Philip Kitcher Quotes

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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 Kitcher

  Ideas, Dubious, Finals

  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 Kitcher

  Ideas, Political, Groups

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  14 Copy quote

• Philosophers ought to aspire to know lots of different things and to forge useful synthetic perspectives.

  Philip Kitcher

  Perspective, Different, Philosopher

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• Many of the greatest works of philosophy seem to me to be valuable not because of their arguments, but because they offer us perspectives that open up new possibilities. They show us how we might start in different places, and not buy into the assumptions tacitly made on the first pages of the philosophical works that have influenced us.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Perspective

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Science literacy consists in the ability and the desire to follow reports of new scientific advances, throughout your whole life.

  Philip Kitcher

  Desire, Literacy, Ability

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I believe that the arts make indispensable contributions to our understanding.

  Philip Kitcher

  Art, Believe, Understanding

  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 Kitcher

  Thinking, Light, Trying

  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 Kitcher

  Experts, Lasts, Authority

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Kitcher

  Lying, Animal, Fundamentals

  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 Kitcher

  Ideas, People, Important

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Kitcher

  Knowledge, Science, Curiosity

  Philip Kitcher (1997). “The Lives to Come”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• The point of philosophy, as I see it, is to change thinking, and thereby to change the conversation.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Thinking, Conversation

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Kitcher

  Theory Of Evolution, Doe, Ancestry

  Philip Kitcher (1982). “Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism”, p.202, MIT Press

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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 Kitcher

  Progress, Elements, Ethical

  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 Kitcher

  Progress, Ethics, Problem

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• I'm a pluralist about perspectives on literature. There seem to me to be all sorts of illuminating ways of responding to major literary works, some of them paying considerable attention to context, others applying various theoretical ideas, yet others focusing on details of language, or linking the work to the author's life, or connecting it with other works.

  Philip Kitcher

  Ideas, Perspective, Details

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Kitcher

  Vanity, Anxiety, Historical

  Philip Kitcher (1982). “Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism”, p.202, MIT Press

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• Refined religion is aimed at realizing ethical values, including the fostering of human lives and human communities.

  Philip Kitcher

  Community, Realizing, Ethical

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Kitcher

  Views, Perspective, Together

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Part of my methodological approach is made explicit when I discuss ways in which literature can have philosophical significance. Literature doesn't typically argue - and when it does, it's deadly dull. But literature can supply the frame within which we come to observe and reason, or it can change our frame in highly significant ways. That's one of the achievements I'd claim for Mann, and for Death in Venice.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophical, Venice, Achievement

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• One goal of ethical inquiry might be to uncover strategies available for use when values conflict or when rules are incomplete.

  Philip Kitcher

  Goal, Inquiry, Use

  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

  May, Being Human, Scientist

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• 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 Kitcher

  Views, Groups, Different

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Kitcher

  Thinking, Generations, Literature

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Philosophy by showing - including philosophy in literature - does truly valuable work in leading us to new perspectives from which our arguments can then begin. It does so by introducing new synthetic complexes, which we then reflect on from various points of view. When the complexes survive and grow, that initial showing has been philosophically decisive.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Introducing New, Views

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

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