A Preliminary Study Of Quine's Evidence Theory

The problem of scientific evidence was once almost eliminated because empiricism was criticized by anti-empincism.For the purpose of maintaining empiricism and defending scientific objectivity,Quine put forward his own evidence-theory for two points:first,criticizing the attempt of anti-empiricism to cancel observation,and second,correcting the rigid individualism in traditional empiricism.As a radical-empiricist,Quine said that empiricism is about evidence rather than truth;scientific knowledge pursues objectivity rather than certainty.He used the results of scientific research to update the concept of experience,and stabilized the status of observation as evidence in science with the self-evidence and inter-subjectivity of observation sentences,and made the scientific cause more open and empiricism more thorough with holism.The questioning of this theory mainly is that it contains internal contradictions and scientific chauvinism.However,the issue of scientific chauvinism had been clarified by Quine,and whether there is an internal contradiction can be resolved by retrospecting the theory itself.The dissertation is divided into three parts.The first part examines the changing process of the traditional empirical evidence-theory and the relativism of anti-empiricism,and clarifies the ideological origin and theoretical starting point of Quine,s evidence?theory.The second part first elucidates the two core concepts of Quine's evidence-theory from the three aspects of definition,characteristics,and function,namely observation sentences and observation categorical sentences,which serve as the intermediary between sensory experience and scientific theory and provide a guarantee for the objectivity of science.On this basis,the two main contents of the theory are elaborated,namely,the principle of observation priority and the holism.In the third part,we first divide the problem of intermal contradictions of the theory into three groups to defend Quine and clarify the problem of scientific chauvinism by expounding Quine' s response,then evaluate the theoretical influence of the theory and its practical significance.