Simon Blackburn

North Carolina · connectedBorn 1944

English academic philosopher (born 1944)

Worked at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

philosopher, university teacher

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Quotations with a citation

The word "philosophy" carries unfortunate connotations: impractical, unworldly, weird.

In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other.

Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous.

The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to be made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundation of knowledge.

Thoughts are strange things. they have 'representational' powers: a thought typically represents the world as being one way or another. A sensation, by contrast, seems to just sit there.

A signpost doesn't in and of itself represent the way to the village. We have to learn how to take it.

Perhaps to restore human freedom we should deny determinism?

Chance is as relentless as necessity.

Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility.

In Michigan recently a man won a lawsuit for substantial damages because, he claimed, a rear-end collision in his car had made him a homosexual.

If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma, are sometimes consoling.

There was content, but no container.

But it is logically impossible that there could exist an 'unowned' dent, a dent without a surface that is dented.

We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.

It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.

A god that created the world and then walked off the site leaving it to its own devices is not a fit object of worship, nor a source of moral authority.

Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything.

But if nothing does as well as something about which nothing can be said, it vanishes.

Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people?

Myself, I have never seen a bumper sticker saying "Hate if you Love Jesus", but I sometimes wonder why not. It would be a good slogan for the religious Right.

What underlies our assignment of probabilities in the real world?

Induction is the process of taking things within our experience to be representative of the world outside our experience. It is a process of projection or extrapolation.

Finding a mechanism does not bypass the problem of induction.

Paradigms can be asked to show their worth, an some of them do not stand up.

Motion however will not help unless we have things moving.

We think about what to do, and muster considerations and arguments in favor of one course or another. How are we to think about that?

According to Confucianism, the ideal life contains a large dose of respect for traditional ways. All these ideals can be fleshed out and painted in more or less attractive colours. Yet there is something uncomfortable about them, if only because there is little reason to suppose that there is any such thing as the ideal life. Since different people have different tastes and interests, and different cultures encourage different concerns, it seems unlikely that any 'ideal life' will be heavily contextualized: ideal for this person in these circumstances, perhaps, but not much more.

We hope for lives whose story leaves us looking admirable; we like our weaknesses to be hidden and deniable... We want to enjoy our lives, and we want to enjoy them with a good conscience ... Ethics is disturbing. We are often vaguely uncomfortable when we think of such things as exploitation of the world's resources, or the way our comforts are provided by the miserable labour conditions of the third world ... Racists and sexists, like antebellum slave owners in America, always have to tell themselves a story that justifies their system.

An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat shop or the concentration camp and the death march.

In the libraries

Open Library C. D. Broad · 2022 View library record ↗ Open Library Mirror, Mirror · 2014 View library record ↗ Open Library Plato's Republic · 2008 View library record ↗ Open Library The Oxford dictionary of philosophy · 1994 View library record ↗ Open Library Think · 1999 View library record ↗ Open Library Truth · 2005 View library record ↗

Read Simon Blackburn

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