By B. John Bayer
Subtitle: The Case of Quine

The late W. V. Quine was one of the most influential American philosophers of the 20th century, and the story of his philosophy in many ways represents the decline of 20th-century philosophy. This course surveys and evaluates central points of Quine's philosophy. Lecture One presents the views of Quine's philosophic predecessors, the logical positivists, who advanced a brand of empiricism which Quine would later seek to purify. Lecture Two presents Quine's famous criticisms of the positivists' version of empiricism, as presented in his article "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." His argument for erasing the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths is discussed, along with his proposal that empiricism become more pragmatic. Lecture Three presents the implications of this pragmatism, showing how Quine's principles are co-opted by advocates of skepticism and postmodernist relativism, and how this leads to the destruction of philosophy and science.

(Audio CD; 6-CD set; 4 hrs., 45 min., with Q & A)