Quotes for All
It is important to realize that whatever we do or design has iconographic references, it comes from somewhere; any form is always metaphorical, never totally metaphysical; it is never a ‘destiny’ but always a fact with some kind of historical reference. To put an object on a base means to monumentalize it, to make everyone … Read more
If our previous analyses are correct, they all point to the same conclusion, that metaphysical adventures are doomed to fail when their authors substitute the fundamental concepts of any particular science for those of metaphysics. Etienne Gilson
Why are there organized beings? Why is there something rather than nothing? Here again, I fully understand a scientist who refuses to ask it. He is welcome to tell me that the question does not make sense. Scientifically speaking, it does not. Metaphysically speaking, however, it does. Science can account for many things in the … Read more
The verbal interpretation, on the other hand, i.e. the metaphysics of quantum physics, is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model. Erwin Schrodinger
Philosophers do need to have intuitions of various specific sorts: ethical, metaphysical, etc., depending on their targeted subject matter. And they must make intuition reports, as they record the contents of their intuitions. But they need not go into whether an intuition has been enjoyed. Ernest Sosa
I am sorry the infernal Divinities, who visit mankind with diseases, and are therefore at perpetual war with Doctors, should have prevented my seeing all you great Men at Soho to-day-Lord! what inventions, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical and pyrotecnical, will be on the wing, bandy’d like a shuttlecock from one to another of … Read more
Animism is a monist metaphysical stance, based upon the idea that mind and matter are not distinct and separate substances but an integrated reality, rooted in nature. Emma Restall Orr
The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation. Emma Goldman
\”Methodological naturalism\” and \”metaphysical naturalism\” are terms that often surface in the continuing battle between evolutionary biology and creationism/intelligent design. The methodological thesis says that scientific theories shouldn’t postulate supernatural entities; the metaphysical thesis says that no such entities exist. In this debate, God is the supernatural entity at issue; the question isn’t whether science … Read more
I disagree with the widely held view that it is metaphysical necessity, not nomological, that matters in the mind/body problem. Elliott Sober