Quotes About Quine

It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.

We believe in Quine, the father of metaontology, and in his criterion of ontological commitment. Which for us ontologists and for our craft was perfectly born in On What There Is . We believe in one catholic and first-order logic. We acknowledge one method—paraphrase—for the remission of ontological sins. And when paraphrase fails, we accept without shame the entities required by our best theories. Amen.

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 is doomed to failure equally.

My fees are negotiable,' said Strike, 'if I like the client.' He followed Leonora Quine into his office and closed the door behind him with a snap.

According to Quine, we must (alas, with the greatest reluctance!) resign ourselves (ah, that it should have come to this!) to accepting (unbidden and unwelcome!) mathematical entities, because (most regrettably and unfortunately!) mention of them seems (would that it were not so!) to be an unavoidable requirement (how cruel a necessity!) in formulating scientific theories.

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.

In a famous argument, the logician W. V. Quine showed that there exist families of logically consistent interpretations and theories that can match a given series of facts. Such insight should warn us that mere absence of nonsense may not be sufficient to make something true.

I know Quine, by the way. Real asshole.

Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

In that case, that is, given the past failure and poor prospects of analytic epistemology, Quine recommends that epistemology simply be replaced by psychology

Both [Quine and Feyerabend] want to revise a version of positivism. Quine started with the Vienna Circle, and Feyerabend with the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics. Both the Circle and the school have been called children of Ernst Mach; if so, the philosophies of Feyerabend and Quine must be his grandchildren.

The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. A pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention.