> On Apr 3, 2015, at 11:55 AM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith <ste...@iase.us> wrote: > > I'll defend the Vienna Circle just a little further because I believe that > they have been misunderstood and mistreated by lesser men in the twentieth > century and that there is some correction going on now. Quine stands alone, > and as Clark said, he has his own problems. He's also responsible to ignoring > the Peirce contributions explicitly, that does not endear him to me. > > I am also less convinced that Peirce was unknown to them, although there is > little explicit consideration given. Hilbert certainly had Peirce in mind.
I definitely think that they were treated quite unfairly. People who continue to praise Quine while dismissing the positivists forget that he thought Carnap the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. That said I think the recent (and surprising) resurgence of interest in the Vienna Circle hasn’t really deal well with their failures. I think the reason the movement failed was not because of refutations (contra Popper’s annoying comments) but just because it wasn’t productive. That said I do think some of Quine’s contributions were pretty devastating even if they more or less ended up re-adoptiong Peirce’s own positions relative to verification. Quine actually wrote a paper on his relationship to the pragmatists. I have a copy in a collection at home. It becomes fairly clear that he really doesn’t know them well, although he is somewhat familiar with them. So I tend to think he was having to rediscover these positions the hard way rather than by rediscovering them in texts. I know others disagree on that point. I’m hardly an expert on the history Quine so they might be right. Regardless of whether there’s a genealogical connection it does seem clear many characterize Quine as a pragmatic philosopher due to his positions. He definitely engages with some of Peirce’s logical work early in the 30’s. And of course Quine wasn’t just influenced by Carnap but also Lewis who was explicitly influenced by Peirce. (Often mangling him in my view, but the influence is there) Peter Godfrey-Smith wrote a nice treatment of Quine and Pragmatism for The Blackwell Companion to Quine that’s well worth reading. It notes a lot of the complexities that Quine’s own paper on the subject perhaps downplays too much. (Although I do find Quine’s paper worth reading) http://petergodfreysmith.com/Quine_Pragmatism_PGS_2013_FD.pdf <http://petergodfreysmith.com/Quine_Pragmatism_PGS_2013_FD.pdf> I should probably chime out of discussing the Vienna Circle though. I’ll confess it’s been ages since I’ve engaged with them carefully. I just tend to think it unfortunate how they’ve been made the boogey-men of philosophy the past decades, usually with egregiously uncharitable readings.
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