Tag Archives: simplicity

  H. L. A. Hart

Some, I know, find the political and moral insight of the Utilitarians a very simple one, but we should not mistake this simplicity for superficiality nor forget how favorably their simplicities compare with the profoundities of other thinkers.

H. L. A. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, Harvard Law Review, vol. 71, no. 4 (February, 1958), p. 596

Peter Suber

If a simplification actually creates fewer problems that it prevents, and makes life better than a truer theory that is more respectful of complexity, subtlety, ambiguity, and indeterminacy, then courage requires that we be fictionalists and admit it.

Peter Suber, ‘Against the Sanctity of Life’