Willard Van Orman Quine, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, has been described as the "greatest living English-speaking philosopher". In this series, he takes part in an in-depth personal interview, and a penetrating analysis of his life's work in six panel discussions with some of today's leading philosophers. In discussions with some of today's leading philosophers. In discussions on his most important theses, Quine defends his views against the major criticisms-past and recent-to bring his position right up-to-date.
The Boolos Panel
The guest panelist in this program is George Boolos, Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He specializes in logic, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of language. He has published extensively in these areas and his books include Computability and Logic, co-authored with Richard Jeffrey, The Unprovability of Consistency and The Logic of Provability.
Professor Quine is questioned by the panel in detail about his arguments in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". This leads in turn to a close examination of his stance on meaning in general, and his indeterminacy of translation thesis. Next Quine's skepticism about meaning and his linguistic behaviorism is explored along with his view of the notorious differences between himself and Chomsky.