[Final manuscript. Published in Philosophers' Imprint] Setting Sail The Development and Reception of Quine's Naturalism Sander Verhaegh* Abstract Contemporary analytic philosophy is dominated by metaphilosophical naturalism, the view that philosophy ought to be continuous with science. This naturalistic turn is for a significant part due to the work of W. V. Quine. Yet, the development and the reception of Quine's naturalism have never been systematically studied. In this paper, I examine Quine's evolving naturalism as well as the reception of his views. Scrutinizing a large set of unpublished notes, correspondence, drafts, papers, and lectures as well as published responses to Quine's work, I show how both internal tensions and external criticisms forced him to continuously develop, rebrand, and refine his metaphilosophy before he explicitly decided to label his view 'naturalism' in the late 1960s. 1. Introduction * Tilburg Center for Logic, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS), Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. 2 During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a naturalistic approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science.1 Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy-the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning-many philosophers today follow W. V. Quine in his seminal rejection of this distinction as well as in his reconstruction of their discipline in naturalistic terms, thereby propagating a scientifically informed philosophy. Despite his influence on the contemporary metaphilosophical scene, however, the historical development and reception of Quine's naturalism have never been systematically studied. Although historians of analytic philosophy have shown a growing interest in the development of Quine's philosophy in recent years, historical studies up until now have focused predominantly on his rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction.2 A similar conclusion can be drawn about the reception of Quine's views. Although it is evident that Quine's views about the nature of philosophy have strongly influenced the course of the analytic tradition, surprisingly little is known about the way in which Quine's work was actually received. Where the reception study is a common methodological tool in 1 Leiter (2004, 3) speaks about a "naturalistic turn" in recent philosophy and Kim (2003, 96) dubs naturalism analytic philosophy's "ruling ideology". Their claims are backed up by Bourget and Chalmers' (2013) recent survey among 931 leading philosophers. In response to the question whether the respondents would describe themselves as naturalists or non-naturalists in metaphilosophy, 49.8% answered 'Naturalism', whereas only 25.9% chose the non-naturalist option. 2 See, for example, Isaac (2011), Frost-Arnold (2011), and Sinclair (2012). For obvious reasons, historians of analytic philosophy have only recently started to reconstruct postwar developments in analytic philosophy. Indeed, Floyd's (2009) overview of the field is still titled "Recent Themes in the History of Early Analytic Philosophy" (my emphasis). 3 most subfields of the history of philosophy, it is an instrument that is still rarely used by historians of analytic philosophy.3 In this paper, I aim to contribute to our understanding of the development and the reception of Quine's naturalism. Building on the wealth of material available at the W. V. Quine Papers at Houghton Library-notes, academic and editorial correspondence, drafts, lectures, teaching materials, and grant proposals-as well as published responses to his work, I piece together the development and reception of Quine's metaphilosophy between 1952 and 1970.4 In doing so, I aim to shed new light on the development of Quine's thinking as well as to take some first steps toward illuminating the evolution of analytic philosophy in the first decades after the Second World War. This paper is structured as follows. After examining Quine's first attempt to develop a comprehensive naturalistic philosophy in the 1940s, I show that he postponed this project because he failed to come up with satisfying solutions to problems in epistemology and the philosophy of language, solutions he finally developed in a 1952 conference paper entitled "The Place of a Theory of Evidence" (section 2). Next, I reconstruct the evolution of Quine's metaphilosophical views by studying, among others, a previously unexamined 454-page transcript of his first working draft of Word and Object from 1953 (section 3) and by showing how Quine's naturalism evolved in the years between this first draft and the publication of his magnum opus in 1960 (section 4). In the final two sections, I reconstruct 3 See Floyd's call for such reception studies in her survey article: "the decade during which the middle Quine and the later Wittgenstein were initially being put to work in academic philosophy, and the story of their receptions [...] is a fascinating one. The history of the interpretations of such philosophers is itself part of the wider story, and very much a part of where philosophy is now" (2009, 199-200). 4 In two earlier papers (Verhaegh 2017; Verhaegh forthcoming-b), I have reconstructed the early development of Quine's naturalism (1930-1952) in detail. In this paper, I continue this story and examine Quine's evolving views after 1952, the year in which Quine first concluded that epistemology should be viewed as "an empirical science" (October 7, 1952, item 3011). Section 2 recaps some of my main conclusions about Quine's development in the 1940s and early 1950s. 4 the way in which Quine's naturalism was received by the philosophical community. I show that Quine was dissatisfied with the responses to Word and Object (section 5) and argue that these responses have contributed to his decision to rebrand his philosophy in the late 1960s, when he for the time chose to adopt the label 'naturalism' for his metaphilosophical views (section 6).5 2. From Sign and Object to Word and Object6 Word and Object is widely viewed as Quine's magnum opus, as the book in which he for the first time presents his views on language, science, and ontology in a comprehensive naturalistic framework. What is not known, however, is that Quine has worked on the book for almost two decades. The earliest evidence of his plan to write a philosophical monograph is from November 1941, when he wrote a four-page outline for a book that was to be titled Sign and Object.7 Quine's philosophical book project was inspired by his Harvard Logic Group meetings with Rudolf Carnap, Alfred Tarski, and Nelson Goodman, who were all at 5 A note on citation and transcription. Unless specified differently, the unpublished documents I refer to in this paper are part of the W. V. Quine Papers, collection MS Am 2587, Houghton Library, Harvard University. In the main text and in the footnotes, I will refer to these documents by citing dates (if known) and item numbers. The items' full titles and box numbers are provided in the bibliography. In transcribing Quine's autograph notes, drafts, and letters, I have aimed to minimize editorial interference and chosen not to correct ungrammatical shorthand. 6 As said, this section summarizes my account of Quine's early development (1930-1952). For the full story, see Verhaegh (2017) and Verhaegh (forthcoming-b). 7 The outline is still titled "Book". A few months later, however, Quine had chosen Sign and Object as his working title. In letters to both Alonzo Church (February 15, 1942, item 570) and Donald C. Williams (April 7, 1942, item 1221), Quine mentions that he has begun to outline a book that is to be entitled Sign and Object. 5 Harvard in the 1940-1941 academic year. In these meetings, the group discussed the prospects of a finitist-nominalist language of science.8 Quine's views on the subject were discussed in December 1940 after he presented a paper on the relation between logic, mathematics, science, and philosophy (December 20, 1940, item 2954). A few weeks later, Quine was granted a small sum of money from the William F. Milton Fund to investigate "the philosophical presuppositions of science" (January 9, 1941, item 475), which was to become one of the main topics of his projected book. And although Quine served as a full lieutenant (and later as a lieutenant commander) in the Navy between September 1942 and November 1945, he at the very least regularly worked on Sign and Object during the War, as is evinced by the notes he wrote during those years.9 Quine's book outline shows that he planned to write a book that is fairly comprehensive in philosophical coverage; the seven chapters he envisions encompass topics such as ontology, meaning, epistemology, nominalism, modality, the paradoxes of identity, and empiricism. From a contemporary perspective, Quine's method of inquiry is particularly interesting. The first chapter of the outline opens with the claim that he is "[s]tarting at the middle" and that he is using "an ontology that may want supplementation or diminution" (November 1941, item 3169, my transcription). Combined with his conviction that that there is no strict distinction between "science and common sense", a claim he defended in his paper for the Harvard Logic Group (December 20, 1940, item 2954), Quine's general picture of inquiry appears to be already pretty naturalistic. Like in Word and Object, Quine aimed to "study and revise the fundamental conceptual scheme of science and common sense [...] from within" (1960, 276).10 8 Carnap's notes of these meetings are published and introduced in Frost-Arnold (2013). 9 The Houghton archives contain dozens of autograph and type written notes related to Sign and Object from this period. 10 Quine explicitly affirms that he is "working from within" in a 1944 note, in which he argues that "there is no [...] cosmic exile" and that "[t]he philosopher cannot study and revise the fundamental conceptual scheme of science and common sense, without having meanwhile some conceptual scheme, whether the same or another no less in need of philosophical scrutiny, in which to work" 6 Despite these similarities between Sign and Object and Word and Object, however, Quine was dissatisfied with the progress he was making. In a 1944 letter to Goodman, written shortly after he had drafted a second outline entitled "Sign and Object; or, The Semantics of Being" (October 4, 1944, item 3169), he complains about the book's progress: In the matter of logic and philosophy, I'm at more of a standstill than I have been for half a generation. Still dickering with the introduction of a book on ontology.11 (December 19, 1944, item 420) It is probably because of this reason that Quine decided to postpone his work on Sign and Object in 1946 and to let his philosophical ideas simmer for a few years in his new course on the philosophy of language.12 For the purposes of this paper, it is important to see why Quine was dissatisfied with the progress he was making. It is my contention that there are two fundamental reasons as to why Quine struggled to complete Sign and Object. First, Quine had yet to develop a comprehensive view about language, meaning, and the nature of logical and mathematical knowledge. Quine had been dissatisfied with Carnap's analytic-synthetic distinction for years (he was unable to find a behavioristically acceptable definition of analyticity), but he had not (November 5, 1944, item 3181, my transcription), passages that appear verbatim in Word and Object, published 16 years (!) later (1960, 275). 11 See also the letter Quine wrote to B. F. Skinner two months later: "I've been wanting to write a book of philosophical and semantic character, but I don't seem to make any headway now. I'm not in the expansive mood that makes for philosophical creativity" (February 23, 1945, item 1001). 12 In a project proposal for the Rockefeller Foundation, Quine writes: "I have a considerable sheaf of rough fragments [...] written over recent years with the idea in mind of a book of primarily philosophical and semantical complexion. These things have not yet shaped up into anything organic, but my thought along these lines has led me to offer, for the coming spring, a course in the Philosophy of Language. Accordingly [this project] will consist immediately in the planning of that course; the book is the ulterior purpose" (July 9, 1946, item 921). 7 been able to formulate a satisfying alternative. Although he had succeeded to define analyticity in terms of synonymy in 1943,13 he severely struggled to find a satisfying behavioristic explication of synonymy. Indeed, one of the most detailed notes from Quine's Navy years is a document entitled "Foundations of a Linguistic Theory of Meaning" (August 1943, item 3169), in which Quine examines and dismisses some candidate behavioristic explications of synonymy. The problem was that even if Quine would decide to abandon the whole project, he had "no suggestion of a bright replacement" (1991, 393); i.e. no alternative way to "account for the meaningfulness of logical and mathematical truth" (1986b, 206-7). Indeed, in a 1948 letter to Hugh Miller, Quine sums up his predicament pretty well: I am with you in questioning the currently popular boundary between analytic and synthetic. I feel, indeed, that the distinction means virtually nothing, pending the devising of some behavioristic criterion such as no semanticist to date has given us an inkling of. But, for the same reason, I don't know what it would mean to say, with you, that arithmetic is not analytic. (May 31, 1948, item 724, my transcription) A second reason for Quine's dissatisfaction with his philosophical progress is the fact that he had not yet been able to develop a satisfying epistemology. Although he adopted a fully realistic materialist ontology in all of his notes, he continuously struggled with the phenomenalist objection that primary sense experiences are more real than tables, chairs, atoms, and electrons: There is a sense in which physics might be said to be concerned with explaining the nature of reality. And who contests this? Primarily the Idealist [...] The Idealist would take the perceptions etc. rather as the basic reality, and derive things as constructions, logical constructs (Russell). The study of how to 13 See, for example, Quine's letter to Carnap from January 5, 1943 (Creath 1990, 297). 8 make these constructions is Epistemology. And things are composed not of atoms but of perceptions, sense qualia etc. (October 4, 1944, item 3169, my transcription) Where the mature Quine dismisses phenomenalism by arguing that sense data are scientific posits and therefore not epistemologically more fundamental than, for example, triggerings of sense receptors, he had yet to develop a satisfying response to phenomenalism in the 1940s.14 In sum, although Quine had developed a naturalistic picture of inquiry in Sign and Object, he started to view the book as "a distant objective" (May 16, 1948, item 921) because he was confronted with two theoretical challenges: (1) he saw no plausible alternative to Carnap's analytic-synthetic distinction, and (2) he had no satisfying response to epistemological foundationalism. Indeed, when Quine, in 1946, was asked to suggest topics for a Rockefeller conference on the most urgent questions in philosophy ("the work which philosophy in the United States now has to do"), he replied by listing the problem of 'cognitive meaning' and the problem of 'epistemic priority' as his main concerns: Clarification of the notion of cognitive meaning, or of the relation of cognitive synonymy of phrases, is needed in order to make sense of the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments [...] (My own view is that the latter definition should be couched in terms of observable linguistic behavior. I have found no satisfactory formulation). 14 Quine did try to answer the phenomenalist's challenge: in some notes he argues that he can just ignore the phenomenalistic objection because epistemology is "irrelevant" to his ontological project (March 19, 1944, item 3181, my transcription); in some notes he flirts with a proto-version of his mature position that "[p]erceptions are themselves states of physical objects" (January 30, 1943, item 3169, my transcription); and in "On What There Is", Quine argues that "the obvious counsel is tolerance" such that there are multiple conceptual schemes: e.g. phenomenalistic and physicalistic ones (1948, 19). It seems, however, that Quine did not believe these solutions to be satisfactory, as they never reappeared in later papers. 9 Clarification of the notion of epistemology priority is needed in order to know what the task of epistemology (as distinct e.g. of psychology) is; for, epistemological priority is the direction in which epistemological reduction of knowledge to more fundamental or immediate knowledge seeks to progress. (October 20, 1946, item 921) Although "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is generally viewed to be a major breakthrough in his development, the paper does not solve these two problems. Quine still presupposes a largely phenomenalistic epistemology in explicating the evidential boundaries of his metaphorical web of beliefs in terms of "sense data" (1951a, 44) and the last section of the paper provides only a metaphorical sketch of an alternative to Carnap's system. At least, this is how Quine evaluated his contribution in a letter to Paul Weiss a few months after his paper had come out: my rather tentative negative strictures on analytic-synthetic have had plenty of attention, disproportionate attention [...] I might feel differently if the doctrine concerned were a positive philosophy. But what is it? (a) The observation that the analytic-synthetic distinction has never been adequately def'ned, though all too widely taken for granted. (b) The tentative conjecture that epistemology might develop more fruitfully under some very different sort of conceptualization, which I do not provide. (June 18, 1951, item 1200, my transcription) Quine in other words, felt that his paper's main contribution was negative and that he had failed to develop a satisfying alternative.15 15 See also Quine's paper "The Present State of Empiricism" (May 26 1951, item 3015, my transcription): "I do not flatter myself that [Two Dogmas] contributes a new idea to philosophy. The paper is negative: an expression of distrust of two doctrines"; and Quine's letter to Joseph T. Clark 10 Quine's real breakthrough came one year later, when he found a solution to his problem with phenomenalism. In October 1952, Quine read a paper entitled "The Place of a Theory of Evidence" at Yale. In the lecture, he for the first time argues that sense data are scientific posits and therefore cannot provide a science-independent epistemological foundation: our selective awareness of present sensory surfaces is a function of [...] past conceptualizations. [...] it is not an instructive over-simplification but a basic falsification, to represent cognition as a discernment of regularities in an unadulterated stream of experience. Better to conceive of the stream itself as polluted, at each succeeding point of its course, by every prior cognition [...] We would do well to recognize that in seeking to isolate sense data we are not plumbing the depths of reality.16 (October 7, 1952, item 3011, p. 17-9) In the remainder of the lecture, he draws the naturalistic conclusion that if there is no epistemological foundation to be had, we can view "epistemology as an empirical science" and replace talk about sense data with talk about "the barrage of physical stimuli to which [a man's] end organs are exposed" (ibid., 23-25). Interestingly, Quine's breakthrough in epistemology also leads him to solve his first problem. After all, his new conception of 'epistemology as an empirical science' provides him with the opportunity to develop an alternative to Carnap's epistemology, i.e. a positive story about scientific and mathematical from April 17, 1951: "I [...] feel much less content at criticism than at construction. This is why the ideas of "Two dogmas", reiterated for years in my course on Philosophy of Language and in private disputation, were so slow in getting into print. [...] I would feel much enthusiasm for it if I were to hit upon a substantial and acceptable constructive theory of knowledge and language" (April 17, 1951, item 231) 16 Quine first publishes (an even stronger version of) this conclusion in "On Mental Entities" (1952, 225): "the notion of pure sense datum is a pretty tenuous abstraction, a good deal more conjectural than the notion of an external object". 11 knowledge that does not rely on an analytic-synthetic distinction. Indeed, a few months after his Yale lecture, Quine first expresses his mature view that "[w]e can still study the ways of knowing" by studying "the learning of language"; i.e. by studying "the relation of sensory stimulation to the production of scientific hypotheses by people" (April 9, 1953, item 3158). Having solved both problems that led him to postpone Sign and Object in 1946, it is perhaps no surprise that Quine immediately considered breathing new life into his plan to write a philosophical monograph. In March 1952, Quine requests a small grant from the Harvard Foundation For Advanced Study and Research for secretarial assistance for a "book on semantics and theory of knowledge" (March 4, 1952, item 475). Two months later, Quine writes Roman Jakobson-the editor of the M.I.T. Press Studies in Communication Series - that he is thinking about writing a book for his series: "For years my thought has been evolving in the direction of such a book; and I have looked upon various of my articles, as well as my course on philosophy of language, as steps toward it" (May 18, 1952, item 1488). 3. Ordinary language and the language of science In order to obtain a first draft for his projected book, Quine redesigned his Philosophy of Language course for the 1953 Spring semester and had the twenty-three lectures taped and transcribed by Alice Koller.17 The resulting 454-page typescript with autograph corrections by Quine (item 3158) almost completely covers the lecture series and can be crosschecked with the approximately 400 3" x 5" note cards Quine wrote in preparing the course (item 3266). Combined, these sources provide a unique insight into Quine's metaphilosophy in the early 1950s.18 17 See Quine's letter to Paul Buck: "During the past term the lectures in my course on the Philosophy of Language were tape-recorded and typed, with a view to obtaining a working draft for a book in Jakobson's projected series" (June 8, 1953, item 479). 18 Quine also lectured on the Philosophy of Language at Oxford during Michaelmas Term in the 19531954 academic year, when he visited Oxford as Eastman Professor. Unfortunately, Quine's notes for 12 For the purposes of this paper, one of the most interesting aspects of the typescript is the light it sheds on Quine's views on the nature of philosophical questions in the early 1950s. Given his rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction and his reconception of epistemology as an empirical science, Quine had all the ingredients to defend a thoroughly naturalistic metaphilosophy, i.e. to emphasize the continuity of science and philosophy against the strict distinction presupposed by both the positivists and the ordinary language philosophers at Oxford. The typescript shows, however, that Quine, like the positivists and the Oxionians, was primarily concerned with the relation between science and ordinary language. The bulk of the typescript deals with the development of a scientific language-i.e. an extensional, non-ambiguous, non-vague language-and emphasizes that ordinary language is not 'superseded by' but merely 'modified for' scientific purposes. Where one would expect Quine to blur the boundary between science and philosophy-thereby further developing his rejection of both the analytic-synthetic distinction and the divide between epistemology and psychology-he in fact focuses on the continuity between science and ordinary language. To give an example: when Quine shows how we, in developing a scientific language, can get rid of egocentric particulars (Russell's term for indexicals like 'here', 'now', and 'I') by resorting to names and descriptions of time and place-e.g. "Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon on January 10, 49BC" instead of "He crossed this river two thousand years ago"- he emphasizes that although the resulting language does not make use of egocentric particulars, it still depends on them in that we need them in order to understand these names and descriptions: Ordinary language, with its egocentric particulars, is not superseded as dispensable. For example, ostension, which is certainly in the spirit of the egocentric particulars 'here', 'now', 'there' whether or not they are uttered, is needed to establish names for places and dates to take the place of subsequent these lectures seem to have been lost. The collection of note cards at Houghton only contains his notes on logic and set theory for Hilary and Trinity term (item 3277). 13 use of egocentric particulars. Even if we use latitude and longitude to name places, we have still to point to the meridian [...] Scientific language is genuinely a splinter or offshoot instead of a replacement of ordinary language.19 (February 12, 1953, item 3158) Similarly, when Quine introduces the 'logical grammar' of his scientific language, he emphasizes that his grammar does not do anything that cannot already be done in ordinary language: For instance, here we have a statement of ordinary language 'All dogs bark' and we try to put it over into logical form [using] universal quantification [∀(x)(¬ Dog x ∧ ¬Barks x )] We can put that over into logical symbols completely now, except for 'barks' and 'is a dog' which are extra-logical components [...] But at the same time, this is-one might say-English [...] each of these signs can be given a fairly direct [...] paraphrase into ordinary language. 'Everything is such that it is not the case that it both is a dog and it is not the case that it barks.' And it's only because of that fact that we can understand these artificial symbols. So what's happened isn't that we've put ordinary language into a very un-English sort of symbolism, but rather that we're [...] paraphrasing ordinary language into a part of ordinary language. (March 3, 1953, item 3158, my emphasis) The purpose of this paraphrasing, of course, is that the subset of ordinary language into which ordinary language as a whole is paraphrased is clearer and, hence, more useful for the sciences. 19 See Quine (1954b, 236) for a published version of this argument: "Terms which are primitive or irreducible, from the point of view of [...] scientific notation, may still be intelligible to us only through explanations in an ordinary language rife with indicator words, tense, and ambiguity. Scientific language is in any event a splinter of ordinary language, not a substitute". 14 In his first draft of Word and Object, in other words, Quine is strongly concerned with the relation between ordinary language and the language of science.20 This becomes even clearer when he explicitly discusses the relation between his project and the traditional problems of philosophy. Rather than arguing that we can solve philosophical problems by adopting a broadly scientific methodology-e.g. solving the problems of epistemology by "scientifically investigating man's acquisition of science" (1973, 3)-Quine adopts the attitude that philosophical problems can be eliminated by the analysis of language, an attitude that was fashionable at the time as both the logical positivists and the ordinary language philosophers expressed similar views: The philosophical importance of this sort of analysis [...] is that they eliminate-from time to time-certain philosophical perplexities. And they can be looked upon as eliminating certain philosophical perplexities by showing that the part of language which gave rise to those perplexities is avoidable in favor of an unperplexing part of language. And this, I think, is pretty characteristic of avoidance of philosophical perplexities. (April 16, 1953, item 3158) According to Quine, in other words, many philosophical problems are linguistic in nature. Just as we can avoid ambiguity and imprecision by paraphrasing ordinary language into a subset of ordinary language, we can eliminate philosophical perplexities by clarifying 20 See also Quine's description of the book in a letter to Max Millikan: "The book on which I am working for Professor Jakobson's series has the tentative title Language and Knowledge [...] One large part of the book will devoted to logical grammar, conceived as an artificial development of part of ordinary language for increasing utility in its scientific applications" (January 20, 1953, item 1488). In his letter to Jakobson, Quine writes: "Within the matrix of natural language a scientific sublanguage tends to crystallize out, but this crystalline part is even today a small fraction of our language" (May 18, 1952, item 1488). 15 ordinary language. A few pages later, Quine explicitly connects this metaphilosophy to the approach of the ordinary language philosophers: Once you've shown how to avoid these troublesome terms, we've shown that whatever problems exist over them are purely verbal [...] And a verbal problem is, philosophically speaking, no problem at all. It's examples of this sort that led Wittgenstein to say that the task of philosophy is not to solve problems, but to eliminate them, by showing that there were no real problems in the first place. (April 16, 1953, item 3158) Of course we should not conclude that Quine's metaphilosophy coincides with the view of the ordinary language philosophers. After all, Quine, like the logical positivists, emphasized the role of logical analysis and explication in eliminating philosophical problems. Where P. F. Strawson (1950), for example, rejects Russell's theory of descriptions because it conflicts with ordinary language, Quine accepts the theory because it is certainly one very effective way of clearing up 'perplexities' about the status of non-existent entities.21 Still Quine, unlike the logical positivists, sides with the Oxonians in arguing that useful artificial languages depend on ordinary language; i.e. that in improving a language we are always working from 21 See "Mr. Strawson on Logical Theory", where Quine argues that although logical language "has its roots in ordinary language", it can contribute to the "elimination of philosophical perplexities" (1953b, 150-1). Quine considered this paper as "a manifesto" to "herald" his academic year at Oxford as Eastman Professor (1985, 235). See also Quine's 1951 letter to Burton Dreben (who was visiting Oxford at the time): "I liked Strawson's paper [...] I think his objections to Russell's theory of descriptions as a representation of ordinary language are well taken [...] Russell's description theory [is] a simplificatory departure from ordinary usage [...] I think Strawson and other Oxonians underestimate the scientific utility of such simplificatory departures, but they are right in insisting that they are departures and in criticizing Russell for failing to see them as such". (January 4, 1951, item 315). 16 within.22 Already in 1943, Quine recognized that his "attitude toward 'formal' languages is very different from Carnap's". In a letter to Alonzo Church, Quine argues that he, unlike Carnap, considers "[s]erious artificial notations, e.g. in mathematics or in [...] logic [as] supplementary but integral parts of natural language (August 14, 1943, item 224). In his 1953 draft of Word and Object, in sum, Quine seems to adopt a position somewhere between the positivists and the ordinary language philosophers: he maintains that we can eliminate philosophical problems using the tools of modern logic, while emphasizing that these logical tools are grounded in ordinary language: The development of science in the past few millennia is a gradual warping and adjusting of the pattern of language [...] Within the matrix of natural language a scientific sublanguage tends to crystallize out [...] a small fraction of our language. Value terms, egocentric particulars, and modalities are foreign to it. The scientific sublanguage is the proper sphere of logic, and of ontological commitment, and of explication, or so-called analysis in the current British sense. (May 18, 1952, item 1488, my emphasis) Whatever his exact attitude towards the logical positivists and the ordinary language philosophers, however, Quine largely accepts their shared presupposition that most philosophical problems are linguistic problems. Even Quine's reconception of epistemology as an empirical science largely depends on considerations about (ordinary) language. In summarizing his argument against sense data in the above-discussed "The Place of a Theory of Evidence" (section 2), for example, Quine writes: We began by observing with regard to molecules that the physicist has no evidence of their existence, beyond the fact that by positing them he can 22 Perhaps it is for this reason that Quine, when asked about the role of naturalism in twentieth-century philosophy claimed that, in retrospect, "the ordinary language philosophers of England" were "certainly [...] as naturalistic as one could wish" (1993, item 2498). 17 smooth his laws. Next we observed with regard to the external objects of common sense that there is no evidence of their existence beyond the fact that by positing them one get a manageable degree of conceptual organization into his train of experience. Thereupon we made the wrong turning, by concluding that there was no evidence for the existence of any of these objects. What is evidence [...] if the testimony of my senses is not evidence of the presence of my desk? [...] To withhold the name of evidence from such instances is to warp the term 'evidence' away from just the denotations which had originally done most to invest the term with whatever intelligibility it may have for us. (October 7, 1952, item 3011, p. 22, my emphasis) Quine's argument against sense data, in other words, largely depends on his considerations about the way in which we use the term 'evidence'. See also "The Scope and Language of Science": "We cannot significantly question the reality of the external world, or deny that there is evidence of external objects [...] for, to do so is simply to dissociate the terms 'reality' and 'evidence' from the very applications which originally did most to invest those terms with whatever intelligibility they may have for us" (1954b, 229). The fact that Quine almost exclusively relies on linguistic considerations is surprising. For both the positivist's distinction between "science" and the "logic of science" (Carnap 1934, §72) and the Oxonian distinction between "talk[ing] sense with concepts" and "talk[ing] sense about them" (Ryle 1949, 7) rely on the analytic-synthetic distinction Quine had given up on a few years before. Where the positivists and the ordinary language philosophers were forced to think of philosophical problems as linguistic problems because of their views about the nature of philosophy, Quine, in rejecting the underlying analyticsynthetic distinction, had the tools for dispensing with this narrow conception of philosophical problems. Quine's first draft of Word and Object, however, was still largely compatible with the traditional view.23 23 In his autobiography, Quine writes that he was not satisfied with his first draft. "I was struggling to find the right structure for my work in progress, what was to become Word and Object [...] My 18 4. Philosophy and Science In his 1952 letter to Jakobson, Quine projected that he would finish his book in 1954. Still, it would take him almost seven years to complete the book after he had obtained his first working draft; an excessively long period by Quine's standards.24 During these years, Quine was primarily concerned with the development of his positive epistemology; i.e. his genetic study of "the ways of knowing" by studying "the learning of language" and "the acquisition of scientific concepts" (April 9, 1953, item 3158). Where Quine's 1953 lectures still present a sketchy story that focuses solely on ostension and internal similarity standards, Word and Object provides a detailed and complex account involving ocular irradiation patterns, stimulus meanings, babbling, conditioning, mimicry, prelinguistic quality spaces, phonetic norms, discrimination thresholds, collateral information, degrees of observationality, and observation sentences.25 Perhaps Quine's increased interest in child development was partly course at Harvard [...] had been recorded on tape and transcribed [...] but I set that all aside, lest my quest for the right structure be obstructed by excessive detail. Better to let the transcript lie for a year or two and then mine it for supplementary substance when the structure was in hand. I even dreaded broaching it, what with my spoken hems and haws, my false starts and infelicities" (1985, 241-2). 24 Most monographs Quine wrote were completed within one or two years. Quine's Portuguese book, O Sentido da Nova Logica (1943), was even written in less than four months (Quine 1985, 159-174). It is therefore no surprise that Quine, in 1959, speaks about his book as "evolving painfully toward completion for nine years and more" (March 2, 1959, item 473). 25 Although the story of the development of Quine's genetic account is a fascinating one-a story that certainly does not end with Word and Object as large parts of his work after 1960 aim to extend and refine the account provided in his earlier work-I will not go into any details here. For the purposes of this paper, it suffices to show that Quine, in these years, became "more consciously and explicitly naturalistic" by "turning to our physical interface with the external world" (1991, 398). One of the biggest breakthroughs was Quine's criterion of observationality. In a letter to Davidson, Quine writes 19 prompted by his son Douglas (born in 1950) and his daughter Margaret (born in 1954). Indeed, Quine's autobiography contains a chapter with anecdotes about their questions, phrases, and grammatical mistakes, showing that he kept extensive notes about their linguistic development (1985, 273-279). In developing his genetic account, Quine came to put more and more emphasis on the integration of science and philosophy. In 1956, Quine writes McGeorge Bundy that his work "seems to be turning increasingly relevant to behavioral studies" (December 3, item 205) and Quine also visited one of the interdisciplinary symposia organized by Jean Piaget's Institute for Genetic Epistemology. Piaget even proposed to write a book with Quine entitled Formal Logic and Real Thinking (La Logique formelle et la pensée réelle). In a letter to Evert Willem Beth, Quine writes that he does not agree with Piaget's views on logic, but that the latter's "conceptions and experiments in the field of psychology are really interesting", explaining that he himself has also "been active in the domain of theoretical psychology [...] for several years" (March 3, 1960, item 96).26 In the 1958-1959 academic year, Quine spends two semesters at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, critically discussing his work with "receptively minded linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists" (October 16, 1959, item 205).27 And although Quine reports that "[n]o appreciable change of theory came out of" these discussions, his turn to the sciences seems to have changed his metaphilosophical perspective. Indeed, in a 1959 summary for Wiley, Quine writes that one of the that he views this criterion as "a triumph of the Neurath attitude, the embedding of epistemology in natural science in the spirit of his Schiffsumbau simile" (August 13, 1965, item 287). 26 See also Quine's travel grant application with the Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner (March 26, 1956, item 475). 27 Among others, Roman Jakobson, Alf Sommerfelt, Gene Galanter, George Miller, and Charles Osgood. 20 distinguishing features of Word and Object is the fact that "[o]ther logical semanticists put no such weight as I do upon natural linguistics and psychology" (October 17, 1959, item 1488).28 It is not my intention here to suggest that Quine, in turning to the sciences, aimed to provide a thoroughly experimental account of language learning in Word and Object. Because Quine accepts that "[d]ifferent persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants" (1960, 8), he is not really interested in "[w]hatever our colleagues in the laboratory may discover of the inner mechanism[s] of [the learning process]" (1954b, 231). Indeed, Burton Dreben seems to have advised Quine to speculate as little as possible about underlying psychological mechanisms. In a note titled "Revidenda (Burt, July 16, 1958)", Quine writes: "'Conditioning'; go easy; controversial; Chomsky vs. Skinner. Neutralize the assumption of a specific mechanism as much as possible. Talk of learning, habit formation, etc." (item 3170).29 Rather, Quine's account is scientific on a more abstract level: he is interested in how these different bushes can be shaped into identical elephants in the first place, considering the fact that all we have to go on are "the effects which [physical objects] help to induce at our sensory surfaces" (1960, 1).30 28 This was also recognized by some readers of Word and Object. Cohen (1962, 29) writes that "though lexicographers, grammarians and historians of ideas presumably use the concept of meaning at least as often, carefully and knowledgeably as anyone else, modern philosophers propounding a theory of meaning have rarely paid any explicit attention to their use of it. W. V. Quine is perhaps the only exception among philosophers of first rank". Murphey (2012, 126) writes that critics of Word and Object "raised [the objection] that it was psychology rather than philosophy". 29	Cf. Quine (1960, 80-3). 30 This attitude was shared by the members of Piaget's Institute for Genetic Epistemology. In response to Word and Object, Jean-Blaise Grize, for instance, writes: "the subject of the psychology necessary to epistemology is of a very particular nature [...] The behavior of some particular child, with his own set of characteristics, with his personal history [...] cannot in any way enlighten the epistemologist [...] It would be infinitely more useful to interview one man such as Prof. Quine than ten thousand readers of Life magazine" (Grize 1965, 464). 21 Nor is it my intention to suggest that Quine completely changed his mind between 1953 and 1960. Quine's mature position is still compatible with the view that philosophical problems are linguistic problems.31 Unlike the Oxonian and positivist proponents of the linguistic turn, Quine's naturalism is compatible with both the view that philosophical problems are linguistic problems and the view that philosophical problems are empirical problems. In fact, Quine's views about analyticity imply that there is no such distinction; an explication is both a linguistic proposal and a scientific choice. What I do want to suggest, is that Quine's perspective on the science-philosophy distinction shifted in the years between his first draft and the eventual publication of Word and Object. If one, like Quine, gives up on the science-philosophy distinction, there are basically two ways to advance one's view: one can either argue that science is more like philosophy than people used to believe or one can argue that philosophy is more like science than has often been proposed. In other words, one can either emphasize the role of linguistic and pragmatic factors in science or the role of factual or empirical considerations in philosophy. Now, in the early 1950s Quine clearly takes the former route: Carnap maintains that ontological questions, and likewise questions of logical or mathematical principle, are questions not of fact but of choosing a convenient conceptual scheme or framework for science; and with this I agree only if the same be conceded for every scientific hypothesis. (1951b, 211) [W]hat I reject in Carnap's doctrine is not the identification of philosophical tenets with linguistic framework, but the failure to extend that identification indefinitely far into science itself. Thus the relevance of linguistic considerations is, if anything, even more pervasive for me than for Carnap. (February 3, 1953, item 3158) 31 Indeed, Quine still connects his metaphilosophy to Wittgenstein's in Word and Object, arguing that Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy "aptly fits explication" even if it "has its limitations" (1960, 260). 22 I grant that one's hypothesis as to what there is [...] is at bottom just as arbitrary or pragmatic as one's adoption of new brand of set theory or a new system of bookkeeping [...] But what impresses me more than it does Carnap is how well this whole attitude is suited also to the theoretical hypotheses of natural science itself. (1954a, 132) Rather than claiming that philosophy is more like science than Carnap used to think, Quine emphasizes that the former's ideas about philosophy also apply to the sciences; science too partly depends on pragmatic criteria. Hence Quine's famous remark that he is espousing "a more thorough pragmatism" than Carnap and Lewis (1951a, 46).32 In the years between 1953 and 1960, however, Quine's perspective shifts to the other side of the coin; i.e. he starts to argue that philosophy is more like science than the proponents of the linguistic turn have advanced. The same motives that impel scientists to seek ever simpler and clearer theories adequate to the subject matter of their special sciences are motives for simplification and clarification of the broader framework shared by all the sciences. (1960, 161) 32 Although Quine, in retrospect, has always denied that he defended a variant of pragmatism in the early 1950s ("I was merely taking the word ['pragmatism'] from Carnap and handing it back"), there is quite some evidence that Quine did think of himself as a pragmatist at the time (1991, 397). In the "Present State of Empiricism", written in May 1951, Quine likens his view to James', and argues "for an increased sympathy with the pragmatists" (May 26, 1951, item 3015, my transcription). See also Quine (1946, 135; 1950, 78-9). Quine's folder with notes from the early 1950s is even called "Pragmatism, etc." (item 3184). In Word and Object, however, Quine has abandoned the label, perhaps because it became increasingly unclear to him "what it takes to be a pragmatist" (1975, 23). A transcription of "The Present State of Empiricism" will be published in Verhaegh (forthcoming-a). 23 Quine's regimentation project in the last three chapters of Word and Object is highly similar to his development of a scientific language in the 1953 draft. Still, Word and Object, unlike the first draft, continuously emphasizes that his regimentation project is "continuous with science in [...] motivation" (ibid., 229), that the "quest of a simplest, clearest overall pattern of canonical notation is not to be distinguished from a quest of ultimate categories (ibid., 161), and that the only thing that distinguishes his ontological project from the scientist's project is "breadth of categories" (ibid., 275); clarifications that are largely missing in his first draft. In Word and Object, both the first and the last section of his two chapters on regimentation as well as the last section of his chapter on ontology (i.e. §33, §47, and §56) emphasize that his aims are scientific and that it is misleading to think that observation has no "bearing on logic and philosophy" (ibid., 274). In Word and Object, in other words, Quine explicitly adopts the view that philosophy is more like science than philosophers used to believe. 5. The Reception of Quine's naturalism Word and Object was a big success in terms of attention and sales records.33 Philosophers who sympathized with Quine's perspective considered the book to be an absolute masterpiece. In a letter to Quine, John Myhill writes that he rates Word and Object "perhaps highest of any philosophical work of this century" (August 30, 1961, item 755) and Peter Hare reports that "some believe Word and Object to be one of the most important works of epistemology and 33 By the end of 1961, Quine had sold 3216 copies. The number of sales strongly increased after the release of a paperback edition in 1964; 23784 copies of Word and Object were sold by 1970 (item 1488). In a 1968 letter to Leigh Cauman, once his Ph.D. student, Quine cheerfully reports that his "books sell like hot cakes" (October 14, 1968, item 1422). Word and Object was reviewed in philosophical, psychological, and mathematical journals by, among others, Rescher (1960), Presley (1961), Becker (1961), Galanter (1961), Wells (1961), Yourgrau (1961), Oesterle (1961), Goodstein (1961), Geach (1961), Johnstone (1961), Deledalle (1962), and Lieb (1962). 24 metaphysics ever written in [the United States]" (1968, 272).34 Quine's more explicitly naturalistic perspective was received positively as well. J. J. C. Smart, for example, writes that Word and Object has "well converted" him to Quine's "philosophical methodology"; he argues that he, "in the vein of Word and Object", is "more inclined to say that you can't sharply separate philosophy and science" (July 15, 1960, item 1005). Outside Quine's closest philosophical circle, however, the responses to Word and Object were more varied. Many reviews that appeared in the years immediately following its publication complain about Quine's style, arguing that it is "very demanding" (Wells 1961, 696), too "casual" (Becker 1961, 238, my translation) and "sometimes condensed to the point of enigma" (Presley 1961, 175).35 It is perhaps because of this reason that some reviewers judge Quine's position to be "unclear" (Oesterle 1961) and nearly impossible to summarize (Becker 2001), or, even stronger, that the book makes "you wonder what Quine's philosophical position really is" (Galanter 1961). This confusion about Word and Object's main message outside Quine's closest philosophical circle had its effect on the reception of his views on metaphilosophy as well. Although some commentators clearly understand the book's main metaphilosophical message,36 there is a wide range of positions ascribed to Quine in the 1960s and early 1970s. Some reviewers interpret Quine's position to be "a version of pragmatism" (Wells 1961, 34 See also Brody (1971, 167): "Quine is clearly one of the most important philosophers of our century" and Davidson and Hintikka (1968, 1): "In the philosophical literature of the last decade few if any works contain as great a wealth of ideas [as] Word and Object". 35 In explaining his complaint, Rulon Wells quips: "if the ship of science is not merely to stay afloat but to sail, it should not drag anchor" (1961, 696). In his intellectual autobiography, Quine admits that he condensed some sections of Word and Object "so as not to harp unduly on the obvious" and that Burton Dreben has told him that he "overdid those precautions" (1986a, 34, 44). 36 See, for example, Passmore (1966), who in the second edition of A Hundred Years of Philosophy (1966) recognizes that Quine "wholly rejects that sharp contrast between philosophy and science which had been common ground to phenomenology, to logical positivism, to Wittgenstein, and to Oxford's 'ordinary language philosophy'" (531-532). 25 696), to represent a "pragmatic turn" within analytic philosophy (Smith 1969, 601), or to be a combination "of both Positivism and Pragmatism" (Ammerman 1965, 9); some still seem to view Quine as a paradigmatic linguistic philosopher (Urmson 1961; Rorty 1967); some claim that "Quine's meta-philosophic theory commits him to a phenomenalism where 'the world' is always 'the world for some subject'" (Yolton 1968, 156); and some read Quine as a (theoretically) conservative philosopher: Quine's arguments in Word and Object show that [...] [r]evisability is a property only of particular sentences, or restricted sets of sentences, and [that] it cannot extend to the total system itself. [...] No revision open to us can take us beyond the language we now use and understand-any 'alternative' is either something we already understand and can make sense of, or it is no alternative at all [...] If revisions can only be partial at best [...] then clearly we must rely on the ongoing conceptual scheme we now possess [...] And this in turn is behind Quine's apparently conservative attitude towards theoretical change and revision [...] This "taste for old things" is not just an idiosyncracy of Quine's; it is the only course open to anyone in his attempts to fit theories to experience.37 (Stroud 1968, 92-3). Finally, some commentators argue that at "the heart of Quine's philosophical position" lies his "attack on standard philosophical views about meaning" (Harman 1967, 124); some read Quine as a 'contextualist' (Thompson 1964, 211-229); some believe that Quine's "philosophical contributions are narrowly restricted to the technical field of modern logic" (Reck 1968, vi, 147); and some read Word and Object primarily as a work in metaphysics, construing a divide between the anti-metaphysical positivists on the one hand and new metaphysicians like Quine, Strawson, Smart, and Sellars on the other (Coburn 1964, Margolis 1969; Rorty 1970; Loux 1972). 37 See also Rescher (1960, 376A-377A) and Grandy (1973, 99). 26 In the 1960s, in other words, there was no widely accepted interpretation of Quine's main message. Of course, many of the above readings are compatible to a certain extent: Word and Object can both be read as defending a version of pragmatism and as a work that attacks traditional views about meaning; both as a conservative work and as a defense of linguistic philosophy.38 Still, this wide range of perspectives on Word and Object seems to be a symptom of the widespread feeling that the book does not provide "a punctual summary of [Quine's] manifold thoughts" (Becker 1961, 238, my translation), or, more negatively, that it is "hard to see a really coherent position behind Quine's book" (Stenius 1968, 27). As a result of these developments, Quine was dissatisfied with the responses to his work. Not only was he displeased with the reviews of his book,39 he was also clearly annoyed by the many misinterpretations of his central theses. In response to an author of one of the many papers about Word and Object he received, Quine writes: Clear exposition, much though I admire it, is a knack that has eluded my best efforts early and late. Word and Object was the hardest; I struggled for years in the writing of it, trying, not primarily to clinch proofs even, but to convey 38 Not all such interpretations are compatible however. Where Coburn reads Word and Object as a "full-scale defense of realism" (1964, 205), for example, Grandy argues that Quine accepts realism only grudgingly because "entities are posited only when there is no way of explaining the data without such posits" (1973, 99). Similarly, the view that Quine's ultimate concern is "to decide what there really is" (1960, 270), is incompatible with the interpretation that his section on semantic ascent functions as a defense of linguistic philosophy (Rorty 1967, 11). 39 See Quine's letter to Lynwood Bryant, the director of The M. I. T. Press: "Thanks for sending me Johnstone's review. It is sad to see one of the substantial journals come through so inadequately. Strangely, the review in Philosophical Books by Peter Geach was scarcely more competent. The only creditable review I've seen thus far is the sixteen-page one [...] by G. F. Presley" (November 16, 1961, item 1489). 27 something of my basic thoughts. Your paper is as devastating evidence as I have seen of the failure of that effort.40 (September 18, 1967, item 675) Arguably, what was missing was a catch phrase or a distinctive 'ism' to summarize his core philosophical perspective. Where positivists, pragmatists, realists, functionalists, and materialists benefited from a clearly identifiable label (no matter how vaguely defined these labels typically were), Quine's philosophy was not identified with any such 'ism'.41 Although Quine was well known for a wide range of philosophical theses and arguments in the early 1960s-his rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction, his criterion of ontological commitment, his views about meaning, the Duhem-Quine thesis, his indeterminacy arguments, and his perspective on modal logic and propositional attitudes-these arguments and theses could not be easily tied together with a convenient label.42 Indeed, in the first half of his philosophical career, Quine did not like to identify his view with a particular 'ism'. Already in a 1938 letter to Wilfred Sellars, Quine quipped that his "ratio of questions to answers" was "too high at present to let me identify myself with any 'ism'" (January 18, 1938, item 972). In a note to Putnam, Quine writes: "The main fault of ismism is that it generates straw men whose isms could never have been embraced by flesh and blood" (undated, item 2388a, my transcription). The one time Quine did adopt an 'ism'-i.e. in his 1947 joint paper "Steps toward a Constructive Nominalism"-he was displeased with the consequences. During much of the 1950s and 1960s, Quine had to correct the widespread 40 In response to a paper by Richard Schuldenfrei, Quine writes: "You have grasped my point of view very successfully. This is something that few readers seem to have done" (June 16, 1971, item 958). 41 Indeed, C. F. Presley's 3000-word encyclopedia entry on Quine in the 1967 edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy does not ascribe any 'ism' to Quine (Presley 1967). 42 If anything, Quine was viewed as a slayer of 'isms'. Antony Quinton, in an 1967 article in The New York Review of Books (title: "The Importance of Quine"), argues that Quine has created "a coherent theory of knowledge of great boldness and originality" by combining the logical expertise and the science-mindedness of his Viennese predecessors, while rejecting their three main 'isms': phenomenalism, conventionalism, and verificationism (Quinton 1967). 28 impression that he was a staunch nominalist. See, for example, Word and Object (1960, 243n5): A[n] [...] accountable misapprehension is that I am a nominalist. I must correct it; my best efforts to write clearly about reference, referential position, and ontic commitment will fail of communication to readers who [...] endeavor in all good will to reconcile my words with a supposed nominalist doctrine. In all books and most papers I have appealed to classes and recognized them as abstract objects. I have indeed inveighed against making and imputing platonistic assumptions gratuitously, but equally against obscuring them. Where I have speculated on what can be got from a nominalistic basis, I have stressed the difficulties and limitations. True, my 1947 paper with Goodman opened on a nominalist declaration; readers cannot be blamed. 6. Adopting an 'ism'. In the mid-1960s, however, Quine's attitude changed, perhaps as a result of the mixed reviews and the confusion surrounding the overarching perspective offered in Word and Object. 43 Where Quine had never used the term 'naturalism' or the slogan 'no first philosophy' before 1965, these phrases become omnipresent in his work from the late 1960s onwards. Between March and July 1968 alone, for example, Quine uses these phrases to describe his perspective in no less than seven lectures, essays and responses: 43 Even Quinton (1967), in his very sympathetic assessment of Quine's philosophy in the New York Review of Books (see footnote 42), argues that "Word and Object was something of a disappointment" as Quine's general philosophical view about knowledge "needs and deserves a fuller and more systematic exposition". 29 - "Natural Kinds", first draft completed March 6, 1968 (item 1355): "my position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science [...] There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy". - "Ontological Relativity", presented at Columbia University March 26-8, 1968 (item 2995): "Philosophically I am bound to Dewey by the naturalism that dominated his last three decades [...] There is no place for a prior philosophy". - "Epistemology Naturalized", first draft dated "March 1968" (item 2441): "The old tendency was due to the drive to base science on something firmer and prior in the subject's experience; but we dropped that project [dislodging] epistemology from its old status of first philosophy". Reply to Smart, completed June 12, 1968 (item 1490): "The key consideration is rejection of the ideal of a first philosophy, somehow prior to science". Reply to Chomksy, completed June 12, 1968 (item 1490): "There is no legitimate first philosophy, higher or firmer than physics, to which to appeal over physicists' heads". Symposium with Sellars, July 11, 1968 (item 2903): "We are both naturalists. We see philosophy as continuous with science and hence as a going concern in the real world of bodies". Reply to Stenius, completed July 30, 1968 (item 1490): "I am able to take this stance because of my naturalism, my repudiation of any first philosophy logically prior to science".44 44 These essays and responses (except Quine's contribution to the symposium with Sellars) were later published as (1968a, 127), (1968b, 1), (1968c, 87), (1968d, 265), (1968e, 275), and (1968f, 270) respectively. Quine's adoption of the label 'naturalism' proved to be very effective. From the early 1970s onwards, Quine's philosophy starts to be widely described as naturalistic. See, for example, Kmita (1971), Giedymin (1972), Wilder (1973), Hockney (1973), and Greenlee (1973). I have found no description of Quine's view as naturalistic in works from before 1968. The only exception is Thompson (1964, 213), who writes that Quine "appears close to a form of contextualistic naturalism". 30 Interestingly, earlier versions of both "Epistemology Naturalized"-at the time still called "Stimulus and Meaning" (November 1965, item 2756) and "Empiricism in Transition" (January 1967, item 3102)-and "Ontological Relativity" (March 1967, item 2994) do not yet contain the term 'naturalism'. Somewhere in the 1960s, in other words, Quine decided to label his philosophy 'naturalistic'.45 Arguably, Quine's decision was influenced by the many misinterpretations of his position. The most influential series of misinterpretations was due to Noam Chomsky, who dismisses Quine's views in his paper "Quine's Empirical Assumptions" (1968). Quine, who must have immediately remembered the impact of Chomsky's review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior (1959), was clearly alarmed; within seven months after he first received Chomsky's paper on November 16, 1967 (item 1490), Quine writes and presents three papers in which he responds to these arguments: "Philosophical Progress in Language Theory" (first delivered in February 1968), "Linguistics and Philosophy" (presented on April 13, 1968), and "Reply to Chomsky" (completed on June 12, 1968).46 'Naturalism' was not the only 'ism' Quine considered in the late 1960s. In a 1965 note entitled "The Sophisticated Irrational", Quine worries about the tendency among recent philosophers (he mentions N. R. Hanson, the Gestalt psychologists, and Thomas Kuhn) to get "carried away" in their opposition to positivism. Quine notes that although "certain hopeful positivistic tenets turned hopeless", the positivists also provided "[v]aluable supervening 45 It is difficult to establish when Quine exactly adopted the label 'naturalism' for his own philosophy, but he does describe his view as "naturalistic" already in a September 22, 1967 talk entitled "Kinds" (item 2948). The first use of the term 'naturalism' in its contemporary sense I have been able to trace is from June 29, 1966, when Quine, in a draft of "Russell's Ontological Development" characterizes the evolution of Russell's views by claiming that "there is an increasing naturalism, an increasing readiness to see philosophy as natural science trained upon itself and permitted free use of scientific findings" (item 2733). Before 1966, Quine does speak about 'naturalistic arguments' and 'naturalists' in his (1946, 112) and (1953b, 149) respectively, but his use of those terms there is unrelated to the metaphilosophical view with which he identifies the term in the later stages of his career. 46 See Quine (1970), (1968g) and (1968e). 31 insights". According to Quine, people like Hanson and Kuhn "forget what they came for" like an "invading army destroying conquered riches". In response, Quine offers what he calls "involutionism" or "immanentialism", the idea that "[w]e must work within a growing system to which we are born".47 According to Quine, Hanson and the Gestalt psychologists fail "to see that involutionism & behaviorism take care of obsvn. sentences to perfection" whereas Kuhn's "cultural relativism", the idea that there is "no truth", is also solved by involutionism via Tarski's theory of truth (July 21, 1965, item 3182, my transcription).48 Apart from 'involutionism' and 'immanentialism', Quine also toyed with the labels 'psychologism' and 'externalized empiricism'. Indeed, one draft of "Epistemology Naturalized" is titled "Epistemology Naturalized; or, the Case for Psychologism" (item 2441), and Quine talks about 'externalized empiricism' in "Linguistics and Philosophy" (1968g, 58), in "Philosophical Progress in Language Theory" (1970, 7), and in a draft for a lecture at Rockefeller University, where Quine spent a term in 1968: "[The] change of viewpoint that I have been describing is not an abandonment of empiricism, as I would use the term, but it is an externalizing empiricism. Instead of taking subjective sense impressions and trying to reduce all talk of external objects to that basis, we start with the objects" (February 5, 1968, item 2902). 49 47 Especially the label 'immanentialism' is interesting as Quine would later often describe his naturalism in terms of immanence and transcendence. See for example Quine (1994b, 230): "the immanent is that which makes sense within naturalism, in mediis rebus, and the transcendent is not". 48 A transcription of "The Sophisticated Irrational" will be published in Verhaegh (forthcoming-a). 49 One might wonder at this point whether Quine only adopted a new label for his philosophy or whether the new description of his views represents a substantive change of mind. Quine himself has claimed that there was no change of mind. In response to a letter from Shapour Etemad, who reports that Chomsky has argued that "Quine adopted [...] naturalized epistemology" in response to "the critique of his position in Word and Object", Quine writes that "[t]he statement that you report from Chomsky is puzzling. Word and Object was already utterly naturalistic. "Epistemology Naturalized" [...] differed only in explicitly proclaiming naturalism as a policy in epistemology" (August 1989, item 336, my transcription). Quine's recollection is confirmed by his own 1968 description of Ontological Relativity and Other Essays to the marketing department of Columbia University Press: 32 So why did Quine, in the end, choose the label 'naturalism' over 'immentialism', 'psychologism', 'involutionism', and 'externalized behaviorism'? It is hard to give a conclusive answer to this question, but there is some evidence that the answer lies in his preparation of "Ontological Relativity" for his John Dewey Lectures in March 1968. When Quine first presented "Ontological Relativity" at Chicago and Yale in May 1967, his paper, as noted above, did not yet contain the term 'naturalism'. Nor did the paper contain any reference to Dewey. In the invitation for the John Dewey Lectures, however, Quine was explicitly asked to deal "with some aspect of John Dewey's work" or to apply "the principles or the spirit of his philosophy to some field of human thought or endeavor" (January 10, 1967, item 248). When Quine adapted his paper on ontological relativity to suit the Lecture Series, therefore, he needed a reference to Dewey. Now, it is generally known that Quine was not well versed in the work of John Dewey.50 Given that the paper Quine eventually read at Columbia in March 1968 (item 2995) only refers to Dewey's Experience and Nature, it is likely that he only read this work in order to draw a connection, a work that literally opens with the statement that "The title of this volume [...] is intended to signify that the philosophy here presented may be termed either empirical naturalism or naturalistic empiricism" (Dewey 1925, 1). Indeed, Quine's book collection (stored at Houghton Library) contains only one of Dewey's books-Experience and Nature. In the back of this copy, Quine has summarized the first pages of the book with the note: "naturalism as opposed to trad'l epistemology" (undated, AC95.Qu441.Zz929d, my transcription). "Philosophical doctrines propounded in my Word and Object and earlier writing aroused considerable controversy, some of which is traceable to misunderstanding. The six essays assembled in this book are meant in part to resolve misunderstanding and in part to press the doctrines further" (October 1968, item 1422, my transcription). 50 See Koskinen and Pihlström (2006) and Godfrey-Smith (2014). Indeed, a few months after his John Dewey lectures, Quine admitted that he is "not much of a Dewey scholar" in a letter to Pearl L. Weber (September 13, 1968, item DVFM 43/16208, Hickman 2008). See also Quine (1994a, 70): "I was not influenced by Dewey. I didn't know his work that well in the old days". 33 A second possible influence on Quine's decision to describe himself as a 'naturalist' in the John Dewey lectures is Ernest Nagel, the first John Dewey Professor in Philosophy at Columbia. At the time, Nagel was well known as a 'naturalist'. Nagel had defended naturalism in his 1954 presidential address to the APA Eastern Division Meeting (title "Naturalism Reconsidered") and he had co-authored a defense of naturalism with John Dewey (and Sidney hook) in the 1944 article "Are Naturalists Materialists?".51 When Quine received an invitation to be the first Dewey Lecturer in January 1967, Nagel and Quine had already been close colleagues for thirty years. Nagel had tried to find a position for Quine in 1939 when the Harvard administration turned down the Department's request for his promotion (May 1939, item 758), Nagel had asked Quine to replace him when he was on leave during the 1950-1951 academic year (December 20, 1949, item 248), and Quine had urged Donald C. Williams that they "should do all we can to get Nagel" at Harvard in 1954, arguing that he would "obviously [...] be a tremendous acquisition" (April 9, 1954, item 471). Perhaps Quine's decision to adopt the label 'naturalism' in his Columbia lectures was also influenced by the fact that Nagel was at Columbia. Of course, Dewey's and Nagel's 'naturalisms' differ somewhat from the way in which Quine uses the term. Where "Columbia Naturalism"52 primarily opposes dualism and supernaturalism, Quine's rejection of first philosophy is predominantly a response to the view that one can strictly distinguish science and philosophy. It is questionable, however, whether Quine was sensitive to this distinction. Indeed, he seems to conflate metaphysical naturalism, epistemological naturalism, and metaphilosophical naturalism in the passage in which he connects his views to those of Dewey's: Philosophically I am bound to Dewey by the naturalism that dominated his last three decades. With Dewey I hold that knowledge, mind, and meaning are 51 See also Danto's entry on naturalism and Thayer's entry on Nagel in the 1967 edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 52 See Eldridge (2004) and Jewett (2011). The term was already in use in the late 1960s. See, for example, Reck (1968, ch. 4). 34 part of the same world that they have to do with, and that they are to be studied in the same empirical spirit that animates natural science. There is no place for a prior philosophy. (1968b, 26) This passage still contains a metaphysical thesis ('knowledge, mind, and meaning are part of the same world that they have to do with'), an epistemological thesis (knowledge, mind, and meaning are to be studied 'in the same empirical spirit that animates natural science'), and a metaphilosophical thesis ('there is no place for a prior philosophy').53 In later work, however, metaphilosophical naturalism takes center stage in Quine's philosophy and is argued for on independent grounds: there is no distinction between science and philosophy because 'we must work within a growing system to which we are born' and because there are no transcendental, distinctively philosophical perspectives from which to question this system. Whatever the exact reasons behind Quine's adoption of the term naturalism, however, he clearly decided to stick with the label. When he was invited to give one of the principal addresses at the World Congress of Philosophy in 1968, he seems to have decided to use the stage to definitively rebrand his philosophy as 'naturalistic'. He rewrote his lecture "Stimulus and Meaning" and renamed it "Epistemology Naturalized". Before he read his lecture, Quine addressed his Viennese audience in German, marking the occasion as follows: Es freut mich sehr, zum ersten Mal seit 35 Jahren nach Wien zurückzukommen. Im Jahre 1932 bekam ich in Amerika mein Doktorat und 53 In a note Quine wrote while preparing "Ontological Relativity", Quine does seem aware that there are different arguments for naturalism. He distinguishes between a negative argument for naturalism, which hinges on the "failure of phenomenalism" (i.e. there is no distinctively epistemological perspective on reality) and a positive argument which "hinges on meaning & the nature of language" (i.e. language, and hence meaning, is a natural phenomenon) (ca. September 1967, item 3182, my transcription). See also Quine's response to Grover Maxwell (1968), written in March 1966 (item 616), in which he uses the term "naturalistic" to describe the view that language and mind are part of the natural world. 35 zugleich ein Reisestipendium, welches mich nach Wien brachte. Damals waren Schlick und Waismann hier und auch Gödel, der eben seine welterschütternde Entdeckung veröffentlicht hatte. Carnap war eben nach Prag übergesiedelt, wohin ich ihm fünf Monate später folgte. Seine Logischer Aufbau war in den Läden und seine Logische Syntax in der Schreibmaschine. Ich wurde ein ernster Jünger Carnaps. Nun sind 35 Jahre vorbeigegangen. Meine philosophische Stellung ist beträchtlich geändert worden und so ist ach die Carnapsche, obwohl nich in der gleichen Richtung. Gewisse Unterschiede zwischen meiem heutigen Gesichtspunkt und der altwienerischen Philosophie werde ich jetzt betrachten.54 (September 9, 1968, item 1239) 7. Conclusion In this paper I have examined the development and the reception of Quine's naturalism. I have argued that although Quine's earliest work was already fairly naturalistic, internal tensions and external criticisms forced him to continuously develop, rebrand and refine his metaphilosophy before he eventually settled on the position that would spark the naturalistic turn in analytic philosophy. Although Quine had already concluded that epistemology should be viewed as an empirical science in 1952, he only started to turn to the sciences in the late 1950s. Finally, I have shown that the reception of Word and Object outside Quine's closest philosophical circles was confused and I have argued that Quine, perhaps in response to these 54 "I am very pleased to return to Vienna for the first time in 35 years. In 1932, I received my doctorate as well as a travel scholarship, which took me to Vienna. At the time, Schlick and Waismann were here as well as Gödel, who had just published his world-shattering discovery. Carnap had just moved to Prague, where I followed him five months later. His Logical Structure was in the stores and his Logical Syntax in the typewriter. I became a serious disciple. Now, 35 years have passed. My philosophical position has changed considerably, and so has Carnap's, though not in the same direction. I will now reflect on the differences between my present point of view and the Old Viennese philosophy" (my translation). 36 misunderstandings, decided to adopt the label 'naturalism' for his philosophy in the late 1960s. Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Gary Kemp and two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. Parts of this paper have been presented at the Quine and Naturalism workshop at the University of Manchester, the SSHAP conference at the University of Calgary, and a Carnap-Quine workshop in Denver. I would like to thank the audiences at these events as well as audiences at conferences and workshops in Munich and Tilburg for their valuable suggestions. This research is funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, grant 275-20-064). My archival research at the W. V. Quine Papers was funded by a Kristeller-Popkin Travel Fellowship from the Journal of the History of Philosophy, by a Rodney G. Dennis Fellowship in the Study of Manuscripts from Houghton Library, and a travel grant from the Evert Willem Beth Foundation. Literature Archival Sources The unpublished papers, letters, lectures, and notebooks listed below are stored at the Harvard Depository and can be accessed at Houghton Library, Harvard University. A catalogue of Quine's unpublished work can be found at http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou01800. The references are ordered by item number. Quine, W. V. and Beth, E. W. (1947-1964). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 004, Item 96. Quine, W. V. and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1955-1979). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 007, Item 205. 37 Quine, W. V. and Church, A. (1988-1996). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 008, Item 224. Quine, W. V. and Clark, J. T. (1951-1953). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 008, Item 231. Quine, W. V. and Columbia University (1949-1970). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 009, Item 248. Quine, W. V. and Davidson, D. (1957-1997). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 010, Item 287. Quine, W. V. and Dreben, B. (1948-1997). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 011, Item 315. Quine, W. V. (various dates). Correspondence Erthrough Ez-. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 011, Item 336. Quine, W. V. and Goodman, N. (1935-1994). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 016, Item 420. Quine, W. V. and Harvard University, Department of Philosophy (1930-1994 and undated). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 018, Item 471. Quine, W. V. and Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (1931-1988). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 018, Item 473. Quine, W. V. and Harvard University, Grants (1931-1988). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 018, Item 475. Quine, W. V. and Harvard University, President's Office (1937-1998). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 018, Item 479. Quine, W. V. and Institute for Advanced Study (1955-1965). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 020, Item 545. Quine, W. V. and Journal of Symbolic Logic (1936-1996). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 021, Item 570. Quine, W. V. and Lakatos, I. (1964-1974). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 023, Item 616. Quine, W. V. and Margolis, J. (1967 and undated). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers 38 (MS Am 2587): Box 025, Item 675. Quine, W. V. and Miller, H. (1948-1952). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 027, Item 724. Quine, W. V. and Myhill, J. (1943-1985). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 028, Item 755. Quine, W. V. and Nagel, E. (1938-1964). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 028, Item 758. Quine, W. V. and Rockefeller Foundation (1945-1980). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 033, Item 921. Quine, W. V. (various dates). Correspondence Sc-. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 034, Item 958. Quine, W. V. and Sellars, W. (1938-1980). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 034, Item 972. Quine, W. V. and Skinner, B. F. (1934-1998). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 036, Item 1001. Quine, W. V. and Smart, J. J. C. (1949-1998). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 036, Item 1005. Quine, W. V. and Weiss, P. (1937-1972). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 042, Item 1200. Quine, W. V. and World Congress of Philosophy (1952-1998). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 043, Item 1221. Quine, W. V. and Williams, D. C. (1940-1994). Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 044, Item 1239. Quine, W. V. (1960-1982 and undated). D. Reidel Publishing Company, Editorial Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 049, Item 1355. Quine, W. V. (1968-1988). Ontological Relativity, Editorial Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 052, Item 1422. Quine, W. V. (1952-1960). Word and Object, Editorial Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 054, Item 1488. 39 Quine, W. V. (1959-1980 and undated). Word and Object, Editorial Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 054, Item 1489. Quine, W. V. (1966-1974). Words and Objections, Editorial Correspondence. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 054, Item 1490. Quine, W. V. (undated). Quine's annotated copy of Putnam's Meaning and the Moral Sciences. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 119, Item 2388a. Quine, W. V. (1968). Epistemology Naturalized; or, the case for psychologism. Unpublished Typescript with manuscript additions. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 085, Item 2441. Quine, W. V. (1993). In conversation: Professor W. V. Quine. Interviews by Rudolf Fara. Unpublished printout with autograph manuscript revisions. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 086, Item 2498. Quine, W. V. (1966-1967). Russell's Ontological Development. Autograph manuscripts, typescript carbons. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 090, Item 2733. Quine, W. V. (November 19, 1965). Stimulus and Meaning. Autograph manuscripts. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 091, Item 2756. Quine, W. V. (February 5, 1968). For Rockefeller Lecture. Autograph manuscripts. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 101, Item 2902. Quine, W. V. (July 11, 1968). For Symposium with Sellars. Autograph manuscripts. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 101, Item 2903. Quine, W. V. (September 22, 1967). Kinds. Autograph manuscripts. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 102, Item 2948. Quine, W. V. (1940). Logic, Math, Science. Unpublished Typescript. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 102, Item 2954. Quine, W. V. (March 1967). Ontological Relativity. Typescript. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 103, Item 2994. Quine, W. V. (March 26-8, 1968). Ontological Relativity. Typescript with autograph manuscript revisions. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 103, Item 2995. Quine, W. V. (1952). The Place of a Theory of Evidence. Unpublished Typescript. W. V. 40 Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 104, Item 3011. Quine, W. V. (1951). The Present State of Empiricism. Unpublished Autograph Manuscript. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 104, Item 3015. Quine, W. V. (January 9-13, 1967). Word and Object Seminar. Autograph Manuscript. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 106, Item 3102. Quine, W. V. (1953). Philosophy 148. Unpublished Typescript. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 107, Item 3158. Quine, W. V. (1937-1944). Early Jottings on Philosophy of Language. Unpublished Collection of Notes. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 108, Item 3169. Quine, W. V. (various dates). Erledigte Notizen. Unpublished Collection of Notes. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 108, Item 3170. Quine, W. V. (1944-1951). Ontology, Metaphysics, etc... Unpublished Collection of Notes. Box 108, Item 3181. Quine, W. V. (various dates). Philosophical Notes. Unpublished Collection of Notes. Boxes 108 and 109, Item 3182. Quine, W. V. (1951-1953). Pragmatism, etc.... Collection of notes. Box 109, Item 3184. Quine, W. V. (various dates). Philosophy 148. Autograph Manuscript. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 115, Item 3266. Quine, W. V. (1953-1954). Oxford University Lectures. Autograph Manuscript. W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587): Box 116, Item 3277. Quine, W. V. (undated). 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O sentido da nova lógica. Sao Paulo: Livraria Martins (1944). Quine, W. V. (1946). Lectures on David Hume's Philosophy. Edited by J. Buickerood. In Quine (2008a), pp. 36-136. Quine, W. V. (1948). On What There Is. In Quine (1953a), pp. 1-19. Quine, W. V. (1950). Identity, Ostension, Hypostasis. In Quine (1953a), pp. 65-79. Quine, W. V. (1951a). Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In Quine (1953a), pp. 20-46. Quine, W. V. (1951b). On Carnap's Views on Ontology. In Quine (1976), pp. 197-202. Quine, W. V. (1952). On Mental Entities. In Quine (1976), pp. 221-227. Quine, W. V. (1953a). From a Logical Point of View. Second and revised edition (1961). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Quine, W. V. (1953b). Mr. Strawson on Logical Theory. In Quine (1976), pp. 137-157. Quine,W. V. (1954a). Carnap and Logical Truth. In Quine (1976), pp. 107-132. Quine, W. V. (1954b). The Scope and Language of Science. In Quine (1976), pp. 228245. Quine, W. V. (1960). Word and Object. The M.I.T. 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