Quine vs Descartes: a Reading of Holistic and Naturalized Epistemology in the Context of Cartesian Tradition

Quine is an empiricist. But he objects the previous empiricists. We want to show that Quine is in fact an objector of the epistemological tradition that Descartes founded, and the empiricists that Quine objects are followers of that tradition. Here we emphasize two specifications of Cartesian tradition: (1) foundationalism (2) trying to answer the problem of justification. We show that Quine’s epistemology rejects both of these. Two traits of Quine’s epistemology that have important roles here are holism and naturalism.