Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.
Willard Van Orman QuineRead
Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the inherent difficulty in understanding the relationship between language and reality.
Willard Van Orman Quine's quote suggests that the confusion between symbols (signs) and what they represent (objects) is a fundamental issue that has existed since language originated. This confusion can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations in communication and thought, as the essence of what we intend to convey often gets lost in translation through the words we choose.
In practice
In a philosophical discussion on the nature of language, you might cite this quote to emphasize the complexities of interpretation.
Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.
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.
For 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. . . .
Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.
Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.
Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praise-worthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.
The Crucifixion, Atonement, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ mark the beginning of a Christian Life, not the end of it.
A country without a memory is a country of madmen.
In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.
I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.
To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere Philosophy.
We all have the same problem as human beings. And it's something that we are born with, and we just see it manifest in different ways. And in this situation, it's racial. It's brutality. It's people breaking the law. It's the smoke, but the underlying fire is something that we all have to deal with, and that's our sin.
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