Analytic Quotes

“We hold these truths to be self-evident.

{Franklin's edit to the assertion in Thomas Jefferson's original wording, 'We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable' in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it instead into an assertion of rationality. The scientific mind of Franklin drew on the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David Hume and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In what became known as 'Hume's Fork' the latters' theory distinguished between synthetic truths that describe matters of fact, and analytic truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition.}”
― Benjamin Franklin

“You can't skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That's the easiest solution to the problem!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Philosophers are in the habit of indicating the object of judgement by the letter p. There is an insouciance with respect to this fateful letter. It stands ready quietly, unobstrusively, to assure us that we know what we are talking about. For example, when we do epistemology, we are interested in what it is for someone to know - know what? oh yes: p. If we inquire into rational requirements on action or intention, we ask what it is to be obliged to - what? oh yes: see to it that p, intend that, if p, then q, and so on. However, if we udnertake to reflect on thought, on its self-consciousness and its objectivity, then the letter p signifies the deepest question and the deepest comprehension. If only we understood the letter p, the whole world would be open to us.”
― Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism

“Philosophy has an image problem. Philosophers are thought to be mystics, religious figures, bullshit artists—anything divorced from reality... Why is philosophy held in such contempt by many physicists? ... one part of the answer probably lies in the split between the two major branches of modern Western philosophy, Analytic and Continental philosophy.

Continental philosophers tend to be much more suspicious of scientific claims about knowledge and truth than are their analytic colleagues.

Yet the distinction between the two kinds of philosophy is not apparent from a distance—most scientists have never heard of the analytic-Continental divide.

So, given that most of the highly visible philosophers in the public sphere today are Continental, and given the attitude that some (not all) Continental philosophers have toward science, it’s not terribly surprising that scientists often have disdain for all philosophers, and sometimes even think that they can do philosophy better than the philosophers can.”
― Adam Becker, What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics

“What is the eternal, necessary order? It is the order of reason and logic. It is the analytic, a priori order, the conceptual order. It has traditionally been associated with God (religion), but it ought to be associated with mathematics (rationalism). Much of what is said about God in philosophy could equally be said about mathematics. The traditional proofs of the existence of God can easily be repurposed as proofs of the existence of mathematics.”
― Thomas Stark, The Sheldrake Shift: A Critical Evaluation of Morphic Resonance