Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

Robert Sinclair

doi:10.5771/9781793618214

Summary

W. V. Quine’s occasional references to his ‘pragmatism’ have often been interpreted as suggesting a possible link to the American Pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction argues that the influence of pragmatism on Quine’s philosophy is more accurately traced to his teacher C.I. Lewis and his conceptual pragmatism from Mind and the World Order, and his later An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Quine’s epistemological views share many affinities with Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism, where knowledge is conceived as a conceptual framework pragmatically revised in light of what future experience reveals. Robert Sinclair further defends and elaborates on this claim by showing how Lewis’s influence can be seen in several key episodes in Quine’s philosophical development. This not only highlights a forgotten element of the epistemological backdrop to Quine’s mid-century criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction, but Sinclair further argues that it provides the central epistemological framework for the form and content of Quine’s later naturalized conception of epistemology.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-1820-7
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-1821-4
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 134
Product type: Book Titles

1. Dedication No access
2. Contents No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
4. 1. Notes No access
1. Lewis’s Conceptual Pragmatism No access
2. The Pragmatic A Priori, Analyticity, and Science No access
3. The Thin Given and Phenomenalism No access
4. Notes No access
1. Quine’s Graduate Work at Harvard No access
2. Problems and Struggles: Analyticity and the Phenomenalist Given No access
3. Conclusions No access
4. Notes No access
1. Quine’s Carnap Lectures No access
2. Truth by Convention No access
3. The Linguistic Doctrine of Logical Truth No access
4. Notes No access
1. Harvard Debates and Wartime Thoughts: The Problem of Analyticity No access
2. Sign and Object: The Empirical Given and Epistemic Priority No access
3. An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation: Analyticity, Sense Meaning, and Empirical Knowledge No access
4. Notes No access
1. The Penn-Harvard Correspondence No access
2. Two Dogmas of Empiricism No access
3. Lewis, Two Dogmas, and the Present State of Empiricism No access
4. Notes No access
1. The Theory of Evidence No access
2. Quine’s Naturalized Epistemology No access
3. Lewis, AKV, and Naturalized Epistemology No access
4. Conclusions No access
5. Notes No access
1. Archival Sources No access
2. Published Literature No access
Index No access Pages 129 - 132
About the Author No access Pages 133 - 134