Quotes About Philosophy

When we engage in a philosophical argument with an opponent, the primary issue is frequently about who has offered the best reasons to support her thesis. It is an illusion to think that there are ahistorical determinate standards to which we can appeal that will sharply distinguish once and for all what "really" are good or better reasons. What counts as "good reasons" is essentially contested.

Putnam rejects the idea that there is a single "scientific method." But he also thinks that this is not what Dewey meant when he appeals to scientific method in solving ethical problems. Rather, Dewey is appealing to experimentation, imaginative construction of alternative hypotheses, open discussion, debate, and ongoing self-corrective communal criticism.

In 1910, John Dewey published an important essay entitled "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy" (Dewey 1981, pp. 31–41). In a recent unpublished lecture, "The Importance of Darwin for Philosophy," Philip Kitcher describes Dewey's essay as "the single best philosophical response to Darwin published in the first century after the appearance of the Origin.

Rorty is just as dismissive of James's many references to 'experience' – a word that appears in almost every text that James ever wrote. In short, Rorty's pragmatism is a pragmatism without experience. And frankly, I agree with those who have strongly argued that to eliminate experience from pragmatism (old or new) is to eviscerate pragmatism, to leave us with a gutless shadow of pragmatism.

I]f we take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage in which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole drift of life, forced on one by one's total character and experience, and on the whole preferred – there is no other truthful word – as one's best working attitude. (James 1977, pp. 14–15)

The expression "pragmatism" is like an accordion; it is sometimes stretched to include a wide diversity of positions and thinkers (not just philosophers) and sometimes restricted to specific doctrines of the original American pragmatists.

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. (Peirce 1992, pp. 28–9)

From the perspective of the logical empiricists, the pragmatic thinkers were viewed as having seen through a glass darkly what was now seen much more clearly. The myth developed (and unfortunately became entrenched) that pragmatism was primarily an anticipation of logical positivism, in particular, the positivist's verifiability criterion of meaning.

I use logic all the time in mathematics, and it seems to yield "correct" results, but in mathematics "correct" by and large means "logical", so I'm back where I started. I can't defend logic because I can't remove my glasses.

In particular the rules of logic tell us how to create, from the opening arrangement (the list of axioms), new arrangements (called "theorems").

The great sea makes one a great sceptic.

To me everything is supernatural.

Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.

Death smiles at us all and all a man can do is smile back.

You're a philosopher." "No. Just drunk.

Christopher Morley extolled philosophical laziness … the kind of laziness that is based upon a carefully reasoned analysis of experience. Acquired laziness. We have no respect for those who were born lazy. It is like being born a millionaire – they cannot appreciate their bliss. It is the man who has hammered his laziness out of the stubborn material of life for whom we chant praise.7

Not only is happiness not money, it is not even like money.

If Christianity is to be discounted as wishful thinking because it removes fear of meaninglessness and annihilation, then secularism should be open to the same charge, since it removes the hated ideas of an absolute superior and of real responsibility.

Richard Linklater

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Life isn't meant to be easy. It's hard to take being on the top - or on the bottom. I guess I'm something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things... Life is one crisis after another.

The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, must feel that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.

Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.