Peter Hylton

Hylton argues that some of the characteristic concerns of Quine are already in place by the 1930s. Hylton examines Quine’s 1934 Harvard lectures on Carnap, his first attempt to explain Carnap’s logical syntax program to an American audience. By pointing out tensions within the exposition the young Quine offered of Carnap’s views, Hylton shows how these lectures already point toward Quine’s subsequent disagreements with Carnap over the analytic/synthetic distinction. Hylton finds that in these lectures Quine departs from exposition because of a philosophical discomfort with Carnap’s assumption that our actual, pre-analytic, language contains a set of implicitly given definitions or rules from which the category of the a priori arises. Moreover, Quine also fastidiously departs from Carnap in trying to avoid assuming that our language contains a distinction between the a priori and the empirical. In the context of an exposition of Carnap’s program, this invites a question Quine was soon to ask: what sort of explanation of a given sentence’s truth could Carnap’s notion of “analytic” possibly provide? Hylton argues that Quine’s later well-known holism about meaning, his famed denial of empiricism’s second reductionist dogma—that “each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience”—was not the sole or primary philosophical factor shaping Quine’s differences with Carnap. Hylton’s examination of the origins of Quine’s differences with Carnap shows that what is fundamentally at stake is the very conception of what counts as a philosophical explanation.

Quine was one of the foremost philosophers of the Twentieth century. In this outstanding overview of Quine's philosophy, Peter Hylton shows why Quine is so important and how his philosophical naturalism has been so influential within analytic philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Quine's philosophical background in logic and mathematics and the role of Rudolf Carnap's influence on Quine's thought, he goes on to discuss Quine's famous analytic-synthetic distinction and his arguments concerning the nature of the a priori. He also discusses Quine's philosophy of language and epistemology, his celebrated theory of the indeterminacy of translation and his broader views of ontology and modality. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Quine, twentieth century philosophy and the philosophy of language.

Quine was one of the foremost philosophers of the Twentieth century. In this outstanding overview of Quine's philosophy, Peter Hylton shows why Quine is so important and how his philosophical naturalism has been so influential within analytic philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Quine's philosophical background in logic and mathematics and the role of Rudolf Carnap's influence on Quine's thought, he goes on to discuss Quine's famous analytic-synthetic distinction and his arguments concerning the nature of the a priori. He also discusses Quine's philosophy of language and epistemology, his celebrated theory of the indeterminacy of translation and his broader views of ontology and modality. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Quine, twentieth century philosophy and the philosophy of language.

Deals with the initial phase of the reaction, by Moore and Russell, against Idealism. In opposition to that view, they developed an extreme form of realism, which the author calls ‘Platonic Atomism’. The idea of a ‘proposition’ is fundamental for this view. Truth is undefinable, and facts are merely those propositions that happen to be true. Among the most important works here are Moore's ‘Nature of Judgement’ and Russell's 1901 book on Leibniz; the same metaphysical view underlies Moore's Principia Ethica.

A general discussion of the problematic relationship between philosophy and its history; an argument against a common view as articulated by Richard Rorty. By contrast with that view, the aim of this book is neither to refute Russell nor simply to appropriate aspects of his thought. It is, rather, to come to terms with his thought in this crucial period as a way of coming to terms with the beginnings of analytic philosophy. For those of us trained within the analytic tradition, this should be a route to an understanding of ourselves and our own philosophical position.

The focus of this chapter is on the book mentioned in its title. There, Russell combines the metaphysics of Platonic Atomism with the logic of relations, which he developed on the basis of Peano's logic and with logicism. Logicism is deployed as an argument against Idealism; in particular, it is used to defend the idea that the truths of mathematics are absolutely true, not merely relatively true as the Idealists had held. And it is also used to argue that consistent theories of space and time are available. This fact, Russell claims, undermines the Idealist claim that our ordinary knowledge is inconsistent. The chapter also raises some of the problems thrown up by Russell's view, in particular the paradox that bears his name.

Deals with the evolution of Russell's metaphysical and epistemological views, from roughly 1906 to 1913. In metaphysics, he gives up on the primacy of propositions and the undefinability of truth; facts become fundamental, and truth defined. Epistemology becomes a far more central concern of Russell's than before and is dominated by the idea of acquaintance, a presuppositionless relation between the mind and entities outside the mind. In both fields, Russell develops a constructivist method, greatly influenced by logic, which was to have a far‐reaching influence on later analytic philosophy.

Here the concern is with the logic underlying Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica and with the relation of that logic to Russell's underlying metaphysics. The author emphasizes the fact that work is, strictly speaking, a theory of propositional functions, not of classes; sentences containing symbols for classes are defined by means of propositional functions. It is terms of the latter sort of entity that Russell's Paradox must be solved; the theory of types is, strictly speaking, a theory of the stratification of propositional functions.

Michael Glanzberg: Quine on Reference and Quantification: This essay reviews Quine's main theses about the nature of reference and quantification, their origins, and their limitations. It presents Quine's view that reference is a derivative semantic notion, along with his proposal to eliminate proper names, and his speculation about how our ability to refer might develop. Turning to quantification, it shows the close connections between quantifiers and regimentation in Quine's work, and discusses his rejection of second‐order logic and quantification into modal contexts, along with the important connection Quine sees between quantification and ontological commitment.

The difference between Carnap and Quine over analyticity is usually thought to turn on a disagreement as to whether there is a notion of meaning, or rules of language, which enable us to define that idea. This paper argues that the more important disagreement is epistemological. Quine came to accept a notion of analyticity. That leaves him in a position somewhat like Putnam's in ‘The Analytic and the Synthetic’: that there is a notion of analyticity, but that it is of no philosophical importance. But their reasons for thinking analyticity unimportant are quite different: for Putnam it is because all analytic truths are trivial; for Quine, the notion of analyticity itself is unimportant. I contrast Putnam's position with that of Carnap, and also contrast Carnap and Quine. Analyticity only has the force that it has for Carnap because he accepts the Principle of Tolerance, the idea that changes within a language and changes of language are subject to justification in different senses. Quine rejects that idea. That is why he does not take analyticity to be philosophically important or useful.