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Word And Object (MIT Press)

Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is a social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when." As Patricia Smith Churchland notes in her foreword to this new edition, with Word and Object Quine challenged the tradition of conceptual analysis as a way of advancing knowledge. The book signaled twentieth-century philosophy's turn away from metaphysics and what Churchland calls the "phony precision" of conceptual analysis.In the course of his discussion of meaning and the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference, Quine considers the indeterminacy of translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our language's referential apparatus, clarifies semantic problems connected with the imputation of existence, and marshals reasons for admitting or repudiating each of various categories of supposed objects. In addition to Churchland's foreword, this edition offers a new preface by Quine's student and colleague Dagfinn Follesdal that describes the never-realized plans for a second edition of Word and Object, in which Quine would offer a more unified treatment of the public nature of meaning, modalities, and propositional attitudes.

Series: MIT Press

Paperback: 312 pages

Publisher: The MIT Press; new edition edition (January 25, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0262518317

ISBN-13: 978-0262518314

Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #795,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #27 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Analytic Philosophy #697 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Epistemology #193069 in Books > Reference

Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) was an American philosopher and logician who taught at Harvard University, and wrote many books such as From a Logical Point of View: Logici-Philosophical Essays,The Web of Belief, etc. [NOTE: Page numbers below refer to the 294-page paperback edition.)He wrote in the Preface to this 1960 book, “Language is a social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when. Hence there is no justification for collating linguistic meanings, unless in terms of men’s dispositions to respond overtly to socially observable stimulations. An effect or recognizing this limitation is that the enterprise of translation is found to be involved in a certain systematic indeterminacy… The indeterminacy of translation invests even the question what objects to construe a term as true of. Studies of the semantics of reference consequently turn out to make sense only when directed upon substantially our language, from within. But we do remain free to reflect, thus parochially, on the development and structure of our own referential apparatus…” (Pg. ix)He points out, “We cannot strip away the conceptual trappings sentence by sentence and leave a description of the conceptual world, and man as a part of it, and thus find out what cues he would have of what goes on around him. Subtracting his cues from his world view, we get man’s net contribution to the difference. This difference marks the extent of man’s conceptual sovereignty---the domain within which he can revise theory while saving the data.” (Pg. 5)He explains, “The philosophical doctrine of the infallibility of observation sentences is sustained under our version. For there is scope for error and dispute only insofar as the connections with experience whereby sentences are appraised are multifarious and indirect, mediated through time by theory in conflicting ways; there is none insofar as verdicts to a sentence are directly keyed to present stimulation… Our version of observation sentences departs from a philosophical tradition in allowing the sentences to be about ordinary things instead of requiring them to report sense data…” (Pg. 44)He argues, “There are philosophers who stoutly maintain that ‘exists’ said of numbers, classes, and the like and ‘exists’ said of material objects are two usages of an ambiguous term ‘exists.’ What mainly baffles me is the stoutness of their maintenance. What can they possibly count as evidence? Why not view ‘true’ as unambiguous but very general, and recognize the difference true logical laws and true confessions as a difference merely between logical laws and confessions? And correspondingly for existence?” (Pg. 131)He suggests, “The primary distinction of eternal sentences is that they are the repository of truth itself, so and of all science. Insofar as a sentence can be said simply to be true, and not just true now or in this month, it is an eternal sentence. When our objective is an austere canonical form for the system of the world, we are not to rest with the renunciation of propositional attitudes and the subjunctive conditional; we must renounce also the indicator words and other sources of truth-value fluctuation.” (Pg. 227-228)He states, “This construction is paradigmatic of what we are most typically up to when in a philosophical spirit we offer an ‘analysis’ or ‘explication’ of some hitherto inadequately formulated ‘idea’ or expression. We do not claim synonomy. We do not claim to make clear and explicit what the users of the unclear expression had unconsciously in mind all along. We do not expose hidden meanings, as the words ‘analysis’ and ‘explication’ would suggest; we supply lacks. We fix on the particular functions of the unclear expression that make it worth troubling about, and then devise a substitute, clear and couched in terms of our liking, that fills those functions. Beyond those conditions of partial agreement, dictated by our interests and purposes, any traits of the explicans come under the head of ‘don’t cares.’” (Pg. 258-259)This is one of Quine’s most widely-discussed works, and will be of keen interest to students of analytical philosophy.

Why in the hell is this re-issue so expensive? Does anyone have any details?Also, it's sad that there is currently only one other review, and that also I'm adding nothing to the table.

Very dense and a difficult read. Not much for clear explanation on logic. Meaning in Language by Alan Cruise is a much better refresher.

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