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The Mastery Of One's Phonemes May Be Compared To The Violinist's Mastery Of Fingering. The Violin String Lends Itself To A Continuous Gradation Of Tones, But The Musician Learns The Discrete Intervals At Which To Stop The String In Order To Play The Conventional Notes. We Sound Our Phonemes Like Poor Violinists, Approximating Each Time To A Fancied Norm, And We Receive Our Neighbor's Renderings Indulgently, Mentally Rectifying The More Glaring Inaccuracies.

-Willard Van Orman Quine

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The Mastery Of One's

Willard Van Orman Quine

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The Mastery Of One's Phonemes May Be Compared To The Violinist's Mastery Of Fingering. The Violin String Lends Itself To A Continuous Gradation Of Tones, But The Musician Learns The Discrete Intervals At Which To Stop The String In Order To Play The Conventional Notes. We Sound Our Phonemes Like Poor Violinists, Approximating Each Time To A Fancied Norm, And We Receive Our Neighbor's Renderings Indulgently, Mentally Rectifying The More Glaring Inaccuracies.

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The Totality Of Our So-called Knowledge Or Beliefs, From The Most Casual Matters Of Geography And History To The Profoundest Laws Of Atomic Physics Or Even Of Pure Mathematics And Logic, Is A Man-made Fabric Which Impinges On Experience Only Along The Edges. Or, To Change The Figure, Total Science Is Like A Field Of Force Whose Boundary Conditions Are Experience.

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To Be Is To Be The Value Of A Variable.

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Logic Chases Truth Up The Tree Of Grammar.

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Some May Find Comfort In Reflecting That The Distinction Between An Eliminative And An Explicative Physicalism Is Unreal.

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Language Is Conceived In Sin And Science Is Its Redemption.

The Word 'definition' Has Come To Have A Dangerously Reassuring Sound, Owing No Doubt To Its Frequent Occurrence In Logical And Mathematical Writings.

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