Induction Proofs but Few Axioms.

By
Ah, Russell, how contradictory thou art.

I can't decide if I'm more disappointed in him as a mathematician or a philosopher. A lot like Descartes, I feel like Russell keeps taking things too far. The sun rising question had been raised (lol at the pun) long before Russell brought it up. However, he ties it to the mathematical proof method induction.

Although I read all of the required reading, this is the section I got caught up on. Mainly because it is mathematical. Induction is my personal favorite type of math proof, and he is right in stating that it starts by saying "this statement holds for ___" and then saying "well, because we know that this statement holds for ___, it must hold for ____+1." And that's exactly what he's saying about the sun rising.

At the same time though, I feel like he often strays from topics by getting caught up on semantics. I noticed this with the debate too. I just find myself wishing he would accept some things as axioms and then move on to discussing deeper things in depth. Does that even make sense? I think this is why Russell confuses me so much.

PS I commented on Sophia and Ethan's posts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Honest Reaction to Reading "Honest to God"

By
Originally I said in my last blog post that I liked this book, but I have sort of changed my mind. It is not that I hate it or anything, it is just weird and I don’t really agree with what John Robinson is saying most of the time. I appreciate that he is trying to write something different and new, but my problem is that some of the ideas are just a little too radical for my taste, and I disagree with him a lot. In the seventh and last chapter of the book, Robinson himself acknowledges his radicalness and writes about how he knows that this type of thought on religion is controversial. He goes on to write how all great thinkers were seen as controversial when they first started and says, “Every new religious truth comes as the destroyer of some other god”. To further prove this point, he uses the example of how Socrates was condemned as an atheist for not believing in multiple gods, and while it is true that Socrates was a great philosopher who was not seen as so when he was alive, I ...
Read more

Raphael and a man walk into Eden...

By
I'll just start off by saying Raphael is one of the three named archangels in Scripture we hear the least about, and I thoroughly enjoy just reading and seeing his name pop up. Regardless, I want to touch on Adam's recounting of his own..."birth". Take that with a grain of salt as Adam was not physically born, but rather he simply became. In truth, we should all be able to give a similar account to their first memory of consciousness and fully aware. Adam was created, but he realized he could walk, talk, and speak without first learning. Imagine being able to think clear thoughts in your native language and be a functioning individual right out of the womb. It's an incredible thought, and Adam can give a recall of this like it were yesterday...which it might have been, who knows? Aside from that, Adam could even give an account to Eve's creation. The Bible says nothing pertaining to this matter so this is where Milton does a bit of adlibbing and writes around ...
Read more

Extra blog

By
OK so, honors project! Honestly I really loved it as a whole. I said this already in the video, but I feel like I personally could've done better. I just feel like I didn't have enough time to completely process some questions and be able to give my best responses. I really enjoyed reading the O'Connor piece, which I think was everyone's favorite anyway. I love narrative stories like that, but honestly I'm glad I got to be in the Russell group. I feel like that group was the easiest to argue and answer from, honestly. As a whole, I would love to do a project like this again in later semesters. It was a lot of fun and time FLEW by.
Read more