Quine on What There Is

W. V. O. Quine, On What There Is, The Analytic Tradition, Spring 2017

[tele]

Prof. Bonevac, thank you for posting these lectures. I appreciate your lecture style and enjoy learning more about modern philosophy.

[okzoia]

I did my doctoral dissertation on Quine's naturalistic epistemology, and I must say that you, Dr. Bonevac, really know your Quine and are a great, engaging teacher! Keep it up.

[charlielevett]

this was incredible, this was a lot to cover and the lecturer makes it so clear in such a short space of time. I'm so grateful for this.

[christianlight]

Thank you for posting this lecture. I am currently taking an undergraduate metaphysics class but I feel I am a little bit more behind in philosophy than my peers. Although my professor is good it helps to hear other professors lectures on the same topic.

[die_schlechtere_Milch]

Many thanks for discussing this important text. I totally agree about Quine's style of writing!

[JasonandJasonShow]

Thank you Professor Bonevac for posting your phenomenal lectures.

[AwesOmenators]

Shout out to Prof. Bonevac who explains quine better than my metaphysics Prof

[SeanAnthony-jf]

Analysis is one great way of resolving long standing issue of language and how we formulate our arguments or formalized conceptual logic just like the categorical theories. But I do also see its limit on certain philosophical questions. Esp. when dealing with metaphysics. And I'm still waiting for another great philosopher who will resolve this issue just like Immanuel Kant tried to make Empiricism and Rationalism works together.

[rubeng]

The Essence-Existence distinction drawn by Aquinas keeps creeping into my head as I hear this very interesting Bonevac lecture on things and the ideas of them

[omidroshandel]

Actually, this part of “on what there is” is pretty easy to understand as opposed to the next part where Quine begins talking about whether attributes and meaning exist and then the relationship between ontology and semantics.

[cliffordhodge]

One problem is that to decide for any X whether X exists, or whether there is anything that is X, we must begin by hypothetically positing the existence of X.  And as between you and me, we must both have a reasonable sense of what X is if we are to proceed further.  So we have to partially develop the thing by using understandable, meaningful words, even to deny its existence.  But we cannot escape the feeling that if I say, "The round square does not exist, " your appropriate response should be, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."  And then my appropriate remark should be, "I'm afraid I don't know what I just said, "  because there is something that seems wrong even about my being able to hold in memory something logically impossible represented by a contradictory description.  However, the words do seem to latch onto something which I can then hold onto, and that is a problem.  Nonetheless, in the realm of impossible things, it does seem reasonable to ask if there is some difference between those of which I - at least apparently - can speak, and those of which no notion whatever arises in me or anyone.  In other words, if we are speaking of impossible objects, there are those for which I can put together some sort of mental and linguistic representation, and those of which I cannot.  For these last, it is impossible to consider the status - existing or not.  So another problem would be that objects in this last group are such that none can be said to be impossible - they just are.

[jamestagge]

This was a really good and interesting lecture. The presentation was wonderful and Mr. Bonevac made what is normally a painfully boring topic, , quite fascinating. Full this Quine was full of himself. What a bowl of word salad and to say what? It’s all piffle. The reality is simple and straight forward.

Words are merely proxies for the existents which are announced by them. So too are they proxies for the concepts which might be proposed. Terms such as justice can stand for a long and involved linear definition of what it is which we hold all at once in our minds, as the latter is uniquely capable of doing. Does it matter that one might include in that understanding of the definition that justice is founded on the principle of merit, i.e., that one is rewarded or punished in proportion to the severity of a good or bad act, respectively and another not, he instead believing justice to be representative of a fixed set of moral imperatives to be applied in a consistent measure in any context? That one might imagine a plant which bears fruit and another that of a plant that does not, each employing the name, “tree” and not violate the general understanding of the term, realizing that in all categories of existents, differences will be present. Classifications of existents or concepts will by definition be general in nature, encompassing only their most significant characteristics in a measure sufficient to isolate or set them apart from those of others.
To claim that there is no Pegasus but yet that there is a name, is merely to offer it as proxy for a concept which all who are in witness understand is only representative of an idea. This is quite proper or there could be no discussion of possibility or no process of abstraction by which to move man’s philosophy or his physical sciences forward. To be sure, there are inevitably existents or concepts which can be proposed, named and thought initially to represent material realities only to be discovered in the end to be frauds, their names standing in for nothing. This is however, the nature of the epistemological process and these terms in their total are its language.

The perceptual process and our language are one to one reflections of the architecture of material reality which permits no contradictions, materially or conceptually. Perception is not wholly subjective but rather “quantitatively objective” and only “qualitatively subjective”, all existents assertions or impositions of their form and function in materiality. This is made clear in the understanding in quantum mechanics that space/time is literally distorted or warped by the presence of a mass/existent (or by its form). That a square is that which it is in part for its characteristics as such but is also that in part for that which it is not, e.g., a circle. This is quantitative. That a tree is what it is for its characteristics but also that it is not a mouse is also quantitative. However, one might spy the tree and understand but think it pretty while another finds it ugly. This is qualitative. It is all very simple.

Language is a one to one reflection of the architecture of materiality (reality) and neither permits contradictions to exist. Quine’s “crisis of thought” which I found a sophomoric pronouncement is easily resolved. “This statement is false”, the example he employed to promote this absurd notion, is easily resolved. That this might be paradoxical, it by definition cannot refer to a previous utterance. What is left is that it is self-referencing. If hearing this one would immediately ask, “what is false”? The term statement used within “this statement is false” has no meaning or content (it acts as proxy to nothing) by which it might be or be judged as true or false. It is pure sophistry to employ such a means of proof of an actual defect in the structure of language which could threaten the intellectual process. Russell was guilty of the same sort of deception, deliberate or not. Note the barber’s paradox which was not a paradox at all.

This man is purported to be so brilliant and I can only request that anyone who thinks him so, explain away the above and show me why. Any thoughts?

[johnparadise]

I love the sound of the chalk on the blackboard, and I’m interested in the lecture too.

[RakeshYadav-fxop]

Prof. Bonevac, your lectures are always great. But I think it should be bit more longer (e.g. 75 or 90 minutes). I feel You follow the time limit very strictly. By the way thank you!

[JonSebastianF]

37:48 the Wittgenstein quote is in the _Tractatus_ around §5.5303

[colet]

Concerning the conversation around the 20 min mark: The Parthenon is experienced through perceptual organs, the idea of the Parthenon or of a man or of a pegasus are perceived through DIFFERENT perceptual organs, unfortunately ones that many people fail to exercise. Imagine a world in which no one has a sense of smell, scent would not 'exist, ' and if someone came along who could smell he would be branded crazy. All reality is mind, just lying on a continuum from the chthonic to the Olympian, and modern man has derracinated God from the world, in the sense that we fail to recognize what quantum physics shows, which is reality is participatory, that it relies upon consciousness to manifest, so as a result we drift further and further away from the realms of reality that we may have once been capable of perceiving but now label fictions and abstractions.

[die_schlechtere_Milch]

I thought that if you study in the USA, than you pay a huge summ of your money for it and that students will therefore be better prepared and do their homework more carefully compared to European students

[jrp]

Word games. I can’t say that I’ve ever been troubled by this stuff.

[stefos]

Professor Bonevac, Can you recommend a history of scientific philosophy that is not made for PhD's? Thank you sir :)

[AdrienLegendre]

There are issues. First language is context dependent. Rounded square is well recognized as a square with rounded corners. Red, black and white all over describes applying 3 layers of paint to a canvas which can also exist. 2nd issue is in the absence of any specific context, qualifiers are needed for precise definitions e.g. the mythological creature Pegasus exists in literature. 3rd stop using identity and use equivalence; 2 objects are equivalent if they share a set of properties, e.g. all cars are motor vehicles, they are equivalent but not identical.. These 3 principles can resolve many questions arising from ontology.