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7527
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Analysis for Moore and Russell is carving up the world, not investigating language [Moore,GE, by Monk]
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Full Idea:
For Moore and Russell analysis is not - as is commonly understood now - a linguistic activity, but an ontological one. To analyse a proposition is not to investigate language, but to carve up the world so that it begins to make some sort of sense.
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From:
report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4
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A reaction:
A thought dear to my heart. The twentieth century got horribly side-tracked into thinking that ontology was an entirely linguistic problem. I suggest that physicists analyse physical reality, and philosophers analyse abstract reality.
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14782
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Philosophy is an experimental science, resting on common experience [Peirce]
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Full Idea:
Philosophy, although it uses no microscopes or other apparatus of special observation, is really an experimental science, resting on that experience which is common to us all.
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From:
Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], I)
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A reaction:
The 'experimental' either implies that thought-experiments are central to the subject, or that philosophers are discussing the findings of scientists, but at a high level of theory and abstraction. Peirce probably means the latter. I can't disagree.
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14788
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Mathematics is close to logic, but is even more abstract [Peirce]
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Full Idea:
The whole of the theory of numbers belongs to logic; or rather, it would do so, were it not, as pure mathematics, pre-logical, that is, even more abstract than logic.
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From:
Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], IV)
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A reaction:
Peirce seems to flirt with logicism, but rejects in favour of some subtler relationship. I just don't believe that numbers are purely logical entities.
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14789
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Experience is indeed our only source of knowledge, provided we include inner experience [Peirce]
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Full Idea:
If Mill says that experience is the only source of any kind of knowledge, I grant it at once, provided only that by experience he means personal history, life. But if he wants me to admit that inner experience is nothing, he asks what cannot be granted.
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From:
Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898])
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A reaction:
Notice from Idea 14785 that Peirce has ideas in mind, and not just inner experiences like hunger. Empiricism certainly begins to look more plausible if we expand the notion of experience. It must include what we learned from prior experience.
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22302
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Moor bypassed problems of correspondence by saying true propositions ARE facts [Moore,GE, by Potter]
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Full Idea:
Moore avoided the problematic correspondence between propositions and reality by identifying the former with the latter; the world consists of true propositions, and there is no difference between a true proposition and the fact that makes it true.
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From:
report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 28 'Refut'
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A reaction:
This is "the most platonic system of modern times", he wrote (letter 14.8.1898). He then added platonist ethics. This is a pernicious and absurd doctrine. The obvious problem is that false propositions can be indistinguishable, but differ in ontology.
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7526
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Hegelians say propositions defy analysis, but Moore says they can be broken down [Moore,GE, by Monk]
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Full Idea:
Moore rejected the Hegelian view, that a proposition is a unity that defies analysis; instead, it is a complex that positively cries out to be broken up into its constituent parts, which parts Moore called 'concepts'.
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From:
report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4
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A reaction:
Russell was much influenced by this idea, though it may be found in Frege. Anglophone philosophers tend to side instantly with Moore, but the Hegel view must be pondered. An idea comes to us in a unified flash, before it is articulated.
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