Quotessence
Home / Authors / Allen W. Wood
Allen W. Wood

Allen W. Wood Quotes

Professor

Filter quotes by topic

AllThinkingMoralIfsHumansWayReasonFormTheoryPhilosophyRationalCapitalismPeopleActionDoeFactsHumanityPhilosopherProblemEndsSelf

Famous Allen W. Wood Quotes

“Our decisions need not be seen as resting on procedures that are merely instrumental in making judgments that are reliably truth-tracking. The procedures might be more directly related than that to truths about what is right or good, or about what we ought to do, or to principles that tell us what is true about these matters. And I have no metaphysical theory about the truth-conditions of such truths, except to say that as objective truths, they must be independent of the attitudes, decisions or actions that they are supposed to justify or for which they are to offer reasons.”

NeedsMatterReasonMightActionDecisionAttitudePrinciplesConditionsTheoryOughtOffersJudgmentIndependentObjectivesRelatedJustifyMetaphysicalProceduresTrackingObjective Truth
Author:Allen W. Wood
Create image

“Kant does not think that along with choice of an action we also choose in each case the motive from which we do it. He thinks all is well if I act beneficently, realizing that it is my duty but also having sympathetic feelings for the person I help. But I ought to strive to be the sort of person who would still help even if these feelings were absent. And it is such a case that he presents when the sympathetic friend of humanity finds his sympathetic feelings overclouded by his own sorrows, and still acts beneficently from duty.”

IfsThinkingWellsPersonsDoeStillsHelpingFeelingsActionHumanityChoicesRealizingCasesDutyOughtSorrowStriveMotiveAbsentSympathetic
Author:Allen W. Wood
Create image

“Consequentialist theories pretend that we can set some great big ends (the general happiness, human flourishing), provide ourselves with definite enough conceptions of them to make them the objects of instrumental reasoning, and then obtain enough reliable information about what actions will best promote them that we could regulate our conduct by these considerations alone.”

HumansEndsEnoughBigsActionInformationObjectsTheoryReasoningConsiderationConceptionDefiniteFlourishing
Author:Allen W. Wood
Create image

“Smith could not be expected to have anticipated the horrors that were to come. But even in his own time, he was a defender of certain state actions that he thought necessary in order to safeguard the good effects of commercial society (Smith did not speak of 'capitalism' and was acquainted only with an early undeveloped form of it). Among these state actions the chief was general public education.”

StatesActionFormCertainOrderSpeakEffectsHorrorCapitalismExpectedChiefsDefendersPublic EducationGeneral Public
Author:Allen W. Wood
Create image