Strawson, Peter Frederick

"Language is not primarily a tool for representing facts, but a means of engaging with others."

"Philosophy makes progress not by discovering new truths, but by dissolving false problems."

"The mind-body problem dissolves when we abandon dualistic assumptions built into our language."

"To understand freedom is to understand how agents can act for reasons."

"Concepts are not fixed essences, but tools that evolve with our practices and needs."

"The search for what is common to all instances of a concept may well be futile."

"Our understanding of causation is shaped by our practical interests and concerns."

"Identity over time is a matter of convention and conceptual choice, not a brute fact."

"The logical form of a proposition is not revealed by its grammatical structure."

"Philosophy must attend to the variety of ways language actually functions in human life."

"We cannot step outside our framework of ordinary concepts to evaluate it from a neutral standpoint."

"The unity of the person is not a matter of strict identity, but of psychological continuity."

"Existence is not a predicate, and attempting to treat it as one creates philosophical confusion."

"Understanding another person is not primarily a matter of inference, but of immediate apprehension."

"The descriptive content of demonstratives is secondary to their referential role."

"We must distinguish between the logical role of a concept and its metaphysical implications."

"Persons are not objects in the world; they are subjects for whom there is a world."

"The attempt to reconstruct all meaningful discourse from pure logic inevitably fails."

"Language learning is not fundamentally a matter of forming associations, but of mastering practices."

"The framework of our concepts is flexible, allowing for revision and improvement."

"The self is neither a Cartesian ego nor a mere bundle, but a living, embodied subject."

"Convention plays a larger role in our conceptual scheme than rationalists typically acknowledge."

"To deny the reality of consciousness is to bite a bullet that cannot ultimately be swallowed."

"The meaning of an expression depends on its role in the linguistic and social practices of a community."

"Philosophical progress consists in achieving clarity about concepts we have always possessed."

"The fact that language can mislead us is not an argument against ordinary language philosophy."

"We should not assume that every significant question has a determinate answer."

"The logical positivists' attempt to eliminate metaphysics through linguistics was itself based on unexamined assumptions."

"Persons cannot be reduced to physical systems without remainder."

"The concept of truth is less mysterious when we stop trying to define it in abstract terms."