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 very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship
Peace can only be secured by justice; never by force of arms.
'Death with dignity' is our society's expression of the universal yearning to achieve a graceful triumph over the stark and often repugnant finality of life's last sputterings. But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms.
No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.
The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual; everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.
Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.
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