On the Ideas of Quine: Section 3
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Willard Quine talks about his contributions to philosophy, hosted by Bryan Magee.
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The power of Socratic questioning. Magee is very sharp interrogating Quine on his materialism, and particularly on how he can square his rejection of "mental objects" with his "positing" of "abstract objects" such as numbers. "It's true there's discontinuity," replies Quine as he proceeds to dodge the question.
Hi s, Quine's argument for admitting sets to the furniture of the universe goes something like this: Our best theories of physics use numbers to describe things like velocity, position, etc. And our best theories of what numbers are analyze them in terms of sets. Since these theories are confirmed en bloc by the empirical data, the empirical data confirm the existence of sets just as they confirm the existence of physical objects.
oh yes you are getting one.....
i think you need to experience something or study in certain area to understand him better....
he indeed is a great philosopher. It took me a long time to realise this ...
(cont, to s) Therefore, its not a question of how can we reduce sets and numbers to physical objects--the sets and numbers are there from the start, along with the physical objects, in how the empirical data were phrased. And yes, Sellars didn't quite see the light on this point :-)
@DrDeist it depends on what is meant by "include". Eistein's theory is a different conceptual framework with different "axioms" and language (e.g. tensors) than Newton's. It includes the latter in a sense that it has higher explanatory & predictive power, and not in a sense that it is an extension of classical mechanics. Similarly, a neuro-biological framework attempts to explain mental phenomena in its own language, in physical terms, without relying on classical or metaphysical dichotomies.
I agree. The reason I don't like being called a naturalist is because a consequence that usually falls out of ontological naturalism (all that exists is what natural science (or just physics for physicalism) quantifies over) is a highly implausible semantic reductionism: for sentences, explanations, etc. to be naturalistically acceptable they must be reduced to the terms of the natural sciences (or physics). I'm a nominalist as well but I deny naturalism's semantic reductionism.
@McTaggStar I don't believe Quine asserts that mental states are *identical* to neural states, that would indeed be silly. I think he's saying that that mental states can be fully reduced to / explained by / redescribed as neural states; and by "fully" I mean there would be nothing interesting left to explain.
For example, Newtonian mechanics is not the same as Einsteinian theory, but anything in the Newtonian theory can be explained in terms Einsten's theory with nothing left to explain.
5:42
"... furniture of the world ..." :)
@DrDeist regarding Quine's "weak" attempt to demonstrate... You're begging the question by presuming there to be something else other than "physical schema". What is it? This is precisely what I meant by "classical or metaphysical dichotomies" that the neuro-biological framework doesn't rely upon. Quine appears to me consistent in his claim.
Quine becomes a politician at 4:09.
magee is one good host... O.O
This expresses what I call Quine's "egalitarian" approach to ontology that makes him different from mainstream materialism. As a consequence of Quine's empiricism and indeterminacy thesis, Ontology has nothing to do with "stuff", with the "substantive" in the classical sense. Numbers are on an ontological par with rocks and chairs because ontology is about which terms and entities we need "commitment" to in order to do science. There is no sense in which rocks and chairs are "more real".
I think that Quine's 'naturalized epistemology' means that we should try to figure out epistemology (how we know stuff) the same way we try to figure out anything else in nature and that is with empirical science. And Quine thinks that 'how we know stuff' is the same as 'how we learn stuff' which is a psychological issue so he thinks the science we should use instead of epistemology is psychology.
I think he wants to replace all epistemology with psychology! (like that's going to help)
Why can't he see that there's a difference between things that are too small to see or to even connect them to other physical objects in the way that he describes (but are nonetheless part of the physical world) and his 'abstract' objects - and that these abstract things are obviously mental and therefore contradictory to his rejection of Duality? If there isn't a difference, he fails to state it here.
Philosophy doesn't have a common definition-- it's mainly the collaboration of thoughts that deal with the whole of our experiences to make sense of all we understand. Don't quote me
christ. fucking, fucking brilliant
Furniture of the world???? What the fuck is Quine on about?
Grrrr.....looks like YT ate my comments.... let me try again...
@ja524309 Every quark is unique, mathematics is an approximation of all reality.
Does anyone else think his idea of mathematics being independent of the physical world is kind of nuts?
Is philosophy the quest to liberate our minds of false ideas so we can live more freely?
i'm probably alone here and i'll probably get death threats for this but i don't get quine at all. i don't see why he is considered so brilliant. not that he is not smart, but i don't see value in what he has to offer. his "naturalized epistemology" is really strange.
There are interesting arguments against his (and Putnam's) so-called Indispensability Argument and the Quinean criterion of ontological commitment generally. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has good stuff on them.
If you ask me, Bryan Magee was a BEAST when it come to grasping even the most eccentric concepts and bringing them to life --as it was meant originally by the philosopher whom are credited if them.
Asking where sets are located is kind of like asking what color empty space is. Empty space doesn't have a color, and sets and numbers don't have a location. But why should something have to have a location in order to be real?
Wonderful interview. Here is where I think Badiou's materialist epistemology of mathematics works better. Quine's naturalism forces him into accepting a strange dualism of abstract and physical objects, which extends to sub-elementary particles described by physics. Badiou simply identifies mathematic expression with what is of matter. This resolves this question in a more radical manner, I think.
Quine - one of the sharpest philosophers ever, but his beliefs about 'abstract' objects, while being a complete materialist, really hurt his reputation. Too bad Wittgenstein wasn't alive - he would've torn Quine to pieces, if not with rhetoric, then with argument and a stick!
where are what?
(2nd try) Suppose we're gathering empirical evidence to confirm, say F=ma. What is this empirical evidence? It is a SET of NUMBERS, which represents forces, masses, accelerations, etc. In other words, even to state the data used to confirm a theory, we have to use the vocabulary of that theory. Therefore, its not a question of reducing sets and numbers to physical objects--sets and numbers are there from the start, cheek and jowl with the physical objects.
He goes deeper into this thread in one of his books, although I can’t for the life of me remember which book. Basically just saying the same way we are ABLE to argue logically for the existence of some sub atomic particles and such, is the same we we’d argue to or prove the equations or sets/classes and numbers making up abstract objects and since we have to use the these equations and sets and numbers to justify or try and prove the existence of the particles, why not say then the equations sets and such (abstract objects) are what is more real.
I got really lost in what I was trying to say but in short it seemed to me Quine felt like the numbers/sets and abstract objects may be the true fundamental constituents of reality as opposed to “[sub-atomic] particles”
@@soulofjimi Yes, Quine has been known to flirt with full-blown Pythagoreanism. Where everything isn't number, but number and everything else are made from sets.
Thank god Magee is at the helm!
Bryan Magee is definitely a hero of mine. Thumbs up if you appreciate him too!