The Philosophy of Philosophy Quotes

“Competence with the English language no more requires acceptance of some law of non-contradiction or any other logical law than it requires acceptance of the theory of evolution or the historical reality of the Holocaust.”
― Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy

“Although empirical knowledge constrains the attribution of essential properties, results are more often reached through a subtle interplay of logic and the imagination. The crucial experiments are thought experiments.”
― Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy

“The necessary is that whose negation counterfactually implies a contradiction.”
― Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy

“[W]hat is epistemically available simply on the basis of linguistic and conceptual competence [?] To a first approximation, the answer is: nothing.”
― Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy

“A question may be easy to ask but hard to answer. Even if it is posed in dramatic and accessible terms, the reflections needed to select rationally between rival answers may be less dramatic and accessible. Such contrasts are commonplace in other disciplines; it would have been amazing if they had not occurred in philosophy. Impatience with the long haul of technical reflection is a form of shallowness, often thinly disguised by histrionic advocacy of depth. Serious philosophy is always likely to bore those with short attention-spans.”
― Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy

“The dialectical nature of philosophical inquiry exerts general pressure to psychologize evidence, and so distance it from the non-psychological subject matter of the inquiry.”
― Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy

“we should be open to the idea that thinking just as much as perceiving is a way of learning how things are.”
― Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy