- Gettier Problems
The best example I know of a simple Gettier problem was formulated by Bertrand Russell in Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), predating Edmund Gettier’s 1963 paper.
- Russell's Teapot
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be r…
- Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), British mathematician and philosopher, co-author with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica. In Process and Reality (1929) he built a metaphysics in which the basic units of the world are "actual occ…
- Certainty
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others (1933), often paraphrased as "The foolish are so certain and the…
- Neutral Monism
The lineage. Benedict de Spinoza's single substance, with thought and extension as two of its attributes, is the ancestor. Ernst Mach held that the world is made of "elements" (colours, pressures, sounds) which are physical when considered…
- Agnosticism
Bertrand Russell, "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?" (1947)
- Hard Atheism
Given common definitions of God, the existence of such an entity is inherently unfalsifiable. While I do not accept the existence of such an entity (that is, I am an atheist), I cannot know with certainty that such a being does not exist.…
- Humanism
The company. The label has been worn by Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Kurt Vonnegut, who was honorary president of the American Humanist Association and said at Isaac Asimov's memorial that "Isaac is up in heaven now", which brought the ho…
- A History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell (1945)
- The Portable Atheist
Subtitled Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, this is Hitchens' anthology of unbelief: Lucretius, Omar Khayyam, Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, Shelley, Mill, Marx, George Eliot, Darwin, Twain, Freud, Bertrand Russell, Einstein, Orwell, Carl Sa…
- The Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell (1912)
- Why I Am Not a Christian
Bertrand Russell (1957; title lecture 1927)
- Quotes I like
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” — Bertrand Russell
