Talk:Willard Van Orman Quine

Vienna Circle
Itt might be worth noting that although Quine rejected the synthetic/analytic distinction, he held onto other key doctrines of the Vienna Circle, e.g. that the scope of language is limited to verifiables; which restricts the scope of science dramatically. The claim that some physical object exists, for instance, is taken to mean only that it's useful for explaining our observations, not that it really exists. So material objects are defined in terms of our observations, and since our observations are also defined in terms of material objects (Quine even calls himself a physicalist), it's hard to see what's left. This whole spooky worldview or lack thereof is carried over fairly neatly from the Vienna Circle. An anecdote in one of Quine's books illustrates the distinction neatly; he said Carnap had complained about Quine's using the word "ontology" when it didn't mean anything, and Quine replied that in his ethics of terminology, words that didn't mean anything were precisely those ripe for redefinition. Presumably this would also apply to the word "exist" and some others. Quine is closer to the Vienna Circle and farther from common belief than his use of language leads people to believe. The same, incidentally, is true of Daniel Dennett, another student of Quine's as I recall.

Should qua ("qua lay physicist") not be in italics? Anjouli 13:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I do not believe Quine to be a verificationist, as per the wiki article.

In "Two Dogmas" Quine clams "So, if the verification theory can be accepted as an adequate account of statement synonymy, the notion of analyticity is saved after all." And later: "The dogma of reductionism, even in its attenuated form, is intimately connected with the other dogma: that there is a cleavage between the analytic and the synthetic. We have found ourselves led, indeed, from the latter problem to the former through the verification theory of meaning." And, once he has claimed that the analytic-synthetic distinction is wrong, together with the verificationist theory of meaning, he says "But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole."

How are you getting Quine as a verificationist? This is simply not true. Nothing about our observations leads necessarily to the belief in material objects -- not even to the belief in physical objects. This is just to say that science is undertermined, that it proceeds by consensus, and that it is driven by practical considerations (he calls it an "extension of common sense")... not that science does not work, nor that science needs to proceed by verifiables. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.223.10.161 (talk) 23:24, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Skepticism and indeterminacy
The last part about indeterminacy of translation, beginning with "There is no way to escape this circle. In fact, it holds just as well in interpreting speakers of one's own language, and even one's own past utterances. This does not, contrary to a widely-disseminated caricature of Quine, lead to skepticism about meaning".

I think it's controversial to say that Quine's theory of meaning isn't a skeptical position. I can not see anything on Philosophical skepticism that makes me think that Quine's theory of meaning can't be called skeptic from at least some point of view.

I can't see how meaning-indeterminacy about one's own utterances follows from the field linguist-argument. Something must be missing in the argument.

Davidw 20:41, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ontology
Quine's statements on ontology are overly grand. Why doesn't he say that philosophy is about what we know and may possibly know, and what we can say about what we know. That's very different and more﻿ modest than what there is, and what we can say about what there is. It seems to me that Quine is more or less hoist by his own petard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.109.195.126 (talk) 22:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Why does Quine reject synthetic/analytic distinction?
The article would be improved if some rationale would be given for the Quines rejection because, as explained in the article, the synthetic/analytic distinction makes perfect sense to me.

WpZurp 07:48, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I have just read the “Rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction” section. I find it quite unconvincing. I don't really see his argument (at least as presented here) that bachelor & unmarried are rather not synonyms. The way its argument seems to be diddling on words. Can any one present a more formal argumentation? Xah Lee 21:34, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)


 * Not only are "bachelor" and "unmarried male" not synonyms (the key question I heard in a philo class was, "Is the Pope a bachelor?"), but I think (its been a while) that Quine's rejection hinges on the idea that an analytic statement must contain concepts that are logically equivalent (synonymous), but words are only synonymous insofar as they relate to the world in some way. Going at it the other way, the world is characterized in certain ways by the languages and the conceptual schemes, including logical equivalences, that are packed into those languages.  So the distinction gets blurred either way you approach it.  -Seth Mahoney 22:34, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

The problem of "collateral information" is mentioned in the article and should be remembered when considering the problem of synonymy. The question whether two words are synonomous can be couched within the question of whether those two words are interchangable within the same sentence--that is, whether the meaning, understood perhaps in terms of the information they provide, if it is an informative sentence, is changed or remains the same when the words are switched. So, for example, in the case of the sentence "John is a bachelor", can ione replace 'bachelor' with 'unmarried male' and yield the exact same meaning? There are different ways of looking at this. For example, you could argue that the 'unmarried male' is implicitly qualified to mean to refer to humans, but that is not an 'analytic' truth, it depends on your interpretation of the context. Whereas 'bachelor' refers explicitly to human's.

The question isn't exactly whether the two terms are synonyms, but what exactly the mechanism by which synonymy functions. Two words cannot mean the exact same thing by simple virtue of the fact that you say they do. This might seem sophistical, but it seems to me that the bare use of a word in a sentence conveys the along with its literl meaning the information that that word refer to the thing it does, which is informtion that no other word can convey.

EtB: I suspect that there is a factual inaccuracy in the page. It claims that Quine used the verification theory of meaning to attack the analytic/synthetic distinction. This cannot be straightforwardly true. Verificationism *is* the second dogma of empiricism; and Quine additionally holds that each dogma entails the other! So if the statement is to be true, then "verificationism" will have to be given some nonstandard interpretation.


 * I you to read Quine's Two Dogmas of Empricism on Jstor if you have access. Otherwise I'm sure there are free copies posted elsewhere on the web. The brunt of his argument seems to be that the '=' sign of an identity statement (e.g., bachelor = unmarried male) cannot be logically defined (without circularity), and that it cannot even be defined in ordinary language without uncertainty. So logically or "illogically", we cannot make sense of the statement that x means the same thing as y. We may think we know that x means y, but we cannot satisfactorily justify our supposed knowledge.--Heyitspeter (talk) 19:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Recent changes
1) The recent changes (by 138.130.145.250) were by me. I apologise for not creating an account first and also for not using preview more effectively.

2) The article as it stood contained some serious misrepresentations of Quine's theory. Though there are of course different interpretations of Quine's work the points that I have altered attributed to Quine either a view that is flat out contrary to some central doctrine he explicitly advocated, or a non-sequitur. I have not intended present a controvertial reading of his work.

3) I hope I have done better justice to the question of why Quine rejected the a/s distinction, and also made clear the distinction between skepticism concerning meanings (which Quine advocated) and skepticism about meaningfulness or significance (which he did not).

(Though I didn't include it in the article the application of the indeterminacy argument to oneself is nothing special since according to Quine the only evidence of what anyone means, including oneself, is behavioural. If it weren't how could we ever be sure that we taught children to associate words with the right meanings? That this question is silly is Quine's main point about meanings.)

Surprised 13:04, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your contribution! I don't know enough about Quine but your edits are appreciated  :).  If you're interested, take a look at WikiProject Philosophy and join the list of philosophy contributors.  --FranksValli 10:07, 9 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I know it's been awhile, but I think it's good work too - more of this is needed!--Levalley (talk) 07:13, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Gavagai
A search for "Gavagai" is redirected to the page on W.V.O Quine. I feel the concept is sufficiently notable to deserve a page of its own. Perhaps merging the section on the indeterminacy of translation with other facts about the term in Quine's work would form an adequate little stub on "gavagai". Does anyone agree with me on this?" Kevin L. 07:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I actually came accross a page on indeterminacy of translation a while ago. It's not very good, though I attempted to at least write a little intro and shorten the section in this article from which it was copied (as it was getting long) so as to stop it just being an obvious copy-and-paste job. I'll fix gavagai so it redirects there - I don't really think it needs its own stub. Please do help me edit the aforementioned page instead - if you like, you could expand the section focussing specifically on the 'gavagai' example? Thomas Ash 22:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Gavagai should have its own page, I assume it does by now (2009). If not, that's shocking.  It has so many references beyond philosophy at this point, it's a perfect Wiki.--Levalley (talk) 07:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Agid?
What does this term mean? The article includes the following quote: "Life is agid, life is fulgid." Could the word used in the original quote actually be "algid"? I could not find any proof of the existence of the word "agid" in the Shorter OED or anywhere online.

Defend "Limited Curiosity"
"Like many analytic philosophers, his knowledge and curiosity about the history of ideas—logic and foundational mathematics excepted—was rather limited."

What evidence is there that he had either limited knowledge, or curiosity, about "the history of ideas"?


 * I agree; that sentence is highly objectionable. The opening clause is crass and false stereotyping.  I've removed it and replaced it with something that is objective, and captures its kernel of truth. 271828182 18:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a hilarious - and wildly inaccurate - attempt at dismissing analytic philosophy in general (from a "continental" perspective). Looks like sheer vandalism. 207.112.42.78 (talk) 09:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * My lord. Disagreeing is not vandalism.  There's still freedom of speech where I live.  Putting "bork bork bork" in the middle of a sentence is vandalism.  Maybe Steven Colbert claiming to be an expert on consciousness is vandalism to the consciousness article, especially as bears were mentioned as chief examples of consciousness - but even that it is only borderline "vandalism" on a topic where no one (no one) knows the proper definition and the word belongs to no one.  OTOH I totally agree that the tone is wrong and the statement is unsubstantiated.  Why go to claims of "vandalism" when the issue can be dealt with through normal editing?  People have opinions.  Accuracy will prevail if we follow the rules, get citations, make sure they say what we insist they say, and so forth.--Levalley (talk) 07:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The Library of Babel
Theres some debate on The Library of Babel about a section which gives Quines philosophical interpretaion of the story. However we do not have any suitable references. I'm wondering if anyone here knows if quine wrote on the subject or knows of a suitable reference. --Salix alba (talk) 08:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hiya - I was able to find the reference. It's from Quine's philosophical dictionary - "Quiddities".  Here's the entry for the Babel Library example: http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/universal_library.html.  It's very late at night, but on a glance reading, the original addition to the Babel article wasn't very clear - hopefully Quine made himself reasonably clear here (see link).  FranksValli 09:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Wow quick work, thanks. --Salix alba (talk) 09:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Style
The section, "Quine's Naturalism" is full of first-person language, as well as questions that make the section's tone sound conversational. There are times (usually when discussing a proposition) when it may make sense to use first person, and to ask questions, but this does not account for all of the section's use. Much of it simply needs to be rewritten.


 * It's also completely unwikified and so out of tone with the rest of the article that I suspect it's a fairly recent text dump. Perhaps it should just be removed or radically pared down, pending further expansion. --Delirium 09:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the text, it also has indented paragraphs. With the first person, essay form as well, this is pretty clearly a cut and paste job from somebody else's essay. --Jvv62 21:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, in the next to last sentence of the section, "Quine's Naturalism" the phrase "reigns to our own lives" appears. A Google search turns up nine instances of this usage all referring back to this Wikipedia article. A search for "reins to our own lives", which is probably the intended phrase, returns zero occurences. Perhaps indicating that the source is not a published one, at least on the Web. Maybe someone's class paper or other un-proofed document? 216.31.3.226 00:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC) ubietous

More notable ideas
Added three new notable ideas, 01/05/06:

1) inscrutability of reference 2) ontological relativity 3) radical translation —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.199.27.171 (talk) 15:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC).

I would like to see History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science, BOOK III: "Rudolf Carnap on Semantical Systems and W.V.O. Quine's Pragmatist Critique" included in the external links. This site offers free downloads by chapter for public use. 12.73.241.35 15:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Thomas J. Hickey

Why is Douglas Hofstadter's name under See Also
I am very interested in knowing the connection bewteen these two people, Quine and Hofstadter, thank you! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vanished user lolalsdkj4ijesis22 (talk • contribs) 07:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC).


 * I am not sure, but I believe the philosophical connection goes through Rudolf Carnap. -- Jvv62 02:23, 9 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think this is in reference to Hofstadter's book, 'Godel, Escher and Bach' which discusses the notion of recursion. I think he refers to the term 'to quine', which is now an English verb, meaning to define in a reciprocal way.  I believe that this definition comes from the philosopher, although I'm not sure of the etymology.  And I've only read Hofstadter's version of this, so I am unsure as to whether Quine really said any such thing or not.  24.208.4.209 17:24, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I would also like to know why there is a reference to Hofstadter. The term "quine" comes from the satirical The Philosophical Lexicon (Dennett 1978c, 8th edn., 1987), where it is said to mean "To deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant." Some people who should be in the See Also section are Donald Davidson, Hillary Putnam, and Daniel Dennett, all students of Quine. I will add them. Kronocide 16:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course, they are already in the box. Then I just want to know what Hofstadter is doping there. :-) Kronocide 16:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Quine was a Reagan Republican, believe it or not.

Quine's Naturalism
I'm not skilled with Wikipedia and so I'm hesitant to edit it myself, but the current entry under the "naturalism" subsection is not even grammatically sensible, let alone coherent. I considered "undoing" that change, but it looks like it replaced what may have been cut-and-paste copywritten material. This needs fixing! Spetey 21:42, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

request for help
... from anyone who watches/has contributed to this article. I just made this addition to the article on Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theory&diff=prev&oldid=171922842 - I'd appreciate it if people would go over it, make any necessry edits to correct or clarify it or just to improve the style. Thanks, Slrubenstein  |  Talk 21:22, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion to combine Overview section with the Lead
It is unorthodox to have such a short Lead and another section for Overview. I suggest removing Overview section and moving it all to Lead. Ideally, the article look similar to that is of Hilary Putnam. Stampit (talk) 23:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC) Since there for no objection about my suggestion for 2 weeks, I went ahead and edited the article myself. If anyone is not satisfied with the edit, please leave me a message before you undo my edit. Thanks. Stampit (talk) 22:38, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

-

I think Quine would have rejected the description "Analytic Philosopher" being applied to him.

Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 07:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Karel Lambert
I'm reading Karel Lambert's 1967 work on free logic and I have an interesting quote:

"It's an irony that Quine's famous aphorism that to be is to [be] the value of a variable seems to have no adequate formal expression in the system of logic he so vigorously espouses--unless we complicate that theory with definite descriptions, etc." (Italics his)

He's arguing that these complications are unnecessary and that free logics can formalize such expressions very simply. Unfortunately, I'm not confident enough in my understanding of Quine to edit the article. But if anybody else is, this could be good information to include. Rdanneskjold (talk) 18:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Stampit
Could you explain what Lambert means in layman's term? What complications are you referring to? Thanks in advance for the explanation. Stampit (talk) 00:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Rdanneskjold
Well Quine argued powerfully for classical propositional logic. Alternately, he held that "to be is to be the value of a variable". Since I'm not confident enough in understanding Quine, I'm not sure I could explain this well enough. But I think it means that, to be, one must be the subject of a series of descriptions which can be made clear in a well-defined interpretation of a propositional language; and, moreover, this just is existence. I doubt I can give layman's terms for something like this. In order to make a propositional logic language that can interpret the natural language, though, you need to interpret the natural language as having all the properties of propositional logic. Most relevantly here, that means the law of excluded middle. In order to get LEM in ordinary language, you have to explain whether sentences like "The present king of France is bald," is true or false in light of the fact that there is no present king of France. Bertrand Russell said that such a statement should be interpretted as having an existence claim, and so if we want to put it into propositional logic we first have to think of it as the collection of statements, "There is at least one present king of France. If anybody is the present king of France, he's one particular guy (this is just a convoluted way of saying that there is no more than one present king of France).  And this guy is bald." This we can turn into propositional logic easily. But it's a massive complication of the theory of logic, which Lambert argues he can wipe out by means of free logic, because free logic doesn't assume that you're talking about anything. So you can still make a formal sentence about the present king of France, and it will be false. But you don't need to assume the existence of the subject of conversation, nor do you need Russell's theory of descriptions. Free logic makes things easy-peasy and philosophically neutral. Rdanneskjold (talk) 14:25, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Undergraduate students as "notable students"
Ted Kaczynski's advisor was Shields at Michigan. Tom Lehrer never received a PhD in mathematics. They, along with Daniel Dennett, were merely undergraduate students of Quine. Is this notable? Tsoeto (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 19:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC).

Dennett mentions some of his undergraduate encounters with "Professor Quine" in some of his books (Darwin's dangerous idea is dedicated to him). Whether he had truly relevant contact with him or not, the fact that he considers it relevant should make it enough for the reference. 189.146.2.217 (talk) 08:37, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Q: Family connections
Was he related to Ward Tunte Van Orman the balloonist (1894-1978), also from Ohio? bio ? NVO (talk) 07:18, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * :) Probably not. --Heyitspeter (talk) 10:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

"shabby black undergraduates"?
Regarding the following excerpt from the "Right wing leanings" section:

" ... the depiction of two Harvard students speaking during a demonstration as 'two shabby black undergraduates.'"

The inclusion of this quotation, or at least its presentation, strikes me as obviously problematic. First, it is clearly intended to suggest that Quine was somehow racist; while I agree that the quote doesn't look good, I should think it insufficient to justify this insinuation. Second, even if we accept that Quine was racist, the inclusion of this bit in this particular section would then seem to suggest that racism is characteristic of "Right wing" political views.

There are other problems with this section (Why is a description of Quine's opposition to Derrida also located here? Plenty of liberal academics, particularly in English speaking countries, have dismissed Derrida), but I think that this one is the most obvious.

--Malaikhanh (talk) 18:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)


 * From a logical point of view, it is not possible for Quine to have had right wing or racist leanings. The reason is that he was an academic and therefore could not have possessed such predicates. "Shabby" and "black" are not necessarily evaluative adjectives. It might be possible that the persons in question possessed, in fact, such attributes.Lestrade (talk) 19:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)Lestrade

This new "Right-wing leanings" section is absolutely horrible and unencyclopedic in almost too many ways to count. The title is a WP:SOAPBOX, and the random collection of smears have almost nothing to do with Quine's reasons for notability. The truth is that Quine was a bit right-wing, but what he was known and read for was analytic logic and epistemology, and you really have to dig (and cherry-pick) to actually find much anything on his politics. Moreover, trying to spin Quine's attitude about Derrida into that sort of politics is nonsensical, and throwing in some random (but mostly false, and certainly uncited) claims that Derrida was "progressive" in order to insinuate something is worse still. There's definitely and obvious some conflict in the styles of thought between analytic philosophers and "continental" ones--Derrrida in particular--but this has nothing to do with politics in the sense of American political parties. Plenty of liberal Democrats in the USA (wrongly to my mind) had the same sort of reaction to Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, etc. that Quine did.

I don't watch this article (though I've read it before some time ago), so was shocked to find the introduction of this, well, crap earlier this month. It has to go. I will not delete the whole section, but it is going to get a serious scissors to it. LotLE × talk 06:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Not sure but it looks like there is an error on the "further reading" section showing the authors as (_____). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smeezekitty (talk • contribs) 03:19, 19 February 2010 (UTC)


 * That means the last mentioned author, once again. in this case, Gibson, Roger F. trespassers william (talk) 22:28, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I would like to '3rd' the objection to the section on Quine's politics, and most especially to placing the mention of his differences with Derrida in that section specifically, as the latter seems to imply that Derrida is unquestionably accepted around the world as a cornerstone of leftism or progressivism. It is to this reader at least painfully obvious that mentioning these differences is a shorthand to certain people for "bad bad analytic philosopher".

One ought to remember that Derrida's politics are hardly transparent in much of his work, and that moreover, one can object to many facets of his work- over reliance on Saussure's dated linguistic ideas, for instance- with which one can take exception. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.65.218.117 (talk) 01:41, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

So where do we stand with this thread now? The Derrida stuff is still under Quine's conservative/rightist beliefs, but the "shabby black students" thing has been removed. That seems like a reversal of what should happen: the defense of Quine's racial beliefs, above, are that his statements might lead us to infer something about his character, which would be unfair. But that just means that Quine's own words were poorly construed. If we can find a good citation, that should remain. I agree, the stuff about Derrida need not be directly connected to Quine's political beliefs, because while it might be true that the relationship to postmodernism characterizes the academic (or humanities) right and left these days, there's no reason to synthesize a big case out of that kind of speculation. Quine's relationship to Derrida and his inopportune racial comments are footnotes to his career--they need to be included, but not worked into a psychological or political profile. Hmmm... a Google search is unproductive at giving me anything about Quine's "shabby black undergraduates" comment, except by a conservative blog claiming him as one of their own. If someone can dig up a controversy, it's worth being in the article.184.77.32.182 (talk) 05:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

verificationism
I've made some changes to the sentences on verifcationism, citing an outside paper, but noting that the debate about his relation to verificationism is ongoing in philosophy. Inaquandry (talk) 21:54, 21 May 2010 (UTC)inaquandry

Boolos
George Boolos wrote he went to study philosophy after reading Quine's ''Math. Logic''. I personally hate the boxy stuff so I won't add him under "influenced", but is it notable enough to mention after the list of students in bio section? trespassers william (talk) 22:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Category nomination

 * The eponymous category for Quine has been nominated for renaming here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:35, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved: casting vote: this discussion has run 32 days. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:15, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

W. V. Quine → Willard Van Orman Quine — I do not support the renaming of this article, but I want to confirm that the article is at the correct name. I believe "W. V. Quine" is supported by WP:COMMONNAME. In this CFD, I proposed renaming the category to match the article name, but two editors disagreed and said that they thought that the article should be renamed. The CFD had few participants, so I want to find out if there is consensus for the current name or for the expanded name. --Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:12, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Relisting to sound out alternative proposal. Andrewa (talk) 21:09, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Either way, the first sentence should either start off either "W. V. Quine (Willard Van Orman Quine)...", or "Willard Van Orman Quine (W. V. Quine)...". PPdd (talk) 05:05, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I would prefer Willard Van Orman Quine, but this name is fine too. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Rather than citing personal preference, which do you think meets the WP:COMMONNAME guideline? Good Ol’factory (talk) 07:25, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * W.V. Quine meets critera for common name and therefore is best title. &mdash; Philogos (talk) 02:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I would prefer the proposed title and don't think the article should have been moved. "W. V. Quine" is only more common (and I admit it probably is, but it is impossible really to tell) because that's what academics published under in his day. I believe it has more to do with publishers' inclinations than with authors' preferences, or with the actual usage of other authors when referring to one another (although this, too, might be influenced by editors). Cf. J. J. C. Smart and J. L. Austin. It's hardly a rule, but it was a trend. Srnec (talk) 03:19, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Rather than citing personal preference, which do you think meets the WP:COMMONNAME guideline? &mdash; Philogos (talk) 02:32, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I answered that question already, but I'll repeat. We can justify, per the guidelines, moving the page to Willard Van Orman Quine and so we should. He is commonly referred to this way (I googled "Quine" and looked at the book results) and the initials are only common on the covers of books he wrote. It is not often necessary to call him anything other than Quine in context, however. There are several books titled "[On] Quine" and they all appear to introduce him with his full name in the text. As I noted, "it is impossible really to tell" which is more common, since the majority of references to him will be spoken, not written, and he is not spoken of nearly so widely as Bill Clinton or guinea pigs, nor is any user likely to produce a comprehensive survey of the mass of relevant literature. Srnec (talk) 02:51, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * This is wrong. In his day, W.V.O.Quine was generally preferred to W.V.Quine. I still have numerous article offprints from those glorious days (and refer to them from time to time). It's more recently that the "O" seems to have been dropped. Andrewa (talk) 12:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Qualified support . The current name is certainly wrong, and this proposal is an improvement but perhaps there's a still better one, see below. Andrewa (talk) 23:07, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose (change of vote). On further research, the once ubiquitous "O" seems to have now fallen from fashion. Andrewa (talk) 12:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose The Library of Congress not only prefers W. V. Quine in listing his books, but includes such works as Essays on the Philosophy of W. V. Quine [sic].  The full name is not used in such contexts. This is one way of dealing with long names; compare The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell; never B. A. W. Russell.   W. V. O. Quine is also defensible but less common. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Gad, but you're right... the spines of all the relevant volumes in my personal library of formal logic (etc) read "W.V.O.Quine", as do the bylines on the article offprints (too many to count). But times change, and checking the online catalogues of the three institutions from which all these articles came, I see the "O" is now most commonly omitted. I have learned something. Andrewa (talk) 12:14, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. Most of the reference works I checked, including the Encyclopædia Britannica and The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, use Willard Van Orman Quine.  Gamaliel (talk) 06:46, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support -- I support a move to "Willard Van Orman Quine" as the main title, and we should redirect all others to it. That is his full name. It is consistent with the category, and Hegel, etcetera. I think article titles with initials should usually be avoided. Greg Bard (talk) 23:34, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Alternative proposal
What about W. V. O. Quine? That's the name used at On What There Is (with a small v there admittedly) and at Two Dogmas of Empiricism, and also in every bibliography I can remember in many years study of formal logic. Andrewa (talk) 21:09, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Withdraw this proposal in view of discussion above. Andrewa (talk) 12:14, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Ranked 5th in Recent Poll
Consider this sentence in the introduction: "A recent poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries.[2]" To what extent was this poll "conducted among analytic philosophers"? It appears to have been a temporary poll open to the public on a blog dedicated to philosophy. The results of the poll are most likely biased to favour the views of the blog readers and thus the blog itself (assuming the readers agree with the blog). As such, I argue that this fact is misrepresented. If it were to be represented for what it really is, I argue that it is too trivial and arbitrary for an introduction on Quine.Jescapism (talk) 19:34, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Van vs. van...
I am noticing that the name "Van" is written with a capital V - but this is not a first name. It is, in fact, part of the family name meaning 'of' and similar to the german 'von' (as, for instance, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) or in the netherlands 'van' (as in Vincent van Gogh). His father's name was Cloyd Robert Quine and his mother's name was Harriet van Orman. The two names were combined to form "van Orman Quine". While many online pages may not be realizing this, thus copying the same mistake over and over, I hope Wikipedia will want to correct this... Mittgenstein (talk) 02:27, 13 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Stanford agrees. Any objections to moving the page? &mdash; goethean 16:00, 6 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Quine capitalized it himself when he wrote his name (and in his publications), and most sources capitalize it. Good Ol’factory (talk) 16:30, 10 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I have to agree with User:Good Olfactory &mdash; goethean 17:54, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I know this is old, but I was curious and did some research. I found here that the last name of his mother was Van Orman (Harriet Van Orman) with a capital V and his friends called him Van. I could not find "van Orman" with a lowercase "v" as a surname anywhere in the web. In contrast, I found van Rood as a surname with a lower case "v". I conclude that it depends on the surname.  Also, the Stanford article switched for a capital "V" between Sep. 2018 and Nov. 2018. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:18, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Derrida quote
Why is there a long quote from Derrida giving his analysis of why Quine opposed him, but only a extremely brief explanation of Quine's reasons for such? And shouldn't Quine's reasons for opposing Derrida come BEFORE Derrida's rebuttal? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chiarabelle (talk • contribs) 03:05, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Comics on philosophers
I agree with 2620:0:2820:a0b:69cf:15a3:b2e2:1595 that the comic link needn't be removed from the article. There is a quite similar link at Wittgenstein: "Doxiadis, Apostolos and Papadimitriou, Christos. Logicomix. Bloomsbury, 2009." I didn't regret reading it. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 21:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The fact that trivia exists at other articles is not a reason for burdening this article with trivia also. Respectfully, while you may have enjoyed a comic about philosophers, that does not make it encyclopedic information. ImprovingWiki (talk) 04:02, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

You are right, my reasons for tolerating are rather weak. But your reasons for removing aren't strong either: it's not too clear that WP:UNDUE applies here. It is certainly not worth an edit war. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 05:24, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Jochen Burghardt, the material is undue and inappropriate to an encyclopedia. Random internet trivia like this has no larger significance, and is a perfect example of undue material. It is simply somebody adding something they think is amusing to the article on Quine. You were wrong to restore it. ImprovingWiki (talk) 01:34, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

You never gave a reason why it is inappropriate; e.g. what is the difference to the Wittgenstein comic? Moreover, WP:UNDUE doesn't mention a notion of "undue material" at all, but speaks only about "undue weight", i.e. about an undue relation between importance and presentation length. We could try to agree on a sufficiently short version of the text, e.g. just "Existential Comic on Quine" under "External links". - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 10:13, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I gave an absolutely clear and unambiguous reason why it is inappropriate. You simply ignored it. The Wittgenstein article is irrelevant. Your comments about WP:UNDUE are unfortunately wiki-lawyering. Trivia is undue. ImprovingWiki (talk) 05:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Garden path sentence?
Maybe it's just me, but I did a doubletake upon reading the lede sentence that begins "A recent poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine ..." Choor monster (talk) 15:29, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130720223632/http://www.inamori-f.or.jp/laureates/k12_c_willard/ctn_e.html to http://www.inamori-f.or.jp/laureates/k12_c_willard/ctn_e.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20170314083709/http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/schome/FAs/ce1000-137.html to http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/schome/FAs/ce1000-137.html

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Genealogy and names
The article van (Dutch) says I suspect that this article is wrong, but wanted to check with editors here. I haven't been able to find Willard Van Orman Quine's maternal grandparents, but here are the sources I found for his mother's name: Apart from potential inclusion in this article, this information is also described on Wikidata at Q214969 & Q214969. Daask (talk) 15:41, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * "Harriet Ellis Van Orman Quine"
 * "Harriet Ellis Van Orman"
 * "Harriet Ellis Van Orman Quine"
 * "Harriet Ellis “Hattie” VanOrman Quine"
 * https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/107196564/harriet-ellis-quine
 * "Harriet Ellis "Hattie" Quine (Van Orman)"
 * https://www.geni.com/people/Harriet-Quine/6000000032295454179
 * https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/107196564/harriet-ellis-quine
 * "Harriet Ellis "Hattie" Quine (Van Orman)"
 * https://www.geni.com/people/Harriet-Quine/6000000032295454179
 * I removed mention of Quine from the article van (Dutch). Daask (talk) 15:45, 13 August 2022 (UTC)