Willard Van Orman Quine

Aspects of Quine’s Naturalized Epistemology 45
propaedeutic or groundwork for science” (NK 126) than like science
itself. Second, though he criticized others for pressing possibilities
having little naturalistic plausibility, in doing ontology, at least, he
seemed to traffic in them himself. For example, Quine drew very
strong conclusions from the bare possibility of radically different
manuals of translation and the bare possibility of radically different
ontologies. Such possibilities will not (indeed, should not) concern
the linguist working in the field. Acknowledging this, Quine
remarked, “But I am making a philosophical point” (OR 34). From
a naturalistic standpoint, such philosophical points seem to be a relapse
into a previous, prenaturalistic way of doing philosophy.
These remarks are not intended as a criticism of the program of
naturalized epistemology – they are only aimed at Quine’s execution
of this program, which to my mind was not thoroughgoing enough.
They leave Quine’s fundamental idea untouched, namely, that it is
not the business of epistemology to validate science and that therefore
there is nothing question-begging in approaching epistemology
from a scientific standpoint. It simply remains to be seen what success
such an enterprise will have when confronted with the data it
is intended to accommodate. 16
notes
1. D. Hume, Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning
the Principles of Morals, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975),
37–8.
2. M. Pakaluk, “Quine’s 1946 Lectures on Hume,” Journal of the History
of Philosophy 27 (1989): 453.
3. Ibid., 457.
4. Ibid., 455.
5. Ibid.
6. D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1978), 173 ff.
7. See Pakaluk, “Quine’s 1946 Lecture on Hume,” 459.
8. R. Fara, In Conversation with V. W. Quine: The Fogelin Panel (London:
Philosophical International, 1994).
9. See R. Fogelin, “Quine’s Limited Naturalism,” Journal of Philosophy 11
(1997): 543–63.
10. This is a very strange object indeed. For example, though we might
be able to say where Quine is, about the only thing we can say about
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