Simon Blackburn Quotes & Sayings

our ideas and concepts can be compared with the lenses through which we see the world. In philosophy the lens is itself the topic of study. Success will be a matter not of how much you know at the end, but of what you can do when the going gets tough: when the seas of argument rise, and confusion breaks out. Success will mean taking seriously the implications of ideas. WHAT IS THE POINT? — Simon Blackburn

Perhaps to restore human freedom we should deny determinism ? — Simon Blackburn

The absolutist takes himself to read nature in her very own language, but the relativist insists that nature does not speak, and we hear only what we have elected to hear. — Simon Blackburn

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. — Simon Blackburn

When the hoary old question of nature versus nurture comes around, sides form quickly. — Simon Blackburn

So the middle-ground answer reminds us that reflection is continuous with practice, and our practice can go worse or better according to the value of our reflections. — Simon Blackburn

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. — Simon Blackburn

getting clear about the right categories with which to understand human motivation, is an important practical task. — Simon Blackburn

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. — Simon Blackburn

The absolutist takes himself to speak to the ages, with the tongue of angels, but the relativist hears only one version among others, the subjectivity of the here and now. — Simon Blackburn

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

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

It is the thought that the least efficient way of of finding either happiness or pleasure is to pursue them. Put in terms of happiness, we can see it like this: To be happy you must quite literally "lose yourself". You must lose yourself in some pursuit; you need to forget your own happiness and find other goals and projects, other objects of concern that might include the welfare of some other people, or the cure of the disease, or simply in the variety of everyday activities with their little successes and setbacks. — Simon Blackburn

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. — Simon Blackburn

Someone sitting on a completely unreasonable belief is sitting on a time bomb. The apparently harmless, idiosyncratic belief of the Catholic Church that one thing may have the substance of another, although it displays absolutely none of its empirical qualities, prepares people for the view that some people are agents of Satan in disguise, which in turn makes it reasonable to destroy them. — Simon Blackburn

Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide. — Simon Blackburn

There may be rhetoric about the socially constructed nature of Western science, but wherever it matters, there is no alternative. There are no specifically Hindu or Taoist designs for mobile phones, faxes or televisions. There are no satellites based on feminist alternatives to quantum theory. Even that great public sceptic about the value of science, Prince Charles, never flies a helicopter burning homeopathically diluted petrol, that is, water with only a memory of benzine molecules, maintained by a schedule derived from reading tea leaves, and navigated by a crystal ball. — Simon Blackburn

Chance is as relentless as necessity. — Simon Blackburn

what Russell called a 'logical construction out of aggregates of facts. (This does not mean that all statements about the average are sensible or useful: as has been said, the average person has one testicle and one breast.) — Simon Blackburn

There are normal times when it is wholly admirable to be steadfast, resolute, unconflicted, and therefore when integrity is unmistakenly a virtue. The person of integrity knows what to do, and does it. But as we have been exploring, there are also times when certainty and single-mindedness indicate something less admirable: a deafness to voices that should be heard or a blindness to aspects of a situation that need to be considered. — Simon Blackburn

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

Respect, of course is a tricky term. I may respect your gardening by just letting you get on with it. Or, I may respect it by admiring it and regarding it as a superior way to garden. — Simon Blackburn

The gods we make in our own image are tribal gods. They tell you how very, very little you should tolerate outsiders, who are less favoured of the Lord. Amazingly, there are no recorded cases of the holy man going up the mountain and finding that it's the others who are right. It always turns out that God wants unbelievers to suffer, and what could be more noble than to help him a little? When religion rules, toleration disappears, for you cannot cherish the verdict of death to the infidels, yet also tolerate those who disagree - for those are the very same infidels ... — Simon Blackburn

Our concepts or ideas form the mental housing in which we live. We may end up proud of the structures we have built. Or we may believe that they need dismantling and starting afresh. But first, we have to know what they are. — Simon Blackburn

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

The fantasist in whom the reality barrier has broken down is unreliable, believing things when he should not, and telling things as true when they are not. — Simon Blackburn

There are always people telling us what we want, how they will provide it, and what we should believe. Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything. — Simon Blackburn

To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, become aware of alternatives, and so on. — Simon Blackburn

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

Reflection enables us to step back, to see our perspective on a situation as perhaps distorted or blind, at the very least to see if there is argument for preferring our ways, or whether it is just subjective. — Simon Blackburn

Science similarly contains within itself the devices for correcting the illusions of science. That is its crowning glory. When we come upon intellectual endeavours that contain no such devices - one might cite psychoanalysis, grand political theories, 'new age' science, creationist science - we need not be interested. — Simon Blackburn

Finding a mechanism does not bypass the problem of induction. — Simon Blackburn

This doctrine, that of the ghost in the machine, strictly separates the mind or soul from the body. And by doing so it takes the soul outside the sphere of mechanical or scientific explanation. It splits the world of the mind from the world of science. It is often supposed to protect our cherished free will. — Simon Blackburn

Accepting a religion may be more like enjoying a poem, or following the football. It might be a matter of immersion in a set of practices. Perhaps the practices have only an emotional point, or a social point. Perhaps religious rituals only serve necessary psychological and social ends. The rituals of birth, coming of age, or funerals do this. It is silly to ask whether a marriage ceremony is true or false. People do not go to a funeral service to hear something true, but to mourn, or to begin to stop mourning, or to meditate on departed life. It can be as inappropriate to ask whether what is said is true as to ask whether Keats's ode to a Grecian urn is true. The poem is successful or not in quite a different dimension, and so is Chartres cathedral, or a statue of the Buddha. They may be magnificent, and moving, and awe-inspiring, but not because they make statements that are true or false. — Simon Blackburn

The absolutist parades his good solid grounding in observation, reason, objectivity, truth and fact; the relativist sees only fetishes. — Simon Blackburn

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. — Simon Blackburn

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. — Simon Blackburn

Others may want to stand upon the 'politics of identity', or in other words the kind of identification with a particular tradition, or group, or national or ethnic identity that invites them to turn their back on outsiders who question the ways of the group. They will shrug off criticism: their values are 'incommensurable' with the values of outsiders. They are to be understood only by brothers and sisters within the circle. People like to retreat to within a thick, comfortable, traditional set of folkways, and not to worry too much about their structure, or their origins, or even the criticisms that they may deserve. Reflection opens the avenue to criticism, and the folkways may not like criticism. In this way, ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind. — Simon Blackburn

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

WORTH IT?
It is no credit to our phase of civilization if it is fear rather than ambition that drives most of those who bankrupt themselves on the vanities, or who end up under the surgeon's knife. It is the fear of falling short, of being inadequate in the eyes of others, including loved ones. [ ... ]
It is unfitting, one might say, improper, treating one's owm body as a tool rather than a part of oneself. [ ... ]
The bottom line is that it dishonors ourselves, for we ought to think better of ourselves than that. — Simon Blackburn

It is sometimes said that one of the casualties of the general suspicion and mistrust that permeated the old Soviet Union was that the distinction between truth and other motivations to believe tended to break down. Upon hearing a purported piece of information, the reaction was not 'Is this true?' but 'Why is this person saying this? - What machinations or manipulations are going on here?' The question of truth did not, as it were, have the social space in which it could breath. — Simon Blackburn

[ ... ] like any human practices, those of religions are not exempt from ethical questioning. Rituals and rites in groups change behavior, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. For the madness of crowds is a very close cousin to the fervor or congregations and the martial spirit of armies. — Simon Blackburn

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up. — Simon Blackburn

The absolutist trumpets his plain vision; the relativist sees only someone who is unaware of his own spectacles. — Simon Blackburn

We must inspect each part, and we have to do so while relying on other parts. But the result of that inspection may, if we are coherent and imaginative, be perfectly seaworthy. — Simon Blackburn

Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders. — Simon Blackburn

Leibniz thought that if we had a sufficiently logical notation, dispute and confusion would cease, and men would sit together and resolve their disputes by calculation. — Simon Blackburn

Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous . — Simon Blackburn

Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people? — Simon Blackburn

Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything. — Simon Blackburn

The absolutist lays down the law, but the relativist hears only roaring and bawling. Or, when the relativist voice, as it is heard from philosophers such as Nietzsche or James, itself starts to grate and sounds shrill, as it often does, and when the relativist then offers concessions, the absolutist hears only insincerity. The war of words can often turn into a dialogue of the deaf, and this too if part of its power to arouse outrage and fury. — Simon Blackburn

How you think about what you are doing affects how you do it, or whether you do it at all. — Simon Blackburn

Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility. — Simon Blackburn