Quotes About Philosophy

I don't have the prejudices many have today. I don't believe in a naturalist worldview. I don't base my thinking on prejudices or a worldview and do not believe in materialism- (From an interview as cited in the Book the Literature of Possibility by Tom Butler-Bowden).

We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.

If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Good general theory does not search for the maximum generality, but for the right generality.

Aquinas wondered what would happen if God wanted to achieve universal resurrection. In other words, bringing everybody who had ever lived back to life at the same time. What would happen to cannibals, and the people they ate? You couldn't bring them all back at the same time, because the cannibals are made of the people they have eaten. You could have one but not the other. Ha.' I looked at Rowan. 'That's a good example of a paradox.

Christopher, like most people, didn't like his universe being unfathomable, so I doubted that a Zen koan would help him.

Nothing means anything but you still have to follow the rules.

Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce.

I'm never less at leisure than when at leisure, or less alone than when alone.

All religions, I claim, involve counterintuitive beliefs in supernatural beings. Moreover, such beliefs are systematically counterintuitive in the same basic ways. As we shall see, these basic ways of entertaining supernatural beliefs are more or less predictable from a fairly limited set of species-specific cognitive structures. These

Because religious beliefs and experiences cannot be reliably validated through logical deduction or observational induction, validation occurs only by satisfying the emotions that motivate religion in the first place. Religious

The Appeal of Utilitarianism

Although utilitarianism has appeal, especially in a secular society, it also has shortcomings. The most common charge against utilitarianism is that it cannot protect the rights of minorities, and sometimes it can even justify obvious injustices when the greater good is served.

Emotivism maintains that the only statements capable of having meaning are those that are empirically verifiable, but this underlying principle is itself not empirically verifiable.

Good reasons usually resolve moral disagreements, but for the emotivist, giving good reasons and using manipulation would essentially be the same thing.

It should not be surprising that ethical statements are not empirically verifiable, since right and wrong are not empirically observable qualities. But neither are they simply emotive expressions.

Despite its philosophical shortcomings, ethical relativism does have appeal, particularly to the popular culture. The first appeal of relativism is based on the important idea that morality does not develop in a sociological vacuum.

A final objection to relativism is the charge that its central premise, namely that moral absolutes do not exist, is a self-defeating statement, since the premise itself is an absolute.

poor Yorick of infinite jest.

Socrates would probably say the only way to ensure you're not an asshole is to assume you are one.

A major reason it works at Automattic is belief in a counterintuitive philosophy: safeguards don't make you safe; they make you lazy.

Toni Schneider used the term continuous deployment to describe the philosophy of endless small changes.

management is seen as a support role. The company stays as flat as possible for this reason. Schneider described his philosophy in this way: 1. Hire great people. 2. Set good priorities. 3. Remove distractions. 4. Stay out of the way.