Robert Nozick Quotes - Page 2

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• Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences?...Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think that it's all actually happening...Would you plug in?

  Robert Nozick

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Robert Nozick (1974). “Anarchy, state, and utopia”

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• Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom.

  Robert Nozick

  Knowing, Perspective, Fundamentals

  Robert Nozick (1989). “The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations”

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• Why are philosophers intent on forcing others to believe things? Is that a nice way to behave towards someone?

  Robert Nozick

  Philosophy, Nice, Believe

  Robert Nozick (1981). “Philosophical Explanations”, p.5, Harvard University Press

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• Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.

  Robert Nozick

  People, Vision, May

  Robert Nozick (1974). “Anarchy, state, and utopia”

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• Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave towards someone; also it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiousity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it is more in accord with one's philosophical motivation.

  Robert Nozick

  Motivation, Philosophy, Nice

  Robert Nozick (1981). “Philosophical Explanations”, p.13, Harvard University Press

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• Justice in holdings is historical; it depends upon what actually has happened. We shall return to this point later.

  Robert Nozick

  Justice, Historical, Return

  Robert Nozick (1974). “Anarchy, state, and utopia”

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• There is room for words on subjects other than last words.

  Robert Nozick

  Lasts, Rooms, Last Words

  Robert Nozick (1974). “Anarchy, state, and utopia”

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• When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.

  Robert Nozick

  Plato, Years, Brooklyn

  "The Examined Life". Book by Robert Nozick, 1989.

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• The terminology of philosophical art is coercive: arguments are powerful and best when they are knockdown, arguments force you to a conclusion, if you believe the premisses you have to or must believe the conclusion, some arguments do not carry much punch, and so forth. A philosophical argument is an attempt to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to beleive it or not. A successful philosophical argument, a strong argument, forces someone to a belief.

  Robert Nozick

  Art, Strong, Powerful

  Robert Nozick (1981). “Philosophical Explanations”, p.4, Harvard University Press

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• Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.

  Robert Nozick

  Distance, Mean, Yield

  Robert Nozick (1994). “The Nature of Rationality”, p.181, Princeton University Press

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• Whoever makes something having bought or contracted for all other held resources used in the process (transferring some of his holdings for these cooperating factors), is entitled to it. The situation is not one of something's getting made, and there being an open question of who is to get it. Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them.

  Robert Nozick

  People, World, Entitlement

  Robert Nozick (1974). “Anarchy, state, and utopia”

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• What hadn't been realized in the literature until now is that merely to describe how severely something has been tested in the past itself embodies inductive assumptions, even as a statement about the past.

  Robert Nozick

  Past, Literature, Assumption

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• And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth.

  Robert Nozick

  Giving Up, Order, Depth

  Robert Nozick (1990). “Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations”, p.102, Simon and Schuster

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• Whatever the practical origins of aesthetic discernment may have been, it has been used to create great works of art. When the very loftiest human creations are seen to derive from humble origins and functions, what needs revision is not our esteem for these creations but our notion of nobility.

  Robert Nozick

  Art, Humble, Needs

  Robert Nozick (1994). “The Nature of Rationality”, p.181, Princeton University Press

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• It is, from another angle, an attack on requiring proof in philosophy. And it's also the case, I guess, that my temperament is to like interesting, new, bold ideas, and to try and generate them.

  Robert Nozick

  Philosophy, Ideas, Interesting

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• One way to determine if a view is inadequate is to check its consequences in particular cases, sometimes extreme ones, but if someone always decided what the result should be in any case by applying the given view itself, this would preclude discovering it did not correctly fit the case. Readers who hold they would plug in to the machine should notice whether their first impulse was not to do so, followed later by the thought that since only experiences could matter, the machine would be all right after all.

  Robert Nozick

  Views, Would Be, Machines

  Robert Nozick (1990). “Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations”, p.105, Simon and Schuster

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• Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression.

  Robert Nozick

  Suicide, Children, Philosophical

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• Evolutionary cosmology formulates theories in which a universe is capable of giving rise to and generating future universes out of itself, within black holes or whatever.

  Robert Nozick

  Giving, Black, Holes

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• I guess my tendency is to think essentially that the new wrinkles won't do the job if the old major idea didn't, and so you have to try something different. Then maybe they can all be combined in some coherent piece.

  Robert Nozick

  Jobs, Thinking, Wrinkles

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• I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way.

  Robert Nozick

  Philosophy, Thinking, Data

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