Willard Van Orman Quine

Tags: Philosopher.

Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25 1908 – December 25 2000) (known to intimates as Van) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. From 1930 until his death 70 years later Quine was continually affiliated with Harvard University in one way or another first as a student then as a professor of philosophy and a teacher of logic and set theory and finally as a professor emeritus who published or revised several books in retirement.

thumbnail

birth date

1908-06-25

birth place

Ohio, Akron Ohio

death date

2000-12-25

death place

Boston, Massachusetts

era

20th-century philosophy

individualised GND number

118641824

influenced

Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Donald Davidson (philosopher), David Lewis (philosopher), Patricia Churchland, Gila Sher, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Scott Soames, Brian Leiter, David Kaplan (philosopher)

influenced by

B. F. Skinner, Bertrand Russell, Charles Sanders Peirce, David Hume, Clarence Irving Lewis, Alfred North Whitehead, Alfred Tarski, Rudolf Carnap, William of Ockham, Vienna Circle

main interest

Epistemology, Ontology, Set theory, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mathematics, Philosophy of science, Logic

notableIdea

Quine–McCluskey algorithm, New Foundations, Quine's paradox, Confirmation holism, Indeterminacy of translation, Duhem–Quine thesis, Naturalized epistemology, Radical translation

philosophicalSchool

Analytic philosophy

region

Western philosophy