The three quines

International Journal of Philosophical Studies 11 (3):261 – 292 (2003)
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Abstract

This paper concerns Quine's stance on the issue of meaning normativity. I argue that three distinct and not obviously compatible positions on meaning normativity can be extracted from his philosophy of language - eliminative ]naturalism (Quine I), deflationary pragmatism (Quine II), and (restricted) strong normativism (Quine III) - which result from Quine's failure to separate adequately four different questions that surround the issue: the reality, source, sense, and scope of the normative dimension. In addition to the incompatibility of the views taken together, I argue on the basis of considerations due to Wittgenstein, Dummett, and Davidson that each view taken separately has self-standing problems. The first two fail to appreciate the ineliminability of the strong normativity of logic and so face a dilemma: they either smuggle it in illicitly, or insofar as they do not, fail to give an account of anything like a language. The third position's mixture of a universalism about logical concepts with a thorough-going relativism about non-logical concepts can be challenged once a distinction is drawn between the universalist and contextualist readings of strong normativity, a distinction inspired by Wittgenstein's distinction between grammatical and empirical judgements.

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Citations of this work

Quine and pragmatism.Heikki J. Koskinen & Sami Pihlström - 2006 - Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (3):309-346.
Quine and Pragmatism.Heikki J. Koskinen & Sami Pihlström - 2006 - Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (3):309-346.
Toward a pragmatist philosophy of the humanities.Sami Pihlström - 2022 - Albany: State University of New York Press.

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References found in this work

Ontological relativity and other essays.Willard Van Orman Quine (ed.) - 1969 - New York: Columbia University Press.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. V. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20-43.

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