Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Sweet Dreams', 'Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues' and 'Russell's Ontological Development'

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2 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / C. Rationalism / 1. Rationalism
In reducing arithmetic to self-evident logic, logicism is in sympathy with rationalism [Sosa]
     Full Idea: In trying to reduce arithmetic to self-evident logical axioms, logicism is in sympathy with rationalism.
     From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.7)
     A reaction: I have heard Frege called "the greatest of all rationalist philosophers". However, the apparent reduction of arithmetic to analytic truths played into the hands of logical positivists, who could then marginalise arithmetic.
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique
Most of our knowledge has insufficient sensory support [Sosa]
     Full Idea: Almost nothing that one knows of history or geography or science has adequate sensory support, present or even recalled.
     From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.7)
     A reaction: This seems a bit glib, and may be false. The main issue to which this refers is, of course, induction, which (almost by definition) is a supposedly empirical process which goes beyond the empirical evidence.