If we believe that there are some irreducibly normative truths, we might be believing what we ought to believe. If there are such truths, one of these truths would be that we ought to believe that there are such truths. If instead we believe that there are no such truths, we could not be believing what we ought to believe. If there were no such truths, there would be nothing that we ought to believe.
Derek Parfit, On What Matters, vol. 2, Oxford, 2011, p. 619
Derek Parfit tells me that, if the amount of evil in the world outweighed any actual or forthcoming good, as Hardy and Schopenhauer held, then he would prefer it to be the case that nothing matters. I have to admit that I don’t understand this preference.
Guy Kahane, ‘If Nothing Matters’, Noûs, forthcoming
There is no reason to fear nihilism. What we should fear is mistaken belief in nihilism.
Guy Kahane, ‘If Nothing Matters’, Noûs, forthcoming
Sir Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him, that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and in every company: to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant practice, and never suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to him.
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, vol. 1, p. 109
[A]ny company, any employment whatever, he preferred to being alone. The great business of his life (he said) was to escape from himself.
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, vol. 1, pp. 167-168
Any death prior to the heat death of the universe is premature if your life is good.
Nick Bostrom, in Curt Butz (ed.), The World I Dream of, Ropley, Hants, 2010, p. 26
Sir, it is no matter what you teach [children] first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time, your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your children, another boy has learnt them both.
Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, vol. 1, p. 245
[W]hen a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, vol. 2, p. 152
I don’t travel for fun anymore—I think it’s a huge investment in discomfort and time with a small happiness payoff, since you don’t spend much time consuming the memories you got from traveling. Yes, you can learn from travel, but it’s an inefficient way to learn, make friends, or even have fun when you can do all that better at home.
Nick Winter, in Corey Breier (ed.), The Habitual Hustler: Daily Habits of 50 Self-Employed Entrepreneurs, 2016
There was a charming scene on Broad’s eightieth birthday, when he had tea with the Senior Bursar of Trinity, Dr Bradfield, Mrs Bradfield, and their son. There was a superb birthday cake, with eighty lighted candles. Broad was proud of his feat in blowing them all out with a single breath. Commenting on his exploit, Broad writes: ‘The practice of emitting hot air, of which philosophy so largely consists, had no doubt been a good training for me.’
Theo Redpath, ‘C. D. Broad’, Philosophy, vol. 7, no. 282 (October, 1999), p. 594
[W]e have all met persons basking in self-satisfaction that seems both to be justified and not to be justified: justified because they have good reasons for being satisfied with themselves, and not justified because we sense that they would be just as satisfied were the reasons to disappear.
Jon Elster, ‘Belief, Bias, and Ideology’, in Martin Hollis & Steven Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982, p. 140
“Any defect or fault in this garment is intentional and part of the design.” This label on a denim jacket I bought in a San Francisco store epitomizes for me some of the morally and intellectually repelling aspects of the society in which I live[.]
Jon Elster, ‘States that Are Essentially By-Products’, Social Science Information, vol. 20, no. 3 (June, 1981), p. 456
A one-legged man, seeking a State mobility allowance, had to struggle up four flights of stairs to the room where a tribunal was to decide his claim.
When he got there the tribunal ruled that he could not have the allowance because he had managed to make it up the stairs.
Geoffrey Lean, ‘Catch 22 for a Man with One Leg’, The Observer, February 17, 1980, p. 5
For a writer it is not easy to resist the desire to go down in posterity as a diary writer of unrivalled sincerity, a project as confused as the wish to be well-known as an anonymous donor to charities. The terms of sincerity and authenticity, like those of wisdom and dignity, always have a faintly ridiculous air about them when employed in the first person singular, reflecting the fact that the corresponding states are essentially by-products. And, by contamination, the preceding sentences partake of the same absurdity, for in making fun of the pathetic quest for authenticity one is implicitly affirming one’s own. “To invoke dignity is to forfeit it “: yes, but to say this is not much better. There is a choice to be made, between engaging in romantic irony and advocating it. Naming the unnameable by talking about something else is an ascetic practice and goes badly with self-congratulation.
Jon Elster, ‘States that Are Essentially By-Products’, Social Science Information, vol. 20, no. 3 (June, 1981), p. 440
I must confess that I am not the kind of person whom I like, but I do not think that that source of prejudice has made me unfair to myself. If there should be others who have roses to strew, they can now do so without feeling the need to make embarrassing qualifications.
C. D. Broad, ‘Autobiography’, in Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, New York, 1959, p. 68
A philosopher who regards ignorance of a scientific theory as a sufficient reason for not writing about it cannot be accused of complete lack of originality, as a study of recent philosophical literature will amply prove.
C. D. Broad, Scientific Thought, London, 1923, p. 3
Suffering is not additive in this way. The discomfort of each of a large number of individuals experiencing a minor headache does not add up to anyone’s experiencing a migraine.
John Taurek, ‘Should the Numbers Count?, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 6, no. 4 (Summer, 1977), p. 308