Philip Kitcher

It's not at all a bad idea for scientific questions to be chosen because a democratic deliberation would identify them as important…

— Philip Kitcher

I believe that the arts make indispensable contributions to our understanding.

— Philip Kitcher

It may be hyperbolic to declare that Shakespeare teaches us more about being human than all the natural scientists combined.

— Philip Kitcher

I take the ethical truths to be the stable elements that emerge out of ethical progress and that are retained under further…

— Philip Kitcher

Science literacy consists in the ability and the desire to follow reports of new scientific advances, throughout your whole life.

— Philip Kitcher

The point of philosophy, as I see it, is to change thinking, and thereby to change the conversation.

— Philip Kitcher

The expert is a midwife. The expert is not someone who has the authority to pronounce the last word on the subject.

— Philip Kitcher

If the research agenda reflects "market forces", the problems of the poor are likely to be even more neglected than they already…

— Philip Kitcher

I was occupied by a range of questions, often different from those fashionable in the professional philosophy of the past half century,…

— Philip Kitcher

As I read Mann in German for the first time, the full achievement - both literary and philosophical - of Death in…

— Philip Kitcher

Aschenbach is not only a projection of Mann in the obvious ways - same daily routines, author of the works Mann had…

— Philip Kitcher

The moment in which the narrator, reaching for his boots, becomes vividly and lastingly aware of the finality of his grandmother's death…

— Philip Kitcher

Britten's opera tends to see things in simpler terms. It portrays an Aschenbach who wants a richer form of sexual fulfillment, and…

— Philip Kitcher

Because the problems are objective features of the human situation - social animals without the capacities for making social life come easily…

— Philip Kitcher

I have enormous respect for Derek Parfit, although he seems to me bound within an unfortunate philosophical tradition - rather like the…

— Philip Kitcher

I'm very concerned about the increasing distortion of research by the intrusion of the market. Universities are beginning to see science as…

— Philip Kitcher

I use biography, I use literary connections (as with Platen - this seems to me extremely helpful for appreciating the nuances of…

— Philip Kitcher

Part of my methodological approach is made explicit when I discuss ways in which literature can have philosophical significance. Literature doesn't typically…

— Philip Kitcher

Both Proust and Joyce record the ways in which human perspectives can be transformed. In Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is constantly undergoing epiphanies,…

— Philip Kitcher

Many of the greatest works of philosophy seem to me to be valuable not because of their arguments, but because they offer…

— Philip Kitcher

Read Mann's notes, which contain precise accounts of cholera and its symptoms, and observe how careful he is throughout his fiction in…

— Philip Kitcher

In the end, we learn about the most basic philosophical questions - like "How to live?" - from a broad mixture of…

— Philip Kitcher

I would like to undermine the stereotype of "strict philosophy." J.L. Austin remarked that, when philosophy is done well, it's all over…

— Philip Kitcher

Even though I want to expand the number of ways in which skilful ironic play happens, I suspect I'm probably guilty of…

— Philip Kitcher

“Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has probably been more widely read—and more widely misinterpreted—than any other book in the…

— Philip Kitcher

I'm very suspicious of the idea of a "final theory" in natural science, and the thought of a complete system of ethical…

— Philip Kitcher

I rather stumbled into philosophy. When I began my undergraduate career at Cambridge, I studied mathematics.

— Philip Kitcher

The more you read the novella, the more you should wonder, I think, which judgments are to be taken as bedrock.

— Philip Kitcher

In my view, we ought to replace the notion of analytic philosophy by that of synthetic philosophy.

— Philip Kitcher

So my methodological approach is to draw on many different features in highlighting different facets of the novella (and the opera and…

— Philip Kitcher

For a pragmatist like me, the important issues concern the words we might deploy to achieve our purposes, rather than the language…

— Philip Kitcher

Philosophers ought to aspire to know lots of different things and to forge useful synthetic perspectives.

— Philip Kitcher

Refined religion is aimed at realizing ethical values, including the fostering of human lives and human communities.

— Philip Kitcher

One goal of ethical inquiry might be to uncover strategies available for use when values conflict or when rules are incomplete.

— Philip Kitcher

In ethics, we don't make progress by discovering pre-existent truths; we do so by solving problems.

— Philip Kitcher

Experiments work when, and only when, they call into action cognitive capacities that might reliably deliver the conclusions drawn.

— Philip Kitcher

It's a very bad idea for scientific conclusions to be accepted because they fit with the political values of a group of…

— Philip Kitcher

I don't deny that scientific investigation is capable of delivering important truths about nature, but that doesn't stop questions about whether, as…

— Philip Kitcher

Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering…

— Philip Kitcher

Mann was profoundly influenced by two philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who returned to the most ancient of all philosophical questions - "How…

— Philip Kitcher