34 ideas
| 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. |
| 8877 | We can't attain a coherent system by lopping off any beliefs that won't fit [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Coherence involves the logical, explanatory and probabilistic relations among one's beliefs, but it could not do to attain a tightly iterrelated system by lopping off whatever beliefs refuse to fit. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: This is clearly right, so the coherentist has to distinguish between lopping off a belief because it is inconvenient (fundamentalists rejecting textual contradictions), and lopping it off because it is wrong (chemists rejecting phlogiston). |
| 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. |
| 8884 | The phenomenal concept of an eleven-dot pattern does not include the concept of eleven [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: You could detect the absence of an eleven-dot pattern without having counted the dots, so your phenomenal concept of that array is not an arithmetical concept, and its content will not yield that its dots do indeed number eleven. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: Sosa is discussing foundational epistemology, but this draws attention to the gulf that has to be leaped by structuralists. If eleven is not derived from the pattern, where does it come from? Presumably two eleven-dotters are needed, to map them. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 8878 | It is acceptable to say a supermarket door 'knows' someone is approaching [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: I am quite flexible on epistemic terminology, and am even willing to grant that a supermarket door can 'know' that someone is approaching. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: I take this amazing admission to be a hallmark of externalism. Sosa must extend this to thermostats. So flowers know the sun has come out. This is knowledge without belief. Could the door ever be 'wrong'? |
| 8880 | 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. |
| 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. |
| 8881 | 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. |
| 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. |
| 8882 | Perception may involve thin indexical concepts, or thicker perceptual concepts [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: There is a difference between having just an indexical concept which one can apply to a perceptual characteristic (just saying 'this is thus'), and having a thicker perceptual concept of that characteristic. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: Both of these, of course, would precede any categorial concepts that enabled one to identify the characteristic or the object. This is a ladder foundationalists must climb if they are to reach the cellar of basic beliefs. |
| 8883 | Do beliefs only become foundationally justified if we fully attend to features of our experience? [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Are foundationally justified beliefs perhaps those that result from attending to our experience and to features of it or in it? | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: A promising suggestion. I do think our ideas acquire a different epistmological status once we have given them our full attention, though is that merely full consciousness, or full thoughtful evaluation? The latter I take to be what matters. Cf Idea 2414. |
| 8885 | Some features of a thought are known directly, but others must be inferred [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Some intrinsic features of our thoughts are attributable to them directly, or foundationally, while others are attributable only based on counting or inference. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: In practice the brain combines the two at a speed which makes the distinction impossible. I'll show you ten dot-patterns: you pick out the sixer. The foundationalist problem is that only those drained of meaning could be foundational. |
| 8876 | Much propositional knowledge cannot be formulated, as in recognising a face [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Much of our propositional knowledge is not easily formulable, as when a witness looking at a police lineup may know what the culprit's face looks like. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This is actually a very helpful defence of foundationalism, because it shows that we will accept perceptual experiences as knowledge when they are not expressed as explicit propositions. Davidson (Idea 8801), for example, must deal with this difficulty. |
| 8879 | Fully comprehensive beliefs may not be knowledge [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: One's beliefs can be comprehensively coherent without amounting to knowledge. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Beliefs that are fully foundational or reliably sourced may also fail to be knowledge. I take it that any epistemological theory must be fallibilist (Idea 6898). Rational coherentism will clearly be sensitive to error. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |