Quotes About Philosophy

Theism does not offer a sufficiently substantial explanation of our capacities, and naturalism does not offer a sufficiently reassuring one.

The place at which the contrast between forms of intelligibility is most vividly presented is in the understanding of ourselves.

The evolutionary story leaves the authority of reason in a much weaker position. … Evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn't take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends.

The subjectivity of consciousness is an irreducible feature of reality, and it must occupy as fundamental a place in any credible world view as matter, energy, space, time and numbers.

too many hypotheses and systems of thought in philosophy and elsewhere are based on the bizarre view that we, at this point in history, are in possession of the basic forms of understanding needed to comprehend absolutely anything.

Nature is such as to give rise to conscious beings with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible to such beings. Ultimately therefore such beings should be comprehensible to themselves.

Both theism and evolutionary naturalism are attempts to understand ourselves from the outside

If you can't prove that anything exists outside you own mind, is it all right to go on believing in the external world anyway?

But it seems to me that, as it is usually presented, the current orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the product of governing assumptions that are unsupported, and that it flies in the face of common sense.

All these theories are motivated by an epistemological criterion of reality—that only what can be understood in a certain way exists.

Persons and other conscious beings are part of the natural order, and their mental states are part of the way the world is in itself.

I do not find theism any more credible than materialism as a comprehensive world view. My interest is in the territory between them.

One of the things that drive the various reductionist programs about mind, value, and meaning, in spite of their inherent implausibility, is the lack of any comprehensive alternative.

The things we do or want without reasons, and without requiring reasons - the things that define what is a reason for us and what is not-are the starting points of our skepticism. 

These essays are about life: about its end, its meaning, its value, and about the metaphysics of consciousness. Some of the topics have not received much attention from analytic philosophers, because it is hard to be clear and precise about them, and hard to separate from a mixture of facts and feelings those questions abstract enough for philosophical treatment.

There may or may not be an external world, and if there is it may or may not be completely different from how it seems to you—there's no way for you to tell. This view is called skepticism about the external world.

Si yo fuera solipsista, probablemente no habría escrito este libro, pues no creería que hubiese alguien más que lo leyera.

evolutionary naturalism offers an explanation of our knowledge that is seriously inadequate, when applied to the knowledge-generating capacities that we take ourselves to have.

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of ancient mythologists, accomodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and yet it remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

I believe in the same manner at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.

in one point, all nations of the earth and all religions agree. All believe in a God, The things in which they disgrace are the redundancies annexed to that belief;