The Problems of Philosophy

Index
INDEX The interrogations indicate places where a view is discussed, not asserted [To use this index divide the sought page number by the number of pages in the book, 160, and scroll down that fraction. Example: "Phenomenon" is on page 86. 86/160=53%. Scroll down 53% into the file and there you are. (Or just use the search function.)] Absolute idea, 142 Acquaintance, 43 ff., 60, 108, 109, 119, 136 with Self? 50 Act, mental, 41 Analytic, 82 Appearance, 9, 16 A priori, 74-7, 80, 82 ff., 103 ff. mental? 88 Arithmetic, 84 Association, 62 63 65 Being, 100 Belief, 119 ff., instinctive, 24 25 Berkeley, George (Bishop), 12, 13, 15, 16, 36, 38 ff., 73, 95, 97 Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 54-8 Bradley, Francis Herbert, 95 Cantor, Georg, 147 Causality, 63, 69, 83 China, Emperor of, 44, 75 C...

Bibliographic Note
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The student who wishes to acquire an elementary knowledge of philosophy will find it both easier and more profitable to read some of the works of the great philosophers than to attempt to derive an all-round view from handbooks. The following are specially recommended: PLATO: Republic, especially Books VI and VII. DESCARTES: Meditations. SPINOZA: Ethics. LEIBNIZ: The Monadology. BERKELEY: Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. HUME: Inquiry concerning Human Understanding. KANT: Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic.

Chapter 15 : The Value of Philosophy
CHAPTER XV THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY HAVING now come to the end of our brief and very incomplete review of the problems of philosophy, it will be well to consider, in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hairsplitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible. This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or p...

Chapter 14 : The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge
CHAPTER XIV THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE IN all that we have said hitherto concerning philosophy, we have scarcely touched on many matters that occupy a great space in the writings of most philosophers. Most philosophers -- or, at any rate, very many -- profess to be able to prove, by a priori metaphysical reasoning, such things as the fundamental dogmas of religion, the essential rationality of the universe, the illusoriness of matter, the unreality of all evil, and so on. There can be no doubt that the hope of finding reason to believe such theses as these has been the chief inspiration of many lifelong students of philosophy. This hope, I believe, is vain. It would seem that knowledge concerning the universe as a whole is not to be obtained by metaphysics, and that the proposed proofs that, in virtue of the laws of logic such and such things must exist and such and such others cannot, are not capable of surviving a...

Chapter 13 : On Knowledge, Error, and Probable Opinion
CHAPTER XIII KNOWLEDGE, ERROR, AND PROBABLE OPINION THE question as to what we mean by truth and falsehood, which we considered in the preceding chapter, is of much less interest than the question as to how we can know what is true and what is false. This question will occupy us in the present chapter. There can be no doubt that some of our beliefs are erroneous; thus we are led to inquire what certainty we can ever have that such and such a belief is not erroneous. In other words, can we ever know anything at all, or do we merely sometimes by good luck believe what is true? Before we can attack this question, we must, however, first decide what we mean by 'knowing', and this question is not so easy as might be supposed. At first sight we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as 'true belief'. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would...

Truth and Falsehood
CHAPTER XII TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD OUR knowledge of truths, unlike our knowledge of things, has an opposite, namely error. So far as things are concerned, we may know them or not know them, but there is no positive state of mind which can be described as erroneous knowledge of things, so long, at any rate, as we confine ourselves to knowledge by acquaintance. Whatever we are acquainted with must be something; we may draw wrong inferences from our acquaintance, but the acquaintance itself cannot be deceptive. Thus there is no dualism as regards acquaintance. But as regards knowledge of truths, there is a dualism. We may believe what is false as well as what is true. We know that on very many subjects different people hold different and incompat...

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON OXFORD NEW YORK [verso] First published in the Home University Library, 1912 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1959 This reprint, 1971-2 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [Public domain (in the USA at least) HTML version completed February 1996. All copyrights for HTML enhancements are renounced. This is a freely reproducible text in the USA. In accordance with the differing copyright laws, in Great Britain (and others using the same copyright treaties) I understand it will become public domain 50 years after the author's death, that is, in 2020. (This may or may not be correct. They may have extended this another 20 years. Ask your lawyer before downloading into non-USA countries, or...

Idealism
CHAPTER IV IDEALISM THE word 'idealism' is used by different philosophers in somewhat different senses. We shall understand by it the doctrine that whatever exists, or at any rate whatever can be known to exist, must be in some sense mental. This doctrine, which is very widely held among philosophers, has several forms, and is advocated on several different grounds. The doctrine is so widely held, and so interesting in itself, that even the briefest survey of philosophy must give some account of it. Those who are unaccustomed to philosophical speculation may be inclined to dismiss such a doctrine as obviously absurd. There is no doubt that common sense regards tables and chairs and the sun and moon and material objects generally as somethin...

On Induction
CHAPTER VI ON INDUCTION IN almost all our previous discussions we have been concerned in the attempt to get clear as to our data in the way of knowledge of existence. What things are there in the universe whose existence is known to us owing to our being acquainted with them? So far, our answer has been that we are acquainted with our sense-data, and, probably, with ourselves. These we know to exist. And past sense-data which are remembered are known to have existed in the past. This knowledge supplies our data. But if we are to be able to draw inferences from these data -- if we are to know of the existence of matter, of other people, of the past before our individual memory begins, or of the future, we must know general principles of some...

Appearance and Reality
CHAPTER I APPEARANCE AND REALITY IS there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy -- for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas. In daily life, we assume as certain many thin...