Willard Van Orman Quine Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Confusion, Sin, Objects

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.101, Harvard University Press

  14 Copy quote

• Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Redemption, Language, Sin

  Willard Van Orman Quine (1973). “The roots of reference”

  4 Copy quote

• A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put into three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: 'What is there?' It can be answered, moreover, in a word--'Everything'--and everyone will accept this answer as true.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Simplicity, Three, Answers

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.177, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

• The scientist is indistinguishable from the common man in his sense of evidence, except that the scientist is more careful.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Science, Men, Common

  Willard Van Orman Quine (1976). “The Ways of Paradox, and Other Essays”, p.233, Harvard University Press

  10 Copy quote

• It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Philosophy, Doe, Benefits

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia Smith Churchland, Dagfinn Follesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.173, MIT Press

  9 Copy quote

• Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Growing Up, Elephants, Different

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia Smith Churchland, Dagfinn Follesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.8, MIT Press

  4 Copy quote

• Logic is an old subject, and since 1879 it has been a great one.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Logic, Subjects, Has Beens

  "Methods of Logic". Book by Willard Van Orman Quine, 1950.

  11 Copy quote

• For me the problem of induction is a problem about the world: a problem of how we, as we are now (by our present scientific lights), in a world we never made, should stand better than random, or coin-tossing chances changes of coming out right when we predict by inductions. . . .

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Light, Coins, World

  17 Copy quote

• Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in
  principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic
  definition of truth is doomed to failure equally.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Truth, Science, Unique

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia Smith Churchland, Dagfinn Follesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.21, MIT Press

  6 Copy quote

• No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Two, Doe, Language

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia S. Churchland, Dagfinn Føllesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.12, MIT Press

  7 Copy quote

• At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity can help too.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Data, Skills, Roots

  "The Web of Belief". Book by Willard Van Orman Quine, 1970.

  5 Copy quote

• Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Believe, Errors, Degrees

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.52, Harvard University Press

  21 Copy quote

• We can applaud the state lottery as a public subsidy of intelligence, for it yields public income that is calculated to lighten the tax burden of us prudent abstainers at the expense of the benighted masses of wishful thinkers.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Yield, Income, Subsidies

  1987 Quiddities,'Gambling'.

  4 Copy quote

• Life is agid, life is fulgid. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Waste, Wasting Time, Life Is

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Douglas B. Quine (2008). “Quine in Dialogue”, p.333, Harvard University Press

  7 Copy quote

• How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula "To be is to be the value of a variable"; this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Doctrine, Answers, Variables

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.189, Harvard University Press

  8 Copy quote

• Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics;we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Acceptance, Thinking, Ontology

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.190, Harvard University Press

  9 Copy quote

• Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio ad absurdum of my behaviorism. I disagree with this second point, but I agree with the first. I hold further that the behaviorism approach is mandatory. In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Choices, Psychology, May

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Douglas B. Quine (2008). “Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist: And Other Essays”, p.341, Harvard University Press

  18 Copy quote

• Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Science, Sheep, Heaven

  16 Copy quote

• The line that I am urging as today's conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, arepudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Animal, Mind, Special

  4 Copy quote

• If pressed to supplement Tweedledee's ostensive definition of logic with a discursive definition of the same subject, I would say that logic is the systematic study of the logical truths. Pressed further, I would say that a sentence is logically true if all sentences with its grammatical structure are true. Pressed further still, I would say to read this book.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Book, Definitions, Systematic

  7 Copy quote

• The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Music, Order, Play

  7 Copy quote

• Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers ... is a convenient myth [which] simplifies the laws of arithmetic ... so physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptional scheme of physical objects is [likewise] a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Math, Numbers, Law

  10 Copy quote

• To call a posit a posit is not to patronize it. A posit can be unavoidable except at the cost of other no less artificial expedients. Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Real, Cost, Building

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia Smith Churchland, Dagfinn Follesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.20, MIT Press

  7 Copy quote

• Some may find comfort in reflecting that the distinction between an eliminative and an explicative physicalism is unreal.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Comfort, May, Distinction

  7 Copy quote

• The variables of quantification, 'something,' 'nothing,' 'everything,' range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Order, Ifs And, Variables

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.187, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin