Praymont

LATEST ARTICLES ( 235 )

• August Philosophy Links

  Kevin Berger interviews Mazviita Chirimuuta about colour.'How to teach classical Chinese thought'. Chris Power on David Markson's book Wittgenstein's... Read more

  Posted on 25 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Broadly Philosophical Links

  Neuroskeptic on whether 'cognition and perception [are] ultimately inseparable'.Susan Dominus writes about four guys in Bogota. They are two sets of identical... Read more

  Posted on 26 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Fact-opinion 10, Opinions and Matters of Opinion

  Let's begin with a quotation of Raymond S. Nickerson, a psychologist who uses 'opinion' as another term for taste:We might say that a belief is something that,... Read more

  Posted on 23 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Fact-opinion 9, Opinion (part d)

  The earliest English-language logic texts carried over the medieval distinction between knowledge and opinion, according to which contingent statements cannot b... Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Corporate Social-scientism in Whyte's 'Organization Man'

  Seventeenth in a series of seventeen posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)In the previous post in this series, I distinguished between... Read more

  Posted on 15 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Opinion, Part 2

  As indicated in the previous post, the Aristotelian, medieval philosophers drew a clear distinction between science (episteme, scientia) and opinion (doxa,... Read more

  Posted on 12 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Quick Introductory Notes on 'opinion'

  In its current, common use, 'opinion' is generally value-neutral. It does not have the same meaning as 'mere opinion'. An opinion may be a responsibly formed... Read more

  Posted on 09 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Fact-Opinion 6, More Data on the Changing Sense of 'fact'

  It was standard for textbooks on critical thinking in the 19th- and early 20th-Century to devote some space to a fact-opinion distinction. Read more

  Posted on 13 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Fact-Opinion 5, 19th-Century Distinctions and a Rough Hypothesis

  One can find fact-opinion distinctions in several 19th-Century university textbooks. Some of these sources are logic texts while others are rhetoric manuals. Read more

  Posted on 11 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Fact-Opinion 4, Alfred Sidgwick

  In my previous post, it looked like the old fact-opinion distinction presupposed some privileged set of data, facts, which were assimilated to pristine and... Read more

  Posted on 08 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Fact-Opinion 3, the Shifting Sense of 'fact'

  In his 'Unfair to Facts' (1954), J. L. Austin consulted the OED about the history of the word 'fact'. He said that the modern usage of this word 'is just what i... Read more

  Posted on 07 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Fact-Opinion, 2: R. W. Sellars on Fact Vs. Theory

  Like others, I'm perplexed by the claim that evolution is a theory and therefore isn't a fact. 'Well-confirmed theories may be taken as fact,' I want to reply. Read more

  Posted on 05 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Fact-Opinion, 1

  I hope to make some progress in explaining how today's fact-opinion distinction arose. Philosophers don't take well to this distinction, which has come in for... Read more

  Posted on 04 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Positivists Vs. Darwin's Bull-dog (social-scientism Vs. Reductionist-scientism,...

  Sixteenth in a series of sixteen posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 15) In my last post on scientism, I claimed to have excavated distinct... Read more

  Posted on 28 May 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Some Quotations on Facts

  Bernard Mandeville (1732):Facts are stubborn things. (Mandeville, 'An Enquiry into the Origin of Honor, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War' [1732])John... Read more

  Posted on 25 May 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Born Today: Russell, Carnap, Etc.

  Philosophers and kindred spirits born on May 18: Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Bishop Butler, Pope John Paul II, W. G. Sebald. Read more

  Posted on 19 May 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Observation Statements Are Based on Unconscious Theorizing (says Sir George Lewi...

  Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 'Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion' (1849):It is true that even the simplest sensations involve some... Read more

  Posted on 18 May 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Philosophy Links (May17)

  Corey Robin on 'The Trials of Hannah Arendt'.The new Philosophical Percolations blog is perking.A. W. Carus (who published a book on Carnap) has a Carnap blog.... Read more

  Posted on 17 May 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Links (mostly Philosophy)

  Cass Sunstein uses the development of Star Wars to illustrate points about law and other narratives:Narrative offers broad lessons not only for movies, but... Read more

  Posted on 26 April 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY

• Social-scientism Vs. Reductionist-scientism (Part I)

  I've distinguished two strands in the use of 'scientism'. On the one hand, there's what I've called 'the mid-20th-Century' use (post 9), or the 'cold-war use'... Read more

  Posted on 16 March 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY