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The Problems of Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

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The Problems of Philosophy | Bertrand Russell

The Problems of Philosophy

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The Problems of Philosophy is one of Bertrand Russell’s attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics.

Russell guides the reader through his famous distinction between “knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description” and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and others, to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike.
or the reasons we have been considering, be exactly like sense-data, yet they may be more or less like. According to this view, physical objects will, for example, really have colours, and we might, by good luck, see an object as of the colour it really is. The colour which an object seems to have at any given moment will in general be very similar, though not quite the same, from many different points of view; we might thus suppose the 'real' colour to be a sort of medium colour, intermediate between the various shades which appear from the different points of view.

Such a theory is perhaps not capable of being definitely refuted, but it can be shown to be groundless. To begin with, it is plain that the colour we see depends only upon the nature of the light-waves that strike the eye, and is therefore modified by the medium intervening between us and the object, as well as by the manner in which light is reflected from the object in the direction of the eye. The intervening air alters colours unless it is perfectly clear, and any strong reflection will alter them completely. Thus the colour we see is a result of the ray as it reaches the eye, and not simply a property of the object from which the ray comes. Hence, also, provided certain waves reach the eye, we shall see a certain colour, whether the object from which the waves start has any colour or not. Thus it is quite gratuitous to suppose that physical objects have colours, and therefore there is no justification for making such a supposition. Exactly similar arguments will apply to other sense-data.

It remains to ask whether there are any general philosophical arguments enabling us to say that, if matter is real, it must be of such and such a nature. As explained above, very many philosophers, perhaps most, have held that whatever is real must be in some sense mental, or at any rate that whatever we can know anything about must be in some sense mental.

Bionic Jean 09/29/2024
The Problems of Philosophy was written in 1912 as an early attempt by its author to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Bertrand Russell is considered to be one of the founders of analytic philosophy, and is also widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logi
Julian 03/03/2022
I should have read this book before reading some of the philosophy books I've recently read.

It was hard to fathom how Bishop Berkeley came up with his views on idealism, until I read about similar ideas in Buddhism (cittamatra) in another book I'm reading.

This is a fascinating subject and I will b
Brian 08/07/2016
An excellent introductory to the layperson (me) on some basics of philosophy; the final section is a beautifully written piece on why philosophy is important and how it enriches humanity.
Roy 06/02/2016
Bertrand Russell is such a gentleman. He writes in lucid, clear prose filled with insight and occasional brilliance. He manages to compress enormous, complex debates into just a few paragraphs, and belies an encyclopedic knowledge of Western philosophy. The book is a gem, and sparkles with subtlety
Amelia 09/09/2007
Turns out that philosophy has many problems

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