W. V. O. Quine

Quick Facts

• Full name: Willard Van Orman Quine
• Lived: 1908-2000
• Born in: Akron, Ohio
• Died in: Boston, Massachusetts
• Main place: Harvard University
• Main fields: logic, language, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of science
• Main tradition: Analytic Philosophy
• Best known for: naturalism, confirmation holism, the web of belief, ontological commitment, and the indeterminacy of translation

The Big Question

Can philosophy stand outside science and give science a final foundation?

Quine's answer was no. Philosophy is not a higher court above science. It is part of the same human attempt to understand the world. We use our best current science, logic, and language to improve that same science, logic, and language from within.

In One Minute

W. V. O. Quine was one of the most important American analytic philosophers of the twentieth century. He kept the discipline's love of logic, but rejected the idea that philosophy has a cleaner method than science.

His famous paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" attacks two ideas: that some truths are true purely by meaning, and that each meaningful sentence has its own private test in experience. Quine thought our beliefs face experience together, as a network.

He also argued that knowledge should be studied naturally: as something human beings and scientific communities actually produce. In language, he denied that meanings are hidden mental objects. In ontology, the study of what exists, he asked what our best theories must treat as real.

What They Taught

Quine taught that there is no "first philosophy." First philosophy means a special starting point that is supposed to justify science before science begins. Quine thought that project had failed. We do not climb out of our beliefs and inspect them from nowhere. We test, repair, simplify, and extend them from inside the system we already use.

His best-known attack is on the analytic/synthetic distinction. An analytic sentence is supposed to be true by meaning alone, as in "All bachelors are unmarried." A synthetic sentence is supposed to depend on how the world is, as in "The bachelor next door owns a telescope." Quine did not deny that definitions are useful. He denied that philosophers had drawn a sharp enough line between truth by meaning and truth by fact. Attempts to explain "true by meaning" usually lean on another unclear idea, such as sameness of meaning, necessity, or convention.

The same paper attacks reductionism. Here reductionism means the view that each meaningful statement can be translated into, or tested by, its own special package of sensory experience. Quine thought real science does not work that way. If a lab prediction fails, the problem might be the law, the measuring device, the background mathematics, the sample description, or the observation report. Evidence pressures a whole theory, not one sentence by itself.

This is confirmation holism. "Holism" means that parts of a theory get their support from their place in the larger whole. Quine pictured belief as a web. Observation sentences sit near the edge: "The meter reads 5" or "There is a rabbit." Logic and mathematics sit nearer the center, because changing them would disturb almost everything else. Central beliefs are not unrevisable, but we give them up only under extreme pressure.

Quine's naturalized epistemology follows from this picture. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. Traditional epistemology often asks how knowledge can be justified from a secure foundation. Quine asks how physical creatures, receiving sensory input, build theories about the world. That makes epistemology continuous with psychology, linguistics, and the natural sciences. It still cares about evidence and reliability, but it does not certify science from outside science.

His view of language is also naturalist. Quine distrusted meanings as private objects hidden behind words. In Word and Object, he imagines radical translation: a linguist tries to translate a completely unfamiliar language using only public behavior and shared circumstances. If a speaker says "gavagai" when a rabbit appears, should that mean "rabbit," "undetached rabbit part," or "rabbit stage"? Quine's point is that more than one translation manual can fit all the public evidence.

This is the indeterminacy of translation. "Indeterminacy" means that the evidence may not settle one unique answer. A related idea is the inscrutability of reference. Reference is what a word points to or stands for. Even good translation may not settle exactly what a term refers to by itself. Reference is fixed only within a wider theory and translation scheme.

Quine's ontology is his answer to the question "What exists?" Ontology is the study of what there is. Quine's method is to take our best theory of the world, rewrite it clearly in logic, and ask what the theory must quantify over. To quantify is to say "there is something" or "for every thing" of a certain kind. If our best physics says there are electrons, and our best mathematics says there are sets or numbers, then accepting those theories commits us to those entities.

Surface grammar can mislead us. "Pegasus does not exist" looks as if it names a strange non-existent horse. Quine says careful logical paraphrase avoids that: nothing is both Pegasus-like and real. He was austere, but not a simple materialist. If successful science needs mathematics, and mathematics needs numbers or sets, then we have reason to accept those abstract objects too.

Key Ideas With Examples

• Naturalism: philosophy should work within our best overall science, not above it. A theory of knowledge may use psychology, linguistics, and biology.
• Analytic/synthetic distinction: the supposed split between truths by meaning and truths by fact. "All bachelors are unmarried" looks analytic; "This bachelor is tired" looks synthetic. Quine argues that the sharp line between the two cannot carry the weight philosophers put on it.
• Reductionism: the idea that each meaningful statement has its own direct test in experience. Quine rejects this. A claim like "The chemical is acidic" depends on instruments, theory, background assumptions, and accepted measurement practices.
• Confirmation holism: evidence tests a body of beliefs together. If an eclipse prediction fails, scientists might check the telescope, the timing, the equations, the weather, or the theory of gravity.
• Web of belief: the connected system of beliefs we revise under pressure. Edge beliefs are easier to change; central beliefs, such as arithmetic, are harder to disturb.
• Naturalized epistemology: the study of knowledge as a natural process. It asks how sensory input, language learning, memory, experiment, and theory-building produce reliable belief.
• Ontological commitment: a theory commits you to whatever it must say exists. If your best theory says "there are electrons," you owe an account of electrons. If it needs numbers, you owe an account of numbers.
• Regimentation: rewriting ordinary claims in a clearer logical form. "Pegasus does not exist" becomes a claim that nothing satisfies the Pegasus description, so we do not have to treat Pegasus as a mysterious object.
• Indeterminacy of translation: more than one translation can fit the same public evidence. "Gavagai" may be translated in different ways while still letting speakers and translators coordinate behavior.
• Inscrutability of reference: even if whole sentences work, the exact reference of their parts may remain unsettled. A word can be mapped to rabbits, rabbit parts, or rabbit stages if the wider system compensates.
• Indispensability argument: mathematics earns belief because science cannot do without it. If physics needs numbers, functions, and sets to state its best theories, Quine thinks that gives us reason to accept those abstract entities.

Major Works

• "On What There Is" (1948): gives Quine's classic approach to ontology. It asks how to deny Pegasus without admitting a ghostly Pegasus, and it links existence to quantification.
• "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951): attacks the analytic/synthetic distinction and sentence-by-sentence reductionism. It made Quine unavoidable for later Analytic Philosophy.
• From a Logical Point of View (1953): collects major essays on logic, language, ontology, and meaning, including "On What There Is" and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism."
• Word and Object (1960): Quine's major book on language and reality. It develops radical translation, indeterminacy, reference, and naturalism.
• Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969): develops ontological relativity and naturalized epistemology. "Epistemology Naturalized" argues that knowledge should be studied with empirical science.
• The Roots of Reference (1974): asks how reference and object-talk grow out of sensory stimulation, learning, and public language.
• Pursuit of Truth (1990): a compact late statement on evidence, observation, truth, reference, and theory choice.

Why It Matters

Quine matters because he changed the default assumptions of twentieth-century philosophy. After him, philosophers could not easily appeal to "meaning," "necessity," "a priori truth," or "definition" as if those notions were already clear.

He also gave Philosophy of Science a powerful anti-foundationalist picture. Science does not need absolute certainty to be rational. It needs theories that answer to experience, fit with the rest of what we know, stay simple where possible, and remain revisable.

His work also helped bring metaphysics back into analytic philosophy in a disciplined form. Instead of asking what reality must contain by pure intuition, Quine asks what our best theories are committed to when stated clearly. His work on translation and reference made meaning public, behavioral, and theory-dependent.

Proponents, Critics, and Opponents

Quine learned logical discipline from Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. He also learned deeply from Rudolf Carnap. Carnap gave him a model of philosophy as clear, formal, scientific work. Quine then turned that model against Carnap's sharp distinction between framework rules and empirical claims.

Quine belongs to Analytic Philosophy, but he pushed it away from armchair foundations and toward naturalism. He also has affinities with Empiricism and Pragmatism: experience matters, and theory choice is practical as well as logical.

Donald Davidson inherited Quine's holism, public account of meaning, and translation problems, then gave truth and interpretation a more central role. Hilary Putnam shared Quine's naturalism and helped develop the indispensability argument, but later resisted Quine's thin treatment of meaning and value. David Lewis shared Quine's taste for clear ontology, though Lewis accepted possible worlds more boldly.

Critics argued that Quine threw away too much. H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson defended the analytic/synthetic distinction against "Two Dogmas." John Searle and Noam Chomsky criticized behaviorist approaches to language and mind. Modal philosophers influenced by Saul Kripke resisted Quine's suspicion of necessity and possible-world talk. Michael Friedman argued that Quine's web of belief does not explain the special historical role of mathematics and framework principles in science.

Thomas Kuhn is a useful contrast. Both Quine and Kuhn made simple empiricism harder to defend. Quine kept a logical, naturalist style; Kuhn stressed scientific revolutions, paradigms, and history. Quine also reframed Skepticism: instead of trying to defeat the skeptic from outside science, he treated knowledge as part of the same natural world science studies.

Related Pages

• Analytic Philosophy
• Philosophy of Science
• Empiricism
• Pragmatism
• Rudolf Carnap
• Bertrand Russell
• Donald Davidson
• Hilary Putnam
• David Lewis
• Skepticism
• Thomas Kuhn
• John Searle
• Saul Kripke