Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Because it matters; meaningful stuff means something to us; words, in particular, are helpful for communicating, shaping and organizing our thought, recording knowledge etc., etc.

We do not need, in addition, to know what meaning is – over and above our knowledge of the working of language.

On this supposition, I, in the first place, described this matter, and essayed to represent it in such a manner that to my mind there can be nothing clearer and more intelligible, except what has been recently said regarding God and the soul; for I even expressly supposed that it possessed none of those forms or qualities which are so debated in the schools, nor in general anything the knowledge of which is not so natural to our minds that no one can so much as imagine himself ignorant of it.

Hence, this modest conceptualism and modest realism coincide - for our knowledge (in general) arises out of apprehending particular occurrences as displaying universal structures.

But after the knowledge of God and of the soul has rendered us certain of this rule, we can easily understand that the truth of the thoughts we experience when awake, ought not in the slightest degree to be called in question on account of the illusions of our dreams.

We may posit objects explicitly with the knowledge that they will 82 help us formulate efficient theories of our world, or we may posit them as 8 tools implicit to our very act of comprehending the world .

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges.

And thus, without in appearance living otherwise than those who, with no other occupation than that of spending their lives agreeably and innocently, study to sever pleasure from vice, and who, that they may enjoy their leisure without ennui, have recourse to such pursuits as are honorable, I was nevertheless prosecuting my design, and making greater progress in the knowledge of truth, than I might, perhaps, have made had I been engaged in the perusal of books merely, or in holding converse with men of letters.

When we discover rules for the use of a known term we do not thereby complete our knowledge of its use, and we do not tell people how to use the term, as if they did not know how. Logical analysis is an antidote.

And, in fine, I could not have restrained my desires, nor remained satisfied had I not followed a path in which I thought myself certain of attaining all the knowledge to the acquisition of which I was competent, as well as the largest amount of what is truly good which I could ever hope to secure Inasmuch as we neither seek nor shun any object except in so far as our understanding represents it as good or bad, all that is necessary to right action is right judgment, and to the best action the most correct judgment, that is, to the acquisition of all the virtues with all else that is truly valuable and within our reach; and the assurance of such an acquisition cannot fail to render us contented.