Talk:Bertrand Russell's philosophical views

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Talk-page for: Bertrand Russell views on philosophy.

Created/split from article Bertrand Russell[edit]

09-Nov-2008: The article "Bertrand Russell" was already 101kb (where 32kb is considered large), so splitting into 3 or 4 parts has reduced each sub-article to 50kb (or less). Bertrand Russell is a subject that is too large for one article: as a very famous man who lived/worked 80 years after college, writing thousands of letters & many books. Also, as a philosopher, his viewpoints will be compared with many other philosophers, causing the article text to explode over 5x times beyond merely stating his viewpoints alone. On 08-Nov-2008, I began the following split:

The sub-articles were copied verbatim from the main-article (approved) text, and now those sections can be greatly trimmed, as short summaries, removing the long quotations which have been moved into the subarticles. Although it can be tempting to condense all information into a single, solid Wikipedia article, the reality is that the man worked 80 years (after college) and changed his viewpoints on many subjects, several times each. When saying "Russell believed...", it is necessary to state the date, before his beliefs changed again. A single Wiki article should not be forced to handle that broad scope of details covering 80 years. It is too stifling when somone wants to add another paragraph to a huge article: there's no room left for improvement. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:44, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • 09-Nov-2008: After splitting the huge article, I reduced only 10k of text about philosophy, so far, as page-size 91kb. If the 3 sections about "Philosophical work" & "Activism" & Selected bibliography were removed entirely, the main-article size would become 42kb. I plan to reduce the main article's list of Selected works (linking to the full list in "Bertrand Russell views on philosophy"), thereby shortening the text by 7kb to page-size 84kb. The main article was simply too huge for easy trimming. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:44, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cosmological or Ontological?[edit]

I don't know enough about the guy to say which is right, but the article is confusing the ontological argument with the cosmological argument (first cause) in this section:

Though he would later question God's existence, he fully accepted the ontological argument during his undergraduate years:

For two or three years...I was a Hegelian. I remember the exact moment during my fourth year [in 1894] when I became one. I had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco, and was going back with it along Trinity Lane, when I suddenly threw it up in the air and exclaimed: "Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!" —Bertrand Russell, Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, pg. 60

This quote has been used by many theologians over the years, such as by Louis Pojman in his Philosophy of Religion, who wish for readers to believe that even a well-known atheist-philosopher supported this particular argument for God's existence. However, elsewhere in his autobiography, Russell also mentions:

About two years later, I became convinced that there is no life after death, but I still believed in God, because the "First Cause" argument appeared to be irrefutable. At the age of eighteen, however, shortly before I went to Cambridge, I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the effect that his father taught him the question "Who made me?" cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question "Who made God?" This led me to abandon the "First Cause" argument, and to become an atheist. —Bertrand Russell, Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, pg. 36

This section was created in 2009, see div, by an IP user. -- prokaryotes (talk) 15:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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External links modified[edit]

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Ethics and positivism[edit]

The entry gives the impression that all logical positivists were emotivists/non-cognitivists. This is not true. Schlick, the leader of the circle, was a cognitivist (of the naturalist variety). Please fix it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.83.60.122 (talk) 18:00, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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