Pursuit of truth
The pursuit of truth is a quest that links observation, theory, and the world. Various faulty efforts to forge such links have led to much intellectual confusion. Quine's efforts to get beyond the confusion begin by rejecting the very idea of binding together word and thing, rejecting the focus on the isolated word. For him, observation sentences and theoretical sentences are the alpha and omega of the scientific enterprise. Notions like "idea" and "meaning" are vague, but a sentence now there's something you can sink your teeth into. Starting thus with sentences, Quine sketches an epistemological setting for the pursuit of truth. He proceeds to show how reflection and reference contribute to the elaborate structure that can indeed relate science to its sensory evidence. --From publisher's description
Print Book, English, 1990
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1990
x, 113 pages ; 22 cm
9780674739505, 0674739507
19778158
Part I: Evidence
Stimulation and prediction
Observation sentences
Theory-laden?
Observation categoricals
Test and refutation
Holism
Empirical content
Norms and aims. Part II: Reference
Bodies
Values of variables
Utility of reification
Indifference of ontology
Ontological relativity. Part III: Meaning
The field linguist's entering wedge
Stimulation again
To each his own
Translation resumed
Indeterminacy of translation
Syntax
Indeterminacy of reference
Whither meanings?
Domestic synonymy
Lexicography. Part IV: Intension
Perception and observation sentences
Perception extended
Perception of things
Belief and perception
Intension
Anomalous monism
Modalities
A mentalistic heritage. Part V: Truth
Vehicles of truth
Truth as disquotation
Paradox
Tarski's construction
Paradox skirted
Interlocked hierachies
Excluded middle
Truth versus warranted belief
Truth in mathematics
Equivalent theories
Irresoluble rivalry
Two indeterminancies