The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays

This expanded edition of The Ways of Paradox includes papers that are among Professor W. V. Quine’s most important and influential, such as “Truth by Convention,” “Carnap and Logical Truth,” “On Carnap’s Views on Ontology,” “The Scope and Language of Science,” and “Posits and Reality.” Many of these essays deal with unresolved issues of central interest to philosophers today. About half of them are addressed to “a wider public than philosophers.” The remainder are somewhat more professional and technical. This new edition of The Ways of Paradox contains eight essays that appeared after publication of the first edition, and it retains the seminal essays that must be read by anyone who seeks to master Quine’s philosophy.

Quine has been characterized, in The New York Review of Books, as “the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank.” His “philosophical innovations add up to a coherent theory of knowledge which he has for the most part constructed single-handed.” In The Ways of Paradox new generations of readers will gain access to this philosophy.