Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it. — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption. — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic definition… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right. — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
The scientist is indistinguishable from the common man in his sense of evidence, except that the scientist is more careful. — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
“Believing is a disposition. We could tire ourselves out thinking, if we put our minds to it, but believing takes no toll.” — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
“As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
“And so come the cults, claiming to meet the needs that science has thus far failed to meet--and offering the prospective inductee… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
Theory may be deliberate, as in a chapter on chemistry, or it may be second nature, as in the immemorial doctrine of ordinary enduring… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
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… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and control the triggerings… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
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… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
“Believing is a disposition. We could tire ourselves out thinking, if we put our minds to it, but believing takes no toll.” — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz.,… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
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… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio ad absurdum… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
Some may find comfort in reflecting that the distinction between an eliminative and an explicative physicalism is unreal. — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings. — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it. — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
The variables of quantification, 'something,' 'nothing,' 'everything,' range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share
