Philip Kitcher quotes
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“It is hard to hide our genes completely. However devoted someone may be to the privacy of his genotype, others with enough curiosity and knowledge can draw conclusions from the phenotype he presents and from the traits of his relatives.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Philip Kitcher (1997). “The Lives to Come”, p.127, Simon and Schuster
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“I'm very suspicious of the idea of a "final theory" in natural science, and the thought of a complete system of ethical rules seems even more dubious.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“It's a very bad idea for scientific conclusions to be accepted because they fit with the political values of a group of researchers.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“Philosophers ought to aspire to know lots of different things and to forge useful synthetic perspectives.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“I believe that the arts make indispensable contributions to our understanding.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“I don't think that anything of any consequence is known a priori: all our knowledge is built up by modifying the lore passed on to us by our ancestors in light of our experiences, and the best a philosopher can do is to learn as much about what has been discovered in various empirical fields, and use it to try to craft an improved synthesis.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“My ethical naturalism sees us as facing the predicament of being social animals without evolved adaptations that make social life easy. The fundamental problem that sparks the ethical project lies in our limited responsiveness to one another. The only way we have to address that problem is through a representative, informed, and engaged conversation.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“The expert is a midwife. The expert is not someone who has the authority to pronounce the last word on the subject.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“I take the ethical truths to be the stable elements that emerge out of ethical progress and that are retained under further ethical progress.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“The theory of evolution explains to us what our ancestry has been. It does not explain away our worth. Why should we be afraid to learn more about what we are?”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Philip Kitcher (1982). “Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism”, p.202, MIT Press
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“The point of philosophy, as I see it, is to change thinking, and thereby to change the conversation.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“Science literacy consists in the ability and the desire to follow reports of new scientific advances, throughout your whole life.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“In ethics, we don't make progress by discovering pre-existent truths; we do so by solving problems.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“Anxieties about ourselves endure. If our proper study is indeed the study of humankind, then it has seemed-and still seems-to many that the study is dangerous. Perhaps we shall find out that we were not what we took ourselves to be. But if the historical development of science has indeed sometimes pricked our vanity, it has not plunged us into an abyss of immorality. Arguably, it has liberated us from misconceptions, and thereby aided us in our moral progress.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Philip Kitcher (1982). “Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism”, p.202, MIT Press
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“First, my frame of reference for the Britten opera shifted. I'd always thought of Britten's approach in Death in Venice as another exploration of the plight of the individual whose aspirations are at odds with those of the surrounding community: his last opera returning to the themes of Peter Grimes. As I read and listened and thought, however, Billy Budd came to seem a more appropriate foil for Death in Venice.”
-- Philip Kitcher -
“Refined religion is aimed at realizing ethical values, including the fostering of human lives and human communities.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“My ideal of conversation that includes wide representation of perspectives, informed by the consensus view of current experts, pursued with an attempt to find a position with which all can live, brings the expert and the public dimensions together.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“It's not at all a bad idea for scientific questions to be chosen because a democratic deliberation would identify them as important for people's lives.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“The balance between literature and philosophy in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is different from that struck in the novella, but, as Mann clearly pointed out in his writings about both thinkers, both modes are present.”
-- Philip Kitcher -
“One goal of ethical inquiry might be to uncover strategies available for use when values conflict or when rules are incomplete.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“It may be hyperbolic to declare that Shakespeare teaches us more about being human than all the natural scientists combined.”
-- Philip Kitcher -
“If there are to be appropriate judgments about what questions are significant, you need both the informed views of scientists who know what has been achieved and what future developments are promising and the reflective judgments of representatives of different groups who can identify what kinds of information are most urgently needed.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering work in thinking about literature philosophically.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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“I would like to undermine the stereotype of "strict philosophy." J.L. Austin remarked that, when philosophy is done well, it's all over by the bottom of the first page. I take him to have meant that the real work comes in setting up the problem with which you are dealing, and thus getting your reader to take particular things for granted.”
-- Philip KitcherSource : Source: www.3ammagazine.com
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