Analytic & pragmatist · 1908–2000
W. V. O. Quine
Harvard logician who attacked the analytic–synthetic distinction
There is no sharp line between truths of meaning and truths of fact; our beliefs form a single web that faces experience as a whole, and philosophy is continuous with natural science.
Life and thought
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) studied mathematics at Oberlin and wrote a Harvard doctorate on Principia Mathematica in two years. A travelling fellowship in 1932–33 took him to Vienna, Warsaw and Prague, where long discussions with Carnap began the most important philosophical relationship of his life. After serving in US naval intelligence in the Second World War, he taught at Harvard for the rest of his career.
In “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) Quine denied that there is a principled line between analytic truths, true by meaning alone, and synthetic truths, true because of the facts. Our beliefs form a single web that faces experience as a whole: when a prediction fails, we could revise anything, even logic, though we prefer to adjust the edges rather than the centre. Philosophy is therefore continuous with science, not a court above it. He also argued that translation is indeterminate: several incompatible ways of translating a stranger’s word “gavagai” could fit all the evidence of how the speaker behaves.
Works
Shaped by
1891–1970Rudolf CarnapQuine called Carnap his greatest teacher after visiting him in Prague in 1933.1859–1952John DeweyPhilosopher of education and democracy; lectured in China 1919–21Shaped
1922–1996Thomas KuhnPhysicist turned historian of science who coined “paradigm shift”1926–2016Hilary PutnamHarvard philosopher who launched functionalism, then criticised it1942–2024Daniel DennettAs a Harvard undergraduate, Dennett was drawn into philosophy by Quine.Argued against
1891–1970Rudolf Carnap“Two Dogmas of Empiricism” is aimed chiefly at Carnap’s analytic–synthetic distinction.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1906–1995Emmanuel LevinasLithuanian-born French philosopher of ethics as first philosophy1906–1975Hannah ArendtGerman-Jewish political theorist who fled Nazism for America1908–1986Simone de BeauvoirFrench existentialist whose The Second Sex reshaped feminism1908–1961Maurice Merleau-PontyFrench phenomenologist of perception and the lived body1908–2009Claude Lévi-StraussFrench anthropologist who founded structural anthropology1909–1995Mou ZongsanLeading second-generation New Confucian and translator of KantOn the record
Carnap both shaped Quine and was the main target of his critique, so the atlas draws two ties between them.
Quine’s 1932–33 fellowship took him to Prague, where Carnap was teaching; the Stanford Encyclopedia names the Logical Empiricists, “especially Carnap”, as Quine’s strongest influence, and reads “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) as largely a debate with Carnap. Both ties stand.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Willard Van Orman Quine”
Carnap both shaped Quine and was the main target of his critique, so the atlas draws two ties between them.
Quine’s 1932–33 fellowship took him to Prague, where Carnap was teaching; the Stanford Encyclopedia names the Logical Empiricists, “especially Carnap”, as Quine’s strongest influence, and reads “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) as largely a debate with Carnap. Both ties stand.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Willard Van Orman Quine”