"But understanding and explaining motives does not compromise freedom; nor does even predicting acts necessarily do so. A person committed to a political cause may vote predictably, and intelligibly in an election. He does not vote less freely than someone that flips a coin at the last minute. So if we find comparison with animals any help in understanding motives, it will not mean that conduct is not free. And since animals are not (as Descartes supposed) automata, the issue of freedom does not make comparing man with any other species and downgrading irrelevance."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Philosophers from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandPeople from LondonUniversity of Oxford facultyWomen from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mary_Midgley
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Mary Midgley
Mary Beatrice Midgley (née Scrutton; 3 September 1919 – 10 October 2018) was an English moral philosopher.
40 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Mary Midgley →
Related Quotes
"Still, people have a lot of obvious and important things that other species do not–speech, rationality, culture and t…"
"Philosophy, like speaking prose, is something have to do all our lives, well or badly, whether we notice it or not."
"Other areas were being mapped by anthropologists, who seemed to have some interest in my problem, but who were inclin…"
"Consideration of motives brings up the matter of free will. I had better say once, that my project of taking animal c…"
"The notion that we "have a nature" far from threatening the concept of freedom, is absolutely essential to it. If we …"
"Every age has its pet contradictions. Thirty years ago we used to accept Marx and Freud together, and then wonder, li…"
"The future will not "be with" anybody in the sense of falling to them as a conquest. The need for many different meth…"
"Selection does not work by cutthroat competition between individuals, but by favouring whatever behavior is useful to…"
"The trouble with words like "fit" in these discussions is that, if taken in a wide sense they are liable to become va…"
"We are not just rather like animals; we are animals. Our difference from other species may be striking, but compariso…"