We need science. We need empirical evidence. We can't just use mathematical reasoning to deduce the nature of the world.

When you ask why did some particular question occur to a scientist or philosopher for the first time, or why did this particular approach seem natural, then your questions concern the context of discovery. When you ask whether the argument the philosopher puts forth to answer that question is sound, or whether the evidence justifies the scientific theory proposed, then you've entered the context of justification. Considerations of history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology are relevant to the context of discovery, but not to justification.

It's something that's very often said that philosophy, as opposed to science, never makes any progress.

I've got access to your mysterious body but not your mysterious soul. Souls seem to me the loneliest possibility of all.

Plato's concern is not just an intellectual issue, but it is knitted with emotional life as well.

Everybody have equal rights to a life of full flourishing. Philosophy slowly, slowly has given us arguments saying, look, you already committed to your own life flourishing, and you're being inconsistent if you don't expand it. So philosophy often works in trying to show us that there's an inner incoherence in our points of view. We're all committed to one thing when it comes to us and our own kind, but we're not willing to expand it and we're guilty of inconsistency.

I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter "Nike" and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.