How can those who possess all knowledge, which must include knowledge of life that is worth living, be interested in using knowledge only for the insignificant aim of making money? Rebecca Goldstein More Quotes by Rebecca Goldstein More Quotes From Rebecca Goldstein The will to matter is at least as important as the will to believe. Rebecca Goldstein important matter believe Paraphrasing Plato's Republic: "Only people who have allowed themselves to be reformed by reality have it in themselves to reform their polis for the better." Rebecca Goldstein plato reality people The good polis is made by the good person, his moral character intact, and the good polis, in turn, helps turn out good persons, their moral character intact. Rebecca Goldstein moral helping character If there is such a thing as philosophical progress, then why - unlike scientific progress - is it so invisible? Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was torturously secured by complex argument comes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance. Rebecca Goldstein philosophical intuition views When you ask why did some particular question occur to a scientist or philosopher for the first time, or why did this particular approach seem natural, then your questions concern the context of discovery. When you ask whether the argument the philosopher puts forth to answer that question is sound, or whether the evidence justifies the scientific theory proposed, then you've entered the context of justification. Considerations of history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology are relevant to the context of discovery, but not to justification. Rebecca Goldstein psychology answers discovery One doesn't diminish a philosopher's achievement, and doesn't undermine its soundness, by showing how the particular set of questions on which he focused, the orientation he brought to bear on his focus, has some causal connection to the circumstances of his life. Rebecca Goldstein achievement focus bears Because of the failure of religion to offer satisfying answers to an increasing number of people, it's time for philosophy to address forcefully these questions that everybody is wondering about. Rebecca Goldstein numbers philosophy people Our society is falling back increasingly on rampant consumerism and self-promoting social media as a way for people to feel that their lives matter - self-centered means of numbing the questions of mattering. Culture has relapsed back into the self-aggrandizing, glorifying answers that the Athenians had presumed, which had Socrates railing against them until he got so annoying that they killed him. Rebecca Goldstein self mean fall I don't think I can write the story of my life, but I can write the story of my hair. Rebecca Goldstein hair writing thinking Philosophers feel a little more cautious about letting down their technical guard lest the general public doesn't recognize their special credentials. It's the fact that philosophy is of general interest that, paradoxically, keeps philosophers from wanting to speak in a way that's accessible to the general public. Rebecca Goldstein special littles philosophy So Socrates was a kind of gadfly. He was a sort of philosophical urban gorilla hanging around in the middle of Athens, asking these peculiar questions of everybody - important people, young men, slaves - questions that had to do with ultimately what's the life that's worth living. And Plato was one of the young men who hung around him, a very aristocratic young man, came from a very old, important family. Rebecca Goldstein philosophical plato men I think the humanities always have to take science, our great knowledge that we get from science, into account, but then try to answer the human questions and try to make sense out of our lives, taking into account all of the scientific knowledge. Rebecca Goldstein humanity trying thinking Almost everybody thinks about philosophy, even if they don't realize it's philosophy and even if they have no sense of the difficulty of the problems, the array of possible answers. Rebecca Goldstein answers philosophy thinking Philosophical progress changes what we take to be "intuitively" obvious, and this change covers up the tracks of the laborious arguments that preceded the changes. We don't see these changes, because we see with them. Rebecca Goldstein philosophical progress track What is love? When you love somebody then I mean we all want good things to happen to ourselves and keep the bad things at bay. When you love somebody you want that as much for them if not more than you do for yourself. Rebecca Goldstein what-is-love want mean We need science. We need empirical evidence. We can't just use mathematical reasoning to deduce the nature of the world. Rebecca Goldstein use world needs If we look at our attitudes consistently and work out the logical implications we're on the road to moral progress, moral understanding. Rebecca Goldstein work-out understanding attitude We may not need God to tell us where the world came from, but we need God to be able to live moral lives and for there to be morality in the first place. Rebecca Goldstein able may world Does God have a reason for wanting us to be charitable, to take care of those who can't take care of themselves? Either God does or God doesn't, it's just logic. If God has a reason then there is a reason independent of God and whatever God's reason is we should figure it out for ourselves. There is a reason and God doesn't really ground morality at all. God wants us to give charity because it's the right thing to do. Rebecca Goldstein independent doe giving I would say to anybody who thinks that all the problems in philosophy can be translated into empirically verifiable answers - whether it be a Lawrence Krauss thinking that physics is rendering philosophy obsolete or a Sam Harris thinking that neuroscience is rendering moral philosophy obsolete - that it takes an awful lot of philosophy - philosophy of science in the first case, moral philosophy in the second - even to demonstrate the relevance of these empirical sciences. Rebecca Goldstein answers philosophy thinking
