From a Logical Point of View Quotes

“As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. 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 conception only as cultural posits. 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.”
― Willard Van Orman Quine, From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays

“Nonsense is indeed mere absence of sense, and can always be remedied by arbitrarily assigning some sense.”
― Willard Van Orman Quine, From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays

“How many possible men are there in that doorway?”
― Willard Van Orman Quine, From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays

“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 immediate experience. Both dogmas are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism.”
― Willard Van Orman Quine, From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays