Meaning, as criteria

Re-reading Willard Quine's Web of belief it struck me that apart from the basic point he makes about our whole belief system, as more like a spider's web rather than a neatly constructed building, one floor on top of the other, there is another aspect of importance.  Now when encountered with an experience that does not fit in with our existing set of beliefs, we can choose which of the beliefs to alter: those on the periphery, or those more towards the centre or the ones at the very core.  Then there could be a whole set of beliefs tweaked, adjusted, altered, given up, reworked... The experience that actually sets this in motion is important but not the central purpose of the whole endeavour.  The exercise is not merely to accommodate the new experience but to 'make sense' of the whole!  The belief machinery is at work primarily to make meaning of the whole web.  Until that is achieved the process continues.  Quine says the whole process is guided by conservatism and the quest for simplicity, I would say that the process is guided by meaning. 

Only then can I explain why and how I can hold very contradictory (or seemingly contradictory) views and yet carry on as if everything perfectly fits in.  It is just that in my whole web of belief the 'contradictory beliefs' are not contradictory!  The binding threads of belief make meaning as a whole - at least for now!