Quotes

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent; deliberation, which those who begin it by prudence, and continue it with subtilty, must, after long expence of thought, conclude by chance. To prefer one future mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires faculties which it has not pleased our Creator to give us.

Samuel Johnson, Life of Mr Richard Savage, London, 1744, p. 282

[O]ne good testimony to one’s existence having a point is that the question of its point does not arise, and the propelling concerns may be of a relatively everyday kind such as certainly provide the grounds of many sorts of happiness.

Bernard Williams (ed.), Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980, Cambridge, 1981, p. 12

Once a scholar has identified a suitable mathematical function or a suitable set of dependent or independent variables, she can begin to look for a causal story to provide an intuition to back the findings. When she writes up the results for publication, the sequence is often reversed. She will state that she started with a causal theory; then looked for the most plausible way of transforming it into a formal hypothesis; and then found it confirmed the data. This is bogus science. In the natural sciences there is no need for the “logic of justification” to match or reflect “the logic of discovery.” Once a hypothesis is stated in its final form, its genesis is irrelevant. What matters are its downstream consequences, not its upstream origins. This is so because the hypothesis can be tested on an indefinite number of observations over and above those that inspired the scholar to think of it in the first place. In the social sciences (and in the humanities), most explanations use a finite data set. Because procedures of data collection often are nonstandardized, scholars may not be able to test their hypotheses against new data. [Footnote:] One could get around or at least mitigate this problem by exercising self-restraint. If one has a sufficiently large data set, one can first concentrate on a representative sample and ignore the rest. Once one has done one’s best to explain the subset of observations, one can take the explanation to the full data set and see whether it holds up. If it does, it is less likely to be spurious. Another way of keeping scholars honest would be if journals refused to consider articles submitted for publication unless the hypotheses to be tested together with the procedures for testing them had been deposited with the editor (say) two years in advance.

Jon Elster, Explaining social behavior: More nuts and bolts for the social sciences, Cambridge, 2010, pp. 48-49

We cannot live by reason alone. This is why no quantity of reason, applied as antiseptic, can compete with the balm of faith, once the terrors of this world begin to intrude upon our lives. Your child has died, or your wife has acquired a horrible illness that no doctor can cure, or your own body has suddenly begun striding toward the grave—and reason, no matter how broad its compass, will begin to smell distinctly of formaldehyde. This has led many of us to conclude, wrongly, that human beings have needs that only faith in certain fantastical ideas can fulfil. It is nowhere written, however, that human beings must be irrational, or live in a perpetual state of siege, to enjoy an abiding sense of the sacred. On the contrary, I hope to show that spirituality can be—indeed, must be—deeply rational, even as it elucidates the limits of reason. Seeing this, we can begin to divest ourselves of many of the reasons we currently have to kill one another.

Science will not remain mute on spiritual and ethical questions for long. Even now, we can see the first stirrings among psychologists and neuroscientists of what may one day become a genuinely rational approach to these matters—one that will bring even the most rarefied mystical experience within the purview of open, scientific inquiry. It is time we realized that we need not be unreasonable to suffuse our lives with love, compassion, ecstasy, and awe; nor must we renounce all forms of spirituality or mysticism to be on good terms with reason.

Sam Harris, The end of faith: religion, terror, and the future of reason, New York, 2005, p. 43

The family went back to Greece when I was young and we returned to America when I was eight. I’m told that at school at the time I couldn’t speak English, only Greek. But the language barrier means nothing to me. Language is just a bunch of symbols. People’s emotions are fundamentally the same everywhere.

John Cassavetes, Cassavetes on Cassavetes, London, 2001, p. 4

There was a real irony to the NLPers I knew who prided themselves on their communication skills yet because of their need to let everyone know how engaging they were, they were among the least engaging people I have ever known. In one extreme, we see this in the Christian fanatics who stand on the street and preach the word of their Lord, unaware that for every one rare, impressionable soul who might respond positively to their shouting and intrusion there are many hundreds of others in whom they have merely confirmed a belief that all Christians must be nutters. People are too often terrible advertisements for their own beliefs.

Derren Brown, Tricks of the mind, London, 2009, p. 357

Why shouldn’t I eat toothpaste? It’s a free world. Why shouldn’t I chew my toenails? I happen to have trodden in some honey. Why shouldn’t I prance across central park with delicate sideways leaps? I know what your answer will be: “it isn’t done”. But it’s no earthly use just saying it isn’t done. If there’s a reason why it isn’t done, give the reason—if there’s no reason, don’t attempt to stop me doing it. All other things being equal, the mere fact that something “isn’t done” is in itself an excellent reason for doing it.

Derek Parfit, The Eton College chronicle, in Anthony Cheetham and Derek Parfit (eds.) Eton microcosm, London, 1964, pp. 100–103, p.101

We thus have an interesting historical paradox: Darwin’s theory was a better starting point for humans than any other species, and required a major pruning to adjust to the rise of genetics. Nevertheless, the Descent had no lasting influence on the social sciences that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. Darwin was pigeonholed as a biologist, and sociology, economics, and history all eventually wrote biology out of their disciplines. Anthropology relegated his theory to a subdiscipline, biological anthropology, behind the superorganic firewall. Since the midtwentieth century, many social scientists have treated Darwinian initiatives as politically tainted threats. If anything, the gulf between the social and natural sciences continues to widen as some anthropologists, sociologists, and historians adopt methods and philosophical commitments that seem to natural scientists to abandon the basic norms of science entirely.

Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not by genes alone: how culture transformed human evolution, Chicago, Ill., 2005, p. 17

I doubt […] that any fundamental ethical dispute between consequentialists and deontologists can be resolved by appeal to the idea of respect for persons. The deontologist has his notion of respect—e.g., that we not use people in certain ways—and the consequentialist has /his—/e.g., that the good of every person has an equal claim upon us, a claim unmediated by any notion of right or contract, so that we should do the most possible to bring about outcomes that actually advance the good of persons. For every consequentially justified act of manipulation to which the deontologist can point with alarm there is a deontologically justified act that fails to promote the well-being of some person(s) as fully as possible to which the consequentialist can point, appalled.

Peter Railton, Alienation, consequentialism, and the demands of morality, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 13, no. 2, 1984, pp. 134–71, p. 163

Nature, as we know, regards ultimately only fitness and not our happiness, and does not scruple to use hate, fear, punishment and even war alongside affection in ordering social groups and selecting among them, just as she uses pain as well as pleasure to get us to feed, water and protect our bodies and also in forging our social bonds.

Leonard David Katz, Evolutionary origins of morality: Cross-disciplinary perspectives, Bowling Green, 2000, p. xv

[S]ome critics of Humeanism are looking for a club with which to beat those who ignore moral reasons. They have already beaten them with the club of immorality–to no effect. They want a bigger club; they want the club of irrationality.

Donald C. Hubin, What's special about humeanism, Nous, vol. 33, no. 1, 1999, pp. 30–45, p. 40

Even if moral truths cannot affect people, they can still be truths.

Derek Parfit, Reasons and motivation, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, vol. 71, no. 1, 1997, pp. 99–130, pp. vol

[P]ublicly expressed beliefs advertise the intellectual virtuosity of the belief-holder, creating an incentive to craft clever and extravagant beliefs rather than just true ones. This explains much of what goes on in academia.

Steven Pinker, So how does the mind work?, Mind & language, vol. 20, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1–24, p. 18

I know all this sounds like playing games. But love is a game, nature’s only game. Just about every creature on this planet plays it—unconsciously scheming to pass their DNA into tomorrow. By counting children, nature keeps her score.

Helen E. Fisher, Why we love: the nature and chemistry of romantic love, New York, 2004, p. 202

I see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will, guided by sound principles of investigation, and organized in common effort, may modify the conditions of existence, for a period longer than that now covered by history. And much may be done to change the nature of man himself. The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men.

Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and ethics and other essays, Charleston, S.C., 1884, p. 85

Una vez, en un diálogo público que mantuvimos en una Feria del Libro, [Bioy Casares] nos explicó a mí y a la concurrencia que había tres clases de amores: “El fugaz, que dura el tiempo necesario para satisfacer el deseo y luego se olvida o se desecha sin pesar; el intermedio, que suele ser muy divertido pero al cual en un momento determinado lo alcanza el tedio y, entonces, se deja caer sin casi darse uno cuenta y, por último, los grandes amores que persisten en el recuerdo y a los cuales uno puede volver con renovado placer y esperanza. Éstos son los mejores.”

María Esther Vázquez, La memoria de los días: mis amigos, los escritores, Buenos Aires, 2004, pp. 142-143

The Beatles are not getting back together again. Brahms is dead. Composers will not return to Baroque style in large numbers. It is we who hold the power of “the cheapest possible artistic revolution” in our hands. We need only will it. Imagine that if one year the world produced 200 brilliant symphonies, 5,000 amazing pop songs, 300 first-rate CDs of jazz, and 5,000 mind-blowing ragas. And that is just a start.

Tyler Cowen, Discover your inner economist: use incentives to fall in love, survive your next meeting, and motivate your dentist, New York, 2007, p. 72

Nearly all modern economic theories of politics begin by assuming that the typical citizen understands economics and votes accordingly—at least on average. […] In stark contrast, introductory economics courses still tacitly assume that students arrive with biased beliefs, and try to set them straight, leading to better policy. […]

What a striking situation: As researchers, economists do not mention systematically biased economic beliefs; as teachers, they take their existence for granted.

Bryan Caplan, The myth of the rational voter: why democracies choose bad policies, Princeton, 2007, p. 13

The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals.

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy: Books I-II, in Francis E. Mineka (ed.) Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1963, p. 952

Y cuando hubo movimiento todas las palancas empezaron a abrirse las puertas y el zapatero traspuso umbrales y antesalas e ingresó en salones cada vez más majestuosos y oscuros, aunque de una oscuridad satinada, una oscuridad regia, en donde las pisadas no resonaban, primero por la calidad y el grosos de las alfombras y segundo por la calidad y flexibilidad de los zapatos, y en la última cámara a la que fue conducido estaba sentado en una silla de lo más corriente el Emperador, junto a algunos de sus consejeros, y aunque estos últimos lo estudiaron con ceño adusto e incluso perplejo, como si se preguntaran qué se le ha perdido a éste, qué mosca tropical lo ha picado, qué loco anhelo se ha instalado en el espíritu del zapatero para solicitar y obtener una audiencia con el soberano de todos los austrohúngaros, el Emperador, por el contrario, lo recibió con palabras llenas de cariño, como un padre recibe a su hijo, recordando los zapatos de la casa Lefebvre de Lyon, buenos pero inferiores a los zapatos de su dilecto amigo, y los zapatos de la casa Duncan & Segal de Londres, excelentes pero inferiores a los zapatos de su fiel súbdito, y los zapatos de la casa Niederle de un pueblito alemán cuyo nombre el Emperador no recordaba (Fürth, lo ayudó el zapatero), comodísimos pero inferiores a los zapatos de su emprendedor compatriota, y después hablaron de caza y de botas de caza y botas de montar y distintos tipos de piel y de los zapatos de las damas, aunque llegado a este punto el Emperador optó velozmente por autocensurarse diciendo caballeros, caballeros, un poco de discreción, como si hubieran sido sus consejeros quienes hubieran sacado el tema a colación y no él, pecadillo que los consejeros y el zapatero admitieron con jocosidad, autoinculpándose sin trabas, hasta que finalmente llegaron al meollo de la audiencia, y mientras todos se servían otra taza de té o café o volvían a llenar sus copas de coñac le llegó el turno al zapatero y éste, llenándose los pulmones de aire, con la emoción que el instante imponía y moviendo las mandos como si acariciara la corola de una flor inexistente pero posible de imaginar, es decir probable, le explicó a su soberano cuál era su idea.

Roberto Bolaño, Nocturno de Chile, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 53-55