29 quotes
Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern.
Mortal Questions (1979)
Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up.
The View From Nowhere (1986)
Consciousness is what makes the mind–body problem really intractable.
What is it like to be a bat? (1974)
I should not really object to dying if it were not followed by death.
Mortal Questions (1979)
Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.
Concealment and Exposure and Other Essays (1998)
If you think about it, the inside of your own mind is the only thing you can be sure of.
What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (1987)
A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental effort of will.
Mortal Questions (1979)
I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.
All of us, I believe, are fortunate to have been born.
Mortal Questions (1979)
Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed.
What is it like to be a bat? (1974)
Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.
What is it like to be a bat? (1974)
To look for a single general theory of how to decide the right thing to do is like looking for a single theory of how to decide what to believe.
Mortal Questions (1979)
Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.
The View From Nowhere (1986)
If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.
Mortal Questions (1979)
It is often remarked that nothing we do now will matter in a million years. But if that is true, then by the same token, nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now.
Mortal Questions (1979)
Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.
The View From Nowhere (1986)
There are elements which, if added to one's experience, make life better; there are other elements which, if added to one's experience, make life worse. But what remains when these are set aside is not merely neutral: it is emphatically positive.
Mortal Questions (1979)
[T]he organism does not have a point of view: the person or creature does.
Mortal Questions (1979)
I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.
Ethics increases the range of what it is about ourselves that we can will—extending it from our actions to the motives and character traits and dispositions from which they arise. We want to be able to will the sources of our actions down to the very bottom.
The View From Nowhere (1986)