Lewis White Beck

North Carolina · connected1913–1997

American philosopher (1913-1997)

Studied at Duke University

philosopher, translator

Quotations with a citation

In the logic of science there is a principle as important as that of parsimony: it is that of sufficient reason. The former directs us to look for simplest causes, the later cautions us not to simplify so far that the explanation is inadequate to the facts to be explained....Parsimony is not itself a simple criterion of a good methodology; we cannot simply count the factors of explanation and say that the theory containing the smallest number is the best. The ideal of parsimony cannot be expressed without the proviso that the conditions for which it is a norm shall themselves be adequate.

For it is only in the Critique that all the various strands of Kant's thought are woven together into the pattern of his practical philosophy. This pattern, in turn, can be understood only in the entire fabric of the critical philosophy, and that rich design can be clear only to those who have understood each of its three principal parts, which are the three Critiques and not shorter and more popular works like the Prolegomena and the Foundations.

Whatever plausibility the machine theory has- and it has much plausibility and is a rich model for psychology and neurology- it gains by being associated with a self-exemption clause.

If you believe that you are not a machine, but that I am (then) I do not know why you are reading this book".

It is an amusing jew d’esprit to take a philosopher’s ten or twenty volumes and try to compress them to postcard length. My proposal for doing this to Kant’s will be disappointing, since hardly anyone nowadays will deny the sentence but many will deny that it is the seminal thought in Kant. But it was a highly disputable proposition in his day, and I think that some of the lasting importance of Kant is shown by the fact that it is no longer disputed. The sentence would be: In order to know and to act, it is necessary both to see and to think.

Kant did not tell us his strategic secrets, and perhaps he was not fully aware of his stratagem. But in our own century, this stratagem has been formulated in what is sometimes called "Ramsey's Maxim". In cases where two opposed arguments seem internally sound but where their conclusions are incompatible and hence a stalemate is created, Frank P. Ramsey wrote, "It is a heuristic maxim that the truth lies not in one of the two disputed views but in some third possibility which has not yet been thought of, which we can only discover by rejecting something assumed as obvious by both the disputants."...We have now seen how Kant applied this maxim in the disputes concerning mathematics....We can illustrate this pattern again by referring to Kant's later attempt to resolve the space antinomy.

It is not my place to tell you whether there is indefeasible ignorance of ultimate reality. I am ignorant of whether there is or is not. But you should think of these things because there are no things more important, though there are no questions more difficult or less answerable. But one's whole life may be changed if one changes his mind about these questions.

But somewhat like people who object to spending money needed in the ghettoes on exploring the moon, I think the best hope for our survival is to be based on understanding human predicaments here on earth, not expecting a saving message from super-human beings in the sky...Thinking about and even hoping to find extraterrestrial civilizations, however, sharpen our search for and appreciation of the peculiar virtues and vices of the only form of life we know.

Myth, religion and now science-fiction with their tales of benevolent and malevolent extraterrestrial beings are commentaries on the human condition. I believe even responsible scientific speculation and expensive technology of space exploration in search for other life are the peculiarly modern equivalent of angeology and Utopia or of demonology and apocalypse.

[T]he only species on earth which prides itself on its intelligence is the only one with the intelligence necessary, and possibly sufficient, to render itself extinct tomorrow.

The quest for other, and better, forms of life, society, technology, ethics, and law may not reveal that they are actually elsewhere; but it may in the long run help us to make some of them actual on earth.

I think the best hope for our survival is to be based on understanding human predicaments here on earth, not expecting a saving message from super-human beings in the sky...Thinking about and even hoping to find extraterrestrial civilizations, however, sharpen our search for and appreciation of the peculiar virtues and vices of the only form of life we know.

In the libraries

Open Library A commentary on Kant's Critique of practical reason · 1960 View library record ↗ Open Library Early German philosophy · 1969 View library record ↗ Open Library Kant · 1963 View library record ↗ Open Library Kant studies today · 1969 View library record ↗ Open Library Studies in the philosophy of Kant · 1965 View library record ↗ Open Library The actor and the spectator · 1975 View library record ↗

Read Lewis White Beck

A commentary on Kant's Critique of practical reason 1960 Find a copy Early German philosophy 1969 Find a copy The actor and the spectator 1975 Find a copy Kant 1963 Find a copy Kant studies today 1969 Find a copy Studies in the philosophy of Kant 1965 Find a copy