And it is clear, to begin with, that we never observe time except as forming both these series. We perceive events in time as being present, and those are the only events which we perceive directly. And all other events in time which, by memory or inference, we believe to be real, are regarded as past or future –those earlier than the present being past, and those later than the present being future.
– McTaggartmemeengine asked: Your quotes... they just never fail to be awesome! Do you read philosophy for school or for yourself? (or both I suppose)
For uni mostly. I’m doing my honours year in philosophy right now, so I’m trying to write a thesis. I post the quotes because it inspires me to get on with my work, haha.
Thanks for your support :D
In short, it seems as if language is like a great balloon, anchored to the ground of non-linguistic fact only by a number of widely scattered and very thin (but all-important) ropes.
– PutnamOf all crimes that human creatures are capable of committing, the most horrid and unnatural is ingratitude, especially when it is committed against parents…
– David HumeThere is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning, that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, it’s conclusions seem to vanish, like phantoms of the night…
– David HumeNeither language nor thinking can be fully explained in terms of the other, and neither has conceptual priority. The two are, indeed, linked, in the sense that each requires the other in order to be understood; but the linkage is not so complete that either suffices, even when reasonably enforced, to explicate the other.
– Donald DavidsonWe advance, rather than retard our existence; and following what seems the natural succession of time, proceed from past to present, and from present to future. By which means we conceive the future as flowing every moment nearer us, and the past as retiring
– David Hume‘Tis obvious, that people associate together according to their particular tempers or dispositions, and that men of gay tempers naturally love the gay.
– David HumeSome animals see objects as having different colours than those we see them as having. If one grants this very plausible
claim, one can then raise the (perhaps silly) question as to which species is seeing the colours of objects correctly. It seems that the obvious answer to this question is that it is perfectly possible for both humans and non-human animals to see the colours of objects correctly, even if they see those objects as having different colours. This is because the reflectance properties
attributed to a given object by two different visual systems can easily be compatible. That is, an object can be both green and giraffe-colour-g.
