Philosophy can help laymen spot and reject the numerous pseudoscientific beliefs that survive in the media, such as the fantasies of psychoanalysts, evolutionary psychologists, and economic equilibrium theorists.

Even philosophies who have denounced pseudosciences like psychoanalysis, have condoned pseudoscientific economic theories like neoclassical microeconomics. It is far safer and easier to criticize Freud and Jung than to criticize Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, because the latter are backed by political movements whereas the former are not.

It occurred to me that I had the duty to give society something in exchange for the free education I was getting.

In the scientific community you find competent teachers and original researchers, just as in the musical community you find many good performers but very few good composers.

There is a continuum between science and philosophy. As Fichte said (but did not practice), philosophy should be the science of sciences.

My Third-World roots remind me that the vast majority of our fellow human beings live hungry, sick, and uneducated, and that most social scientists, even in that world, ignore that ugly reality. This is why my papers in mathematical sociology deal not with free choice among 30 flavors of ice-cream, but with social structure, social cohesion, and social marginality.

Science is morally neutral, but social science shows us that some moral codes are better than others.