Western Philosophy. Группа авторов

considerations which determine a reasonable construction of the whole. To whatever extent the adoption of any system of scientific theory may be said to be a matter of language, the same – but no more – may be said of the adoption of an ontology.

      But simplicity, as a guiding principle in constructing conceptual schemes, is not a clear and unambiguous idea; and it is quite capable of presenting a double or multiple standard. Imagine, for example, that we have devised the most economical set of concepts adequate to the play-by-play reporting of immediate experience. The entities under this scheme – the values of bound variables – are, let us suppose, individual subjective events of sensation or reflection. We should still find, no doubt, that a physicalistic conceptual scheme, purporting to talk about external objects, offers great advantages in simplifying our over-all reports. By bringing together scattered sense events and treating them as perceptions of one object, we reduce the complexity of our stream of experience to a manageable conceptual simplicity. The rule of simplicity is indeed our guiding maxim in assigning sense data to objects: we associate an earlier and a later round sensum with the same so-called penny, or with two different so-called pennies, in obedience to the demands of maximum simplicity in our total world-picture.

Here we have two competing conceptual schemes, a phenomenalistic one and a physicalistic one. Which should prevail? Each has its advantages; each has its special simplicity in its own way. Each, I suggest, deserves to be developed. Each may be said, indeed, to be the more fundamental, though in different senses: the one is epistemologically, the other physically, fundamental.

      The physical conceptual scheme simplifies our account of experience because of the way myriad scattered sense events come to be associated with single so-called objects; still there is no likelihood that each sentence about physical objects can actually be translated, however deviously and complexly, into the phenomenalistic language. Physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of experience, just as the introduction of irrational numbers simplifies laws of arithmetic. From the point of view of the conceptual scheme of the elementary arithmetic of rational numbers alone, the broader arithmetic of rational and irrational numbers would have the status of a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth (namely, the arithmetic of rationals) and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part. Similarly, from a phenomenalistic point of view, the conceptual scheme of physical objects is a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part.

      Now what of classes or attributes of physical objects, in turn? A platonistic ontology of this sort is, from the point of view of a strictly physicalistic conceptual scheme, as much a myth as that physicalistic conceptual scheme itself is for phenomenalism. This higher myth is a good and useful one, in turn, insofar as it simplifies our account of physics. Since mathematics is an integral part of this higher myth, the utility of this myth for physical science is evident enough. In speaking of it nevertheless as a myth, I echo that philosophy of mathematics to which I alluded earlier under the name of formalism. But an attitude of formalism may with equal justice be adopted toward the physical conceptual scheme, in turn, by the pure aesthete or phenomenalist …

      But the question what ontology actually to adopt still stands open, and the obvious counsel is tolerance and an experimental spirit. Let us by all means see how much of the physicalistic conceptual scheme can be reduced to a phenomenalistic one; still, physics also naturally demands pursuing, irreducible in toto though it be. Let us see how, or to what degree, natural science may be rendered independent of platonistic mathematics; but let us also pursue mathematics and delve into its platonistic foundations.

      From among the various conceptual schemes best suited to these various pursuits, one – the phenomenalistic – claims epistemological priority. Viewed from within the phenomenalistic conceptual scheme, the ontologies of physical objects and mathematical objects are myths. The quality of myth, however, is relative; relative, in this case, to the epistemological point of view. This point of view is one among various, corresponding to one among our various interests and purposes.

      Specimen Questions

      1 How does Quine propose to solve the ‘riddle of non-being’? How does his solution reflect a ‘taste for desert landscapes’?

      2 How does Quine respond to the argument that fictional entities (like Pegasus the winged horse) must exist in some sense, or else we could not talk about them?

      3 ‘Our ontology is determined once we have fixed upon the over-all conceptual scheme which is to accommodate science in the broadest sense’ (Quine). Explain and critically discuss.

Suggestions for Further Reading (Including Internet Resources)

      1 Several of Quine’s most important philosophical papers are contained in his From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953; rev. edn 1961).

      2 For an excellent study of Quine’s philosophy, see C. Hookway’s Quine: Language, Experience and Reality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988). Amongst the more recent publications is G. Kemp, Quine: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Continuum, 2006), which gives a clear explication of Quine’s central ideas. P. Hylton provides an excellent exposition of Quine’s views and the arguments supporting them in his Quine (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). See also P. Gregory, Quine’s Naturalism: Language, Knowledge and the Subject (New York: Continuum Press, 2008) for another illuminating account of Quine.

      3 Two useful collections of critical essays are R. Barrett and R. Gibson (eds.), Perspectives on Quine (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), and G. Harman and E. Lepore (eds.), A Companion to W.V.O. Quine (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).

      4 For online resources, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a useful entry at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/ (by P. Hylton and G. Kemp). On Quine’s philosophy of science, see the entry in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://www.iep.utm.edu/quine-sc/ (by R. Sinclair). Douglas Quine, son of W. V. O. Quine, also maintains a site at http://www.wvquine.org/ dedicated to the work of his father. It includes bibliographical information, lists of books on Quine, and much else.

      Notes

      ^* First published as an article in the Review of Metaphysics (1948), repr. in W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper & Row, 1953; 2nd edn 1961); excerpts from pp. 1–2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19.

      1 1 See introduction to Part III, extract 3, below.

      2 2 See Part III, extract 9, below.