Consider all. Test All. Hold on to the good.

Illogic Primer Quotes Clippings Books and Bibliography Paper Trails Links Film

Proof of an External World

G.E. Moore, Proceedings of the British Academy 25 (1939), pp.273-300.
Go It is a matter of some importance and also a matter which falls properly within the province of philosophy, to discuss the question what sort of proof, if any, can be given of ‘the existence of things outside of us’. And to discuss this question was my object when I began to write the present lecture. But I may say at once that, as you will find, I have only, at most, succeeded in saying a very small part of what ought to be said about it.

CS Lewis on Hoping the Worst of One’s Enemy

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Go

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that”, or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

Jean Paul Sartre, " trans., Philip Mairet, in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, edited by Walter Kaufmann (World Publishing Company: 1956; Lecture on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris), pp. -311.
Go My purpose here is to offer a defence of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it. ... Many may be surprised at the mention of humanism in this connection, but we shall try to see in what sense we understand it. In any case, we can begin by saying that existentialism, in our sense of the word, is a doctrine that does render human life possible; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity.

J.B. Bury on Freedom of Thought and, Therefore, of Speech

J.B. Bury, A History of Freedom of Thought (Cambridge University Press: 1913), Introduction.
Go

It is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses so long as he conceals what he thinks. The working of his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts to others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbours. Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have any power over the mind. If a man’s thinking leads him to call in question ideas and customs which regulate the behaviour of those about him, to reject beliefs which they hold, to see better ways of life than those they follow, it is almost impossible for him, if he is convinced of the truth of his own reasoning, not to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude that he is different from them and does not share their opinions. Some have preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer to-day, to face death rather than conceal their thoughts. Thus freedom of thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech.

In

William Lane Craig on Scientism as the Net Effect of the Enlightenment

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, Third Ed. (Crossway: 2008, orig. 1994).
Go

The hallmark of the Enlightenment was “free thought,” that is, the pursuit of knowledge by means of unfettered human reason alone. While it’s by no means inevitable that such a pursuit must lead to non-Christian conclusions and while most of the original Enlightenment thinkers were themselves theists, it has been the overwhelming impact of the Enlightenment mentality that Western intellectuals do not consider theological knowledge to be possible. Theology is not a source of genuine knowledge and therefore is not a science (in German, a Wissenschaft). Reason and religion are thus at odds with each other. The deliverances of the physical sciences alone are taken as authoritative guides to our understanding of the world, and the confident assumption is that the picture of the world which emerges from the genuine sciences is a thoroughly naturalistic picture.

Mark Zuckerberg on the Need to Order Liberty

Mark Zuckerberg, "Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s Not Resigning", Interviewed by Robinson Meyer (April 9, 2018).
Go

I think there’s just been a very basic shift in how we view our responsibility. We used to view our role as building tools for people and saying, “Hey, we’re going to put this power in your hands”. And we think people are basically good, and we think that that can have a net positive effect. Now I just think we understand — both because of the ability for us to develop these things and because of the scale at which we operate — that it’s also our responsibility to make sure that all these tools are used well, not just to put them in people’s hands.

The Ethics of Belief

William K. Clifford, Contemporary Review, (1877); reprinted in William K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, ed. Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock (London: Macmillan and Co., 1886).William K. Clifford (1845–1879) was an English mathematician.
Go The sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it.
In

Bertrand Russell on the Good Life as Love and Knowledge

Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (Simon and Schuster: 1957), pp. 56-7.
Go My view is this: The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Knowledge and love are both indefinitely extensible; therefore, however good a life may be, a better life can be imagined. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life. In the Middle Ages, when pestilence appeared in a country, holy men advised the population to assemble in churches and pray for deliverance; the result was that the infection spread with extraordinary rapidity among the crowded masses of supplicants. This was an example of love, without knowledge. The late war afforded an example of knowledge without love. In each case, the result was death on a large scale.

Martinez-Conde and Macknick Channeling Kant on Phenomenology

Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, Champions of Illusion: The Science Behind Mind-Boggling Images and Mystifying Brain Puzzles (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Oct 24, 2017), pp. 3-4.
Go

Your brain creates a simulation of the world that may or may not match the real thing. The “reality” you experience is the result of your exclusive interaction with that simulation. We de­fine “illusions” as the phenomena in which your perception differs from physical reality in a way that is readily evident. You may see something that is not there, or fail to see something that is there, or see something in a way that does not reflect its physical properties.

In