GRE Reading Comprehension

Home > GRE Test > GRE Reading Comprehension Questions

Next steps

Source: NO9

Historically, a cornerstone of classical empiricism has been the notion that every true generalization must be conformable by specific observations. In classical empiricism, the truth of "All balls are red," for example, is assessed by inspecting balls; any observation of a nonred ball refutes unequivocally the proposed generalization.

For W.V.O. Quine, however, this constitutes an overly "narrow" conception of empiricism. "All balls are red," he maintains, forms one strand within an entire web of statements (our knowledge);individual observations can be referred only to this web as a whole. As new observations are collected, he explains they must be integrated into the web. Problems occur only if a contradiction develops between a new observation, say, "That ball is blue," and the preexisting statements. In that case, he argues, statement or combination of statements (not merely the "offending" generalization, as in classical empiricism) can be altered to achieve the fundamental requirement, a system free of contradictions, even if, in some cases, the alteration consists of labeling the new observation a "hallucination.

Question List: 1 2 3 4

The author of the passage is primarily concerned with presenting

  • A criticisms of Quine's views on the proper conceptualization of empiricism
  • B evidence to support Quine's claims about the problems inherent in classical empiricism
  • C an account of Quine's counterproposal to one of the traditional assumptions of classical empiricism
  • D an overview of classical empiricism and its contributions to Quine's alternate understanding of empiricism
  • E a history of classical empiricism and Quine's reservations about it

Show Answer

Previous       Next