The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”
— Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment
Tag: Philosophy
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The Movement of the Stars
Observe the movement of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings wash away the filth of life on the ground.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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Mary’s Room
Imagine a neuroscientist who has only ever seen black and white things, but she is an expert in color vision and knows everything about its physics and biology. If, one day, she sees color, does she learn anything new? Is there anything about perceiving color that wasn’t captured in her knowledge?
My belief: She absolutely learned something new, and though that new knowledge is hard to explain, it is not mystical, unexplainable, or nontransferable. Her new brain state could in fact be replicated in another brain or machine and be experienced just as Mary had herself.
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Two Sets of Rules
Every system has two sets of rules: The rules as they are intended or commonly perceived, and the actual rules (‘reality’). In most complex systems, the gap between these two sets of rules is huge.”
— Paul Buchheit, Applied Philosophy, a.k.a. “Hacking”
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Then Whence Evil?
Epicurus’s old questions are still unanswered: Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? then whence evil?”
— David Hume
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Albert Camus on This Plague
Everyone has it inside himself, this plague, because no one in the world, no one, is immune.”
— Albert Camus, The Plague (via Stowe Boyd)
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Sophocles on Tomorrow
Tomorrow is tomorrow. Future cares have future cures, and we must mind today.”
— Sophocles
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Friedrich Nietzsche on God
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
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Bertrand Russell on Religion
“My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”
— Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (via Philosophy Bits)
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Baruch Spinoza on Free Will
So experience itself, no less clearly than reason, teaches that men [sic] believe themselves free because they are conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the cause by which they are determined, that the decisions of the mind are nothing but the appetites themselves which therefore vary as the disposition of the body varies.”
— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
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Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius: Volume 1
Lisa Marie Blair 