9 quotes
Love is indeed, at root, the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones.
To be truly rational we need to acknowledge the limits of our rationality: nothing is more irrational than an unwarranted faith in reason.
The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)
If the house on the lake can become a new iteration of a philosophical retreat, that would pay homage to its first owner much more than any number of selfie-snapping visitors could.
Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.
Philosophical autobiographies do much more than simply reveal the personalities and prejudices of their authors, however. They provide striking examples of just why such factors inevitably colour our thinking beyond the biographical.
The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)
Philosophers understandably focus on the nature of reason itself. However, in order for reason to flourish, it needs to be practised in the right environment. And that is sadly often lacking in the very places where reason is held in the highest esteem.
The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)
If it seems shocking to some that scientists are not cold computers but human beings with different preferences, dispositions, skills and temperaments then they must have a very strange idea of how people think. Science is indeed a rational pursuit par excellence. But it does violence to the notion of rationality if we pretend that it is not a complicated, somewhat messy capacity.
The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)
Disenchantment with politics is therefore toxic, and populism can only increase such disenchantment, since it leads to the promise of simple solutions that cannot be delivered, while removing from the public square the more nuanced kind of discourse that is needed to explain why it can’t work.
The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)
This point is critical. Reason is often assumed to be by definition disinterested. Disinterested reason has its place, of course, in mathematics and science, but sometimes it can legitimately be very interested indeed. Reason needs to be objective, not disinterested, and this means it can recognise the objective existence of needs and desires, good and bad states.
The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)