Willard Van Ormond Quine was, I believe, one of the best of the 20th century philosophers, and is someone who has greatly influenced me. Here is a TV interview by Brian Magee, from the 1970s, if I am right. They discuss the nature of philosophy. This year marks the centenary of Quine’s birth.
“The Ideas of Quine” on Youtube:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Hat tip to Calculemus. The heading is a bad pun on one of Quine’s most famous essays: “On What There Is”.
7 responses so far ↓
Greg Laden // June 22, 2008 at 10:56 am |
I took a semester focusing on philosophy at Harvard while Quine was there. But retired and unwilling to visit our seminars, so we never met. And all this was among phiso-symps in the anthro department.
But it was kind of cool imagining that Quine might pay us a visit…
Greg Laden // June 22, 2008 at 10:56 am |
I took a semester focusing on philosophy at Harvard while Quine was there. But retired and unwilling to visit our seminars, so we never met. And all this was among phiso-symps in the anthro department.
But it was kind of cool imagining that Quine might pay us a visit…
Greg Laden // June 22, 2008 at 10:56 am |
I took a semester focusing on philosophy at Harvard while Quine was there. But retired and unwilling to visit our seminars, so we never met. And all this was among phiso-symps in the anthro department.
But it was kind of cool imagining that Quine might pay us a visit…
Tlönista // June 22, 2008 at 3:33 pm |
One of my philosophy professors had a Quine Story. He was in town for a symposium on the somethingth anniversary of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and she was assigned to ferry him around, take him to dinner and fend off the grad students fawning at his feet (one brought Quine’s entire backlist for the man to sign). He had been given some little plaque or award thingy and in all the rushing about had been misplaced, and as my professor was driving him back to look for it, she ran a yellow on a left-hand turn and was almost hit by oncoming traffic…
She told us ruefully that she almost became known as The Woman Who Killed W. V. O. Quine.
Tlönista // June 22, 2008 at 3:33 pm |
One of my philosophy professors had a Quine Story. He was in town for a symposium on the somethingth anniversary of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and she was assigned to ferry him around, take him to dinner and fend off the grad students fawning at his feet (one brought Quine’s entire backlist for the man to sign). He had been given some little plaque or award thingy and in all the rushing about had been misplaced, and as my professor was driving him back to look for it, she ran a yellow on a left-hand turn and was almost hit by oncoming traffic…
She told us ruefully that she almost became known as The Woman Who Killed W. V. O. Quine.
Toby // June 23, 2008 at 2:45 pm |
Jeez, Brian Magee is the spitting image of Jim Broadbent (he plays Indy’s Department Head in the “Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls”).
Quine on Bryan McGee « alien eleutheronomy // October 11, 2009 at 4:46 pm |
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