Jonah Lehrer Quotes

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

The crude real will not by itself yield truth.

Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.

Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not.

To be is to be perceived

Subjectivity is objective.

Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.

All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.

All those formal systems, in mathematics and physics and the philosophy of science, which claim to give foundations for certain truth are surely mistaken. I am tempted to say that we do not look for truth, but for knowledge. But I dislike this form of words, for two reasons. First of all, we do look for truth, however we define it, it is what we find that is knowledge. And second, what we fail to find is not truth, but certainty; the nature of truth is exactly the knowledge that we do find.

We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but 'tis vain to ask. Whether there be body or not? That is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.

Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.

... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not.

Truth is that which cannot be proved false.

Truth happens to an idea

Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.

Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

I have learned more from Hayek than from any other living thinker, except perhaps Alfred Tarski - but not even excepting Russell.

Would there be trees if we didn't see them?