Posts Tagged W.V.O. Quine

Goodman and Quine’s Nominalism

happy numbersI referred on the podcast to Goodman’s 1947 article “Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism.” You can look at it here. The philosophical content is in the first couple of chapters; in fact, I’ll just give you the first half of the first chapter here:

We do not believe in abstract entities. No one supposes that abstract entities — classes, relations, properties, etc. — exist in space-time; but we mean more than this. We renounce them altogether. We shall not forego all use of predicates and other words that are often taken to name abstract objects. We may still write “x is a dog”, or “x is between y and z”; for here “is a dog” and “is between . . . and” can be construed as syncategorematic: significant in context but naming nothing. But we cannot use variables that call for abstract objects as values.1 In “x is a dog”, only concrete objects are appropriate values of the variable. In contrast, the variable in “x is a zoological species” calls for abstract objects as values (unless of course, we can somehow identify the various zoological species with certain concrete objects). Any system that countenances abstract entities we deem unsatisfactory as a final philosophy.

Now, I support this on general principles; I don’t like ontologies with weird Platonic forms or numbers as real or possible worlds (another target of Goodman). What’s less clear to me as someone who hasn’t read much philosophy of mathematics is the rationale:
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Later Pragmatists: Quine on mind

In our discussions on William James, we alluded to later pragmatists and the relationship of pragmatism to verificationism (logical positivism). Does being a pragmatist, who tries to reduce philosophical problems to problems of how we should most intelligently act in the face of world, mean that you have to discount claims that can’t be verified by empirical science?

Here’s W.V.O. Quine (who is typically considered a pragmatist) being interviewed about our philosophy of mind topic, where he comes down as reductive materialist with sympathies to behaviorism:

Note his diagnosis of the problem of free will as being a result of philosophical confusion. Read the rest of this entry »

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