Abstract

Dilman conjures up a memorable vision of two great twentieth-century dragons at war. Each takes a turn at stimulating the other with its blue breath of naturalist hellfire. Each responds like a venomously programmed beast with a cold douche of quotations. Quine is provoked to repeat famous statements—mainly from “On What There Is,” “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” “Epistemology Naturalised,” and The Web of Belief. Wittgenstein is induced to hurl back commentaries from a great many works, up from the Tractatus. Wittgenstein, of course, is said to triumph.