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The operationist asks, “What would we have to do to come to believe it?” For the pragmatist the question is, “What would we do if did believe it?”

Abraham Kaplan

A problem is something you can do something about. If you can’t do something about it, then it’s not a problem, it’s a predicament. That means it’s something that must be coped with, endured.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Execute Mean Plan Predicament Problem Something
We are caught up in a paradox, one which might be called the paradox of conceptualization.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Caught might Need Paradox
The operationist asks, “What would we have to do to come to believe it?” For the pragmatist the question is, “What would we do if did believe it?”
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Believe Meaning Operationist Pragmatist Question Statement
We are forever asking Nature whether it has stopped beating its wife.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Asking Beating Forever Nature Stopped Wife
I call it the law of the instrument , and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Human Instrument Law Pressure Scientific Social Trait Work
There is nothing more inspiring than having a mind unfold before you. Let people teach who have a calling. It is never just a job.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Before Inspiring Job Mind People Teach Unfold
Every discipline develops standards of professional competence to which its workers are subject… Every scientific community is a society in the small, so to speak, with its own agencies of social control.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Agency Community Competence Discipline Profession Standard
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Boy Children Humorous Need Parenting Small
Experience is of particulars only.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Experience Particular Work Hard Time
Mathematics is not yet capable of coping with the naïveté of the mathematician himself.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Coping Mathematics Naivete Ves
It comes as no particular surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Discover Formulate Particular Problem Require Solution Surprise
The proper concepts are needed to formulate a good theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the proper concepts.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Arrive Concept Formulate Good Need Proper Theory
A philosophy which speaks, even indirectly, only to philosophers is no philosophy at all; and I think the same is true if it speaks only to scientists, or only to jurists, or priests, or any other special class.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Class Indirectly Philosophy Speak Thinking
The price of training is always a certain trained incapacity: the more we know how to do something, the harder it is to learn to do it differently.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Certain Incapacity More Price Something Training
In addition to the social pressures from the scientific community there is also at work a very human trait of individual scientist.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Addiction Boys Community Giving Law Pressure Social
To get at the meaning of a statement the logical positivist asks, “What would the world be like if it were true?”
ABRAHAM KAPLAN

Ask Believe Like Logical Question Statement World

The operationist asks, “What would we have to do to come to believe it?” For the pragmatist the question is, “What would we do if did believe it?”

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The operationist asks, “What would we have to do to come to believe it?” For the pragmatist the question is, “What would we do if did believe it?”

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Popular Authors

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