Abstract
In the ever-growing literature on Quine, his Paul Carus lectures, “The Roots of Reference,” appear to have attracted much less attention than they deserve.1 And yet in these lectures, apart from continuing some of the main theses (about language and reference) of Word and Object, Quine develops some new strategies which are of the utmost philosophical interest and whose significance goes far beyond the behavioristic framework that pervades them. It is not my purpose to add to the already available criticisms of that framework, particularly in connection with the question of language learning. I would rather follow two methodological principles. One, formulated by Quine himself in his reply to Chomsky, is: “The more absurd the doctrine attributed to some one, ceteris paribus, the less the likelihood that we have well construed his words.”2 I would therefore look beneath the absurdities of a behavioristic framework for elements of philosophical insight, which, to be sure, are never lacking in Quine’s writings.
Originally appeared in Swoyer and Shahan (Eds.), The Philosophy of W.V.O. Quine (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), pp. 21–43. Reprinted with permission.
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Notes
W.V.O. Quine, The Roots of Reference (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1973). Henceforth referred to as RR.
D. Davidson and J. Hintikka (Eds.), Words and Objections: Essays on the Work of W.V.O. Quine (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1969), p. 304.
I owe this insight to Nicolai Hartmann’s “Diesseits vom Idealismus und Realismus,” Kant-Studien 29 (1924).
W. V. O. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 92f.
RR, p. 83.
Ibid., p. 82.
Ibid., p. 83f.
Ibid., p. 124.
Ibid., p. 101.
Ibid., p. 100.
Ibid., p. 105.
E. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.
Davidson and Hintikka, Words and Objections, p. 320.
RR, p. 19.
Ibid., p. 19.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 26.
Quine, Ontological Relativity, p. 7.
RR, p. 85.
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., pp. 66–67.
Ibid., pp. 77–78.
Ibid., p. 124.
G. Harman, Review of The Roots of Reference, Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), pp. 388–395.
J. Piaget, The Child and Reality: Problems of Genetic Epistemology, trans. A. Rosin (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972), p. 13.
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., p. 15.
Ibid., p. 15.
R. Brown, Psycho-Linguistics: Selected Papers (New York: Free Press, 1970), p. 223.
J.H. Flavele, The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget (Princeton N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1963), pp. 52–53.
Piaget, The Child and Reality, p. 12.
For a good account of these stages see J. Piaget, The Construction of Reality in the Child (New York: Basic Books, 1954), esp. Chapter 1, “The Development of the Object Concept.”
Ibid., p. 91.
Ibid., p. 94.
R. Brown, A First Language: The Early Stages (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 199.
See E. Vurpillot,“Development of Identification of Objects,” in: V. Hamilton and M.D. Vernon (Eds.), The Development of Cognitive Process (New York: Academic Press, 1976), p. 202.
D. McNeill, The Acquisition of Language: The Study of Developmental Psycholinguistics (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 20–21.
Ibid., p. 23.
See also P. Nemyuk, The Acquisition and Development of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), p. 101.
E. Husserl, Experience and Judgment.
Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., p. 74f.
Ibid., p. 75.
Ibid., p. 76.
Ibid., pp. 78–79.
Ibid., pp. 85–86.
Ibid., p. 88.
Ibid., p. 215.
Ibid., p. 235f.
Ibid., pp. 260–261.
Ibid., p. 13.
RR, p. 115.
Ibid., p. 59.
Experience and Judgment, pp. 88–91.
Ibid., p. 245.
Ibid., pp. 91–99.
W.V.O Quine, The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 251.
Ibid., pp. 251–252.
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Mohanty, J.N. (1985). On the Roots of Reference: Quine, Piaget, and Husserl. In: The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy. Phaenomenologica, vol 98. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5049-8_12
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