W.V.O. Quine Quotes

A collection of quotes by W.V.O. Quine.

W.V.O. Quine (1908-2000) was an influential American philosopher and logician. He made significant contributions to the fields of ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Quine's most well-known work was his ontological commitment through his famous thesis that states, "to be is to be the value of a variable." He challenged traditional philosophical doctrines, advocating for a naturalistic perspective and rejecting the analytic-synthetic distinction. Quine's ideas had a profound impact on logic, philosophy, and cognitive science, making him one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.

Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situatio

Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.

W.V.O. Quine

Science Philosophy