“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
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
Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it. — 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
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
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
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
Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption. — 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
“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
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
“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
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
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… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
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… — 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
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 Image
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… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
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
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