Quine and Davidson on language, thought and reality, by Hans- Johann Glock. Cambridge: Cambridge university press, . Pp. XVI + . H/b £. [Book Review]
Abstract
Glock’s book is about evenly divided between Quine and Davidson. The central claims are (i) that they are best studied in conjunction; (ii) that they ‘can profitably be seen as logical pragmatists’ (meaning primarily that they view language as action that can be understood or clarified by means of formal logic); (iii) that they ‘combine profound insights with serious distortions’; and (iv) that their respective attempts to ‘accommodate higher phenomena such as meaning and thought within a naturalistic framework’ are ‘misguided’ (pp. – ). But the overriding aim is clearly to establish (iv) along with the negative..