Quotes

[W]e have all met persons basking in self-satisfaction that seems both to be justified and not to be justified: justified because they have good reasons for being satisfied with themselves, and not justified because we sense that they would be just as satisfied were the reasons to disappear.

Martin Hollis & Steven Lukes (ed.), Rationality and Relativism, Massachusetts, 1982, p. 140

“Any defect or fault in this garment is intentional and part of the design.” This label on a denim jacket I bought in a San Francisco store epitomizes for me some of the morally and intellectually repelling aspects of the society in which I live[.]

Jon Elster, States that are essentially by-products, Social Science Information, vol. 20, no. 3, 2016, pp. 431–473, p. 456

A one-legged man, seeking a State mobility allowance, had to struggle up four flights of stairs to the room where a tribunal was to decide his claim.

When he got there the tribunal ruled that he could not have the allowance because he had managed to make it up the stairs.

Geoffrey Lean, Catch 22 for a man with one leg, The Observer, 1980, pp. 5, p. 5

For a writer it is not easy to resist the desire to go down in posterity as a diary writer of unrivalled sincerity, a project as confused as the wish to be well-known as an anonymous donor to charities. The terms of sincerity and authenticity, like those of wisdom and dignity, always have a faintly ridiculous air about them when employed in the first person singular, reflecting the fact that the corresponding states are essentially by-products. And, by contamination, the preceding sentences partake of the same absurdity, for in making fun of the pathetic quest for authenticity one is implicitly affirming one’s own. “To invoke dignity is to forfeit it “: yes, but to say this is not much better. There is a choice to be made, between engaging in romantic irony and advocating it. Naming the unnameable by talking about something else is an ascetic practice and goes badly with self-congratulation.

Jon Elster, States that are essentially by-products, Social Science Information, vol. 20, no. 3, 2016, pp. 431–473, p. 440

A philosopher who regards ignorance of a scientific theory as a sufficient reason for not writing about it cannot be accused of complete lack of originality, as a study of recent philosophical literature will amply prove.

C. D. Broad, Scientific thought, London, 1923, p. 3

I must confess that I am not the kind of person whom I like, but I do not think that that source of prejudice has made me unfair to myself. If there should be others who have roses to strew, they can now do so without feeling the need to make embarrassing qualifications.

C. D. Broad, Autobiography, in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The philosophy of C.D. Broad, New York, 1959, pp. 3–68, p. 68

Suffering is not additive in this way. The discomfort of each of a large number of individuals experiencing a minor headache does not add up to anyone’s experiencing a migraine.

John M. Taurek, Should the numbers count?, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 6, no. 4, 1977, pp. 293–316, p. 308

Curiosity is the spark that starts a flirtation—in a bar, at a party, across the lecture hall in Economics 101. And curiosity ultimately nourishes that romance, and all our best human relationships—marriages, friendships, the bond between parents and children. The curiosity to ask a simple question—“How was your day?” or “How are you feeling?—to listen to the answer, and to ask the next question.

Brian Grazer, A Curious Mind: the Secret to a Bigger Life, New York, 2015, p. 7

No man ever will unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least chequer his life with solitude.

Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English opium-eater, and Suspiria de profundis, Boston, 1850, p. 270

Bentham’s whole task was to elaborate an originally simple philosophy; [James] Mill’s to simplify what had become too elaborate for popular comprehension.

William Thomas, The philosophic radicals: Nine studies in theory and practice, 1817-1841, Oxford, 1979, p. 36

A person totally unacquainted with the party would have found some difficulty in following the conversation, and they have used themselves to this sort of language so long that I really believe it never occurs to them that it is not in common use. Can you imagine Mr. Mill saying seriously to me that they were “very desirous Dumont should come and codify for a few weeks at Ford Abbey”? I wanted to find my Husband one day, and Mr. Mill said “I fancy Sir Samuel is gone to vibrate with Mr. Bentham”. If you were asked to take a “post prandial vibration”, it would scarcely occur to you it was walking up and down the Cloisters after dinner. They vibrate too on the Terrace, but when they go to the Pleasure Grounds it is a circumgyration. I cannot tell you half the old expressions that are in common use. Circumbendibus is a favorite one, the “Grandmother Egg sucking principles” another.

Anne Garbett Romilly, Romilly-Edgeworth Letters, 1813-1818: with an Introduction and Notes by Samuel Henry Romilly, London, 1936, p. 176

Une seule et même émotion peut avoir deux effects distincts. D’une part, elle suggère à l’acteur des préférences qu’il aurait désavouées avant d’être assailli par l’émotion en question et qu’il va récuser quand elle se calme. D’autre part, par son impact sur la formation des croyances, l’émotion fait entrave à la réalisation rationnelle de ces préférences temporaires. On ne veut pas ce qu’on devrait vouloir; mais, comme on ne peut pas faire efficacement ce que l’on veut, le danger est écarté ou réduit. Cette idée optimiste de deux négations qui s’annulent l’une l’autre ne correspond pourtant pas à une tendance universelle, car elles peuvent également s’ajouter l’une à l’autre. Prenons le cas de la vengeance. Alors que le sang lui bout dans les veines à la suite d’un affront, un agent décide de se venger sur-le-champ, ce qui l’expose à plus de risques que s’il prenait son temps pour chercher le lieu et l’heure qui conviennent. Le risque est minimal s’il ne se venge pas (je fais abstraction des sanctions que d’autres pourraient lui imposer pour le punir de sa ourdisse). Il est plus grand quand il se venge, mais prend son temps pour concocter les détails de cette vengeance. Il est maximal quand il cherche à se venger sans délai. Ainsi l’émotion augmente doublement le risque.

Jon Elster, Agir contre soi: la faiblesse de volonté, Paris, 2007, pp. 58-59

In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.

The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design, 1974, p. 11

The libertarian goals—including immediate abolition of invasions of liberty—are “realistic” in the sense that they could be achieved if enough people agreed on them, and that, if achieved, the resulting libertarian system would be viable. The goal of immediate liberty is not unrealistic or “Utopian” because—in contrast to such goals as the “elimination of poverty”—its achievement is entirely dependent on man’s will. If, for example, everyone suddenly and immediately agreed on the overriding desirability of liberty, then total liberty would be immediately achieved.

Murray N. Rothbard, The ethics of liberty, New York, 1998

A certain artist, whom we may call “Art Garfinkel”, often visits so-called junkyards, in search of such scraps of metal as will not just catch his eye, but, more than that, which will hold his attention quite enjoyably. On one of these visits, as it happens, he finds most appealing a certain junky piece of copper, shaped just like a lump, and nothing like, say, a disk. Purchasing the piece for just a pittance, and naming his acquisition “Peter Copperfield,” Art has it in mind to use this newly named Peter in a certain moderately complex artistic endeavor, a brief description of which I now provide.

Covering Copperfield with a suitable sort of wax, Garfinkel first uses the purchased piece to make a suitably shaped mold, the mold being made not of copper, of course, but of some quite different material, very well suited for making a mold of just the sort Art knowledgeably aims to produce. What the mold will be used for, once completed, is to make a sculpture, from molten copper. For Garfinkel, the point of that is this: After that copper hardens, he will have produced, in that way, a sculpture that, at least in all intrinsic regards and respects, is very like Peter Copperfield, the purchased piece of coppery junk. Using this mold, Art pours into it (at least very nearly) exactly as much (molten) copper—at least down to the nearest one thousandth of a milligram—as is contained in Copperfield. That copper hardens so as to form a piece of copper, one that’s always spatially distant from, and that’s ever so separate from, the purchased Copperfield. This newly hard piece of copper, it may be noted, contains no matter that ever served to compose the piece bought in the junkyard, Peter Copperfield. Amusingly, Garfinkel names the piece of copper he intentionally produced “Peter /Copyfield/”.

Having studied philosophy when in college, AG was quite uncertain that any piece of copper could ever be a copper sculpture; indeed, he was inclined to think not. In any case, he gave another name, “Untitled #42”, to the sculpture he produced exactly when and where he produced Peter Copyfield. So it was that, entirely made of copper, there came to be Untitled #42, an artwork that, fairly rocking even the coolest of the cognoscenti, brought AG a cool $6,000,000, with an equal amount going, of course, to his very fashionable dealer.

With that said, we’re almost done with our little story. The rest is just this: After resting in a billionaire’s penthouse for a while, perhaps about a month, the matter composing Untitled #42—matter also composing Peter Copyfield—is annihilated. In a moderately realistic case of that, the matter may be nuked. Perhaps better for our consideration, though not a great deal better, is a case where the matter is converted to energy. In this latter case, even the matter itself suddenly ceases to be.

In the story just told, a certain piece of copper and a certain copper sculpture are, from the first moment of their existence until their very last, always spatially perfectly coincident. And, throughout their history, each is composed of the same (copper) matter as the other. Still and all, it may well be that there are, indeed, those two distinct things I mentioned, Peter Copyfield being one of them, and Untitled #42 being the other notable thing. Just so, there will be only some quite confused thinking on the part of anyone who may think that, in our little story, we mentioned just one most salient cuprous thing, mentioning twice over just a single salient cuprous thing—with our sometimes using one of its names, “Peter Copyfield” and, with our using, at other times, another of its names, “Untitled #42”. As the chapter progresses, how confused that is will become very clear.

Toward beginning to make that clearer, we may ask about what could have been done to Untitled #42 with the result that it should then continue to exist, and also what could have been done to it with the opposite result, with the result that it should then cease to exist. Additionally, we may ask parallel questions concerning Peter Copyfield. In philosophically favored terminology, when asking those questions, what we’re asking is this: What are the persistence conditions of Untitled #42, the expensive copper sculpture? And, of about equal interest, what are the persistence conditions of Peter Copyfield, the piece of copper composed of just the very same copper that, throughout all the very same period of time, also serves to compose the pricey copper sculpture, Untitled #42?”

Peter Unger, Empty ideas: a critique of analytic philosophy, New York, NY, 2014, pp. 110-112

The next best thing to learning that a social intervention succeeds is determining conclusively that it does not succeed—so that funders will seek better options rather than pouring money down the drain.

Hal Harvey, Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy, New York, 2008, p. 143

Le Mal qu’on souffrait patiemment comme inévitable semble insupportable dès qu’on conçoit l’idée de s’y soustraire.

Alexis de Tocqueville, L’ancien régime et la révolution, Paris, 1856, ch. 4

MIT Press encouraged me to mention a couple of important updates in this preface for the paperback edition. First, my mother now has email.

William Easterly, The elusive quest for growth: economists' adventures and misadventures in the tropics, Cambridge, MA, 2001, p. x

[An] argument I always hear around the mathematics department [is that] mathematics helps you to think clearly. I have a very low opinion of this self-serving nonsense. In sports there is the concept of the specificity of skills: if you want to improve your racquetball game, don’t practice squash! I believe the same holds true for intellectual skills.

David Edwards, The Math Myth, 2016

The pseudo rationalists do true rationalism a disservice if they pretend to have adequate insight exactly where strict rationalism excludes it on purely logical grounds. Rationalism sees its chief triumph in the clear recognition of the limits of actual insights.

Otto Neurath et al., Philosophical papers, 1913-1946, Dordrecht, Holland ; Boston : Hingham, MA, 1983, p. 8