Word and Object is a 1960 book by Willard Van Orman Quine. His most famous book, it argues in favor of naturalizing epistemology, supports physicalism over phenomenalism and mind-body dualism, and supports extensionality over intensionality. It also develops a behavioristic conception of sentence-meaning, theorizes about language learning, speculates on the ontogenesis of reference, explains various forms of ambiguity and vagueness, recommends measures for regimenting language to eliminate ambiguity and vagueness as well as to make perspicuous the logic and ontic commitments of theories, argues against quantified modal logic and the essentialism it presupposes, argues for Platonic realism in mathematics, rejects instrumentalism in favor of scientific realism, develops a view of philosophical analysis as explication, argues against analyticity and for holism, argues against countenancing propositions, and argues that the meanings of theoretical sentences are indeterminate and that the reference of terms is inscrutable.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Gibson, Roger F. (1999). In Audi, Robert. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 767–768. ISBN 0-521-63722-8.
[edit] See also
