Willard Van Orman Quine

32 robert j. fogelin
Reflecting on this claim forty years after it was published, Quine tells
us that he regrets what he calls his “needlessly strong statement of
holism” (TDR 268). In “Five Milestones of Empiricism,” he makes
the point more strongly:
It is an uninteresting legalism...to think of our scientific system of the
world as involved en bloc in every prediction. More modest chunks suffice,
and so may be ascribed their independent empirical meaning, nearly enough,
since some vagueness in meaning must be allowed for in any event. (FME
71)
In fact, not only does Quine’s extreme holism become muted in his
later writings, the radical revisability thesis associated with it has
become muted as well. In a video discussion concerning Quine’s
naturalized epistemology, I had the opportunity to suggest to Quine
that this strong version of revisability is rather hard to take, especially
when applied to laws of logic. Quine responded as follows:
“Well, I think I rather agree. I think nowadays it seems to me at
best an uninteresting legalism.” 8 The expression “uninteresting legalism”
is Quine’s marker for earlier views that he has come to view
as – if not altogether wrong, and perhaps even in some Pickwickian
sense correct – needlessly extreme. Elsewhere 9 I have suggested
that this moderation in what were originally signature features of
Quine’s position reflects his growing commitment to a naturalistic
standpoint. Naturalized epistemology makes one more modest –
or at least it ought to. But even if Quine’s growing commitment to
naturalism forced revisions in some of his earlier, more exuberant
views, in “Epistemology Naturalized” many of the Quinean leading
characters are still on stage, including indeterminacy of translation,
indeterminacy of reference (or ontological relativity), and observation
sentences. I will not attempt to explain these features of Quine’s
positions in detail. Others in this volume do so. Noting only their
general features, I wish to examine how they relate to Quine’s naturalistic
commitments.
Let us start with indeterminacy of translation. Unlike some of the
technical discussions elsewhere, in “Epistemology Naturalized” the
exposition and defense of the doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation
is quite straightforward. It turns on combining a simple point
of logic with the notion of multiple forms of revision. The point of
logic is this: Given a valid argument with a false conclusion, we may
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