Willard Van Orman Quine: Wissenschaft und Empfindung

The ›Kant Lectures‹ were delivered as a series at Stanford University in 1980. They provide a short and useful summary of Qunie’s philosophy – useful for specialists and as an introduction for determined students seeking a summary of Quine’s philosophy. The lecture series includes an important emphasis on the theme of sensitivity. For Quine, the human being is a kind of divided animal: we are divided between our focus on the world of nature, a focus emphasized in empiricism and in the natural sciences, and a very different focus on other people – engagement with the particular human environment of our socializations and development. Performing the linguistics turn with J. L. Austin and with Quine, and turning to the natural world and our (translating) dictionaries, might we, then, be able to better cope with the problems of our peculiarities regarding pride and prejudice? This theme from the ›Kant Lectures‹ casts new light on Quine’s characterisitc semantic theses of the indeterminancy of translation and inscrutability of reference.