Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism & Ontological Relativity

source: Philosophical Overdose    2016年4月1日
An introduction is given of W. V. Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, as well as Quine's indeterminacy of reference/meaning, ontological relativity, and epistemology naturalized. Two Dogmas of Empiricism was a famous article in which Quine attacked the analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism. The former involves a strict separation between questions of language and questions of fact, while the latter is the belief that every meaningful statement about the world can be reduced to statements about sensory experience. Both were crucial assumptions of 20th century empiricism (i.e. logical positivism). In their place, Quine offered instead a holistic conception of knowledge (what's sometimes called "confirmation holism").
Willard Van Orman Quine was a famous American philosopher and logician who made important contributions to the fields of logic, ontology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and mathematics.
This talk was given by someone named Darren Staloff. Apparently, the last 30 seconds were cut off...I have no idea why, but sorry about that!