Simon Blackburn
British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularise philosophy.
A signpost doesn't in and of itself represent the way to the village. We have to learn how to take it.
Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything.
What underlies our assignment of probabilities in the real world?
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.
But it is logically impossible that there could exist an 'unowned' dent, a dent without a surface that is dented.
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.
According to Confucianism, the ideal life contains a large dose of respect for traditional ways. All these ideals can be fleshed out and painted in more or less attractive colours. Yet there is something uncomfortable about them, if only because there is little reason to suppose that there is any such thing as the ideal life. Since different people have different tastes and interests, and different cultures encourage different concerns, it seems unlikely that any 'ideal life' will be heavily contextualized: ideal for this person in these circumstances, perhaps, but not much more.
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.
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.
In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other.
It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.
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.
Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people?
Perhaps to restore human freedom we should deny determinism?
We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.
Motion however will not help unless we have things moving.
Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility.
"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."
If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma, are sometimes consoling.
Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous.