Word and Object by Quine Week 1

How does language come to have meaning and can we trust natural language to be a reliable vehicle for truth? For many in the early analytic tradition, the answer to the meaning of language is intimately related to a correspondence theory of truth where one needs to painstakingly tie words to their reference objects in the world. For these philosophers, logic is the correct tool in order to tame natural language and train it to be a reliable vehicle for truth. For Quine (1908-2000), this is simply not the right approach to language. Quine is known for his blistering critiques of the logical positivists and the early analytic philosophers, calling into question the very idea of a proposition and challenging the analytic/synthetic distinction which had been evolving since Kant. In Word and Object, he tackles philosophy of language, introducing his indeterminacy of translation thesis that there isn't even theoretically a unique way to translate correctly from one language to another. This rattles the very heart of the metaphysical project of tying down language to objects in the world since we can't even seem to tie one language to another in a unique way. He also argues that objects are simply abstract concepts we invent in order to make sense of our experiences, cautioning us against reification. Quine is no anarchist though, he has a deep respect for science and emphasizes an empirical approach to language grounded in the social practices of communities. Maybe we cannot attain absolute certainty but we can certainly design successful social practices to probe and try to understand the world around us. Join us as we explore the nature of language, truth, and knowledge over the course of four weeks with Quine as our guide.

Participants should read the entire reading before attending this in person meeting. For the first week we will read p. 1-67. I will be reading from this version here and a free copy can be found here.

For questions please send me a message or post to meetup.

Best,

Brian