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. …
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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Russell's epistemology Anti-Philosophy
‘Philosophy’ has never been Wisdom. Chapter 25: Bertrand Russell 3: What is Knowledge?
Thirdly on Russell, here is a summary of his Epistemology: his understanding of what knowledge is and how we acquire it. It was first published in his book The Problems of Philosophy (1912), continued in his Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), and in his article The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics (1914).] I am suddenly speechless on what to give as a punchy summary of BR on this subject.…
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Logicism Bertrand Russell Anti-Philosophy
‘Philosophy’ has neve been Wisdom. Chapter 24: Bertrand Russell 2: boiling maths down to logic
Russell’s attempt to show that mathematics is just glorified logic is called Logicism. It was a pretty convincing attempt. He published it in Principia Mathematica (1910-1913) which he wrote with Whitehead. This post is a summary of it, paraphrased from other sites that explain it for us. Logicism is in the philosophy of mathematics and consists of one or more of these theses: that mathematics is an extension of logic,…
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Bertrand Russell Anti-Philosophy
‘Philosophy’ has never been Wisdom. Chapter23: Bertrand Russell 1: his human wisdoms
Bertrand Russell always struck me as lacking in human intelligence. His mind whirred like a clock, endlessly doing logico-mathematical puzzles, and applying them to human matters. He showed no awareness of the darkness and depth in men’s souls. He was rationalistic, humanistic and pacifistic, and believed in his own goodness because goodness, you see, is what he intended. He had no idea of the hearts of human beings or of…
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Philosophy Anti-Philosophy
Philosophers logicking on Identity
(This is a long post which I have been unable to break up. Take it in stages.) Philosophers since Plato have worried at what exactly Identity and Personal Identity are. They do this by logicking on the words (or ‘concepts’). The literal meaning of ‘identity’ from its Greek origins is ‘sameness’ or ‘state of being the same’. But this is not enough for philosophers. Identity, or what it is…
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