Quotes

[Una] forma tentadora de confrontar las restricciones propias de la escasez es apelar al hecho de que el Gobierno es ineficiente, corrupto, o ambas cosas. […] La idea sería que, en vez de aceptar que los recursos son escasos, deberíamos concentrarnos en erradicar estos males públicos. Ahora bien, este planteo presupone que no podemos afirmar que los recursos son escasos porque en un escenario contrafáctico en el que los funcionarios fueran más honestos y diligentes, los recursos públicos alcanzarían tanto para proveer el medicamento a Beviacqua como para brindar cobertura médica básica a los carenciados. El problema es que especular acerca de lo que pasaría en un universo paralelo de poco nos sirve a la hora de decidir cómo asignar los recursos existentes en este. Es innegable que la corrupción y la ineficiencia son problemas mayúsculos que merecen ser enfrentados con tesón, pues ellos son las causas de muchas carencias sociales, pero quejarnos acerca de su incidencia no nos librara de las restricciones concretas que la escasez impone.

Lucas S. Grosman, Escasez e igualdad: Los derechos sociales en la Constitución, Buenos Aires, 2008, p. 62

Las primeras tres cuadras las recorrí a toda velocidad. Después fui aminorando la marcha. A la quinta o sexta cuadra, andaba lo más tranquilo. La ciudad era un cementerio, y salvo las luces débiles de las esquinas, el resto estaba enterrado en la oscuridad. Cuando me puse a cruzar una esquina en diagonal, bajo la luz que dejaba ver las masas blanquecinas de la llovizna suspendidas en el aire, vi venir una figura humana en mi dirección. Fue emergiendo lentamente de la oscuridad, y al principio apareció borrosa por la llovizna, pero después fue haciéndose más nítida. Era un hombre joven, vestido con un impermeable que me resultó familiar. Era igual al mío. Venía tan derecho hacia mí que nos detuvimos a medio metro de distancia. Exactamente bajo el foco de la esquina. Traté de no mirarle la cara, porque me pareció saber de antemano de quién se trataba. Por fin alcé la cabeza y clavé la mirada en su rostro. Vi mi propio rostro. Era tan idéntico a mí que dudé de estar yo mismo allí, frente a él, rodeando con mi carne y mis huesos el resplandor débil de la mirada que estaba clavando en él. Nunca nuestros círculos se habían mezclado tanto, y comprendí que no había temor de que él estuviese viviendo una vida que a mí me estaba prohibida, una vida más rica y más elevada. Cualquiera hubiese sido su círculo, el espacio a él destinado a través del cual su conciencia pasaba como una luz errabunda y titilante, no difería tanto del mío como para impedirle llegar a un punto en el cual no podía alzar a la llovizna de mayo más que una cara empavorecida, llena de esas cicatrices tempranas que dejan las primeras heridas de la comprensión y la extrañeza.

Juan José Saer, Cicatrices, Buenos Aires, 1969, pp. 93-94

One of the paradoxes of science is that its very greatness as an intellectual adventure is perversely mirrored by a crippling diminution of what it is to be human.

Simon Conway Morris, Life's solution: inevitable humans in a lonely universe, Cambridge, 2003, p. 22

What is inconsistent with the universal applicability of quantum mechanics is not out ordinary experience as such, but the common-sense way of interpreting it. And I am bound to say that, in this area, I cannot see that common sense has any particular authority, given that our intuitions have evolved within a domain in which characteristically quantum-mechanical effects are scarcely in evidence.

Michael Lockwood, Mind, brain and the quantum: the compound "I", Oxford, 1989, p. 224

At yet another party he had befriended [fashion designer Fernando] Sanchez. Ayer was now standing near the entrance to the great white living-room of Sanchez’s West 57th Street apartment, chatting to a group of young models and designers, when a woman rushed in saying that a friend was being assaulted in a bedroom. Ayer went to investigate and found Mike Tyson forcing himself on a young south London model called Naomi Campbell, then just beginning her career. Ayer warned Tyson to desist. Tyson: “Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.” Ayer stood his ground. “And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.” Ayer and Tyson began to talk. Naomi Campbell slipped out.

Ben Rogers, A.J. Ayer: a life, New York, 1999, p. 344

Once we acknowledge the risk/uncertainty distinction, it is natural to think that our default state is uncertainty. Getting to a position where we can legitimately treat a proposition as risky is a cognitive achievement. Traditional indifference principles fail because they trivialise this achievement.

Brian Weatherson, Should we respond to evil with indifference?, Philosophy and phenomenological research, vol. 70, no. 3, 2005, pp. 613–635, p. 624

Utilitarianism is almost certainly much more demanding than Mill allows. It is tempting to think, in fact, that Mill is deliberately being disingenuous here. He was quite aware of how much further there was to go before customary morality became ideal, and that the route to that ideal would seem demanding to many. The rhetoric to encourage people on that road comes in chapter 3 of Utilitarianism, especially in the closing paragraphs. Here, he may be more concerned to allay doubts. Better to persuade a reader to become a feeble utilitarian than put them off entirely by stressing the demandingness of utilitarian morality.

Roger Crisp, Routledge philosophy guidebook to Mill on utilitarianism, London, 1997, p. 115

Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality.

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Oxford, 1998, p. 240

If you postulate ‘intuitions’ as states which play a certain sort of role in a theory of beliefs about value, then the term ‘intuition’ is really just a place-holder for any state satisfying the demands of that theory.

Graham Oddie, Value, reality, and desire, Oxford, 2005, p. 41

It is not the case that whenever an argument deploys a premise that directly and obviously contradicts an opponent’s position, the argument begs the question. Still less is it true that whenever a consistent opponent would reject at least one of an argument’s premises, the argument begs the question.

Michael Huemer, Ethical intuitionism, New York, 2005, p. 69

Our duty to objectivity must not be misunderstood as a license to ignore de se clues.

Nick Bostrom, Self-locating belief in big worlds: Cosmology's missing link to observation, The journal of philosophy, vol. 99, no. 12, 2002, pp. 607–623, p. 622

We are far too apt to think of Mill as a technically philosophical writer, because we cannot help thinking of him as the author of the Logic, and to forget that he, no less than Bentham and the other utilitarians, is primarily dominated by the practical interest of the social reformer. He is really far more interested in the question of how, “once the general happiness is recognized as the ethical standard," this ideal is to be practically realized, than in the question of the ethical criterion and its proof.

James Seth, The alleged fallacies in Mill's "Utilitarianism", The Philosophical Review, vol. 17, no. 5, 1908, pp. 469–488, p. 478

Often when reading philosophy one gets the feeling that the writer cares more deeply about his or her conclusion than about the argument, so that if the argument can be shown to fail, the philosopher whose argument it is will simply proceed to look for other arguments rather than take back his or her commitment to the conclusion.

David Enoch, An outline of an argument for robust metanormative realism, Oxford studies in metaethics, vol. 2, 2007, pp. 21–50, p. 23

Naturalism and Non-Cognitivism are both […] close to Nihilism. Normativity is either an illusion, or involves irreducibly normative facts.

Derek Parfit, On what matters, Oxford, 2011, p. 24

While the objective in going to certain bars and dance clubs appears to be getting drunk and hooking up, how many of the people crowding in are actually driven by a deeper craving for human connection that they simply don’t know how to pursue?

John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: human nature and the need for social connection, New York, 2008, p. 37

Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, London : New York, 1921

Farmers don’t benefit from competition between their domesticated animals or plants. In fact, reduced competition between individual members of domesticated species is the secret of some big gains in farm productivity, such as the dwarf strains of wheat and rice that made up the “Green Revolution.” Since the elites were in a very real sense raising peasants, just as peasants raised cows, there must have been a tendency for them to cull individuals who were more aggressive than average, which over time would have changed the frequencies of those alleles that induced such aggression. This would have been particularly likely in strong, long-lived states, because situation in which rebels often won might well have favored aggressive personalities. This meant some people were taming others, but with reasonable amounts of gene flow between classes, populations as a whole should have become tamer.

Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, The 10,000 year explosion: How civilization accelerated human evolution, New York, 2009, pp. 111-112

Consider two recent high-profile cases. In 2005, Harvard’s then-president Lawrence Summers suggested gender differences in intrinsic ability as one cause of the dearth of women in the top tier of science, rather than espousing the popular view that women’s under-representation results from biased hiring, discriminatory tenure practices and negative stereotypes. Summers’s insinuation of biologically-based sex differences in cognitive ability was radioactive, setting off debates on campuses and outpourings of editorials. Despite apologizing for reckless language — which his supporters felt research supported — he later resigned.

James Watson is the most illustrious scholar to have his career ended for reckless language. Watson’s downfall was his assertion that “all our social policies are based on the fact that [African] intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really”. Although he hoped everybody was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true”. Watson instantly plunged from A-list Nobelist to outcast, and was suspended from his chancellorship of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Watson later clarified in a statement that he does not believe Africans to be genetically inferior, but this had little impact on the controversy.

Watson’s first assertion could be read as scientifically supported: black Africans’ IQ scores are lower than those of white Europeans. But Watson’s use of ‘intelligence’ was interpreted as meaning ‘intrinsic cognitive ability’, ignoring how unfamiliarity with testing format, low quality of schooling, or poor health might depress IQ scores. There have been analyses showing average national IQs for sub-Saharan Africa to be approximately 30 points lower than average IQs for predominantly white European nations, and drawing a racial conclusion from those results. A refutation of these analyses would provide an opportunity to advance understanding. Sadly, although these analyses can be refuted, as we and others have done, most of those who scorned Watson never knew they existed.

Attacks on Watson and Summers extinguished discussion by making moral attributions about their presumed character flaws rather than debating facts. But character attacks lead to a one-party science that squelches divergent views.

Some scientists hold more ‘acceptable’ views, ourselves included. We think racial and gender differences in IQ are not innate but instead reflect environmental challenges. Although we endorse this view, plenty of scholars remain unpersuaded. Whereas our ‘politically correct’ work garners us praise, speaking invitations and book contracts, challengers are demeaned, ostracized and occasionally threatened with tenure revocation.

Stephen Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, Darwin 200: should scientists study race and IQ? Yes: the scientific truth must be pursued, Nature, vol. 457, no. 7231, 2009, pp. 788–789, pp. 788-789

I do confess I find Sears entertaining. On pages 186 and 187 of The Anti-Aging Zone he lists a number of signs or, if you will, “biomarkers,” to inform you whether you are “in the Zone” or not, i.e., whether you are following the Zone diet properly. These include how you feel generally, whether you are groggy in the morning, are fatigued, have headaches, and ten other markers of similar sophistication. One of these biomarker signs is the following, and I quote Sears exactly, “When the stool is isodense with water (i.e., it floats), that becomes a very good indicator of optimal eicosanoid balance.” In other words, if your shit floats, you are “in the Zone.” To this I have but one question: Where are you when it hits the fan?”

Roy L. Walford, Beyond the 120-year diet: How to double your vital years, New York, 2000, pp. 20-21

Freud had saddled Western culture with the bizarre notion that the least considered utterances were always, magically, the truest—that reflection added nothing, and the ego merely censored or lied. It was an idea born more of convenience than anything else: he’d identified the part of the mind easiest to circumvent—with tricks like free association—and then declared the product of all that remained to be ‘honest’.

Greg Egan, Distress, 1995, pp. 82-83