A look at Quine's Two Dogmas essay and its impact on aesthetics, economics, physics, and other disciplines. Can a super-robot escape Quine's assault?
Sorry on the cut-off. The ending is obvious: No need for metaphysical entities. Issues will be decided pragmatically based on variety of criteria. Thank you for listening. Will prepare a more friendly intro to Quine soon.
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. 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.
Quine, "Two Dogmas"
