Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy

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But if human conceit was staggered for a moment by its kinship with the ape, it soon found a way to reassert itself, and that way is the "philosophy" of evolution. A process whi...

Bergson maintains that intellect can only deal with things in so far as they resemble what has been experienced in the past, while intuition has the power of apprehending the un...

There is quite another direction in which a large technical development of logic has taken place: I mean the direction of what is called logistic or mathematical logic. This kin...

Given any fact, there is an assertion which expresses the fact. The fact itself is objective, and independent of our thought or opinion about it; but the assertion is something...

The first thing that appears when we begin to analyse our common knowledge is that some of it is derivative, while some is primitive; that is to say, there is some that we only...

We can now give a statement of the experienced facts concerning the blue spectacles, which will supply an interpretation of common-sense beliefs without assuming anything beyond...

We have now constructed a largely hypothetical picture of the world, which contains and places the experienced facts, including those derived from testimony. The world we have c...

To answer this question, we must consider what it is that is proved by the empirical success of physics. What is proved is that its hypotheses, though unverifiable where they go...

The above brief outline must not be regarded as more than tentative and suggestive. It is intended merely to show the kind of way in which, given a world with the kind of proper...

Apart from definite arguments, there are certain feelings, rather than reasons, which stand in the way of an acceptance of the mathematical account of motion. To begin with, if...

(3) We have now to consider the _logical_ answer to the alleged difficulties of the mathematical theory of motion, or rather to the positive theory which is urged on the other s...

In order to understand Zeno, and to realise how little modern orthodox metaphysics has added to the achievements of the Greeks, we must consider for a moment his master Parmenid...

The above difficulty, that B must have passed C' at some time between two consecutive moments, is a genuine one, but is not precisely the difficulty raised by Zeno. What Zeno pr...

"_Simp._ I know very well that a square Number is that which arises from the Multiplication of any Number into itself; thus 4 and 9 are square Numbers, that arising from 2, and...

There is, however, a certain logical doctrine which may be thought to form an objection to the above definition of numbers as classes of classes--I mean the doctrine that there...

Among observed causal laws is this, that observation of uniformities is followed by expectation of their recurrence. A horse who has been driven always along a certain road expe...

(2) _Are human actions subject to an external compulsion?_ We have, in deliberation, a subjective sense of freedom, which is sometimes alleged against the view that volitions ha...