Ontology recapitulates philology: Willard Quine, pragmatism, and radical behaviorism

Behavior and Philosophy, 2001 by Malone, John C

. . proceeding by contextual definition to construct a language adequate to natural science. It is an attractive idea, for it would bring scientific discourse into a much more explicit and systematic relation to its observational checkpoints. My only reservation is that I am convinced, regretfully, that it cannot be done. (1981, p. 20)

This is so because two or more incompatible "manuals of translation" can in principle both do justice to all aspects of nature-and it is not a question of which is "right."

Quine the Private Person

The Time of My Life was written by what appears to be a very happy man, full of energy and enthusiasm for his work and fond of his many social engagements. But Quine described himself in the last pages as taciturn and introverted, the kind of person who admitted his "practice down the decades of preparing copious notes for the classroom and writing my public lectures in full" (p. 477). Almost all of his work was done alone. It is easy to empathize with such a person, who also can be subject to "spells of nostalgia, loneliness, anxiety, or boredom." At such times he escaped into his projects-or he manipulated numbers (p. 476):

I am apt today, as of yore . . . idly to compute-determining e.g., that the number of acres that can be circumscribed in a mile is just under fifty-one, or that the distance in statute leagues of the horizon at sea is the square root of the height of the eye in fathoms. (Look, no coefficients.) I have gained facility in manipulating big numbers.

Quine believed that his strongest emotion was impatience, as felt when wanting to complete a task. Poetry aroused other powerful emotions-he was "easily moved"--so he avoided poetry. That seems surprising, given the sober rationality that we associate with mathematicians and logicians.

Quine's Influence on Psychology

Radical Behaviorism needs all the friends it can get, so powerful are the rival folk psychologies that are always dominant. Willard Quine was not a radical behaviorist, but he was close enough. His writings are both eloquent and entertaining, dealing with the most fundamental questions that we can ask-what is the nature of existence, what do we know of it, and how do we come to know it? Twenty-first century academia focuses on topics that are likely to appear in newspaper headlines-violent and overweight children, working parents, depressed adolescent girls, social relationships, "optimism and hope research," spirituality, and similar superficial fare.

Ontology and epistemology are not popular topics, but Quine could render them fascinating through his use of clear prose, simple sentences, and catchy expressions. Recall the discussion of the extent to which we can know private experience, both of ourselves and of others, which begins, "As illustrated by 'Ouch' . . . ," and the reader's attention is captured. Quine's writings benefited us all by improving the intellectual climate, making epistemology and ontology accessible to ordinary people. As behaviorists, we should have known him better.