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The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives.
Julian Baggini
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Julian Baggini
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 9
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Makes
True
Alternatives
Reason
Philosophical
Better
Convinced
Good
Embrace
World
Position
Least
Sense
More quotes by Julian Baggini
If philosophy is to be a valuable part of life, we have to appreciate it for its own sake, and not just for what it's done for us lately.
Julian Baggini
Constructive complaint requires only two things: that what you are complaining about should be different, and that it can be different. It sounds simple, but too often our protests fail this test.
Julian Baggini
Trying to keep up with health advice can feel like surfing the Net for weather forecasts: what you find is always changing, often contradictory and rarely encouraging.
Julian Baggini
The truly humble feel the ground beneath their feet every day and do not only become aware of it when held aloft or pushed down to their knees.
Julian Baggini
I don't believe in God because certain reasons and arguments weigh more heavily in my mind than others, not because I have willfully decided to reject my creator, as many religious people seem to think. I could no more simply decide to believe in God than I could decide to like beetroot, just like that.
Julian Baggini
Seek first what is true and of value, and then whatever happiness follows will be of the appropriate quantity and, more importantly, quality.
Julian Baggini
It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient.
Julian Baggini
Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends, should be an occasion for generous hospitality.
Julian Baggini
The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up.
Julian Baggini
The reason Buddhism can be so naturalised is because, stripped of its supernatural elements, its core teachings can be giving a sound, secular philosophical interpretation. In other words, it becomes a religion acceptable to the contemporary, naturalistic mind only when it ceases to be a religion.
Julian Baggini
The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable.
Julian Baggini
Daily life is better when it involves interactions with real people who have a personal investment in their labour, like shopkeepers, than it is with someone 'just doing my job' or the infernal self-checkout machine.
Julian Baggini
Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right.
Julian Baggini
As a teenager, I increasingly had questions about religion to which I found no good answers.
Julian Baggini
Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint.
Julian Baggini
Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That's why economics is not the dismal science, it's no science at all.
Julian Baggini
We do wrong willfully when we fail to think hard about whether what we're doing is right.
Julian Baggini
I don't feel proprietorial about the problems of philosophy. History has taught us that many philosophical issues can grow up, leave home and live elsewhere.
Julian Baggini
No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.
Julian Baggini
When you try to translate any kind of real-life problem into a neat logical form, you're almost always simplifying it. We need a kind of blend - we need to use not just tools of logic, which are important and valuable - I'm not denying that, but also tools of judgement, and of inductive and abductive reasoning which can also inform.
Julian Baggini