Grice on Austin on Moore

I would begin by recalling that as a matter of historical fact Austin professed a strong admiration for G. E. Moore. “Some like Witters” he once said, “but Moore is my man.” [...] The question which now exercises me is why Moore’s stand on this matter should have specially aroused Austin’s respect, for what Moore said on this matter seems to me to be plainly inferior in quality, and indeed to be the kind of thing which Austin was more than capable of tearing to shreds had he encountered it in somebody else. [...] My explanation of part of Austin’s by no means wholly characteristic charity lies in my conjecture that Austin saw, or thought he saw, the right reply to these complaints and mistakenly assumed that Moore himself had also seen how to reply to them. [...] while Cook Wilson finds himself landed with bad answers, it seems to me that Moore has no answers at all, good or bad; and whether nonanswers are superior or inferior to bad answers seems to me a question hardly worth debating.

Grice, 1989, Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 381-384
Share:

Moore's 'so-and-so's

‘It all depends on what you mean by “the earth” and “exists” and “years”: if you mean so and so, and so and so, and so and so, then I do; but if you mean so and so, and so and so, and so and so, or so and so, and so and so, and so and so, or so and so, and so and so, and so and so, then I don’t, or at least I think it is extremely doubtful’.

Moore, 1925, A defense of common sense, p. 111

Share:

Russell on heroic remedies on philosophy

As all these results were obtained, not by any heroic method, but by patient detailed reasoning, I began to think it probable that philosophy had erred in adopting heroic remedies for intellectual difficulties, and that solutions were to be found merely by greater care and accuracy. This view I had come to hold more and more strongly as time went on, and it has led me to doubt whether philosophy, as a study distinct from science and possessed of a method of its own, is anything more than an unfortunate legacy from theology.

Russell, 2010, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, p. 128

Share:

Russell's confidence on logicism

But in spite of its [i.e. Principia Mathematica] shortcomings I think that no one who reads this book will dispute its main contention, namely, that from certain ideas and axioms of formal logic, by the help of the logic of relations, all pure mathematics can be deduced, without any new undefined idea or unproved propositions.

Russell, 2010, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, p. 128

Share:

Russell on the most important part of philosophy

The most important part [of philosophy], to my mind, consists in criticizing and clarifying notions which are apt to be regarded as fundamental and accepted uncritically.

Russell, 2010, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, p. 148

Share:

Russell on logically perfect language

A logically perfect language, if it could be constructed, would not only be intolerably prolix, but, as regards its vocabulary, would be very largely private to one speaker. That is to say, all the names that it would use would be private to that speaker and could not enter into the language of another speaker. 

Russell, 2010, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, pp. 25-26

Share:

Russell on the length of doing philosophy

That, of course, is especially likely in very abstract studies such as philosophical logic, because the subject-matter that you are supposed to be thinking of is so exceedingly difficult and elusive that any person who has ever tried to think about it knows you do not think about it except perhaps once in six months for half a minute. The rest of the time you think about the symbols, because they are tangible, but the thing you are supposed to be thinking about is fearfully difficult and one does not often manage to think about it. The really good philosopher is the one who does once in six months think about it for a minute. Bad philosophers never do. 

Russell, 2010, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, pp. 10-11

Share:

Russell on philosophical method

There is not any superfine brand of knowledge, obtainable by the philosopher, which can give us a standpoint from which to criticize the whole of the knowledge of daily life. The most that can be done is to examine and purify our common knowledge by an internal scrutiny, assuming the canons by which it has been obtained, and applying them with more care and with more precision. Philosophy cannot boast of having achieved such a degree of certainty that it can have authority to condemn the facts of experience and the laws of science. The philosophic scrutiny, therefore, though sceptic  in regard to every detail, is not sceptical as regards the whole. That is to say, its criticism of details w  only be based upon their relation to other details, not upon some external criterion which can be applied to all the details equally. 

Russell, 1914, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientiļ¬c Method in Philosophy, pp. 73-74
Share:

Russell on philosophy

Considered in that way you may say that the whole of our problem belongs rather to science than to philosophy. I think perhaps that is true, but I believe the only difference between science and philosophy is, that science is what you more or less know and philosophy is what you do not know. Philosophy is that part of science which at present people choose to have opinions about, but which they have no knowledge about. Therefore every advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some problems which formerly it had, and if there is any truth, if there is any value in the kind of procedure of mathematical logic, it will follow that a number of problems which had belonged to philosophy will have ceased to belong to philosophy and will belong to science. And of course the moment they become soluble, they become to a large class of philosophical minds uninteresting, because to many of the people who like philosophy, the charm of it consists in the speculative freedom, in the fact that you can play with hypotheses. 

Russell, 2010, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, p. 124
Share:

Russell on ordinary language

It is exceedingly difficult to make this point clear as long as one adheres to ordinary language, because ordinary language is rooted in a certain feeling about logic, a certain feeling that our primeval ancestors had, and as long as you keep to ordinary language you find it very difficult to get away from the bias which is imposed upon you by language.

Russell, 2010, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, p. 68.
Share:

BTemplates.com

Search This Blog

Powered by Blogger.