Quotes About Philosophical

The terminology of philosophical art is coercive: arguments are powerful and best when they are knockdown, arguments force you to a conclusion, if you believe the premisses you have to or must believe the conclusion, some arguments do not carry much punch, and so forth. A philosophical argument is an attempt to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to beleive it or not. A successful philosophical argument, a strong argument, forces someone to a belief.

Logical investigations can obviously be a useful tool for philosophy. They must, however, be informed by a sensitivity to the philosophical significance of the formalism and by a generous admixture of common sense, as well as a thorough understanding both of the basic concepts and of the technical details of the formal material used. It should not be supposed that the formalism can grind out philosophical results in a manner beyond the capacity of ordinary philosophical reasoning. There is no mathematical substitute for philosophy.

The world is a philosophical prison and Man is the philosophical prisoner.

If you read philosophical texts of the tradition, you'll notice they almost never said 'I,' and didn't speak in the first person. From Aristotle to Heidegger, they try to consider their own lives as something marginal or accidental. What was essential was their teaching and their thinking. Biography is something empirical and outside, and is considered an accident that isn't necessarily or essentially linked to the philosophical activity or system.

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today - and even professional - seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is - in my opinion - the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.

...if there is a widely shared concept of intentional action... a philosophical analysis of intentional action that is wholly unconstrained by that concept runs the risk of having nothing more than a philosophical fiction as its subject matter.

the most common type of pessimism is neither philosophical nor religious: it is the pessimism of thwarted desire. ... It is the cynical sneer of the man who, seeking roses, finds only ashes.

The picture of Kant as the 'theological Robespierre' or the "world-crusher" was first suggested by someone with whom Kant stood in a relation of philosophical disagreement but also great mutual respect: namely, Moses Mendelssohn.

I'm very educated and can give you somewhat of a vocabulary, but I don't get to the philosophical side.

Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.

When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East--above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe--we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy.

To a certain extent all philosophers have been involved in a systematic questioning that undermines confidence and certainty. Philosophy as a whole unleashed skeptical forces which, outside of the tightly controlled environment of a rigorous philosophical debate, led a lot of people to throw their hands up in despair and think 'what's the point?'. A lot of the public perception of philosophy is that it leaves you with no answers, and more confused than you were at the beginning.

Scientists themselves are of surprisingly little help. They find it difficult to talk of what they do because they tend to assume detailed knowledge is required for generalities to be understood. They find it hard to grasp the concept of the meaning of their work, assuming this to be a debate that takes place at a lower level than the specialized discussions with their colleagues. When they do generalize, - or "popularize" as it is usually called with a noticeable degree of contempt - they tend to reveal a startling philosophical naiveté.

I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty.

Philosophy springs from the love of being; it is man's loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it. Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of being the Gnostic constructs his system. The building of systems is a gnostic form of reasoning, not a philosophical one.

Maybe the most provocative thing one can do - and I'm not the first one to do it - is to ask the moral and philosophical question: why are some people better than others? Why are some people more moral than others?

In the 20th century philosophy of time for a great many theorists became part of science because it was time as is studied in physics that became the object of philosophical speculation. That's very different from the way time has normally been understood.

Metaphysics is the clearing house for all fundamental philosophical problems.

As a teacher, it's a great help to be teaching philosophical systems you don't believe. You can actually do a better job of presenting them if you leave your beliefs at the door.

I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagiani was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.

They gutted the book, making an action movie for 15-25 year olds. Tolkien became...devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time. The gap widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become is beyond me. This level of marketing reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical significance of this work.

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up.

The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.

It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense.

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.

I'll be geeky right now too, because I love Sondheim. Anything he does I had a blast, because every time I do a show of his, I learn something about myself because he's philosophical. During that show, the cast was incredible Hugh and Dan Levine (who I played opposite of), all of us clicked and I love the show.

We like the idea of being a little divisive without making it into some kind of philosophical musical approach, and maybe we can convert some people to our view of the world.

From a philosophical perspective, I want to fight off isolationism and protectionism, be it part of another voice out there that says, wait a minute, what matters to women in Afghanistan matters to America. An isolationist point of view says it doesn't matter. The articulation of "all life matters" helps frame the case that it does matter what happens to a woman in Afghanistan.

I feel like the Internet needs to be disarmed in some way. There needs to be a philosophical undermining of the Internet. We take it too seriously and too literally. For a reference we go to Wikipedia, which is full of inaccuracies and misinformation. It's kind of beautiful - it's all the product of imagination; it's not reality at all.

What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it.

Creationists often appeal to the facts of science to support their view, and evolutionists often appeal to philosophical assumptions from outside science.

Get married, in any case. If you happen to get a good mate, you will be happy; if a bad one, you will become philosophical, which is a fine thing in itself.

Imposed philosophical morality (laws/rules) will not save the world. Only a calculated tangible plan to alter our circumstances so such actions pose no merit will stop immoral behaviour.

In the sort of screen dappled with different states of mind which my consciousness would simultaneously unfold while I read, and which ranged from the aspirations hidden deepest within me to the completely exterior vision of the horizon which I had, at the bottom of the garden, before my eyes, what was first in me, innermost, the constantly moving handle that controlled the rest, was my belief in the philosophical richness and beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate them for myself, whatever that book might be.

One of the characteristics of the university is that it is made up of professors who train professors, or professionals training professionals. Education was this no longer directed toward people who were to be educated with a view to become fully developed human beings, but to specialists, in other that they might learn how to train other specialists. This is the danger of "Scholasticism," that philosophical tendency which began to be sketched at the end of antiquity, developed in the Middle Ages, and whose presence is still recognizable in philosophy today.

Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student - and not a good one - and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved.

There are philosophical issues involved in that about choosing the right discount rate, the value, the future, and things like that which drive it. But its start with the premise that global warming is real and if you're a denier of that fact, then you're not going to find climate change mitigation policies to have particular appeal.

The entrance into Zen is the grasping of one's essential nature. It is absolutely impossible, however, to come to a clear understanding of our essential nature by any intellectual or philosophical method. It is accomplished only by the experience of self-realization through zazen.

I work in several different groups of pictures which act on and with each other - ranging from several abstracted manners to a form for the surreal. I have been called a preacher - but, in reality, I'm more generally philosophical. I have never made an abstracted photograph without content. An educated background in Zen influences all of my photographs. It has been said that my work resembles, more closely than any photographer, Le Douanier Rousseau - working in a fairly isolated area and feeding mostly on myself - I feel that I am a primitive photographer.

Integrity has a high psychological and philosophical value, for many people it is a highest value, it associate with health of soul. Dualism, contradiction, torments of hesitation - is something of illness, integrity is health, people strive for it instinctively.

One of things about beards is that, when men reach a certain age, they'd like to see if they can grow one. It's a phenomenon I understand very well. After you get over the itchy face, you go, "Oh, I don't have to shave, that's cool." And then you move into the philosophical thing- people say, "You look weird, you have a beard." And you say, "No, actually, it's weird to shave." Having a beard is natural. When you think about it, shaving it off is quite weird.

With regard to philosophical metaphysics, I always see increasing numbers who have attained to the negative goal, but as yet few who climb a few rungs backwards; one ought to look out, perhaps, over the last steps of the ladder, but not try to stand upon them.

I have enormous respect for Derek Parfit, although he seems to me bound within an unfortunate philosophical tradition - rather like the extraordinarily brilliant exponents of Ptolemaic astronomy in the Middle Ages.

I am absolutely sick unto death of hearing people say - they all say this; it must be Item One on the curriculum in Trend College - "I just hate to talk to a machine!" They say this as though it is a major philosophical position, as opposed to a description of a minor neurosis. My feeling is, if you have a problem like this, you shouldn't go around trumpeting it; you should stay home and practice talking to a machine you can feel comfortable with, such as your Water Pik, until you are ready to assume your place in modern society.

You have good games, you have bad games. You have good years, you have bad years. I have always been kind of philosophical about that.

In philosophical terms, the opposite of rationalism is not irrationalism but empiricism, that is, a willingness to form beliefs on the basis of experience rather than from a priori deduction. Empirical evidence never yields the dogmatic certainty that accompanies logical deduction.

We must honor our dragons, encourage them to be worthy destroyers, expect they'll strive to cut us down. It is their duty to ridicule us, it is their job to demean us, to force us if they can to stop being different! And when we walk our way no matter their fire and their fury, our dragons shrug when we're out of sight, return to their card-games philosophical: 'Ah well, we can't toast 'em all...'

In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working; he makes photographs, working with subject matter that he thinks will make the pictures.