Papers on Quine, Davidson and Wittgenstein by Gary Kemp
CUP Book Anniversary: Quine's Word and Object, 2025
The main argument is present in my earlier 'In Favour of the Classical Quine' but here is angled ... more The main argument is present in my earlier 'In Favour of the Classical Quine' but here is angled very differently, entirely from 'within' Quine, including the history and development of his view of ontology. Much of it concerns the very late and more reflective Quine. If you aren't familiar with the earlier paper, you may find the conclusions surprising, but I don't think it is contrary to Quine (whereas in the earlier paper, I thought otherwise).
Philosophical Studies, 2024
As is reasonably well-appreciated, Quine struggled with his definition of the all-important notio... more As is reasonably well-appreciated, Quine struggled with his definition of the all-important notion of an observation sentence; especially in order to make them bear out his commitment to language's being a 'social art'. In an earlier paper I proposed a repair, which here I will explain, justify and articulate further. But it also infects the definition of observation categoricals, and furthermore makes it a secondary matter, a seeming afterthought, that evidence, science and knowledge generally are shared, are joint, social and collaborative products. Without forsaking Quine's strict naturalism, I try to make the necessary adjustments to Quine's scheme.
See official version (small changes) here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-024-02116-8
Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: His Influence on Historical and Contemporary Analytic Philosophers (Volume I). Routledge, 2024
Quine is as antipathetic as Wittgenstein to traditional philosophical thinking that presumes ther... more Quine is as antipathetic as Wittgenstein to traditional philosophical thinking that presumes there is a subject between science and logic and seeks synthetic a priori knowledge. But whereas Wittgenstein opts for logic, Quine opts for science. Still they stand together on many issues, not least in rejecting mental entities, meanings and propositions as abstract entities. In this chapter we examine what Quine says about Wittgenstein, both positive and negative, where he gets Wittgenstein right and where wrong, and how his treatment of philosophical problems sometimes coincides, sometimes diverges from Wittgenstein's. We note that it is no surprise given their very different conceptions of philosophy and starting points that they differ more in attitude than in belief than the commentators and followers imagine.
Naturalism and Its Challenges, ed. Kemp and Hossein Khani, Routledge, 2024
Forthcoming. One might think that naturalism gives definite answers to certain questions of epist... more Forthcoming. One might think that naturalism gives definite answers to certain questions of epistemology and metaphysics—and in particular that Quine’s naturalism tells us exactly what to say about the purported underdetermination of theory. This is very far from being the case, as Quine realises. It is argued that this should have driven Quine into a yet more frankly ‘naturalistic’ position. A Quinean scientist is driven to a stance, on these issues, of ‘say what you please’. In Dreben’s words, they are a case where our notions ‘have exploded’, that it is ‘science fiction’, just as it is with outlandish sceptical hypotheses. Without a transcendental perspective, there is nothing more to say.
Philosopher's Imprint, 2024
[See https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/article/id/1872/ for the final version]. It's no... more [See https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/article/id/1872/ for the final version]. It's not correspondence, and not deflation. His view is largely Tarski’s, and at its core is what I shall call the generalising function of truth. After stating Quine’s actual doctrine non-figuratively and with care, I turn to a most interesting piece by Lars Bergström which examines various related Quinean philosophical projects and commitments, with the implication that Quine must accept a richer conception of truth than the comparatively austere Tarskian conception. I find against Bergström. But the reasoning serves to illuminate several interconnected but wide-ranging aspects of Quine’s philosophy, including such seemingly disparate items as the place it accords to logic, the place of value, what is meant by the ‘Pursuit of Truth’, the take on realism, and the status of metaphysics. To see the point is to appreciate how thoroughgoing and powerful the notion of truth is, despite its being, 'in itself', only a device of sentential generalization. This dovetails with Quine’s famous naturalism, a connection which I bring out at the end.
The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine, ed. by Sean Morris (CUP), 2023
Ways in which Carnap and Quine might defend their (roughly) anti-metaphysical views from the tend... more Ways in which Carnap and Quine might defend their (roughly) anti-metaphysical views from the tendency towards metaphysics in Williamson.
Mind, 2022
The centerpiece of Quine's epistemology and philosophy of language is his notion of an observatio... more The centerpiece of Quine's epistemology and philosophy of language is his notion of an observation sentence (roughly, these are Quine's naturalistic analogue of the protocol sentences of the logical empiricists). But there was a problem with the notion, a crucial ambiguity in his introduction of the idea in Word and Object of 1960; i was not until the 1990s that he settled on his solution (an exchange with Gary Ebbs is especially enlightening). I argue for an alternative to Quine’s conception of observation sentences, one that better satisfies the roles Quine envisages for them, and which respects Quinean constraints. After reviewing the predicament Quine got into in balancing the needs of the intersubjectivity of observation sentences with his notion of the stimulus meaning of an observation sentence, I push for replacing the latter with what I call the ‘stimulus field’ of an observation sentence, a notion that remains ‘proximate’ but is shared between different language users. Throughout, I stress the epistemological role of observation sentences.
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2020
I make a Quinean case that Quine's ontological relativity marked a wrong turn in his philosophy. ... more I make a Quinean case that Quine's ontological relativity marked a wrong turn in his philosophy. I think indeed that his fundamental commitments point towards the classical view of ontology that was worked out in the most detail in Word and Object.
Quine: Structure and Ontology, edited by Frederique Janssen-Lauret (OUP), 2020
This is a quietly subversive attempt to convey, via fastidious attention to the text with some e... more This is a quietly subversive attempt to convey, via fastidious attention to the text with some expansions, Quine's thinking about ontology in the final chapter of his great mid-period work, his Word and Object of 1960. In many ways it sums up his thinking through the 1950's, but in the following decades he would change his estimate of its significance. We find it aptly named in 'Ontic Decision'. Many of the tendencies for which he is most famous -- his pragmatism, and against a peculiarly philosophical point of view as against or superior to science being chief among them -- are very much on display.
History of Analytic Philosophy, Robert Sinclair (Ed): Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine (Palgrave-MacMillan), 978-3-030-04908-9, 2019
Did Quine respond to the Kant-like question of what makes objectivity possible? And if so, what w... more Did Quine respond to the Kant-like question of what makes objectivity possible? And if so, what was his answer? I think Quine did have an answer, which is in fact a central theme in his philosophy. For his epistemology was not concerned with the question whether we have knowledge of the external world. His philosophy takes for granted that physics provides the most fundamental account of reality that we have. And like many positivists including Carnap, he takes that sort of question to have a fundamentally changed and newly tractable character. His more general epistemological question is what is actually involved in a human subject coming to have knowledge of the objective world, when limited to the deliverances of his or her own senses. Most of the story is well-known, but an essential link was not fully explicit until 1990s: the doctrine of Pre-Established Harmony.
From Rules to Meanings: New Essays on Inferentialism, Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Vojtěch Kolman and Ladislav Koreň, 2018
I think that Peregrin is wrong to think that there is a serious tension between Quine's views and... more I think that Peregrin is wrong to think that there is a serious tension between Quine's views and inferentialism as an account of natural language. Quine did not see anything wrong with a " science " of norms (although it might well fail to be a hard science), and his notion of a linguistic disposition is not crippling the way that Peregrin supposes. I sketch the beginnings of something that Quine never offered: a positive Quinean account of normativity, landing him squarely with Hume.
Blackwell Companion to Quine, 2013
Philosophy of Language and Linguistics: The Legacy of Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein (Piotr Stalmaszczyk ed.) De Gruyter, Ontos, 2014
Quine had a number general criticisms of the discipline or science known as semantics. Without go... more Quine had a number general criticisms of the discipline or science known as semantics. Without going into them all, I try to separate them into the interlinguistic and intralinguistic, suggesting that semantics can survive the interlinguistic criticisms, but that some of the more piecemeal intralinguistic criticisms remain.
Quine and His Place in History (Palgrave), 2016
Examines the apparent tension between Underdetermination and Realism in Quine's philosophy.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1992
Note this is 1992, and there is, as far as I know, no on-line access to the journal before 1997.
European Journal of Philosophy, 2010
Philosophical Topics, 2016
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Papers on Quine, Davidson and Wittgenstein by Gary Kemp
See official version (small changes) here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-024-02116-8
See official version (small changes) here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-024-02116-8
Abstract: A solution of McGrew et al is defended and made more precise. The Paradox: You are shown two envelopes of money, are given one, and informed that the other one contains half the amount in your envelope or double that amount. Elementary reasoning tells you to trade. But the same reasons tell you to trade again ....
As against Georges Rey in his book Representation of Language: Philosophical Issues in a Chomskyan Linguistics, I argue that if one accepts Generative Grammar and consequently the human language-faculty as dealing in representations of SLEs, then one should accept the existence of SLEs themselves.
Tractatus; (5) Syntactical Diagrams and Meaning; (6) Quantifying-in. (7) Patterns of Use. I end with comparisons with some related views of the territory.
An exploration of the connections between two ideas that beguile us in their relative proximity but which stand stubbornly apart, if only because of the considerable distance between their respective purveyor’s styles of thinking: Proust’s idea of involuntary memory—represented by the Madeleine—and Wittgenstein’s idea of aspect-perception— represented by the famous Duck-Rabbit drawing. Both are unassailably real, from a psychological point of view, or at their least basic experiences are real, if not their theoretical interpretation on the part of Proust and Wittgenstein. I consider the consequences and ramifications of the assumption that these two ideas—or sets of ideas— are indeed very close, that they form no less than the basis of the human life-world and the nature of art.
Abstract
In the past 60 years or so, the philosophical subject of artistic expression has generally been handled as an inquiry into the artistic expression of emotion. In my view this has led to a distortion of the relevant territory, to the artistic expression of feeling’s too often being overlooked. I explicate the emotion-feeling distinction in modern terms (distinguishing mood as well), and urge that the expression of feeling is too central to be waived off as outside the proper philosophical subject of artistic expression. Restricting the discussion to the art of painting (and drawing), I sketch a partial psychological model for the exrtistic expression of feelipression of feeling. Although the feeling-emotion contrast is seldom made clear in their writings, I stress that many, or even most of the eminent pre-1960’s voices in aesthetics and art criticism—Croce, Dewey, Langer, Bosanquet, Berenson and others—would more or less agree that feeling is no less important for expression than emotion, and indeed can be interpreted as anticipating many points that I set forth.
In this clear and carefully structured introduction to the subject Gary Kemp explains the following key topics:
the basic nature of philosophy of language and its historical development
early arguments concerning the role of meaning, including cognitive meaning vs expressivism, context and compositionality
Frege’s arguments concerning sense and reference; non-existent objects
Russell and the theory of definite descriptions
modern theories including Kripke and Putnam; arguments concerning necessity, analyticity and natural kind terms
indexicality, context and modality. What are indexicals?
Davidson’s theory of language and the ‘principle of charity’
propositional attitudes
Quine’s naturalism and its consequences for philosophy of language.
Chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of language and will be particularly useful for students coming to the subject for the first time.
Table of Contents:
Introduction and Acknowledgements
Part I Wittgenstein and Seeing-as
1. The Room in a View
Charles Travis
Part II Difficulties with Wollheim’s Borrowing from Wittgenstein
2. Seeing Aspects and Telling Stories about It
Joachim Schulte
3. Aspects of Perception
Avner Baz
4. Aspect-perception, Perception and Animals: Wittgenstein and Beyond
Hans-Johann Glock
5. Wittgenstein’s Seeing as: A Survey of Various Contexts
Volker A. Munz
Part III Benefits from Wollheim’s Borrowing from Wittgenstein
6. Leonardo’s Challenge: Wittgenstein and Wollheim at the Intersection of Perception and Projection Garry L. Hagberg
7. ‘Surface’ as an Expression of an Intention – On Richard Wollheim’s Conception of Art as a Form of Life
Gabriele M. Mras
8. Richard Wollheim on Seeing-In: From Representational Seeing to Imagination
Richard Heinrich
Part IV Rescuing Wollheim’s Account without the Support of Wittgenstein
9. A measure of Kant seen in Wollheim
Gary Kemp
10. Seeing-In as Aspect Perception
Fabian Dorsch
Part V Imagination and Emotion in Wollheim’s Account of Pictorial Experience
11. Wollheim: Emotion and its relation to art
Michael Levine
12. Visions: Wollheim and Walton on the Nature of Pictures
David Hills
Gary Kemp
ABSTRACT
So far as language and meaning are concerned, Donald Davidson and Willard Van Orman Quine are typically regarded as birds of a feather. This book urges first of all that they cannot be. Quine’s most basic and general philosophical commitment is to his methodological naturalism, which is incompatible with Davidson’s main commitments. In particular, it is not possible to endorse, from Quine’s perspective, the roles played by the concepts truth and reference in Davidson’s philosophy of language; Davidson’s employment of the concept of truth is from Quine’s point of view needlessly ambitious; and his use of the concept of reference cannot be divorced from unscientific ‘intuition’. Second, the book puts the case positively in favour of Quine’s naturalism and its corollary, naturalized epistemology. It is possible to give a consistent account of language without problematic uses of the concepts truth and reference, which in turn makes a strident naturalism much more plausible.
Keywords: Davidson, Quine, truth, reference, naturalism, naturalized epistemology, intuition, philosophy of language
BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780199695621
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695621.001.0001
philosophy as a unified whole, identifying and exploring the themes and approaches common to his seemingly disparate concerns, and showing this to be the key to understanding fully the work of this major modern thinker.
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chapter summaries, glossaries and useful exercises.
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Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide is essential reading for anyone, student or professional, at work or in the classroom, seeking to improve their reasoning and arguing skills.
Draws on essays from well-known scholars, including Thomas Baldwin, Catherine Wilson, Adrian Moore and Lori Gruen
Locates the authors and their oeuvre within the context of the discipline as a whole
Considers how contemporary philosophy both draws from, and contributes to, the broader intellectual and cultural milieu
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