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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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Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Freedom
Free
Insoluble
Order
Kant
Nature
Fits
Problem
Basic
Fit
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More quotes by Allen W. Wood
It seems to me self-evident that it is worthwhile to understand the best thoughts of the past, to appropriate them, to criticize them.
Allen W. Wood
Consequentialist theories begin with a very simple and undoubtedly valid point: Every action aims at a future end, and is seen as a means to it.
Allen W. Wood
I think Fichte did take it further than Kant by arguing that we can regard the moral law as objectively valid only by seeing it as addressed to us by another being, even though Fichte thought God could not literally be a person who could address us.
Allen W. Wood
The moral law is simply the way we think our own freedom as self-determination.
Allen W. Wood
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
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
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
Being aware of truths about what is good or right or about what we ought to do is not the same as deciding what to do. Nor can the former truths be derived from decisions about what to do, or about procedures for making such decisions, unless these procedures themselves rest in some way on the apprehension of truths about what we ought to do.
Allen W. Wood
Popular religion since the time of Kant and Fichte has gone in a direction they tried to prevent and that has been disastrous for the humanity both of believers and of the rest of us. Look at the role of religion in Republican presidential primaries if you need any confirmation of this last statement.
Allen W. Wood
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
Reason necessarily expresses itself through emotions and emotions are healthy only insofar as they are expressions of reason.
Allen W. Wood
What I most fear now is that within a century or so there may not be any human future at all.
Allen W. Wood
Descartes recommended that we distrust the senses and rely on the ... use of our intellect.
Allen W. Wood
Kant thinks that a free will is a will under moral laws and that freedom and the moral law are distinct thoughts that reciprocally imply each other. Fichte thinks they are the same thought.
Allen W. Wood
Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.
Allen W. Wood
I think it is clear that what we ought to do has to be independent of our decisions about what to do, and independent of any procedures we might use in making such decisions.
Allen W. Wood
Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it).
Allen W. Wood
It is both theoretically mistaken and morally wrong to regard others as objects of investigation rather than partners in free rational communication.
Allen W. Wood
Until I was a junior in high school, I was a boy scientist type and expected to go into chemistry. Then I discovered the humanities. I read the plays of Shakespeare voraciously, some novels, such as Pasternack's Dr. Zhivago and Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, and I got into philosophy by reading Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Allen W. Wood
The problem is that many who reject Marx do not read him, or read him only by bringing prejudices to their reading that prevent them from understanding him.
Allen W. Wood