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3 ideas
14765 | Association of ideas is the best philosophical idea of the prescientific age [Peirce] |
Full Idea: The doctrine of the association of ideas is, to my thinking, the finest piece of philosophical work of the prescientific ages. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
6441 | Pragmatism judges by effects, but I judge truth by causes [Russell] |
Full Idea: Pragmatism holds that a belief is to be judged if it has certain effects, whereas I hold that an empirical belief is to be judged true if it has certain kinds of causes. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.15) | |
A reaction: I'm with Russell here, and this seems to me a convincing objection to pragmatism. The simple problem is that falsehoods can occasionally have very beneficial effects. Beliefs are made true by the facts, not by their consequences. |
6431 | Empiricists seem unclear what they mean by 'experience' [Russell] |
Full Idea: When I began to think about theory of knowledge, I found that none of the philosophers who emphasise 'experience' tells us what they mean by the word. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: A very significant comment about empiricism. Hume does not seem very clear about what an 'impression' is. Russell's problem has been dealt with intensively by modern empiricists, who discuss 'the given', and conceptualised perception. |