RandomPoster
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- May 22, 2017
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Here are my three favorite philosophers.
1. Francis Bacon. To begin with, many are turned off by his writing style, except in all fairness, he lived in 17th century England. The "father of empiricism" seems to have fallen out of favor a bit these days, except I believe he deserves enormous credit for stressing the importance of using direct observations to inductively test the conclusions of our extremely fallible human deductions. In my opinion, his most important message is that he taught us that caution and careful examination of the evidence, rather than bold and audacious speculation, very often leads to our greatest progress even if it does sometimes us take a bit longer to get there. In the end, the Scientific Revolution he spawned actually progressed at a shockingly rapid pace.
2. Rudolf Carnap. I believe Logical Positivism, or Logical Empiricism as many prefer it to be called, is very misunderstood as a philosophical movement. I see it as an attempt to spread the message that calm, dispassionate, analytical thinking should not be limited to only mathematics and the hard, physical sciences and that we should always look for ways to apply rigorous logical analysis wherever we can in life. Rudolf Carnap wrote in a very straightforward, no-nonsense style and he spent his life working to spread the message of how the virtues of calm, dispassionate analytical thinking are beneficial in all aspects of life. He espoused a message that it is important that we do our best to receive communication in a manner of tolerance, and that it is equally important that we do our best to communicate our own thoughts in the most clear, understandable manner in which we are capable.
3. David Stove. I don't usually like philosophers who's best work is of a critical nature, except I must admit a guilty pleasure when reading David Stove's scathing rebukes of irrationalism. "Scientific Irrationalism : Origins of a Postmodern Cult" is one of my favorite books ever. It's lack of popularity has resulted in hard copies of the book being rather expensive, except I fortunately found the Kindle version to be much more affordable. I very highly recommend it to anyone who may be interested. "Against the Idols of the Age" is another one of my favorites.
Footnote: One minor thing I would like to point out is that a few people appear to have misconceptions regarding a particular article of David Stove's titled "Darwinian Fairytales", I can only assume from not having actually read it. David Stove was not a Creationist, he was actually agnostic. He was in fact a huge admirer of Charles Darwin and took no issue with Evolutionary Theory itself. He merely took issue with attempts to apply Darwin's theories to human society.
I was only able to find videos of the first two philosophers on my list.
Francis Bacon
Rudolf Carnap
Please feel free to list your three favorite philosophers and what it is about them that you find most interesting.
1. Francis Bacon. To begin with, many are turned off by his writing style, except in all fairness, he lived in 17th century England. The "father of empiricism" seems to have fallen out of favor a bit these days, except I believe he deserves enormous credit for stressing the importance of using direct observations to inductively test the conclusions of our extremely fallible human deductions. In my opinion, his most important message is that he taught us that caution and careful examination of the evidence, rather than bold and audacious speculation, very often leads to our greatest progress even if it does sometimes us take a bit longer to get there. In the end, the Scientific Revolution he spawned actually progressed at a shockingly rapid pace.
2. Rudolf Carnap. I believe Logical Positivism, or Logical Empiricism as many prefer it to be called, is very misunderstood as a philosophical movement. I see it as an attempt to spread the message that calm, dispassionate, analytical thinking should not be limited to only mathematics and the hard, physical sciences and that we should always look for ways to apply rigorous logical analysis wherever we can in life. Rudolf Carnap wrote in a very straightforward, no-nonsense style and he spent his life working to spread the message of how the virtues of calm, dispassionate analytical thinking are beneficial in all aspects of life. He espoused a message that it is important that we do our best to receive communication in a manner of tolerance, and that it is equally important that we do our best to communicate our own thoughts in the most clear, understandable manner in which we are capable.
3. David Stove. I don't usually like philosophers who's best work is of a critical nature, except I must admit a guilty pleasure when reading David Stove's scathing rebukes of irrationalism. "Scientific Irrationalism : Origins of a Postmodern Cult" is one of my favorite books ever. It's lack of popularity has resulted in hard copies of the book being rather expensive, except I fortunately found the Kindle version to be much more affordable. I very highly recommend it to anyone who may be interested. "Against the Idols of the Age" is another one of my favorites.
Footnote: One minor thing I would like to point out is that a few people appear to have misconceptions regarding a particular article of David Stove's titled "Darwinian Fairytales", I can only assume from not having actually read it. David Stove was not a Creationist, he was actually agnostic. He was in fact a huge admirer of Charles Darwin and took no issue with Evolutionary Theory itself. He merely took issue with attempts to apply Darwin's theories to human society.
I was only able to find videos of the first two philosophers on my list.
Francis Bacon
Rudolf Carnap
Please feel free to list your three favorite philosophers and what it is about them that you find most interesting.
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