Here, for the next almost 2 pages, is the nub of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein exposed language mistakes at the heart of Philosophy. So much so that he felt that Philosophy ought to give up and concentrate on curing them. But it seems to me he didn’t take his own advice and continued churning out Philosophy. His thought is divided into early and late. There was a leap between them. His first…
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‘Philosophy’ has always been Bunk: Kant’s Noumena and Phenomena
(I’ve kept all parts of Kant on Knowledge together, so this chapter is awfully long. The nub of it is down to the first horizontal line. Takethe rest in easy stages. I’ve left Kant’s Ethics to another chapter.) Kant felt he had achieved a revolution of Copernican proportions in Philosophy by coming up with hisTranscendental Idealism — which very roughly is that we can never know things in themselves as…
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‘Philosophy’ has neve been Wisdom. Chaper 6: Descartes on Knowledge
It is another example of the pottiness of Philosophy. This first page down to the first horizontal line gives the nub: …
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‘Philosophy’ has never been Wisdom. Chapter 4. Plato, his Universals and Forms
‘Philosophy’ has never been Wisdom: 4, Plato’s Universals and Forms (The ‘Socratic Problem’ is that Socrates never wrote anything down. All we have is what Plato wrote as having been said by him. So we don’t really know what of it was Plato’s own thinking or that of Socrates. Plato ascribed the theory of Universals and Forms to Socrates, but it is usually ascribed to Plato.) The nub of this…
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Locke Proof of God Morality Anti-Philosophy
‘Philosophy’ has neve been Wisdom: Locke 3, on God and Morality
Locke on God: Locke was an empriricist who believed that all of our knowledge comes ultimately from our senses, see my earlier post. So, he believed that we construct our idea of God from our sensory experiences of this world. Or, more precisely, from experiences of one’s own human existence: its duration, its knowledge, its power, its wisdom, and other admirablee qualities. And from our ‘reflections’, our thinking, on these qualities. …
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Anti-Philosophy
‘PHILOSOPHY’ HAS NEVER BEEN WISDOM. chapter 8. Locke 1, Empiricism
JUST SEE IF ANY OF THIS PRELIMINARY IN RED LETTERS CONTAINS ANYTHING TO GO INTO THE BLOG BELOW From www.philosophybasics. A quick History of Philosophy john Locke. He argued that all our ideas, whether simple or complex, are ultimately derived from experience, so that our knowledge is limited in its scope and in its certainty (a kind of modified Skepticism), — the real inner natures of things derive from their primary qualities which we can never experience. All Knowledge Begins with…
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Anti-Philosophy
‘Philosophy’ has never been Wisdom: Chapter :Locke 2, Politics
The first time I came across Locke I was amazed at his neat liberal moralizings like little Jack Horne. But that may be an anachronistic feeling of mine, formed as I am by the taken-for-granted liberal society around me. The USA’s Founding Fathers were influenced by John Locke’s concepts that mankind was endowed by nature with inalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that man…
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Analytic Philosophy Anti-Philosophy
‘Philosophy’ has never been Wisdom. chapter 31: Quine 2
What follows gives a taste of Quine’s thinking that lies below what is in my first chapter on him (here). My philosophically retarded mind can’t now grasp much of what Id previously written here, even my own interjections. I am afraid to omit it for fear of leaving something important out. It provides an example of the philosphizing of the modern analytical philosopher. But to me, although it’s intellectually terribly…
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Analytic Philosophy Anti-Philosophy
‘Philosophy’ has never been Wisdom, 30: Quine 1
Quine is famous for saying that there is actually no difference between ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’ statements. The difference had been introduced by Hume in the 1730s (or by even earlier empiricists) but only so named by Kant in 1781. It had since then become gospel in Philosophy. The example of analytic statement that everyone gives is ‘All bachelors are unmarried’, which has to be true because of the definition of…
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Bertrand Russell Philosophy Anti-Philosophy
‘Philosophy’ has never been Wisdom. Chapter 26: Bertrand Russell 4: breaking statements into logical atoms
BR thought that many problems of Philosophy cease being problems if one exposes the hidden elements of meaning that they are actually made of. Philosophy had always created insoluble pseudo-problems for itself by not exposing them. This was his Logical Atomism or Logical Analysis. Russell’s had previously tried to reduce mathematics to logic, which was called Logicism (see here). Now his Logical Atomism was trying to reduce statements in language…
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