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Kant is not saying - about freedom or any other subject - anything of the form: Not-p but we must assume that p. That's close to self-contradictory, like Moore's paradox: p, but I don't believe that p.

Allen W. Wood

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Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Freedom
Contradictory
Form
Paradox
Anything
Assume
Self
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Must
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Believe
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Kant
Saying
Moore

More quotes by Allen W. Wood

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Kant attempted to work out a view of religion and religious belief according to which existing religions could be brought into harmony with modernity, science and reason.
Allen W. Wood
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Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant says that we may regard ourselves as legislator of the moral law, and consider ourselves as its author, but not that we are legislators or authors of the law.
Allen W. Wood
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Our procedures of deliberation are not ways of finding out independent moral truths but instead ways of constructing these truths, in the process of deciding what to do.
Allen W. Wood
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Notice that tearing oneself out of the insensible state is the opposite of remaining in it the man who is beneficent from duty nevertheless acts with feelings, if not with empirical inclinations.
Allen W. Wood
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Marx is thought of as an implacable foe of capitalism. But go back and read the first section of the Communist Manifesto. Notice how it contains a paean of praise for the way capitalism and the bourgeoisie have both enriched the human powers of production and also enabled us to see with clear vision the nature of human society and human history.
Allen W. Wood
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When consequentialist theories are developed in terms of an equally shallow psychology of the good - such as a crude form of hedonism - the results can sometimes strike sensible people as revolting and inhuman. People can be reduced to simple repositories of positive or negative sensory states, and their humanity is lost sight of entirely.
Allen W. Wood
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Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it).
Allen W. Wood
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It is probably not a good idea to ask someone to expound a position they do not accept and do not feel they even fully understand.
Allen W. Wood
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Leaders of nations, and people whose wealth or fame gives them power over the lives of others quite often do more harm than good.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant does represents a distinctively modern view of the human condition in contrast to that of ancient high culture, found in ancient Greek ethics and also in ancient Chinese ethics.
Allen W. Wood
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Surely the world will be a better place, at least marginally, if people have a better understanding of Kant and Hegel, if Marx's thought its studied and appreciated, if people gain a better understanding of Fichte, whose philosophy is far more important than people realize.
Allen W. Wood
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The problem I see with utilitarianism, or any form of consequentialism, is not that it gets the wrong answers to moral questions. I think just about any moral theory, worked out intelligently, and applied with good judgment, would get just about the same results as any other.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized.
Allen W. Wood
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We cannot predict the effects of our actions, especially our collective actions over generations or centuries, to use instrumental reasoning toward these big final ends to tell us what we ought to do.
Allen W. Wood
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Many who are committed to reason and science have turned against religion altogether and treat it with fear and contempt.
Allen W. Wood
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If the problem of free will is to see how freedom fits into the order of nature, then Kant's basic view about the free will problem is that it is insoluble.
Allen W. Wood
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It is a culturally interesting (but also deeply depressing) fact that many religious claims seem to retain their emotional power for believers only if taken in ways that are intellectually unsupportable and even morally contemptible.
Allen W. Wood
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Freedom is an unprovable but unavoidable presupposition, not an article of faith.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant thinks of judgment as a special faculty or talent of the mind, not reducible to discursive reasoning but cultivated through experience and practice.
Allen W. Wood