On Hume’s Empiricism:
Most adequately reflected in his saying that “all ideas are derived from impressions and are nothing but copies and representations of them, whatever is true of one must be acknowledged concerning the other.” (pp. 66) Every idea that we have in mind is hence from our impressions i.e. defined as sensations, passions, and emotions (pp. 49). Impressions then cause our ideas and not vice versa.
I On Abstraction:
Hume says that when we think of a general idea, we actually think of or associate it immediately with a specific instance. In his exact words, he thinks that it is impossible to form an idea (abstract general idea; an umbrella concept) of an object that is possessed of quantity and quality and yet possessed of no precise degree of either (pp. 67). As a direct result of this, whenever we think a “general idea” we immediately associate it with some specific instance under this umbrella. Or so Hume says, “abstract ideas are therefore in themselves individual, however they may become general in their representation” (pp. 67). What happens then is that we treat it as if it is a universal. We delude ourselves into thinking that it is a universal general concept that has feign weak relations to all but it is actually a specific precise idea that we are thinking about. We customarily recall a particular idea and construct its relation to the “universal.” The
It seems there can be nothing abstract. “The mind would never have dreamed of distinguishing a figure from the body figured, as being in reality.” For Hume, it is impossible to distinguish the colour of a white marble from the form of a white marble because “whatever objects are different are distinguishable and separable by our imagination.” Since the white marble and its form is in reality by empirical intuition, one whole and hence inseparable, abstraction is not possible.
II On Hume’s confusion; Kant’s response
I can now better understand Kant’s critical project on our faculties of understanding as a direct response to Hume. Hume argues that “the capacity of the mind is limited […] and can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity.” We hence, cannot have umbrella concepts that hold the infinite weak associations to all intuitions. An idea of a line that we can have of conceptually is thus not different from the precise length or quantity and quality of the line itself. If we were to split up the grain of sand into a part of ten thousand, this conceptual imaginary grain and the grain is thus not different because for Hume, “no object can appear to the senses [or] no impression can become present to the mind without being determined in its degree of both quantity and quality” (pp. 66). But by doing so, Hume has mistakenly conflated crucial differences between conceptual ideas that we can speculate about unconditionally and the intuitive-empirical. Although we cannot split the grain of sand into a part of ten thousand or infinitely, this inability is only empirical. Conceptually, we can have an idea of the 1/10 000th part of a grain although we will not be able to materialize it empirically. We can imagine the idea of an infinitely split grain of sand but we will not be able to associate it empirically, an intuition of it.
It seems clear to me that conceptual division is vastly different from empirical division. Surely, the real division of a grain of sand can go as far as our technological abilities but conceptually, even Hume admits of this: that our faculty of imagination has the liberty to transpose and change its ideas (pp. 57). On Sect IV, he even continues by saying that all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination and may be united in whatever form it pleases (pp. 57). This is why we can indeed have chimerical ideas of winged horses, fiery dragons and monstrous giants that do not exist in reality. Kant in the critique of Pure Reason writes of our imagination (Einbildungskraft) as “a blind but indispensible function of the soul... [that] we are scarcely ever conscious of.” (CPR pp. 112) it is blind in its synthesis of our manifold representations. He is clear that the productive synthesis of imagination takes place a priori and transcendentally giving us and necessary for the possibility of knowledge and order in our experience. Kant says that there are in our understanding pure a priori modes of knowledge (pure concepts i.e. categories of understanding) that contains the necessary unity of the pure synthesis of imagination with regards to all possible appearances. Pure categories thus give order and grounds to order in our sensible empirical experiences. From this several things are clear. Imagination works intimately with our faculty of understanding a priori to give formal unity which differs from a posteriori empirical experience. The pure and a priori categories at work with our imagination thus differ from the empirical. This is something so crucial that Hume has elided. That there are idealized winged horses and flying cottage houses (as well as God, freedom and immortality) and a priori pure proofs, mathematical principles, natural science (physics) that carry with them a priori necessity and universality is something we cannot dismiss. Such a possibility exists because of our faculty of pure reason which contains a priori principles and knowledge (pure categories) that give us formal order. These pure knowledge are transcendental. They are not interfused with anything extraneous like experience, sensation. This is why Kant begs heedfulness and prudence to:
1) “Transcendental philosophy as a philosophy of pure and mere speculative reason.” (pp. 61). Transcendental philosophy unlike Hume’s empiricism can explain how there is a priori basis of nature and the speculative possibility of things via the faculty of reason – the faculty that always seeks to transcend our limits of experience to complete the series of conditions into the unconditioned thoughts of man. Transcendental philosophy explains how we have for the longest time progressed only with pure knowledge, concepts and principles itself i.e. abstractly.
2) Distinctions between experience and possible experience. As Kant writes in the preface to his second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, “Experience is itself a species of knowledge which involves understanding; and understanding has rules which I must presuppose as being in me prior to objects being given in me […] They find expression in a priori concepts to which all objects of experience necessarily conform and to which they must agree.” Kant’s introduction to the Critique of Pure reason itself begins with how there can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience but although all knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that all arises out of experience. This gives a very clear precursor to the distinction that Hume failed to make i.e. the distinction between the real empirical and the possible and speculative.
Hume On Time:
We notice the existence of ‘time’ or the idea of duration from a succession of changeable objects. Hume is assertive in that we cannot know duration from anything steadfast and unchangeable. This to me is reflective of his hardcore empiricism – that our knowledge of things is only a posteriori. Duration or the idea of time cannot be ‘unchangeable.’ Ideas always represent the objects or impressions from which they are derived (pp. 86). So there is no ‘abstract time.’ Time is always “compounded of indivisible parts.” As such, if a man is sleeping deeply, he will have no sense impressions of time because he does not by experience experience the successive perceptions of time. My contention seems to be that, that we do not experience time empirically a posteriori, it does not mean it does not exist a priori. In the same light, it is absurd to say that if I do not comprehend an abstruse mathematical equation or physics law, it does not exist.
For Hume, if the idea of extension or space exists, its parts (compound impression – consisting of lesser impressions) must also exist and be present and imparted by us through impressions through our sensibility Hume writes as sight and touch. “We have no idea of space or extension but when we regard it as an object either of our sight or feeling.” (pp. 87)
Abridged version of argument on Time
1) Everything that is different is distinguishable and seperable
2) From 1) then, if it is different, it will be seperable
3) Time however, “arises altogether from the manner in which impressions appear to the mind.” (pp. 85).
4) If 3) is true, then time is not different from its experienced object.
5) If 4) is true, then time is something empirical that we know from inductive experience.
6) But 1)-5) can’t be true because if it were true, it means that if we were born insensate, there would be no time. Yet, time exists with or without our empirical experience of it.
Argument that infinite time does not exist:
1) Our mind does not have infinite capacity
2) Our minds are the substrate of experience
3) If 1) is true, then we would not have knowledge of any ‘infinite time and space’ but only of a finite number of simple and indivisible.
4) Because of 1), infinite divisibility is impossible and contradictory.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Will to Doubt
Reflections of Bertrand Russell's works
Postmodernist Jean Baudrillard once pilloried our modern culture as one whose functioning and establishment is predicated solely on what he rues as “lowest common multiple resources". Man needs only a degenerated matrix of opinions to whom his fellow peers whose brains has also atrophied can assent to and find resonance in. Many critical thinkers have a similar strand of thought. Bertrand Russell in this collage of essays writes of our emotions and opinions in regard to love, birth and death becoming, standardized and universal. Universality indeed makes it easy for co-operation since we can more “intuitively” understand the other and so makes peace and conciliation more pleasant amongst nations. Russell is not taking an elaborate stand on this but I think I have all rights to believe that forces of standardization engineered and propelled by the engines of capitalism are too truculent, invasive and far too unabating. Its advance is unforgiving and it seeks unmitigated domination. It will like a virulent plague cause the extinction of the exceptional man but will as Russell admits, probably increase the happiness of the average man promote greater cohesion etc (pp. 120). But I cannot envisage a future of improvement where ubiquity is virtue. Can you? The world needs more Nietzschean Ubermensch, more stylistic people, more free natured and greedy people. We have lost our thirst and died in our unfounded peaceable truths. When have we felt sheer ecstatic joy? We haven’t for a longest time. Because most men are enslaved, dulled and made unadventurous by the religious institutions of our time, by unnecessary moral and penal laws [...] and a poorly functioning education system. We hide woefully and pitiably under our quilts and deceitfully through hoax ratiocination teach ourselves degraded forms of regalement. We partake in the most childish vanities of life and pride ourselves in fulfilling them. How willful can we be!
In a way, Russell’s depiction of the world is not wrong. We have grown fascistic. We are modern irrationalists or anti-rationalists whose state of mind is not reached by observation, testing of propositions and establishing rational grounds but by a “belief in intuitional “positing” of opinions,” (pp. 101) or by submitting to the powerful.
I have become weary of always thinking the same things about us. So I shall move on to Russell’s short essay on “The value of Scepticism.” Russell argues that our believfs underpin and “largely determines” (pp. 45) the general structure of our lives and actions. But he also realizes like how contemporary thinkers like Herbert Simon etc. realizes, that most of our beliefs are not grounded upon evidence. It is fostered upon “irrationalism.” As Freudians put it, we think it rational, but our thoughts are in fact not and sociological experimentations (e.g. Kahneman Daniel 2003 “Maps of Bounded Rationality”) have buttressed this so successfully. I have as Russell has done so, ruminated deeply about the extent to which rationality should foster our thoughts and guide our actions in life. Habituation makes a set of action endearing, seemingly- connate, serene and assuring. Per contra, it distances us from the apprehension, anxiety and inquietude that can set in when we are bereft of solid grounds. This can be particularly perturbing for it can activate a sense of loss of direction and hence, inefficacy in action. To this end, rationality would be a nuisance. That is what any of the hoi polloi will tell me if I insinuate to them the need to rethink their premises. Yet, the great Spinoza said once before that the intellectual love of God or a greater understanding of the broader causal connections of actions can foster greater understanding of the origins and causal mechanisms of things. Rationality then has a preponderant influence for it not only makes man more perspicacious beings but can also as Russell wants to assert, control bellicose emotions of “hate, envy and cruelty” (pp. 50) that are always the first seeds of war and conflict.
I like how Russell writes of the usefulness of scepticism. The late Kant writes of how it is man who bequeaths teleological judgment upon the orderliness of the world. Whether there is “objectivity” out there in-itself, we can never know but only as science does, presume first, a most basic premise based on inductive observations from which everything else is founded upon. This is how also many systems of thoughts can become antiquated and antediluvian like how the Galileo’s heliocentricism and the Copernicus system both succeeded in weeding out Aristotelian physics. Scientists have to accept that their ideas will and can be outmoded. The great Newton or Darwin did not dogmatically lay down axioms and force it upon us. They were able and ready to accept further rigorous introspection and debacles over their legacies. A healthy amount of scepticism in science is readily accepted and should be the same in politics and religion is what Russell is trying to argue. In the latter two, we have been far too uncompromising and too believing in our instincts that has landed us in endless brawls. Man needs to be more skeptical, and less confident about what they think they know.
What impressed upon me most however is Russell’s reiteration of the importance of what we have denigrated as “useless knowledge” or what I recognize as the Socratic “pursuit of knowledge in itself.” I have always felt that the intellectual gains in terms of greater comprehension, acceptance of certain law-like governing forces of life and death, expansion of interests beyond the savage and brute physical brings about an broadens our province in which we can derive felicity from. Confining oneself to only physical gratification is what I think a severe form of privation. Man is unique because of his intellect and ability to use rationality. This is the Aristotelian function argument in the Nicomachean Ethics that goes: “…if the function of man is activity of soul which follows or implies reason…we state the function of a man to be a certain kind of life implying an activity or actions of the soul [also] implying a rational principle and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these.” Immediately, we can see that there are various classes of things that Aristotle has taken pains to not truncate and I think we should not as well. Here, I see Russell being a crusader of Aristotle’s sense of happiness where virtue (arete) is a life of rational activity in accordance with excellence (NE pp. xii). Why? Why is this “useless knowledge” or the pursuit of “knowledge in itself” important? Russell writes it all too well. 1) It is as Spinoza has written so in ethica that it can relief us from trivial pleasures and channel our contemplation and acts into more productive thought. 2) It can give men other source of self-respect other than some brute assertion of domination and the love of power that is the source of skirmishes and warfare. 3) As I have said, we have a greater expanse of places we can source for felicity – not just useless wars of our age in Afghanistan and surely, cold wars of the past between the Soviets and America can be avoided.
I will admit that I am bored by the jejune, insipid and irksome monotony of the people around me so fixated and obsessed with trivial and piffling concerns. Essentially, I read and write to constantly engage my mind with “useless unpractical knowledge” but it is something that evokes a true rapturous sense of intellectual joy and tranquility in me. It is what inspires me to live everyday.
In a way, Russell’s depiction of the world is not wrong. We have grown fascistic. We are modern irrationalists or anti-rationalists whose state of mind is not reached by finding a rational ground, observation and testing but by a “belief in intuitional “positing” of propositions,” (pp. 101) or by submitting to the powerful.
I have become weary of always thinking the same things about us. So I shall move on to Russell’s short essay on “The value of Scepticism.” Russell argues that our beliefs underpins and “largely determines” (pp. 45) the general structure of our lives and actions. But he also realizes like how contemporary thinkers like Herbert Simon etc. realizes, that most of our beliefs are not grounded upon evidence. It is fostered upon “irrationalism.” As Freudians put it, we think it rational, but our thoughts are in fact not and sociological experimentations (e.g. Kahneman Daniel 2003 “Maps of Bounded Rationality”) have buttressed this so successfully. I have as Russell has done so, ruminated deeply about the extent to which rationality should foster our thoughts and guide our actions in life. Habituation makes a set of action endearing, seemingly- connate, serene and assuring. Per contra, it distances us from the apprehension, anxiety and inquietude that can set in when we are bereft of solid grounds. This can be particularly perturbing for it can activate a sense of loss of direction and hence, inefficacy in action. To this end, rationality would be a nuisance. That is what most common man will tell me if I insinuate to them the need to rethink their premises. Yet, the great Spinoza said once before that the intellectual love of God or a greater understanding of the broader causal connections of actions can foster greater understanding of the origins and causal mechanisms of things. Rationality then has a preponderant influence for it not only makes man more perspicacious beings but can also as Russell wants to assert, control bellicose emotions of “hate, envy and cruelty” (pp. 50) that are always the first seeds of war and conflict.
I like how Russell writes of the usefulness of scepticism. The late Kant writes of how it is man who bequeaths teleological judgment upon the orderliness of the world. Whether there is “objectivity” out there in-itself, we can never know but only as science does, presume first, a most basic premise based on inductive observations from which everything else is founded upon. This is how also many systems of thoughts can become antiquated and antediluvian like how the Galileo’s heliocentricism succeeds the Copernicus system. Scientists have to accept that their ideas will and can be outmoded. The great Newton or Darwin did not dogmatically lay down axioms and force it upon us. They were able and ready to accept further rigorous introspection and debacles over their legacies. A healthy amount of scepticism in science is readily accepted and should be the same in politics and religion is what Russell is trying to argue. In the latter two, we have been far too uncompromising and too believing in our instincts that has landed us in endless brawls.
What impressed upon me most however is Russell’s reiteration of the importance of what we have denigrated as “useless knowledge” or what I recognize as the Socratic “pursuit of knowledge in itself.” I have always felt that the intellectual gains in terms of greater comprehension, acceptance of certain law-like governing forces of life and death, expansion of interests beyond the savage and brute physical brings about an broadens our province in which we can derive felicity from. Confining oneself to only physical gratification is what I think a severe form of privation. Man is unique because of his intellect and ability to use rationality. This is the Aristotelian function argument in the Nicomachean Ethics that goes: “…if the function of man is activity of soul which follows or implies reason…we state the function of a man to be a certain kind of life implying an activity or actions of the soul [also] implying a rational principle and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these.” Immediately, we can see that there are various classes of things that Aristotle has taken pains to not truncate and I think we should not as well. Here, I see Russell being a crusader of Aristotle’s sense of happiness where virtue (arete) is a life of rational activity in accordance with excellence (NE pp. xii). Why? Why is this “useless knowledge” or the pursuit of “knowledge in itself” important? Russell writes it all too well. 1) It is as Spinoza has written so in ethica that it can relief us from trivial pleasures and channel our contemplation and acts into more productive thought. 2) It can give men other source of self-respect other than some brute assertion of domination and the love of power that is the source of skirmishes and warfare. 3) As I have said, we have a greater expanse of places we can source for felicity.
Postmodernist Jean Baudrillard once pilloried our modern culture as one whose functioning and establishment is predicated solely on what he rues as “lowest common multiple resources". Man needs only a degenerated matrix of opinions to whom his fellow peers whose brains has also atrophied can assent to and find resonance in. Many critical thinkers have a similar strand of thought. Bertrand Russell in this collage of essays writes of our emotions and opinions in regard to love, birth and death becoming, standardized and universal. Universality indeed makes it easy for co-operation since we can more “intuitively” understand the other and so makes peace and conciliation more pleasant amongst nations. Russell is not taking an elaborate stand on this but I think I have all rights to believe that forces of standardization engineered and propelled by the engines of capitalism are too truculent, invasive and far too unabating. Its advance is unforgiving and it seeks unmitigated domination. It will like a virulent plague cause the extinction of the exceptional man but will as Russell admits, probably increase the happiness of the average man promote greater cohesion etc (pp. 120). But I cannot envisage a future of improvement where ubiquity is virtue. Can you? The world needs more Nietzschean Ubermensch, more stylistic people, more free natured and greedy people. We have lost our thirst and died in our unfounded peaceable truths. When have we felt sheer ecstatic joy? We haven’t for a longest time. Because most men are enslaved, dulled and made unadventurous by the religious institutions of our time, by unnecessary moral and penal laws [...] and a poorly functioning education system. We hide woefully and pitiably under our quilts and deceitfully through hoax ratiocination teach ourselves degraded forms of regalement. We partake in the most childish vanities of life and pride ourselves in fulfilling them. How willful can we be!
In a way, Russell’s depiction of the world is not wrong. We have grown fascistic. We are modern irrationalists or anti-rationalists whose state of mind is not reached by observation, testing of propositions and establishing rational grounds but by a “belief in intuitional “positing” of opinions,” (pp. 101) or by submitting to the powerful.
I have become weary of always thinking the same things about us. So I shall move on to Russell’s short essay on “The value of Scepticism.” Russell argues that our believfs underpin and “largely determines” (pp. 45) the general structure of our lives and actions. But he also realizes like how contemporary thinkers like Herbert Simon etc. realizes, that most of our beliefs are not grounded upon evidence. It is fostered upon “irrationalism.” As Freudians put it, we think it rational, but our thoughts are in fact not and sociological experimentations (e.g. Kahneman Daniel 2003 “Maps of Bounded Rationality”) have buttressed this so successfully. I have as Russell has done so, ruminated deeply about the extent to which rationality should foster our thoughts and guide our actions in life. Habituation makes a set of action endearing, seemingly- connate, serene and assuring. Per contra, it distances us from the apprehension, anxiety and inquietude that can set in when we are bereft of solid grounds. This can be particularly perturbing for it can activate a sense of loss of direction and hence, inefficacy in action. To this end, rationality would be a nuisance. That is what any of the hoi polloi will tell me if I insinuate to them the need to rethink their premises. Yet, the great Spinoza said once before that the intellectual love of God or a greater understanding of the broader causal connections of actions can foster greater understanding of the origins and causal mechanisms of things. Rationality then has a preponderant influence for it not only makes man more perspicacious beings but can also as Russell wants to assert, control bellicose emotions of “hate, envy and cruelty” (pp. 50) that are always the first seeds of war and conflict.
I like how Russell writes of the usefulness of scepticism. The late Kant writes of how it is man who bequeaths teleological judgment upon the orderliness of the world. Whether there is “objectivity” out there in-itself, we can never know but only as science does, presume first, a most basic premise based on inductive observations from which everything else is founded upon. This is how also many systems of thoughts can become antiquated and antediluvian like how the Galileo’s heliocentricism and the Copernicus system both succeeded in weeding out Aristotelian physics. Scientists have to accept that their ideas will and can be outmoded. The great Newton or Darwin did not dogmatically lay down axioms and force it upon us. They were able and ready to accept further rigorous introspection and debacles over their legacies. A healthy amount of scepticism in science is readily accepted and should be the same in politics and religion is what Russell is trying to argue. In the latter two, we have been far too uncompromising and too believing in our instincts that has landed us in endless brawls. Man needs to be more skeptical, and less confident about what they think they know.
What impressed upon me most however is Russell’s reiteration of the importance of what we have denigrated as “useless knowledge” or what I recognize as the Socratic “pursuit of knowledge in itself.” I have always felt that the intellectual gains in terms of greater comprehension, acceptance of certain law-like governing forces of life and death, expansion of interests beyond the savage and brute physical brings about an broadens our province in which we can derive felicity from. Confining oneself to only physical gratification is what I think a severe form of privation. Man is unique because of his intellect and ability to use rationality. This is the Aristotelian function argument in the Nicomachean Ethics that goes: “…if the function of man is activity of soul which follows or implies reason…we state the function of a man to be a certain kind of life implying an activity or actions of the soul [also] implying a rational principle and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these.” Immediately, we can see that there are various classes of things that Aristotle has taken pains to not truncate and I think we should not as well. Here, I see Russell being a crusader of Aristotle’s sense of happiness where virtue (arete) is a life of rational activity in accordance with excellence (NE pp. xii). Why? Why is this “useless knowledge” or the pursuit of “knowledge in itself” important? Russell writes it all too well. 1) It is as Spinoza has written so in ethica that it can relief us from trivial pleasures and channel our contemplation and acts into more productive thought. 2) It can give men other source of self-respect other than some brute assertion of domination and the love of power that is the source of skirmishes and warfare. 3) As I have said, we have a greater expanse of places we can source for felicity – not just useless wars of our age in Afghanistan and surely, cold wars of the past between the Soviets and America can be avoided.
I will admit that I am bored by the jejune, insipid and irksome monotony of the people around me so fixated and obsessed with trivial and piffling concerns. Essentially, I read and write to constantly engage my mind with “useless unpractical knowledge” but it is something that evokes a true rapturous sense of intellectual joy and tranquility in me. It is what inspires me to live everyday.
In a way, Russell’s depiction of the world is not wrong. We have grown fascistic. We are modern irrationalists or anti-rationalists whose state of mind is not reached by finding a rational ground, observation and testing but by a “belief in intuitional “positing” of propositions,” (pp. 101) or by submitting to the powerful.
I have become weary of always thinking the same things about us. So I shall move on to Russell’s short essay on “The value of Scepticism.” Russell argues that our beliefs underpins and “largely determines” (pp. 45) the general structure of our lives and actions. But he also realizes like how contemporary thinkers like Herbert Simon etc. realizes, that most of our beliefs are not grounded upon evidence. It is fostered upon “irrationalism.” As Freudians put it, we think it rational, but our thoughts are in fact not and sociological experimentations (e.g. Kahneman Daniel 2003 “Maps of Bounded Rationality”) have buttressed this so successfully. I have as Russell has done so, ruminated deeply about the extent to which rationality should foster our thoughts and guide our actions in life. Habituation makes a set of action endearing, seemingly- connate, serene and assuring. Per contra, it distances us from the apprehension, anxiety and inquietude that can set in when we are bereft of solid grounds. This can be particularly perturbing for it can activate a sense of loss of direction and hence, inefficacy in action. To this end, rationality would be a nuisance. That is what most common man will tell me if I insinuate to them the need to rethink their premises. Yet, the great Spinoza said once before that the intellectual love of God or a greater understanding of the broader causal connections of actions can foster greater understanding of the origins and causal mechanisms of things. Rationality then has a preponderant influence for it not only makes man more perspicacious beings but can also as Russell wants to assert, control bellicose emotions of “hate, envy and cruelty” (pp. 50) that are always the first seeds of war and conflict.
I like how Russell writes of the usefulness of scepticism. The late Kant writes of how it is man who bequeaths teleological judgment upon the orderliness of the world. Whether there is “objectivity” out there in-itself, we can never know but only as science does, presume first, a most basic premise based on inductive observations from which everything else is founded upon. This is how also many systems of thoughts can become antiquated and antediluvian like how the Galileo’s heliocentricism succeeds the Copernicus system. Scientists have to accept that their ideas will and can be outmoded. The great Newton or Darwin did not dogmatically lay down axioms and force it upon us. They were able and ready to accept further rigorous introspection and debacles over their legacies. A healthy amount of scepticism in science is readily accepted and should be the same in politics and religion is what Russell is trying to argue. In the latter two, we have been far too uncompromising and too believing in our instincts that has landed us in endless brawls.
What impressed upon me most however is Russell’s reiteration of the importance of what we have denigrated as “useless knowledge” or what I recognize as the Socratic “pursuit of knowledge in itself.” I have always felt that the intellectual gains in terms of greater comprehension, acceptance of certain law-like governing forces of life and death, expansion of interests beyond the savage and brute physical brings about an broadens our province in which we can derive felicity from. Confining oneself to only physical gratification is what I think a severe form of privation. Man is unique because of his intellect and ability to use rationality. This is the Aristotelian function argument in the Nicomachean Ethics that goes: “…if the function of man is activity of soul which follows or implies reason…we state the function of a man to be a certain kind of life implying an activity or actions of the soul [also] implying a rational principle and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these.” Immediately, we can see that there are various classes of things that Aristotle has taken pains to not truncate and I think we should not as well. Here, I see Russell being a crusader of Aristotle’s sense of happiness where virtue (arete) is a life of rational activity in accordance with excellence (NE pp. xii). Why? Why is this “useless knowledge” or the pursuit of “knowledge in itself” important? Russell writes it all too well. 1) It is as Spinoza has written so in ethica that it can relief us from trivial pleasures and channel our contemplation and acts into more productive thought. 2) It can give men other source of self-respect other than some brute assertion of domination and the love of power that is the source of skirmishes and warfare. 3) As I have said, we have a greater expanse of places we can source for felicity.
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