Quine, Structure, and Ontology

Abstract

Contemporary work on ontology, logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language still owes much to W.V. Quine. Nevertheless his views are now often dismissed because of mistaken or overly simplified conceptions of his philosophy. The development of his views over time are often overlooked, and in particular the growing importance of a kind of structuralism to his system as it evolved. This volume provides a fuller, richer picture of Quine’s views and their development. It is the first to investigate Quine’s views on structure and how it permeates and shapes his attitude to a range of philosophical questions. It includes contributions by world-famous philosophers and experts in a range of subfields including philosophical logic, philosophy of language, history of philosophy, mathematics, philosophy of time, and set theory. Chapters by Michael Resnik, Frederique Janssen-Lauret and Fraser MacBride, John Collins, Jaroslav Peregrin, and Paul Gregory explore whether Quine’s structuralism is epistemological, language-based, or ontological. Greg Frost-Arnold, Robert Sinclair, and Gary Kemp and Andrew Lugg explore Quine’s views on structure from a historical point of view. Nathan Salmón, Gila Sher, Marianna Antonutti Marfori, and Natalja Deng consider Quine’s views on the structure of logic, language, and theories in relation to contemporary philosophy, specifically ontology, the philosophy of logic and mathematics, philosophy of set theory, and philosophy of time.