Over at Hopos-L today there was an interesting discussion of the oft quoted quip of Quine's, "philosophy of
science is philosophy enough." I've sure you've heard it before. However what was interesting was the contextualizing of the quote. Saul Fisher offered some useful comments. First the quote appears in "Mr. Strawson on Logical Theory" in Mind 62, 248 (October, 1953) on page 446. Fisher suggests that the quote "has to rate among the more routinely and inappropriately cited 'slogans' taken out of context form Quine's writings."
Quine was reviewing a book of Strawson's, Introduction to Logical Theory, that was analyzing logic in terms of ordinary language philosophy. Needless to say, given is proclivities, Quine wrote a fairly annoyed but polite rejoinder. (I've not read the paper in question, but I've read others by Quine with perhaps a similar attitude, so I can almost picture the prose)
The long and perceptive passages in which Mr. Strawson traces out something like a logic of ordinary language have all the interest and value of an able philological inquiry. But it is a mistake to think of Mr. Strawson as doing here, realistically, a job which the dream-beset formal logician had been trying to do in his unrealistic way.
Quine famously wishes to reject ordinary language philosophy and maintains part of the old postivist project of developing more "artificial" languages that will make the concepts of science clear. He further thinks that this formal project will resolve many of the traditional problems in philosophy.
The full quote from Quine on philosophy of science as philosophy enough is,
Such solutions are good to just the extent that (a) philosophy of science is philosophy enough and (b) the refashioned logical underpinnings of science do not engender new philosophical problems of their own.
Obviously that second part is an important caveat as is contextualizing the quote in terms of the project Quine is committed to. Which, to my eyes at least, is similar to how Peirce's pragmatic maxim worked - although clearly there are important and significant differences between the two philosophers. (Primarily over the nature of abstract objects, although to me Quine seems a bit inconsistent on that point)
Getting back to Fisher's post to Hopos-L, he notes that there is a big difference between proclaiming a slogan, as some tend to use the quote, and using it to qualify his project of formalizing scientific language. The difference being, of course, that as a qualifier it may well be that philosophy of science isn't enough philosophy. That's because as one formalizes scientific language new problems pop up. (Which is what Quine asserts elsewhere) The ultimate point though is that analysis is better pursued with formal tools rather than ordinary language ala Strawson.
Fisher notes a longer discussion of this with a slightly different perspective in "Frege, Carnap, and Quine: Continuities and Discontinuities" in Carnap Brought Home: The View from Jena, S Awodey & C Klein (ed.s), Open Court, 2004.
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