Posts Tagged empiricism

Russell’s Epistemology: “The Problems of Philosophy”

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in PEL's Notes on June 8, 2011

I wanted to follow up on a reference I made on the episode for folks who want to know more about Russell’s epistemology:

His book The Problems of Philosophyis an easy-reader intro to his take on traditional epistemological problems. Some of it will be familiar if you’ve listened to our episodes (from p. 42). For instance, he claims: “The faculty of being acquainted with things other than itself is the main characteristic of a mind,” and uses this as an a priori refutation of idealism: the idealist confuses ideas and the objects (which we may know virtually nothing about) to which the ideas correspond.

One element of his epistemology which will sound familiar to fans of British empiricists is his distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance (from chapter 5):
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When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong

Posted by Daniel Horne in Web Detritus on January 14, 2011

Far SideA research physicist friend of mine who works at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a bit of a global warming skeptic. When I brought up all the scientific research on the subject, he said, somewhat dismissively, “Yes, but anyone who gets a PhD in climate science goes into it with an agenda. No one goes into particle physics just to prove a point. So no, I don’t always trust their research.” Not being a scientist myself, I had no clever rejoinder at the time, other than to say, essentially, “Well, 50,000 climate scientists can’t all be wrong!” But what if most scientists tend to be wrong most of the time? And not due to political agendas, but academic, professional, or even psychological ones?

A good New Yorker article appeared last month regarding the fallibility of scientific research as currently practiced, or perhaps as inevitably practiced. There is a lot to chew on here, once you consider the ramifications.

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Episode 17: Hume’s Empiricism: What Can We Know?

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on March 29, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:25 — 114.9MB)

Reading David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

David Hume thinks that all we can know are our own impressions, i.e. what our moment-to-moment experiences tell us. Funny thing, though: he thinks that no experience shows us one event causing another event. We only experience one thing happening, then another, and these sequences tend to display a lot of uniformity. So, if we have any legitimate idea of causality at all, it must just be that: regular patterns of conjoined events.

We discuss what Hume thinks this view implies for the free will question, belief in miracles, whether external objects are actually there, Seth’s experience of Towlie, and more.

Read with us: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9662.

End song: “Twitch” by by The MayTricks, from the 1994 album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down.

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Episode 10: Kantian Ethics: What Should We Do?

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on October 19, 2009

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:03 — 114.6MB)

Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysic of Morals.

We try very hard to make sense of Kant’s major ethical principle, the Categorical Imperative, wherein you should only do what you’d will that EVERYONE do, so, for instance, you should not will to eat pie, because then everyone would eat it and there would be none left for you, so too bad.

Also, Kant on free will, “things in themselves,” our duties to animals, and prostitution! Plus: Should you go to grad school?

The Kant reading can be found at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5682. The Allen Wood article “Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature” is here: http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/papers/Nonrational.doc.

End song: “Stop” by Madison Lint (2003).

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