Chapter 5 - Objectivity Socialized

Summary

This essay contrasts Rudolf Carnap’s and W. V. Quine’s responses to the challenge that their positions distort the social nature of inquiry. In Quine’s case, the challenge is the heart of Donald Davidson’s insistence that naturalized epistemology fails to capture the objectivity of thought. In Carnap’s case, the challenge may be detected in Charles Morris’s call for semiotic rather than syntax to ground scientific philosophy. Drawing out the challenge in Morris’s proposal requires considering a neglected influence on this neglected philosopher: his advisor George Herbert Mead’s social theory of mind. Meeting the underlying demand that objectivity be socialized, I argue, requires those of us who wish to pursue Carnap and Quine’s scientific vision of philosophy to recognize the ineliminable role other inquirers play in our own investigations.