That's one of the compensations for being mediocre. One doesn't have to worry about becoming mediocre.

Philosophers feel a little more cautious about letting down their technical guard lest the general public doesn't recognize their special credentials. It's the fact that philosophy is of general interest that, paradoxically, keeps philosophers from wanting to speak in a way that's accessible to the general public.

When the first people started to argue against slavery, for example, this was a new idea. If you crowd-source, you'd never come up with this. And so the - exactly the kind of progress we've made couldn't be made if we depend it on crowd-sourcing.

Thinking is the soul speaking to itself.

What is love? When you love somebody then I mean we all want good things to happen to ourselves and keep the bad things at bay. When you love somebody you want that as much for them if not more than you do for yourself.

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

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.