Abstract
In the fourth Immanuel Kant Lecture, Quine summons the specter of Kant’s Ding an sich, the thing in itself. Clearly antithetical to his naturalism, Quine quickly dismisses it as having feet of clay. Despite this short shrift, it is worth examining what he did say about the Ding an sich—in the Kant Lectures, in “Things and Their Place in Theories”, and in “Structure and Nature”. I offer a critical reading of these passages in the context of Quine’s proxy functions, ontological relativity, and structure. I argue that Quine uses the Ding an sich as a foil for his anti-metaphysical, deflationary structuralism—a view that grounds objectivity in true statements, without any transcendental notion of objects, without the Ding an sich.
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Notes
- 1.
For more detail, see Quine’s introductory note to “Things” (1981b).
- 2.
See my “Quine’s Deflationary Structuralism” for more detail (Forthcoming).
- 3.
Again, my (Forthcoming) details the evolution of this view in Quine’s work.
- 4.
The example in “Ontological Reduction and the World of Numbers” is that of reducing impure numbers such as n degrees centigrade or n meters to the pure number n and new predicates (1976, 207, originally published in 1964).
- 5.
From here on out I will consider proxy functions to be one-to-one unless otherwise noted.
- 6.
My aim here is interpretive, not to defend the proxy function argument in detail. I offer this objection and response as a means of clarifying the view at hand.
- 7.
Quine exploits this rhetorical maneuver frequently: produce a dramatic conceptual crisis, only to restore balance and security via an appeal to naturalism. I think it is more than mere rhetoric. It plays an important argumentative, or at least expressive, role in Quine’s naturalism. But this is a topic for another essay.
- 8.
- 9.
See my (Forthcoming, 2003).
- 10.
Surely, it is no accident that by the 90s, Quine, who takes great care with his titles, is no longer talking about “Things and Their Place in Theories”, but about Pursuit of Truth and “Structure and Nature”.
- 11.
Indeed, in From Stimulus to Science, he describes ontological relativity as a “startling ontological triviality” (1995a, 73).
- 12.
The resolution, according to Quine, is just to accept that theory is fallible and our commitment is tentative. I refrain from evaluating here either Quine’s reading of Stroud or his response to Stroud.
- 13.
Answering this question in full is an essay in itself. Here I merely gesture at an answer.
- 14.
Similar remarks appear in Quine (1995b, 261).
- 15.
That is, they make no difference yet. Quine acknowledges that some (though not all, since they are infinite) such statements might someday enter into physical theory. In that case we would either legislate them as axioms or take them to be supported by the success of the whole theory structure.
References
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Gregory, P.A. (2019). Quine’s Ding an sich: Proxies, Structure, and Naturalism. In: Sinclair, R. (eds) Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04909-6_8
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