39 ideas
| 6947 | Metaphysics does not rest on facts, but on what we are inclined to believe [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical systems have not usually rested upon any observed facts, or not in any great degree. They are chiefly adopted because their fundamental propositions seem 'agreeable to reason', which means that which we find ourselves inclined to believe. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.15) | |
| A reaction: This leads to Peirce's key claim - that we should allow our beliefs to be formed by something outside of ourselves. I don't share Peirce's contempt for metaphysics, which I take to be about the most abstract presuppositions of our ordinary beliefs. |
| 6420 | Only by analysing is progress possible in philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I remain firmly persuaded, in spite of some modern tendencies to the contrary, that only by analysing is progress possible, …for example, by analysing physics and perception, the problem of mind and matter can be completely solved. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I don't share his confidence in the second part of this, but I subscribe to the maxim that 'analsis is the path to wisdom'. It is a very western view, and lots of people (mostly of a mystical disposition) hate it, but I see no better path. |
| 6432 | Analysis gives new knowledge, without destroying what we already have [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me evident that, as in the case of impure water, analysis gives new knowledge without destroying any of the previously existing knowledge. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: I agree. On the whole, opponents of analysis are sentimental mystics who are reluctant to think carefully about life. I'm not sure what careful and concentrated thought is capable of, apart from analysis. |
| 6937 | Reason aims to discover the unknown by thinking about the known [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 7) | |
| A reaction: I defy anyone to come up with a better definition of reasoning than that. The emphasis is on knowledge rather than truth, which you would expect from a pragmatist. …Actually the definition doesn't cover conditional reasoning terribly well. |
| 6437 | The theory of types makes 'Socrates and killing are two' illegitimate [Russell] |
| Full Idea: 'Socrates and killing are two' would be an illegitimate sentence according to the doctrine of types. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: This nicely shows how Ryle's notion of a 'category mistake', although it is a commonsense observation of bogus reasoning, arises out of Russell's logical analysis of sets. Of course, the theory of types has its critics. |
| 6442 | Truth belongs to beliefs, not to propositions and sentences [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Truth and falsehood both belong primarily to beliefs, and only derivatively to propositions and sentences. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why a proposition which is date/place stamped ('it is raining, here and now') could not be considered a truth, even if no one believed it. Is not the proposition 'squares have four sides' true? |
| 6436 | I gradually replaced classes with properties, and they ended as a symbolic convenience [Russell] |
| Full Idea: My original use of classes was gradually more and more replaced by properties, and in the end disappeared except as a symbolic convenience. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: I wish I knew what properties are. On the whole, though, I agree with this, because it is more naturalistic. We may place things in classes because of their properties, and this means there are natural classes, but classes can't have a life of their own. |
| 7528 | Leibniz bases everything on subject/predicate and substance/property propositions [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysics of Leibniz was explicitly based upon the doctrine that every proposition attributes a predicate to a subject and (what seemed to him almost the same thing) that every fact consists of a substance having a property. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: I think it is realised now that although predicates tend to attribute properties to things, they are far from being the same thing. See Idea 4587, for example. Russell gives us an interesting foot in the door of Leibniz's complex system. |
| 6439 | Names are meaningless unless there is an object which they designate [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Unlike descriptions, names are meaningless unless there is an object which they designate. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: This interests Russell because of its ontological implications. If we reduce language to names, we can have a pure ontology of 'objects'. We need a system for saying whether a description names something - which is his theory of definite descriptions. |
| 6423 | We tried to define all of pure maths using logical premisses and concepts [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The primary aim of our 'Principia Mathematica' was to show that all pure mathematics follows from purely logical premisses and uses only concepts definable in logical terms. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This spells out the main programme of logicism, by its great hero, Russell. The big question now is whether Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems have succeeded in disproving logicism. |
| 6424 | Formalists say maths is merely conventional marks on paper, like the arbitrary rules of chess [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The Formalists, led by Hilbert, maintain that arithmetic symbols are merely marks on paper, devoid of meaning, and that arithmetic consists of certain arbitrary rules, like the rules of chess, by which these marks can be manipulated. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: I just don't believe that maths is arbitrary, and this view pushes me into the arms of the empiricists, who say maths is far more likely to arise from experience than from arbitrary convention. The key to maths is patterns. |
| 6425 | Formalism can't apply numbers to reality, so it is an evasion [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Formalism is perfectly adequate for doing sums, but not for the application of number, such as the simple statement 'there are three men in this room', so it must be regarded as an unsatisfactory evasion. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a powerful and simple objection. The foundation of arithmetic is that there are three men in the room, not that one plus two is three. Three men and three ties make a pattern, which we call 'three'. |
| 6426 | Intuitionism says propositions are only true or false if there is a method of showing it [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The nerve of the Intuitionist theory, led by Brouwer, is the denial of the law of excluded middle; it holds that a proposition can only be accounted true or false when there is some method of ascertaining which of these it is. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: He cites 'there are three successive sevens in the expansion of pi' as a case in point. This seems to me an example of the verificationism and anti-realism which is typical of that period. It strikes me as nonsense, but Russell takes it seriously. |
| 6419 | In 1899-1900 I adopted the philosophy of logical atomism [Russell] |
| Full Idea: In the years 1899-1900 I adopted the philosophy of logical atomism. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting (about Russell) because he only labelled it as 'logical atomism' in about 1912, and only wrote about it as such in 1918. It is helpful to understand that the theory of definite descriptions was part of his logical atomism. |
| 6438 | Complex things can be known, but not simple things [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I have come to think that, although many things can be known to be complex, nothing can be known to be simple. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a rejection of his logical atomism. It goes with a general rebellion against foundationalist epistemology, because the empiricists foundations (e.g. Hume's impressions) seem devoid of all content. |
| 21492 | Realism is basic to the scientific method [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental hypothesis of the method of science is this: There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinion of them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877]), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'method' | |
| A reaction: He admits later that this is only a commitment and not a fact. It seems to me that when you combine this idea with the huge success of science, the denial of realism is crazy. Philosophy has a lot to answer for. |
| 6949 | If someone doubted reality, they would not actually feel dissatisfaction [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Nobody can really doubt that there are Reals, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.19) | |
| A reaction: This rests on Peirce's view that all that really matters is a sense of genuine dissatisfaction, rather than a theoretical idea. So even at the end of Meditation One, Descartes isn't actually worried about whether his furniture exists. |
| 6434 | Facts are everything, except simples; they are either relations or qualities [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Facts, as I am using the word, consist always of relations between parts of a whole or qualities of single things; facts, in a word, are whatever there is except what (if anything) is completely simple. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: This is the view that goes with Russell's 'logical atomism', where the 'completely simple' is used to build up the 'facts'. If World War One was a fact, was it a 'relation' or a 'quality'. Must events then be defined in terms of those two? |
| 6440 | Universals can't just be words, because words themselves are universals [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Those who dislike universals have thought that they could be merely words; the trouble with this view is that a word itself is a universal. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: Russell gradually lost his faith in most things, but never in universals. I find it unconvincing that we might dismiss nominalism so easily. I'm not sure why the application of the word 'cat' could not just be conventional. |
| 6430 | In epistemology we should emphasis the continuity between animal and human minds [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me desirable in the theory of knowledge to emphasise the continuity between animal and human minds. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: I strongly agree with this, mainly because it avoids overemphasis on language in epistemology. It doesn't follow that animals know a lot, and there is a good case for saying that they don't actually 'know' anything, despite having true beliefs. |
| 6940 | The feeling of belief shows a habit which will determine our actions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.10) | |
| A reaction: It is one thing to assert this fairly accurate observation, and another to assert that this is the essence or definition of a belief. Perhaps it is the purpose of belief, without being the phenomenological essence of it. We act in states of uncertainty. |
| 6941 | We are entirely satisfied with a firm belief, even if it is false [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: As soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.10) | |
| A reaction: This does not deny that the truth or falsehood of a belief is independent of whether we are satisfied with it. It is making a fair point, though, about why we believe things, and it can't be because of truth, because we don't know how to ensure that. |
| 6942 | We want true beliefs, but obviously we think our beliefs are true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We seek for a belief that we shall think to be true; but we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: If, as I do, you like to define belief as 'commitment to truth', Peirce makes a rather startling observation. You are rendered unable to ask whether your beliefs are true, because you have defined them as true. Nice point… |
| 6943 | A mere question does not stimulate a struggle for belief; there must be a real doubt [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief; there must be a real and living doubt. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: This the attractive aspect of Peirce's pragmatism, that he is always focusing on real life rather than abstract theory or pure logic. |
| 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. |
| 6444 | True belief about the time is not knowledge if I luckily observe a stopped clock at the right moment [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Not all true beliefs are knowledge; the stock example to the contrary is that of a clock which has stopped by which I believe to be going and which I happen to look at when, by chance, it shows the right time. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: [in his 1948:112] Russell had spotted Gettier-type problems long before Gettier. The problem of lucky true beliefs dates back to Plato (Idea 2140). This example is also a problem for reliabilism, if the clock is usually working fine. |
| 6598 | We need our beliefs to be determined by some external inhuman permanency [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This very sensible and interesting remark hovers somewhere between empiricism and pragmatism. Fogelin very persuasively builds his account of knowledge on it. The key point is that we hardly ever choose what to believe. See Idea 2454. |
| 6944 | Demonstration does not rest on first principles of reason or sensation, but on freedom from actual doubt [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is a common idea that demonstration must rest on indubitable propositions, either first principles of a general nature, or first sensations; but actual demonstration is completely satisfactory if it starts from propositions free from all actual doubt. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: Another nice example of Peirce focusing on the practical business of thinking, rather than abstract theory. I agree with this approach, that explanation and proof do not aim at perfection and indubitability, but at what satisfies a critical mind. |
| 6948 | Doubts should be satisfied by some external permanency upon which thinking has no effect [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: To satisfy our doubts it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.18) | |
| A reaction: This may be the single most important idea in pragmatism and in the philosophy of science. See Fodor on experiments (Idea 2455). Put the question to nature. The essential aim is to be passive in our beliefs - just let reality form them. |
| 6945 | Once doubt ceases, there is no point in continuing to argue [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Some people seem to love to argue a point after all the world is fully convinced of it. But no further advance can be made. When doubt ceases, mental action on the subject comes to an end; and, if it did go on, it would be without purpose. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.11) | |
| A reaction: This is the way Peirce's pragmatism, which deals with how real thinking actually works (rather than abstract logic), deals with scepticism. However, there is a borderline where almost everyone is satisfied, but the very wise person remains sceptical. |
| 6433 | Behaviourists struggle to explain memory and imagination, because they won't admit images [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Behaviourists refuse to admit images because they cannot be observed from without, but this causes them difficulties when they attempt to explain either memory or imagination. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: This is a striking objection to behaviourism, and it is rarely mentioned in modern discussions of the topic. They might try denying the existence of private 'images', but that wouldn't be very plausible. |
| 6443 | Surprise is a criterion of error [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Surprise is a criterion of error. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: Russell is not too precise about this, but it is a nice point. Surprise is thwarted expectation, which implies prior misjudgement. |
| 22306 | To explain false belief we should take belief as relating to a proposition's parts, not to the whole thing [Russell] |
| Full Idea: To explain belief in what is false we shall have to regard what is called belief in a proposition as not a thought related to the proposition, but rather as a thought related to the constituents of the proposition. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Papers of 1906 [1906], V.321), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 40 '1906' | |
| A reaction: Russell proposed a new theory of judgement, in order to explain erroneous judgements, given that true propositions are identical with facts. Of course there might be errors about the constituents, as well as about their structure. Othello is his example. |
| 6427 | Unverifiable propositions about the remote past are still either true or false [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There is no conceivable method by which we can discover whether the proposition 'It snowed on Manhattan Island on the 1st January in the year 1 A.D.' is true or false, but it seems preposterous to maintain that it is neither. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: I love this example, which seems so simple and so clear-cut. It criticises verificationism, and gives strong intuitive support for realism, and supports the law of excluded middle. |
| 6435 | You can believe the meaning of a sentence without thinking of the words [Russell] |
| Full Idea: If you have just heard a loud clap of thunder, you believe what is expressed by 'there has just been a loud clap of thunder' even if no words come into your mind. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me important, and accurate. We should not be too mesmerised by language. Animals have beliefs, and this is a nice example of an undeniable non-linguistic human belief. |
| 6939 | What is true of one piece of copper is true of another (unlike brass) [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The guiding principle is that what is true of one piece of copper is true of another; such a guiding principle with regard to copper would be much safer than with regard to many other substances - brass, for example. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 8) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is so beautifully simple and sensible. This gives the essential notion of a natural kind, and is a key notion in our whole understanding of physical reality. |
| 6938 | Natural selection might well fill an animal's mind with pleasing thoughts rather than true ones [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is probably of more advantage to an animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 8) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is a pragmatist saying that a set of beliefs might work fine but be untrue. So Peirce does not have the highly relativistic notion of truth of some later pragmatists. Good for him. Note the early date to be thinking about Darwin. |
| 6946 | If death is annihilation, belief in heaven is a cheap pleasure with no disappointment [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: If death is annihilation, then the man who believes that he will certainly go straight to heaven when he dies, provided he have fulfilled certain simple observances in this life, has a cheap pleasure which will not be followed by the least disappointment. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.12) | |
| A reaction: This is a nicely wicked summary of one side of Pascal's options. All the problems of the argument are built into Peirce's word "cheap". Peirce goes on to talk about ostriches burying their heads. |