Simon Blackburn Quotes

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.

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.

Perhaps to restore human freedom we should deny determinism?

If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma, are sometimes consoling.

In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other.

Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility.

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.

We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.

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.

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.

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.

An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat shop or the concentration camp and the death march.

Finding a mechanism does not bypass the problem of induction.

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?