Willard Van Orman Quine

Published in 1982, Willard Van Orman Quine wrote an epistemological book title, The Pursuit of Truth. Quine ranges from different aspect, from evidence to reference, in his quest to gain epistemological truth from science. This is a short summary of the book 's contents then the latter half of the paper is critique and review of the book and Quine’s points within. In the first chapter Quine, deals with the evidence and all things pertaining to it. He starts the chapter with the point that evidence

To understanding how we use language to describe the world, we need theories to describe and explain our reality. The title quote is taken from Willard Van Orman Quine’s, “On What There Is”, in which he presents a theory of ontology and a position on the problem of universals. The problem of universals questions the existence of universals. Universals are properties and relations which are held in common by shared qualities. In comparison, particulars are concrete entities. The debate is centred

According to (Naturalism.Org, 2017), the definition of naturalism in terms of art and literature is defined as a style and theory of a type of representation based on the accurate depiction of detail. However, whereas, in a philosophical viewpoint, it is considered to be everything that arises from natural properties and causes, as well as supernatural or spiritual explanations that are excluded or discounted. Furthermore in moral philosophy, it is the theory that ethical statements can be derived

Popper’s theory is that the process of falsifying is not as simple as it appears. This critique stems from the “Duhem/Quine thesis”. According to the Duhem/Quine thesis, Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine stated that it is basically impossible to test a scientific hypothesis by itself because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more auxiliary assumptions. The Duhem/Quine thesis argues that no scientific hypothesis is able to make predictions by itself and an experimental result can

Emotivism by definition is theory about the use of the meaning of sentences used in moral utterance. It is the expression of feelings or attitude as the function of the meaning of sentences, rather than the actual meaning behind what is said. Alasdiar MacIntyre, in his book, After Virtue, focuses on how emotivism has corrupted modern philosophy into, “nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling" (11-12). The purpose of this essay is to summarize and analyze the claims

Reflections on the Analytic/Continental Divide My friends in the English department often ask me to explain the difference I so often talk about between analytic and continental philosophy. For some odd reason they want to relate our discipline with theirs in an effort, maybe, to understand both better. Thus, I welcome the opportunity offered by Schuylkill's general theme this year to give a very general and un-rigorous presentation on Philosophy, intended for the University Community at large

truth can be divided into two categories: analytic truths are based on inherent meanings and can be observed through the application of reason, if not experiment; synthetic truths are those facts which are obtained from the experience of reality (Quine, in Rosenberg & Travis, 63). How does this apply to linguistic philosophy? Any system of communication must, in order to be meaningful, include some way to represent the truth accurately; any empiricist will tell you that this truth is only valuable