Quotes
One way to see the unacceptability of welfare-independent rights is to ask the question ‘why Right X?’ to a very ultimate level. If the answer is ‘Right X because Y’, then one should ask ‘Why Y?’ For example, if the answer to ‘why free speech?’ is that people enjoy free speech, it is already not welfare-independent. If the answer is free speech deters dictatorship’, then we should ask, ‘Why is it desirable to deter dictatorship?’ If one presses hard enough with such questions, most people will eventually come up with a welfare-related answer.
Yew-Kwang Ng, Welfarism and utilitarianism: a rehabilitation, Utilitas, vol. 2, no. 2, 1990, pp. 171–193, p. 180
Nozick’s “happiness machine” problem is a popular among academics, who generally fail to consider three things. First, who says that no one would want to be hooked up? The world is full of people who want happiness and don’t care one bit about whether it is “well deserved.” Second, those who claim that they would not agree to be hooked up may already be hooked up. After all, the deal is that you forget your previous decision. Third, no one can really answer this question because it requires them to imagine a future state in which they do not know the very thing they are currently contemplating.
Daniel T. Gilbert, Stumbling on happiness, New York, 2006, p. 244
Until we have settled the question of whether moral beliefs necessarily have motivational force, for example, we are in no position to say whether it is a point in favor of a given account of our moral practice that it endows them with such a force; and until we have decided whether mathematical beliefs can be known a priori, we will be unable to say whether it is a point in favor of an account of our mathematical practice that it allows them to have such a status. A realist or antirealist conclusion therefore represents the terminus of philosophical inquiry into a given area rather than its starting point; and so it is hardly surprising that such slight progress has been made within realist metaphysics, even by comparison with other branches of philosophy.
Kit Fine, The question of realism, Philosophers' imprint, vol. 1, no. 1, 2001, p. 25
My students often ask me if I think their parents did wrong to pay the $44,000 per year that it costs to send them to Princeton. I respond that paying that much for a place at an elite university is not justified unless it is seen as an investment in the future that will benefit not only one’s child, but others as well. An outstanding education provides students with the skills, qualifications, and understanding to do more for the world than would otherwise be the case. It is good for the world as a whole if there are more people with these qualities. Even if going to Princeton does no more than open doors to jobs with higher salaries, that, too, is a benefit that can be spread to others, as long as after graduating you remain firm in the resolve to contribute a percentage of that salary to organizations working for the poor, and spread this idea among your highly paid colleagues. The danger, of course, is that your colleagues will instead persuade you that you can’t possibly drive anything less expensive than a BMW and that you absolutely must live in an impressively large apartment in one of the most expensive parts of town.
Peter Singer, Why don't we give more?, in Peter Singer (ed.) The life you can save: Acting now to end world poverty, New York, 2009, pp. 45–62, pp. 138-139
[T]he much-vaunted analogy with natural kinds is of little help, and actually stands in the way of seeing what the mechanism might be. For our beliefs concerning natural kinds are not in general independent of perceptual experience. If we were to learn that most of our perceptual experience was non-veridical, then little would be left of our knowledge of natural kinds. The brain-in-the-vat is at a severe epistemic disadvantage in coming to any form of scientific knowledge; and if there really were an analogy between our understanding of scientific and of ethical terms, then one would expect him to be at an equal disadvantage in the effort to acquire moral wisdom. It is for this reason that the continuity in moral and scientific inquiry so much stressed by writers such as Boyd and Railton appears entirely misplaced. A much better analogy is with our understanding of mathematical terms, for which the idea of a hookup with the real world is far less plausible.
Kit Fine, Modality and tense: Philosophical papers, Oxford, 2006, p. 258
En alguna ocasión sobreviví precisamente porque sabía cómo suicidarme si las cosas empeoraban.
Roberto Bolaño, Entre paréntesis: ensayos, artículos y discursos (1998-2003), Barcelona, 2004, p. 340
[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, London, 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