Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Quine's and Putnam's arguments have also been influential outside philosophy of mathematics, inspiring indispensability arguments in other areas of philosophy. For example, David Lewis , who was a student of Quine, used an indispensability argument to argue for modal realism in his 1986 book On the Plurality of Worlds .
Putnam considers the argument in the two last sections as independent of the first four, and at the same time as Putnam criticizes Quine, he also emphasizes his historical importance as the first top rank philosopher to both reject the notion of apriority and sketch a methodology without it. [3]
Both Putnam and Quine invoke naturalism to justify the exclusion of all non-scientific entities, and hence to defend the "only" part of "all and only". The assertion that "all" entities postulated in scientific theories, including numbers, should be accepted as real is justified by confirmation holism .
According to Putnam, Quine's version of the argument was an argument for the existence of abstract mathematical objects, while Putnam's own argument was simply for a realist interpretation of mathematics, which he believed could be provided by a "mathematics as modal logic" interpretation that need not imply the existence of abstract objects.
While Quine's rejection of the analytic–synthetic distinction is widely known, the precise argument for the rejection and its status is highly debated in contemporary philosophy. However, some (for example, Paul Boghossian ) [ 16 ] argue that Quine's rejection of the distinction is still widely accepted among philosophers, even if for poor ...
A view close to Quine’s subclass/category description is called ‘’conceptual relativity’’. [9] To describe conceptual relativity, Putnam points out that while the pages of a book are regarded as part of book when they are attached, they are things-in-themselves if they are detached. My nose is only part of an object, my person.
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument supports the conclusion that mathematical objects exist with the idea that mathematics is indispensable to the best scientific theories. [5] It relies on the view, called confirmational holism , that scientific theories are confirmed as wholes, and that the confirmations of science extend to the ...