Quine and Tarski on Nominalism

Paolo Mancosu (1)

1 IHPST - Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques

In this chapter I would like to trace the trajectory of two importantnominalists in twentieth-century analytic philosophy, Quine andTarski. Each one of them had his own trajectory with regard tonominalism but their paths intersected at two important points: theacademic year 1940-1 when both were at Harvard (together withCarnap) and in 1953 at the conference in Amersfoort organized by Beth on ''Platonism and Nominalism in Contemporary Logic''.These two points of intersection will be important in the exposition but I will also be interested in their individual development withrespect to the topic at hand.

Mots clés: Nominalism; Platonism; Quine; Goodman; Tarski; Beth

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Paolo Mancosu. Quine and Tarski on Nominalism. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 2008, 4, pp.22-55. ⟨halshs-00791902⟩