The Cambridge Companion to Quine

W. V. Quine (1908–2000) was quite simply the most distinguished analytic philosopher of the later half of the twentieth century. His celebrated attack on the analytic/synthetic tradition heralded a major shift away from the views of language descended from logical positivism. His most important book, Word and Object, introduced the concept of indeterminacy of radical translation, a bleak view of the nature of the language with which we ascribe thoughts and beliefs to ourselves and others. Quine is also famous for the view that epistemology should be naturalized, that is conducted in a scientific spirit with the object of investigating the relationship between the inputs of experience and the outputs of belief. The eleven essays in this volume cover all the central topics of Quine\'s philosophy: the underdetermination of physical theory, analycity, naturalism, propositional attitudes, behaviorism, reference and ontology, positivism, holism and logic.

• Quine is the most important analytic philosopher of latter part of twentieth century and volumes on twentieth-century figures in this series do well • As with all other philosophy companions it is systematic, comprehensive and accessible

1. Aspects of Quine’s naturalized epistemology Robert Fogelin; 2. Quine on the intelligibility and relevance of analyticity Richard Creath; 3. Quine’s holisms Ernest Lepore and Raffaella de Rosa; 4. Underdetermination of physical theory Lars Bergstrom; 5. Quine on reference and ontology Peter Hylton; 6. Indeterminacy of translation Robert Kirk; 7. Quine’s behaviorism cum empiricism Roger F. Gibson; 8. Quine on modality Dagfinn Follesdal; 9. Quine and Logical Positivism Daniel Isaacson; 10. Quine and logic Joseph S. Ullian; 11. Quine on Quine Burton S. Dreben.