Belief Quote by Nomy Arpaly

“When I see two owls and then two more owls and conclude that I see four owls, I am responding to reasons, and it better not be my choice to believe that two plus two always equals four. If I am a rational person, I will have that belief by necessity, whether I wanted to or not. So it's not that strange to discuss responding to reasons out of necessity.”

Nomy Arpaly

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More by Nomy Arpaly

I am an atheist. I don't think there's anything divine. Beautiful, impressive, awe-inspiring - sure, but not divine.

Nomy Arpaly

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Other things being equal, ill will is worse than moral indifference (as in causing suffering for money vs causing suffering to cause suffering), though…

Nomy Arpaly

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Duties concern things that are voluntary. I do think that if you have a moral duty to bring me back the book you borrowed, that implies, roughly, that your doing so depends on your wanting to do so: if you want to bring me the book, you will. This is not the case if you are stuck at some airport…

Nomy Arpaly

Sometimes I suspect that there are two prototypes of philosophers who write about humans - I call them "celestials" and "terrestrials", without implying that celestials have their heads in the clouds or that terrestrials have theirs buried in the ground. The difference between these two types is not so much in their theories but in whether or not they would…

Nomy Arpaly

When you find yourself reluctant to sit on a chair because it had unexpectedly collapsed in the past you might shake your head and…

Nomy Arpaly

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If I make a stupid decision but don't execute it because I'm, say, lazy, then I'm lucky, not rational. However, at other times a person acts for good reasons just as she does what she thinks she shouldn't do, not knowing that they are good reasons. Just like sometimes we are a lot less rational than we think we are,…

Nomy Arpaly

If I am told my loving you had to happen because of some Freudian stuff about my childhood, that might be degrading or deflationary,…

Nomy Arpaly

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I am not committed in any way to the traditional concept of character - the concept of "character trait" as involving predictable behavior. I…

Nomy Arpaly

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I don't think any of my desires or beliefs or other mental states are external to me. Many people will occasionally feel alienated from the motives for an action - "whatever possessed me to do that?". Note, however, that some people feel alienated from the white hairs that recently appeared on their heads - "who put them there?", they might…

Nomy Arpaly

Incompatibilists will tell you that a work of art has no meaning unless the artists could have chosen to create a different one, but actual artists often say things like "the book chose me" - that is, the work had to be. Some philosophers would call it "volitional necessity", and a similar case that's discussed is the case of Luther…

Nomy Arpaly

Though we think intrinsic desires tend to be pretty stable, we do not think they imply anything like the amount of predictability in behavior that traditional virtue ethics requires for someone to have a one-word-in-English character trait such as "benevolence". Other things being equal, a person with more of a desire for other people's wellbeing will do more for other…

Nomy Arpaly

Suppose a student of mine writes in her exam that "morality is completely relative to culture, so nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Because of that, it is absolutely wrong to be culturally intolerant". This student, if she believes what she writes, believes a contradiction. She ought not to believe the contradiction - it's a basic epistemic norm. This is…

Nomy Arpaly

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I have tried to resign myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot…

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