"Our habitual ways of speaking and thinking can seem inadequate to the task of expressing the reality of being human."

"The burden of philosophy is to provide the resources to tell ourselves stories so we can subject ourselves to self-scrutiny." 

"We must ask what it means to do philosophy when we expect that the next generation will be worse off, in many ways, than our generation."

Amie L. Thomasson examines the role of philosophy in shaping concepts rather than making scientific discoveries. She proposes that philosophy can focus on conceptual engineering—improving, refining, and constructing concepts to better serve social, legal, and scientific purposes. This approach avoids rivalry with the natural sciences and emphasizes the importance of how we think and talk about the world, showing how conceptual change can transform practices and perspectives i

"When we think, we 'withdraw' from the world of appearances, in order to make present to the mind what is absent from the senses."