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28Pragmatism and scientific philosophy in Carnap and QuineBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 1-8. forthcoming.Critical Review of The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine, edited by Sean Morris, Cambridge University Press, 2023.Scholarly opinion concerning the Carnap–Quine relationship and their centra...
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16Précis of Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic DistinctionAsian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 1-7. 2023.Quine’s references to his “pragmatism” have often been seen as indicating a possible link to the American pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. In Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction, I argue that the influence of pragmatism on Quine’s philosophy is more accurately traced to C.I. Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism. Quine’s epistemology shares many affinities with Lewis’s view, which depicts knowledge as a conceptual system pragmatically revised in light of future ex…Read more
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19Replies to my criticsAsian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 1-13. 2023.In these replies, I respond to critics in the book symposium on my Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction, Lexington Books, 2022.
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5Quine's Epistemology NaturalizedIn Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011-09-16.
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11Quine on the Indeterminacy of TranslationIn Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011-09-16.
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5Quine's Two Dogmas of EmpiricismIn Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011-09-16.
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9Quine on EvidenceIn Ernie Lepore & Gilbert Harman (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.Alex Orenstein: “Inscrutability Scrutinized”: This is a reply to Quine's comments on an earlier paper. In his comments on that earlier paper Quine acknowledged that distinguishing the inscrutability of reference from the indeterminacy of meaning might be preferable to other of his ways of referring to this distinction. He also agreed that inscrutability of reference is a strong claim, a “thesis”, proven as per model theory. His examples of inscrutability are examined and supplemented with other …Read more
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9ReificationIn Robert Arp, Steven Barbone & Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad Arguments, Wiley. 2018-05-09.This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'reification'. A relative newcomer to the world of logical fallacies, reification is difficult to place and its status as a fallacy not that well understood. In general, reification involves taking something that is abstract, like an idea or concept, and making it concrete, or assigning it a concrete, 'real' existence. The standard analysis of reification presents it as a fallacy of presumption, which can be avoided by mi…Read more
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15The Philosopher: A History in Six Types. By Justin E. H. Smith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 272 (review)Metaphilosophy 48 (3): 370-375. 2017.
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6Introduction: Quine’s Immanuel Kant LecturesIn Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine: The 1980 Immanuel Kant Lectures, Palgrave Macmillan. 2019.These introductory remarks provide an overview of the project Quine develops in his Kant lectures. Much of the lectures are aimed at locating mentalistic discourse within a scientific, physicalist framework, where this forms part of a scientific, if abstract, explanation of how we come to know the external world and other minds without an appeal to mental entities or other sensibilia. I further attempt to illuminate Quine’s physicalist rendering of perception through a comparison with Austin’s o…Read more
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11Review of Peter Olen and Carl Sachs: Pragmatism in Transition: Contemporary Perspectives on C.I. Lewis (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (1): 201-205. 2019.
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27Review of Quentin Kammer, Jean-Philippe Narboux and Henri Wagner: C.I. Lewis: the a priori and the given (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 315-319. 2022.
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103Naturalism and Normativity By Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, editorsTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47 (4): 531. 2011.Recent trends in philosophical naturalism have their chief source in Quine's influential call to 'naturalize' epistemology, which recommended that philosophical concerns be seen as simply one part of a scientifically informed attempt to understand the natural world. The result is the view described as 'scientific naturalism' where philosophy now must defer to science when addressing questions of knowledge, meaning and existence. This naturalist turn is sometimes portrayed as a novel and radical …Read more
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Quine on EvidenceIn Gilbert Harman & Ernest LePore (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.
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125Quine and Conceptual PragmatismTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (3): 335-355. 2012.In comparing his conception of empiricism with that of other like-minded philosophers at the end of his 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism,' W. V. Quine famously emphasized the broader scope of his pragmatist commitment in these terms:Carnap, Lewis, and others take a pragmatic stand on the question of choosing between language forms, scientific frameworks; but their pragmatism leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In repudiating such a boundary I espouse a more thoro…Read more
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20Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic DistinctionLexington Books. 2022.This book provides an in-depth examination of C.I. Lewis's conceptual pragmatism and its influence on Quine's developing views in epistemology. The author shows how Quine's engagement with problems presented by Lewis, such as analyticity and the empirical given, contribute to the development of his conception of naturalized epistemology.
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22Quentin Kammer, Jean-Philippe Narboux, and Henri Wagner, eds. C. I. Lewis: The A Priori and the Given. New York: Routledge, 2021. Pp. vii+320. $160.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-138-70087-1 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 315-319. 2022.
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2Working from within: the nature and development of Quine’s naturalism: by Sander Verhaegh, New York, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. vii + 218, £47.99 (hb), ISBN: 978-0-19091-315-1 (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (2): 426-428. 2020.Volume 28, Issue 2, March 2020, Page 426-428.
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21Working from within: the nature and development of Quine’s naturalism: by Sander Verhaegh, New York, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. vii + 218, £47.99 (hb), ISBN: 978-0-19091-315-1 (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (2): 426-428. 2020.Volume 28, Issue 2, March 2020, Page 426-428.
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19Peter Olen and Carl Sachs, eds. Pragmatism in Transition: Contemporary Perspectives on C. I. Lewis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. viii+222. $109.99 ; $84.99 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (1): 201-205. 2019.
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14Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine: The 1980 Immanuel Kant Lectures (edited book)Palgrave Macmillan. 2019.In this book, W. V. Quine’s Immanuel Kant Lectures entitled Science and Sensibilia are published for the first time in English. These lectures represent an important stage in the development of Quine’s later thought, where he is more explicit about the importance of physicalist constraints in his account of the steps from sensory stimulation to scientific theory, and in further using them to assess the extent to which mental vocabulary is defensible. Taken as a unit, these lectures fill an impor…Read more
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17Kirk Ludwig , Donald Davidson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 240 pages (review)Philosophiques 32 (1): 271-273. 2005.
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Paul A. Gregory, Quine's Naturalism: Language, Theory and the Knowing Subject (review)Philosophy in Review 29 (4): 257. 2009.
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63The philosophical significance of triangulation: Locating Davidson's non-reductive naturalismMetaphilosophy 36 (5): 708-728. 2005.Donald Davidson has emphasized the importance of what he calls “triangulation” for clarifying the conditions that make thought possible. Various critics have questioned whether this triangular causal interaction between two individuals and a shared environment can provide necessary conditions for the emergence of thought. I argue that these critical responses all suffer from a lack of appreciation for the way triangulation is responsive to the philosophical commitments of Davidson's naturalism. …Read more
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98Quine's Naturalized Epistemology and the Third Dogma of EmpiricismSouthern Journal of Philosophy 45 (3): 455-472. 2007.This essay reconsiders Davidson's critical attribution of the scheme‐content distinction to Quine's naturalized epistemology. It focuses on Davidson's complaint that the presence of this distinction leads Quine to mistakenly construe neural input as evidence. While committed to this distinction, Quine's epistemology does not attempt to locate a justificatory foundation in sensory experience and does not then equate neural intake with evidence. Quine's central epistemological task is an explanato…Read more
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20Huw Price , Naturalism Without Mirrors . Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 32 (3): 222-224. 2012.
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25Dewey, Religion, and the New AtheismContemporary Pragmatism 7 (1): 93-106. 2010.This article explores the conflict between those who find value in religious commitment and others who recommend the complete abandonment of religion. It examines John Dewey's reflections on religion in order to assess its possible resources for addressing this specific conflict. Dewey's discussion highlights deep human impulses that a secular perspective should address. But this should be accomplished not through his proposed broadening of religious life, but by promoting these impulses and the…Read more