Quine and the Problem of Truth
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v4i10.2359Abstract
Widespread deflationistic readings of Quine misrepresent his view of disquotation’s significance and the truth predicate’s utility. I demonstrate this by answering a question that philosophers have not directly addressed: how does Quine understand the philosophical problem of truth? A primary thesis of this paper is that we can answer this question only by working from within Quine’s naturalistic framework. Drawing on neglected texts from Quine's corpus, I defend the view that, for Quine, the problem of truth emerges from the development of science, in particular, from logical theorizing. I show that disquotation itself, from this Quinean point of view, is the problematic phenomenon calling for philosophical reflection. I conclude by arguing that Quine does not envisage the kind of explanatory role for disquotation taken up by contemporary deflationists, and he shows no interest in the task that animates deflationism, namely, to show that concerns with truth’s nature are fundamentally confused.
References
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Austin, J. L., 1975. How To Do Things With Words, 2nd ed., edited by M. Sbisa and J. O. Urmson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Austin, J. L., P. F. Strawson and N. D. Cousin, 1950. “Symposium: Truth.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 24: 111–72.
Ayer, A. J., 1953. “Truth.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 7: 183–200.
Azzouni, Jody, 2006. Tracking Reason: Proof, Consequence, and Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bays, Timothy, 2009. “Beth’s Theorem and Deflationism.” Mind 118: 1061–73.
Beall, Jc and Michael Glanzberg, 2008. “Where the Paths Meet: Remarks on Truth and Paradox.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32: 169–98.
Black, Max, 1948. “The Semantic Definition of Truth.” Analysis 8: 49–63.
Blackburn, Simon and Keith Simmons, eds., 1999. Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burgess, Alexis G. and John P. Burgess, 2011. Truth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Collins, John, 2010. “Compendious Assertion and Natural (Generalized) Quantification: A Problem for Deflationary Truth.” In Pedersen and Wright (2010), pp. 81–96.
Crowe, Michael, 2007. Mechanics from Aristotle to Einstein. Santa Fe: Green Lion Press.
Damnjanovic, Nic, 2010. “New Wave Deflationism.” In Pedersen and Wright (2010), pp. 45–58.
David, Marian, 1994. Correspondence and Disquotation: An Essay on the Nature of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 2008a. “Quine’s Ladder: Two and a Half Pages from the Philosophy of Logic.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32: 274–312.
———, 2008b. “Tarski’s Convention T and the Concept of Truth.” In New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy, edited by D. Patterson, pp. 133–56. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ebbs, Gary, 2009. Truth and Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Field, Hartry, 1986. “The Deflationary Conception of Truth.” In Fact, Science, and Morality: Essays on A. J. Ayer’s ‘Language, Truth, and Logic’, edited by G. MacDonald and C. Wright, pp. 55–117. Oxford: Blackwell.
———, 2001. “Tarski’s Theory of Truth.” In Truth and the Absence of Fact, pp. 3–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Føllesdal, Dagfinn and Douglas B. Quine, eds., 2008. Quine in Dialogue. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goldfarb, Warren, 2003. Deductive Logic. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Gupta, Anil, 1999. “A Critique of Deflationism.” In Blackburn and Simmons (1999), pp. 282–307.
Gustaffson, Martin, 2006. “Quine on Explication and Elimination.” Candadian Journal of Philosophy 36: 57–60.
———, 2014. “Quine’s Conception of Explication—and Why It Isn’t Carnap’s.” In A Companion to Quine, edited by G. Harman and E. Lepore, pp. 508–25. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Halbach, Volker, 1999. “Disquotationalism and Infinite Conjunctions.” Mind 108: 1–22.
Heck, Richard G., 2004. “Truth and Disquotation.” Synthese 142: 317–52.
Horsten, Leon, 2011. The Tarskian Turn: Deflationism and Axiomatic Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Horwich, Paul, 2010. “Varieties of Deflationism.” In Meaning, Truth, and Reality, pp. 13–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hylton, Peter, 2007. Quine. New York: Routledge.
Ketland, Jeffrey, 1999. “Deflationism and Tarski’s Paradise.” Mind 108: 69–94.
Leeds, Stephen, 1978. “Theories of Reference and Truth.” Erkenntnis 13: 111–29.
Loar, Brian, 1981. Mind and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, Michael P., ed., 2001. The Nature of Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Patterson, Douglas, 2002. “Two Argument Against Disquotationalism.” Dialectica 56: 99–108.
Pedersen, L. L. J. and D. C. Wright, eds., 2010. New Waves in Truth. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Putnam, Hilary, 1978. Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Quine, W. V., 1951. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” Reprinted in Quine (1980b), pp. 20–46.
———, 1952. “On an Application of Tarski’s Theory of Truth.” Reprinted in Quine (1995c), pp. 141–45.
———, 1953. “Mr. Strawson on Logical Theory.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 137–57.
———, 1954a. “Interpretations of Sets of Conditions.” Reprinted in Quine (1995c), pp. 205–11.
———, 1954b. “The Scope and Language of Science.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 228–45.
———, 1955. “Posits and Reality.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 246–54.
———, 1960a. “Logic as a Source of Syntactical Insights.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 44–49.
———, 1960b. “On the Application of Modern Logic.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 35–41.
———, 1960c. “Variables Explained Away.” Reprinted in Quine (1995c), pp. 227–35.
———, 1960d. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———, 1962. “Ways of Paradox.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 3–20.
———, 1969a. “On Austin’s Method.” Reprinted in Quine (1981a), pp. 86–91.
———, 1969b. Set Theory and Its Logic, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1971. “Algebraic Logic and Predicate Functors.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 283–307.
———, 1974a. The Roots of Reference. Chicago: Open Court.
———, 1974b. “Truth and Disquotation.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 308–21.
———, 1976. The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1980a. Elementary Logic, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1980b. From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed., revised. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1980c. “Meaning and Existential Inference.” In Quine (1980b), pp. 160–68.
———, 1980d. “Notes on the Theory of Reference.” In Quine (1980b), pp. 130–38.
———, 1981a. Theories and Things. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
———, 1981b. “Things and Their Place in Theories.” In Quine (1981a), pp. 1–23.
———, 1982. Methods of Logic, 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1986. Philosophy of Logic, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1987. Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
———, 1991. “Immanence and Validity.” Reprinted in Quine (1995c), pp. 242–50.
———, 1992. Pursuit of Truth, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1994a. “Promoting Extensionality.” Reprinted in Quine (2008), pp. 438–46.
———, 1994b. “Responses to Articles by Abel, Bergström, Davidson, Dreben, Gibson, Hookway, and Prawitz.” Reprinted in Føllesdal and Quine (2008), pp. 223–34.
———, 1994c. “Truth.” Reprinted in Quine (2008), pp. 420–37.
———, 1995a. From Stimulus to Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1995b. “Reactions.” Reprinted in Føllesdal and Quine (2008), pp. 235–50.
———, 1995c. Selected Logic Papers, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1999. “Where Do We Disagree?” Reprinted in Føllesdal and Quine (2008), pp. 159–65.
———, 2008a. Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionlist and Other Essays, edited by D. Føllesdal and D. B. Quine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ricketts, Thomas, 1996. “Carnap: From Logical Syntax to Semantics.” In Origins of Logical Empricism, edited by N. R. Giere and A. W. Richardson, pp. 231–50. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———, 2003. “Languages and Calculi.” In Logical Empiricism in North America, edited by G. Hardcastle and A. Richardson, pp. 257–80. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———, 2004. “Frege, Carnap, and Quine: Continuities and Discontinuties.” In Carnap Brought Home, edited by S. Awodey and C. Klein, pp. 181–202. Chicago: Open Court.
———, 2011. “Roots of Ontological Relativity.” American Philosophical Quarterly 48: 287–300.
Sher, Gila, 2004. “In Search of a Substantive Theory of Truth.” The Journal of Philosophy 101: 5–36.
Smullyan, Raymond, 1957. “Languages in which Self Reference is Possible.” Journal of Symbolic Logic 22: 55–67.
Tarski, Alfred, 1983. “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages.” Reprinted in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, 2nd ed., edited by J. Corcoran, pp. 152–278. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Thomson, J. F., 1949. “A Note on Truth.” Analysis 9: 67–72.
Vision, Gerald, 2004. Veritas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wright, Crispin, 1999. “Truth: A Traditional Debate Reviewed.” In Blackburn and Simmons (1999), pp. 203–38.
Austin, J. L., 1975. How To Do Things With Words, 2nd ed., edited by M. Sbisa and J. O. Urmson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Austin, J. L., P. F. Strawson and N. D. Cousin, 1950. “Symposium: Truth.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 24: 111–72.
Ayer, A. J., 1953. “Truth.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 7: 183–200.
Azzouni, Jody, 2006. Tracking Reason: Proof, Consequence, and Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bays, Timothy, 2009. “Beth’s Theorem and Deflationism.” Mind 118: 1061–73.
Beall, Jc and Michael Glanzberg, 2008. “Where the Paths Meet: Remarks on Truth and Paradox.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32: 169–98.
Black, Max, 1948. “The Semantic Definition of Truth.” Analysis 8: 49–63.
Blackburn, Simon and Keith Simmons, eds., 1999. Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burgess, Alexis G. and John P. Burgess, 2011. Truth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Collins, John, 2010. “Compendious Assertion and Natural (Generalized) Quantification: A Problem for Deflationary Truth.” In Pedersen and Wright (2010), pp. 81–96.
Crowe, Michael, 2007. Mechanics from Aristotle to Einstein. Santa Fe: Green Lion Press.
Damnjanovic, Nic, 2010. “New Wave Deflationism.” In Pedersen and Wright (2010), pp. 45–58.
David, Marian, 1994. Correspondence and Disquotation: An Essay on the Nature of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 2008a. “Quine’s Ladder: Two and a Half Pages from the Philosophy of Logic.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32: 274–312.
———, 2008b. “Tarski’s Convention T and the Concept of Truth.” In New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy, edited by D. Patterson, pp. 133–56. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ebbs, Gary, 2009. Truth and Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Field, Hartry, 1986. “The Deflationary Conception of Truth.” In Fact, Science, and Morality: Essays on A. J. Ayer’s ‘Language, Truth, and Logic’, edited by G. MacDonald and C. Wright, pp. 55–117. Oxford: Blackwell.
———, 2001. “Tarski’s Theory of Truth.” In Truth and the Absence of Fact, pp. 3–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Føllesdal, Dagfinn and Douglas B. Quine, eds., 2008. Quine in Dialogue. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goldfarb, Warren, 2003. Deductive Logic. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Gupta, Anil, 1999. “A Critique of Deflationism.” In Blackburn and Simmons (1999), pp. 282–307.
Gustaffson, Martin, 2006. “Quine on Explication and Elimination.” Candadian Journal of Philosophy 36: 57–60.
———, 2014. “Quine’s Conception of Explication—and Why It Isn’t Carnap’s.” In A Companion to Quine, edited by G. Harman and E. Lepore, pp. 508–25. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Halbach, Volker, 1999. “Disquotationalism and Infinite Conjunctions.” Mind 108: 1–22.
Heck, Richard G., 2004. “Truth and Disquotation.” Synthese 142: 317–52.
Horsten, Leon, 2011. The Tarskian Turn: Deflationism and Axiomatic Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Horwich, Paul, 2010. “Varieties of Deflationism.” In Meaning, Truth, and Reality, pp. 13–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hylton, Peter, 2007. Quine. New York: Routledge.
Ketland, Jeffrey, 1999. “Deflationism and Tarski’s Paradise.” Mind 108: 69–94.
Leeds, Stephen, 1978. “Theories of Reference and Truth.” Erkenntnis 13: 111–29.
Loar, Brian, 1981. Mind and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, Michael P., ed., 2001. The Nature of Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Patterson, Douglas, 2002. “Two Argument Against Disquotationalism.” Dialectica 56: 99–108.
Pedersen, L. L. J. and D. C. Wright, eds., 2010. New Waves in Truth. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Putnam, Hilary, 1978. Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Quine, W. V., 1951. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” Reprinted in Quine (1980b), pp. 20–46.
———, 1952. “On an Application of Tarski’s Theory of Truth.” Reprinted in Quine (1995c), pp. 141–45.
———, 1953. “Mr. Strawson on Logical Theory.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 137–57.
———, 1954a. “Interpretations of Sets of Conditions.” Reprinted in Quine (1995c), pp. 205–11.
———, 1954b. “The Scope and Language of Science.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 228–45.
———, 1955. “Posits and Reality.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 246–54.
———, 1960a. “Logic as a Source of Syntactical Insights.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 44–49.
———, 1960b. “On the Application of Modern Logic.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 35–41.
———, 1960c. “Variables Explained Away.” Reprinted in Quine (1995c), pp. 227–35.
———, 1960d. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———, 1962. “Ways of Paradox.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 3–20.
———, 1969a. “On Austin’s Method.” Reprinted in Quine (1981a), pp. 86–91.
———, 1969b. Set Theory and Its Logic, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1971. “Algebraic Logic and Predicate Functors.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 283–307.
———, 1974a. The Roots of Reference. Chicago: Open Court.
———, 1974b. “Truth and Disquotation.” Reprinted in Quine (1976), pp. 308–21.
———, 1976. The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1980a. Elementary Logic, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1980b. From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed., revised. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1980c. “Meaning and Existential Inference.” In Quine (1980b), pp. 160–68.
———, 1980d. “Notes on the Theory of Reference.” In Quine (1980b), pp. 130–38.
———, 1981a. Theories and Things. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
———, 1981b. “Things and Their Place in Theories.” In Quine (1981a), pp. 1–23.
———, 1982. Methods of Logic, 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1986. Philosophy of Logic, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1987. Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
———, 1991. “Immanence and Validity.” Reprinted in Quine (1995c), pp. 242–50.
———, 1992. Pursuit of Truth, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1994a. “Promoting Extensionality.” Reprinted in Quine (2008), pp. 438–46.
———, 1994b. “Responses to Articles by Abel, Bergström, Davidson, Dreben, Gibson, Hookway, and Prawitz.” Reprinted in Føllesdal and Quine (2008), pp. 223–34.
———, 1994c. “Truth.” Reprinted in Quine (2008), pp. 420–37.
———, 1995a. From Stimulus to Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1995b. “Reactions.” Reprinted in Føllesdal and Quine (2008), pp. 235–50.
———, 1995c. Selected Logic Papers, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———, 1999. “Where Do We Disagree?” Reprinted in Føllesdal and Quine (2008), pp. 159–65.
———, 2008a. Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionlist and Other Essays, edited by D. Føllesdal and D. B. Quine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ricketts, Thomas, 1996. “Carnap: From Logical Syntax to Semantics.” In Origins of Logical Empricism, edited by N. R. Giere and A. W. Richardson, pp. 231–50. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———, 2003. “Languages and Calculi.” In Logical Empiricism in North America, edited by G. Hardcastle and A. Richardson, pp. 257–80. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———, 2004. “Frege, Carnap, and Quine: Continuities and Discontinuties.” In Carnap Brought Home, edited by S. Awodey and C. Klein, pp. 181–202. Chicago: Open Court.
———, 2011. “Roots of Ontological Relativity.” American Philosophical Quarterly 48: 287–300.
Sher, Gila, 2004. “In Search of a Substantive Theory of Truth.” The Journal of Philosophy 101: 5–36.
Smullyan, Raymond, 1957. “Languages in which Self Reference is Possible.” Journal of Symbolic Logic 22: 55–67.
Tarski, Alfred, 1983. “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages.” Reprinted in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, 2nd ed., edited by J. Corcoran, pp. 152–278. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Thomson, J. F., 1949. “A Note on Truth.” Analysis 9: 67–72.
Vision, Gerald, 2004. Veritas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wright, Crispin, 1999. “Truth: A Traditional Debate Reviewed.” In Blackburn and Simmons (1999), pp. 203–38.
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