front cover of Quantifiers, Logic, and Language
Quantifiers, Logic, and Language
Edited by Van der Does and Jan van Eijck
CSLI, 1996
Subject: Linguistics; Grammar--Quantifiers
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Questions of Form
Logic and Analytic Proposition from Kant to Carnap
Joelle ProustTranslated by Anastasios Albert Brenner
University of Minnesota Press, 1989

Questions of Form was first published in 1989. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In Questions on Form, Joelle Proust traces the concept of the analytic proposition from Kant's development of the notion down to its place in the work of Rudolf Carnap, a founder of logical empiricism and a key figure in contemporary analytic philosophy. Using a method known in France as topique comparative,she provides a rigorous exposition of analyticity, situating it within four major philosophical systems—those of Kant, Bolzano, Frege, and Carnap—and clearly delineating its development from one system to the next.

Proust takes as her point of departure Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Though she makes clear that Kant drew on Locke, Hume, and Leibniz, she argues that his notion of analyticity was innovative, not simply an elaboration of something already found in their work. She shows that the analytic proposition unexpectedly (given its modest status in Kant) came to play an important part in efforts to convert problems considered "transcendental" into questions of belonging to formal logic.

Ultimately, her comparison of their systems reveals that the concept of the analytic, however specific its rile in each, remains linked to a foundationalist strategy—in effect, to the transcendentalist questions Kant used when he reinterpreted the findings of his empiricist predecessors. Hence, this book's provocative claim: today's so-called logical empiricism owes much more to Kant's notion of science than to Hume's.

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Quiddities
An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary
W. V. Quine
Harvard University Press, 1987

The appellation “polymath” is often lightly bestowed, but it can be applied with confidence to the celebrated philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. Quine’s areas of interest are panoramic, as this lively book amply demonstrates.

Moving from A (alphabet) to Z (zero), Quiddities roams through more than eighty topics, each providing a full measure of piquant thought, wordplay, and wisdom, couched in easy and elegant prose—“Quine at his unbuttoned best,” in Donald Davidson’s words. Philosophy, language, and mathematics are the subjects most fully represented; tides of entries include belief, communication, free will, idiotisms, longitude and latitude, marks, prizes, Latin pronunciation, tolerance, trinity. Even the more technical entries are larded with homely lore, anecdote, and whimsical humor.

Quiddities will be a treat for admirers of Quine and for others who like to think, who care about language, and who enjoy the free play of intellect on topics large and small. For this select audience, it is an ideal book for browsing.

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Quine in Dialogue
W. V. Quine
Harvard University Press, 2008

Over the course of his life, W. V. Quine, one of the twentieth century’s great philosophers, engaged and inspired, interviewed and critiqued countless scholars, critics, and students. The qualities that distinguished him in any discussion are on clear display in this volume, which features him in dialogue with his predecessors and peers, his critics and students.

The volume begins with a number of interviews Quine gave about his perspectives on twentieth-century logic, science and philosophy, the ideas of others, and philosophy generally. Also included are his most important articles, reviews, and comments on other philosophers, from Rudolf Carnap to P. F. Strawson. The book, which contains many previously unpublished manuscripts, concludes with a selection of small pieces, written for a broader public, that give a glimpse of the philosopher’s wide interests, his sense of humor, and his warm relations to friends. The result is a wide-ranging, in-depth, and finely nuanced portrait of the humanity underlying this great twentieth-century thinker’s philosophy.

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Quintessence
Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine
W. V. Quine
Harvard University Press, 2008

Through the first half of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy was dominated by Russell, Wittgenstein, and Carnap. Influenced by Russell and especially by Carnap, another towering figure, Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) emerged as the most important proponent of analytic philosophy during the second half of the century. Yet with twenty-three books and countless articles to his credit—including, most famously, Word and Object and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"—Quine remained a philosopher's philosopher, largely unknown to the general public.

Quintessence for the first time collects Quine's classic essays (such as "Two Dogmas" and "On What There Is") in one volume—and thus offers readers a much-needed introduction to his general philosophy. Divided into six parts, the thirty-five selections take up analyticity and reductionism; the indeterminacy of translation of theoretical sentences and the inscrutability of reference; ontology; naturalized epistemology; philosophy of mind; and extensionalism. Representative of Quine at his best, these readings are fundamental not only to an appreciation of the philosopher and his work, but also to an understanding of the philosophical tradition that he so materially advanced.

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