W. V. Quine is arguably the intellectual father of contemporary naturalism, the idea that there is no distinctively philosophical perspective on reality. Yet, even though Quine has always been a science-minded philosopher, he did not adopt a fully naturalistic perspective until the early 1950s. In this paper, I reconstruct the genesis of Quine’s ideas on the relation between science and philosophy. Scrutinizing his unpublished papers and notebooks, I examine Quine’s development in the first decades of his career. After identifying three (...) commitments supporting his naturalism—viz. empiricism, holism, and realism—I piece together the evolution of Quine’s position by examining the origins of these commitments one by one, showing how his early views gradually evolved into the mature naturalistic position that would have such an enormous impact on post-war analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Tarski, Carnap and Quine spent the academic year 1940?1941 together at Harvard. In their autobiographies, both Carnap and Quine highlight the importance of the conversations that took place among them during the year. These conversations centred around semantical issues related to the analytic/synthetic distinction and on the project of a finitist/nominalist construction of mathematics and science. Carnap's Nachlaß in Pittsburgh contains a set of detailed notes, amounting to more than 80 typescripted pages, taken by Carnap while these discussions were taking (...) place. In my article, I present a survey of these notes with special emphasis on Tarski's rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, the passage from typed languages to first-order languages, Tarski's finitism/nominalism, and the construction of a finitist language for mathematics and science. (shrink)

Dans les « Deux dogmes», Quine voulait démontrer que le positivisme logique n’était possible qu’en raison d’hypothèses injustifiées. L’intention de Quine était de montrer qu’il n’est possible de sauver l’empirisme que si l’on accepte une autre approche, holistique. Toutefois, l’article de Quine était anachronique dès le moment de sa publication. Le but de cet article est double. Tout d’abord, on esquissera l’argument de Quine et on le confrontera aux positions de Carnap et Dubislav. On montrera que la critique de Quine (...) était en retard d’au moins 15 ans. En deuxième lieu, on examinera le postulat de Quine de l’empirisme sans dogmes et on comparera brièvement à la théorie de Poznański et Wundheiler. On soutiendra que ce postulat avait été réalisé déjà dans les années 1930. (shrink)

Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic (1936) was immediately regarded as a clear and faithful presentation of the views of the Vienna Circle to English-speaking readers. Since Ayer wrote this book after his visit to Vienna, where he participated in the meetings of the Circle, one may often hear to this day that he brought logical positivism to England. However, while Ayer’s conception was a form of logical positivism, it significantly differed from its Viennese counterpart(s). The key discrepancies are related to (...) verificationism: this article aims to analyse these discrepancies. It will be claimed that upon his return from Vienna Ayer assumed positions that were no longer, or had never been, held in the Circle: regarding the verification principle, test-statements, phenomenalist reductionism and analyticity. (shrink)

This volume portrays the Polish or Lvov-Warsaw School, one of the most influential schools in analytic philosophy, which, as discussed in the thorough introduction, presented an alternative working picture of the unity of science.