American Philosopher Quotes

Millions of people profess knowledge of the reality of God, claiming miracles witnessed or voices heard. If what really causes them to believe that they know of God's existence (and that they have had these experiences) is an unconscious, infantile wish for the protection of an all-powerful father-figure, then we have reason to wonder about the epistemic status of their belief.

Brian Leiter
Brian Leiter
The very essence of civilized culture is that we deliberately institute, in advance of the happening of various contingencies and emergencies of life, devices for detecting their approach and registering their nature, for warding off what is unfavorable or at least for protecting ourselves from its full impact.

To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world—and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.

Libertarians are often baffled at how those who appear so sensitive to constraints on choice, and to differences in bargaining power, when these derive from market factors, become so amazingly oblivious to the constraint on choice, and differential bargaining power, represented by the armed might of the state, empowered to enforce its demands by legalized violence.

Thus a eukaryotic cell may be thought of as an empire directed by a republic of sovereign chromosomes in the nucleus. The chromosomes preside over the outlying cytoplasm in which formerly independent but now subject and degenerate prokaryotes carry out a variety of specialized service functions.

The secret of all true persuasion is to induce the person to persuade himself.

Radical hope anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it.

The experience of a cosmos existing in precarious balance on the edge of emergence from nothing and returning to nothing must be acknowledged, therefore, as lying at the center of the primary experience of the cosmos.

What is it about separation, in any or all of its many forms and degrees, that makes it so basic and so sinister, so exciting and so repellent?

Science acts like an enchantment to disarm criticism; and mental quacks perceiving this, hasten to call their nostrums science.

Guts are important. Your guts are what digest things. But it is your brains that tell you which things to swallow and which not to swallow.

Hitherto, it must be admitted that American Negroes have been a race more in name than in fact, or to be exact, more in sentiment than in experience. The chief bond between them has been that of a common condition rather than a common consciousness; a problem in common rather than a life in common.

Alain LeRoy Locke
Alain LeRoy Locke
We are scientific people and we want our students to feel the enthusiasm and promise of the scientific method. We want them to feel the moral quality of exact technique, as exact as the subject matter permits. We want them to feel that science is a spiritual experience.

Every time we turn to Christ in faith it is like a moment of Sabbath, a little foretaste of eternal rest and glory. The gift of that moment lies not in what we do but what we receive. It is the holy time set aside to receive the greatest gift of God ever has to give, which is himself, in his own beloved Son.

No new choices are introduced by raising the specter of disaster. These become opportunities for swearing new allegiance to technology. The solution is to discover new technologies that will correct and modify the harm either potentially or already caused by present technologies.

From my reading of Gandhi I had learned how some people in India regard eating cow as unspeakably repulsive. I realized I felt the same way about cats and dogs: I could never eat them. Were cows so different from cats and dogs that there were two moral standards, one that applies to cows, another that applies to cats and dogs? Were pigs so different? Were any of the animals I ate so different?

Tom Regan
Tom Regan
Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.

John Rawls
John Rawls
Morality cannot be based on religion. If anything, the opposite is partly true, for nothing can be God unless he or it is an object worthy of worship and it is our own moral insight that must tell us if anything at all could possibly be
worthy of worship.

The principal way that cognitive science can contribute to epistemology, I claim, is to identify basic belief-forming, or problem-solving processes. Once identified, these processes would be examined by primary epistemology according to the evaluative dimensions and standards adduced in Part I.

Many people don't realize the extent to which stories influence our behavior and even shape our culture. Think about how Bible stories teach the fundamentals of religion and rules of conduct. Think of the fables and parables that molded your values. Think of how stories about your national, cultural or family history have shaped your attitudes about yourself and others.

The law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power; laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power.

There is no such thing as the probability of four aces in one hand, or the probability of anything else. Given all the relevant data which there are to be known, everything is either certainly true or certainly false.

We must only learn that independence cannot be gained by a rebellion against the constitution of the universe, or by inverting the laws of life and evolution, but by comprehending them and adapting ourselves to the world in which we live.

Paul Carus
Paul Carus
Even as the cell is the unit of the organic body, so the family is the unit of society.

For the way in which the word is experienced is always momentous