Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. Willard Van Orman Quine More Quotes by Willard Van Orman Quine More Quotes From Willard Van Orman Quine Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying. Willard Van Orman Quine judging truth science 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 subsidies income yield 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 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 communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy. Willard Van Orman Quine philosophical party philosophy Language is a social art. Willard Van Orman Quine language social art Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes. Willard Van Orman Quine landscape desert way 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 doubt sound writing We cannot stem linguistic change, but we can drag our feet. If each of us were to defy Alexander Pope and be the last to lay the old aside, it might not be a better world, but it would be a lovelier language. Willard Van Orman Quine would-be feet world If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, hassome indirect systematic efficacy in the development of theory. Willard Van Orman Quine systematic events development 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 Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar. Willard Van Orman Quine grammar logic tree English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us. Willard Van Orman Quine native-language data simple Necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about. Willard Van Orman Quine way Set theory in sheep's clothing. Willard Van Orman Quine clothings theory sheep Linguistically, and hence conceptually, the things in sharpest focus are the things that are public enough to be talked of publicly, common and conspicuous enough to be talked of often, and near enough to sense to be quickly identified and learned by name; it is to these that words apply first and foremost. Willard Van Orman Quine focus names firsts 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 psychology choices may Treating 'water' as a name of a single scattered object is not intended to enable us to dispense with general terms and plurality of reference. Scatter is in fact an inconsequential detail. Willard Van Orman Quine details names water The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. A pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. Willard Van Orman Quine black white father Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption. Willard Van Orman Quine redemption sin language Life is what the least of us make the most of us feel the least of us make the most of. Willard Van Orman Quine life-is feels
