Regarding the second, I'd say that for Quine, what he's rebelling against here is the logicial positivist view that our concepts of physical objects in the external world are logical constructs or theoreticla posits based on a prior grasp of our own sense data. He's rebelling against the view that what we know first and formost is stuff inside of our mind and then we infer afterthefact that maybe there's an external world of objects behind it all. Quine want to say, look, if you really want to be both scientific and commonsensical about this, then you will realize that what little kids do is first form the concept of external objects and people and only later do they realize that they are people that have internal states that represent the external world. Thus, the difference between a glimse and a thing glimsed is as follows: if I glimse a tree, the glimpse is a state of me--a state of perceiving or sensing. The thing glimsed is a tree. A tree is the sort of thing that exists independently of anyone perceiving or sensing it. So, the first concept to gel in my head as I'm growing up is going to be the concept of a tree. Only later will I figure out that I have a mind.
Regarding the second, I'd say that for Quine, what he's rebelling against here is the logicial positivist view that our concepts of physical objects in the external world are logical constructs or theoreticla posits based on a prior grasp of our own sense data. He's rebelling against the view that what we know first and formost is stuff inside of our mind and then we infer afterthefact that maybe there's an external world of objects behind it all. Quine want to say, look, if you really want to be both scientific and commonsensical about this, then you will realize that what little kids do is first form the concept of external objects and people and only later do they realize that they are people that have internal states that represent the external world. Thus, the difference between a glimse and a thing glimsed is as follows: if I glimse a tree, the glimpse is a state of me--a state of perceiving or sensing. The thing glimsed is a tree. A tree is the sort of thing that exists independently of anyone perceiving or sensing it. So, the first concept to gel in my head as I'm growing up is going to be the concept of a tree. Only later will I figure out that I have a mind.
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