Philosophy Made Simple
Richard H. Popkin
Language: English
Pages: 332
ISBN: 0385425333
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
For almost four decades, Made Simple books have set the standard for continuing education and home study. In answer to the changing needsof today's marketplace, the Made Simple series for the '90s presents a thoroughly up-to-the-minute portfolio of skills, information, and experience, with revised and updated editions of bestselling titles, plus a whole range of new subjects from personal finance to office management to desktop publishing.
B & W illustrations throughout
true, then that assertion may actually be false. Therefore, the argument concludes, clarity and distinctness must be the marks of truth, the distinguishing characteristics by which you can tell the true from the false. Hence the general rule can be formulated, “Whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true.” CLARITY AND DISTINCTNESS But what are these characteristics of clarity and distinctness? In a somewhat baffling section of his Principles of Philosophy, Descartes gave as clear
Descartes insisted, are imperfections and hence cannot be characteristics of a perfect being. This discovery—on the basis of the clear and distinct idea of God—that the perfect being cannot be a deceiver guarantees to Descartes that God is not, and cannot be, the evil demon he had envisaged earlier. If God is not that, then a great deal of the information that had earlier been considered suspect can now be considered reliable. All that is needed is to find out what God, the nondeceiver, wants
into one basket.” This again should be rendered so that the subject and predicate are clearly indentifiable. When we do this, the sentence will read: “All persons who put their eggs in one basket are persons who take great risks.” RULE B: Supply the missing quantifier. When no quantifier is present, supply the missing quantifier. Unless it is clear from the context that “some” is intended, the rule is that “all” is meant. Thus, in a proposition such as “Psychotics are dangerous,” one should
from Heidegger, who was a Nazi, and was expounded in the United States by de Man, who was an anti-Semitic propagandist in Belgium at the beginning of the Second World War, the view may represent a way of justifying a dismissal of all accepted values. Others have suggested that deconstructionism is a new cultural outlook in the postcolonial world, where the values and standards of Western thought are no longer universally accepted or are applicable. Nonetheless, at least in the field of literary
as well. It may soon be the case that a thorough examination of the biological and psychological characteristics of an infant may enable scientists to write his/her autobiography before he/she lives his/her life, although they would probably have to write it in conditional terms, such that if certain things happened in the world around him/her, then he/she would have certain thoughts and feelings, make certain decisions, and perform certain actions. Most of us would prefer to think that this grim