Given cognitive vulnerabilities, it would be convenient to have an arrangement whereby reality could tell us off; and that is precisely what science is. Scientific methodology is the arrangement that allows reality to answer us back.

And then there is Pythagoras. The legend is that the founder of theoretical mathematics was so outraged when one of his students, the haplessly gifted Hippasus, discovered irrational numbers that he sent the poor fellow out on a raft to drown, initiating a venerable tradition of professors mistreating their graduate students.

Plato conceived of philosophy as necessarily gregarious rather than solitary. The exposure of presumptions is best done in company, the more argumentative the better.

In fact, it’s the very impersonality of impersonal knowledge that renders such knowledge the most ethically potent of all.

I like that there are so many different ways of looking at the world and I like all of the particular narratives. In any case we will never all see the same way on these [religious] issues. It's the way liberals and conservatives will never see the same way on individuals whereas it’s different orientations and they go too deep down and when we're dealing with questions that can't be definitively answered by science that's where you're sort of... your orientation swells in to fill up the gaps and so we're never always going to agree.

Does God have a reason for wanting us to be charitable, to take care of those who can't take care of themselves? Either God does or God doesn't, it's just logic. If God has a reason then there is a reason independent of God and whatever God's reason is we should figure it out for ourselves. There is a reason and God doesn't really ground morality at all. God wants us to give charity because it's the right thing to do.

Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.