History of Analytic Philosophy Series Editor: Michael Beaney, Humboldt University, Berlin and King’s College London Titles include: Stewart Candlish THE RUSSELL/BRADLEY DISPUTE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR TWENTIETH- CENTURY PHILOSOPHY Siobhan Chapman SUSAN STEBBING AND THE LANGUAGE OF COMMON SENSE Annalisa Coliva MOORE AND WITTGENSTEIN Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense Giuseppina D’Oro and Constantine Sandis (editors) REASONS AND CAUSES Causalism and Non-Causalism in the Philosophy of Action George Duke DUMMETT ON ABSTRACT OBJECTS Mauro Engelmann WITTGENSTEIN’S PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT Phenomenology, Grammar, Method, and the Anthropological View Sébastien Gandon RUSSELL’S UNKNOWN LOGICISM A Study in the History and Philosophy of Mathematics Jolen Gallagher RUSSELL’S PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ANALYSIS: 1898–1905 Nicholas Griffin and Bernhard Linksky (editors) THE PALGRAVE CENTENARY COMPANION TO PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA Anssi Korhonen LOGIC AS UNIVERSAL SCIENCE Russell’s Early Logicism and Its Philosophical Context Gregory Landini FREGE’S NOTATIONS What They Are and What They Mean Sandra Lapointe BOLZANO’S THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY An Introduction Sandra Lapointe and Clinton Tolley (editors and translators) THE NEW ANTI-KANT S.J. Methven FRANK RAMSEY AND THE REALISTIC SPIRIT Kevin Mulligan, Katarzyna Kijania-Placek and Tomasz Placek (editors) THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF POLISH LOGIC Omar W. Nasim BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE EDWARDIAN PHILOSOPHERS Constructing the World Ulrich Pardey FREGE ON ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE TRUTH Douglas Patterson ALFRED TARSKI Philosophy of Language and Logic Erich Reck (editor) THE HISTORIC TURN IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Graham Stevens THE THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS Mark Textor (editor) JUDGEMENT AND TRUTH IN EARLY ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGY Maria van der Schaar G.F. STOUT AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Nuno Venturinha (editor) WITTGENSTEIN AFTER HIS NACHLASS Pierre Wagner (editor) CARNAP’S LOGICAL SYNTAX OF LANGUAGE Pierre Wagner (editor) CARNAP’S IDEAL OF EXPLICATION AND NATURALISM Forthcoming: Rosalind Carey RUSSELL ON MEANING The Emergence of Scientific Philosophy from the 1920s to the 1940s Consuelo Preti THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF ETHICS The Early Philosophical Development of G.E. Moore Paolo Tripodi ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE LATER WITTGENSTEINIAN TRADITION History of Analytic Philosophy Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–55409–2 (hardback) 978–0–230–55410–8 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Quine and His Place in History Edited by Frederique Janssen-Lauret University of Campinas, Brazil and Gary Kemp University of Glasgow, UK Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Frederique Janssen-Lauret and Gary Kemp 2016 Chapters © Individual authors 2016 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-47250-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-57035-5 ISBN 978-1-137-47251-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-47251-9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Quine and his place in history:/[edited by] Frederique Janssen-Lauret, University of Campinas, Brazil, Gary Kemp, University of Glasgow, UK. pages cm.—(History of analytic philosophy) 1. Quine, W. V. (Willard Van Orman) I. Janssen – Lauret, Frederique, 1985–editor. B945.Q54Q46 2015 191—dc23 2015021857 Contents Series Editor’s Foreword vii Acknowledgments x Notes on Contributors xi Introduction: Quine and His Place in History 1 Frederique Janssen-Lauret and Gary Kemp Part I Previously Unpublished Papers by W.V. Quine 1 I ntroduction to ‘Levels of Abstraction’ 11 Douglas B. Quine 2 L evels of Abstraction (1972) 12 W.V. Quine 3 I ntroduction to ‘Preestablished Harmony’ and ‘Response to Gary Ebbs’ 21 Gary Ebbs 4 P reestablished Harmony (1995) 29 W.V. Quine 5 R esponse to Gary Ebbs (1995) 33 W.V. Quine Part II Quine’s Contact with the Unity of Science Movement: A Glimpse of His Friendship with Ed Haskell 6 O bservations on the Contribution of W.V. Quine to Unified Science Theory 39 Ann Lodge, Rolfe A. Leary and Douglas B. Quine Part III Quine’s Connection with Pragmatism 7 T he Web and the Tree: Quine and James on the Growth of Knowledge 59 Yemima Ben-Menahem v vi Contents 8 On Quine’s Debt to Pragmatism: C.I. Lewis and the Pragmatic A Priori 76 Robert Sinclair Part IV Understanding Quine 9 Quine’s Philosophies of Language 103 Peter Hylton 10 R eading Quine’s Claim That No Statement Is Immune to Revision 123 Gary Ebbs 11 M eta-Ontology, Naturalism, and the Quine-Barcan Marcus Debate 146 Frederique Janssen-Lauret 12 U nderdetermination, Realism, and Transcendental Metaphysics in Quine 168 Gary Kemp 13 Q uine, Wittgenstein and ‘The Abyss of the Transcendental’ 189 Andrew Lugg Appendix 210 Scan of Quine’s Original ‘PreEstablished Harmony’ 210 Scan of Quine’s Original ‘Reply to Gary Ebbs’ 214 Index 219 Series Editor’s Foreword During the first half of the Twentieth Century, analytic philosophy gradually established itself as the dominant tradition in the English- speaking world, and over the past few decades it has taken firm root in many other parts of the world. There has been increasing debate over just what ‘analytic philosophy’ means, as the movement has rami- fied into the complex tradition that we know today, but the influ- ence of the concerns, ideas and methods of early analytic philosophy on contemporary thought is indisputable. All this has led to greater self-consciousness among analytic philosophers about the nature and origins of their tradition, and scholarly interest in its historical devel- opment and philosophical foundations has blossomed in recent years, with the result that history of analytic philosophy is now recognized as a major field of philosophy in its own right. The main aim of the series in which the present book appears, the first series of its kind, is to create a venue for work on the history of analytic philosophy, consolidating the area as a major field of philos- ophy and promoting further research and debate. The ‘history of analytic philosophy’ is understood broadly as covering the period from the last three decades of the Nineteenth Century to the start of the Twenty-first Century, beginning with the work of Frege, Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, who are generally regarded as its main founders, and the influences upon them, and going right up to the most recent devel- opments. In allowing the ‘history’ to extend to the present, the aim is to encourage engagement with contemporary debates in philosophy, for example, in showing how the concerns of early analytic philosophy relate to current concerns. In focusing on analytic philosophy, the aim is not to exclude comparisons with other – earlier or contempo- rary – traditions, or consideration of figures or themes that some might regard as marginal to the analytic tradition but which also throw light on analytic philosophy. Indeed, a further aim of the series is to deepen our understanding of the broader context in which analytic philosophy developed, by looking, for example, at the roots of analytic philosophy in neo-Kantianism or British idealism, or the connections between analytic philosophy and phenomenology, or discussing the work vii viii Series Editor’s Foreword of philosophers who were important in the development of analytic philosophy but who are now often forgotten. Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000) was one of the leading figures in the second generation of analytic philosophers. Born in Akron, Ohio, he studied mathematics at Oberlin College before doing his PhD under the supervision of A.N. Whitehead at Harvard on Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica 1910–1913. He spent the academic year of 1932–33 in Europe, taking part in meetings of the Vienna Circle and visiting Rudolf Carnap (who was in Prague at the time). He returned to Harvard in 1933 as Junior Fellow and remained there for the rest of his life, becoming Professor in 1948 and Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy in 1956 until his retirement in 1978. His most important works include Mathematical Logic (1940), From a Logical Point of View (1953), which contains two of his most famous papers, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ and ‘New Foundations for Mathematical Logic’, Word and Object (1960), The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (1966, 1976), Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969), Theories and Things (1981), and Pursuit of Truth (1990). ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, first given as a paper in 1950, heralded the critique of logical empiricism that was such a central feature of analytic philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s. The two dogmas that Quine attacked were the analytic–synthetic distinction and reductionism, and Carnap’s views were certainly one of the targets. Quine came to develop a form of naturalism, in which philosophy was seen as continuous with natural science, and to take seriously ontological questions, which led to the return to metaphysics after its repudiation by both logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy. All of these themes are addressed and explored in the present collection, edited by Frederique Janssen- Lauret and Gary Kemp, especially in Part IV. As the editors note in their Introduction, it is now time for detailed historical study of the development of analytic philosophy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. In the case of Quine, this involves not just investigation of the intricacies of his engagement with logical empiricism but also of the influence upon him of pragmatism, which has been a powerful tradition – and arguably, the dominant tradition – in American philosophy throughout the Twentieth Century. There are two papers on Quine’s connection to pragmatism in Part III, and an interesting account of Quine’s contact with the Unity of Science Movement, integral to the logical empiricist tradition, in Part II. We are also delighted to include some previously unpublished papers by Quine, with accompanying commentary, in Part I. With this volume, history of Series Editor’s Foreword ix Quinean philosophy can be seen not only to have come of age but also to have taken its rightful place in history of analytic philosophy, with which it is undoubtedly continuous. Michael Beaney June 25, 2015