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Willard Van Orman Quine
[1908-2000]
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Willard Van Orman Quine of Harvard stands as one of the modern world’s most eminent philosophers. His major writings include the papers "On What There Is" (1948), which elucidated Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions and contains Quine's famous dictum of ontological commitment, "To be is to be the value of a variable", and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) which attacked the traditional analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism, undermining the then-popular logical positivism, advocating instead a form of semantic holism. Major writings also include the books "Word and Object" [1960], which further developed these positions and introduced Quine's famous indeterminacy of translation thesis, advocating a behaviorist theory of meaning,
and "The Web of Belief" [1970], which advocates a kind of coherentism.
"Life is what the least of us make the most of us feel [that] the least of us make the most of."
"[The word] 'ouch' is not independent of social training. One has only to prick a foreigner to appreciate that it is an English word."
"One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy."
"Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word."
"As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in light of past experience."
"It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it."
— Willard Van Orman Quine
"Language is a social art."
B I O
t e x t
h e r e
Willard V.O. Quine entry at Wikipedia
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Major Works
http://www.amazon.com/s?k=Willard+V.O.+Quine&i=stripbooks
http://www.amazon.com/Willard-Van-Orman-Quine/e/B000AQ4R1C?
"A System of Logistic" [1934]
http://www.amazon.com/System-Logistic-Willard-Orman-Quine/dp/0674431650/ Harvard Univ Press 6/2014
the paper "New Foundations" (1937)
"Mathematical Logic" [1940]
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Logic-Willard-Orman-Quine/dp/0674554515/ Harvard Univ Press 1981
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Logic-Willard-Orman-Quine/dp/1258082241/ 8/2011
"Elementary Logic" [1941]
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Logic-W-V-Quine-ebook/dp/B005ULERXU/
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Logic-Willard-Orman-Quine/dp/0674244516/
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Logic-W-V-Quine/dp/0674244508/
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-logic-W-V-Quine/dp/B0007DV29S/ Ginn and company 1941
the paper "On What There Is" (1948)
http://www.philosopher.eu/texts/quine-on-what-there-is-summary/
"Methods of Logic" [1950]
http://www.amazon.com/Methods-Logic-Willard-Orman-Quine/dp/0674571762/ Harvard Univ Press 1982
http://www.amazon.com/Methods-Logic-W-V-Quine/dp/B0007DLU90/ 1959
the paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Dogmas_of_Empiricism
http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html
"From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, Second Revised Edition" [1953] contains "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"
http://www.amazon.com/Logical-Point-View-Logico-Philosophical-Revised-ebook/dp/B08QVKBPY2/
http://www.amazon.com/Logical-Point-View-Logico-Philosophical-Essays/dp/0674323513/ 1980 Harvard Univ Press
http://www.amazon.com/Logical-Point-View-2e-Revised/dp/B004VIGTIO/ 1963
http://www.amazon.com/logical-point-view-logico-philosophical-essays/dp/B0007IUIP2/
"Word and Object" [1960]
The closest thing Quine wrote to a philosophical treatise; Chapter 2 sets out his indeterminacy of translation thesis
http://www.amazon.com/Word-Object-Willard-Orman-Quine-ebook/dp/B08HY2GYDW/
http://www.amazon.com/Object-Press-Willard-Orman-Quine/dp/0262518317/
http://www.amazon.com/Object-Press-Willard-Orman-Quine/dp/0262670011/ pb 3/64 MIT Press
http://www.amazon.com/Object-Willard-Orman-Quine-1960-07-30/dp/B01K2RKJZG/
"Set Theory and Its Logic" [] 1969 (1963). Harvard Univ. Press.
"Selected Logic Papers" [1966] New York: Random House.
"The Ways of Paradox" [] 1976 (1966). Harvard Univ. Press
"Ontological Relativity and Other Essays" [1969] Columbia Univ. Press. ISBN 0-231-08357-2.
contains chapters on ontological relativity, naturalized epistemology, and natural kinds
"The Web of Belief" [1970] Random House 2nd ed., 1978). With J. S. Ullian
"The Philosophy of Logic" [] 1986 (1970). Harvard Univ. Press.
"The Roots of Reference" [] 1974 (1971). Open Court Publng ISBN 0-8126-9101-6
developed from Quine's Carus Lectures
"Theories and Things" [1981] Harvard Univ. Press.
"Pursuit of Truth" [] 1992 (1990). Harvard Univ. Press.. ISBN 0-674-73951-5.
A short, lively synthesis of his thought for advanced students and general readers not fooled by its simplicity
"From Stimulus to Science" [1995] Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-32635-0.
Other Works
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"Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of The Century" [1967] Essays In His Honour Edited by Ralph Schoenman contributors are: A.J. Ayer, Werner Bloch, Max Born, C.D. Broad, Erich Fromm, Aldous Huxley, Georg Kreisel, Constance Malleson, Linus Pauling, Victor Purcell, Hilary Putnam, W.V. Quine, Herbert Read, Hans Reichenbach, Maria Reichenbach, Dana Scott, Rev. Michael Scott, I.F. Stone, Julian Trevalyan Kindle Edition from ... [9/00] for $0.00 PUB pb [8/00] for $0.00 hardcover [8/00] for $0.00 out of print/used |
"Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary" [1987] Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-14-012522-1.
essays, many subtly humorous, for lay readers, very revealing of the breadth of Quine's interests
Movies & Television, Other Media
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Willard+Van+Orman+Quine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx9RJFBcb00 1.00.00
echobook reading of 1948 work
July 19, 2020
Public Domain. This is the 1961 revised edition of Two Dogmas of Empiricism. Often cited as the single greatest essay in philosophy of the 20th century. In this essay Willard Van Orman Quine shows how the analytic and synthetic are two sides of one coin, etc.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism (Full Essay Willard Van Orman Quine 1961)
 | "Men of Ideas" TV series [BBC-TV Jan-April 1978] fifteen 45-minute color BBC-TV episodes; episode titles were: 1) An Introduction To Philosophy, 2) Marxist Philos-ophy, 3) Marcuse and The Frankfurt School, 4) Heidegger and Modern Existentialism, 5) The Two Philosophies of Wittgenstein, 6) Logical Positivism and Its Legacy, 7) The Spell of Linguistic Philosophy, 8) Moral Philosophy, 9) The Ideas of Quine, 10) The Philosophy of Language, 11) The Ideas of Chomsky, 12) The Philosophy of Science, 13) Philosophy and Politics, 14) Philosophy and Literature, and 15) Philosophy: The Social Context • host Bryan Magee interviews A.J. Ayer [1910-89], William Barrett, Isaiah Berlin, Noam Chomsky, Ronald Dworkin, Ernest Gellner, R.M. Hare, Herbert Marcuse [1898-1979], Iris Murdoch [1919-99], Hilary Putnam, Willard Van Orman Quine, Anthony Quinton, John Searle, Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams series credits at IMDb • series entry at Wikipedia |
Episode 9 "Willard Van Orman Quine interview with Bryan Magee" [BBC-TV 1977]
watch full episode [5/2016 upload; 44:21] online at YouTube •
episode credits at IMDb
Works About W.V.O. Quine
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"American Philosophy From Edwards To Quine" [1977] Edited & with Introduction by Robert W. Shahan & Kenneth R. Merrill What have American philosophers Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, John Dewey, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, and Willard Van Orman Quine contributed to American philosophy ? • contributors are: Max H. Fisch, Roland A. Delattre, A. Robert Caponigri, Max H. Fisch, Peter Fuss, Frederick A. Olafson, and Willard Van Orman Quine Univ Oklahoma Press 8½x5½ pb [9/79] for $29.56 Univ Oklahoma Press hardcover [1977] out of print/used |
"The Time of My Life: An Autobiography" [The MIT Press 1985] ISBN 0-262-17003-5
"The Philosophy of W.V.O. Quine (The Library of Living Philosophers)" [Open Court 1986] Edited by Hahn, L. E., and Schilpp, P. A.,
"The Philosophy of W. V. Quine: An Expository Essay" [1988] University of South Florida by Roger F. Gibson
"Enlightened Empiricism: An Examination of W. V. Quine's Theory of Knowledge" [1988] University of South Florida by Roger F. Gibson
"Perspectives on Quine" [1990] Blackwell Publng Edited by Roger F. Gibson & R. Barrett
 | "The American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, and Kuhn" [1994] by Giovanna Borradori, Translated by Rosanna Crocitto Rather obtuse conversations that are probably not for the beginner or student, but may be valuable for in-depth insight to any of these nine American philosophers: Stanley Cavell, Arthur C. Danto, Donald Davidson, Thomas S. Kuhn, Alasdair MacIntyre, Robert Nozick, Hilary Putnam, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Richard Rorty Kindle Edition from Univ Chicago Press [1994 edition] for $14.30 Univ Chicago Press 8½x5½ pb [3/94] for $25.64 Univ Chicago Press 8¾x5¾ hardcover [3/94] out of print/used |
"W.V. Quine" biography [2002] Princeton Univ Press by Alex Orenstein
"Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine" [2004] Harvard Univ Press by Roger F. Gibson
"The Cambridge companion to Quine" [2004] Cambridge Univ Press Edited by Roger F. Gibson ISBN 0521639492
"The Development of Quine's Philosophy" [2012] Springer germany - Murray Murphey
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