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Two Dogmas of Empiricism
Two Dogmas of Empiricism is arguably W.V. Quine's most controversial work. Quine critiques analytic/synthetic and reductionism viewpoints. Quine claims that,, "almost none of our knowledge is directly answerable to experience" (Hylton, Peter and Kemp, 2022), thus, a different viewpoint is necessary. Quine's Holism, "implies that the idea of confirmation does not apply to individual sentences" (Hylton, Peter and Kemp, 2022). This is Quine's solution to analytic/synthetic and reductionism. -
Word and Object
This work by Quine attempts to describe how,
"linguistic analysis may be used as a method of resolving philosophical problems" (Scott, 2003). Quine believes that words are powerful but the manner in which they are individually understood is even more so. He argues that, "the meaning of a sentence as a stimulus to verbal behavior is defined by what type of response it arouses in the listener or reader" (Scott, 2003). Quine noted that the innate sense of words and phrases dictates comprehension. -
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays
In this work, Quine aims to argue for ontological relativity, "Relativist ontology is the belief that reality is a finite subjective experience." (Levers, 2013). Most of Quine's works deal with what is actually real and what is not. "Quine thought that the best way to make ‘all that there is’ (that is, ontology) meaningful is to understand that ‘all that there is’ is simply ‘all we say that there is’" (Okpala, 2018). Quine is claiming that we dictate what is and is not. -
From Stimulus to Science
In his last work, Quine explains how we process and receive information. The most impactful chapter, I feel, is chapter 4, "Checkpoints of Empirical Content". "Quine‟s so-called observational categoricals are the checkpoints of science... The relative frequency of such checkpoints is what distinguishes the “hard” from the “softer” sciences" (Legg, 1995). Quine uses empiricism to explain how we process information and distinguish between ideas that are based in fantasy and reality. -
