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Full Idea
Philosophy is in large part concerned with ...what science could get along with, could be reconstructed by means of, as distinct from what science has historically made us of.
Gist of Idea
Philosophy is largely concerned with finding the minimum that science could get by with
Source
Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'Ways of Paradox and other essays' [Harvard 1976], p.151
A Reaction
This nicely summarises the programme for the whole of the philosophy of David Lewis, who was Quine's pupil. If you start by asking what it could 'get by with', it is not surprising that simplicity is the top intellectual virtue for both of them.
| 13713 | Quine holds time to be 'space-like': past objects are as real as spatially remote ones [Quine, by Sider] |
| 22430 | If we understand a statement, we know the circumstances of its truth [Quine] |
| 22432 | Normally conditionals have no truth value; it is the consequent which has a conditional truth value [Quine] |
| 22431 | Good algorithms and theories need many occurrences of just a few elements [Quine] |
| 22433 | It is important that the quantification over temporal entities is timeless [Quine] |
| 22437 | Logical languages are rooted in ordinary language, and that connection must be kept [Quine] |
| 22434 | Reduction to logical forms first simplifies idioms and grammar, then finds a single reading of it [Quine] |
| 22435 | The logician's '→' does not mean the English if-then [Quine] |
| 22438 | Philosophy is largely concerned with finding the minimum that science could get by with [Quine] |
| 22436 | Logicians don't paraphrase logic into language, because they think in the symbolic language [Quine] |