ONT Re: Quine -- Two Dogmas Of Empiricism
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TDOE. Note 31
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| 6. Empiricism without the Dogmas (concl.)
|
| Ontological questions, under this view, are on a par with questions
| of natural science. Consider the question whether to countenance
| classes as entities. This, as I have argued elsewhere, is the
| question whether to quantify with respect to variables which
| take classes as values. Now Carnap [*] has maintained that
| this is a question not of matters of fact but of choosing
| a convenient language form, a convenient conceptual scheme
| or framework for science. With this I agree, but only on the
| proviso that the same be conceded regarding scientific hypotheses
| generally. Carnap ([*], p. 32n) has recognized that he is able to
| preserve a double standard for ontological questions and scientific
| hypotheses only by assuming an absolute distinction between the
| analytic and the synthetic; and I need not say again that
| this is a distinction which I reject.
|
| The issue over there being classes seems more a question of convenient
| conceptual scheme; the issue over there being centaurs, or brick houses
| on Elm street, seems more a question of fact. But I have been urging that
| this difference is only one of degree, and that it turns upon our vaguely
| pragmatic inclination to adjust one strand of the fabric of science rather
| than another in accommodating some particular recalcitrant experience.
| Conservatism figures in such choices, and so does the quest for
| simplicity.
|
| Carnap, Lewis, and others take a pragmatic stand on the question of choosing
| between language forms, scientific frameworks; but their pragmatism leaves
| off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In
| repudiating such a boundary I espouse a more thorough pragmatism. Each
| man is given a scientific heritage plus a continuing barrage of sensory
| stimulation; and the considerations which guide him in warping his
| scientific heritage to fit his continuing sensory promptings are,
| where rational, pragmatic.
|
|*Rudolf Carnap, "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology",
|'Revue Internationale de Philosphie', vol. 4 (1950), pp. 20-40.
| Reprinted in Leonard Linsky (ed.), 'Semantics and the Philosophy
| of Language', University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL, 1952.
|
| Quine, "Two Dogmas", pp. 45-46.
|
| W.V. Quine,
|"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", 'Philosophical Review', January 1951.
| Reprinted as pages 20-46 in 'From a Logical Point of View',
| 2nd edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980.
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