Anthony Quinton

While Quinton's theory states that no further analysis of the classes is possible, he also says that some classes may be more or less natural—that is, more or less unified than another class. Armstrong illustrates this intuitive difference Quinton is appealing to by pointing to the difference between the class of coloured objects and the class of crimson objects: the crimson object class is more unified in some intuitive sense (how is not specified) than the class of coloured objects.

The shortest definition, and it is quite a good one, is that philosophy is thinking about thinking. That brings out the generally second-order character of the subject, as reflective thought about particular kinds of thinking – formation of beliefs, claims to knowledge – about the world or large parts of it. — The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 666 (1st ed.)

On 7 February 1983, he was created a life peer as Baron Quinton, of Holywell in the City of Oxford and County of Oxfordshire. An admirer of Margaret Thatcher, he sat in the Lords he sat as a Conservative.

Quinton was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1975 to 1976. He was chairman of the board of the British Library from 1985 to 1990.

In Quinton's 1957 paper, he sees his theory as a less extreme version of nominalism than that of Willard Van Orman Quine, Nelson Goodman and Stuart Hampshire.

He was educated at Stowe School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took first-class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. A fellow of All Souls from 1948, he became a Fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1955. He was President of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1978 to 1987.

Anthony Quinton was born on March 25, 1925 in Chatham, Kent, England.

Quinton was born at 5, Seaton Road, Gillingham, Kent, the only son of Surgeon Captain Richard Frith Quinton, Royal Navy (1889–1935) and his wife (Gwenllyan) Letitia (née Jones).