Over in the never ending positivism thread, David Landrith raises the question of what's so bad with positivism. Presumably that's raised in connection to the postmodernism that was contrasted with positivism in that discussion. It's an interesting question in a certain way, especially since the roots of both postmodernism and positivism are so close with many common origins in Frege. In that context, the debate between Carnap and Heidegger is probably quite relevant. Carnap is, of course, one of the pre-eminent positivists. And Heidegger, has the same stature among postmodernists. So to see how they engage with one an other probably is as good a way to see their differences as any. As interesting as their differences, is their similarities. Both announced an end to metaphysics, although what they understood by that was radically different. Further both took philosophy to be understood within the realm of language. Once again though, how to understand that is quite different.
In connection to all this, might I suggest the excellent paper from Current Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, "Heidegger, Carnap and Quine at the Crossroads of Language". I think it does a very good job of getting at some of the issues of contention. Indeed, the main focus on the meaning of "nothing" is quite important. Heidegger moves towards an understanding of nothing that was much more in line with the medieval and neoPlatonic traditions whereas Carnap most definitely did not. Are there practical implications to this "nothing" in philosophy and more practical disciplines such as science or history? I tend to think so. Perhaps over the next few days, if I can manage to find the time, I can touch upon some of them.
Abraham Stone has a paper, "Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics". I've only had time to glance at it, so I really can't comment on it too much. But it may be helpful for those who want more depth than the above paper provides. It appears that Stone is more favorable towards Carnap than Heidegger since he argues "that Carnap is criticizing Heidegger for carrying out their common project incorrectly" (reacting against Husserl's system).
An other paper that might be relevant is Patrick Heelan's "Carnap and Heidegger: Parting Ways in the Philosophy of Science" Once again this is on my "to read" list and I can't comment on it too much. However it appears that he delves more into the history of how the various German neo-Kantians parted ways in the 1920's and 1930's. Glancing at it he seems to deal with the rather acrimonious relationship between Cassirer and Heidegger as well.
One last paper, of a more pro-Heideggarian bent, is Rory Kraf's "In Defense of Nothing" which also goes through the Heidegger-Carnap debate over nothing but attempts to show in terms of phenomenology what Heidegger means by nothing. i.e. that it indicates an actual phenomena and not empty language as Carnap or others would assert.
Great name for a thread. Does your choice of a photo reveal your bias?
Good read, although I found it to be less of a synthesis and more of a summary and recapitulation of where Carnap/Quine and Heidegger stood in each other's philosophies. I've always considered Quine more of a positivist. I look forward to reading your comments.
I'm a little reluctant to ask this, because I don't want to hijack this thread, but here goes: If I remember correctly) in his Library of Living Philosophers volume Quine admits that he's given up either his opposition to the analytic synthetic distinction or his holism (or maybe both). I don't own the volume--although I should. Is there anyone out there who does who could correct or clarify this?
I'm not sure how you could consider Quine a positivist. Indeed he's usually listed as one of the main foes of positivism. He still holds to a kind of verificationalism. But that alone isn't sufficient for positivism. Heavens, I think many hold to some sort of verificationalism. But while Quine was largely a behavioralist, and thus in "tune" with certain biases of the positivists, I'd really not call him a positivist precisely because of his linguistic assumptions.
Regarding moving away from his Two Dogmas of Empiricism. As I recall, he did tweak things a bit, but I don't recall a repudiation. But then I'm not a Quine scholar although I have many of his books. I unfortunately don't have the Living Philosophers volume. (A very good series though) I'd have expected a repudiation to be mentioned in the Stanford article though.
I'm (obviously) not a Quine scholar either, but I wouldn't call Quine an opponent of positivism any more than I'd call Hume an opponent of empiricism. (But I don't place Quine on the same level as Hume in terms of importance.)
You're probably right about the Stanford article, and (to boot) I couldn't find anything at all about a possible repudiation on Google either. I'll chalk it up to my poor memory.
I don't know. After rejecting and (according to many) rendering problematic the central tenant of positivism, I'm not sure how to characterize his relationship to positivism. I'd definitely say he took a strong pragmatic turn and thus a turn away from Carnap. If that's a friend to a position and not an opponent, then all I can think of is the old saying, "with friends like these..." With Davidson who took up and went beyond Quine, I think the connection to pragmatism is even more pronounced. Of course pragmatism, especially of the Peircean variety, offers a third path through language.
Just to add to my above comments, I'm not sure Quine is to positivism (or Carnap) what Hume is to empiricism. I'd rather think that a comparison to Kant is a better analogy. Kant still had empirical aspects to his thought and focused on some of the same goals, but clearly Kantism is quite pronouncedly different from the empiricism one found in Britain before he started writing. In the same way I think Quine's naturalism is quite different from the logical positivism which he once found himself in.
(I should add that quite a few logical positivists saw the error of their ways later in their life and moved to different positions)
I've never found any continental philosopher who found it particularly compelling that that Russell once considered himself an Hegelian and moved on to different positions.
Actually I think most Continentals would. Indeed many of them were following a very similar paths. I was just listening, for example, to the Bernstein lecture tapes on Hegel from Berkeley. There Bernstein suggests that most Continental philosophy is a series of reactions against Hegel. In the discussion on Continental vs. Analytic philosophy I mentioned that in many ways Russell and Husserl were following very similar paths, at least initially. I think in many ways Hegel lies in the background of Husserl, even if perhaps not as significantly as Brentano, Frege or others. In a way I think that Continental philosophy might be seen as a second way, after the failure of Carnap, Russell, Ayer, and others in their attempt to overcome metaphysics. (With, perhaps, Hegel being the metaphysician everyone is always reacting against, either directly or indirectly)
My sampling of continentals must be a biased sample. I'm still waiting to find someone who'll slap their forehead and exclaim, "Russell gave up Hegelian philosophy for empiricism?!?! The Hegelian approach must be bankrupt."
Rather than spend a week writing and refining this, I just typed this up on the subway ride home. I figure I’ll just post it and we can start clarifying and hashing out the problems right now. It focusses on reasons why I’m not comfortable saying that Quine isn’t a pragmatist rather than why I think he’s a positivist. Also, this is a very large topic, and I’m not really trying to do anything more than touch the surface. So as long as your good with these caveats, here it goes.
First, I’d like to say that bickering over what is and isn’t pragmatism runs counter to James’ entire program. (Not that this matters...)
I’d characterize the key distinction between pragmatists and most other forms of philosophy as follows: Many philosophers distinguish between different types of truths or beliefs, pragmatists want to talk different ways that truths or beliefs operate in different situations. Admittedly, this is not a terribly clear kind of thing to say, but part of its import is that the pragmatist typically wants to collapse a priori, a posteriori, and normative statements (or logic, facts, and values) into one category of truth or beliefs.
Let me warn you that I’m no expert on pragmatism. Dewey and Pierce both wrote very badly, and if I wanted to wade through difficult texts containing ideas that are expressed clearly elsewhere, I’d begin rereading Derrida.
Let me also warn you that I don’t take Quine very seriously. I view Quine as a disciple of Carnap who was forever trying to compensate the untenability of nominalism. Thus, he embarked upon a project to make it less expensive, if you will, to posit the existence of objects and things. For Quine, ontology is not just a matter of choice (as with Carnap), but it’s a choice without a lot of consequences.
That said, I can’t really see that Quine himself ever took his own argument against analytic truths very seriously. To begin with, his arguments apply only when we consider analytic truths apart from any given conceptual scheme. And I don’t believe that he ever wrote in such a way as to imply otherwise.
And it’s easy enough to define what how things are analytically true within a given conceptual scheme (to the extent that a conceptual scheme embodies a kind of logic):
Basically, you have analytic truths (say, axiomatic probability calculus) and data collected in a method consistent with some interpretation of the analytic truths (viz., some ratio of frequencies), and an algorithm for mapping the two (say, mapping a 1 in 6 mathematical probability with the ratio of the sides of standard die [6] to the number of sides that can face upwards [1]). Adopting a conceptual scheme means accepting all three of these components. And adopting all three of these things means that it is a priori true that the die has a 1 in 6 chance of landing on any side. Much is made of the fact that we accept the map for empirical reasons, and that this seems to give the analytic truths non-trivial import. But by the time we begin to compute the consequences of the map, the map itself has already been taken for granted. I believe that this is consistent with the way that Quine treats it.
And we can take a pragmatic approach to adopting these conceptual schemes without collapsing the different kinds of truth within it and thereby embracing pragmatism. Even so, Quine himself thought (following Russell) that things which are directly accessible to experience exist in some sense that is more fundamental than things which aren’t. I believe that this is a difference in kind rather than in operation, and that this argues for a less pragmatic approach to choosing among conceptual schemes.
I’d also like to point out that Quine was never comfortable rejecting the naturalistic fallacy (particularly with regard to normative ethical statements) the way that other pragmatists tend to, and I think that this also differentiates truths and values in a way that is quite un-pragmatic.
Lastly, I think that there is a tendency to artificially limit the scope of the term positivism, because it is construed as a pejorative term. Thus, I believe that many people would argue with my estimation of him as a positivist just because they’d find it insulting.
A couple of quick comments. First, while I think Quine took a pragmatic turn I'd be quite uncomfortable calling him a pragmatist the way say Putnam is. I think both Quine and Davidson have strong pragmatic elements, but are sufficiently doing their own thing so as to render the label perhaps as misleading as it is helpful. Putnam I'm much more comfortable using the term.
Second, I'd probably disagree on Peirce's readability. Personally I find him one of the clearest and easiest to read philosophers out there. However you have to grasp his trichotomy (three categories) first. Once you do that though I think he avoids a lot of the difficult writing that I find in many philosophers of both main traditions.
Oh, I'd also say that I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of pragmatism. Certainly I don't think it fits Peirce. It is true that Peirce talked about beliefs having their meaning in terms of what they lead us to do. And Quine certainly agreed with that. He wrote
Peirce scored a major point for naturalism, moreover, in envisioning a behavioristic semantics. Naturalism in psychology and semantics is behaviorism; and Peirce declared for such a semantics when he declared that beliefs consist in dispositions to action.
Of course making Peirce a behavioralist distorts a bit of what he was doing. But that's neither here nor there. Quine's indeterminacy of translation also had affinities with Peirce. Once again quoting Quine.
If we recognize with Peirce that the meaning of a sentence turns on what would count as evidence for its truth, and if we recognize with Duhem that theoretical sentences have their evidence not as single sentences but as larger blocks of theory, then the indeterminacy of translation is the natural conclusion.
You can see the connection to both Peirce and pragamatism in general here. While he wrote that a "sentence or set of sentences is devoid of empirical content unless it is testable," thus following somewhat the positivists, he also wrote "Contrary to positivist spirit, I do not repudiate sentences for lack of empirical content." And it is exactly that point that most people critique the positivists on.
A great paper that goes through all this and may help clarify the problems of how Quine sees verificationalism is Panu Raatikaine's "Is Quine a Verificationaist?" I think it clarifies rather well the pragmatic issues as well.
I should note, in the interest of fairness, that Quine himself questioned the pragmatic label. Yashuhiko Tomida conducted an interview with Quine over a few weeks back in 1992 which is quite helpful for understanding Quine. There he both clarifies his use of the word (which he says he took from Carnap when he used it in "Two Dogmas." He says his main critique of Carnap is that Carnap is pragmatic down to a certain point, at which point he adopts an empiricist kind of foundationalism. (Basically an atomism of sure sense-data) Quine argues for pragmatism all the way down, basically Peirce's notion of continuity. Thus Quine, unlike the positivists, is anti-foundationalist.
Tomida started to bring up Dewey and James, but of course their kind of pragmatism was different from Peirce's. Indeed Peirce retermed his philosophy pragmaticism to distinguish it from James. I think the big points of distinction between James and Peirce are over continuity and infinities. (Unlimited semiosis in modern terms) Peirce inquired into these matters very rigorously, while James really didn't have the mind for those sorts of inquiries. Thus he didn't really understand the importance of infinity and real continuity in pragmatism - although some see vague connections to such matters in his more religious writings.
Positivism and pragmatism represent a fairly broad range of views. Not only is there overlap, but at times the difference between a positivist and a pragmatist is a very fine line. And I never meant to imply that there aren't pragmatic elements in Quine, and more so in Davidson (and Putnum: Which Putnum? He's all over the place; perhaps he's just a reformed realist?).
That said, the only thing I can discern from your discussion of pragmatism is that you seem to think that it entails some form of relativism. You seem to imply that it also overlaps with anti-foundationalism. But Lewis was a foundationalist, as are Pierce and James the way that I read them. Nor do I find the Quine-Duhem thesis (which I see as breaking with foundationalism, though not necessarily anti-foundatinal) to be at odds with positivism.
At any rate, I've shown you mine, now you show me yours. What do you take to be the distinguishing characteristic of pragmatism? Turnabout is fair play, and I'm waiting for my turn to have at your formulation.
I'd say the major difference is that pragmatists are anti-foundational while positivists are foundationalist. For instance Peirce, with his unlimited semiosis and the fact his philosophy is founded upon certain kinds of infinities (see Kelly Parker's The Continuity of Peirce's Thought for both an excellent discussion of this as well as probably the best introduction to his thought) is definitely an anti-foundationalist. Indeed several people have argued that Peirce "anticipates" much of 20th century philosophy in his writing.
The similarity is in that both positivism and pragmatism are tied to empiricism of a sort. Indeed many pragmatists characterized themselves as radical empiricists. However the differences are rather pronounced and end up being tied to that anti-foundationalism.
As for thinking that I believe pragmatism entails a kind of relativism, I'm not sure where you get that idea. However you said that you thought postmodernism entails relativism as well, which I think is rather significantly wrong as well. (Although obviously postmodernism, which is such a general term, covers so many movements that probably some are relativists)
With regards to the discussion of positivism, I'd say that the big difference between positivists and pragmatists is over the meaning of verification. Probably the best explanation of it from a pragmatic point of view is Peirce's maxim.
Pragmatism. The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of the following maxim for attaining clearness of apprehension: "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." (CP 5.2)
Pragmaticism was originally enounced in the form of a maxim, as follows: Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object. (CP 5.43)
On their side, one of the faults that I think they might find with me is that I make pragmatism to be a mere maxim of logic instead of a sublime principle of speculative philosophy. In order to be admitted to better philosophical standing I have endeavored to put pragmatism as I understand it into the same form of a philosophical theorem. I have not succeeded any better than this:
Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood. (CP 5.18)
Most of the variations on the pragmatic maxim of Peirce can be found in this post from Peirce-L by Jon Awbrey. You are right that they can sound similar to positivism. But there are some very important differences, mainly resting on the nature of continuity, the community of inquirers, and the anti-foundationalism. With respect to Peirce, his realism as opposed to the anti-realism of positivists, especially to scientific laws, is a major difference. Indeed Peirce's nearly medieval form of realism is one of his philosophy's characteristic attributes.
I've clearly put myself on the wrong side of this argument by stating that James and Pierce were foundationalists. This is mistaken. I should state that I take them to be realists who believe there are "facts of the matter", and that these can really be discovered, and that given the correct methodologies and enough investigation, all investigators will eventually agree. And this is not foundationalism. I should state the rather weaker statement that it's "vaguely" foundationalist. Logical Positivism started out as a hard-core foundationalism. But Carnap (and Neurath) quickly moved away from phenomenal to physical language (about objects), and embraced holism, coherence theory of truth, and (particularly for Carnap) relativism. So I'm not sure that it's the touchstone that seem to be making it out to be. Especially since CI Lewis explicitly advocates foundationalism, and isn't he considered a pragmatist?
I think that your quote about considering truths in light of consequences is consistent with my description that they collapse different forms of truth into one.
The "Is Quine a Verificationist?" essay has a lot of merit. (Sadly, perhaps) I remember reading it when it was first published.
Most of the positivists, as I understand, moved away from the doctrine in their latter years. Some kept one or two elements and then the big question is whether they were logically consistent in doing so. If you read that interview with Quine I linked to earlier in this thread, you'll note that he makes that point about the latter Carnap.
I suppose the real question becomes, when a positivist ammends his views sufficiently, is it still helpful to call the position a positivist one? (i.e. how general ought we take the term positivism to be?) Given that there already are nice terms for the broader positions: naturalism, evidentialism or even empiricism, I personally think we ought to keep the meaning of positivism as what was espoused up through the 1940's.
One other quick thing, while it is true that most pragmatists had a notion of agreement with sufficient investigation, it is not always straightforward how to take this. For instance Peirce had a notion of "in the long run." Yet while some have taken this to entail a kind of convergence on truth, such as we find in scientific realism, he himself never took it that way. Further that "in the long run" may be an infinitely long time. In the meanwhile new evidence may take us away from truth. It is merely the faith that eventually new evidence will bring us to the truth that characterizes Peirce's position. This is quite different from the positivist position which seems to lead one to the notion that the evidence points rather clearly to the truth. Indeed the reason positivists are often held in disdain, whether fairly or not, is because they often felt that one could discern the truth in an unambiguous fashion.
While they certainly frequently adhered to a notion of fallibilism, like Peirce, in practice it seemed that how fallibilism was viewed was much more limited. Peirce in particular took fallibilism, chance, and continuity as three ontological foundations to his philosophy.
Mr. Goble: Indeed the reason positivists are often held in disdain, whether fairly or not, is because they often felt that one could discern the truth in an unambiguous fashion.
This is, sadly, the standard caricature. There is, of course, more than enough room for fallibility within positivism.
Incidentally, if we take Carnap through the 1940s I believe that this encompasses his turn to relativism. I think there is a tendency to limit the reach of the term positivist, because of the backlash against them—positivism became the disco of philosophy, if you will.
Ayer, of course, famously remarked in his book on pragmatism (something to the effect) that his study of it convinced him that it was much closer to positivism than he'd supposed.
I agree - the question is the nature of the fallibilism and the issue of completion or determinate ideas in the tradition. In any case, when positivism is invoked, it is that sense it is typically used. We certainly can say that it does't fully capture the views of particular philosophers. But then any general term by its mere fact of being general will not correctly represent the individual views of philosophers.
One can point out the same thing with terms of greater or lesser generality, such as postmodernist, pragmatist, existentialist, or so forth.
That's why it ends up being useful to move from generalities to specific texts.
Mr. Goble: the question is the nature of the fallibilism and the issue of completion or determinate ideas in the tradition.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Positivism was much more concerned with the classification of types of statements (e.g., emotive, analytic, synthetic) based on grammar (a la the theory of types insofar as it classified otherwise intelligible statements as nonsense based purely on their logical form) and empirical content (a la verification principle).
But perhaps we're not just in disagreement over our definition of pragmatism, but also in the definition of positivism. Quick definitions aside, what is it that you
Mr. Goble: One can point out the same thing with terms of greater or lesser generality, such as postmodernist, pragmatist, existentialist, or so forth.
I’m not as comfortable as you are saying this kind of thing. I think in the past I’ve parodied (albeit unfairly, perhaps) your overemphasis on the gray areas as claiming that “Everything is just like everything else, only moreso.”
General terms are, by their nature, general to varying degrees. To get more specific we ought to refer to specific claims by philosophers. And even then, often to specific periods of those philosopher's thought. Most accounts of positivism I've seen tend to discuss it in terms of the early Carnap (pre-1950's), although other philosophers are also discussed. Sadly most discussions of pragmatism neglect Peirce far too much, which is unfortunate as he was far more rigorous than James or (I'm told) Dewey.
Mr. Goble: General terms are, by their nature, general to varying degrees.
No argument on that front from me.
Mr. Goble: To get more specific we ought to refer to specific claims by philosophers.
Am I off-base to think that we're still talking about whether Quine fits better into positivism than pragmatism? There may be some amount of fudging either way, but I don't think that trying to make sure that we're on the same basic page about what constitutes pragmatism or positivism is a vain pursuit. Nor do I think that it ties us to the traditional cliches with regard to positivism or pragmatism.
I see our disagreement (to the extant that it's clear to me that we may disagree) to stand as follows: to I see your quote on pragmatism as fitting nicely with my characterization of how it collapses different forms of truth, but you seem focus on the more on the tendencies relating to foundationalism. I on the other hand, see foundationalism as a significant trend within each school rather than a delimiting characteristic. Also, my gut feeling and memory (which of course, is quite fallable), lead me to believe that you may be off on your Carnap calendar, but, of course, this is an empirical question.
I guess my point is that the debate about which he fits better into doesn't seem that fruitful. One is left with a ponderous, "so what?" He denies belonging to either, so at best we can discuss the elements of each. As I said I think that, as used of late, positivism entails a foundationalism which definitely Quine opposed. Since I see that as one of the important things Quine brought us, I'm loath to neglect it.
My ultimate point is that general terms are useful for getting a general feel. However they definitely have their limits. Arguing what general class any philosopher belongs to can be misleading, unless they are characteristic of that class. (And, say what you will, Quine is definitely not characteristic of the positivist movement) Even then, I admit that I find such discussions most interesting when the supposed characteristic philosopher of a movement is contrasted against the movement.
Regarding the collapse of different forms of truth, I confess I have difficulty understanding what that means. So I intentionally didn't comment on it.
Regarding Carnap's chronology I fully confess my ignorance and am simply too lazy to look up when he began significantly modifying his philosophy. My vague recollection was the 1940's, but no one should take it as anything other than that. That dim recollection is the sole basis for saying the period up to the 1940's or 50's.
Then let's just agree to call him an exponent of progmativism, and therefore a progmativist.
David, not to dredge up a dead thread, but this seemed the appropriate place to bring it up. I figured you read the new comments and will read this.
Have you read any Van Fraassen? He's one of the foremost contemporary empiricists. (Which is, btw, what I think you really espouse when you discuss positivism) Your comments about Carnap are quite like his comments about the difference between principles and stances. He wrote a criticism of Quine which I dimly recollect which you might like, given your above comments. It was called Against Naturalized Epistemology and is often quoted although don't ask me to say much about it. (grin)
Here's a great and informative review of his recent book, The Empirical Stance, which has been on my "to read" list for a while.
What brought it to mind was, of all things, the discussion of categories over at This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics, which mentions his work on mathematical foundations. So I thought I'd bring it up.
One other review that is helpful as it brings up the discussion of pragmatists (unfortunately not the sort I like - it's Rorty) and a discussion of "stances" for Van Fraasen that I find very similar to Heidegger's notion of for-the-sake-of. The commonality is that stances are never dogmatic and thus never a system. If you saw my comments on Heidegger earlier today you should be able to see the parallel I'm getting at,
I'm certainly not about to argue they are the same thing - especially since I've not yet read the book. But it is an intriguing overlap of Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy.
Clark: David, not to dredge up a dead thread, but this seemed the appropriate place to bring it up. I figured you read the new comments and will read this.
Actually, during my travel time to and from my Thanksgiving vacation, I prepared a more detailed exposition of why I put Quine squarely within the positivist tradition. It hinges on my own very reasonable, but in many respects peculiar, interpretation of Quine. (I just got in, so I’ll be posting it in a few minutes.)
Clark: Have you read any Van Fraassen?
I haven’t read any Van Fraassen. I’ll definitely check him out.
Clark: He’s one of the foremost contemporary empiricists. (Which is, btw, what I think you really espouse when you discuss positivism)
Jeeze, Clark. You keep trying to classify my beliefs. (grin)
I don’t believe I’ve ever actually espoused positivism here or elsewhere, but I do hold out for it’s ultimate tenability, and I am a verificationist. I actually prefer the whole late-Russellian-Lockean-monistic-realism thing that believes that there are such things as (for example) propositions. And I do believe that it is fruitful to analyze language in terms of idealized constructs (a la Russell). These are two of my primary departure points from Carnap.
Clark: One other review that is helpful as it brings up the discussion of pragmatists (unfortunately not the sort I like—it’s Rorty)
I don’t much like Rorty either. Ever since the Simon and Garfunkel song about him (probably written in response to The Linguistic Turn, which he edited), I can’t read him without thinking of the opening line, “They say that Richard Rorty owns one half of this whole town,” and hearing the haunting refrain, “And I wish that I could be, Oh, I wish that I could be, Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Rorty.” I mean, how can I take him seriously after a song like that?
Perhaps I’m beating a dead horse here, but I don’t share your dim view of this discussion of Quine’s philosophical position. I’m sorry that you didn’t find my first, rather rough take on the issue to be a reasonable starting point. Having just spent several hours on planes traveling to and from the Inland Northwest for Thanksgiving, I’ve had more time to characterize Quine’s philosophy than during my earlier subway ride.
Starting with Carnap’s positivism: Carnap claims that one can choose conceptual frameworks at will for pragmatic reasons (this is more like Hume’s “reason is the slave of the passions” than it is like real pragmatism) without having to make realist (or metaphysical) commitments concerning their ontology. Thus, he is able to analyze language without simply changing metaphysical discussions dealing with “what is really existent” into metaphysical discussions dealing with “what is really said.”
Quine’s critique of this is three-fold: 1. A framework x can only be formulated by translating it into another framework y. 2. The formulation of framework x ends up being a set of rules for translating x into y. 3. When we talk about the translation of x into y, we’re talking about y as much as we’re talking about x, and it is unclear where one begins and the other ends.
Trying to explicate the analytic/synthetic distinction within language x ends up using language y to define what the distinction means in language x, which leaves the distinction undefined in language y, which is our target language anyway. Quine makes roughly the same point with the ontology of x vis-à-vis y (<commentary>I think that my earlier point about Quine trying to compensate for the failure of nominalism is relevant here</commentary>).
This leads either to an infinite regress or to a primitive, unexplicated, naturalized home-language that serves as the overarching background scheme (this is what Quine opts for; ironically, this makes his “ontological relativism” into an anti-relativistic principal). Either way, we don’t get any ultimate clarification of the analytic/synthetic distinction. And either way, we get Quine’s verificational holism: if we can’t meaningfully discern which facts are presupposed and which are empirical, then the theory as a whole is on trial rather than its supposed postulates and their consequences.
This, in a very small nutshell, is Quine’s system as I understand it. I’ve read everything that Quine had written up until about 1994, and all of the major secondary works about Quine written until that point. It’s taken me quite a lot of editing, abridging, and re-formulating to concisely express this and break through all of the cobwebs accumulated in the 10 years since I ceased actively studying philosophy and started making money (and I’ve probably expressed it more clearly in some paper I wrote that now sits mildewing in a box in my basement). Even so, I am certainly in need of a refresher in Quine’s specifics. Absent such a refresher, it would take an inordinate amount of time for me to source it all.
<commentary>In practice, I’m not convinced that Quine’s point (if correct) is really worth making. I find the kind of points that Quine makes under the auspices of “radical translation” to be rather trivial. Just the same, his naturalized, unexplicated, home-base language smacks rather heavily of early Wittgenstein. And in any case, it all hinges on Quine’s ability to block a reductionist take on the translation that occurs between x and y, which is questionable at best.</commentary>
Whatever Quine’s critique offers by way of qualifying the bold positivistic conception of language analysis, Quine’s system strikes me as less pragmatic than Carnap’s positivism, and just as thoroughly focussed on the particulars of linguistic analysis. I conclude that (regardless of how Quine wishes to classify himself) Quine falls squarely within the positivist tradition.
So I have two questions: First, do you find the position that I have described to be more positivist or more pragmatist? Second, do you take it to reflect a reasonable (if peculiar) interpretation of Quine.
Here’s a bonus point that actually has something to do with your post at the start of this thread: If we take Carnap’s most developed position, Heidegger is doing one of two things: either he is trying to create a framework without identifying the objects, properties, and predicates within its operational domain; or he is trying to ask questions outside of any given framework. Either way, Heidegger’s work is literally nonsense. This analysis is, no doubt, correct, but I don’t believe that the paper you link to in this threads initial post mentions it. (I think it relies more on his notion of linguistic logical truth as the foundation of any linguistic framework, though I’d have to reread it to be sure.)
I'm very busy today and don't have time for a thorough response. I'd just say I don't think I take a dim view of Quine. Indeed Quine and Davidson are my two favorite philosophers in the "analytic" tradition. However I do think Quine has some errors in his views on some matters. Still I remain very fond of Two Dogmas. As for monism as you know I like very much Davidson's anomalous monism and am a big fan of Leibniz and Spinoza. So perhaps our positions aren't as far removed as we think?
BTW - sorry for labeling you. I always hate when I do that. I just can't get my mind wrapped around your use of positivism. Calling you an empiricist just seems much more palatable to my inner sense of categories.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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