Mario Bunge: Philosophy can help laymen spot and reject the numerous p...

I pity the babies whose mothers are busy texting trivialities instead of playing with their children; I pity the children who are tethered to their cell phones instead of playing ball; I pity the adolescents who are wasting their best years holding one of those artefacts instead of the hand of another young person.

Mario Bunge

mother baby children

All philosophers can do is to abstain from helping the aggressors and to enjoin social scientists to tell the truth instead of joining the choir of liars and hypocrites.

Mario Bunge

joining hypocrite liars

The motto of science is not just Pauca but rather Plurima ex paucissimis - the most out of the least.

Mario Bunge

chaos motto justice

All genuine philosophy transcends national boundaries. Patriotic philosophies are just nationalist ideologies.

Mario Bunge

patriotic boundaries philosophy

All the electronic devices are weakening the social bonds. Sociologists and psychologists should study this serious threat instead of repeating that communication is the cement of society.

Mario Bunge

communication serious study

One can discern a few very general myths that facilitate the birth of further myths: that everything is possible; that whatever we have failed to explain in normal and earthly terms must have paranormal or supernatural explanations; and that science, being rational, cannot explain the irrational, such as taste and love.

Mario Bunge

normal and-love taste

Only the stupid and the wicked can fear rational criticism.

Mario Bunge

wicked criticism stupid

From a historical viewpoint, religion is just a kind of superstition, and from a political viewpoint it is a tool of social control.

Mario Bunge

political historical tools

The fact is that all the important political philosophers and scientists from the great Aristotle on, with the exception of those of the French Enlightenment and Mill, have sided with the powers that be.

Mario Bunge

enlightenment political important

We deem valuable whatever is likely to meet our needs or wishes (individual values) and whatever is likely to help protect or attain social goals (social values). However, this is not a dichotomy, for some individual values, such as truth, are needed to secure some social values, such as mutual trust, and some social values, such as peace, are required to pursue some individual values, such as good health.

Mario Bunge

social-values goal wish

Of course you cannot free yourself from the laws of nature; but the laws of nervous systems are not the same as the physical laws.

Mario Bunge

free-yourself nervous law

To me, work is not a burden but my main hobby. This is why I always take work with me when I go on holidays. Moreover, that's when new projects occur to me: while contemplating beautiful landscapes or seascapes.

Mario Bunge

hobbies holiday beautiful

Contemporary philosophers are facing problems that were unthinkable only one century ago, such as whether space and time are mutually Independent, whether there is objective chance or only uncertainty, whether physics can explain chemical change, whether our behavior is fully determined by our genomes, whether ideation can change the brain, or whether either the economy or ideas are the ultimate roots of the social.

Mario Bunge

independent roots ideas

Whereas science elicits changes in order to know, technology knows in order to elicit changes.

Mario Bunge

technology knows order

Science is morally neutral, but social science shows us that some moral codes are better than others.

Mario Bunge

moral social shows

One should believe only what can be chosen to be true or just. Irrational (or unjustified) beliefs should be avoided because they can have disastrous practical consequences.

Mario Bunge

belief should believe

In the scientific community you find competent teachers and original researchers, just as in the musical community you find many good performers but very few good composers.

Mario Bunge

musical community teacher

Most contemporary philosophers are conservative and eager to keep their jobs.

Mario Bunge

philosopher conservative jobs

Original philosophy is always "deviant" or even subversive.

Mario Bunge

deviants subversive philosophy

I have nothing to fear from serious social studies of science, and I hope that my philosophy will help progressive science policies while showing that the most modern views of science are ignorant and regressive, even if they are accompanied by a leftist-sounding rhetoric.

Mario Bunge

ignorant views philosophy

Philosophy can help laymen spot and reject the numerous pseudoscientific beliefs that survive in the media, such as the fantasies of psychoanalysts, evolutionary psychologists, and economic equilibrium theorists.