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Simon Blackburn Quotes

Simon Blackburn, FBA is a British academic philosopher known for his work in metaethics, where he defends quasi-realism, and in the philosophy of language; more recently, he has gained a large general audience from his efforts to popularise philosophy. He retired as the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009–2010 term. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002 and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.

He has appeared in multiple episodes of the documentary series Closer to Truth.

✵ 12. July 1944
Simon Blackburn photo
Simon Blackburn: 29   quotes 2   likes

Famous Simon Blackburn Quotes

“Chance is as relentless as necessity.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 85

“Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 170

“Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 105

“Paradigms can be asked to show their worth, an some of them do not stand up.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Six, Reasoning, p. 231

“In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other.”

Simon Blackburn

Introduction, p. 11
Think (1999)

“An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat shop or the concentration camp and the death march.”

Simon Blackburn

Simon Blackburn, Being Good (2001)

Simon Blackburn Quotes about the world

“Induction is the process of taking things within our experience to be representative of the world outside our experience. It is a process of projection or extrapolation.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Six, Reasoning, p. 225

“What underlies our assignment of probabilities in the real world?”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Six, Reasoning, p. 212

“Thoughts are strange things. they have 'representational' powers: a thought typically represents the world as being one way or another. A sensation, by contrast, seems to just sit there.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Two, Mind, p. 78

“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.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter One, Knowledge, p. 17

“A god that created the world and then walked off the site leaving it to its own devices is not a fit object of worship, nor a source of moral authority.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 169

Simon Blackburn Quotes

“Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous.”

Simon Blackburn

Introduction, p. 11
Think (1999)

“We hope for lives whose story leaves us looking admirable; we like our weaknesses to be hidden and deniable… We want to enjoy our lives, and we want to enjoy them with a good conscience … Ethics is disturbing.”

Simon Blackburn

Context: We hope for lives whose story leaves us looking admirable; we like our weaknesses to be hidden and deniable... We want to enjoy our lives, and we want to enjoy them with a good conscience... Ethics is disturbing. We are often vaguely uncomfortable when we think of such things as exploitation of the world's resources, or the way our comforts are provided by the miserable labour conditions of the third world... Racists and sexists, like antebellum slave owners in America, always have to tell themselves a story that justifies their system.

Simon Blackburn, Being Good (2001)

Hope

“But it is logically impossible that there could exist an 'unowned' dent, a dent without a surface that is dented.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Four, The Self, p. 136

“Finding a mechanism does not bypass the problem of induction.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Six, Reasoning, p. 227

Problem

“It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 162

Law , Nature

“We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Four, The Self, p. 146

Knowledge , Memory

“Motion however will not help unless we have things moving.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Seven, The World, p. 244

Help

“Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people?”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 190

People

“In Michigan recently a man won a lawsuit for substantial damages because, he claimed, a rear-end collision in his car had made him a homosexual.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 106

Cars

“But if nothing does as well as something about which nothing can be said, it vanishes.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 173

“Perhaps to restore human freedom we should deny determinism?”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 84

Freedom

“Myself, I have never seen a bumper sticker saying "Hate if you Love Jesus", but I sometimes wonder why not. It would be a good slogan for the religious Right.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 191

Love , Hate

“The word "philosophy" carries unfortunate connotations: impractical, unworldly, weird.”

Simon Blackburn

Introduction, p. 1
Think (1999)

“We think about what to do, and muster considerations and arguments in favor of one course or another. How are we to think about that?”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Eight, What To Do, p. 270

Thinking

“A signpost doesn't in and of itself represent the way to the village. We have to learn how to take it.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Two, Mind, p. 78

Way , Learning

“According to Confucianism, the ideal life contains a large dose of respect for traditional ways. All these ideals can be fleshed out and painted in more or less attractive colours. Yet there is something uncomfortable about them, if only because there is little reason to suppose that there is any such thing as the ideal life. Since different people have different tastes and interests, and different cultures encourage different concerns, it seems unlikely that any 'ideal life' will be heavily contextualized: ideal for this person in these circumstances, perhaps, but not much more.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Eight, What To Do, p. 278-279

Life , People , Way , Painting

“If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma, are sometimes consoling.”

Simon Blackburn

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 117

Effort

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