Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Psychologism

  • Another Transparently Worthless Argument that Justifies the Questioning of Motives

    From my Facebook page, three years ago, today.   Dick Durbin (D-IL): “I’m going to take you back in history for a moment. When that Second Amendment was written, we were talking about the likelihood a person could purchase a muzzle-loading musket.” The implied conclusion, of course, is that the Second Amendment does not protect…

  • Is it Ever Legitimate to Question Motives?

    Absolutely. Suppose someone 'argues' that a photo ID requirement disenfranchises blacks because blacks don't have photo ID. That is a transparently worthless argument, based as it is on a plainly false premise. Once an argument has been refuted it is perfectly legitimate to inquire into the motives of the one giving it. People who give…

  • Another Thought on Psychologism in Logic

    Logic is prescriptive and proscriptive.  Logic prescribes how we ought to think if we would arrive at truth. It also proscribes those ways of thinking that lead to error.  But 'ought' implies 'can.' How we ought to think must be really possible, indeed really possible for us, where what is really possible for us is…

  • Has Any Philosophical Problem Been Solved? The case of psychologism in logic.

    For Cyrus …………… A reader is skeptical of my solubility skepticism. He adduces the problem of psychologism in logic which, he suggests, has been definitively settled in favor of the anti-psychologizers.  Here, then, is a problem that supposedly has been solved. There is progress in philosophy after all. My reader is joined by Robert Spaemann…