A thought 26 Jun 2010 Things and actions are what they are, and consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived? [Bishop Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons, Sermon VII, §16.] This is widely misquoted from Isaiah Berlin’s epigram at the head of Karl Marx: His life and environment (1939) as (misquotations bolded): Things and actions are what they are, and their consequences will be what they will be: why then should we seek to be deceived? I have found it in an earlier essay, from 1937. Possibly this is where Berlin got it. Even recent historians misquote it. Ethics and Moral Philosophy Philosophy Quotes PhilosophyQuotes
Epistemology Feeling smug 29 Jul 2009 … because I sent off two papers this week to journals. I’ll feel a lot smugger, of course, if they get accepted. One is on genetic information (yeah, you all know about that one!) and the other about natural kinds in biology, a historical-philosophical piece. We’ll see. Even more smugifying,… Read More
Epistemology Phylogeny, induction, and the straight rule of homology 8 Jan 201122 Jun 2018 Continuing my “natural classification” series, which I am writing with Dr Malte Ebach of UNSW. After having experienced the circulation of the blood in human creatures, we make no doubt that it takes place in Titius and Maevius. But from its circulation in frogs and fishes, it is only a… Read More
Epistemology Metaphysical determinism 20 May 201227 Aug 2012 There is a hypothesis called the Sapir-Whorf Thesis (also known as linguistic relativity) in language that one can only think what one’s language permits you to think, and indeed forces you to think. This idea that some conceptual scheme can determine how you think is widely held. It appears again… Read More
Earlier in the section, he writes: “Even without determining what that is which we call guilt or innocence, there is no man but would choose, after having had the pleasure or advantage of a vicious action, to be free of the guilt of it, to be in the state of an innocent man. This shows at least the disturbance and implicit dissatisfaction in vice.” At most, it shows (instead) the disturbance and implicit dissatisfaction in what one acknowledges to be (one’s own) vice – a different thing entirely. Unacknowledged, there is no need for the “hurry of business or of pleasure” to assist in any desired deception, there being an absence of the latter.
Possibly, but I couldn’t locate another edition at the time. Google Books has the original 1726 edition here, and it has the same wording. Later note: As does the 1792 edition here.
The first variation does not seem to me to signal a difference. The second (“seek” v. “desire”) makes a common implication of “desire” explicit. And I wouldn’t even be surprised to find that one of the recorded meanings of “seek” IS “desire” (esp. in contexts such as “seek to be deceived”). Must look it up when I achieve immortality. Is there much in it?