Was he a good philosopher

on the level of Derrida, Deleuze, Focault etc.?

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He's doing stuff that is very different from the guys you mentioned. To me, it's like asking if Federer is better than Woods. He's among the very best the analytic tradition of philosophy has produced and by the way a writer of very entertaining, simple but elegant and often greatly funny prose.

better. Because the problems he worked on were far more interesting

but isn't Quine's writing basic?

Not really, although some of them seem basic today just because of how generally accepted they've become, such as his "creature with a heart / creature with a kidney" case, which is probably the first serious attempt in analytic philosophy to draw a sharp distinction between intention and extension. At a bare minimum he deserves our respect for being one of two authors, along with Wittgenstein, to destroy logical positivism.

He was instrumental for analytic philosophy through the linguistic turn, and he continues to hold a place of prominence and prestige.

The extension/intension distinction was known in ancient Greece, and intensions were implemented formally by Carnap

Quine was responding directly to Carnap in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" for the fatal error he made in "The Elimination of Metaphysics". To quote Carnap:

"Secondly, take the case when we are given a criterion of application for a new word, say 'toovy'; in particular, let the sentence 'this thing is toovy' be true if and only if the thing is quadrangular (It is irrelevant in this context whether the criterion is explicitly stated or whether we derive it by observing the affirmative and the negative uses of the word). Then we will say: the word 'toovy' is synonymous with the word 'quadrangular'; that though every quadrangular thing is also toovy and conversely, this is only because quarangularity is the visible manifestation of toovyness, but that the latter itself is a hidden, not itself observable property. We would reply that after the criterion of application has been fixed, and that we are no further at liberty to 'intend' this or that by the word." (all typos are my own). He makes a variety of similar errors later on in the essay.

Carnap, here, in the context of his own formalisation of intention, still manages to make the error of assuming a one-to-one correspondence of intention and extension. He is asserting that, if a thing is "toovy" if and only if it is also quadrangular, that quadrangularity and "toovyness" are synonyms, but Quine's counterexample proves this to be false (at least by the standards of Carnap's positivism). A thing is a "creature with a kidney" if and only if it is an animal; likewise, a thing is a "creature with a heart" if and only if it is an animal, but it's quite clear that different things are meant by "creature with a kidney" and "creature with a heart." Since the perfect kind of synonymity that Carnap describes requires that, if A = B and B = C, then A = C (quite obviously), but this logic cannot hold against Quines example.

You're quite right about everything you've said, though. I definitely should have been more clear about Quines significance to the philosophy of language and logic, rather than just calling it a "sharp distinction".

OK cool, I didn't know about that. One thing is that if we observe their synonymity by looking at the uses of the word, we have to include their uses in modal contexts. Words with different intensions will have different truth judgments there, even if their extension is identical. Intension isn't something opaque to those sorts of tests. And when you said 'if and only if' in the second paragraph, synonymy is more plausible if by this you mean not material equivalence, but strict material equivalence across possible worlds. If they're not really synonyms, you should be able to find a possible world with a counterexample to the biconditional.

Quine's counterexample or whatever you want to call it is recorded by a famous ancient Greek parable where Diogenes refutes Plato's definition of a man as a bipedal featherless animal by plucking a chicken.

>good philosopher
>on the level of Derrida, Deleuze, Focault

why did you just make two completely unrelated statements?

He's trying to bait out the analytic/continental divide.

>Quine's counterexample or whatever you want to call it is recorded by a famous ancient Greek parable where Diogenes refutes Plato's definition of a man as a bipedal featherless animal by plucking a chicken.
I've always read that as a warning against reductively defining terms. I'm still not 100% on how Diogenes' chicken implies anything other than Plato's definition of man being wrong. Though I suppose it could be read differently.

It also seems to me that Carnap and Quine wouldn't have had possible world semantics in mind, considering that they were both writing before Kripke, Lewis, etc. had really published anything of note. Wouldn't it be best to assume (especially with Carnap) that they're only considering these cases in the context of one world -- theirs? I'm fairly certain "if and only if" would not be used to mean "necessarily" in Quine's case; I, at least, was not using it in that way.

Can you clarify on how modality might affect intention? With examples, if possible. I'm afraid I'm new to modal logic and still slow to grasp the full weight of the terms.

>they were both writing before Kripke, Lewis
Modal notions go back to antiquity (Aristotle, and probably even further back to pre-Socratics) but more recently to C. I. Lewis (not the Lewis of Modal Realism) and Kripke's contemporary Ruth Barcan Marcus

plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal-origins/

>I'm still not 100% on how Diogenes' chicken implies anything other than Plato's definition of man being wrong
Diogenes chicken was a concrete counterexample to Plato's universal claim: for all x, if x is a man, then x is a bipedal featherless animal. It doesn't strictly falsify it because it (Man(Diogenes chicken) -> BFA(Diogenes chicken)) is vacuously true, but it *does* get across the intuition that the definition is off.

Thank you. You've been very helpful.

I guess I'll have to do more reading into modal logic etc. over the next months.

And in particular, it changed the extension of the set 'featherless biped' to include a chicken, to show that such an extensional definition can't define humanity.

>Can you clarify on how modality might affect intention? With examples, if possible. I'm afraid I'm new to modal logic and still slow to grasp the full weight of the terms.

If 'creature with a heart' and 'creature with a kidney' are in fact coextensive, we can still ask whether say, if some creature with a heart were to lose it, it would thereby not have a kidney either. The obvious answer is no – these are two different things.

But if we ask, say, whether if an ophthalmologist no longer was an eye doctor, if he would remain an ophthalmologist – and the answer in this case seems to be no. This is a clue that these are synonymous, whereas 'creature with a heart' and 'creature with a kidney' are not. To peel out the difference though, we have to ask modal questions about what 'would' be the case.

I'm not too familiar with Carnap, but I believe he had a notion of intension as a function from some parameter to an extension. That's pretty much all you need, whether you consider that parameter a possible world, or whatever.

>And in particular, it changed the extension of the set 'featherless biped' to include a chicken, to show that such an extensional definition can't define humanity.
In that case I amend the universal claim I attributed to Plato in . Biconditional works better as it seems to rule out all the chickens (they, along with mankind, still do share the same set). Take Jenny, the chicken.

From:

(1) Jenny is man Jenny is a featherless biped animal

we infer:

(1a) Jenny is man -> Jenny is a featherless biped animal
(1b) Jenny is a featherless biped animal -> Jenny is man

where (1a) is vacuously true and (1b) -- false; therefore (1) is false. However, substituting the name "Jenny" with, say, "Plato", both conditionals and hence the biconditional in (1) is true.

here.
Last attempt at this. Thinking a bit more about it it dawned upon me that Plato's definition is more faithfully translated into something like FOL as:

(1) for ALL x, (IF x is man THEN x is a featherless biped) AND there IS NO y such that (y is a featherless biped AND y is not man)

or in plain English:

(1) All men are featherless bipeds and there is no featherless biped that isn't a man

Now, if we interpret the "featherless biped" predicate as denoting the union of {x:x is a human} and {x:x is a chicken}, as we did before, then the second conjunct of (1) evaluates to FALSE which implies that (1) itself is FALSE. No silly and redundant vacuousness.

The previous two formalisations were inadequate because although the shortcomings of that definition were clearly apparent, the formalisms were still strangely consistent.

Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault are just for fun, while Quine is for when you want to get serious

Deleuze is a genius, a true master of the history of philosophy with a dramatic and sweeping vision of the tradition it has left him.

Derrida is a sharp critic, too often ruined by his followers turning his fleeting discoveries into solid, hypostatic concepts. People pay too much attention to Derrida's content rather than his form, associating "deconstruction" as a method with ideas like supplementarity and logocentrism when these were simply the discoveries made in particular readings in the history of philosophy.

Foucault is Althusser's worst student and a bad reader of Marx.

"Supplementarity", also referred to as "the supplementary principle", is one of the main principles of the Kyoto Protocol. The concept is that internal abatement of emissions should take precedence before external participation in flexible mechanisms. These mechanisms include emissions trading, Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and Joint Implementation (JI).

Emissions trading basically refers to the trading of emissions allowances (carbon credits) between one regulated entity and a less pollutive entity. This trading of permits results in a marginal economic disincentive to the buyer and a marginal economic incentive the abater.

CDM and JI are flexible mechanisms based on the concept of a carbon project. These projects reduce GHG voluntarily (outside the capped sectors) and therefore can be imported into the capped sector to aid in compliance.

The supplementarity principle is found in three articles of the Kyoto Protocol: article 6 and 17 with regards to trading, and article 12 with regards to the clean development mechanism.

Article 6.1 states that "The acquisition of emission reduction units shall be supplemental to domestic actions for the purposes of meeting commitments under Article 3". Article 17 states that "[…]Any such trading shall be supplemental to domestic actions for the purpose of meeting quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments under that article". Article 12.3.b states that "Parties included in Annex I may use the certified emission reductions accruing from such project activities to contribute to compliance with part of their quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments under Article 3[…]".

The actual meaning of the principle has been heavily argued since the signing of Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The COP/MOP is the body that represents the signers/ratifiers of the protocol and they have not been able to agree on a specific definition of the limit on use of flexible mechanisms. The original text has been interpreted to mean that anywhere from 3-50% of emissions could be offset by trading mechanisms. However, the only determination that has been thustly made is that the actual value of supplementarity should be decided at the country level.

In the United States RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) has set a precedent in that it will initially allow only up to 3.3% compliance occur by means of offset projects (carbon projects). This value can increase to 5% and ultimately 10% if certain price thresholds are exceeded in the region.

kek

The thing about his "destruction of logical positivism" is that he didn't destroy it in the direction that enemies of logical positivism would like.

What "direction" would you say the enemies of logical positivism wanted to work towards, versus what Quine was doing?

what's your point faggot

is this the famous Red John?

I just didn't know Derrida had such strong opinions on carbon emissions.

hi

I am also curious about what you mean by "direction" in which the destruction of positivism must go. Positivism is first and foremost a reaction against metaphysics. Quine made metaphysics a tenable enterprise within philosophy

I think he is great, but some of his papers are hard to take very seriously. His solution to the unhanged man paradox is absurd.

Actually no: Quine was a naturalist and thought any metaphysics better be synchronised with our best science. So it is the science that calls the shots and tells us what the world is like for Quine.

Kripke was the one that resurrected metaphysics from the dead with his highly influential Naming & Necessity.

A metaphysics synchronized with science is still metaphysics, especially when dealing with the ontology of scientific and mathematical entities. Quine envisioned philosophy as the abstract branch of science. His undermining of the analytic/synthetic distinction championed by Carnap is what revived metaphysics. Kripke's contribution was refuting Russel's theory of proper names and thereby restoring essentialist metaphysics to philosophy.