Philosophy Quotes

"Identity and difference are not absolute relations but depend on the level of analysis."

"Philosophy is continuous with science; there is no special philosophical method."

"We carve nature at its joints only relative to our conceptual scheme."

"The problem of universals cannot be solved by reference to abstract objects."

"The law of excluded middle presupposes a particular metaphysical outlook."

"Reference and meaning are not determinate facts about the world."

"The mind is not a mirror of nature but a tool for organizing experience."

"Identity conditions determine what objects are."

"The supposed objects of philosophy are not entities but features of our language."

"We project structure onto the world; the world does not force a unique structure upon us."

"Logic is revisable in principle, though in practice we revise it rarely."

"Ontological commitments are made when we quantify over objects in our theory."

"Conceptual relativity means different schemes can describe the same world differently."

"The question 'What is there?' can only be answered relative to a language."

"The meaning of a word is not an intrinsic property but a relational one."

"Our theories about the world rest on a foundation of pragmatic choices, not absolute necessity."

"Language is governed by convention and pragmatic necessity, not by a pre-existing reality."

"Objects do not come already packaged in nature; we decide how to individuate them."

"All language is shaped by our interests and purposes."

"Words are meaningless in isolation; they derive meaning from their role in a system."

"To adopt a theory is to adopt an ontology."

"Necessity and possibility are features of our language, not of the world itself."

"The most abstract principles of logic may themselves be revisable."

"Identity is not an intrinsic feature of objects but a feature of how we conceptualize."

"We can never step outside our conceptual scheme to compare it to the world itself."

"The question of what exists is inseparable from questions about language and meaning."

"Language is pragmatically motivated but not determined by the world."

"The ontology of a theory is what one must posit to make the theory true."

"We cannot divide our beliefs into the empirical and the analytic in any principled way."

"The mind imposes structure on experience rather than receiving it passively."