An Introduction to PhilosophyMacmillan, 1924 - 399 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Absolute accept actions acts Agnosticism arguments Aristotle assert assumption belief body and mind Categorical Imperative Catholic Encyclopedia causality causes character conception consciousness criticism deny depends Descartes determined distinct doctrine Double Aspect Theory Dualism Epiphenomenalism epistemology Ethics evolution exist experience explain fact false freedom function fundamental Hedonism Hegel human ical Idealism ideas individual intellect Introduction to Philosophy judgments Kant Kantian Külpe logical Materialism materialistic matter means Mechanism mechanistic mental metaphysical method mind-substance modern Monism moral Naïve Realism nature object Ollé-Laprune pantheism Paulsen perceive perception phenomena philos physical position possess possible Pragmatism pragmatist Present Philosophical Tendencies principles priori Problems of Philosophy prove psychical psychology purely question Realism reality reason relation religion result scientific scientists sensations sense soul spiritual substance teleology Theories of Knowledge things thinkers thought tion true truth unity universe validity vitalist whole
Popular passages
Page 278 - I must again repeat what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent's own happiness but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.
Page 59 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process...
Page 59 - Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem. ' How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness ? ' The chasm between...
Page 29 - By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself : in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.
Page 380 - While the world lasts, will Aristotle's doctrine on these matters last, for he is the oracle of nature and of truth. While we are men, we cannot help, to a great extent, being Aristotelians, for the great Master does but analyze the thoughts, feelings, views, and opinions of human kind.
Page 11 - ... for completeness and finality are out of the question. The very nature of experience as an ongoing, changing process forbids. In a less rigid sense, they apply to science rather than to philosophy. For obviously it is to mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, history, etc. that we must go, not to philosophy, to find out the facts of the world. It is for the sciences to say what generalizations are tenable about the world and what they specifically are. But when we ask what sort...
Page 168 - The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.
Page 133 - ... an effort to give voice to this presupposition. If there is anything true in a philosophy of evolution, then there is something more than mere physical causation, mere mechanism in the world ; for how there can be history in the world, no causal explanation, no appeal to mechanism as such, can ever directly express. In so far as you find mechanism only in the world, you find neither growth nor decay ; you find no story at all.
Page 317 - out of time.' It is a Thought, at each moment different from that of the last moment, but appropriative of the latter, together with all that the latter called its own.
Page 16 - Philosophy, taken as something distinct from science or from practical affairs, follows no method peculiar to itself. All our thinking to-day has evolved gradually out of primitive human thought, and the only really important changes that have come over its manner (as distinguished from the matters in which it believes) are a greater hesitancy in asserting its convictions, and the habit of seeking verification 4 for them whenever it can.