“Aggregative consequentialist theories are threatened by infinitarian paralysis: they seem to imply that if the world is canonically infinite then it is always ethically indifferent what we do. In particular, they would imply that it is ethically indifferent whether we cause another holocaust or prevent one from occurring. If any non-contradictory normative implication is a reductio ad absurdum, this one is.”

— Nick Bostrom

Infinite Ethics https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf (2011)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Swedish philosopher 1973

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

The Times, Sidney Morgenbesser: Erudite and influential American linguistic philosopher with the analytical acuity of Spinoza and the blunt wit of Groucho Marx https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sidney-morgenbesser-5cz8gg8qfvm, September 8, 2004.

“In so far as men believed that the traditional ceremonial was what God wanted of them, they would be indifferent to the reformation of social ethics.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.1 The Historical Roots of Christianity the Hebrew Prophets, p. 6
Context: In so far as men believed that the traditional ceremonial was what God wanted of them, they would be indifferent to the reformation of social ethics. If the hydraulic force of religion could be turned toward conduct, there is nothing which it could not accomplish.

“How are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at all, implies an ethical absolute. A person whose idea of what is proper varies from day to day can be admired for his broadmindedness, but not for his virtue.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

“Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“Acceptance of the Catholic position implies a certain willingness to see the present injustices of society continue… Individual salvation implies liberty, which is always extended by Catholic writers to include the right to private property. But in the stage of industrial development which we have now reached, the right to private property means the right to exploit and torture millions of one's fellow creatures. The Socialist would argue, therefore, that one can only defend property if one is more or less indifferent to economic justice.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: Review of Communism and Man by F. J. Sheed in Peace News (27 January 1939)

“The Palestinian cause is the cause of the entire Islamic world, and we cannot stay indifferent to it.”

Ahmad Khatami (1960) Iranian ayatollah

Ahmad Khatami, Member of Iranian Assembly of Experts: Israel Is a "Dying Political Corpse" http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1487.htm May 2007.

“The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

“A certain theory of representation implies a certain theory of meaning - and meaning is what we live by.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 88; as cited by David Byrne (1999)

“Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.”

G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's Apology

A Mathematician's Apology (1941)

“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

Source: "Faulkner and Desegregation" in Partisan Review (Fall 1956); republished in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)
Context: Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges.

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