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The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundation of knowledge.

Simon Blackburn

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Simon Blackburn
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: July 12
Academic
Philosopher
University Teacher
Made
Scientific
Way
Foundation
Make
Beings
World
Safe
Knowledge
Less
Feared
Human
Threatening
Humans
Reflect

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Finding a mechanism does not bypass the problem of induction.
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Thoughts are strange things. they have 'representational' powers: a thought typically represents the world as being one way or another. A sensation, by contrast, seems to just sit there.
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The absolutist parades his good solid grounding in observation, reason, objectivity, truth and fact the relativist sees only fetishes.
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Perhaps to restore human freedom we should deny determinism ?
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It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.
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In Michigan recently a man won a lawsuit for substantial damages because, he claimed, a rear-end collision in his car had made him a homosexual.
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The fantasist in whom the reality barrier has broken down is unreliable, believing things when he should not, and telling things as true when they are not.
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If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma , are sometimes consoling.
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A god that created the world and then walked off the site leaving it to its own devices is not a fit object of worship, nor a source of moral authority.
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Respect, of course is a tricky term. I may respect your gardening by just letting you get on with it. Or, I may respect it by admiring it and regarding it as a superior way to garden.
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Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous .
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Myself, I have never seen a bumper sticker saying Hate if you Love Jesus , but I sometimes wonder why not. It would be a good slogan for the religious Right.
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We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.
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The absolutist takes himself to read nature in her very own language, but the relativist insists that nature does not speak, and we hear only what we have elected to hear.
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Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.
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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.
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The absolutist takes himself to speak to the ages, with the tongue of angels, but the relativist hears only one version among others, the subjectivity of the here and now.
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