Untested assumptions and lazy habits of thought can be shown up, once put in a spotlight of a different hue.

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

The greatest moral failing is to condemn something as a moral failing: no vice is worse than being judgmental.

This is the deal: we are happy to single out people as superior just as long as they don't accept the description themselves. We want heroes and idols but we also want egalitarianism and that requires proclamations of humility from our Gods.

Once Steve Fuller said that there is this idea that your responsibility as an intellectual is just to speak the truth as you see it. But actually, you should be more appreciative of what needs to be said. I don't think that's ever an excuse to say something you don't believe is true - but sometimes the emphasis has to be different. Well, if I'm talking to an audience of hardline atheists, I'll be trying to unsettle them a bit more, whereas, if I'm speaking to an audience of believers, I'll be giving them more of the pros of atheism. It's about having a sensitivity to context.

You don't choose what you believe moment to moment, but choices you have made do shape what you come to believe.

The idea that there is a sharp boundary between our true, inner selves and the outside world is pervasive, but highly questionable. The boundaries of the self might well be more porous than we ordinarily think.