Talk:Willard Van Orman Quine

message: Itt might be worth noting that although Quine rejected the synthetic/analytic distinction, he held onto other key doctrines of the Vienna Circle, e.g. that the scope of language is limited to verifiables; which restricts the scope of science dramatically. The claim that some physical object exists, for instance, is taken to mean only that it's useful for explaining our observations, not that it really exists. So material objects are defined in terms of our observations, and since our observations are also defined in terms of material objects (Quine even calls himself a physicalist), it's hard to see what's left. This whole spooky worldview or lack thereof is carried over fairly neatly from the Vienna Circle. An anecdote in one of Quine's books illustrates the distinction neatly; he said Carnap had complained about Quine's using the word "ontology" when it didn't mean anything, and Quine replied that in his ethics of terminology, words that didn't mean anything were precisely those ripe for redefinition. Presumably this would also apply to the word "exist" and some others. Quine is closer to the Vienna Circle and farther from common belief than his use of language leads people to believe. The same, incidentally, is true of Daniel Dennett, another student of Quine's as I recall.
Should qua ("qua lay physicist") not be in italics? Anjouli 13:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vienna Circle 

message: The last part about indeterminacy of translation, beginning with "There is no way to escape this circle. In fact, it holds just as well in interpreting speakers of one's own language, and even one's own past utterances. This does not, contrary to a widely-disseminated caricature of Quine, lead to skepticism about meaning".
I think it's controversial to say that Quine's theory of meaning isn't a skeptical position. I can not see anything on Philosophical skepticism that makes me think that Quine's theory of meaning can't be called skeptic from at least some point of view.
I can't see how meaning-indeterminacy about one's own utterances follows from the field linguist-argument. Something must be missing in the argument.
Davidw 20:41, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Skepticism and indeterminacy 

message: Quine's statements on ontology are overly grand.  Why doesn't he say that philosophy is about what we know and may possibly know, and what we can say about what we know. That's very different and more﻿ modest than what there is, and what we can say about what there is. It seems to me that Quine is more or less hoist by his own petard.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.109.195.126 (talk) 22:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ontology 

message: 1) The recent changes (by 138.130.145.250) were by me.
I apologise for not creating an account first and also for not using preview more effectively.
2) The article as it stood contained some serious misrepresentations of Quine's theory. Though there are of course different interpretations of Quine's work the points that I have altered attributed to Quine either a view that is flat out contrary to some central doctrine he explicitly advocated, or a non-sequitur. I have not intended present a controvertial reading of his work.
3) I hope I have done better justice to the question of why Quine rejected the a/s distinction, and also made clear the distinction between skepticism concerning meanings (which Quine advocated) and skepticism about meaningfulness or significance (which he did not).
(Though I didn't include it in the article the application of the indeterminacy argument to oneself is nothing special since according to Quine the only evidence of what anyone means, including oneself, is behavioural. If it weren't how could we ever be sure that we taught children to associate words with the right meanings? That this question is silly is Quine's main point about meanings.)
Surprised 13:04, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your contribution!  I don't know enough about Quine but your edits are appreciated  :).  If you're interested, take a look at WikiProject Philosophy and join the list of philosophy contributors.  --FranksValli 10:07, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

text: I know it's been awhile, but I think it's good work too - more of this is needed!--Levalley (talk) 07:13, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent changes 

message: A search for "Gavagai" is redirected to the page on W.V.O Quine. I feel the concept is sufficiently notable to deserve a page of its own. Perhaps merging the section on the indeterminacy of translation with other facts about the term in Quine's work would form an adequate little stub on "gavagai". Does anyone agree with me on this?" Kevin L. 07:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I actually came accross a page on indeterminacy of translation a while ago. It's not very good, though I attempted to at least write a little intro and shorten the section in this article from which it was copied (as it was getting long) so as to stop it just being an obvious copy-and-paste job. I'll fix gavagai so it redirects there - I don't really think it needs its own stub. Please do help me edit the aforementioned page instead - if you like, you could expand the section focussing specifically on the 'gavagai' example? Thomas Ash 22:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Gavagai should have its own page, I assume it does by now (2009).  If not, that's shocking.  It has so many references beyond philosophy at this point, it's a perfect Wiki.--Levalley (talk) 07:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gavagai 

message: "Like many analytic philosophers, his knowledge and curiosity about the history of ideas—logic and foundational mathematics excepted—was rather limited."
What evidence is there that he had either limited knowledge, or curiosity, about "the history of ideas"?
::I agree; that sentence is highly objectionable.  The opening clause is crass and false stereotyping.  I've removed it and replaced it with something that is objective, and captures its kernel of truth. 271828182 18:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My lord.  Disagreeing is not vandalism.  There's still freedom of speech where I live.  Putting "bork bork bork" in the middle of a sentence is vandalism.  Maybe Steven Colbert claiming to be an expert on consciousness is vandalism to the consciousness article, especially as bears were mentioned as chief examples of consciousness - but even that it is only borderline "vandalism" on a topic where no one (no one) knows the proper definition and the word belongs to no one.  OTOH I totally agree that the tone is wrong and the statement is unsubstantiated.  Why go to claims of "vandalism" when the issue can be dealt with through normal editing?  People have opinions.  Accuracy will prevail if we follow the rules, get citations, make sure they say what we insist they say, and so forth.--Levalley (talk) 07:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defend "Limited Curiosity" 

message: Theres some debate on The Library of Babel about a section which gives Quines philosophical interpretaion of the story. However we do not have any suitable references. I'm wondering if anyone here knows if quine wrote on the subject or knows of a suitable reference. --Salix alba (talk) 08:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hiya - I was able to find the reference.  It's from Quine's philosophical dictionary - "Quiddities".  Here's the entry for the Babel Library example: http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/universal_library.html.  It's very late at night, but on a glance reading, the original addition to the Babel article wasn't very clear - hopefully Quine made himself reasonably clear here (see link).  FranksValli 09:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow quick work, thanks. --Salix alba (talk) 09:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Library of Babel 

message: The section, "Quine's Naturalism" is full of first-person language, as well as questions that make the section's tone sound conversational. There are times (usually when discussing a proposition) when it may make sense to use first person, and to ask questions, but this does not account for all of the section's use. Much of it simply needs to be rewritten.
:It's also completely unwikified and so out of tone with the rest of the article that I suspect it's a fairly recent text dump.  Perhaps it should just be removed or radically pared down, pending further expansion. --Delirium 09:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Style 

message: Added three new notable ideas, 01/05/06:
1) inscrutability of reference
2) ontological relativity
3) radical translation —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.199.27.171 (talk) 15:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More notable ideas 

message: I am very interested in knowing the connection bewteen these two people, Quine and Hofstadter, thank you! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vanished user lolalsdkj4ijesis22 (talk • contribs) 07:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure, but I believe the philosophical connection goes through Rudolf Carnap. -- Jvv62 02:23, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is in reference to Hofstadter's book, 'Godel, Escher and Bach' which discusses the notion of recursion.  I think he refers to the term 'to quine', which is now an English verb, meaning to define in a reciprocal way.  I believe that this definition comes from the philosopher, although I'm not sure of the etymology.  And I've only read Hofstadter's version of this, so I am unsure as to whether Quine really said any such thing or not.  24.208.4.209 17:24, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would also like to know why there is a reference to Hofstadter. The term "quine" comes from the satirical The Philosophical Lexicon (Dennett 1978c, 8th edn., 1987), where it is said to mean "To deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant." Some people who should be in the See Also section are Donald Davidson, Hillary Putnam, and Daniel Dennett, all students of Quine. I will add them. Kronocide 16:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course, they are already in the box. Then I just want to know what Hofstadter is doping there. :-) Kronocide 16:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is Douglas Hofstadter's name under See Also 

message: I'm not skilled with Wikipedia and so I'm hesitant to edit it myself, but the current entry under the "naturalism" subsection is not even grammatically sensible, let alone coherent.  I considered "undoing" that change, but it looks like it replaced what may have been cut-and-paste copywritten material.  This needs fixing! Spetey 21:42, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quine's Naturalism 

message: ... from anyone who watches/has contributed to this article.  I just made this addition to the article on Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theory&diff=prev&oldid=171922842 - I'd appreciate it if people would go over it, make any necessry edits to correct or clarify it or just to improve the style.  Thanks, Slrubenstein   |  Talk 21:22, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  request for help 

message: It is unorthodox to have such a short Lead and another section for Overview. I suggest removing Overview section and moving it all to Lead. Ideally, the article look similar to that is of Hilary Putnam. Stampit (talk) 23:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion to combine Overview section with the Lead 

message: I'm reading Karel Lambert's 1967 work on free logic and I have an interesting quote:
"It's an irony that Quine's famous aphorism that to be is to [be] the value of a variable seems to have no adequate formal expression in the system of logic he so vigorously espouses--unless we complicate that theory with definite descriptions, etc." (Italics his)
He's arguing that these complications are unnecessary and that free logics can formalize such expressions very simply.  Unfortunately, I'm not confident enough in my understanding of Quine to edit the article.  But if anybody else is, this could be good information to include. Rdanneskjold (talk) 18:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Karel Lambert

message: Could you explain what Lambert means in layman's term? What complications are you referring to? Thanks in advance for the explanation. Stampit (talk) 00:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Stampit

message: Well Quine argued powerfully for classical propositional logic.  Alternately, he held that "to be is to be the value of a variable".  Since I'm not confident enough in understanding Quine, I'm not sure I could explain this well enough.  But I think it means that, to be, one must be the subject of a series of descriptions which can be made clear in a well-defined interpretation of a propositional language; and, moreover, this just is existence.  I doubt I can give layman's terms for something like this.  In order to make a propositional logic language that can interpret the natural language, though, you need to interpret the natural language as having all the properties of propositional logic.  Most relevantly here, that means the law of excluded middle.  In order to get LEM in ordinary language, you have to explain whether sentences like "The present king of France is bald," is true or false in light of the fact that there is no present king of France.  Bertrand Russell said that such a statement should be interpretted as having an existence claim, and so if we want to put it into propositional logic we first have to think of it as the collection of statements, "There is at least one present king of France.  If anybody is the present king of France, he's one particular guy (this is just a convoluted way of saying that there is no more than one present king of France).  And this guy is bald."  This we can turn into propositional logic easily.  But it's a massive complication of the theory of logic, which Lambert argues he can wipe out by means of free logic, because free logic doesn't assume that you're talking about anything.  So you can still make a formal sentence about the present king of France, and it will be false.  But you don't need to assume the existence of the subject of conversation, nor do you need Russell's theory of descriptions.  Free logic makes things easy-peasy and philosophically neutral. Rdanneskjold (talk) 14:25, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Rdanneskjold

message: Ted Kaczynski's advisor was Shields at Michigan.  Tom Lehrer never received a PhD in mathematics.  They, along with Daniel Dennett, were merely undergraduate students of Quine.  Is this notable? Tsoeto (talk)  —Preceding undated comment was added at 19:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undergraduate students as "notable students" 

message: Was he related to Ward Tunte Van Orman the balloonist (1894-1978), also from Ohio? bio ? NVO (talk) 07:18, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: ) Probably not. --Heyitspeter (talk) 10:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Q: Family connections

message: Regarding the following excerpt from the "Right wing leanings" section:
" ... the depiction of two Harvard students speaking during a demonstration as 'two shabby black undergraduates.'"
The inclusion of this quotation, or at least its presentation, strikes me as obviously problematic. First, it is clearly intended to suggest that Quine was somehow racist; while I agree that the quote doesn't look good, I should think it insufficient to justify this insinuation. Second, even if we accept that Quine was racist, the inclusion of this bit in this particular section would then seem to suggest that racism is characteristic of "Right wing" political views.
There are other problems with this section (Why is a description of Quine's opposition to Derrida also located here? Plenty of liberal academics, particularly in English speaking countries, have dismissed Derrida), but I think that this one is the most obvious.
--Malaikhanh (talk) 18:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: From a logical point of view, it is not possible for Quine to have had right wing or racist leanings. The reason is that he was an academic and therefore could not have possessed such predicates. "Shabby" and "black" are not necessarily evaluative adjectives. It might be possible that the persons in question possessed, in fact, such attributes.Lestrade (talk) 19:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

text: That means the last mentioned author, once again. in this case, Gibson, Roger F. trespassers william (talk) 22:28, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "shabby black undergraduates"? 

message: I've made some changes to the sentences on verifcationism, citing an outside paper, but noting that the debate about his relation to verificationism is ongoing in philosophy. Inaquandry (talk) 21:54, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:   verificationism 

message: George Boolos wrote he went to study philosophy after reading Quine's Math. Logic. I personally hate the boxy stuff so I won't add him under "influenced", but is it notable enough to mention after the list of students in bio section? trespassers william (talk) 22:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boolos 

message: *The eponymous category for Quine has been nominated for renaming here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:35, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Category nomination

message: Consider this sentence in the introduction: "A recent poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries.[2]" To what extent was this poll "conducted among analytic philosophers"? It appears to have been a temporary poll open to the public on a blog dedicated to philosophy. The results of the poll are most likely biased to favour the views of the blog readers and thus the blog itself (assuming the readers agree with the blog). As such, I argue that this fact is misrepresented. If it were to be represented for what it really is, I argue that it is too trivial and arbitrary for an introduction on Quine.Jescapism (talk) 19:34, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ranked 5th in Recent Poll 

message: I am noticing that the name "Van" is written with a capital V - but this is not a first name. It is, in fact, part of the family name meaning 'of' and similar to the german 'von' (as, for instance, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) or in the netherlands 'van' (as in Vincent van Gogh).
His father's name was Cloyd Robert Quine and his mother's name was Harriet van Orman. The two names were combined to form "van Orman Quine". 
While many online pages may not be realizing this, thus copying the same mistake over and over, I hope Wikipedia will want to correct this...
Mittgenstein (talk) 02:27, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Stanford agrees. Any objections to moving the page? — goethean 16:00, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Quine capitalized it himself when he wrote his name (and in his publications), and most sources capitalize it. Good Ol’factory (talk) 16:30, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I have to agree with User:Good Olfactory  — goethean 17:54, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  I know this is old, but I was curious and did some research. I found here that the last name of his mother was Van Orman (Harriet Van Orman) with a capital V  and his friends called him Van. I could not find "van Orman" with a lowercase "v" as a surname anywhere in the web. In contrast, I found van Rood as a surname with a lower case "v". I conclude that it depends on the surname.  Also, the Stanford article switched for a capital "V" between Sep. 2018 and Nov. 2018. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:18, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Van vs. van... 

message: Why is there a long quote from Derrida giving his analysis of why Quine opposed him, but only a extremely brief explanation of Quine's reasons for such? And shouldn't Quine's reasons for opposing Derrida come BEFORE Derrida's rebuttal?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chiarabelle (talk • contribs) 03:05, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Derrida quote 

message: I agree with 2620:0:2820:a0b:69cf:15a3:b2e2:1595 that the comic link needn't be removed from the article. There is a quite similar link at Wittgenstein#Further reading: "Doxiadis, Apostolos and Papadimitriou, Christos. Logicomix. Bloomsbury, 2009." I didn't regret reading it. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 21:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The fact that trivia exists at other articles is not a reason for burdening this article with trivia also. Respectfully, while you may have enjoyed a comic about philosophers, that does not make it encyclopedic information. ImprovingWiki (talk) 04:02, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

text: Jochen Burghardt, the material is undue and inappropriate to an encyclopedia. Random internet trivia like this has no larger significance, and is a perfect example of undue material. It is simply somebody adding something they think is amusing to the article on Quine. You were wrong to restore it. ImprovingWiki (talk) 01:34, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

text: I gave an absolutely clear and unambiguous reason why it is inappropriate. You simply ignored it. The Wittgenstein article is irrelevant. Your comments about WP:UNDUE are unfortunately wiki-lawyering. Trivia is undue. ImprovingWiki (talk) 05:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comics on philosophers 

message: Maybe it's just me, but I did a doubletake upon reading the lede sentence that begins "A recent poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine ..." Choor monster (talk) 15:29, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Garden path sentence? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article van (Dutch) says  I suspect that this article is wrong, but wanted to check with editors here. I haven't been able to find Willard Van Orman Quine's maternal grandparents, but here are the sources I found for his mother's name:
* "Harriet Ellis Van Orman Quine"
** 
* "Harriet Ellis Van Orman"
** 
* "Harriet Ellis Van Orman Quine"
** 
* "Harriet Ellis “Hattie” VanOrman Quine"
** https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/107196564/harriet-ellis-quine
* "Harriet Ellis "Hattie" Quine (Van Orman)"
** https://www.geni.com/people/Harriet-Quine/6000000032295454179
Apart from potential inclusion in this article, this information is also described on Wikidata at d:Q214969#P734 & d:Q214969#P735. Daask (talk) 15:41, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed mention of Quine from the article van (Dutch). Daask (talk) 15:45, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genealogy and names 

message: Who is Paolo Valore and why is his Italian language 2001 Questioni di ontologia quineana regarded as a useful entry for "Further reading"? Thanks. 86.169.244.154 (talk) 19:07, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Paolo Valore Remsense聊 00:27, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: So a notable philosopher. But there are already 17 items in "Further reading". Is it really useful to also have a non-English language title included, unless it was a notable work in its own right? Perhaps French, German, Spanish, etc writers also deserve to have works included there? 205.239.40.3 (talk) 09:26, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further reading