Simon Blackburn famous quotes

04-17-2025

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Philosophical #Responsibility #Cutting
Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Suicide #Philosophical #Intellectual
This doctrine, that of the ghost in the machine, strictly separates the mind or soul from the body. And by doing so it takes the soul outside the sphere of mechanical or scientific explanation. It splits the world of the mind from the world of science. It is often supposed to protect our cherished free will.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Soul #Mind #Machines
The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundation of knowledge.
-- Simon Blackburn

#World #Safe #Way
We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Memories #Grieving #Maturity
It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Fall #Law #Facts
A god that created the world and then walked off the site leaving it to its own devices is not a fit object of worship, nor a source of moral authority.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Leaving #World #Moral
Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Bills #Able #Window
Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people?
-- Simon Blackburn

#Simple #People #Should
Myself, I have never seen a bumper sticker saying " Hate if you Love Jesus ", but I sometimes wonder why not. It would be a good slogan for the religious Right.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Religious #Jesus #Hate
Induction is the process of taking things within our experience to be representative of the world outside our experience. It is a process of projection or extrapolation.
-- Simon Blackburn

#World #Process #Projection
Finding a mechanism does not bypass the problem of induction.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Bypass #Doe #Problem
Paradigms can be asked to show their worth, an some of them do not stand up.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Shows #Paradigm
If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma , are sometimes consoling.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Karma #Destiny #Effort
Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Responsibility #Culture #Very Good
There are normal times when it is wholly admirable to be steadfast, resolute, unconflicted, and therefore when integrity is unmistakenly a virtue. The person of integrity knows what to do, and does it. But as we have been exploring, there are also times when certainty and single-mindedness indicate something less admirable: a deafness to voices that should be heard or a blindness to aspects of a situation that need to be considered.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Integrity #Voice #Doe
Chance is as relentless as necessity.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Chance #Relentless
In Michigan recently a man won a lawsuit for substantial damages because, he claimed, a rear-end collision in his car had made him a homosexual.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Men #Car #Michigan
Respect, of course is a tricky term. I may respect your gardening by just letting you get on with it. Or, I may respect it by admiring it and regarding it as a superior way to garden.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Garden #May #Way
When the hoary old question of nature versus nurture comes around, sides form quickly.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Sides #Nature Vs Nurture #Form
The fantasist in whom the reality barrier has broken down is unreliable, believing things when he should not, and telling things as true when they are not.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Believe #Reality #Broken
An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat shop or the concentration camp and the death march.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Sweat #Essentials #Gone
The word " philosophy " carries unfortunate connotations: impractical, unworldly, weird.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Philosophy #Connotation #Unfortunate
Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous .
-- Simon Blackburn

#Reflection #May #Dangerous
Thoughts are strange things. they have 'representational' powers: a thought typically represents the world as being one way or another. A sensation, by contrast, seems to just sit there.
-- Simon Blackburn

#Way #World #Strange
Perhaps to restore human freedom we should deny determinism ?
-- Simon Blackburn

#Deny #Should #Determinism

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