Sign and Object : Quine’s forgotten book project

Synthese 196 (12):5039-5060 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

W. V. Quine’s first philosophical monograph, Word and Object, is widely recognized as one of the most influential books of twentieth century philosophy. Notes, letters, and draft manuscripts at the Quine Archives, however, reveal that Quine was already working on a philosophical book in the early 1940s; a project entitled Sign and Object. In this paper, I examine these and other unpublished documents and show that Sign and Object sheds new light on the evolution of Quine’s ideas. Where “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” is usually considered to be a turning point in Quine’s development, this paper redefines the place of ‘Two Dogmas’ in his oeuvre. Not only does Quine’s book project reveal that his views were already fairly naturalistic in the early 1940s ; Sign and Object also unearths the steps Quine had to take in maturing his perspective; steps that will be traced in the second half of this paper.

Similar books and articles

Boarding Neurath's Boat: The Early Development of Quine's Naturalism.Sander Verhaegh - 2017 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (2):317-342.
Quine's ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’: or The Power of Bad Logic.Geoffrey Hunter - 1995 - Philosophical Investigations 18 (4):305-328.
Quine's ‘needlessly strong’ holism.Sander Verhaegh - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 61:11-20.
Quine.Peter Hylton - 2007 - London: Routledge.
Empatia e Transcendência: Reflexões sobre o Sistema Filosófico de Quine.Vera Vidal - 2003 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 7 (1-2):205-228.
Quine's "Strictly Vegetarian" Analyticity.Lieven Decock - 2017 - The Monist 100 (2):288-310.
Quine.Christopher Hookway - 2013 - Polity.
Quine on modality.Dagfinn Føllesdal - 1968 - Synthese 19 (1-2):147 - 157.
‘‘Quine’s Evolution from ‘Carnap’s Disciple’ to the Author of “Two Dogmas.Greg Frost-Arnold - 2011 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (2):291-316.
On Quine on Carnap on Ontology.Marc Alspector-Kelly - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 102 (1):93 - 122.
Is Quine a Verificationist?Panu Raatikainen - 2003 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 41 (3):399-409.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-02-02

Downloads
397 (#45,607)

6 months
126 (#23,707)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Sander Verhaegh
Tilburg University

Citations of this work

Add more citations

References found in this work

Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
From a Logical Point of View.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1953 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 17 (2):278-279.

View all 78 references / Add more references