Bertrand Russell's gross misunderstanding of Plato's theory of knowledge and perception
In http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1EiQEwn1lc Plato believed that truth is a conceptual form of knowledge, which is a priori and so not obtained through the senses. Truth obtained through the senses, Plato believed, was changeable. But, presumably because he was an empiricist, Russell essentially treats Plato as an empiricist gone wrong. Russell thus grossly misunderstands Plato, apparently not undestrstanding that, as Leibniz and Kant have stated, there is a difference between necessary or a priori knowledge (which does not change) and the changeable, contingent truths of perception. Because of Russell's apparent confusion between these two forms of knowledge, and denial of a priori knowledge, Russell wastes many words apparently trying to show that the changeable knowledge obtained through the senses can somehow be necessarily true, giving "snow is white" as an example. Anyone who grew up as I did, in what was then sooty smokey Pittsburgh, knows that snow can sometimes be dark gray. Similarly, Russell incorrectly bases his repudiation of a priori knowledge by using the changeable nature of contingent knowledge as an example. I have not checked Russell's treatment of Kant, but because of this ignorance, Russell also apparently treats Kant as an empiricist gpone bad. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
