Carnap, Quine, and Putnam on Methods of Inquiry

Carnap, Quine, and Putnam held that in our pursuit of truth we can do no better than to start in the middle, relying on already-established beliefs and inferences and applying our best methods for re-evaluating particular beliefs and inferences and arriving at new ones. In this collection of essays, Gary Ebbs interprets these thinkers' methodological views in the light of their own philosophical commitments, and in the process refutes some widespread misunderstandings of their views, reveals the real strengths of their arguments, and exposes a number of problems that they face. To solve these problems, in many of the essays Ebbs also develops new philosophical approaches, including new theories of logical truth, language use, reference and truth, truth by convention, realism, trans-theoretical terms, agreement and disagreement, radical belief revision, and contextually a priori statements. His essays will be valuable for a wide range of readers in analytic philosophy.

• Presents new interpretations of central views in the history of analytic philosophy in the mid- to late-twentieth century, including Carnap's, Quine's, and Putnam's views of the analytic-synthetic distinction, and compares and evaluates these views
• Reveals the real strengths of Carnap's, Quine's, and Putnam's arguments while debunking widespread misinterpretations of their work
• Addresses central methodological questions from multiple overlapping, but different, perspectives, yielding a new and deeper understanding of the issues, and opening up new avenues of thinking about them