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7290
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If Russell rejects innate ideas and direct a priori knowledge, he is left with a tabula rasa [Russell, by Thompson]
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Full Idea:
If Russell rejects innate ideas, and he even thinks the laws of thought must by triggered by experiences (e.g. of a beech tree), and he doesn't embrace associations, this implies that he thinks the mind begins as a tabula rasa.
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From:
report of Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912]) by George Thompson - talk
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A reaction:
This nice observation places Russell as (in my view) a rather old-fashioned empiricist, who ignores Hume and Kant, and is not willing to speculate about how the mind can turn acquaintances with sense-data into knowledge
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5357
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It is natural to begin from experience, and presumably that is the basis of knowledge [Russell]
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Full Idea:
In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 1)
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A reaction:
Is experience the 'natural' place to begin? It didn't seem to strike Descartes that way. It seems better to say that philosophy begins when we are not quite satisfied with experience, and the natural place to begin is 'dissatisfaction'.
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5382
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We are acquainted with outer and inner sensation, memory, Self, and universals [Russell, by PG]
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Full Idea:
We have acquaintance with outer senses, with inner sense (by introspection), with memory (of outer or inner sensations), with a Self (probably), and also with universals (general ideas).
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From:
report of Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 5) by PG - Db (ideas)
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A reaction:
The spectacular odd one out in a basic empiricist theory is, of course, universals, when one expects some sort of nominalist reduction of those into sense-data. I am very sympathetic to the Russell line, though it spells big ontological trouble.
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