Word and Object

Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language isa social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as towhat to say and when." As Patricia Smith Churchland notes in her foreword to this new edition,with Word and Object Quine challenged the tradition of conceptual analysis as away of advancing knowledge. The book signaled twentieth-century philosophy's turn away frommetaphysics and what Churchland calls the "phony precision" of conceptualanalysis.

In the course of his discussion of meaning and the linguistic mechanismsof objective reference, Quine considers the indeterminacy of translation, brings to light theanomalies and conflicts implicit in our language's referential apparatus, clarifies semanticproblems connected with the imputation of existence, and marshals reasons for admitting orrepudiating each of various categories of supposed objects. In addition to Churchland's foreword,this edition offers a new preface by Quine's student and colleague Dagfinn Follesdal that describesthe never-realized plans for a second edition of Word and Object, in which Quinewould offer a more unified treatment of the public nature of meaning, modalities, and propositionalattitudes.