The indispensability argument is a method for showing that abstract mathematical objects exist. Various versions of this argument have been proposed. Lately, commentators seem to have agreed that a holistic indispensability argument will not work, and that an explanatory indispensability argument is the best candidate. In this paper I argue that the dominant reasons for rejecting the holistic indispensability argument are mistaken. This is largely due to an overestimation of the consequences that follow from evidential holism. Nevertheless, the holistic indispensability (...) argument should be rejected, but for a different reason —in order that an indispensability argument relying on holism can work, it must invoke an unmotivated version of evidential holism. Such an argument will be unsound. Correcting the argument with a proper construal of evidential holism means that it can no longer deliver mathematical Platonism as a conclusion: such an argument for Platonism will be invalid. I then show how the reasons for rejecting the holistic indispensability argument importantly constrain what kind of account of explanation will be permissible in explanatory versions. (shrink)

Some of Quine’s critics charge that he arrives at a behavioristic account of linguistic meaning by starting from inappropriately behavioristic assumptions (Kripke 1982, 14; Searle 1987, 123). Quine has even written that this account of linguistic meaning is a consequence of his behaviorism (Quine 1992, 37). I take it that the above charges amount to the assertion that Quine assumes the denial of one or more of the following claims: (1) Language-users associate mental ideas with their linguistic expressions. (2) A (...) language-user can have a private theory of linguistic meaning which guides his or her use of language. (3) Language learning relies on innate mechanisms. Call an antecedent denial of one or more of these claims illicit behaviorism. In this paper I show that Quine is prepared to grant, if only for the sake of argument, all three of the above claims. I argue that his claim that there is nothing in linguistic meaning beyond what is to be gleaned from overt behavior in observable circumstances is unscathed by these allowances (Quine 1992, 38). And I show that the behaviorism which Quine does assume should be viewed as a largely uncontroversial aspect of his evidential empiricism. I conclude that if one sets out to dismiss Quine’s arguments for internal-meaning skepticism, this dismissal should not be motivated by the charge that his conclusions rely on the illicitly behavioristic assumptions that some have suggested that they do. (shrink)

In his 1993 article George Bealer offers three separate arguments that are directed against the internal coherence of empiricism, specifically against Quine’s version of empiricism. One of these arguments is the starting points argument (SPA) and it is supposed to show that Quinean empiricism is incoherent. We argue here that this argument is deeply flawed, and we demonstrate how a Quinean may successfully defend his views against Bealer’s SPA. Our defense of Quinean empiricism against the SPA depends on showing (1) (...) that Bealer is, in an important sense, a foundationalist, and (2) that Quine is, in an important sense, a coherentist. Having established these two contentions we show that Bealer’s SPA begs the question against Quinean empiricists. (shrink)

Compared to the extensive amount of literature on various themes of W.V.O. Quine’s philosophy, his immanent concept of truth remains a relatively unexplored topic. This relative lack of research contributes to a persistent confusion on the deflationary and inflationary details of Quine’s truth. According to a popular reading, Quine’s disquotational definition of the truth predicate exhausts the content of truth, thus amounting to a deflationary view. Others promote opposing interpretations. I argue that by relying on Tarski’s semantic conception of truth, (...) Quine’s disquotational account inherits a commitment to classical correspondence intuitions. Based on this, Quine posits a firm constitution for truth as an intermediary between language and the world. From this constitution claim follows that the disquotational account proves incompatible with both the general deflationary thesis and, more specifically, the minimalist account, which deny any constitution for truth past what is given by the preferred deflationary schema. This reading is significant for refuting the widespread misrepresentations of Quine as a prominent deflationist. (shrink)

Davidson has always been explicit in his faithful adherence to the main doctrines of Quine’s philosophy of language, among which the indeterminacy of translation thesis is significant. For Quine, the indeterminacy of translation has considerable ontological consequences, construed as leading to a sceptical conclusion regarding the existence of fine-grained meaning facts. Davidson’s suggested reading of Quine’s indeterminacy arguments seems to be intended to block any such sceptical consequences. According to this reading, Quine’s arguments at most yield the conclusion that there (...) are always different ways of representing the facts about meaning, rather than the sceptical conclusion that there are no such facts. It is, however, puzzling how Davidson can endorse the main premises of Quine’s arguments, i.e. his general physicalistic view and his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, and yet resist the arguments’ sceptical outcome. I will argue that Davidson’s construal of Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation is unjustified and faces a problematic dilemma. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ : Même s’il formule à diverses reprises sa thèse controversée de l’indétermination de la traduction, Quine n’a jamais examiné de près le lien entre l’indétermination et la conception de la signification qu’il aurait développée à partir des travaux de Peirce et de Duhem. Cet article esquisse le plan d’une telle conception de la signification dans sa relation à la thèse de l’indétermination et évalue les avantages et les implications de cette conception dans le contexte du programme philosophique de Quine (...) lui-même, ainsi que selon l’approche très différente de la signification et de la compréhension élaborée dans l’œuvre de Gadamer. (shrink)

Dans laScience de la logiqueet dans l’Encyclopédie des sciences philosophiques,Hegel reconstruit la philosophie critique de Kant en développant i) une logique transcendantale dans laScience de la logiqueet dans laPhilosophie de la nature; ii) une conception pragmatique de l’a priori; et iii) une caractéristique-clé de l’usage du verbe «réaliser» en relation avec les concepts et les principes. Chacun de ces trois éléments constitue un aspect central de la sémantique spécifiquement cognitive de Hegel, que celui-ci développe, en partant de la thèse kantienne (...) de la référence cognitive singulière, en un réalisme pragmatique systématique. (shrink)

Despite offering many formulations of his controversial indeterminacy of translation thesis, Quine has never explored in detail the connection between indeterminacy and the conception of meaning that he supposedly derived from the work of Peirce and Duhem. The outline of such a conception of meaning, as well as its relationship to the indeterminacy thesis, is worked out in this paper; and its merits and implications are assessed both in the context of Quine’s own philosophical agenda, and also with a view (...) to a very different approach to meaning and understanding exemplified by the work of Gadamer. (shrink)

In order to reconnect Quine's views to the current debate on scientific realism, I reframe Quine's scientific realism into a semantic, a metaphysical, and an epistemological dimension. With this conceptual background, I review the historical development of Quine's scientific realism from the late 1940s until his death in 2000. I challenge Soames's view that Quine is a phenomenalist at the time of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) and show that he remains agnostic between a realist and an anti‐realist conceptual scheme (...) instead. I also argue that Quine's early views on regimentation are incompatible with a strong formulation of semantic realism. I proceed in reconstructing how he becomes a metaphysical and epistemological realist in the mid‐1950s and argue against the view of Keskinen and Fogelin that interprets Quine as being a metaphysical anti‐realist. Contrary to Davidson, I defend the view that he never gave up normative epistemology and really is a proper epistemological realist. Finally, I discuss how he tries to reconcile his realism with his thesis of ontological relativity and how this necessitates the switch to a stronger form of semantic realism. (shrink)

Quine’s thesis of underdetermination is significantly weaker than it has been taken to be in the recent literature, for the following reasons: (i) it does not hold for all theories, but only for some global theories, (ii) it does not require the existence of empirically equivalent yet logically incompatible theories, (iii) it does not rule out the possibility that all perceived rivalry between empirically equivalent theories might be merely apparent and eliminable through translation, (iv) it is not a fundamental thesis (...) within Quine’s philosophy, and (v) it does not carry with it the anti-realistic consequences often associated with the thesis in recent debates. The paper analyzes Quine’s views on the matter and the changes they underwent over the years. A conjecture is put forth about why Quine’s thesis has been so widely misrepresented: Quine’s writings up to 1975 tackled primarily the formulation and justification of the thesis, but afterwards were concerned mostly with the question whether empirically equivalent rivals to the theory we hold are to be considered true also. When this latter discussion is read without bearing in mind Quine’s earlier formulation and justification of the thesis, his thesis seems to have stronger epistemic consequences than it actually does. A careful reading of his later writings shows, however, that the formulation of the thesis remained unchanged after 1975, and that his mature and considered views supported only a very mitigated version of the thesis. (shrink)

Quine’s notion of fact of the matter has received very little attention, although a good grasp of it is crucial to an understanding of some of Quine’s famous formulations of the indeterminacy of translation thesis. The notion is used and cited by many but has to my knowledge never been thoroughly analysed. In the present article, I attempt to analyse and clarify it. In the first section, my exposition focuses on the relations Quine has developed between his notion of fact (...) of the matter and his views on physicalism and ontology. The main conclusion of this section is that Quine’s notion of fact of the matter is ontological. That is to say, for Quine, the notion concerns extralinguistic reality, which is ultimately described by physics. In the second section, I try to show what relations Quine sees between facts of the matter and truth. The main conclusion of this section is that, for Quine, facts of the matter determine truth. This determination is to be understood in the context of Quine’s genetic approach to evidence, which reveals that it is through the mechanism of conditioned response that facts of the matter determine truth. It is hoped that the present analyses will shed new light on Quine’s controversial indeterminacy of translation thesis as well as on the asymmetry that Quine sees between that thesis and underdetermination of theory. (shrink)

Naturalistic epistemology is accused of ruling out the normative element of epistemology. Different naturalistic responses are considered. It is argued that the content of attributions of knowledge is best understood in purely descriptive terms. So their normative force is merely hypothetical. Attributions of justified belief, on the other hand, do have intrinsic normativity. This derives from their role in our first-person deliberation of what to believe. It is suggested that the content of them is best captured in naturalistic terms by (...) accepting a dispositional analysis of justification that is a species of the generic dispositional conception of value. (shrink)

Owing in part to Rorty’s energetic promotional efforts, Davidson’s philosophy of language has received much attention in recent decades from quarters most diverse, creating at times a sense of an almost protean versatility. Conspicuously missing from the rapidly growing literature on the subject is a sustained discussion of the relationship between Davidson’s interpretive theory and history: an omission all the more surprising since a comparison between Davidson and Gadamer has been pursued at some length and now, it seems,abandoned—all without as (...) much as a mention of history, which does, of course,play a prominent role in Gadamer’s thought. The issue, moreover, is hardly negligible. Davidson understood his work as an attempt to reconcile the demands of rigorous naturalism with the Kantian picture of human rationality,thereby salvaging what he considered to be important and interesting features of the human world from mechanistic reduction. For many thinkers of the 20th century, including Dewey and Gadamer, the irreducibly human had to do with the historical being of mankind, with historicity as the unique mark of our species. Yet, Davidson has virtually nothing to say about history and, in fact, a recent study by Giuseppina D’Oro (2004b), comparing Collingwood and Davidson, concludes that Davidson’s model of interpretation results in a distorted picture of understanding, as judged by the standards of a historically informed interpretive practice. Examining the causes of their disagreement, then,should help us make some headway towards a clearer sense of what it means to understand historically, by gleaning some additional constraints that the requirement of historicity imposes upon an interpretive theory. We start with D’Oro’s criticism of Davidson and discuss the alternative account of interpretation she proposes. Afterwards, we turn to Collingwood to see if either account does justice to his central insights, ending with some suggestions about the conceptual adjustments required to accommodate them. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish two ways of using the expression ‘epistemological naturalism’. In one sense, naturalism amounts to a denial that epistemology should be understood as a kind of first philosophy providing the foundations for science from outside. In a second sense, naturalism holds that human knowledge is a natural phenomenon and that epistemology should be seen as a chapter of natural science. Moreover, naturalism in this second sense usually incorporates some additional specifications that build up a very restrictive (...) concept of science. Two different projects for naturalizing epistemology lie behind these two meanings of ‘naturalism’, and the two projects, although sometimes seen as complementary or even equivalent, are not necessarily so. After drawing this distinction, I set out the difficulties faced by those naturalistic stances that do not discriminate sharply enough or do not establish the appropriate hierarchical relationship between both projects. Finally, I argue for a conception of epistemology which is best described as a radical antilfoundntionnlism. This conception sticks to the requirements that follow from naturalism when understood in the first sense above, and takes the cluster of theses that give birth to the second as subsidiary and revisable. (shrink)