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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, by Bertrand russell
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How do we know what we "know"? How did we –as individuals and as a society – come to accept certain knowledge as fact? In Human Knowledge, Bertrand Russell questions the reliability of our assumptions on knowledge. This brilliant and controversial work investigates the relationship between ‘individual’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge. First published in 1948, this provocative work contributed significantly to an explosive intellectual discourse that continues to this day.
- Sales Rank: #2035461 in Books
- Published on: 1967-10-30
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 524 pages
Review
‘The nearest thing to a systematic philosophy written by one who does not believe in systems of philosophy. Its scope is encyclopedic…a joy to read.’ – New York Times
‘His intelligibility comes of stating things directly as he himself seems them, sharply defined and readily crystallized in the best English philosophical style.’ - The Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). The leading British Philosopher of the twentieth century, who made major contributions to the area of logic and epistemology. Politically active and habitually outspoken, his ethical principles twice lead to imprisonment
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Informative and clearly expressed.
By Fibbo
Russell is proclaimed as one of the foremost philosophers of the 19th century. He is certainly one of the clearest writers on philosophy and the subject of human knowledge. I found this text well organised and expressed in clear terms. It is possible that there have been advances in philosophy (and topically epistemology) since Russell wrote this work: however, modern texts in epistemology sometimes hide whatever message they are trying to convey in complex expression and academic "sounding" words.
This text is essential reading for those interested in what we humans can know, and how we can say we know it.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
RUSSELL’S FINAL SUMMATION OF HIS PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE AND EPISTEMOLOGY
By Steven H Propp
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 A History of Western Philosophy, The Problems of Philosophy, Mysticism and Logic, Why I am Not a Christian, Religion and Science, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, The Analysis of Mind, Our Knowledge of the External World, etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1948 book, “The following pages are addressed not only or primarily to professional philosophers but to that much larger public which is interested in philosophical questions without being willing or able to devote more than a limited amount of time to considering them… I think it is unfortunate that during the last hundred and sixty years or so philosophy has come to be regarded almost as technical as mathematics. Logic, it must be admitted, is technical in the same way as mathematics is, but logic, I maintain, is not part of philosophy. Philosophy proper deals with matters of interest to the general educated public, and loses much of its value if only a few professionals can understand what it said. In this book I have sought to deal, as comprehensively as I am able, with a very large question: How comes it that human beings, whose contacts with the world are brief and personal and limited, are nevertheless able to know as much as they do now? Is the belief in our knowledge partly illusory? And, if not, what must we know otherwise than through the senses?”
He said in the Introduction, “there has been a mistaken tendency among philosophers to allow the description of the world to be influenced unduly by considerations derived from the nature of human knowledge. To scientific common sense (which I accept) it is plain that only an infinitesimal part of the universe is known, that there were countless ages during which there was no knowledge, and that there will probably be countless ages without knowledge in the future.” (Pg. xi) He adds, “if, then, I am ever to be able to infer events, I must accept principles of inference which lie outside deductive logic. All inferences from events to events demands some kind of interconnection between different occurrences. Such interconnection … is implied… in whatever limited validity may be assigned to induction by simple enumeration. But the traditional ways of formulating the kind of interconnection that must be postulated are in many ways defective, some being too stringent and some not sufficiently so. To discover the minimum principles required to justify scientific inferences is one of the main purposes of this book.” (Pg. xii-xiii)
He states, “it must be admitted that there is a bare possibility---no more---that although occurrences in the brain do not infringe the laws of physics, nevertheless their outcome is not what it would be if no psychological factors were involved… There is therefore, so far, not the smallest positive reason for supposing that there is anything about physical processes in the brain that involves different macroscopic laws from those of the physics of inanimate matter. Nevertheless, for those who are anxious to assert the power of mind over matter it is possible to find a loophole… since… according to quantum physics, there are no physical laws to determine which of several possible transitions a given atom will undergo, we may imagine that, in a brain, the choice between possible transitions is determined by a psychological cause called ‘volition.’ All this is POSSIBLE, but no more than possible; there is not the faintest positive reason for supposing that anything of the sort actually takes place.” (Pt. One, Ch. V, pg. 40-41)
He observes, “‘Knowledge’ is a vague concept for two reasons. First, because the meaning of a word is always more or less vague… and second, because all that we count as knowledge is in a greater or lesser degree uncertain, and there is no way of deciding how much uncertainty makes a belief unworthy to be called ‘knowledge,’ any more than mow much loss of hair makes a man bald.” (Pt. Two, Ch. V, pg. 98) He points out, “There is a long history of discussions as to what was mistakenly called ‘skepticism of the senses.’ Many appearances are deceptive. Things seen in a mirror may be thought to be ‘real.’ … The rainbow seems to touch the ground at some point, but if you go there you do not find it… But in all these cases the core of data is not illusory, but only the derived beliefs. My visual sensations, when I look in a mirror or see double, are exactly what I think they are… In dreams I have all the experiences that I seem to have; it is only things outside my mind that are not as I believe them to be while I am dreaming. There are in fact no illusions of the senses, but only mistakes in interpreting sensational data as signs of things other than themselves… there is no evidence that there are illusions of the senses.” (Pt. Three, Ch. I, Pg. 167)
He contends, “the best scientific opinion of the present time has a better chance of truth, or of approximate truth, than any differing hypothesis suggested by a layman. The case is analogous to that of firing at a target. If you are a bad shot you are not likely to hit the bull’s-eye, but you are nevertheless more likely to hit the bull’s-eye than to hit any other equal area. So the scientist’s hypothesis, though not likely to be quite right, is more likely to be right than any variant suggested by an unscientific person.” (Pt. Four, Ch. I, pg. 235) He asserts, “Perfect rationality consists not in believing what is true but in attaching to every proposition a degree of belief corresponding to its degree of credibility. In regard to empirical propositions, the degree of credibility changes when fresh evidence accrues. In mathematics, the rational man who is not a mathematician will believe what he is told. He will therefore change his beliefs when mathematicians discover errors in the work of their predecessors. The mathematician himself may be completely rational in spite of making a mistake, if the mistake is one which at the time is very difficult to detect. Whether we ought to aim at rationality is an ethical question.” (Pt. Five, Ch. VI, pg. 397-398)
He argues, “Belief in causation, whether valid nor not, is deeply embedded in language. Consider how Hume, despite his desire to be skeptical, allows himself, from the start, to use the word ‘impression.’ An ‘impression’ should be something that presses in on one, which is a purely causal conception. The difference between an ‘impression’ and an ‘idea’ should be that the former, but not the latter, have a proximate cause which is external… For my part, I should define an ‘impression,’ or a ‘sensation,’ as a mental occurrence of which the proximate cause is physical, while an ‘idea’ has a proximate cause which is mental… In dreams we think we have impressions, but when we wake we usually conclude that we were mistaken. It follows that there is no INTRINSIC character which inevitably distinguishes impressions from ideas.” (Pt. Six, Ch. V, pg. 455-456)
Russell was reportedly disappointed that professional philosophers (who were engrossed in Existentialism and Linguistic Philosophy, when this book was published) ignored this book; but with the advantage of hindsight, I think we can appreciate it as an excellent summing-up of Russell’s analytic philosophy (except that he gives “science” a much greater degree of confidence than we might, nowadays).
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Strictly reserved for the serious
By D. Coyle
To my knowledge, one of the best books ever written.
Russell's English has a wonderful, graceful clarity. But this is not an easy book to read. What does it mean to "know"? what do we know? how far can we be sure that we do in fact know? These are fundamental questions about human thought, and this book is an essential item in the library of anyone who is concerned with such questions.
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