Remembering Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000)

OBITUARY

REMEMBERING WILLARD VAN ORMAN QUINE (1908–2000)

ROGER GIBSON

I. A SKETCH OF QUINE’S CAREER

Willard Van Orman Quine was born in a modest frame house on NashStreet in Akron, Ohio on June 25, 1908, the second son of Cloyd RobertQuine and Harriet Ellis Van Orman Quine. On that momentous day noone could have foreseen, of course, that this newest member of the Quinefamily was destined to become the most distinguished analytic philosopherin the English speaking world during the latter half of the 20th century. Inthe meantime, the youngest Quine (and his brother Robert Cloyd Quine)enjoyed a stable middle class upbringing in the rubber tire capital of theworld.

Quine graduated from Akron’s West High School in January, 1926, atthe age of seventeen. In the fall of 1926 he entered Oberlin College, wherehe studied mathematics and mathematical logic. It was during his daysat Oberlin that Quine first became aware of Principia Mathematica – thethree-volume masterpiece on mathematical logic co-authored by AlfredNorth Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, published between 1910 and 1913.The Principia was to have a life-long influence on Quine’s thinking aboutlogic and philosophy. Another important lingering influence traceable tohis Oberlin days was behaviorism as elaborated in J. B. Watson’s Psy-chology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. Thirty-some years later, inhis own masterpiece, World and Object (1960), Quine acknowledged theinfluence of another behaviorist, namely, that of his friend, B. F. Skinner.Ironically, Quine’s exposure to behaviorism at Oberlin antedated Skinner’sexposure to behaviorism; Quine writes:

It has been wrongly assumed that I imbibed my behaviorism from Fred; I lately learnedfrom his autobiography that in fact my exposure to John B. Watson slightly antedated his.It was particularly in language theory, rather, that Fred opened doors for me. My linguistic

Journal for General Philosophy of Science 33: 213–229, 2002.© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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interest had run to etymological detail; he put me onto Bloomfield and Jespersen and gaveme a first American edition of John Horne Tooke. (TL, 110)

Quine graduated from Oberlin summa cum laude in the spring of 1930.In the fall of 1930 he enrolled as a graduate student in philosophy at Har-vard University. He applied for admission to Harvard because Whitehead(of Principia fame) was teaching there. Once at Harvard, Quine stud-ied with C. I. Lewis and H. M. Scheffer, and wrote a dissertation un-der the nominal direction of Whitehead entitled The Logic of Sequences:A Generalization of Principia Mathematica. Fifty-five years later, Quinereminisced:

Long sleepless and with a week’s beard, I took the dissertation to Whitehead’s flat in theevening of April 1, 1932, with three hours to spare.

I was still twenty-three when I received my Ph.D. A two-year Ph.D. is inadvisable,apart from strong financial motives such as I felt in those depression years. It precludes theunclocked reflection that best suits scholarship. (TL, 86).

“Dr. Quine" was awarded Harvard’s Sheldon Traveling Fellowship for1932–33. He used his fellowship year to visit Vienna (where he attendedmeetings of the Vienna Circle), Prague (where he met Rudolf Carnap), andWarsaw (where he met Stanislaw Lesnieski, Jan Lukasiewicz, and AlfredTarski, among other prominent logicians). Quine’s Sheldon year was tohave a profound and lasting impact on his philosophical development; thisis especially true regarding his contact with Carnap in Prague.

In April, 1933, Whitehead notified Quine by telegram that Quine hadbeen elected to Harvard’s brand new Society of Fellows. Quine was ec-static: “This meant three years with a comfortable stipend, attractive pere-quisites, and complete freedom to pursue my researches as I pleased’ (TL,99). Three years later, in 1936, he was appointed to the faculty of Harvard’sdepartment of philosophy. Except for a tour of duty in the Navy duringWWII, and various visiting appointments, Quine remained at Harvard,eventually as Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy and Senior Fellow inthe Society of Fellows, until his retirement in 1978 at the age of seventy.However, he continued to lecture world-wide and to publish voluminouslyuntil two years before he died on Christmas Day, 2000, at the age ofninety-two.

During his long career, which extended twenty years beyond his re-tirement from Harvard, Quine lectured on six continents in six languages,published numerous journal articles and some twenty-three books, and re-ceived many prestigious honors and awards, including eighteen honorarydegrees, Sweden’s Rolf Schock Prize, and Japan’s lucrative Kyoto Prize.Unquestionably, Quine was the most distinguished analytic philosopher ofthe second half of the 20th century.

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Distinguished philosopher, yes, but a household name, no. The truthis, the overwhelming majority of Americans have never heard of WillardQuine. Why is this? Two factors conspire to explain this, I believe. First thegeneral public takes little interest in analytic (i.e., scientific) philosophy,the kind of philosophy that Quine concentrated on. Quine acknowledgedthis in an article he wrote for Newsday titled “Has Philosophy Lost Contactwith People?” There he said, “think of organic chemistry; I recognize itsimportance but I am not curious about it nor do I see why the laymanshould care about much of what concerns me in philosophy” (TT, 193).Indeed Quine was very much a philosopher’s philosopher; almost all ofhis writings are addressed to an audience of professional philosophers andlogicians, and therefore, can be quite technical. Second, personality-wiseQuine lacked the flamboyance of Russell (“Better Red than dead!”) andthe mysticism of Wittgenstein (“What we cannot speak about we must passover in silence.”) to mention traits of two towering figures of the first halfof the 20th century. But though he was a modest man who did not seekthe limelight, neither did he shun it, even when he harbored misgivingsabout the venue; for example, he once quipped: “If instead of being calledupon to perform in the British television series ‘Man of Ideas’ I had beenconsulted on its feasibility, I should have expressed doubt” (TT, 193). Hisdoubt notwithstanding, he appeared on the show allowing himself to beinterviewed by the show’s host Bryan Magee.

II. HOW I CAME TO KNOW QUINE

I came to know Quine in the 1970’s when I was a graduate student in philo-sophy at the University of Missouri-Columbia. In those days no course onQuine was offered at Mizzou (in spite of the fact that Quine’s magnumopus, Word and Object, had been in print since 1960). However, in 1972 acongenial faculty member in the department agreed to direct an independ-ent studies on Word and Object for two of my fellow graduate studentsand me. We read Word and Object with great enthusiasm, but with littlecomprehension. Our erratic meetings with our well-intentioned directoramounted to little more than a case of the blind leading the blind. Some-how, though, I learned enough about Quine’s views to write a master’sthesis in 1973 on his conception of philosophical analysis (i.e., explicationis elimination).

By 1975 I was eager (desperate?) to find a suitable doctoral dissertationtopic; Quine came to mind. In an impulsive moment in mid-Novemberof 1975, I wrote to the Great Man at Harvard inquiring whether it werepossible for me to sit in on any courses he might be offering in the spring

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of 1976. A few days later I received a letter from Quine informing me thathis one course offering for the spring was to be Word and Object, and thatI was welcome to sit in, if I wished “to migrate for such slender fare”. Hecontinued, “a more formal arrangement is possible but that would lead to aneedless expense of $1,000”. I was struck by his thoughtfulness, humility,and generosity. I resolved to migrate, but it would be three long monthsbefore I would meet the Great Man face to face.

I arrived in Boston via TWA on Saturday morning, January 31, 1976.I spent my first night in Boston in a hotel. The next afternoon, I rented aone-room apartment in Jamaica Plain for the months of February, March,and April. On Monday morning, February 2, I made my way via publictransportation to Harvard with the purpose of introducing myself to Quine.His office was on the second floor of Emerson Hall. I ascended the twoflights of stairs as if in slow motion. I was about to come face to facewith the Great Man. As I centered his closed door I drew a deep breathbefore knocking, maybe he’s not in. A voice responded, “Come in”. WhenI opened the door I found Quine standing before his desk, halfway to thedoor. He was a good six feet tall, trim, and sporting a marvelous tan he hadacquired while vacationing in Mexico during the semester break. He waswearing a coat and tie. At the time he was 67, and I was days away frombeing 32.

As we shook hands, I mumbled something inane like, “Professor Quine,I presume”. He had a firm grip and large hands. I explained who I was andthat I had come from Columbia to sit in on Word and Object. He heard“Columbia” and naturally thought that I was from Columbia University.It took an awkward moment or two to clear up this “minor” confusion.Obviously, he didn’t recall our exchange of letters in November of 1975.He volunteered some remarks regarding his recent visit to Mexico – whichI would later learn was one of his favorite vacation spots.

Getting down to business, he told me that Word and Object would meeton Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30 to noon in a classroom in EmersonHall once the new semester began in a few days. I thanked him for his timeand told him how much I was looking forward to Word and Object; then Ileft. The meeting I had anticipated for nearly three months was over in lessthan ten minutes! Still, it was a success, for I made contact with the GreatMan and he didn’t bite off my head; in fact, he was downright friendly.I felt a great wave of relief as I bounded down the same two flights ofstairs that minutes before had been so difficult to ascend. As I emergedfrom Emerson Hall into the sunshine of Harvard Yard, it never crossed mymind that my ten-minute meeting with Quine marked the beginning of atwenty-four-year friendship that would change my life.


The first class meeting of Word and Object took place in Emerson Hallin early February. The room’s thirty-some chairs were occupied, and therewere chairless students lining three walls. By the end of the semester therewere less than twenty students who finished the course. However, on thefirst day of class many of the students who were present had no intentionof enrolling in the course. Rather, they had come to get a glimpse of theGreat Man. After class several students asked Quine to autograph theirnewly purchased, pristine, an probably never to be read, copies of Wordand Object. Quine cheerfully and without fanfare complied. A further test-ament to Quine’s celebrity status on campus was the abundance of Quinegraffiti etched on various surfaces of the men’s room in the basement ofEmerson Hall.

Quine taught Word and Object purely as a lecture class. Remarkably,asking questions in class and engaging in discussion were not permitted.Any questions students might have were to be written and handed to Quineat the end of class. Quine would respond to them at the beginning ofthe next class. There were few questions. Making matters worse, Quinewas not a gifted lecturer. He relied on a stack of five-by-seven note cardscovering virtually everything in Word and Object and Roots of Reference(1974). Occasionally, he would break free of the cards, and when he did hislecturing improved greatly. I recall one class meeting in April when Quinelectured without notes for the last fifteen minutes of class. His performanceso mesmerized the students that when the class was over no one stirreduntil Quine had left the room. My conjecture is that his Draconian teachingmethod derived from the fact that he had so much material to cover and solittle time to do so. However, there may be a second consideration, foraccording to a rumor going around at the time, he once offered the courseas a seminar only to find that the students weren’t up to it.

On Wednesday, March 10, I had my first hour-long meeting with Quinein his office to discuss the feasibility of my dissertation topic: the logicalstructure of his systematic philosophy. I asked if it were okay for me torecord our discussion; he said it was. I was sitting on a couch to the leftof Quine’s desk. I placed my tape recorder on his desk. But when I wentto plug in the microphone I found my hand to be shaking so badly thatI had to steady it by resting my wrist on the edge of Quine’s desk. Fromhis position seated behind his desk, he surely noticed this symptom of mynervousness, but he said nothing. The meeting began with my requestingthat he not hold back any criticism he might have regarding my proposeddissertation. I then read to him a two-page précis of the dissertation. Heliked what he heard for the most part, but he also thought that I needed

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to say more about his behaviorism. One thing led to another and soon myhour was up.

As I was preparing to leave, Quine gave me two of his recent articles(1975) I hadn’t known about: “The Nature of Natural Knowledge” and“Mind and Verbal Dispositions”. I was pleased to have them but I was evenmore pleased with Quine’s positive response to my project. I finally had aviable dissertation topic! Now all I had to do was to write it. I celebratedthis milestone with a cup of coffee at a café in Harvard Square.

Later in March we again met in his office to discuss my progress. Afteran hour of discussion I began to gather up my things to leave; Quine said“Sit down. You have come a long way”. I sat, and we discussed for anotherhour. Quine was very generous with his time.

My writing progressed apace. I worked all day everyday. I copied inlonghand every word of Word and Object. And I read and re-read Roots ofReference. I allowed myself no diversions. Getting Quine right became anobsession. By the time my days at Harvard came to a close in April, I hadwritten all but the final chapter of my dissertation. That final chapter waseventually completed, and I took my Ph.D. at Mizzou in 1977. In 1982 arevised and expanded version of my dissertation was published under thetitle The Philosophy of W.V. Quine: An Expository Essay: the book containsa foreword by Quine.

Although the Boston/Cambridge area was Quine’s home base for sevendecades, from 1930 to 2000, I always thought of him as a Midwesterner.Certainly, many of his character traits were instilled in his youth in Ohio. Ihave already noted his thoughtfulness, humility, and generosity, but he wasalso honest, frugal, industrious, sociable, and conservative. Moreover, as arule, Quine was patient and polite regarding his critics, but now and againsomeone would get his goat and suffer his verbal wrath. For example, inresponse to an irksome remark of a critic Quine wrote: so-and-so “predictsthat I will pretend not to understand what he means by his ‘assertions aboutthe spiral of understanding as corresponding to the walls of our cosmos’. Iam tempted, perversely, to pretend that I do understand. But let us be fair:if he claimed not to understand me, I would not for a moment suspect himof pretending” (PQ, 493). Obviously, Quine had a lively sense of humor.

Harvard had a policy (now illegal) of mandatory retirement at the ageof seventy. Quine retired in 1978, just two years after I sat in on Word andObject. Retirement for Quine meant retirement from teaching; he still hadtwenty years of writing and lecturing in front of him. Indeed, he publishedfive books and over eighty articles during his retirement years.

During those years I was privileged to be in his presence at lectureshe gave and/or conferences held on his philosophy at the University of


Missouri-Columbia, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Washington Uni-versity in St. Louis, Wittenberg University, Boston, San Marino, Spain,Sweden, Norway, and the Czech Republic. This is by no means a completelist of Quine’s professional activities during his retirement years; rather, itis limited to just those of his activities I that witnessed.

During the last two or three years of his life Quine suffered from memoryloss. This notwithstanding, my close friend Professor Ernie Lepore thoughtwe ought to pay Quine a visit at his Boston residence, 38 Chestnut Street.Thus we visited Quine at his home on the occasion of on his 91st birthday(June 25, 1999). We visited him again on his 92nd birthday, but our visitthis time took place in Quine’s hospital room and we were accompaniedby Professor Juliet Floyd, Burton Dreben’s widow.

When we arrived we found Quine sitting up in bed taking a little oxy-gen. He was very alert, enough so as to correct Juliet’s pronunciation of thenames of some of the places in Scandinavia she told him she had recentlyvisited, and enough so as to talk for ten minutes on Ernie’s cell phonewith Donald Davidson in Berkely about Davidson’s then upcoming trip toTurkey.

We stayed about an hour. When it came time to leave, Juliet gave Quinea kiss on cheek and said good-bye; Ernie did the same. That left me alone,face-to-face, with the Great Man. I shook his hand and thanked him forall he had done for me. As I turned to join Juliet and Ernie in the hallway,Quine said in a loud clear voice, “Roger, thank you for coming”. I thought,“and thank you, Van, for allowing me to ‘migrate for such slender fare’twenty-three years ago”. Van Quine, teacher and friend, died on ChristmasDay, 2000 – exactly six months after his 92nd birthday.

III. QUINE’S PHILOSOPHICAL LEGACY

When he was in his eighties Quine remarked that the bulk of his philo-sophy consists of corollaries to his commitment to extensionalism andnaturalism. Thus did Quine regard himself to a systematic philosopher.

Extensionalism

What is extensionalism, according to Quine:

A context is extensional if its truth value cannot be changed by supplanting a componentsentence by another of the same truth value, nor by supplanting a component predicateby another with all the same denota, nor by supplanting a singular term by another withthe same designatum. Succinctly, the three requirements are substitutivity of covalence,of coextensiveness, and of identity, salva veritate. A context is intensional if it is notextensional. (FSS, 90).

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So, for example, the context of “Lincoln was assassinated” in “Lincolnwas assassinated and McKinley was assassinated” is extensional, suppos-ing the “and” it contains is truth functional (unlike the “and” of “andthen”). Substituting any true sentence for “Lincoln was assassinated” (orfor “McKinley was assassinated”) in the above context preserves truth.Similarly for coextensive predicates and for codesignative singular terms.But what of the doctrine of extensionalism; Quine writes:

I find extensionality necessary, indeed, though not sufficient for my full understanding ofa theory. In particular it is an affront to common sense to see a true sentence go false whena singular term in it is supplanted by another that names the same thing. What is true of athing is true of it, surely, under any name. (FSS, 90–91).

Thus we may characterize extensionalism as the view that extension-ality is necessary, though not sufficient, for the full understanding of atheory.

An extensional language par excellence is elementary logic (that is,first-order predicate logic with relations and identity) even when augmen-ted by the epsilon of set theory. Quine maintains that given such a languageone can determine the ontological commitments of a theory by translatingthe theory into that canonical idiom and noting the range of values of thebound variables: to be is to be the value of a bound variable. By thiscriterion, if a scientific theory quantifies over both physical objects andsets, say, then the theory is committed to an ontology of both physicalobjects and abstract objects, namely, sets. Notice that the criterion doesn’tsettle what there is, rather, it settles what the theory says there is; thusthe criterion is trivial. Moreover, for an entity to be the value of a boundvariable the entity must have identity criteria: no entity without identity.For example, physical objects are identical if and only if they occupy thesame space-time regions, while sets are identical if and only if they havethe same members.

Naturalism

What now of naturalism? According to Quine, it consists of the followingtwo claims: (1) there is no successful first philosophy – that is, there is no apriori ground outside of science upon which science can be justified or ra-tionally reconstructed; (2) it is up to science to tell us what there is and howwe know what there is – that is, science is the measure of what exists (onto-logy) and how we come to know what exists (epistemology). Furthermore,according to Quine, the currently best science advocates a physicalist onto-logy and an empiricist epistemology. So Quine the naturalist is also Quinethe physicalist and Quine the empiricist.


Physicalism

To say that Quine is a physicalist can be interpreted in at least three ways,depending on the context. When the context is philosophy of language theterm signals his repudiation of mentalistic semantics; when the context isphilosophy of mind the terms signals his repudiation of mind-body dual-ism; and when the context is ontology the term signals his acceptance ofthe doctrine that “nothing happens in the world, not the flutter of an eyelid,not the flicker of a thought, without some redistribution of microphysicalstates” (TT, 98). However, Quine’s ontological physicalism includes morethan microphysical states (that is, physical objects), it also includes theabstract objects of mathematics, numbers, or sets. Quine is obliged toadmit these abstract objects into his physicalist ontology because sciencecannot proceed without them. Accordingly, Quine represses his nomin-listic scruples and, somewhat grudgingly, embraces a bifurcated ontology:physical objects and abstract objects. Bifurcated, yes, but singularly exten-sional; suitable objects all as values of the bound variables of a formalizedversion of the best scientific theory we can muster at the time.

Empiricism

As an empiricist Quine accepts the following two tenets of empiricism:“whatever evidence there is for science is sensory evidence ... [and] all in-culcation of meanings of words must rest ultimately on sensory evidence”(EN, 75). True to his naturalism Quine cites science as the source of thesetwo tenets of empiricism: “Science itself teaches there is no clairvoyance;that the only information that can reach our sensory surfaces from externalobjects must be limited to two-dimensional optical projections and variousimpacts of air waves on the eardrums and some gaseous reactions in thenasal passages and a few kindred odds and ends” (RR, 2).

Quine does not attempt to “prove” empiricism is true – whatever thatmight mean. Rather, empiricism is for him a hypothesis, contingent onthe findings of science. Nevertheless, the naturalistic philosopher neednot slavishly defer to the scientist in matters ontological and epistemolo-gical, nor must the naturalistic philosopher become a scientist. The homedomains of the scientist and the naturalistic philosopher are distinct butoverlapping. In Word and Object Quine puts the point as follows:

Given physical objects in general, the natural scientist is the man to decide about wombatsand unicorns. Given classes, or whatever other broad realm of objects the mathematicianneeds, it is for the mathematician to say whether in particular there are any even primenumbers or any cubic number that are sums of pairs of cubic numbers. On the other hand itis scrutiny of this uncritical acceptance of the realm of physical objects itself, or of classes,etc., that devolves upon ontology. Here is the task of making explicit what had been tacit,

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and precise what had been vague; of exposing and resolving paradoxes, smoothing kinks,lopping off vestigial growths, clearing ontological slums. The philosopher’s task differsfrom others’, then, in detail; but in no such drastic way as those suppose who imagine forthe philosopher a vantage point outside the conceptual scheme he takes in charge. There isno such cosmic exile. He cannot study and revise the fundamental conceptual scheme ofscience and common sense without having some conceptual scheme, whether the same oranother no less in need of philosophical scrutiny, in which to work. (WO, 275–276).

Thus, Quine’s naturalistic philosopher operates in a conceptual spacebetween the uncritical acceptance of objects by the scientist (in the broad-est sense of that term), on the one hand, and the feigned cosmic exile ofthe traditional philosopher on the other.

Fallibilism

Finally, we must not lose sight of the fact that as a naturalist Quine is alsoa fallibilist. He recognizes that science changes over time and, therefore, itis conceivable that someday science could withdraw its support for physic-alism and/or empiricism. In sum, Quine’s commitment to physicalism andto empiricism are firm but tentative.

Reciprocal Containment

As we have seen, Quine rejects traditional epistemology (first philosophy),but he does not reject epistemology itself. Rather, he endorses “an en-lightened persistence ... in the original epistemological problem” (RR, 3).Unburdened of the impossible task of concocting a first philosophy, theenlightened epistemologist turns to psychology and allied sciences for ananswer to the central question of epistemology, namely, “How do we ac-quire our theory of the world, and why does it work so well?” Thus, forQuine:

The naturalistic philosopher begins his reasoning within the inherited world theory as agoing concern. He tentatively believes all of it, but believes also that some unidentifiedportions are wrong. He tries to improve, clarify, and understand the system from within.He is the busy sailor adrift on Neurath’s boat. (TT, 72).

Let us investigate the nature of the relationship, implicit in these re-marks, between ontology and epistemology in the context of naturalizedepistemology. Ontology addresses the question of what there is, and whatthere is is a matter to truth. Epistemology addresses the question of howwe know what there is; and how we know what there is is a matter ofmethod and evidence. And since for Quine evidence is sensory evidence,so epistemology is for Quine empiricism. It follows that empiricism is nota theory of truth, but a theory of evidence (that is, of warranted belief). Itdoes not purport to tell us what there, is, but only what evidence there is


for what there is. This is the sense of Quine’s quip that empiricism is theepistemology of ontology.

In spite of the fact that ontology and epistemology address differentquestions (respectively, What is there? What evidence is there for whatthere is?), ontology and epistemology are, for Quine, intimately related toeach other by way of what he calls “reciprocal containment” (EN, 83).

When Quine says that ontology and epistemology are reciprocally con-tained, what he means is that epistemology is contained in ontology as achapter of empirical psychology, and yet ontology is ‘contained’ in epi-stemology in the sense that it provides an account of the methodologicaland evidential bases of ontology, including empirical psychology. As wehave seen, Quine’s preferred ontology is a sort of Platonic physicalism,while his preferred epistemology is a form of empiricism. Thus Quine’sPlatonic physicalism and his empiricism also are reciprocally contained.

However, a critic might point out the circularity of the notion of re-ciprocal containment, and he would be correct. But, if with Quine takenaturalism seriously this charge of circularity is rendered benign, for asnaturalists we would understand the circularity of reciprocal containmentto be unavoidable – after all, as naturalists we are the busy sailors adrift onNeurath’s boat.

Corollaries to Extensionalism and Naturalism

As we have seen, Quire’s naturalism begat a physicalist ontology and anempiricist epistemology. Using the term broadly, as Quine intended it,what are some further ‘corollaries’? There are several, including (a) thatmeaning is indeterminate, (b) that reference is inscrutable, (c) that onto-logy is relative, (d) that physical theories are, in principle, underdeterminedby experience, (e) that the truth value of any statement can be revised, (f)that there are no meanings, no propositions, no attributes, no relations, nonumbers, no synonymy, no facts, no analyticity, an so on. Let us take acloser look at some the “corollaries”.

Indeterminacy of Translation. In the late 1950’s Quine engaged in athought experiment which he called radical translation. The setting of rad-ical translation includes a linguist (or linguists) and a native speaker (orspeakers). The native’s language, Jungle, is one that has no cultural orhistorical connection with any known language. Furthermore, there areno bilinguals (of English and Jungle) in the context of radical translation.Within this austere context, the linguist’s task is to construct a transla-tion manual for the two languages. Since, according to Quine, we acquireour language from other people by observing their behavior, including

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their verbal behavior, there can be no more to meaning than what can bemanifested in behavior.

Quine’s indeterminacy thesis is the conjecture that countless theoreticalsentences (as opposed to observation sentences) in Jungle can be translatedholophrastically into incompatible but equally efficacious ways. In otherwords, a particular native utterance of a theoretical sentence “J” may betranslated by one linguist as the English sentence “E” while another lin-guist may translate it as “E1”. Then, if “E” and “E1” are incompatible withone another, but nevertheless equally facilitate communication with thenative, meaning is said to be indeterminate. In such cases there is no mentalor physical fact of the matter to the question which translation is correct?They are both correct. I hasten to add that there is also no “problem ofindeterminacy”; the claim is not that some sentences of Jungle cannotbe translated, rather, the claim is some sentences of Jungle have multiple(equally good) translations. Furthermore, the indeterminacy thesis is forQuine a conjecture, a hypothesis incapable of proof. What evidence thereis for this hypotheses is rendered perspicuous in the details of Quine’sthought experiment of radical translation.

The chief philosophical point of radical translation and indeterminacyis that if there are such entities as propositions they cannot be understoodas sentence meanings. Consider the following: Let P1, P2, and P3 be pro-positions, then if P1 is synonymous with P3, and P2 is synonymous withP3, it follows that P2 is synonymous with P3. The underlying principle atwork here is that two things equal to a third are equal to each other, butthe principle can be violated in the case of sentence meanings. Considerthe following: Let M1, M2, and M3 be sentence meanings, then if M1 istranslated as M3, and M2 is translated as M3, and if there is indeterminacy,it does not follow that M2 translates M3 (or vice versa). Thus, whateverpropositions purport to be, they cannot be sentence meanings. In additionto this argument from indeterminacy, Quine argues against propositionson the grounds that there is no entity without identity and that so-calledpropositions lack acceptable identity criteria.

Inscrutability of Reference. While out for their daily constitutional, thenative and the linguist are startled by a rabbit that scurries across theirpath, prompting the native to exclaim “Gavagai”, and in turn, promptingthe linguist to enter into his budding Jungle-to-English translation manualthat “Gavagai” means “Lo, a rabbit”. The hypothesis that “Gavagai” isa one-word native sentence for heralding rabbits is what Quine refers toas a “real” hypothesis – an inductive generalization suitable for testing infuture settings. There is little or no indeterminacy involved in translating


such observation sentences. They wear their meanings on their sleeves.But when we turn our attention away from meaning to reference, where“gavagai” (uncapitalized) is said to be a term, we are faced with optionsresulting not from real hypotheses, but from what Quine calls “analytical”hypotheses. Such hypotheses are essential to translation. One set of ana-lytical hypothesis might construe “gavagai” as “rabbit”, another set mightconstrue “gavagai” as “undetached rabbit parts”, another “rabbithood”, andso on. And since each of these options occupy he same space-time regionsno amount of gesturing will help to settle the matter: point to a rabbit andyou point to undetached rabbit parts, and so in. In the same vein one mighttry to settle the reference of “gavagai” by translating the Jungle equivalentsof the referential apparatus of English, including plural endings, pronouns,numerals, the “is” of identity, and its adaptations “same” and “other”. Oncethis is done the linquist could then ask the native questions like “Is thisgavagai the same as that one?” and “Is this one gavagai or two?”. Andsuch questions can go a long way toward determining whether the native’s“gavagai” refers, say, to rabbits or to their undetached parts.

However, there is a fly in the ointment. For if one overall system ofanalytical hypotheses provides for translating a given Jungle expressionas “is the same as”, perhaps another overall system would translate thatexpression as “belongs with”. Then when the linguist attempts to ask “Isthis gavagai the same as that?”, he unwittingly could be asking “Doesthis gavagai belong with that?”. Thus, the native’s assent (dissent) is notsufficient for settling absolutely the reference of “gavagai”. In short, thereference of “gavagai” is inscrutable.

Ontological Relativity. In Word and Object (1960) Quine’s discussion ofinscrutability of reference is pedagogically connected to indeterminacy oftranslation. Alternative systems of analytical hypotheses provide alternat-ive referents for “gavagai”, and such systems are subject to indeterminacy– there is no fact of the matter to the question of which system is thecorrect one; both are consistent with the behavior of all concerned and aretherefore both correct.

However, a few years after the appearance of Word and Object Quinebegan to emphasize that indeterminacy of translation is one thing, inscrut-ability of reference is another. Indeterminacy of translation pertains to the-oretical sentences, while inscrutability pertains to terms; moreover, inde-terminacy is an un-provable hypothesis, whereas inscrutability is a provenfact. Quine proffers what he calls the proxy function argument for inscrut-ability. The basic idea is that where there is a one-to-one mapping of atheory’s old objects onto new ones, and where the theory’s predicates are

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reinterpreted, and all the theory’s true observation sentences remain true,reference goes inscrutable. The new objects have replaced the old. Onto-logical relativity is the claim that what a theory says there is is relative toan interpretation, or in other words, ‘rabbit’ refers to rabbits relative to atranslation manual.

Underdetermination of Physical Theory. The doctrine of underdetermin-ation applies to idealized, global theories. It asserts that such physicaltheories vastly outrun all possible sensory evidence and, as a result of thisempirical slack, it can happen that such global theories can be empiricallyequivalent (insofar as each one implies all and only true observation sen-tences) yet logically incompatible. Such incompatibility would reside highin the theory, remote from observation. If so, then we can take measuresto eliminate the incompatibility be changing the spelling of some wordof one of the (two) theories. So if one theory says that neutrinos existand a second theory says neutrinos do not exists, we can eliminate theirincompatibility by changing the spelling of “neutrino” in one of the the-ories, say, “meutrino”. Ought we say of two such theories that they areboth true? Quine has given inconsistent answers. As an empiricist Quineasks what more is needed for the truth of a theory than it implies all andonly true observation sentences. As a naturalist Quine says only one suchtheory, namely the theory we use, is true – other theories are false ormeaningless. Quine calls his empiricist response his ecumenical view andhis naturalistic response his sectarian view. In the final analysis, Quineopted for the sectarian view over the ecumenical view, which indicatesthat his commitment to naturalism runs deeper than his commitment to(the aforementioned “corollary” of) empiricism.

It should be noted that Quine’s thesis of indeterminacy of translationis highly controversial. Many of Quine’s readers accept the doctrine ofthe underdetermination of linguistics (that is, semantics), but they balk atthe idea that linguistics is affected by some further kind of indeterminacy.While we cannot settle the issue here, one ought to recall that because welearn language from observing the behavior of others, only the behavioralfacts are relevant to semantics, according to Quine. Language is a social artwhere meaning is to be explained in behavioral terms and not in mentalisticor neutrophysiological terms.

Holism. The primary reference for Quine’s holism is his essay “TwoDogmas of Empiricism” (1951). In that essay Quine repudiates the ana-lytic/synthetic distinction and what he calls reductionism on the groundsthat they are dogmas. The reductionism that Quine repudiates presupposes


that individual sentences of scientific theories can be confirmed and in-firmed in isolation from their fellow sentences. Quine’s holism contradictsthat presupposition: his countersuggestion, as he calls it, is that statementsabout the external world face the tribunal of sence experience not indi-vidually but as a corporate body. But just how large is that corporate body?In ‘Two Dogmas’ Quine maintained an extreme holism where the corpor-ate body was taken to be the whole of science. However, by the time hewrote Word and Object he came to see that a moderate holism, where thecorporate body was not all of science but a significant stretch of science,was more faithful to actual scientific practice and was still sufficient forundercutting reductionism.

Moderate holism is Quine’s countersuggestion to reductionism as anaccount of how theories are related to the observations that confirm orinfirm them. However, moderate holism plays another important role inQuine’s thinking, namely, it explains the apparent necessity of mathem-atical truth. We shall broach that topic in the next section which centerson the second dogma of “Two Dogmas”, the so-called analytic/syntheticdistinction.

The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction. Quine’s “Two Dogmas” is probablythe most widely read philosophical essay of the latter half of the twen-tieth century, and his rejection therein of the so-called analytic/syntheticdistinction is as controversial as his thesis of indeterminacy of translation.

According to the doctrine of analyticity that Quine focuses on, a state-ment is said to be analytic just in case it is true solely in virtue of themeanings of its words. Quine grants that the logical truths, indeed element-ary logic, are analytic in this sense. But there is another class of statementsthat are not logical truths but appear to be analytic. An example of a logicaltruth is “No unmarried man is married”. An example of a non-logical truththat is purportedly analytic is “No bachelor is married”. Quine remarksthat we won’t have a full account of analyticity until we have an accountof the analyticity of this second class of statements. Might there be a way toreduce statements in this second class to logical truths? We might be able todo so by relying on synonymy; in the statement “No bachelor is married”we could replace “bachelor” with its synonym “unmarried man” yieldingthe logical truth “No unmarried man is married”. The problem with thisapproach lies with the notion of synonymy. How are we to determine that“unmarried man” is synonymous with “bachelor?” After several failedattempts to answer this question relying on lexicography, definition, andsubstitution salva veritate, Quine gives up on trying to use synonymy toshed light on analyticity. Turning the tables, he examines some attempts

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at explaining analyticy outright, which if successful, could then be used toclarify synonymy. Unfortunately, these attempts fall short as well.

One reason analyticity is so important to empiricists (especially thelogical empiricists) is because it can be used to solve two problems theyhave with mathematics, namely, that mathematics is devoid of empiricalcontent yet true. However, where the logical empiricists saw a burningneed for analyticity, Quine saw merely a need for holism. Of these twoproblems, Quite wrote in “Two Dogmas in Retrospect” (1991):

I answer both with my moderate holism. Take the first problem: lack of content. Insofaras mathematics gets applied in natural sciences, I see it as sharing empirical content. Sen-tences of pure arithmetic and differential calculus contribute indispensably to the criticalsemantic mass of various clusters of scientific hypotheses, and so partake of the empiricalcontent imbibed from the implied observation categoricals [that is, implied sentences ofthe form “Whenever this, that”. Where “this” and “that” are observation sentences].

What, now, of the second problem, the necessity of mathematics? Quinecontinues:

This again is nicely cleared up by moderate holism, without help of analyticity. For ... whena cluster of sentences with critical semantic mass is refuted by an experiment, the crisis canbe resolved by revoking one or another sentence in the cluster. We hope to choose in sucha way as to optimize future progress. If one of the sentences is purely mathematical, wewill not choose to revoke it; such a move would reverberate excessively through the rest ofscience. We are restrained by a maxim of minimal mutilation. It is simply in this, I hold,that the necessity lies; our determination to make revisions elsewhere instead. I make nodeeper sense of necessity anywhere. Metaphysical necessity has no place in my naturalisticview of things, and analyticity hasn’t much. (TDR, 269–270).

Thus moderate holism is a doctrine which enables Quine to accountfor both the empirical content and the apparent necessity of mathematicaltruths, without abandoning empiricism or relying on analyticity.

IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS

As we have seen, Quine was a systematic thinker who regarded the bulk ofhis system as corollaries of his commitments to naturalism and extension-alism. Just how much of his systematic philosophy will be read by futuregenerations of philosophers is difficult to know, but I would suggest thatQuine’s revival of naturalism – perhaps his greatest contribution – willcommand attention for some time to come. Nevertheless, whatever thefuture holds in this regard, there can be no doubt that Quine was indeeda towering figure of the 20th century.


NOTES OF THE EDITORS

1. As to a Quine bibliography we refer to Eddie Yeghiayan: The Writings of Willard VanOrman Quine in the internet under the address: http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/∼scctr/philosophy/quine/index.html2. The signature on p. iv is from the dedication in Quine’s first book (“A System of Lo-gistic”, 1931) “To Mom and Dad.” Photo and signature published by courtesy of MargaretQuine McGovern and Douglas Boynton Quine.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FSS W. V. Quine: 1995, From Stimulus to Science, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.EN W. V. Quine: 1968, “Epistemology Naturalized”, in Ontological Relativity and other

Essays, New York: Columbia University Press.PQ The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, P. Schilpp and L. Hahm (eds.), LaSalle, IL: Open Court

Publishers, 1986.TL W. V. Quine: 1985, The Time of My Life, Cambridge: MIT Press.TT W. V. Quine: 1981, Theories and Things, Cambridge: MIT Press.RR W. V. Quine: 1974, Roots of Reference, LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishers.TDR W. V. Quine: 1991, “Two Dogmas in Retrospect”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy

21, 265–274.WO W. V. Quine: 1960, Word and Object, Cambridge: MIT Press, 160.

Washington University in St. LouisDepartment of PhilosophyCampus Box 1073One Brookings DriveSt. Louis, MO 63130–4899

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Remembering Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000)