Daniel Flores — HCC Learning Web

"Philosophical problems do not arise in a vacuum. Typically they emerge when we come to see a conflict among the assumptions and presumptions that we explicitly or tacitly accept, or commitments that command our presumptive respect." The seriousness of philosophical problem therefore depends on two related questions: First, how deep is our attachment to the assumptions and commitments that give rise to the apparent conflict? Second, how easy or difficult is it to bring the conflicting assumptions into an acceptable reconciliation? The process of reconciliation may require serious modifications to our original commitments. Short of abandoning the entire framework of existing commitments, compromises must be negotiated. There are no free lunches in philosophy any more than in real life." - Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World, Ch. 2.

"The value of philosophy is … to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. Common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find … that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect." - Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, XV.