Quotes

It appears to me that the best preparation for original work on any philosophic problem is to study the solutions which have been proposed for it by men of genius whose views differ from each other as much as possible. The clash of their opinions may strike a light which will enable us to avoid the mistakes into which they have fallen; and by noticing the strong and weak points of each theory we may discover the direction in which further progress can be made.

C. D. Broad, Five types of ethical theory, London, 1930, pp. 1-2

The lavish attention devoted to intelligence (raising it, praising it, worrying when it is low, etc.) seems wasteful in light of the fact that we choose to virtually ignore another set of mental skills with just as much social consequence—rational thinking mindware and procedures. Popular books tell parents how to raise more intelligent children, educational psychology textbooks discuss the raising of students’ intelligence, and we feel reassured when hearing that a particular disability does not impair intelligence. There is no corresponding concern on the part of parents that their children grow into rational beings, no corresponding concern on the part of schools that their students reason judiciously, and no corresponding recognition that intelligence is useless to a child unable to adapt to the world.

Keith E. Stanovich, What intelligence tests miss: the psychology of rational thought, New Haven, 2009, p. 197

[T]here is a connection between the supervaluational approach to vague probability […] and Pascal’s own argument. For Pascal was doing something analogous to supervaluating: the conclusion that one should believe that God exists is supposed to come out true for every probability function (except of course the strict atheistic ones that assign zero to God’s existence) It is presumably in the spirit of Pascal to think of these as different sharp probability functions belonging to different people; but we might equally think of them as different precisifications of the vague opinion of a single person. And just as the strict atheistic probability functions pose a problem for Pascal, so too do the strict atheistic precisifications of a vague opinion concerning God.

Alan Hájek, Objecting vaguely to Pascal's wager, Philosophical studies, vol. 98, no. 1, 2000, pp. 1–14, p. 12

[T]he human mind is used to thinking in terms of decades or perhaps generations, not the hundreds of millions of years that is the time frame for life on Earth. Coming to grips with humanity in this context reveals at once our significance in Earth history, and our insignificance. There is a certainty about the future of humanity that cheats our mind’s comprehension: one day our species will be no more.

Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin, The sixth extinction: patterns of life and the future of humankind, New York, 1995, p. 224

Parking may be the best business in the world. I can’t think of a better one. You employ one person to simply sit there and take in cash. You provide no service, no goods, no nothing–except expensive space! I know all about it, since I’ve got enough lots of my own—which the city has always insisted I provide. So I know why businessmen love to own them. The lots make lots of money! But, much as I like to make a buck, I hate them.

Today, thank God, you can no longer by law put another street-level parking lot on King Street. But I firmly believe no parking lot should be allowed in any downtown area, period! They add nothing to any city but congestion, exhaust fumes, pollution, and smog.

Parking is a hugely profitable but ugly business.

Ed Mirvish, How to build an empire on an orange crate: or 121 lessons I never learned in school, Toronto, 1993, p. 192

[D]eification of intelligence can have a truly perverse moral consequence that we often fail to recognize—the denigration of those low in mental abilities measured in intelligence tests. Such denigration goes back to the very beginnings of psychometrics as an enterprise. Sir Francis Galton would hardly concede that those low in IQ could feel pain: The discriminative facility of idiots is curiously low; they hardly distinguish between heat and cold, and their sense of pain is so obtuse that some of the more idiotic seem hardly to know what it is. In their dull lives, such pain as can be excited in them may literally be accepted with a welcome surprise. Milder and subtler version so f this denigration continue down to the modern day. In 2004 author Michael D’Antonio published a book titled The State Boys Rebellion about the ill treatment of boys in the Walter E. Fernald School for the Feebleminded and how a group of boys residing at the school rebelled against this treatment. Disturbingly, however, reviews of the book tended to focus on the stories of those boys who later were found to have normal IQs. The The York Times Book Review (June 27, 2004) titled its review “A Ledger of Broken Arms: Misdiagnosis and Abuse at a School for the ‘Feebleminded’ in the 1950s.” We might ask what in the world does “misdiagnosis” have to do with the issue of highlighting the ill treatment in these institutions? The implication here is that somehow it was less tragic for those “properly diagnosed”—whatever that may mean in this context. Shades of Galton, and of the dark side of the deification of intelligence, are revealed in the reactions to this book.

Keith E. Stanovich, What intelligence tests miss: the psychology of rational thought, New Haven, 2009, p. 53

W. H. Auden, Collected shorter poems, 1927-1957, New York, 1966, p. 42

The Meadow Keepers and Constables are hereby instructed to prevent the entrance into the Meadow of all beggars, all persons in ragged or very dirty clothes, persons of improper character or who are not decent in appearance and behaviour; and to prevent indecent, rude, or disorderly conduct of every description.

To allow no handcarts, wheelbarrows, no hawkers or persons carrying parcels or bundles so as to obstruct the walks.

To prevent the flying of kites, throwing of stones, throwing balls, bowling hoops, shooting arrows, firing guns or pistols, or playing games attended with danger or inconvenience to passers-by; also fishing in the waters, catching birds, bird-besting or cycling.

To prevent all persons cutting names on, breaking or injuring the seats, shrubs, plants, trees or turf.

To prevent the fastening of boats or rafts to the iron palisading or river wall and to prevent encroachments of every kind by the river-side.

The Meadow Keepers Church and Constables of Christ,

[B]elief in a “God-of-the-gaps” is vulnerable to scientific advances that close the gaps. Among the gaps on which theists once relied, and on which many still rely, is the presumed inability of the sciences to explain the origin of the human species or of life or the Earth or our solar system. These gaps have not been largely closed. The ultimate gap, for many theists, concerns the origin of the universe; even if the other gaps are closed, that one can never be. But we have just been seeing how it too might be closed.

John F. Post, Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction, New York, 1991, p. 90

The resource privilege we confer upon a group in power is much more than mere acquiescence in its effective control over the natural resources of the country in question. This privilege includes the power to effect legally valid transfers of ownership rights in such resources. Thus a corporation that has purchased resources from the Saudis or Suharto, or from Mobuto or Sani Abacha, has thereby become entitled to be—and actually /is/—recognized anywhere in the world as the legitimate owner of these resources. This is a remarkable feature of our global order. A group that overpowers the guards and takes control of a warehouse may be able to give some of the merchandise to others, accepting money in exchange. But the fence who pays them becomes merely the possessor, not the owner, of the loot. Contrast this with a group that overpowers an elected government and takes control of a country. Such a group, too, can give away some of the country’s natural resources, accepting money in exchange. In this case, however, the purchaser acquires not merely possession, but all the rights and liberties of ownership, which are supposed to be—and actually /are/—protected and enforced by all other states’ courts and police forces. The international resource privilege, then, is the legal power to confer globally valid ownership rights in a country’s resources.

Thomas Pogge (ed.), Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor?, Oxford, 2007, pp. 48-49

In most sciences, there are few things more prized than a counterintuitive result. It shows something surprising and forces us to reconsider our often tacit assumptions. In philosophy of mind a counterintuitive ‘result’ (for example, a mind-boggling implication of somebody’s ‘theory’ of perception, memory, consciousness or whatever) is typically taken as tantamount to a refutation. This affection for one’s current intuitions […] installs deep conservatism in the methods of philosophers.

D. C. Dennett, Sweet dreams: philosophical obstacles to a science of consciousness, Cambridge, Mass. London, 2005, p. 34

Life for me is defined not by time, but by mood.

Terri Cheney, Manic: A memoir, New York, 2008, p. 1

Attaching epistemic significance to metaphysical intuitions is anti-naturalist for two reasons. First, it requires ignoring the fact that science, especially physics, has shown us that the universe is very strange to out inherited conception of what it is like. Second, it requires ignoring central implications of evolutionary theory, and of the cognitive and behavioural sciences, concerning the nature of our minds.

James Ladyman et al., Every thing must go: metaphysics naturalized, Oxford ; New York, 2007, p. 10

If mankind were capable of deriving the most obvious lessons from the facts before them, in opposition to their preconceived opinions, Mormonism would be to them one of the most highly instructive phenomena of the present age. Here we have a new religion, laying claim to revelation and miraculous powers, forming within a few years a whole nation of proselytes, with adherents scattered all over the earth, in an age of boundless publicity, and in the face of a hostile world. And the author of all this, in no way imposing or even respectable by his moral qualities, but, before he became a prophet, a known cheat and liar. And with this example before them, people can still think the success of Christianity in an age of credulity and with neither newspapers nor public discussion a proof of its divine origin!

John Stuart Mill, Journals and Debating Speeches, in Francis E. Mineka (ed.) Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1963, p. 667

Of all the main historical positions in philosophy, the logical positivists and logical empiricists came closest to the insights we have urged. Over-reactions to their errors have led metaphysicians over the past few decades into widespread unscientific and even anti-scientific intellectual waters. We urge them to come back and rejoin the great epistemic enterprise of modern civilization.

James Ladyman et al., Every thing must go: metaphysics naturalized, Oxford ; New York, 2007, p. 310

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself–in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else–means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

George J. Firmage (ed.), E. E. Cummings: A Miscellany, New York, 1958, p. 13

As a small boy strolling with his sister through a Viennese park one afternoon [Johannes Wittgenstein] came across an ornate pavilion and asked her if she could imagine it made of diamonds. ‘Yes,’ Hermine said, ‘wouldn’t that be nice!’

‘Now let me have a go,’ he said, and setting himself upon the grass proceeded to calculate the annual yield of the South African diamond mines against the accumulated wealth of the Rothschilds and the American billionaires, to measure every portion of the pavilion in his head, including all of its ornament and cast-iron filigree, and to build an image slowly and methodically until—quite suddenly—he stopped. ‘I cannot continue,’ he said, ‘for I cannot imagine my diamond pavilion any bigger than this’, indicating a height of some three or four feet above the ground. ‘Can you?’

‘Of course,’ Hermine said. ‘What is the problem?’

‘Well, there is no money left to pay for any more diamonds.’

Alexander Waugh, The House of Wittgenstein: A family at war, New York, 2009, pp. 25-26

Among the things which we can to some extent influence by our actions is the number of minds which shall exist, or, to be more cautious, which shall be embodied at a given time. It would be possible to increase the total amount of happiness in a community by increasing the numbers of that community even though one thereby reduced the total happiness of each member of it. If Utilitarianism be true it would be one’s duty to try to increase the numbers of a community, even though one reduced the average total happiness of the members, so long as the total happiness in the community would be in the least increased. It seems perfectly plain to me that this kind of action, so far from being a duty, would quite certainly be wrong.

C. D. Broad, Five types of ethical theory, London, 1930, pp. 249-250

[I]t is not the minds of heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed on all inquiry which does not end in the orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped, and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtle and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing. No one can be a great thinker who does not recognise, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.

John Stuart Mill, On liberty; with the subjection of women; and chapters on socialism, Cambridge, 1989, p. 242

Outside the sphere of psychometrics and differential psychology, my attitude toward [Stephen Jay] Gould was largely positive. I admired and supported his battle against creationist efforts to demote Darwinian thinking in high school biology courses and textbooks. When it comes to human variation in psychological or behavioral traits, however, Gould himself seemed to be a creationist rather than an evolutionist. I regard differential psychology as a branch of human biology, and I would have hoped that Gould did also. Too bad he never wrote an autobiography, which might have explained the origins of his antipathy toward psychometrics, the g factor, and their relevance to advancing the scientific study of human differences. That would have been most interesting.

Arthur Robert Jensen and Frank Miele, Intelligence, race, and genetics: conversations with Arthur R. Jensen, Boulder, Colo, 2002, p. 156