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W. V. Quine's Background
W. V. Quine was born in 1908 in Akron, Ohio. He was an American logician and philosopher widely recognized as a predominant figure in Anglo-American philosophy during the latter half of the 20th century. Quine studied at Harvard University, where he obtained his Ph.D. and joined the faculty. Two years later, Quine became a professor at Harvard and stayed for the next 30 years until his retirement. He was known for his work in the philosophy of logic, ontology, epistemology, and language. -
Quine's Contribution to Epistemology
Within epistemology, Quine was known for rejecting the Vienna Circle doctrine of analytic-synthetic distinction, and in 1951, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" was published. Quine argued that "no coherent definition of analyticity had ever been proposed" (Britannica, 2022). Based on his view, the truths of mathematics and logic were known by experience, which made both revisable when presented with counter-evidence (Britannica, 2022). Two Dogmas Video -
Quine's Contribution to Philosophy of Language
In 1964, Quine published "Word & Object," which is the source of his famed thesis, "Indeterminacy of Translation." The thesis states that within a language, there are indefinite possibilities for translations from one language to another (Britannica, 2022). Based on Quine's thesis, there is no definite fact about whether one translation of a given language is actually correct. Because this thesis is more of a general view, it falls under Quine's "ontological relativity" (Britannica, 2022). -
Quine's Contribution to Ontology
Within ontology, Quine's contribution was recognized as his publication of "Ontological Relativity," which was published in 1969. Quine believed notions like properties, propositions, and meanings were ill-defined or scientifically useless (Britannica, 2022). Quine only believed in concrete physical objects and abstract sets that were required by mathematics (Britannica, 2022).