Readings
 Philosophy

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Readings in Cognitive Science
Readings in Logic
Readings in Mathematics
Readings in Being and Empowerment
Readings in Computing Milieux
Readings in Computation Theory [Miser Project]
[Abel1976]
Abel, Reuben.  Man is the Measure. A Cordial Invitation to the Central Problems of Philosophy.  Free Press (New York: 1976).  ISBN 0-684-83636-X pbk.
   Content
     Preface to the Paperback Edition
     Preface
     Introduction: The Philosophic Enterprise
     1. Metaphysics: What in the World Is There?
     2. The Basis of Knowledge
     3. Our Knowledge of the External World
     4. The Task of Perception
     5. When Do We Attain Certainty?
     6. Logic, Mathematics, and Metaphysics
     7. Meaning and Naming: How Language Bites on to the World
     8. Truth and Belief
     9. Science, Fact, and Hypotheses
     10. Scientific Explanation
     11. The Social Sciences
     12. Space, Time, and Matter
     13. Is There Purpose in Nature?  The Evidence of Evolution
     14. "Human Nature" and Scientific Method in Anthropology, Psychology and Psychoanalysis
     15. The Study of History: What Is the Past?
     16. Probability, Rationality, and Induction
     17. The Person
     18. Mind and Body
     19. Minds, Machines, Meanings, and Language
     20. Intention, Action, and Free Will
     21. Form in Art
     22. Creativity
     23. Man Is the Measure
     Guide to Further Reading
     Index
   
[Adler1985]
Adler, Mortimer J.  Ten Philosophical Mistakes.  Basic Errors in Modern Thought -- How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them.  Macmillan (New York, London: 1985).  ISBN 0-02-500330-5 pbk.
   Content
     To the Reader
     Prologue: Little Errors in the Beginning
     The Ten Subjects About Which the Mistakes Are Made
     Part One
     1. Consciousness and Its Objects
     2. The Intellect and the Senses
     3. Words and Meanings
     4. Knowledge and Opinion
     5. Moral Values
     Part Two
     6. Happiness and Contentment
     7. Freedom of Choice
     8. Human Nature
     9. Human Society
     10. Human Existence
     Epilogue: Modern Science and Ancient Wisdom
[Austin1975]
Austin, J.L., Urmson, J.O.(ed.)., Sbisà, Marina (ed.).  How To Do Things with Words,  ed.2. Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA: 1962, 1975).  ISBN 0-674-41152-8 pbk.  
   
[Berlinski2000]
Berlinski, David.  The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea That Rules the World.  Harcourt (New York: 2000).  ISBN 0-15-100338-6.
     "This is a work of scholarship.  The author has woven stories, involving imagined people and incidents into the text, the better to enable the reader to enjoy the technical discussions.  Or to endure them.  All of these inventions of the author begin and end with the following symbols:   øøøø " [here some reasonable facsimile of four shaded boxes] cleverly buried on p. iv.
     2001-05-01: This is an amazing book.  I had leafed through it before, passing it over.  Now, at 82nd and Broadway, with an author commenting on the Columbia River and its mythic history in the background, I look again.  Passages grab at my heart.  "Read me.  Read me now."  This copy is autographed.  Why not?  
     I escape the bookstore with but this one treasure and work through it until my Saturday return flight to Seattle.  I have placed as many sticky strips on passages for later review as I once loaded The Art of Computer Programming with bookmarks.  
      I have marveled at Russell's mathematical journey and what we have remembered only lately about the relationship of theory and the world, brought oppositely manifest in the digital computer.  Now here in Advent of the Algorithm is unraveled the tapestry whose threads hold the map of our world, revealed unseen.  When we at last discern the principles of a machine that claims to ponder its own existence, indeed claims to exist at all, what will we uncover? 
     øøøø Stopping for a sandwich in the new dining area of Grand Central Station, my first visit to the track level in over 35 years, I am asked wasn't I here earlier today, asking about the tuna salad sandwich before?  Having once met someone I resemble more than their own brother, I am not entirely surprised, though without my scruffy mustache I neither dread nor long for Jane calling me Ted.   Who traces my steps ahead of me: my evil twin, ejected from a hostile universe to disrupt mine?  
     Long ago, leaving work very late on a Friday night, my pal Lenny and I stopped at a bar in my neighborhood on lower Riverside Drive.  The bartender seemed to be ignoring my efforts to order drinks, but I couldn't make out what he was saying in the noisy, crowded scene.  The owner/bouncer calmly clarified that I had been disruptive earlier that night and I wasn't welcome back here.  Leaving with my prudence intact, I couldn't bring myself to ever return to that bar.  And now I am preceded again.  Welcome back, chum.  Where are we headed, pray tell? øøøø  
   Contents
     Preface: The Digital Bureaucrat [Computers; the digital world]
     Introduction: The Jeweler's Velvet [Calculus; Algorithm]
     Chapter 1: The Marketplace of Schemes [Leibniz]
     Chapter 2: Under the Eye of Doubt [Peano]
     Chapter 3: Bruno the Fastidious [Frege]
     Chapter 4: Cargoload and Crack-Up [Predicate Calculus; Cantor]
     Chapter 5: Hilbert Takes Command [Whitehead, Russell, Zermelo, Fraenkel, Hilbert]
     Chapter 6: Gödel in Vienna [Gödel; Recursion]
     Chapter 7: The Dangerous Discipline [logic]
     Chapter 8: Flight into Abstraction [Church]
     Chapter 9: The Imaginary Machine [Turing]
     Chapter 10: Postscript [Post]
     Chapter 11: The Peacock of Reason [Church's Thesis]
     Chapter 12: Time Against Time [Entropy, simulated worlds]
     Chapter 13: An Artifact of Mind [Shannon; Neural Nets]
     Chapter 14: A World of Many Gods [Complexity; Microbiology and DNA]
     Chapter 15: The Cross of Words [Paley; Randomness and Complexity; Meaning and The Mind of God]
     Epilogue: The Idea of Order at Key West
     Acknowledgments
     Index
 
[Bloom1991]
Plato.  The Republic of Plato.  Translated with notes and interpretive essay by Allan Bloom.  Basic Books (1968, 1991).  ISBN 0-465-06934-7 pbk.  See [Plato-400b]
 
[Durant1953]
Durant, Will.  The Pleasures of Philosophy: A Survey of Human Life and Destiny.  Simon and Schuster (New York: 1929, 1953).  417pp.
     2002-02-14: I was enough taken by readings in the author's The Story of Civilization that I recently tracked down a complete used set of those volumes.  As I began reading from the beginning, I was also reading about social construction and I became aware of the particular viewpoint that shows up in the work, a viewpoint that doesn't find such ready agreement as the books may have encountered in the mid-20th century.  Even so, I find value.  I turned to this volume out of affinity and curiosity about Durant's personal philosophical journey.  I am struck by how much the questions that I might have thought to be recent are apparently not so recent at all.  I wonder if Durant is a bit indignant on some directions that philosophical inquiry has taken.  To comprehend his concerns, I will need to dig deeper than my tentative reading so far.
   Contents
     Confession
     Invitation
               Part One: Introduction
     I. The Lure of Philosophy
               Part Two: Logic and Epistemology
     II. What is Truth?
               Part Three: Metaphysics
     III. Matter, Life and Mind
     IV. Is Man a Machine?
               Part Four: Problems of Morality
     V. Our Changing Morals
     VI. Morality and Immorality
     VII. Love
     VIII. Men and Women
     IX. The Modern Woman
     X. The Breakdown of Marriage
     XI. About Children: A Confession
     XII. The Reconstruction of Character
               Part Five: Esthetics
     XIII. What Is Beauty?
               Part Six: Philosophy of History
     XIV. The Meaning of History: A Symposium
     XV. Is Progress a Delusion?
     XVI. The Destiny of Civilization
               Part Seven: Political Philosophy
     XVII. In Praise of Freedom
     XVIII. Is Democracy a Failure?
     XIX. Aristocracy
     XX. How We Made Utopia
               Part Eight: Religion - A Dialog
     XXI. The Making of Religion
     XXII. From Confucius to Christ
     XXIII. God and Immortality
               Part Nine: Envoi
     XXIV. On Life and Death
     Bibliographical Guide to Editions Used
     Index
          
[Eco1997]
Eco, Umberto.  Kant e l'ornitorinco.  Italian (Kant and the Platypus): Bompiani (Milano: 1997).  ISBN 88-452-2868-1 pbk.
     «Che cosa c'entra Kant con l'ornitorinco?  Nulla».  And there we are.  Likewise, I suppose, with Marco Polo and the Unicorn in chapter 1.  
   Content
     Introduzione
     1. Sull'essere
          1.1 La semiotica e il Qualcosa
          1.2 Un problema innaturale
          1.3 Perché c'è dell'essere?
          1.4 Come si parla dell'essere
          1.5 L'aporia dell'essere aristotelico
          1.6 La duplicazione dell'essere
          1.7 L'interrogazione dei poeti
          1.8 Un modello di conoscenza del mondo
          1.9 Di un possibile dileguamento dell'essere
          1.10 Le Resistenze dell'essere
          1.11 Il senso del continuum
          1.12 Conclusioni in positivo
     2. Kant, Peirce e l'ornitorinco
     3. Tipi cognitivi e contenuto nucleare
     4. L'ornitorinco tra dizionario ed enciclopedia
     5. Note sul riferimento come contratto
     6. Iconismo e ipoicone
     7. Appendice 1: Sulla denotazione
     8. Appendice 2: Croce, l'intuizione e il guazzabuglio
     Note ai capitoli
     Riferimenti bibliografici
     Indice degli autori citati
   
[Hacking2002]
Hacking, Ian.  Historical Ontology.  Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA: 2002).  ISBN 0-674-00616-X.
   Content
     Preface
     1. Historical Ontology [1999]
     2. Five Parables [1982]
     3. Two Kinds of "New Historicism" for Philosophers [1988]
     4. The Archaeology of Michel Foucault [1981]
     5. Michel Foucault's Immature Science [1979]
     6. Making Up People [1983]  
     7. Self-Improvement [1984]
     8. How, Why, When, and Where Did Language Go Public? [1992]
     9. Night Thoughts on Philology [1988]
     10. Was There Ever a Radical Mistranslation? [1981]
     11. Language, Truth, and Reason [1982]
     12. "Style" for Historians and Philosophers [1992]
     13. Leibniz and Descartes: Proof and Eternal Truths [1973]
     14. Wittgenstein as Philosophical Psychologist [1982]
     15. Dreams in Place [2001]
     Works Cited
     Sources
     Index
   
[Hart1996]
Hart, Wilbur Dyre (ed.).  The Philosophy of Mathematics.  Oxford University Press (Oxford: 1996).  ISBN 0-19-875120-6 pbk.  See Mathematics.
   
[Monk1999]  
Monk, Ray.  Bertrand Russell.  The Great Philosophers Series, no. 7.  Phoenix, London; Rutledge, NY (London: 1997, New York: 1999).  ISBN 0-415-92386-7 pbk.  58pp.
     This tiny book amazes me.  Rather than attempt a biography, Monk focuses on one theme of Russell's life: his adventure with mathematics and the drive to reduce all of mathematics to logic, crystallized as a pristine whole of pure beauty -- the ultimate achievement of rational thought.  Retracing the inspiration, successes, and ultimate defeat of that program, interpolating through the stages of Russell's own writings, Monk provides us with a glimpse of the integrity of a life committed to taking a major philosophical inquiry to an unwanted and discouraging conclusion.  In retracing the path of Russell's mathematical passion, Monk provides brief thumbnails of the major concepts that illuminated the route to today's mathematical logic and its foundational construction: one that in itself demonstrates the impossibility of a purely logical system that resolves all of mathematics as a wonder of deductive reasoning.  dh: 2001-01-02.
     Russell's Mathematical Journey is summarized in a separate note.
 
[Perry1997]
Russell, Bertrand.  The Problems of Philosophy.  With a new introduction by John Perry.  Oxford University Press (Oxford: 1912, 1997).  ISBN 0-19-511552-X pbk.  See [Russell1997].
 
[Plato-400a]
Plato.  The Republic.  The complete and unabridged Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) translation.  Random House Vintage Books (New York). Classic Edition, March 1991.  ISBN 0-679-73387-6 pbk.
 
[Plato-400b]
Plato.  The Republic of Plato.  Translated with notes and interpretive essay by Allan Bloom.  Basic Books (1968, 1991).  ISBN 0-465-06934-7 pbk.
     Book 1 - The Quality of Justice, has my notes based on the reading of this section.
   
[Polanyi1975]
Polanyi, Michael., Prosch, Harry.  Meaning.  University of Chicago Press (Chicago: 1975).  ISBN 0-226-67295-6 ppbk.
     2002-11-28: I had previously owned this book yet I was startled to find it on the shelf at a local bookstore.  I have carried around one insight from this book for over twenty years, and seeing it again reminded me that I had left that insight mostly-unexamined in the interval.   What struck me then, and remains clear as day now, is Polanyi's notion of focal versus subordinate awareness.  Whatever the durability of Polanyi's metaphysics and moral philosophy, this fundamentally-linguistic notion is reflected in the operation of modern digital computers, where the concepts of focal and subordinate attention are clearly modeled in the stored-program concept.  I have never left that metaphor very far from reach, but I had let it become indistinct in my thinking.  Reviewing it anew (in chapter 2, pp. 32-34), I see that it has even more powerful application in my research into the fundamental linguistic nature of computing machines.
   Content
     Preface
     Acknowledgments
     1. The Eclipse of Thought
     2. Personal Knowledge
     3. Reconstruction
     4. From Perception to Metaphor
     5. Works of Art
     6. Validity in Art
     7. Visionary Art
     8. The Structure of Myth
     9. Truth in Myths
     10. Acceptance of Religion
     11. Order
     12. Mutual Authority
     13. The Free Society
     Notes
     Bibliographical Note
     Index
   
[Prosch1975]
Polanyi, Michael., Prosch, Harry.  Meaning.  University of Chicago Press (Chicago: 1975).  ISBN 0-226-67295-6 ppbk.  See [Polanyi1975]
   
[Putnam1975]
Putnam, Hilary.  Philosophical Papers, vol. 2: Mind, Language and Reality.  Cambridge University Press (Cambridge: 1975).  ISBN 0-521-29551-3 pbk.
     "... In the first volume of these collected papers I have tried to do a certain amount of philosophy of science from a nonverificationist and nonpositivist point of view, but without developing in detail a theory of meaning alternative to the positivists'.   The papers in the present volume, while written over a number of years and betraying a number of changes of mind, have been largely concerned with the development of such a theory of meaning, a nonverificationist theory of meaning, and with the critique of verificationist philosophy of mind." From the Introduction, p. viii.
     In the Introduction, Putnam titles his themes:  (1) the defects of verificationalism, (2) philosophy of mind, (3) the a priori and the analytic-synthetic distinction, and (4) conventionalism.
     "It does not seem to me important to decide whether science is philosophy or philosophy is science as long as one has a conception of both that makes both essential to a responsible view of the real world and of man's place in it."  Introduction, p. xvii.
   Contents
     Introduction: Philosophy of language and the rest of philosophy
     1. Language and philosophy
     2. The analytic and the synthetic [1962]
     3. Do true assertions correspond to reality? [1960]
     4. Some issues in the theory of grammar [1961]
     5. The 'innateness hypothesis' and explanatory models in linguistics [1967]
     6. How not to talk about meaning [1965]
     7. Review of The concept of a person [60's]
     8. Is semantics possible? [1970]
     9. The refutation of conventionalism [1975]
     10. Reply to Gerald Massey [1974]
     11. Explanation and reference [1973]
     12. The meaning of 'meaning' [1975]
     13. Language and reality [1974]
     14. Philosophy and our mental life [1973]
     15. Dreaming and 'depth grammar' [1962]
     16. Brains and behavior [1963]
     17. Other minds
     18. Minds and machines [1960]
     19. Robots: machines or artificially crated life? [1964]
     20. The mental life of some machines [1967]
     21. The nature of mental states [1967]
     22. Logical positivism and the philosophy of mind [1969]
     Bibliography
     Index
 
[Putnam1979]  
Putnam, Hilary.  Philosophical Papers, vol. 1: Mathematics,  Matter and Method.  ed.2.  Cambridge University Press (Cambridge: 1975, 1979).  ISBN 0-521-29550-5 pbk.
     "The major themes running through these essays, as I look at them today, are the following: (1) Realism, not just with respect to material objects, but also with respect to such 'universals' as physical magnitudes and fields, and with respect to mathematical necessity and mathematical possibility (or equivalently with respect to mathematical objects); (2) the rejection of the idea that any truth is absolutely a priori; (3) the complementary rejection of the idea that 'factual' statements are all and at all times 'empirical', i.e., subject to experimental or observational test; (4) the idea that mathematics is not an a priori science, and an attempt to spell out what its empirical and     quasi-empirical aspects really are, historically and methodologically." -- From the Introduction, p. vii.
     "Since the philosophy of science is, after all, not all of philosophy, it may be well to say a word or two about wider issues.  It will be obvious that I take science seriously and that I regard science as an important part of man's knowledge of reality; but there is a tradition with which I would not wish to be identified, which would say that scientific knowledge is all of man's knowledge.   I do not believe that ethical statements are expressions of scientific knowledge; but neither do I agree that they are not knowledge at all.  The idea that the concepts of truth, falsity, explanation, and even understanding are all concepts which belong exclusively to science seems to me to be a perversion. ...
     "If the importance of science does not lie in its constituting the whole of human knowledge, even less does it lie, in my view, in its technological applications.  Science at the best is a way of coming to know, and hopefully a way of acquiring some reverence for, the wonders of nature.  The philosophical study of science, at the best, has always been a way of coming to understand both some of the nature and some of the limitations of human reason.  These seem to me to be sufficient grounds for taking science and philosophy seriously; they do not justify science worship." -- Introduction pp. xiii  - xiv.
   Contents
     Introduction: Science as approximation to truth
     1. Truth and necessity in mathematics [1964]
     2. The thesis that mathematics is logic [1967]
     3. Mathematics without foundations [1967]
     4. What is mathematical truth?
     5. Philosophy of physics [1965]
     6. An examination of Grünbaum's philosophy of geometry [1963]
     7. A philosopher looks at quantum mechanics [1965]
     8. Discussion: comments on comments on comments: a reply to Margenau and Wigner [1964]
     9. Three-valued logic [1957]
     10. The logic of quantum mechanics [1968]
     11. Time and physical geometry [1967]
     12. Memo on 'conventionalism' [1959]
     13. What theories are not [1962]
     14. Craig's theorem [1965]
     15. It ain't necessarily so [1962]
     16. The 'corroboration' of theories [1974]
     17. 'Degree of confirmation' and inductive logic [1963]
     18. Probability and confirmation [1963]
     19. On properties [1970]
     20. Philosophy of logic [1971]
     Bibliography
     Index
 
[Putnam1983]  
Putnam, Hilary.  Philosophical Papers, vol.3: Realism and Reason.  Cambridge University Press (Cambridge: 1983).  ISBN 0-521-31394-5 pbk.
This volume was not part of the original 2-volume plan, although Putnam provided glimpses of his approach to realism in the earlier works.  The ideas are developed over time and I have recovered the dates of the papers to have a better sense of the progression in Putnam's thinking [dh: 2000-10-11]
     "The essays collected in this volume were written in a period of rethinking and reconsidering of my philosophical position. ... [What strikes me in reviewing some earlier work] is that I was walking on a razor's edge without knowing it.  In the intervening years I have come to see that one cannot come to grips with the real problems in philosophy without being more sensitive to the epistemological position of the philosopher than I was willing to be ... .  Some of the resulting reflections appear in this volume."  From the Introduction, pp. vii-viii.
     Here, Putnam introduces the topics as (1) the problems with the idea of truth as correspondence; (2) Ontological relativity; (3) Disquotational theories of truth and reference; (4) The view of Michael Dummett; and (5) Truth as justification.
   Contents
     Introduction: An overview of the problem
     1. Models and reality [1977]
     2. Equivalence 
     3. Possibility and necessity
     4. Reference and truth
     5. 'Two dogmas' revisited [1976]
     6. There is at least one a priori truth [1977]
     7. Analyticity and apriority: beyond Wittgenstein and Quine [1979]
     8. Computational psychology and interpretation theory [1983]
     9. Reflections on Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking [1979]
     10. Convention: a theme in philosophy [1981]
     11. Philosophers and human understanding [1981]
     12. Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981]
     13. Why reason can't be naturalized [1981]
     14. Quantum mechanics and the observer [1981]
     15. Vagueness and alternative logic
     16. Beyond historicism [1981]
     Bibliography
     Acknowledgments
     Index
 
[Putnam1988]  
Putnam, Hilary.  Representation and Reality.  MIT Press (Cambridge, MA: 1988).  ISBN 0-262-66074-1 (paperback).
     "This book is primarily a criticism of currently fashionable philosophical views held in and around the cognitive science community.  They are the views of philosophers, including some of my former selves, but they are by no means held only by philosophers.  I am dissatisfied with these views, and so this book consists of philosophical criticism, but I am by no means depressed by what some will regard as the 'negative' outcome of my investigations.  As I suggest in the last chapter, it is only by seeing that the currently fashionable views do not work that we can begin to see what the tasks of philosophy might really be."  From the Preface, p. ix.
     "In this book I shall be arguing that the computer analogy, call it the 'computational view of the mind,' or 'functionalism,' or what you will, does not after all answer the question we philosophers (along with many cognitive scientists) want to answer, the question 'What is the nature of mental states?'  I am, thus, as I have done on more than one occasion, criticizing a view I myself earlier advanced."  From the Introduction, p. xi.
   Content
     Preface
     Introduction
     1. Meaning and Mentalism
     2. Meaning, Other People, and the World
     3. Fodor and Block on "Narrow Content"
     4. Are There Such Things as Reference and Truth?
     5. Why Functionalism Didn't Work
     6. Other Forms of Functionalism
     7. A Sketch of an Alternative Picture
     Appendix
     Notes
     Author Index
   
[Quine1960]
Quine, Willard Van Orman.  Word and Object.  MIT Press (Cambridge, MA: 1960).  ISBN 0-262-67001-1 pbk.
     "Language is a social art.  In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when.  Hence there is no justification for collating linguistic meanings, unless in terms of men's dispositions to respond overtly to socially observable stimulations.  An effect of recognizing this limitation is that the enterprise of translation is found to be involved in a certain systematic indeterminacy ... .
     "The indeterminacy of translation invests even the question what objects to construe a term as true of.  Studies of the semantics of reference consequently turn out to make sense only when directed upon substantially our language, from within. ... Clarity also is perhaps gained on what we do when we impute existence, and what considerations may best guide such decisions." -- From the Preface, p.ix.
   Content
     Preface
     I. Language and Truth
     II. Translation and Meaning
     III. The Ontogenesis of Reference
     IV. Vagaries of Reference
     V. Regimentation
     VI. Flight from Intension
     VII. Ontic Decision
     Bibliographical References
     Index
      
[Russell1917]
Russell, Bertrand.  Mysticism and Logic and other Essays.  George Allen & Unwin (1917, 1963 edition); Barnes & Noble Books (Totowa, NJ: 1981).  ISBN 0-389-20135-9 pbk.
     "The title essay of this collection suggests Bertrand Russell's lifelong preoccupation: the disentanglement, with ever-increasing precision, of what is subjective or intellectually cloudy from what is objective or capable of logical demonstration.  The first five essays he calls 'entirely popular': they include two on the revolutionary changes in mathematics in the last hundred years, and one on the value of science in human culture.  The last five, 'somewhat more technical', are concerned with particular problems of philosophy: the ultimate nature of matter, the connection between the sense-data and physics, the problem of causality and different ways of knowing.  In these one can see the Russell method in operation, intellectual analysis dissecting the problem to its bare bones." -- From the back cover.
     "In theoretical Ethics, the position advocated in 'A Free Man's Worship' is not quite identical with that which I hold now: I feel less convinced than I did then of the objectivity of good and evil.  But the general attitude towards life which is suggested in that essay still seems to me, in the main, the one which must be adopted in times of stress and difficulty by those who have no dogmatic religious beliefs, if inward defeat is to be avoided." - From the Preface, p.7.
     "All philosophers, of every school, imagine that causation is one of the fundamental axioms or postulates of science, yet, oddly enough, in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word 'cause' never occurs. ... To me .. it seems that the reason why physics has ceased to look for causes is that, in fact, there are no such things.  The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm." -- From "On the Notion of Cause," p.132.
     "Although the old 'law of causality' is not assumed by science, something which may be called 'the uniformity of nature' is assumed, or rather is accepted on inductive grounds. ... The ground of this principle [of the permanence of a certain law] is simply the inductive ground that it has been found to be true in very many instances; hence the principle cannot be considered certain, but only probably to a degree which cannot be accurately estimated.  ... The uniformity of nature is not known a priori, but is an empirical generalization, like 'all men are mortal'."  From "On the Notion of Cause," pp.142-143.
     "We cannot say that every law which has held hitherto must hold in the future, because past facts which obey one law will also obey others, hitherto indistinguishable but diverging in future.  Hence there must, at every moment, be laws hitherto unbroken which are now broken for the first time.  What science does, in fact, is to select the simplest formula that will fit the facts.  But this, quite obviously, is merely a methodological precept, not a law of Nature."  From "On the Notion of Cause," p.148.
   Content
     Preface
     I. Mysticism and Logic [1914]
     II. The Place of Science in a Liberal Education [1913]
     III. A Free Man's Worship [1903]
     IV. The Study of Mathematics [1907]
     V. Mathematics and the Metaphysicians [1901]
     VI. On Scientific Method in Philosophy [1914]
     VII. The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915]
     VIII. The Relation of Sense-data to Physics [1914]
     IX.  On the Notion of Cause [1912]
     X. Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description. [`1911?]
     Index
   
[Russell1974] 
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.  Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.  Translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness, with the 1922 Introduction by Bertrand Russell.  Routledge (London: 1921, 1922, 1961, 1974).  ISBN 0-415-02825-6 pbk.  See [Wittgenstein1974]
 
[Russell1993]
Russell, Bertrand.  Our Knowledge of the External World.  With a new Introduction by John G. Slater.  Open Court (London: 1914); Routledge (London: 1993).  ISBN 0-415-09605-7 pbk.
 
[Russell1997]  
Russell, Bertrand.  The Problems of Philosophy.  With a new introduction by John Perry.  Oxford University Press (Oxford: 1912, 1997).  ISBN 0-19-511552-X pbk.
   Contents
     Introduction by John Perry (1996)
     Preface (1912)
     Note to Seventeenth Impression (1943)
     1. Appearance and Reality
     2. The Existence of Matter
     3. The Nature of Matter
     4. Idealism
     5. Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description
     6. On Induction
     7. On Our Knowledge of General Principles
     8. How A Priori Knowledge is Possible
     9. The World of Universals
     10. On Our Knowledge of Universals
     11. On Intuitive Knowledge
     12. Truth and Falsehood
     13. Knowledge, Error, and Probable Opinion
     14. The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge
     15. The Value of Philosophy
     Bibliographical Note
     Suggested Readings (1997)
     Index
[Sbisà1975]
Austin, J.L., Urmson, J.O.(ed.)., Sbisà, Marina (ed.).  How To Do Things with Words,  ed.2. Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA: 1962, 1975).  ISBN 0-674-41152-8 pbk.  See [Austin1975]
   
[Slater1993]
Russell, Bertrand.  Our Knowledge of the External World.  With a new Introduction by John G. Slater.  Open Court (London: 1914); Routledge (London: 1993).  ISBN 0-415-09605-7 pbk.  See [Russell1993]
 
[Smith1996]  
Smith, Brian Cantwell.  On the Origin of Objects.  MIT Press (Cambridge, MA: 1996).  ISBN 0-262-69209-0 pbk.
   Contents
     Preface
     Introduction
     Part I.  Analysis
          1. Computation
          2. Irreduction
          3. Realism
          4. Particularity
          5. physics
     Part II. Construction
          6. Flex & slop
          7. Registration - I
          8. Registration - II
          9. Middle distance
          10. Transition
          11. Metaphysics
          12. Conclusion
     Indexes
          Sections
          Figures
          Sidebars
          Topics
          Names
          References
 
[Tymoczko1998]  
Tymoczko, Thomas (ed.).  New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics: An Anthology.  ed. 2.  Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ: 1986, 1998).  ISBN 0-691-03498-2 pbk.  See the main entry under Mathematics.
   
[Umson1975]
Austin, J.L., Urmson, J.O.(ed.)., Sbisà, Marina (ed.).  How To Do Things with Words,  ed.2. Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA: 1962, 1975).  ISBN 0-674-41152-8 pbk.  See [Austin1975]
   
[Williams1999]  
Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen.  Plato.  The Invention of Philosophy.  The Great Philosophers Series, no. 23.  Phoenix, London; Rutledge, NY (London: 1997, New York: 1999).  ISBN 0-415-92395-6 pbk.  57pp.
     I am not so taken by this little book in the same way that I have been by the one on Bertrand Russell [Monk1999].  My hesitation is about being found cheating, relying on what might be called the Reader's Digest take on the invention of philosophy.   It is here I am confronted by myself as a snob as well as a dilettante.  
     The value of this little book is its use in sorting out the range of Plato's interests and discussions so that I can focus my readings and search on the elements that interest me: the development of idealism and the relationship of language, memory, and mathematics to our conception of the world.  There is far more of importance to Plato, and they are not entirely separate.  Williams' sketch provides a way to focus my own explorations and also remain aware of the greater reach of Plato's philosophical embrace.  dh: 2001-02-25.
     My notes on Plato's Idealistic Journey are here.
   Content
     The Invention of Philosophy [untitled introduction]
     Plato's Development
     The Socratic Dialogs
     Virtue Is Not Yet Knowledge
     The Ethical Challenge
     Out of the Cave
     Plato's Philosophy and the Denial of Life
     The Dialogues
     Notes
     Bibliography
          1. General Works
          2. Other Works Cited in the Notes
 
[Wittgenstein1974]  
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.  Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.  Translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness, with the 1922 Introduction by Bertrand Russell.  Routledge (London: 1921, 1922, 1961, 1974).  ISBN 0-415-02825-6 pbk.
   Contents
     Translators' Preface (1974)
     Introduction by Bertrand Russell (1922)
     Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Preface
     Translation
          1. The world is all that is the case.
          2. What is the case--a fact--is the existence of the state of affairs.
          3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
          4. A thought is a proposition with a sense.
          5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
          6. The general form of a truth-function is [p-bar, x-bar, N(x-bar)].  This is the general form of a proposition.
          7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
     Index (1961, 1974)
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