Resolving Quine's Confict: A Neo-Quinean View of the Rational Revisability of Logic

Australasian Journal of Logic 14 (1) (2017)
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Abstract

There is an apparent conflict in Quine’s work between, on the one hand, his clear commitment to the rational revisability of logic and, on the other, his principle of charitable translation and ‘change of logic, change of subject’ argument. I argue that the apparent conflict is mostly resolved under close exegesis, but that the translation argument normatively rules out collaborative revision and allows only revision by individuals. However, I articulate a Neo-Quinean view that preserves the rational acceptability of collaborative revision. On that view, everything is rationally revisable in some manner or other — it’s just that the logical principles that laypersons find (actually or potentially) obvious and tacitly use to govern their everyday inferences can’t be rationally revised quickly and all at once. Since, in Quine’s view, what most people find obvious resists change, rational changes to laymen’s logic must be gradual.

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Amanda Bryant
Ryerson University

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References found in this work

Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
Spandrels of truth.J. C. Beall - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Logical pluralism.Jc Beall & Greg Restall - 2000 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (4):475 – 493.
Paradoxes and Failures of Cut.David Ripley - 2013 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (1):139 - 164.
Spandrels of truth.Jc Beall - 2010 - Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 16 (2):284-286.

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