Mary Midgley

"Consideration of motives brings up the matter of free will. I had better say once, that my project of taking animal comparisons seriously does not involve a slick mechanistic or deterministic view of …"

"It would be quite false to say that competition is the only relation that obtains between species. Mutual dependence is in general quite as important. Each kind exists within an ecosystem, and needs t…"

"What do we mean when we speak...of higher and lower animals? ...What too about communication ? What is so good about communicating? How are we sure that it constitutes and excellence? Is it even clear…"

"Arguments can always be answered. Moral philosophy, unlike straight moralizing, arises from and trives on plurality of values."

"The future will not "be with" anybody in the sense of falling to them as a conquest. The need for many different methods is not going to go away, dissolved in a quasi-physical heaven where all serious…"

"People did not proceed, as the theory of evolution really requires by demythologizing their symbolism about animals and the downward direction. Instead they resisted evolution at all costs, or accepte…"

"In fact, the whole idea of illusion seems to make sense only if we accept the reality of the illusory experience as an experience and question only what it seems to be telling us about the outside wor…"

"Philosophy, like speaking prose, is something have to do all our lives, well or badly, whether we notice it or not."