Abstract
These introductory remarks provide an overview of the project Quine develops in his Kant lectures. Much of the lectures are aimed at locating mentalistic discourse within a scientific, physicalist framework, where this forms part of a scientific, if abstract, explanation of how we come to know the external world and other minds without an appeal to mental entities or other sensibilia. I further attempt to illuminate Quine’s physicalist rendering of perception through a comparison with Austin’s ordinary language approach to perception. I conclude with a brief description of the essays found in section II.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This description is based on the more detailed one found in Longworth (2017, 3.2).
- 3.
Compare Quine’s discussion of the refraction case: “But science tells us to rely on our senses circumspectly. For it is science still that identifies the illusion of the bent stick in water, the illusion of water warm to one hand and cold to the other, and the illusion of dreams. It was such illusions that sowed the seeds of doubt that engendered epistemology in the first place, and it is science itself that counsels us against the illusions. Science is its own best critic, and it is where epistemology begins and belongs” (Quine, This volume, 34).
- 4.
- 5.
For an attempt to show why Austin is not so dismissive of the metaphysics of perception, see Lawlor (2018).
- 6.
For some doubts concerning Austin’s general role in this transition, see Martin.
- 7.
Quine offers other critical reflections on Austin’s views in his 1981b.
- 8.
For further discussion see Quine (This volume, 53–69).
- 9.
These examples are given in Gochet (2005), a review of the German edition of Quine’s Kant Lectures.
- 10.
For further comparison of Quine and Austin on perception see my Forthcoming.
References
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Berdini, Federica, and Claudia Bianchi. 2018. John Langshaw Austin (1911–1960). The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002. http://www.iep.utm.edu/. Accessed 2 May 2018.
Gochet, Paul. 2005. Book Review of Wissenschaft und Empfindung: Die Immanuel Kant Lectures by Willard Van Orman Quine, Translated and Introduced by H.G. Callaway. 2003. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Friedrich Frommann Verlag: Günther Holzboog. Dialectica 59: 375–378.
Lawlor, Krista. 2018. Austin on Perception, Knowledge and Meaning. In Interpreting Austin, ed. Savas Tsohatzidis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Longworth, Guy. 2017. John Langshaw Austin. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 ed.). Edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/austin-jl/.
Martin, M.G.F. 2007. Austin: Sense & Sensibilia Revisited. Unpublished.
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———. 1974. The Roots of Reference. La salle: Open Court.
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———. 1981a. Things and Their Place in Theories. In Theories and Things. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. 1981b. On Austin’s Method. In Theories and Things. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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———. 1992. Pursuit of Truth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. 2019. Science and Sensibilia: The 1980 Immanuel Kant Lectures, ed. Robert Sinclair. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sinclair, Robert. Forthcoming. Science, Sense, and Sensibilia: Quine and Austin on Perception. Al-Mukhatabat 27.
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Sinclair, R. (2019). Introduction: Quine’s Immanuel Kant Lectures. 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_1
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