- Quine rejected the classical empiricist view that individual sentences correspond to individual experiences. For Quine, our entire web of beliefs faces experience as a whole. - Davidson criticized Quine for not going far enough, arguing that the notion of our beliefs fitting experience does not add anything intelligible to the concept of beliefs being simply true. - Rorty drew on Quine and Davidson to argue that philosophy should abandon searching for foundations of knowledge and instead see beliefs as connected to other beliefs rather than reality. However, Rorty's views were ambiguous and sometimes suggested radical positions not supported by Davidson.

1. Quine-Davidson-Rorty:
A Summary
Bryan W. Van Norden
© 2016

2. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Classical Empiricism
• Empiricism is the view that all knowledge comes
from our physical senses.
• According to empiricism, for every meaningful
sentence, there is a particular experience that verifies
or falsifies it.
• If we cannot associate a sentence with a particular
experience, then that sentence is meaningless.
• Scientific claims are meaningful because verified or
falsified by experience. Statements about religion,
ethics, and most of traditional philosophy are,
literally, “meaningless.”

3. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
W.V.O. Quine
(1908-2000)
• W.V.O. Quine was an empiricist, but one who
thought classic empiricism was mistaken in seeing an
individual sentence as getting its meaning and truth
from its relationship to an individual experience.
• Quine argued that our entire "web of beliefs" faces
experience as a whole.
• For example, a particular experience could lead us to
believe "there are flying saucers" or "I saw headlights
reflected off clouds." The choice of which to believe
will depend on which other beliefs we are committed
to.

4. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden

5. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
An Image of the Classic Empiricist
View
Belief1 Belief2 Belief3
Experience1 Experience2 Experience3

6. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
An Image of Quine's View
.
Beliefs
Experience
Experience
Experience
Experience

7. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Quine's Description of Things as
"Posits"
"As an empiricist I continue to think of the
conceptual scheme of science as a tool,
ultimately, for predicting future experience
in the light of past experience. Physical
objects are conceptually imported into the
situation as convenient intermediaries --
not by definition in terms of experience,
but simply as irreducible posits
comparable, epistemologically, to the gods
of Homer." (Quine, "Two Dogmas of
Empiricism," 44, emphasis mine)

8. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Quine's Description of Things as
"Posits"
“Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay
physicist, believe in physical objects and not in
Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error
to believe otherwise. But in point of
epistemological footing the physical objects and
the gods differ only in degree and not in kind.
Both sorts of entities enter our conception only
as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is
epistemologically superior to most in that it has
proved more efficacious than other myths as a
device for working a manageable structure into
the flux of experience." (Quine, "Two Dogmas
of Empiricism," 44, emphasis mine)

9. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Two Webs of Belief:
Disputed "Posits" in Boldface
B1="A bolt of lightning killed the king."
B2="The king offended Zeus."
B3="Zeus punishes those who offend him."
B4="Zeus is the god of lightning."
B1="A bolt of lightning killed the king."
B2="The king's body conducted electricity to the ground."
B3="Lightning is electricity."
B4="Electricity is electrons in motion."
B1
Experience
B2
B3
B4

10. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Summary of Quine's View
• Quine was not claiming that it is arbitrary
whether we believe in Zeus or atoms, flying
saucers or reflected lights. Quine agrees
that there are better and worse ways to
adjust our theory to sensory evidence.
• However, Quine argued that no individual
sentence is uniquely connected to any
individual experience.
• He also argued that things (whether cats or
ghosts) are simply "posits." We postulate
that they exist in order to organize and
predict our sensory experience.

11. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Donald Davidson
(1917-2003)
• Donald Davidson was a student of
Quine's.
• Davidson agreed with Quine about many
things; however, Davidson thought
Quine did not go far enough in his
criticism of classic empiricism.
• Davidson rejected the notion that
human knowledge could be grounded in
sensory experiences in any meaningful
sense.

12. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Davidson's Description of Quine's
View
"[On a view like Quine's,] for a theory to fit or
face up to the totality of possible sensory
evidence is for that theory to be true. If a theory
[refers to] physical objects, numbers, or sets,
what it says about these entities is true provided
the theory as a whole fits the sensory evidence.
One can see how, from this point of view, such
entities might be called posits. It is reasonable to
call something a posit if it can be contrasted with
something that is not. Here the something that is
not is sensory experience—at least that is the
idea." ("On the Very Idea of a Conceptual
Scheme," 193, glosses and emphasis mine)

13. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Davidson's Criticism of Quine's
View
"The trouble is that the notion of fitting the
totality of experience, like the notion of
fitting the facts, or of being true to the
facts, adds nothing intelligible to the
simple concept of being true. To speak of
sensory experience rather than the
evidence, or just the facts, expresses a
view about the source or nature of
evidence, but it does not add a new entity
to the universe against which to test
conceptual schemes." (193-194,
emphasis mine)

14. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Quine vs. Davidson
• Quine is still an empiricist: the totality of our
beliefs is judged by how well it predicts and
controls the totality of human experience.
• Davidson rejects this view, arguing that it is
just as obscure what it means for all of our
beliefs to be true of (or predict, or control)
"experience as a whole" as it is for one belief to
be true of (predict, control) an individual
experience.
• To say "our beliefs fit experience as a whole" is
just a colorful way of saying "our beliefs are
true."

15. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Richard Rorty
(1931-2007)
• Richard Rorty began as a fairly
mainstream "analytic" philosopher.
However, in Philosophy and the Mirror
of Nature and later essays and books,
he argued that mainstream philosophy
was fundamentally misguided in
searching for a foundation for our
beliefs.
• A significant part of Rorty's
argument was based on his
understanding of Quine and Davidson.

16. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Rorty on
Language and the World
• What Rorty said about the relationship
between language and the world is ambiguous.
• Sometimes, he suggests a sensible and
moderate position that he derives from
Davidson.
• Other times, Rorty slips into a way of
speaking that could easily be mistaken for
subjectivism, relativism, or idealism
(views that make reality somehow dependent
on the human mind).

17. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Some of Rorty's Comments Suggest a
Radical View
• "...there is no way to get outside
our beliefs and our language so as to
find some test other than coherence
[among our beliefs]." (178)
• "We have to drop the notion of
correspondence [with reality] for
sentences as well as for thoughts,
and see sentences as connected with
other sentences rather than with the
world." (372-373)

18. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Some of Rorty's Comments Sugggest a
Moderate View
"...to say that we do not know how to
find a way of describing ...inquiry
into nature except in our own terms...
[is] just a way of saying that our
present views about nature are our
only guide in talking about the
relation between nature and our
words." (276)

19. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
Davidson's View Does Not Support the
Radical Formulation that Rorty Gives
“In giving up dependence on the concept of an
uninterpreted reality, something outside all
schemes and science, we do not relinquish the
notion of objective truth—quite the contrary.
Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and
reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth
relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this
kind of relativity goes by the board. ... In giving
up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not
give up the world, but re-establish unmediated
touch with the familiar objects whose antics
make our sentences and opinions true or
false.” (Davidson, 198, emphasis mine)

20. (c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden
"Unmediated Touch with...Familiar
Objects"
Davidson agrees with common sense that...
• there is a world independent of our language.
• we can talk about language-independent objects (tables,
cats, atoms, galaxies) and sensory experiences.
However, Davidson insists...
• there is no way to "get outside of our language," in the
sense that we have to use our language to talk about the
world, objects, or sensory experiences. Consequently...
• there is no helpful way of justifying our sentences through
a semantic theory that explains their "correspondence" to
some language-independent things. So...
• to say "this sentence corresponds to the facts" is just a
colorful way of saying "this sentence is true."