Catherine Wilson Quotes

Quotes about:

• We are now returning to the 18th century empirical approach with the new interest in the evolutionary basis of ethics, with 'experimental' moral philosophy and moral psychology. As a result, we understand better why moral formulas are experienced as ineluctable commands, even if there is no commander and even if the notion of an inescapable obligation is just superstition. So moral philosophy has made huge progress.

  Catherine Wilson

  Philosophy, Psychology, Progress

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• Human courtship has some wild extremes. At one end of the spectrum, there is harassment, pestering, blackmail, and an abuse of institutional power, which its targets rightly fear and loathe. At the other end is love, which as Nietzsche said, is beyond good and evil and always deserves our respect and compassion even when it is doomed or destructive. In the wide middle of the spectrum are all the ambiguous and tragi-comic goings-on of our species.

  Catherine Wilson

  Compassion, Evil, Abuse

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  19 Copy quote

• The moves to contractualism and utilitarianism required some extra ingredients besides mortalism, the denial that God is in charge of the world, and the doctrine that physical and psychological pain are the greatest evils.

  Catherine Wilson

  Pain, Moving, Evil

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  8 Copy quote

• You can reasonably make the intellectual journey from thinking it's permissible to eat shrimp to thinking it's not permissible, or vice versa, whereas our slavery journey was uni-directional. We are as certain we are not going back to that old kind of slavery as we are that we aren't going back to the geocentric universe.

  Catherine Wilson

  Journey, Thinking, Intellectual

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• We call 'Slavery is wrong' a moral truth because there is a specific history of theoretical investigation of a particular kind of slavery. We discussed it for centuries in metaphysical, economic, biological, and philosophical terms; we listened to all the arguments pro and con, we read all the testimonies of slaves and witnesses, and we decided. Though this 'we" is not everybody on earth, or even most people, who've never thought about slavery much.

  Catherine Wilson

  Philosophical, People, Slavery

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• For seventeenth-century astronomers, the Epicurean doctrine of multiple worlds separated by void space was seen to fit with the new Copernican system in which every star was a sun, and the universe was a vast place with no centre.

  Catherine Wilson

  Stars, Space, Doctrine

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Highly unequal societies are morally defective because they get to be that way through the exploitation by the clever and well-positioned ones of the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of others. The well-off then use their acquired political power to refuse to make sacrifices for others. This system brings us a wonderful range of products and experiences for consumers at the top of the privilege scale, but it also degrades and benumbs the workers at the lower end, as Adam Smith and Marx both said.

  Catherine Wilson

  Clever, Sacrifice, Political

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• A moral rule is essentially 'advantage-reducing.' It prohibits you doing something you could do that would serve your interests at someone else's expense.

  Catherine Wilson

  Moral, Advantage, Reducing

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Morality has in the past made progress when we broadened the category of things we weren't permitted to harm (animals, 'infidels'); saw through some delusions and rationalisations about what harms are good for people themselves (prison punishment, hysterectomies for unhappy 1950s wives); and readjusted our for-the-good of others criteria so as to demand only reasonable sacrifices (ceasing to use children as handy chimney sweeps).

  Catherine Wilson

  Children, Sacrifice, Animal

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Gentlemanly, principled, helpful behaviour by older men vis-a-vis young women goes unnoticed, but it deserves real moral credit, and we could use more first-person testimony from the beneficiaries and practitioners about that too.

  Catherine Wilson

  Real, Men, Behaviour

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Moral claims aren't, as a class, truth-value apt or not.

  Catherine Wilson

  Class, Moral, Claims

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe we will get to this point and reach a decision one way or the other with 'Human cloning is acceptable,' but I doubt that it is ever going to happen for 'It is morally permissible to eat shrimp' or with the general formula 'Adultery is wrong,' whose intended extension is again very unclear.

  Catherine Wilson

  Decision, Doubt, Shrimp

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• In Western Europe and North America some things are better than they were - at least relative to their moral nadirs - such as labour legislation, the opening of the professions to women, intolerance for domestic violence, but so much is still morally unacceptable - the weapons trade, cruel and unusual punishment, economic parasitism.

  Catherine Wilson

  Europe, Punishment, America

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Moral theory develops from the divine command theory of medieval Christian philosophy, mixed up with a bit of ancient pagan virtue theory, to the purely secular moral sentiment and interpersonal reaction theories of Smith and Hume, to Kant's attempt to restore command theory but with something supersensible in the individual rather than God as the source of authority.

  Catherine Wilson

  Christian, Philosophy, Moral

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• There's Hobbes, who understood in the 1640s that the sovereign is not an appointee of God, or even a figure of superior virtue and wisdom, but just a functional device whose role is to keep people from hurting and killing each other.

  Catherine Wilson

  Hurt, People, Roles

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• There is no single test or formula for producing moral progress anymore than there is for generating scientific truths. It is a process involving theoreticians, fact-gatherers, protestors, martyrs for the cause, authors of first- person narratives who change the way we see and evaluate the distribution of harms and benefits.

  Catherine Wilson

  Progress, Benefits, Narrative

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• There's nothing a priori good about equality. One person has three televisions, the other has two, so what?

  Catherine Wilson

  Two, Three, Television

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• People formerly seemed unable to evaluate a woman's c.v. or to accept a range of personal and communicative styles from the exuberant and confident to the sober and pedantic. It's much better than it was, and a number of male philosophers have been extraordinarily helpful in detecting and criticising everyday sexism in the profession.

  Catherine Wilson

  Numbers, People, Everyday

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• It used to be that nobody would really argue with a woman, because what she thought (unless it was by way of providing helpful comments about one's own work) just didn't matter.

  Catherine Wilson

  Matter, Way, Arguing

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• We need grief as a precursor to emotional refreshment, and so consume it vicariously in somewhat titrated but powerful enough form through engagement with the arts.

  Catherine Wilson

  Art, Powerful, Grief

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• You can find many philosophy papers on the themes of 'love' and 'friendship,' most of which are cheerful and somewhat anodyne; you don't find many on the loss of friends, relatives, and lovers from death or alienation, though it happens all the time.

  Catherine Wilson

  Philosophy, Loss, Cheerful

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• I don't see how being a faster runner, or a better mathematician makes you 'deserve' access to a better life, or more influence on policy, in the absence of a social decision to play that game in the way it's proposed to be organised for some set of benefits.

  Catherine Wilson

  Games, Play, Decision

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• There are people who organise the contest, winners, losers, and people who benefit from the contest taking place.

  Catherine Wilson

  People, Benefits, Loser

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• If you live in an acquisitive society you are likely to be acquisitive, but it isn't deeply rooted in human nature, except in the sense that it's deeply rooted to be psychologically receptive to your peers and to advertising.

  Catherine Wilson

  Peers, Advertising, Human Nature

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• People's wants are not fixed; they generally want what others in their chosen comparison class appear to be enjoying and what advertising presents to them as attainable for them and as bringing happiness.

  Catherine Wilson

  Class, People, Want

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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