30 quotes
Do we find ourselves a species naturally free from conflict? We do not.
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979)
Philosophy, in spite of all its tiresome features, is not a luxury but a necessity, because we always have to use it when things get difficult.
The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir (2005)
Arguments can always be answered. Moral philosophy, unlike straight moralizing, arises from and trives on plurality of values.
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979)
Every age has its pet contradictions. Thirty years ago we used to accept Marx and Freud together, and then wonder, like the chameleon on the turkey carpet, why life was so confusing.
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979)
Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.
The Myths We Live By (2003)
(In fact a cost-benefit-conscious gene that really understood its business would, no doubt, have remained on board something like the amoeba; it will probably be amoung the last to go.)
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979)
"Cognition" cannot be "translated into circuitry." Learning and creativeness cannot be "defined as specific portions of the cognitive machinery." They cannot be because translating and defining are operations performed, not on the mean in any thinker's brain, but on language.
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979)
Scientism exalts the idea of science on its own, causing people to become fixated on the assumptions that seemed scientific to them during their formative years. This prevents them from seeing contrary facts, however glaring they may be, that have been noticed more lately.
Are You an Illusion (2014)
Many natural patterns, such as the arrangement of buds on a stem, accord with the series of Fibonacci numbers, and Fibonacci spirals are also observed in spiral nebulae. There are, moreover, no flying pigs …
Review of 'What Darwin Got Wrong' by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli Palmarini (2010)
Rightly did Darwin pin up a paper warning himself to be careful about using such words as "higher" and "lower." What is downward about the trend that has produced elephants, chimpanzees, wolves, dolphins, and jackdaws by comparison with ants and bees?
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979)