Quinean Explication of Reality and Naturalistic Philosophy
摘要
This chapter deals with two often underappreciated Quinean naturalistic explications. The first explication concerns the metaphysical status of reality under naturalism, by examining what can be viewed as Quine’s attempt to dissolve realism and idealism into each other; the second explication concerns the metaphilosophical dimension of naturalized epistemology. I aim to demonstrate that Quine’s way of approaching these two concepts turns out to be not only complementary, but also highly indicative of his overall naturalistic outlooks as well as professional preferences. Namely, they are approached by Quine’s characteristic from within approach, which highlights the intra-theoretic and intra-linguistic nature of all human empirical inquiry.