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Single Idea 16488

[filed under theme 12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique ]

Full Idea

If 'it is not raining' means 'the sentence "it is raining" is false', that makes it almost impossible to understand how a sentence containing the word 'not' can be found true by observation.

Gist of Idea

It is hard to explain how a sentence like 'it is not raining' can be found true by observation

Source

Bertrand Russell (Human Knowledge: its scope and limits [1948], 9)

Book Ref

Russell,Bertrand: 'Human Knowledge' [Routledge 2009], p.111

A Reaction

Russell goes on to explore the general difficulty of deciding negative truths by observation. The same problem arises for truthmaker theory. Obviously I can observe that it isn't raining, but it seems parasitic on observing when it is raining.

Related Idea

Idea 16489 Is it possible to state every possible truth about the whole course of nature without using 'not'? [Russell]

The 38 ideas with the same theme [rejection of knowledge arising just from experience]:

13257 The senses are too feeble to determine the truth [Anaxagoras]
23309 Aristotle's concepts of understanding and explanation mean he is not a pure empiricist [Aristotle, by Frede,M]
1693 Animals may have some knowledge if they retain perception, but understanding requires reasons to be given [Aristotle]
1860 Knowledge may be based on senses, but we needn't sense all our knowledge [Aquinas]
24034 If someone had only seen the basic colours, they could deduce the others from resemblance [Descartes]
6228 Senses cannot judge one another, so what judges senses cannot be a sense, but must be superior [Cudworth]
2793 It is unclear how identity, equality, perfection, God, power and cause derive from experience [Locke, by Dancy,J]
5024 Knowledge doesn't just come from the senses; we know the self, substance, identity, being etc. [Leibniz]
13001 Our sensation of green is a confused idea, like objects blurred by movement [Leibniz]
3902 Hume mistakenly lumps sensations and perceptions together as 'impressions' [Scruton on Hume]
23421 If a person had a gap in their experience of blue shades, they could imaginatively fill it in [Hume]
6182 Even Hume didn't include mathematics in his empiricism [Hume, by Kant]
5538 Understanding has no intuitions, and senses no thought, so knowledge needs their unity [Kant]
5559 Sensations are a posteriori, but that they come in degrees is known a priori [Kant]
7544 Many people imagine that to experience is to understand [Goethe]
19590 Empiricists are passive thinkers, given their philosophy by the external world and fate [Novalis]
15622 Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel]
15621 Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel]
15632 The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel]
14785 The world is one of experience, but experiences are always located among our ideas [Peirce]
4532 We can have two opposite sensations, like hard and soft, at the same time [Nietzsche]
16488 It is hard to explain how a sentence like 'it is not raining' can be found true by observation [Russell]
16485 Perception can't prove universal generalisations, so abandon them, or abandon empiricism? [Russell]
21532 Full empiricism is not tenable, but empirical investigation is always essential [Russell]
6431 Empiricists seem unclear what they mean by 'experience' [Russell]
5376 I can know the existence of something with which nobody is acquainted [Russell]
5199 Empiricism, it is said, cannot account for our knowledge of necessary truths [Ayer]
19488 The second dogma is linking every statement to some determinate observations [Quine, by Yablo]
8178 Empirical and a priori knowledge are not distinct, but are extremes of a sliding scale [Dummett]
8255 Davidson says the world influences us causally; I say it influences us rationally [McDowell on Davidson]
6400 Without the dualism of scheme and content, not much is left of empiricism [Davidson]
2522 Experience cannot teach us why maths and logic are necessary [Katz]
8052 To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre]
8881 Most of our knowledge has insufficient sensory support [Sosa]
2494 Rationalists say there is more to a concept than the experience that prompts it [Fodor]
6081 Necessity and possibility are big threats to the empiricist view of knowledge [McGinn]
10404 Extreme empiricists can hardly explain anything [Swoyer]
14918 The doctrine of empiricism does not itself seem to be empirically justified [Ladyman/Ross]