The Harvard philosopher Willard van Orman Quine had the question mark on his typewriter replaced with a logical symbol. Asked by a reporter if he missed the question mark, Quine replied, “I deal in certainties.” Quine’s certainties were of the scientific sort: he famously said that “philosophy of science is philosophy enough.” For Quine, this meant that philosophy had to give up its pretenses and recognize that it had no special claim to truth.
Willard Quine died on Christmas Day at the age of 92. He was one of the 20th Century’s greatest thinkers, whose work in logic and epistemology challenged philosophy’s perpetual quest for transcendent meaning. The search for truth beyond immediate human experience, Quine thought, was not only pointless, it was actually a barrier to the pursuit of knowledge. The philosophy of Quine, this hour on the Connection
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Alexander George, professor of Philosophy at Amherst College
Richard Rorty, professor of Literature at Stanford University