Dear Kamila:

I'm sorry I did not respond to this email sooner.  It's not because I wasn't interested or intrigued.  But I have two limitations:

First, Professor Alvarez understands Quine's philosophy and related literature in far greater detail than I.  And so whatever criticisms I might have, I'm sure they would be superficial.  Second, my issues with Quine stem more from what I take to be the “Naturalist” project.  Nevertheless, I suppose I could share with you some of the reasons that I regard the "Naturalist" in philosophy with suspicion.  Here are some of them.

1. I think the question. “Why are successful scientific theories successful?” is a reasonable an intriguing question that cannot be answered satisfactorily by an anti-realist instrumentalism or neo-Pragmatism.  The success of science seems somewhat miraculous unless one adopts some kind of correspondence account of theory and objective reality. Or at least again so it seems to me.

2. Those naturalistic reductions which seem most promising, themselves turn upon a kind of conceptual analysis which is not part of the scientific project.  I mean, were I to redefine “grace in movement” as “motor efficiency” or “muscular efficiency,” I would have ostensibly reduced the apparently non-natural aesthetic concept of “grace and movement” to something that could be and is studied by the empirical sciences.  I think this particular reduction doesn't work actually, but that's not my point here.  My point here is that for me to successfully reduce “grace” to “motor efficiency” requires a kind of conceptual analysis which itself is not part of the scientific project, but rather part of traditional philosophy.

3. Another reason I find the naturalist project problematic which may be relevant to Quine, but is really a criticism of Naturalism sometimes understood as Scientism.  To suggest that all rational inquiry can only take place within the dialogue of science is either incoherent or trivial.  I mean by that, the sentence “All rational inquiry is confined to the realm of science.” is not itself a scientific claim.  Hence it is incoherent.  One can only avoid that if one agrees that, as a kind of epistemological “working presumption,” and as such it is a sort of meta-scientific clam to be included within the discipline of science, but we have now imported traditional epistemology into the scientific project.  Theoretically we might likewise import metaphysical claims as well.  If “science” is expanded to include metaphysics, epistemology, and who knows perhaps natural theology, ethics and aesthetics, then we have trivialized the idea that all rational inquiry must take place within the confines of “Science,” since we've expanded “science” to include all forms of rational inquiry.

4. Another problem is that traditional philosophy is required to interpret the deliverances is of science.  In other words, the debate over whether or not scientific theories refer to real mind independent realities or are merely instrumental constructions for modeling experience, this debate is itself a philosophical debate not a scientific debate.  Therefore, philosophy is required, or at least it seems to me, traditional philosophy is required to interpret the fruits of science.  There are other examples.

5. Finally the physical Sciences, principally physics itself, restricts itself to the quantifiable.  But this sets up an immediate problem.  The most that ever could hope to be achieved is a coordination of the quantifiable with the qualitative.  But coordination does not prove identity.  Now our Scientistic friend might say, “Well the quantified redescriptions of the qualitative really is all there is.”  That the qualitative is nothing other than the quantitative.  But, as already noted, that's deeply problematic.  They haven't established this, it seems to me,  but merely presume it.   Alternatively, they might say well we can simply ignore the qualitative, since it's nothing that appears when we look at the world scientifically.  But just because the qualitative disappears when we put on our quantitative goggles doesn't demonstrate it lacks any degree of reality and need not be accounted for in any way.  It seems to me the mind body problem is not a resistance to Scientism, but a direct consequence of it.  

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts on it.  But it sounds like you had a wonderful semester and have benefited from the intellectual engagement with Professor Alvarez and your classmates.  My compliments to your professor and to you.

Sincerely,

Kenton

Oh, two parting thoughts.  First of all, I certainly agree with Quine that the reductive empirical project (a la Locke/ Hume/ Ayer etc.) was sort of myopic, due to the impoverished view of experience that they were working with.  I think this is a point brilliantly made by Whitehead.  However, the fact that we cannot offer necessary and sufficient conditions for “analyticity” or “synonymy” does not necessarily demonstrate these terms lack any meaning.  For one, it should not surprise us I don't think that we cannot offer a non-circular account of analyticity.  But perhaps more telling is the fact that if you put 100 philosophers in a room and gave them 100 claims to examine and asked them to sort those claims into analytic and synthetic claims, I think you would find a very broad consensus on most.  So, if Wittgenstein is correct, that understanding a term means being able to use it as a competent language user, and if we're using these terms competently, then we understand these terms, even if we can't define them.