Ambrose Paved Way for Quine's Critique

A new study reveals that a philosopher named Alice Ambrose wrote about some big ideas in logic and language over 80 years ago, long before they were widely accepted by other philosophers. Ambrose's early work actually predicted some of the criticisms of these ideas that were later made by a famous philosopher named W.V. Quine. In particular, Ambrose recognized the problem of treating logical rules as arbitrary conventions, and the difficulty of defining words in a way that avoids infinite loops. Her insights were even ahead of some of Quine's own major contributions to the field, making her a pioneering figure in the history of philosophy.