The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only… — 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 Image
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 Image
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… — 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 Image
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… — 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 Image
The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms connecting them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes… — 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 Image
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 Image
Some may find comfort in reflecting that the distinction between an eliminative and an explicative physicalism is unreal. — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, bit by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who… — 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 Image
![“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…” quote by Willard Van Orman Quine](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/3e0/willard-van-orman-quine-10137_ads_some-have-said-that-the-thesis-of-indete_315688.jpg)
