W.V Quine | Library of Living Philosophers | SIU

The Philosophy of W.V. Quine

(Volume XVIII, 1986)

For over 30 years, Willard Van Orman Quine has been a dominant figure in logical theory and philosophy of logic. His innovations in notions and techniques have been momentous, and his clear, elegant expositions have set new standards. In addition to his technical work in logic, he has stirred up hornets' nests in methodology, theory of language, epistemology, and ontology. His distinctive brand of pragmatic naturalism has helped blur the boundaries between speculative metaphysics and natural science, and provoked fruitful debates on such topics as the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, synonymy and its explication, meaning holism and the underdetermination of theory by particular experiences, the inscrutability of reference, and indeterminacy of translation.

Table of Contents

Autobiography of W.V. Quine

W.V. Quine

(Replies follow essays)

William P. Alston: Quine on Meaning 
Herbert G. Bohnert: Quine on Analyticity 
Dagfinn Follesdal: Essentialism and Reference 
Ulrich Gähde/Wolfgang Stegmüller: An Argument in Favor of the Duhem- Quine Thesis: From the Structuralist Point of View 
Roger F. Gibson, Jr.: Translation, Physics, and Facts of the Matter 
Nelson Goodman: Nominalisms 
Gilbert Harman: Quine's Grammar 
Geoffrey Hellman: Logical Truth by Linguistic Convention 
Jaakko Hintikka: Quine on Who's Who 
David Kaplan: Opacity 
Harold N. Lee: Discourse and Event: The Logician and Reality 
Arnold B. Levison: Translational Indeterminacy and the Mind-Body Problem 
Robert Nozick: Experience, Theory, and Language 
Charles Parsons: Quine on the Philosophy of Mathematics 
Hilary Putnam: Meaning Holism 
Paul A. Roth: Semantics without Foundations 
Henryk Skolimowski: Quine, Ajdukiewicz, and the Predicament of 20th Century Philosophy 
J.J.C. Smart: Quine on Space-Time 
P.F. Strawson: Reference and Its Roots 
Manley Thompson: Quine's Theory of Knowledge 
Joseph S. Ullian: Quine and the Field of Mathematical Logic 
Jules Vuillemin: On Duhem's and Quine's Theses 
Hao Wang: Quine's Logical Ideas in Historical Perspective 
Morton White: Normative Ethics, Normative Epistemology, and Quine's Holism
Bibliography of the Writings of W.V. Quine