I wasn’t trying to endorse the whole empiricist philosophy, and neither was Russell, at least in this quote. The rationality lesson it offers is not “radical empiricism good, radical rationalism bad” but more like “a wide base of principles with connections to experience good, a small base of abstract logical principles bad”.
er, I agree my comment was poorly phrased. Instead of accusing him of giving positive credit to radical empiricism I probably should have said, while he’s making a good point warning against the dangers of radical rationalism, he was failing to warn against the dangers of going too far in the direction of empiricism.
That’s why I prefer the quote I followed up with, it is more careful to reject both of these approaches.
I wasn’t trying to endorse the whole empiricist philosophy, and neither was Russell, at least in this quote. The rationality lesson it offers is not “radical empiricism good, radical rationalism bad” but more like “a wide base of principles with connections to experience good, a small base of abstract logical principles bad”.
er, I agree my comment was poorly phrased. Instead of accusing him of giving positive credit to radical empiricism I probably should have said, while he’s making a good point warning against the dangers of radical rationalism, he was failing to warn against the dangers of going too far in the direction of empiricism.
That’s why I prefer the quote I followed up with, it is more careful to reject both of these approaches.
Recognising the weaknesses inherent in human logical deductions?