Simon Blackburn Quotes

Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility.

Finding a mechanism does not bypass the problem of induction.

We hope for lives whose story leaves us looking admirable; we like our weaknesses to be hidden and deniable... We want to enjoy our lives, and we want to enjoy them with a good conscience ... Ethics is disturbing. We are often vaguely uncomfortable when we think of such things as exploitation of the world's resources, or the way our comforts are provided by the miserable labour conditions of the third world ... Racists and sexists, like antebellum slave owners in America, always have to tell themselves a story that justifies their system.

What underlies our assignment of probabilities in the real world?

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

We think about what to do, and muster considerations and arguments in favor of one course or another. How are we to think about that?

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.

Chance is as relentless as necessity.

The word "philosophy" carries unfortunate connotations: impractical, unworldly, weird.

A signpost doesn't in and of itself represent the way to the village. We have to learn how to take it.

But it is logically impossible that there could exist an 'unowned' dent, a dent without a surface that is dented.

It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.

Paradigms can be asked to show their worth, an some of them do not stand up.

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.