The scientist is indistinguishable from the common man in his sense of evidence, except that the scientist is more careful.
Willard Van Orman QuineFor me the problem of induction is a problem about the world: a problem of how we, as we are now (by our present scientific lights), in a world we never made, should stand better than random, or coin-tossing chances changes of coming out right when we predict by inductions. . . .
Willard Van Orman QuineThe lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. A pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention.
Willard Van Orman QuineThe familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.
Willard Van Orman QuineOur talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and control the triggerings of our sensory receptors in the light of previous triggering of our sensory receptors.
Willard Van Orman QuineWe must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, bit by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea.
Willard Van Orman Quine