An Outline of Philosophy (Routledge Classics) 1st Edition by Bertrand Russell (EPUB)

Description

In his controversial book An Outline of Philosophy, first published in 1927, Bertrand Russell argues that humanity demands consideration solely as the instrument by which we acquire knowledge of the universe. From our inner-world to the outer-world, from our physical world to the universe, his argument separates modern scientific knowledge and our ‘seeming’ consciousness. These innovative perspectives on philosophy made a significant contribution to the discourse on the meaning, relevance and function of philosophy which continues to this day.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970) was an influential British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and political activist. In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in recognition of his many books such as

⭐,

⭐,

⭐,

⭐,

⭐,

⭐,

⭐, etc.[NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 317-page paperback edition.]He begins this book (first edition, 1920) by saying, “The definition of ‘philosophy’ will vary… all that we can say to begin with is that there are certain problems… which do not… belong to any of the special sciences. These problems are all such as to raise doubts concerning what commonly passes for knowledge… Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague, and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects… in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise, and self-consistent.” (Pg. 1-2)He observes, “This is something of a difficulty in the Watsonian theory of language… I may say to one person, ‘I met Mr. Jones in the train today,’ and to another ‘Joseph was in the 9:35 this morning.’ With the exception of the words ‘in the’, these two sentences have nothing verbally in common, yet they may relate the same fact, and I may use either indifferently when I recall the fact. Thus my recollection is certainly NOT a definite verbal habit… If the behaviorist … begins by telling me that it is a VERBAL habit, he can be driven by such instances to the admission that it must be some other kind of habit. If he says this, he is abandoning the region of observable fact, and taking refuge in hypothetical bodily movements invoked to save a theory. But these are hardly better than ‘thoughts.’” (Pg. 77)He notes, “The notion of a ‘place’ is also quite vague. Is London a ‘place’? But the earth is rotating. Is the earth a ‘place’? But it is going around the sun. Is the sun a ‘place’? But it is moving relatively to the stars. At best you could talk of a place at a given time; but then it is ambiguous what is a given time, unless you confine yourself to one place. So the notion of ‘place’ evaporates.” (Pg. 115)He points out, “We do not, in fact, ‘observe’ what it is here said that we observe; all this is INFERRED. What we observe, in astronomy, is a two-dimensional pattern of points of light, with a few bright surfaces of measurable size when seen through the telescope (the planets)… These are the OBSERVED facts. There is no logical impossibility about the medieval doctrine of spheres rotating round the earth, one for each planet and one for the stars. The modern doctrines are simpler, but not one whit more in accordance with the observed facts; it is our passion for SIMPLE laws that has made us adopt them.” (Pg. 126)He states, “It is extraordinarily difficult to divest ourselves of the belief that the physical world is the world we perceive by sight and touch; even if, in our philosophic moments, we are aware that this is an error, we nevertheless fall into it again as soon as we are off our guard. The notion that what we see is ‘out there’ in physical space is one which cannot survive while we are grasping the difference between what physics supposes to be really happening, and what our senses show us as happening; but it is sure to return and plague us when we begin to forget the argument. Only long reflection can make a radically new point of view familiar and easy.” (Pg. 148)He says, “We come now to the real crux of the whole matter, namely to the question: Do we think? This question is very ambiguous, so long as ‘thinking’ has not been clearly defined. Perhaps we may state the matter thus: Do we know events in us which would not be included in an absolutely complete knowledge of physics? … If the question is put in this way, I think it is quite clear that we do know things not included in physics. A blind man could know the whole of physics, but he could not know what things look like to people who can see, nor what is the difference between red and blue as seen.” (Pg. 182)He asserts, “The view we are now to examine is the theory that there are certain rules of conduct—e.g., the Decalogue—which determine virtue in all situations. The person who keeps all the rules is perfectly virtuous; the person who fails in this is wicked in proportion to the frequency of his failures. There are several objections to this as the basis of ethics. In the first place, the rules can hardly cover the whole field of human conduct; e.g., there is nothing in the Decalogue to show whether we ought to have a gold standard or not.” (Pg. 235)He argues, “We have seen that [Descartes] set to work to doubt all he could, but found he could not doubt his own existence… He supposed that the most certain fact in the world is ‘I think.’ This was unfortunate, since it gave a subjective bias to modern philosophy. As a matter of fact, ‘I’ seems to be only a string of events, each of which separately is more certain than the whole. And ‘think’ is a word which Descartes accepted as indefinable, but which really covers complicated relations between events. When is an event a ‘thought’? Is there some intrinsic characteristic which makes it a thought? Descartes would say yes… I should say no. Take, e.g., a visual and an auditory sensation. Both are ‘thoughts’ in Descartes’ sense, but what have they in common?… It is the particular events which are certain, not the ‘I think’ which Descartes made the basis of his philosophy.” (Pg. 251)He summarizes, ”if the correct analysis of knowledge bears any resemblance at all to that which has been suggested in this book, the whole controversy between empiricists and apriorists becomes more or less unreal… Roughly speaking, the beliefs which could as a priori will be those which well might have been upset by subsequent events, but in fact were confirmed. Here as elsewhere we are driven to the view that theory of knowledge is not so fundamental as it has been considered since Kant.” (Pg. 261)He explains, “Everything in the world is composed of ‘events’; that, at least, is the thesis I wish to maintain. An ‘event,’ as I understand it, is something having a small finite duration and a small finite extension in space; or rather, in view of the theory of relativity, it is something occupying a small finite amount of space-time. If it has parts, these parts, I say, are again events, never something occupying a mere point or instant, whether in space, in time, or in space-time.” (Pg. 287)He admits, “I have been assuming that we admit the existence of other people and their perceptions, but question only the inference from perceptions to events of a different kind. Now there is no good reason why we should not carry our logical caution a step further. I cannot verify a theory by means of another man’s perceptions, but only by means of my own. Therefore the laws of physics can only be verified by me in so far as they lead to predictions of my precepts. If then, I refuse to admit non-mental events because they are not verifiable, I ought to refuse to admit mental events in every one except myself, on the same ground. Thus I am reduced to what is called ‘solipsism,’ i.e., the theory that I alone exist. This is a view which is hard to refute, but still harder to believe. I once received a letter from a philosopher who professed to be a solipsist, but was surprised that there were no others!” (Pg. 302)Much more “science-oriented” than Russell’s other philosophical works, this book will be of great interest to anyone studying his thought, and its development.

⭐Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970) was an influential British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and political activist. In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in recognition of his many books such as

⭐,

⭐,

⭐,

⭐,

⭐,

⭐,

⭐, etc.[NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 317-page paperback edition.]He begins this book (first edition, 1920) by saying, “The definition of ‘philosophy’ will vary… all that we can say to begin with is that there are certain problems… which do not… belong to any of the special sciences. These problems are all such as to raise doubts concerning what commonly passes for knowledge… Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague, and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects… in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise, and self-consistent.” (Pg. 1-2)He observes, “This is something of a difficulty in the Watsonian theory of language… I may say to one person, ‘I met Mr. Jones in the train today,’ and to another ‘Joseph was in the 9:35 this morning.’ With the exception of the words ‘in the’, these two sentences have nothing verbally in common, yet they may relate the same fact, and I may use either indifferently when I recall the fact. Thus my recollection is certainly NOT a definite verbal habit… If the behaviorist … begins by telling me that it is a VERBAL habit, he can be driven by such instances to the admission that it must be some other kind of habit. If he says this, he is abandoning the region of observable fact, and taking refuge in hypothetical bodily movements invoked to save a theory. But these are hardly better than ‘thoughts.’” (Pg. 77)He notes, “The notion of a ‘place’ is also quite vague. Is London a ‘place’? But the earth is rotating. Is the earth a ‘place’? But it is going around the sun. Is the sun a ‘place’? But it is moving relatively to the stars. At best you could talk of a place at a given time; but then it is ambiguous what is a given time, unless you confine yourself to one place. So the notion of ‘place’ evaporates.” (Pg. 115)He points out, “We do not, in fact, ‘observe’ what it is here said that we observe; all this is INFERRED. What we observe, in astronomy, is a two-dimensional pattern of points of light, with a few bright surfaces of measurable size when seen through the telescope (the planets)… These are the OBSERVED facts. There is no logical impossibility about the medieval doctrine of spheres rotating round the earth, one for each planet and one for the stars. The modern doctrines are simpler, but not one whit more in accordance with the observed facts; it is our passion for SIMPLE laws that has made us adopt them.” (Pg. 126)He states, “It is extraordinarily difficult to divest ourselves of the belief that the physical world is the world we perceive by sight and touch; even if, in our philosophic moments, we are aware that this is an error, we nevertheless fall into it again as soon as we are off our guard. The notion that what we see is ‘out there’ in physical space is one which cannot survive while we are grasping the difference between what physics supposes to be really happening, and what our senses show us as happening; but it is sure to return and plague us when we begin to forget the argument. Only long reflection can make a radically new point of view familiar and easy.” (Pg. 148)He says, “We come now to the real crux of the whole matter, namely to the question: Do we think? This question is very ambiguous, so long as ‘thinking’ has not been clearly defined. Perhaps we may state the matter thus: Do we know events in us which would not be included in an absolutely complete knowledge of physics? … If the question is put in this way, I think it is quite clear that we do know things not included in physics. A blind man could know the whole of physics, but he could not know what things look like to people who can see, nor what is the difference between red and blue as seen.” (Pg. 182)He asserts, “The view we are now to examine is the theory that there are certain rules of conduct—e.g., the Decalogue—which determine virtue in all situations. The person who keeps all the rules is perfectly virtuous; the person who fails in this is wicked in proportion to the frequency of his failures. There are several objections to this as the basis of ethics. In the first place, the rules can hardly cover the whole field of human conduct; e.g., there is nothing in the Decalogue to show whether we ought to have a gold standard or not.” (Pg. 235)He argues, “We have seen that [Descartes] set to work to doubt all he could, but found he could not doubt his own existence… He supposed that the most certain fact in the world is ‘I think.’ This was unfortunate, since it gave a subjective bias to modern philosophy. As a matter of fact, ‘I’ seems to be only a string of events, each of which separately is more certain than the whole. And ‘think’ is a word which Descartes accepted as indefinable, but which really covers complicated relations between events. When is an event a ‘thought’? Is there some intrinsic characteristic which makes it a thought? Descartes would say yes… I should say no. Take, e.g., a visual and an auditory sensation. Both are ‘thoughts’ in Descartes’ sense, but what have they in common?… It is the particular events which are certain, not the ‘I think’ which Descartes made the basis of his philosophy.” (Pg. 251)He summarizes, ”if the correct analysis of knowledge bears any resemblance at all to that which has been suggested in this book, the whole controversy between empiricists and apriorists becomes more or less unreal… Roughly speaking, the beliefs which could as a priori will be those which well might have been upset by subsequent events, but in fact were confirmed. Here as elsewhere we are driven to the view that theory of knowledge is not so fundamental as it has been considered since Kant.” (Pg. 261)He explains, “Everything in the world is composed of ‘events’; that, at least, is the thesis I wish to maintain. An ‘event,’ as I understand it, is something having a small finite duration and a small finite extension in space; or rather, in view of the theory of relativity, it is something occupying a small finite amount of space-time. If it has parts, these parts, I say, are again events, never something occupying a mere point or instant, whether in space, in time, or in space-time.” (Pg. 287)He admits, “I have been assuming that we admit the existence of other people and their perceptions, but question only the inference from perceptions to events of a different kind. Now there is no good reason why we should not carry our logical caution a step further. I cannot verify a theory by means of another man’s perceptions, but only by means of my own. Therefore the laws of physics can only be verified by me in so far as they lead to predictions of my precepts. If then, I refuse to admit non-mental events because they are not verifiable, I ought to refuse to admit mental events in every one except myself, on the same ground. Thus I am reduced to what is called ‘solipsism,’ i.e., the theory that I alone exist. This is a view which is hard to refute, but still harder to believe. I once received a letter from a philosopher who professed to be a solipsist, but was surprised that there were no others!” (Pg. 302)Much more “science-oriented” than Russell’s other philosophical works, this book will be of great interest to anyone studying his thought, and its development.

⭐The definition of philosophy varies according to the philosophy we adopt, says Russell. So then — there are some general problems which people find interesting, and which do not belong to any of the special sciences, and these problems raise doubts about what we consider knowledge. The definition and exploration of this problems is philosophy. With this introduction, Russell discusses some problems: the physical world, man from without (environment), man from within (consciousness, emotions, ethics etc) and so on. An outline is clearly limited, and Russell does not include many branches of philosophical enquiry such as metaphysical inquiry and some aspects of authority and state. But within its constraints, the book is still a good read.

⭐I’ve been reading my way through this since getting it. Of course, at some points it is rather dated (after all it was written in 1927) but I’ve found it very interesting. Philosophy is such a wide area of study that it can seem difficulty to know where to start. I’ve found that this is particularly accessible introduction to the subject.

⭐As usual Russell is clear, precise and to the point. He has a supreme command over the language and hence can explain complicated concepts without much ado.

Keywords

Free Download An Outline of Philosophy (Routledge Classics) 1st Edition in EPUB format
An Outline of Philosophy (Routledge Classics) 1st Edition EPUB Free Download
Download An Outline of Philosophy (Routledge Classics) 1st Edition 2009 EPUB Free
An Outline of Philosophy (Routledge Classics) 1st Edition 2009 EPUB Free Download
Download An Outline of Philosophy (Routledge Classics) 1st Edition EPUB
Free Download Ebook An Outline of Philosophy (Routledge Classics) 1st Edition