Quotes About Philosophy

La pregunta que nos asalta es: ¿sólo podemos escapar del determinismo gracias al azar de una vida sin sentido?

En una carta al mismo interlocutor, Einstein hizo unas afirmaciones que han sido citas con frecuencia por los deterministas. Dijo que si la Luna fuese dotada de autoconsciencia estaría perfectamente convencida de que su camino alrededor de la Tierra es fruto de una decisión libre.

Plantinga explained, the scientific search for truth assumes nature is not all there is. If nature is all there is, then truth itself is a chimera and our human faculties for discovering and knowing it are unreliable.

The acids of modernity brought about by modern philosophy were just as corrosive for traditional religion as were the ones created by the new sciences.

Thought, when it is cut off from action, is sick. This sickness is sometimes called mythology, mysticism, idealism. Today it is called existentialism.

nous risquons maintenant de mourir par excès de moyen et par absence de fins.

For what are the Aegyption Hierogliphicks, and the whole History of the Pagan Gods; the Hints, and Fictions of the Wise Men of Old, but in Effect, a kind of Philosophical Mythology ; Which is, in truth, no other, then a more Agreeable Vehicle found out for Conveying to us the Truth and Reason of Things, though the medium of Images and Shadows.

Buffett found it 'extraordinary' that academics studied such things. They studied what was measurable, rather than what was meaningful. 'As a friend [Charlie Munger] said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Objective mathematical notions must be thought of as timeless entities and are not to be regarded as being conjured into existence at the moment that they are first humanly perceived.

A scientific world-view which does not profoundly come to terms with the problem of conscious minds can have no serious pretensions of completeness.

I argue that the phenomenon of consciousness cannot be accommodated within the framework of present-day physical theory.

What is particularly curious about quantum theory is that there can be actual physical effects arising from what philosophers refer to as counterfactuals-that is, things that might have happened, although they did not in fact happen.

In some Platonic sense, the natural numbers seem to be things that have an absolute conceptual existence independent of ourselves.

How is that perceiving beings can arise from out of the physical world, and how is that mentality is able seemingly to 'create' mathematical concepts out of some kind of mental model.

The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't. Deconstruction deconstructs itself, and disappears up its own behind, leaving only a disembodied smile and a faint smell of sulphur.

Take away religion, take away philosophy, take away the higher aims of art, and you deprive ordinary people of the ways in which they can represent their apartness. Human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this 'living down', which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind, and with it our kindness.

Liberty is not the same thing as equality, and that those who call themselves liberals are far more interested in equalizing than in liberating their fellows.

Words do not reflect the world, not because there is no world, but because words are not mirrors.

Roger Silverwood

Roger Silverwood

just as vivid—I slowly let go of my prejudices and came to accept, like Hamlet after seeing his father's ghost, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Since then, I have helped or watched literally thousands of people go through similar experiences—life-changing journeys into psychic memory that help illuminate—and heal—the traumas of the present.

No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.

Existe una diferencia esencial entre «tener ideas» y «someter estas ideas a prueba». Lo característico de los filósofos es comprobar las ideas, averiguar si poseen alguna coherencia y solidez o si encierran algún tipo de vicio de forma, o algún error que las haga inviables.