Australian Philosopher Quotes

John Carew Eccles

Peter Singer

Samuel Alexander

David Malet Armstrong

J. L. Mackie

J. J. C. Smart

It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality.

Now suppose that the clue experiences that can correct the illusion become for some reason increasingly scarce – perhaps because the dominant story itself brings about their elimination! Then the illusion might go on for a very long time, might have to result in real catastrophe, before anyone realizes anything is wrong.

The word ecology, coined by the German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel (initially as oecology) in 1866. derives from the Greek oikos, "referring originally to the family household and its daily operations and maintenance." The term ecology is therefore intended to refer to the study of the conditions of existence that pertain to, and the interactions between, all the entities that make up our larger, cosmic household here upon earth.

I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition … we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.

John Carew Eccles

If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic.

That is why classical Utopias, and the modern dystopias which ironically incorporate their ideals, are static. … The technically expert citizen is expert only in his allotted task; for him to think about the value of that task is for him to pass completely beyond the limits of what is permissible.

Set theory is peculiarly important... because mathematics can be exhibited as involving nothing but set-theoretical propositions about set-theoretical entities.

David Malet Armstrong

The more comprehensive a science becomes the closer it comes to philosophy, so that it may become difficult to say where the science leaves off and philosophy begins.

Samuel Alexander

If we do take statements to be the primary bearers of truth, there seems to be a very simple answer to the question, what is it for them to be true: for a statement to be true is for things to be as they are stated to be.

Indeterminism does not confer freedom on us: I would feel that my freedom was impaired if I thought that a quantum mechanical trigger in my brain might cause me to leap into the garden and eat a slug