“Do you know why I chose neurosurgery, sir? Because the mission we organized to perform those surgeries couldn't help the patients with neurogenic blindness. So this isn't one case- it's the reason I became a doctor."
And no one was going to keep her from going into that OR.”
Source: Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors
“Wenn aber der Widerstreit des Glaubens und der Vernunft verschwunden und in eine
Aussöhnung übergegangen ist, so würde es wesentlich von der Natur dieser Aussöhnung
selbst abhängen, inwiefern zu ihr Glück zu
wünschen wäre.
Denn es gibt auch einen Frieden der
Gleichgültigkeit gegen die Tiefen des Geistes, einen Frieden des Leichtsinns, der Kahlheit; in einem solchen Frieden kann das Widerwärtige beseitigt scheinen, indem es nur auf die Seite gestellt ist.
(Vorrede zu Hinrichs' Religionsphilosophie, 1822)”
“The person of faith cannot accept reason as the arbiter of truth without giving up on faith...”
Source: These Truths: A History of the United States
“Reason is evolutionary, in that abstract reason builds on and makes use of forms of perceptual and motor inference present in "lower" animals. The result is a Darwinism of reason, a rational Darwinism: Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature. The discovery that reason is evolutionary utterly changes our relation to other animals and changes our conception of human beings as uniquely rational. Reason is thus not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.”
Source: Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
“Reasonable skepticism can be a radical concept to those embracing ideology.”
“Eine zentrale ethische Idee ist die Forderung, möglichst viele unserer eigenen Thesen, Entscheidungen und Handlungen zu begründen und auch von unseren Mitmenschen Begründungen für deren Thesen, Entscheidungen und Handlungen einzufordern. Wir sollen in das Spiel des Gebens und Forderns von Gründen eintreten. Beispielsweise sollen wir nicht einfach je nach unseren unmittelbaren Präferenzen, Leidenschaften und Wünschen durch unser Leben trudeln, sondern uns Konzepte eines für uns guten Lebens machen, die wir vor uns selbst und vor anderen begründen können. Wenn wir uns fragen, welche Art von Person wir sein und welche Art von Leben wir führen wollen, dann muss die Antwort konsistent (= widerspruchsfrei) sein und argumentativ gut gestützt werden; denn sie sollte einer gründlichen Kritik standhalten können. Das ist der sokratische Standpunkt.”
Source: Grundkurs Philosophie Band 1. Logik
“If a memoir needs a reason, mine is simply that wonderful things become even more wonderful for me if I can share them and dreadful things more bearable.”
Source: "Here's Someone I'd Like You to Meet": Tales of Innocents, Musicians and Bureaucrats
“You cannot reason with unreasonable people”
Source: Pearls Before Swine
“Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding. In summary, reason is not, in any way, a transcendent feature of the universe or of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.”
Source: Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
“Reason is not "universal" in the transcendent sense; that is, it is not part of the structure of the universe. It is universal, however, in that it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way our minds are embodied.”
Source: Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought