In the case of our main stock of well-worn predicates, I submit that the judgment of projectibility has derived from the habitual ...projection, rather than the habitual projection from the judgment of projectibility. The reason why only the right predicates happen so luckily to have become well entrenched is just that the well entrenched predicates have thereby become the right ones.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The problem of induction is not a problem of demonstration but a problem of defining the difference between valid and invalid ...>predictions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You may decry some of these scruples and protest that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosoph...y. I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there are in heaven or earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we are ready to tolerate everything as understood, there is nothing left to explain; while if we sourly refuse to take anything..., even tentatively, as clear, no explanation can be given. What intrigues us as a problem, and what will satisfy us as a solution, will depend upon the line we draw between what is already clear and what needs to be clarified.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Rules and particular inferences alike are justified by being brought into agreement with each other. A rule is amended if it yield...s an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend. The process of justification is the delicate one of making mutual adjustments between rules and accepted inferences; and in the agreement achieved lies the only justification needed for either.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Any effort in philosophy to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while th...e reward of success is banality. An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with 'the world'; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature... of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous. Rather--speaking loosely and without trying to answer either Pilate's question or Tarski's--a version is to be taken to be true when it offends no unyielding beliefs and none of its own precepts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »