Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 134-135
“I see philosophy as a fairly abstract activity, as concerned mainly with the analysis of criticism and concepts, and of course most usefully of scientific concepts.”
As quoted in Profile of Sir Alfred Ayer (June 1971) by Euro-Television, quoted in A.J. Ayer: A Life (1999), p. 2.
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Alfred Jules Ayer 18
English philosopher 1910–1989Related quotes
Rudolf Carnap
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Source: Meaning And Necessity (1947), p. 7-8 as cited in: Erich Reck (2011) " Carnapian Explication: A Case Study and Critique http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~reck/Reck-C'ian%20Explic.%20(3rd.%20rev.).pdf"
“I don’t confuse abstract philosophical concepts with reality.”
Source: Ancillary Justice (2013), Chapter 4 (p. 54)
Russell L. Ackoff
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Source: 1960s, Management misinformation systems, 1967, p. 149.
Source: The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Chapter Four
John S. Bell
(1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist
"Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists" (1981); published in Quantum Gravity (1981) edited by Christopher Isham, Roger Penrose and Dennis William Sciama, p. 611 - 637
“The concept of space is not abstracted from external sensations.”
Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) German philosopher
Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World
[O] : Introduction, 0.6
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)
Context: When semiotics posits such concepts as 'sign', it does not act like a science; it acts like philosophy when it posits such abstractions as subject, good and evil, truth or revolution. Now, a philosophy is not a science, because its assertions cannot be empirically tested … Philosophical entities exist only insofar as they have been philosophically posited. Outside their philosophical framework, the empirical data that a philosophy organizes lose every possible unity and cohesion.
To walk, to make love, to sleep, to refrain from doing something, to give food to someone else, to eat roast beef on Friday — each is either a physical event or the absence of a physical event, or a relation between two or more physical events. However, each becomes an instance of good, bad, or neutral behavior within a given philosophical framework. Outside such a framework, to eat roast beef is radically different from making love, and making love is always the same sort of activity independent of the legal status of the partners. From a given philosophical point of view, both to eat roast beef on Friday and to make love to x can become instances of 'sin', whereas both to give food to someone and to make love to у can become instances of virtuous action.
Good or bad are theoretical stipulations according to which, by a philosophical decision, many scattered instances of the most different facts or acts become the same thing. It is interesting to remark that also the notions of 'object', 'phenomenon', or 'natural kind', as used by the natural sciences, share the same philosophical nature. This is certainly not the case of specific semiotics or of a human science such as cultural anthropology.