Simon Blackburn Quotes on Knowledge
Simon Blackburn’s Spreading the Word (1984), Essays in Quasi-Realism (1993), and Ruling Passions (1998) give late twentieth-century analytic philosophy its most influential development of the quasi-realist program in metaethics and the broader theory of normative discourse. The central project is the philosophical demonstration that the apparently realist surface features of ethical, modal, causal, and probabilistic discourse — truth-evaluability, embedding in conditionals, the appearance of cognitive content — can be earned through the projective expressivist machinery of attitudes and their disciplining by inferential and practical commitments, without the metaphysical commitments the standard realist accounts require. The framework, drawing on Hume, Wittgenstein, and the broader expressivist tradition through Ayer, Stevenson, and Allan Gibbard, shaped the contemporary analytic metaethics and the broader engagement with the cognitive status of normative judgment.
Quotes
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Attributed to Simon Blackburn:
“Humean philosophy is the school of moral common sense.”
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“The word " philosophy " carries unfortunate connotations: impractical, unworldly, weird.”
Introduction, p. 1 -
“In the end , it is ideas for which people kill each other.”
Introduction, p. 11 -
“Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous .”
Introduction, p. 11 -
“The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to be made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundation of knowledge .”
Chapter One, Knowledge, p. 17 -
“Chapter One, Knowledge, p. 17”
The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to be made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundation of knowledge . -
“A signpost doesn't in and of itself represent the way to the village. We have to learn how to take it.”
Think(1999) | Chapter Two, Mind, p. 78 -
“We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.”
Think(1999) | Chapter Four, The Self, p. 146