-
W. V. Quine's birth
Quine was born and raised In Akron, Ohio. He lived with his parents and older brother. His father was a manufacturing entrepreneur (founder of the Akron Equipment Company, which produced tire molds) and his mother, who was a schoolteacher. -
Quine's education
Quine received his B.A. summa cum laude in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1930, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932. -
World War II
Quine arranged for Tarski to be invited to the September 1939 Unity of Science Congress in Cambridge, for which the Jewish Tarski sailed on the last ship to leave Danzig before Nazi Germany invaded Poland and triggered World War II. Quine lectured on logic in Brazil, in Portuguese, and served in the United States Navy in a military intelligence role, deciphering messages from German submarines, and reaching the rank of lieutenant commander. -
On What There Is
“What is there?” An easy and broadly acceptable answer could be “everything,” in other words, “there is what there is.” There has been a lot of debate over certain cases regarding whether everything can be included among things that exist. Quine notes a problem in particular for ontological debates. As we noted, people may differ as to what should be considered an existing entity or not. Quine does not believe there is such an entity. -
Two Dogmas of Empiricism
The paper is an attack on two central aspects of the logical positivists' philosophy: the first being the analytic-synthetic distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts; the other being reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms that refer exclusively to immediate experience. -
From a Logical Point of View.
Consists of nine essays that are largely concerned with the theory of meaning. At the same time, adjacent portions of philosophy and logic are discussed. To the existence of what objects may a given scientific theory be said to be committed? And what considerations may suitably guide us in accepting or revising such ontological commitments? These are among the questions dealt with in this book, particular attention being devoted to the role of abstract entities in mathematics. -
Word and Object
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. -
Set Theory and its Logic
Quine's idea was that if two objects with the same elements are the same object. -
Ways of Paradox
Ways of Paradox includes papers that are among 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. -
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays
The essays included herein are intimately related and concern themselves with three philosophical preoccupations: the nature of meaning, the meaning of existence, and the nature of natural knowledge. -
The Roots of Reference.
Quine expands on his earlier concepts about the inscrutability of reference and examines problems with traditional empiricism, arguing for a naturalized epistemology based on holism. -
Theories and Things.
This book includes philosophical reflections on language that are brought to bear upon metaphysical and epistemological questions such as; What does it mean to assume objects, concrete and abstract? How do such assumptions serve science? What is the empirical content of a scientific theory? Further essays deal with meaning, moral values, analytical philosophy, and its history, metaphor, and the nature of mathematics; and there are essays on individual philosophers. -
Pursuit of Truth
The pursuit of truth is a quest that links observation, theory, and the world. Various faulty efforts to forge such links have led to much intellectual confusion. Quine’s efforts to get beyond the confusion begin by rejecting the very idea of binding together word and thing, rejecting the focus on the isolated word. For him, observation sentences and theoretical sentences are the alpha and omega of the scientific enterprise. -
Stimulus to Science.
Quine produced a sharp, sprightly book that encapsulates the whole of his philosophical enterprise, including his thinking on all the key components of his epistemological stance—especially the value of logic and mathematics. -
Death
Quine died, in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 25th, 2000 at the age of 92 of an illness.