begineer philosophy

Dunamis - I was simply pointing out a significant flaw in Russells philosophy that could be have wholly avoided if he had understood Freges work.

So please explain to me, why he missed this distinction?

Y.

Personally I have a distaste for Analytical Philosophy. (It operates from, which for me what is largely a mis-comprehension of the verb “to be”). I just find it odd for someone who does have great passion for a particular philosopher, to have almost no comprehension of the context in which that philosopher’s ideas were delivered. Russell and Frege in many ways were having a dialogue of ideas, and Russell’s position could be seen as a response to Frege. Its one thing to take a side in the debate, but to suggest that one philosopher simply did not understand the elementary ideas of the other gives the impression that it is you perhaps that is missing something important. Perhaps if you looked at the nature of their disagreement, you would come out with even more clarity in your understanding of Frege, and why he proved something beyond refute.

Dunamis

I get this impression when I read his critique of A. Meinong. One caveat: although Russell’s style seems very easy to understand–no big words, no convoluted, long sentences–the logic behind is not that simple. And yes, I read Frege alongside.

sorry, off-topic

I’m in the middle of reading David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

While Hume tends to get a little too sarcastic at times for my tastes, he does a great job overall in conveying some fundamental philosophical principles. He is rather captivating, if you ask me. :wink:

Don’t fear, Y, he isn’t being hostile - just ‘taking pleasure in your views’. :slight_smile:

I recommend ‘What’s it all about’ by Thomas Nagle.

Touché

Dunamis

– De’trop

:slight_smile:

my dear friend, philosophy is best learned in the heart (whose essence can be questioned!) LOvely sport, to read the ancients, develop a knack for logical techniques, and possess an arsenal of linguistic philosophical sling-shot ammo for debate (great!), but relative to one’s goal, philosophy is truly where you find it…

this is not to dismiss as unimportant the impressive accomplishment that is the assimilation of accepted philosophical knowledge, history, and science into the works of current philosophers now…

it is only to say, here
that
philosophy is like the experience of life itself-
open to personal interpretation,
never wrong,
never right,
just what you decide.
You are God.

What denotes a beginner and one who is skilled in books of others teachings or self taught as some are?

I have seen some who started out as beggers and became great men with only their own knowledges. While, I have also seen others who have studied many books and learned what others have concieved as their basis of understandings, only to be taken as thier own agreements with the author and have built thier own foundations of beliefs upon anothers.

What is a beginner and what is experienced?

To me, I say “What is your own opinion of your own reality and does it fit with a meaning and a purpose?”

I personally would be called a beginner by those who sit in colleges and study books of others who have gave thier opinions about life and meaning. While others who know me personally call me a pro in Philosophy. because I have my own foundations which have basis towards factual written documentions, testings and conclusions and others opinions towards my findings"

No different here in these forums some will scoff and some will listen.

Look the best place I have learned about Philosophy is “Life in General”. Experience life by going out and learning all that you can and then put it to use as a thing that is called wisdom.

You your just on the beginning of a trip of a life time if your asking which books to read. Experience will without fail be your biggest teacher in Philosophy. One can read Plato over and over and never get his meanings but if one has experienced it/them personally then one can relate to his meanings with understanding of how to think in that realm of beliefs.

For instance: You see a penny on the ground. “A” do you remember an old saying a penny earned is a a penny saved; And pick it up to keep. “B” walk past it and remember nothing. Or “C” say "Hey I found a penny and stick it in your pocket to walk away never thinking about it or a saying to remembered by someone who experienced it before and spoke upon it?

But then remember some who spoke upon things had never experienced them themselves.

I hope you find many books and experiences to learn from and may all the wisdom you gain be wise and learning experiences.

ASO

Dunamis,

Your condescension leads me in awe of you as a philosopher.

Please explain to me therefore why he missed the point?

You must know being a big fan of Russell?

(I will admit I was not aware that Rusell and Freger corrospondended)

But this does not explain why the logical proof was overlooked by Russell in his own philosophy.

And quite frankly there are other examples where Russell ignored his contemperies and did blatently nonsensical things. I.e. wittgenstein and his proof for the external reality (I know they fell out, but still)

Y.,

I actually am a very poor philosopher. But thank you. Your assumption that I am a big fan of Russell is mistaken. If you noticed, I told you that I have distaste for Analytical Philosophy and I find Russell uninspired as a philosopher. As a writer and essayist he is highly skilled though. I only suggest that he “missed the point” not because he didn’t understand it, but that he disagreed with it. I have absolutely no desire to visit these Frege/Russell arguments in detail again, as to me they are dead ends. One should at least know the context of a philosophical thought if you are going to champion it. The Frege/Russell disagreement is famous.

Dunamis

Hi, I’m in the same boat only started reading philosophy this year after taking a interest in politics, if you’re looking for the basics try out philosophypages.com [/url]

hehe dunamis, she never implied you are rich

who’s she and how did they imply this?

Maybe this series will help you?

Russell’s work is varied…he was a great philosopher. In the end, if you get Socrates, you’re a good philosopher. Any of us who can proceed to think and omit error without having a preconceived goal, is a good philosopher even if we don’t retread the genius steps of old, down tyo the last page of every translation. Russell had a great way of applying his philsophical side to critiquing religion, commenting on concepts from happiness, to the virtues of idleness, to sex and marriage, to world peace, whatever that means. It may be a great joy to study kant, but it’s more important for the world to read Russell. And more fun, I think.

why

Ok, just felt like I needed to comment on the Frege/Russell discussion that’s been goin on here. Russell was very much in the know of Frege’s ideas and arguments, as mentioned earlier, their correspondence is very well known. Anyway, Russell primarily disagreed with Frege’s mysterious sense or “sinn.” Put simply, it was not coherent with his analysis of language. The problem with Frege’s sense, and part of what motivated Russell’s Theory of Descriptions is as follows:

 Frege begins “On Sense and Reference” by introducing his datum.  Frege finds that identity statements are problematic in that ‘a = b’ appears to have different cognitive value than ‘a = a’ while, according to the law of identity, ‘a’ and ‘b’ must in fact be or refer to the same thing.  “If we were to regard equality as a relation between that which the names ‘a’ and ‘b’ designate, it would seem that a = b could not differ from a = a” (Frege 563).  However, the statements ‘a = b’ and ‘a = a’ are clearly different; at least in that ‘a’ and ‘b’ are different names or designators.   Thus Frege introduces the doctrine of sense in order to explain this apparent difference in cognitive value.
 Frege explains sense as the mode of presentation of an object.  Names have senses and may or may not have reference.  In addition to whatever the sign may refer to (possibly nothing), Frege holds that there is also the “sense of the sign, wherein the mode of presentation is contained” (Frege 564).  According to this conception, it is through the sense that we arrive at the reference (the way of presenting the object of the name).  In terms of his datum, consider the identity statements “Hesperus is Phosphorus” and “Hesperus is Hesperus.”  These statements are of the form ‘a=b’ and ‘a=a’ respectively.  Hesperus and Phosphorus refer to the same object, namely Venus, yet the two identity statements have differing cognitive values.  In other words, although they refer to the same object, it is certainly possible that an individual would know trivially that “Hesperus is Hesperus” and not that “Hesperus is Phosphorus.”  Frege explains this phenomenon as follows: while the referent of both names remains the same, it is their senses that differ.  “The reference of ‘evening star’ would be the same as that of ‘morning star,’ but not the sense” (Frege 564).  According to the Fregean doctrine of sense as the mode of presentation of an object, the object Venus is presented in one instance as ‘the morning star’ and the other as ‘the evening star.’  Frege seems to be strongly committed to his view that sense is a mode of presentation of an object until he begins to discuss objects of fiction.  These names seem to present a problem for this notion of Frege’s sense.  
 Consider the fictional name “Odysseus.”  For Frege, this name has no reference; the physical man ‘Odysseus’ never existed beyond the epic tales of Homer.  Yet we can still understand the thought expressed by the sentence “Odysseus came to shore at Ithaca.”  For Frege, the sense of a sentence is a thought.  “The thought, accordingly, cannot be the reference of the sentence, but must rather be considered as the sense” (Frege 568).  Fregean sense is also compositional.  That is, in order to grasp the thought of a sentence, one must also grasp the sense of its constituents.  Certainly “Odysseus came to shore at Ithaca,” expresses a clear thought, the sense of the sentence.  Since sense is compositional, the constituent parts of the sentence must also have sense.  So it seems that “Odysseus” has a certain sense.  In other words, “Odysseus” must have sense despite the fact that the name itself lacks reference.  This is problematic if Frege is to be understood as being strictly committed to his view that sense is the mode of presentation of an object.  
 If “Odysseus” has sense and no reference, then what is it that the sense presents?  There is no object, no ‘Odysseus’ to present.  Thus there is no mode of presentation and in turn no sense.  Although sense without reference is no problem for semantically complex sentences (because sense and reference are compositional), Frege’s conception of sense seems to fail when dealing with fictional semantically simple names (where the name is a single symbol or noun).  In the latter case it doesn’t make sense to have a mode of presentation of an object where there is no referent.  Gareth Evans makes this point clear in his book The Varieties of Reference:

I have claimed is that dire consequences follow from the ascription of a Fregean sense to any expression that has no Meaning or semantic value; hence the consequences ensue for Frege because he selected, as appropriate semantic values for singular terms, the objects that would be regarded as their referents (Evans 32).

In other words, it is Frege’s own construction of sense and reference that causes problems for empty names. Evans goes on to argue that there is a way around the problem of empty (no referent) names. He proposes an alternative conception of sense and referent that avoids this problem. Evans suggests that one can assign sets instead of objects as the referents. Thus if there is a referent, the sense is the mode of presentation of the set consisting of the referent. Likewise, if there is no referent, the sense is the mode of presentation of the empty set. Under this conception the problem of a sense that presents nothing is avoided. This shows that Frege’s conception of sense and reference can be reconciled with non-referring names. However, this view was not espoused in Frege’s “On Sense and Reference.” So it seems that Frege abandons his idea of sense as mode of presentation when faced with fictional semantically simple names.
Ultimately, it seems that Frege’s explanation of sense as the mode of presentation of an object is adhered to throughout his essay with the exception of fictional semantically simple names. Thus it appears that this Fregean doctrine of sense may be inadequate in that a theory should apply universally without exceptions. In addition, this doctrine runs into further problems. Another Fregean doctrine of sense holds that sense is that which “is grasped by everybody who is sufficiently familiar with the language” (Frege 564). It seems that this doctrine and sense as mode of presentation may not be completely compatible; however this is outside the scope of this paper. Nonetheless, when faced with non-referring names, it seems that Frege’s doctrine is insufficient (at least as understood in “On Sense and Reference”). There is no mode of presentation when there is nothing to be presented. With these considerations in mind, it appears that Frege is not absolutely committed to his doctrine of sense as mode of presentation.

With that in mind, Russell had many problems as well…pointed out by the likes of Strawson, Donnellan, Kripke etc. But he did get rid of Frege’s sense.

Perhaps this should be a new thread, but any Frege/Russell or analytical philo discussions would be cool.

well essentially what that, and Freges other works, amount to is that there are logical differences in meaning and reference.

I can extrapolate it at least partially from your post - and there is no logical argument against it. So are you saying Russell just missed that the logic is flawless? or are you suggesting that Frege was just a bad writer?

There is no such thing as, “learning about philosophy,” you’re either a philosopher or you’re not. All those philosophers we term as philosophers didn’t read about philosophers to become one, they just philosophized on their own essentially. Philosophy is like altruism. Altruism is an unselfish interest in the welfare of another and philosophy is an open interest in philosophizing about anything and not reading the works of another philosopher. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t read other philosophers, but that reading is not philosophizing or philosophy.