Photo: Maryclaire Quine, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
W. V. O. Quine public figure — reconstructed profile
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
Logician and naturalist ("Two Dogmas of Empiricism", Word and Object). Beliefs form a web, revised at the edges under pressure from experience. Positions from his published works — not a member.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Before reading a particular study, you were skeptical of claim X. The study — large, in a strong journal — largely convinced you. It is now retracted for fabricated data. Stipulate: no other study has tested X, and nothing else you know bears on X beyond what you knew before. Where does your belief in X land now? | Back where I started — the study is simply erased | "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) — the web of belief: destroy a strand of evidence and the web settles back to its prior configuration. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Which comes closest to your actual position on God? | Probably no god, though I can't be certain | Word and Object (1960) naturalism; stated atheism. |
| Five people you know well report the same event: one evening, an object hovered unsupported in a public square for about ten seconds. Stipulate: each has been reliable for years, none knows the others, each reported separately, there's no footage, and no one has identified a trick, wire, magnet or collusion that could explain it. How likely is it that the object really hovered, with no conventional explanation? | Extremely unlikely — some ordinary explanation exists, found or not | "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) — testimony is weighed inside the total web; a report against the whole fabric of physics is revised away at the periphery. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| An anonymous source with no track record alleges that about 200 people inside one institution have kept a specific, career-ending wrongdoing secret for 10 years. Stipulate: no leak, no documents and no other whistleblower so far. Before any investigation, how likely is the allegation to be true? | Almost certainly not — 200 people don't keep a secret like that for ten years | "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) — the web absorbs recalcitrant claims at its cheapest point, which is disbelieving the report. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Two physical theories predict identically every observation anyone can foresee making. By whatever measure of simplicity you'd defend, T1 is simpler. How much does T1's simplicity raise your confidence that T1 is the true one? | Not at all — when predictions are identical, simplicity is taste, not evidence | "On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World" (1975) and "Two Dogmas" (1951) — underdetermination: empirically equivalent rivals leave truth open; simplicity is a pragmatic tie-breaker, not a truth-meter. Hence exactly 50%. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You've taken a $20-a-month supplement for three months and feel clearly better. Stipulate: two large, well-run, placebo-controlled trials found no effect beyond placebo for the symptom you take it for. What do you do? | Stop taking it — two large trials beat my impression; the benefit was placebo | "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969) — epistemology is continuous with science; controlled trials are the tribunal, private impression the witness it overrules. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Humans came to exist by: | Natural processes — and the question of guidance doesn't even arise for me | Word and Object (1960) — evolution is bedrock science in the web; the question of guidance does not arise within it. |
| A physical-science theory you accept has passed every test for decades. Two independent teams, using different equipment and methods, now report the same observation that contradicts it. Stipulate: no explanation exists yet. Twenty years from now, how likely is it that the anomaly has been explained as error, or absorbed within the existing theory with no revision needed? | Near-certain — replicated anomalies against a decades-proven theory are almost always error, or absorbable | "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) — "Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system." An anomaly is absorbed by the web with room to spare; his signature extremism on exactly this item. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| A mechanism predicts that drug D should help condition C. Stipulate: every step of the mechanism has been shown in human tissue, and on mechanism alone you started out fairly confident D helps. Two independent randomized trials then found no significant effect — though each trial was small enough that it could have missed a real effect. Where do you land on D now? | Genuinely uncertain now | "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) — recalcitrant trials force revision somewhere; the web protects the mechanism by adjusting auxiliaries first. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You clearly remember a conversation going one way; a colleague clearly remembers it going another. Stipulate: there's no recording, you're both usually reliable, and neither of you gains anything from either version. How likely is it that your version is the right one? | Leaning mine | Word and Object (1960) — observation and recollection are revisable checkpoints in the web, not foundations. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| A teleporter scans you, builds an exact atom-for-atom copy at the destination, and instantly and painlessly destroys the original. Stipulate: it has been used 10,000 times, every arrival reports feeling continuous, and it would save you a 12-hour trip. You'd use it: | Never | Word and Object (1960) — physical objects are individuated spatiotemporally ("no entity without identity"): the copy is a numerically different object, so the trip kills the traveler and sends a twin. Scored as his doctrine requires. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Suppose a worldview with a creator and one without predict identically every observation anyone can foresee making. By whatever measure of simplicity you'd defend, one is simpler, whichever one that is for you. How much does that raise your confidence that the simpler one is true? | Not at all — when predictions are identical, simplicity is taste, not evidence | Same underdetermination doctrine, tribe-neutral by construction. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| God exists | Probably false | His stated atheism (interviews and The Time of My Life, 1985), grounded in the naturalism of Word and Object (1960) — theology earns no place in the web. |
| Conscious existence continues after death | Certainly false | Word and Object (1960) — physicalism throughout; there is nothing to survive. |
| Prayer can change what happens in the world, beyond its effects on the people involved | Certainly false | Word and Object (1960) and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) — no mechanism, no evidence, no place in the web. |
| Human beings arose entirely through unguided natural processes | Certainly true | "Natural Kinds" (1969) and Word and Object (1960) — Darwinian evolution is the framework science that naturalized epistemology presupposes. |
| Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain | Certainly true | Word and Object (1960) — his physicalism: mental states are states of the body, full stop. |
| With the past exactly the same, our choices could have gone otherwise | Probably false | Theories and Things (1981) — determinism is the working presumption of his naturalism; "could have gone otherwise" survives only as a practical locution. |
| Some actions are wrong no matter what any person or culture believes | Probably false | Theories and Things (1981), "On the Nature of Moral Values" — moral values lack the evidential grounding of science; they are projections of our sentiments onto a neutral world. |
| Experts are usually right about questions in their own field | Probably true | "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969) — science is self-correcting and continuous with common sense; its current practitioners are the best guide going. |