Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

These phenomena suggest that at least some aspects of the ability to perceive speech were present long before the advent of language.

It would be extraordinarily difficult at present to conduct experiments that fairly compared a primate’s ability to a human’s, fully testing the null hypothesis.

Somewhat to their surprise, Diesendruck and Markson conclude, “Interestingly, the present findings lend indirect support to the idea that in some respects, word learning is special” (p. 639).

Those whom God has endowed with a larger measure of genius will entertain, perhaps, designs still more exalted; but for the many I am much afraid lest even the present undertaking be more than they can safely venture to imitate.

And although my own satisfaction with my work has led me to present here a draft of it, I do not by any means therefore recommend to every one else to make a similar attempt.

It differs from the assertion that mental life can be understood only in terms of first-person present-tense subjective experience.

Faced with this puzzle, the only alternatives to natural selection are deliberate engineering by a deity or extraterrestrial; some kind of mysterious teleological force that allows future benefit to affect present design; and simply not caring.

On the other hand, when too much time is occupied in traveling, we become strangers to our native country; and the over curious in the customs of the past are generally ignorant of those of the present.

All that is required for present purposes is that some qualitative vocabulary, conjoined with indexical terms such as 'I' and 'now', is sufficient.

My present design, then, is not to teach the method which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his reason, but solely to describe the way in which I have endeavored to conduct my own.