Quines Physicalist Epistemology :: Philosophy Theories Papers

Quine's Physicalist Epistemology Quine, in his article "In Praise of the Observational Sentence," claims to establish naturalized epistemology and the work of science as a realist mapping of the world. Invoking Rorty's criticisms of foundationalism from Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, this paper analyzes Quine's observational sentence by discussing the unresolved issue of justification. It discusses whether a causal explanation can be a justified true belief and adequate "grounding" of knowledge. I suggest that the criticisms of Quine bypass similarities between Rorty's position and Quine's. Such polemic positions - characteristic of the postmodern/modern debate - imply a false dichotomy. These criticisms of justification and grounding are best understood as a means to argue for eclectic viewpoints of human understanding. I conclude that Wittgenstein's idea of "human life form," or world-picture, provides further context for insisting upon interdisciplinary dialogue in lieu of an assumed hierarchy of specialize d sciences. In his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty argues that Quine's doctrines of indeterminacy of translation and ontological relativity call for the end of epistemology. Nonetheless, Rorty criticizes Quine's physicalist stance. According to Rorty, Quine's claim that observation sentences are a foundation for empiricism contains a contradictory ontological bias. In a more recent article "In Praise of the Observation Sentence" (1993), Quine allegedly clarifies his physicalist epistemology addressing criticisms analogous to Rorty's. Quine states that naturalized epistemology is not a theory about an "internal domain of qualia;" it is an "intermediate position" between what Quine calls "old phenomenalism" and anti-epistemology. (1) He argues that observation sentences entail observations of the world itself that are not entirely subjective. Consequently, in comparison to "old," that is, analytical phenomenalism, Quine claims that his use of language and logic is a "more realis tic rational reconstruction" of knowledge. (2) In this paper, I examine Rorty's challenge that Quine's physicalist claims are contradictory and Quine's recent defense. I conclude that Quine's position is not inconsistent although his "intermediate position" within epistemology remains controversial. Overview of Quine's Intermediate Position on Observation For Quine, classical epistemology has its most recent roots in British Empiricism. Consequently, according to Quine, epistemology's primary concern has been to clarify how we derive natural knowledge from sense data. The link between observation and the natural world is allegedly a resource for privileged access to such natural knowledge. Quine in parallel to classical epistemology asserts that "perceptual similarity is the basis of all learning, all habit formation, and it is testable in people and other animals by the reinforcement and extinction of conditional response.