Product Description
Language consists of dispositions, socially instilled, to respond observably to socially observable stimuli. Such is the point of view from which a noted philosopher and logician examines the notion of meaning and the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference. In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our language's referential apparatus, clarifies semantic problems connected with the imputation of existence, and marshals reasons for admitting or repudiating each of various categories of supposed objects. He argues that the notion of a language-transcendent "sentence-meaning" must on the whole be rejected; meaningful studies in the semantics of reference can only be directed toward substantially the same language in which they are conducted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Empiricism Squared
Quine tells a fascinating story about translation.His is not a lazy mind.

His assumption (or belief) that language is learned completely through experience is simply false.Ample evidence drawn from experiments in psychology, neuro-physics, and even common sense demonstrate otherwise.Like the English philosophers who wrote about language and cognition centuries before him, his work will be found to be historically interesting, but ultimately dated; one might say, in the field of linguistics, pre-Copernicus.

Probably wrong but great nonetheless
First of all, unless you specialize in self-torture, don't try to read past chapter 2. (I myself died in the middle of chapter 5.) Chapters 1 and 2, however, are fantastic. You've probably heard the story before...it seems we can't tell whether by "Gavagai" the natives mean "rabbit", or "undetached rabbit part." The reason is, every single time a native is stimulated by the one, he is stimulated by the other...or something like that. That much is a fairly amusing observation, and Quine has a field day with it, suggesting that it's impossible in principle to discriminate between these putative "referents". Hmm. Well, let's just see. Say you and I are observing a "source"...a black box, out of which ticks a stream of letters. Say that, occasionally, the string of characters "R-A-B-B-I-T" appears in the stream. You have noticed that whenever this happens, I announce (gleefully) "Gavagai!" It seems you're stuck. You can never tell whether by "Gavagai!" I take myself to "refer" to "R-A-B-B-I-T" or to the rabbit-embedded "B-B" appearing in the stream. At least, not by passive observation. Once you can ask me questions about what I do take myself to be "referring" to, it seems that we can clear this issue up, but fast. Or not? Quine thinks not, and that's where things get interesting. I'm pretty sure he's wrong, but I'm not (exactly) sure why. Probably you can employ a meta-language to artificially attach referential information to sentences...more interesting, however, is the question why you would want to. Indeed, wouldn't a philosopher versed in the paradox just say "what's the difference?" when asked whether he "referred" to "R-A-B-B-I-T" or a rabbit-embedded "B-B"? The moral seems to be that you aren't stuck at all...you know what I *mean* either way, you just don't know what I'm referring to: reference, in short, doesn't contribute in the way we usually think it does to meaning. But, whatever the answers are, the puzzles are here, so read it.

A Seminal Book in Contemporary Pragmatism
This book is Quine's first full-length book, and it sets forth his most elaborate statement of his wholistic thesis of language.Instead of the metaphorical statement in "Two Dogmas" written a decade earlier, here in Word and Object Quine expresses his thesis in the literal vocabulary of behavioristic psychology with his idea of "stimulus meaning".

Much of the book is an exposition of his thesis of semantic indeterminacy as it is manifested in translation between languages, which thus appears as his indeterminacy of translation thesis sometimes called his "radical translation" thesis.In fact there is nothing radical about it; linguists have long known of such translation problems.As has long been said: traduttore,traditore.But Quine uses it to critique positivism, and it is essential to his pragmatism.

In the translation situation he portrays the field linguist in the same situation that the positivist Carnap postulates in "Meaning and Synonymy in Natural Language", where Carnap attempted to describe how the field linguist can ascertain a term's "intension" or meaning by identifying its extension or range of application from the observed behavior of native speakers of an unknown language.Carnap admitted that this determination of extension involves uncertainty and possible error due to vagueness, but he excused this uncertainty and risk of error, because it occurs even in the concepts used in empirical science.While this admission of extensional vagueness in science made the fact unproblematic for Carnap, it had just the opposite significance for Quine.

For Quine extensional vagueness is an inherent characteristic of language that he calls "referential inscrutability", and which he later calls "ontological relativity."And what Carnap called intensional vagueness, Quine prefers to consider as a semantical indeterminacy in stimulus meaning but without admitting intensions.

For more on my views on Quine, please Google my book History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science, which is also on my web site philsci with free downloads by chapter - especially BOOK III, and my other reviews of Quine's books at this AMAZON site.

Thomas J. Hickey

An Essential Read forPhilosophy of Language Enthusiasts
In this incomparable and engaging book Quine takes up many of the questions he raised in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and in his other early papers.In Word and Object, he levels an attack against the traditional notion of meaning that is accepted by so many, because it is understood by so few.Though the position defended here is alomost completely wrong, it is wrong for interesting reasons and, along with Quine's other works, establishes a position regarding matters semantic that, from his ultra-empiricist positivist perspective is nearly inevitable.If you don't find his position at least a little compelling, then your heart is made of stone.

Pinnacle of Philosophical Clarity
This book is a true classic, both in content and presentation; Quine's pithy style, sometimes ironic, is singular in the literature of analytic philosophy. This book describes the generation of reference and logical categories out of the confluence of "sense-data" and "stimulus synonymy", and proceeds to plow through every permutation of problems which can arise from such an endeavor. Chapter two (the [in-]famous "indeterminacy of translation" thesis) is a fascinating linguistic reformulation of the "other minds" problem, demonstrating that one must conclude a type of "ontological relativity" amongst speakers. Along with Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations," Ryle's The Concept of Mind," and Sellars' "Philosophy and the Empiricism of Mind," Quine's major work completes the quadrivium of mid-20th century analytic philosophy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good book
I have been reading this book off and on for years.It is beautiful.However, I am not well read in mathematical logic, and the comments of a mathematical logician as to whether the proofs are correct and what should be read next would be helpful to readers interested in mathematical logic.I read the book to understand Godel.There are better books for that.However, once I starting reading this book, I appreciated the eloquence of Prof. Quine and the beauty of the axioms, definitions and proofs in the book.

Very good but be aware of omissions
This book is indeed much shorter than Principia, mainly because it is derived for lecture notes for a 1 semester PhD course. It is also a lot clearer than PM. But the notation is largely the same, which makes for hard reading if your are under 50. Quine's proof format doesn't take up much space, but has always eluded me. This book contains the best treatment of truth functional and quantificational logic prior to natural deduction and truth trees.

I like the set theory of this book, but I warn you that it is very nonstandard. Even ardent lovers of Quine's NF theory hate
the ML theory of this book.

The weakness of this book is its treatment of metatheory:
consistency, completeness, decidability, categoricity. The treatment of Godel's incompleteness is detailed and highly original (altho' it owes more to Tarski than to Godel). But it is very difficult, and Smullyan (1991) is much better.
Quine also had no clue re model theory or recursion.

I respect the historical remarks a lot. Just one big omission: Quine, like nearly everyone of his generation, missed that
math logic as we know and love it does not descend from Frege, but from an 1885 article by C S Peirce.

In Depth Look at Logic
Try this book when you know a bit about the basics of logic.The descriptions are much more lucid than those in Principia, even if the ideas are less earthshattering for there time.Quine, as he always does, gives amasterful, detailed look at logic.If you are a fan of logic and thefoundations of math, this book is not to be missed. ... Read more

Product Description
"Some Pow'r did us the giftie grant/ To see oursels as others can't." With that play on Burns' famous line as a preface, Willard Van Orman Quine sets out to spin the yarn of his life so far. And it is a gift indeed to see one of the world's most famous philosophers as no one else has seen him before. To catch an intimate glimpse of his seminal and controversial theories of philosophy, logic, and language as they evolved, and to hear his warm and often amusing comments on famous contemporary philosophers.

From his beginnings in Akron, Ohio in the early 1900s, Quine takes us on a tour of over 100 countries over three-quarters of a century, including close observations of the Depression and two world wars. Far from a philosophical tract, it is an ebullient, folksy account of a richly varied and rounded life. When he does dip into philosophy, it is generally of the armchair sort, and laced with a gentle good humor: "There is that which one wants to do for the glory of having done it, and there is that which one wants to do for the joy of doing it. One can want to be a scientist because he wants to see himself as a Darwin or an Einstein, and one can want to be a scientist because he is curious about what makes things tick .... In normal cases the two kinds of motivation are in time brought to terms .... In me the glory motive lingered ......

In this book, Quine approaches the details of his life the way he has always approached them with a sharp sense of interest, adventure and fun. And he has a skill for picking a word that is just off-center enough to pull an ordinary event out of the humdrum of daily life and evoke its personal meaning. The result is a book of memories that is utterly mesmerizing.

Willard Van Orman Quine is the author of numerous books, including Word and Object, published by The MIT Press in 1960.

A Bradford Book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

External things
This autobiography is only `a factual account of external things'.
It is a summing up of the author's travel experiences and symposia reminiscences.
It contains only very superficial sketches of his family life and professional career and nearly nothing about his philosophical work or about discussions with colleagues.
There are no emotions, no comments on political or social events, on war or peace. Nothing.

I cannot recommend this book.

For an introduction to the work of Quine, I recommend an interview with Bryan Magee published in `Talking Philosophy: dialogues with Fifteen Leading Philosophers.'

Poor formatting
An interesting book, a bit too long, and a very bad text-formatting job. One would expect much better from MIT press. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Willard Van Orman Quine, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1316 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description

This expanded edition of The Ways of Paradox includes papers that are among Professor Quine's most important and influential, such as "Truth by Convention," "Carnap and Logical Truth," "On Carnap's Views on Ontology," "The Scope and Language of Science," and "Posits and Reality." Many of these essays deal with unresolved issues of central interest to philosophers today. About half of them are addressed to "a wider public than philosophers." The remainder are somewhat more professional and technical. This new edition of The Ways of Paradox contains eight essays that appeared after publication of the first edition, and it retains the seminal essays that must be read by anyone who seeks to master Quine's philosophy.

Quine has been characterized, in The New York Review of Books, as "the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank." His "philosophical innovations add up to a coherent theory of knowledge which he has for the most part constructed single-handed." In The Ways of Paradox new generations of readers will gain access to this philosophy.

Customer Reviews (2)

Helpful understanding of logic for LSAT prep
As a professional LSAT tutor/blogger in NYC, I believe this book is helpful, but not necessary, for LSAT prep.

At 144 pages, it's short and sweet. It's also the first-ever logic textbook (originally published 1941, revised 1980). It discusses many basic issues (necessary/sufficient, etc.) relevant to LSAT logic. If you have the time/inclination, feel free to give it a read, but it's by no means necessary.

The Best Introductory Textbook of Logic
I am surprised to be the first one to write a review about this book. However, I can see how this happened - the author himself writes in his preface to this last edition: "Publisher's samples of fifty-five logic textbooks have accumulated in my office, all introductory and in English. Quantification theory or the first-order predicate calculus is covered in one way or another in most of them. Forty years ago it was covered in none." Forty years ago W. O. Quine published his "Elementary Logic" and set some standards in Logic. I would only want to stress the fact that the good thing about this book is not only that it was the first of this kind, chronologically speaking, but that it still is the first, from a logical point of view (this is the title of another one of Quine's books). Usual readers may not realize that the standards that Quine set forty years ago are still the best that one can find in his attempt to learn Logic. I haven't read a better introductory textbook of Logic and I recommend it to anyone who really wants to understand how the Science of all Sciences (as the medieval philosophers called Logic) works. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Masterwork
"Set Theory and It's Logic" has cast a long shadow since it's first appearance. It is quite simply the crowning work of one of the 20th century's most distinguished philosophers. Sober, clear, and direct (and yet unpretentious and very friendly), it is illuminating to anyone who has the patience to slowly sip it and consider the the way the arguments build up from line to line and page to page a seemingly indestructible house of cards. If one is unprepared for the rigors of the book, that can be easily remedied--Quine also wrote the best introductory book on Logic, "Methods of Logic", which he took through several editions before his death. That book assumes no backround in logic, and a beginner who works her way through the exercises will find herself well-prepared for the magic tricks in "Set Theory and its Logic". I wished we taught this stuff in the public schools, along with mathematics, and (to keep the old dialectic rolling) Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoy, Dickinson--the great poets. I might be dreaming, but we may have, at the very least, more ethical scientists, more humane poets, or just plain old more interesting people--who know what the foundations of their thoughts actually assume. A classic. ... Read more