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PARADOXICAL CONCEPTS, QUINE’S CONSTRUCTIVISM, AND OBSERVATION SENTENCES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 4 (26). P. 150-159

The article examines Willard Van Orman Quine’s approach to the problem of paradoxical concepts in the context of their relationship with reality. Quine’s thesis, according to which it is necessary to resolve paradoxes where they appeared and not to extend them to reality, is analyzed. It has been suggested that observation sentences, being intermediaries between language and reality, in retrospective analysis, always turn out to be the primary points in the development of theories due to the constant incompleteness of empirical concepts. The working hypothesis of the study is as follows: the possibility of a particular theory, as a specific variant of the organization of empirical concepts, is determined by observation sentences arising from the schematization of reality and often producing paradoxes.

Keywords: paradoxes, ontology, observation sentences, theories, universe of reasoning, Willard Van Orman Quine