Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #220769 in Books
• Published on: 1980-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Customer Reviews

Universals, dogmas, useful myths, efficacy in communication
The philosophical issues treated in this book are very important indeed. In fact, they explain nothing less than what really exists in our universe and how mankind can deal with this universe through pragmatism (language).

On What There Is
Universals of bound variables (e.g., redness) are useful myths. They don't exist really (they are not there).
Physical conceptual schemes simplify our accounts of experience, because myriad scattered sense events come to be associated with simple so-called objects.

Two Dogmas of Empiricism
There is no fundamental cleavage between analytic (grounded on meanings independent of fact) and synthetic (grounded in fact) truths. The truth of a statement cannot be split into a linguistic and a factual component.
Reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience, is a dogma. The unit of empirical significance is the whole of science. Reductionism is only pragmatic.

The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics
This text treats the problem of significant sequences (phonemes and morphemes) in speech and the notion of synonymy.

Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis
Concepts in an unconceptualized reality are not more than language. Their purpose is pragmatic. The ultimate duty of language, science and philosophy is efficacy in communication and prediction.

New Foundations
In this text, Quine reduces the logical foundations of Russell's Principia Mathematica to a three-fold logic of propositions, classes and relations: membership (x is a member of y), alternative denial (a statement is false if and only if both constituent statements are true) and universal quantification (a prefix of a variable).

Reification of Universals
Quantification is a criterion of ontological commitment: an entity (a value) is presupposed by a theory if and only if it is needed among the values of the bound variables in order to make the statements affirmed in the true theory.

Notes on the Theory of Reference
In this text Quine explains Tarski's solution for the paradoxes in the theory of reference (e.g., the liar paradox).

Reference and Modality
In this text, Quine gives comments on the theory of reference and modal contexts (e.g., possibility, necessity).

Meaning and Existential Inference
In this essay, Quine treats the difficulties arising out of the distinction between meaning and reference, logical truth and singular terms.

Although the problems (and the reasoning behind them) are not always easy to understand for the layman, Quine's language is exceptionally clear (an example for all true philosophers).

These essays are a must for all those interested in philosophy and for all those who want to understand the world we live in.