[F]elt importances are neither propositions nor universals nor Platonic ideals; rather, they are individual and concrete features of the empirically existing world-whole.
Quentin Smith, The Felt Meanings of the World: A Metaphysics of Feeling, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1986, p. 29
The basic presupposition shared by Heidegger and other philosophers in the rational-metaphysical tradition from Plato and Aristotle onwards is that the central metaphysical question is a Why-question, and is about the reason or reasons that explain why everything is and is as it is. Metaphysicians from Plato to Hegel presupposed the most fundamental metaphysical truth to be the answer to this question, and metaphysicians from Schopenhauer onwards presupposed the most basic metaphysical truth to be the unanswerability of this question.
Quentin Smith, The Felt Meanings of the World: A Metaphysics of Feeling, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1986, p. 13
[T]here may be an even more basic (and perhaps unique) problem that arises due to the highly non-conservative shift in thinking that a transition to quantum cognitive science would require. It may be that quantum ontologies are so ‘strange’ that many, most, or virtually all philosophers find them psychologically impossible to believe. This may be a genetic problem, rather than merely a problem in the lack of intellectual acculturation in quantum ontology.
Quentin Smith, ‘Why Cognitive Scientists Cannot Ignore Quantum Mechanics’, in Smith and Aleksandar Jokic (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford, 2003, p. 410
Not long ago I was sleeping in a cabin in the woods and was awoken in the middle of the night by the sounds of a struggle between two animals. Cries of terror and extreme agony rent the night, intermingled with the sounds of jaws snapping bones and flesh being torn from limbs. One animal was being savagely attacked, killed and then devoured by another. […] [I]it seems to me that the horror I experienced on that dark night in the woods was a veridical insight. What I experienced was a brief and terrifying glimpse into the ultimately evil dimension of a godless world.
Quentin Smith, ‘An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Laws’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 29, no. 3 (June, 1991), pp. 159, 173