W. V. O. Quine Quotes on Knowledge
Willard Van Orman Quine was a 20th-century American philosopher and logician, one of the most influential analytic philosophers of the post-war era. This page collects quotes attributed to W. V. O. Quine on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“To be is to be the value of a variable.”
On What There Is -
Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“No entity without identity.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Translation is indeterminate.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Philosophy of science is philosophy enough.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Logic is an old subject, and since 1879 it has been a great one.”
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“Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard ; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor .”
On What There Is -
“On What There Is", p. 4. a humorous comment on the idea "unactualized possible".”
Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes. -
“Two dogmas of Empiricism”
Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to -
“The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.”
Two dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26 -
“Two dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26”
The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings. -
“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.”
Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26 -
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26”
Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space. -
“No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.”
Two Dogmas of Empiricism -
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism”
No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.