Re: Quine's "Word & Object"

On 03/21/2025 09:34 PM, Ross Finlayson wrote:

Quine's "Word & Object"
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Been leafing through Quine's Word & Object.
Have you had a chance to find a copy of this?
I suppose it's considered quite the tour de force
of, "modern logic", in a sense of logical positivism,
while as well Quine won't ever be quite pinned down
as to whether it's exactly, founded, say.
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Do you read, Quine's "Word & Object"?
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One thing I noticed is that it consistently and
always uses the standard, Oxford, serial comma.
Yet, that would go without saying, except that
its absence is considered erroneous and poor.
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It's like, if you really think that comma doesn't
belong, why don't you just use none, and keep
going, until it just sort of results a grunt of assent
or dissent.
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Of course "A Theory" has a "The Logic".
>

The comma-list is both comma-join and comma-split,
it'd be fair to omit the "and" before omitting the comma.
The comma-joining is both "and" and "or", reflecting
a common element of distinct elements, any one of which
applies and all apply.
If you start taking a look at Word & Object, Quine is
plenty voluble about modern logics' efforts, and problems.
Which he phrases in nice sorts of ways as sort of allusion
to criticism then though sometimes the waffling.
Strawson though stands out as sort of uncontradicted,
especially when Quine's "relevance" is sort of the
opposite of what's usually meant, for relevance logic.
Yet, then Strawson also himself wrote himself into
the corner of modern logic, though at least he's less
fooled by the quasi-modal which some hypocrites use
to leave themselves rule one yet still contradictory
under inverses.
Quine though in Word & Object much entertains a lot
of the developments and indeed it is a great survey.