Willard Van Orman Quine citations

Willard Van Orman Quine est un philosophe et logicien américain, l'un des principaux représentants de la philosophie analytique.

Il est notamment l’auteur des Deux dogmes de l'empirisme, article célèbre de 1951 qui remet en cause la distinction entre énoncés analytiques et énoncés synthétiques et de Le Mot et la Chose en 1960, où il propose sa thèse de l'indétermination de la traduction radicale et une critique de la notion de « signification ».

L’œuvre de Quine a eu une influence majeure dans les domaines de la philosophie, de la logique, de l'épistémologie et de la sémantique. Son projet d'une « épistémologie naturalisée » a notamment permis d'amorcer un tournant dans la pensée contemporaine — celui du naturalisme philosophique. Wikipedia  

✵ 25. juin 1908 – 25. décembre 2000
Willard Van Orman Quine photo
Willard Van Orman Quine: 28   citations 0   J'aime

Willard Van Orman Quine citations célèbres

“Notre argument n'est pas totalement circulaire, mais il n'en est pas loin. Il ressemble, pour ainsi dire, à une courbe fermée dans l'espace.”

Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.
en
Les Deux Dogmes de l'empirisme

“On se réoriente d'autre part vers le pragmatisme.”

Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism.
en
Les Deux Dogmes de l'empirisme

“Quant à moi, en m'inspirant essentiellement de la doctrine carnapienne du monde physique dans lAufbau, je propose l'idée que nos énoncés sur le monde extérieur sont jugés par le tribunal de l'expérience sensible, non pas individuellement, mais seulement collectivement.”

My countersuggestion, issuing essentially from Carnap's doctrine of the physical world in the Aufbau, is that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.
en
Les Deux Dogmes de l'empirisme

Willard Van Orman Quine: Citations en anglais

“We cannot stem linguistic change, but we can drag our feet.”

Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary (1987), p. 231
1980s and later
Contexte: 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.

“Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth.”

Response to being quoted William Shakespeare's statement from Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in your philosophy." As quoted in ‪When God is Gone Everything Is Holy: The Making Of A Religious Naturalist‬ (2008) by ‪Chet Raymo‬
1980s and later

“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it.”

Willard van Orman Quine Two Dogmas of Empiricism

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)
Contexte: Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

“Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.”

"Natural Kinds", in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969), p. 126; originally written for a festschrift for Carl Gustav Hempel, this appears in a context explaining why induction tends to work in practice, despite theoretical objections. The hyphen in "praise-worthy" is ambiguous, since it falls on a line break in the source.
1960s

“Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes.”

"On What There Is", p. 4. a humorous comment on the idea "unactualized possible".
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

“"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.”

Quine's paradox, in "The Ways of Paradox" in "The Ways of Paradox and other Essays" (1976)
1970s

“It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.”

Theories and Things, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981
1980s and later

“A fancifully fancyless medium of unvarnished news.”

Willard van Orman Quine livre Word and Object

A mocking title for the 'protocol language' imagined by some of the logical positivists, in "Word and Object (1960), section 1
1960s

“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
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

“Set theory in sheep's clothing.”

Referring to Second-order logic, in Philosophy of Logic (1970)
1970s

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

Willard van Orman Quine Two Dogmas of Empiricism

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

“Life is agid. Life is fulgid. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of.”

Quine's response in 1988 when asked his philosophy of life. (He invented the word "agid".) It makes up the entire Chapter 54 in Quine in Dialogue (2008).
1980s and later