In this paper I examine a series of criticisms that have been levelled against Quine's naturalized epistemology, regarding its response to the problem of scepticism. Barry Stroud and Michael Williams, assuming that Quine wishes to refute scepticism, argue that Quine not only fails to undertake this refutation, but is also committed to theses (such as the inscrutability of reference and the underdetermination of theory by evidence) which imply versions of scepticism of their own. In Quine's defence, Roger Gibson argues that (...) Quine can succeed in showing sceptical doubts to be incoherent. But I contend that both parties of this dispute wrongly assume that Quine wishes to defeat the sceptic in a traditional way. Instead, Quine is happy to 'acquiesce' in scepticism about a certain kind of justification. No logical justification of our scientific beliefs is possible on his view. But Quine thinks that pragmatic justification is possible, and acknowledging that this is his view leads to the resolution of a number of interpretive quandaries. (shrink)

Naturalism holds that there is no higher access to truth than empirically testable hypotheses. Still it does not repudiate untestable hypotheses. They fill out interstices of theory and lead to further hypotheses that are testable.A hypothesis is tested by deducing, from it and a background of accepted theory, some observation categorical that does not follow from the background alone. This categorical, a generalized conditional compounded of two observation sentences, admits in turn of a primitive experimental test.The observation sentences themselves, like (...) ape cries and bird calls, are in holophrastic association with ranges of neural intake. Denotation of determinate objects figures neither in this association nor in deducing the categorical from the scientific hypotheses. Hence the indeterminacy of reference; ontology is purely auxiliary to the structure of theory. Truth, however, is seen still as transcendent at least in this sense: we say of a superseded scientific theory not that it ceased to be true, but that it is found to have been false. (shrink)

In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our ...

Our only channel of information about the world is the impact of external forces on our sensory surfaces. So says science itself. There is no clairvoyance. How, then, can we have parlayed this meager sensory input into a full-blown scientific theory of the world? This is itself a scientific question. The pursuit of it, with free use of scientific theory, is what I call naturalized epistemology. The Roots of Reference falls within that domain. Its more specific concern, within that domain, (...) is reference to concrete and abstract objects: what such reference consists in, and how we achieve it. (shrink)

Things and Their Place in Theories Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and ...

" This is a key book for understanding the effort that a major philosopher has made a large part of his life's work: to naturalize epistemology in the twentieth ...

For example, Cheryl Misak in her book-length examination of verificationism writes that ‘the holist [such as Quine] need not reject verificationism, if it is suitably formulated. Indeed, Quine often describes himself as a verificationist’.[iii] Misak concludes that Quine ‘can be described as a verificationist who thinks that the unit of meaning is large’;[iv] and when comparing Dummett and Quine, Misak states that ‘both can be, and in fact are, verificationists’.[v].

For the faithful there is much to ponder. In this short book, based on lectures delivered in Spain in 1990, Quine begins by locating his work historically.

These essays, along with several manuscripts published here for the first time, offer a more complete and highly defined picture than ever before of one of the ...

Quine's naturalized epistemology is ambivalent between a modest naturalism according to which epistemology is an a posteriori discipline, an integral part of the web of empirical belief, and a scientistic naturalism according to which epistemology is to be conducted wholly within the natural sciences. This ambivalence is encouraged by Quine's ambiguous use of science, to mean sometimes, broadly, our presumed empirical knowledge and sometimes, narrowly, the natural sciences. Quine's modest naturalism is reformist, tackling the traditional epistemological problems in a novel (...) way; his scientistic naturalism is revolutionary, requiring restriction and reconceptualization of epistemological problems. In particular, his scientistic naturalism trivializes the question of the epistemic standing of the natural sciences, whereas modest naturalism takes it seriously, and can offer a plausible answer. (shrink)

Michael Dummett is a leading contemporary philosopher whose work on the logic and metaphysics of language has had a lasting influence on how these subjects are conceived and discussed. This volume contains some of the most provocative and widely discussed essays published in the last fifteen years, together with a number of unpublished or inaccessible writings. Essays included are: "What is a Theory of Meaning?," "What do I Know When I Know a Language?," "What Does the Appeal to Use Do (...) for the Theory of Meaning?," "Language and Truth," "Truth and Meaning," "Language and Communication," "The Source of the Concept of Truth," "Mood, Force, and Convention," "Frege and Husserl on Reference," "Realism," "Existence," "Does Quantification Involve Identity?," "Could there be Unicorns?," "Causal Loops," "Common Sense and Physics," "Testimony and Memory," "What is Mathematics About?," "Wittgenstein on Necessity: Some Reflections," and "Realism and Anti-Realism." Serving well as a companion to Dummett's other collections, the essays in this volume are not forbiddingly technical or specialized, and have relevance to many areas of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

W. V. Quine was the most important naturalistic philosopher of the twentieth century and a major impetus for the recent resurgence of the view that empirical science is our best avenue to knowledge. His views, however, have not been well understood. Critics charge that Quine’s naturalized epistemology is circular and that it cannot be normative. Yet, such criticisms stem from a cluster of fundamental traditional assumptions regarding language, theory, and the knowing subject – the very presuppositions that Quine is at (...) pains to reject. Through investigation of Quine’s views regarding language, knowledge, and reality, the author offers a new interpretation of Quine’s naturalism. The naturalism/antinaturalism debate can be advanced only by acknowledging and critiquing the substantial theoretical commitments implicit in the traditional view. Gregory argues that the responses to the circularity and non-normativity objections do just that. His analysis further reveals that Quine’s departure from the tradition penetrates the conception of the knowing subject, and he thus offers a new and engaging defence of Quine’s naturalism. (shrink)

Introduction -- Metaphysics -- "Ostrich nominalism"' or "mirage realism"? -- Postscript to "Ostrich nominalism" or "mirage realism"? -- Aberrations of the realism debate -- Postscript to "aberrations of the realism debate" -- Underdetermination and commonsense realism -- Scientificrealism -- Postscript to "scientific realism" -- Incommensurability and the priority of metaphysics -- Postscript to "incommensurability and the priority of metaphysics" -- Global response dependency and worldmaking -- The metaphysics of nonfactualism -- The metaphysics of truth -- Moral realism : a naturalistic (...) perspective -- Natural kinds and biological realisms -- Resurrecting biological essentialism -- Epistemology -- Naturalism and the a priori -- No place for the a priori -- Intuitions -- On determining what there isn't. (shrink)

I juxtapose Quine's and Davidson's approaches to naturalized epistemology and assess Davidson's reasons for rejecting Quine's account of the nature of knowledge. Davidson argues that Quine's account of the nature of knowledge is Cartesian in spirit and consequence, i.e. it is essentially first person and invites global skepticism. I survey Quine's response to Davidson's criticisms and suggest that the view that Davidson criticizes may not be Quine's after all. I conclude by raising some questions about Quine's definition of ?observation sentence?