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
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
