ACHIEVEMENTS OF Dr. Willard Van
Orman Quine
THE 1996 KYOTO PRIZE LAUREATE
IN
CREATIVE ARTS AND MORAL SCIENCES
Field Selected: Philosophy
Developing countless sensational arguments filled with insight
covering fields from epistemology to philosophy of language and
philosophy of science, Dr. Willard Van Orman Quine has created
a new paradigm of philosophy for the second half of the 20th
Century.
Dr. Quine first started as a logician, grappling with the
formal
readjustment of the set theory posed by "Russell's
Paradox".
He succeeded in improving the system set down by B. Russell, and
in constructing an even more refined system. Though Dr. Quine
originally worked from a position of logical positivism, he soon
turned off from it, and by amalgamating the American pragmatism
with the methods of logical analysis, he established a unique
position known as "neopragmatism". This philosophy
freely
employs the methods of logical analysis stemmed from the Vienna
Circle in an elaborate and accurate form, while maintaining the
traditions of pragmatism. Having accomplished these achievements
early in his career, Dr. Quine moved beyond logic into the proper
area of philosophy and has developed a series of major theories
which have strongly influenced contemporary philosophy.
1. In challenging the distinction between "analytical
statements" and "synthetic statements", which had
been
considered self-evident according to the dominant empiricism
of this century, Dr. Quine pointed out that there was no
firm basis for such a distinction. Further, within the
empirical theory most representative of logical positivism,
statements may be classified into linguistic factors and
actual factors and meaningful statements will thus be
subject to individual independent sensory confirmation and
refutation. Quoting the allegations previously set forth by
Duhem. Dr. Quine criticized the reduction of this type of
empiricism and developed his own thesis which asserts that
the statements concerning the outer world are not separate
and isolated, but indeed will be subject to sensory judgment
as a collective whole known as the "Quine-Duhem
Thesis".
With this argument, Dr. Quine succeeded in unveiling "two
dogmas of empiricism" which greatly influenced future
directions of both epistemology and ontology.
2. In the area of philosophy of language, Dr. Quine has
also developed a thesis known as the "Indetermancy of
Translation" which shock the presently accepted positions of
the field. This thesis suggests that multiple, opposing
manuals of translation are feasible whenever an attempt is
made to translate between differing linguistic systems.
Furthermore, he claimed that it is impossible to determine
which method of translation is correct. This theory
correlates to another thesis known as the "Uncertainty of
Reference", which deals with the problem of the ambiguity of
object denotation. Both of these indetermancies deal with
the basic, fundamental problem of philosophy of language,
specifically the "relationship between word and object"
or
"the meaning of words". These and related problems
proposed
by Dr. Quine have since strongly influenced the direction of
the this area.
3. Dr. Quine has challenged the dominant thought concerning
philosophy and in particular epistemology, questioning those
epistemological ideas which serve as the external,
fundamental justification for scholarly knowledge. In their
place he has established what is referred to as
"epistemology naturalized" which calls for the
reassessment
of epistemology as something which cannot transcend the
achievements of scientific progress, but instead which is in
fact based on these achievements. It should therefore be
considered as a form of "scientific psychology" or a
form of
psychology in which scientific factors have been introduced.
These doctrines have been subject to torrid debate, the
result of which has been a basic reevaluation of what
exactly epistemology is, a query which touches the deepest,
most fundamental problems of philosophy.
We may therefore say that the many theses and arguments of Dr.
Willard Van Orman Quine have become the center of debate for
modern epistemology and ontology as well as philosophy of
language and philosophy of science in general. He has created
a profound, powerful influence without which it would not be
possible to understand the current state of philosophy.