An Introduction to Philosophy
1690
First published in 1890, this clear and patient introduction was written for readers curious about philosophy but uncertain where to begin. Fullerton opens by acknowledging a truth many beginners sense but few textbooks admit: philosophy has no standard path, no universally agreed method, no single question it promises to answer. What philosophy offers instead is a way of questioning rigorously, of examining the foundations of what we think we know. Fullerton systematically explores how philosophy differs from everyday thinking and scientific inquiry, then turns to the great puzzles that have occupied thinkers for centuries: Does an external world truly exist? What is the relationship between what we know and what we experience? How should we reason about knowledge itself? His prose remains remarkably direct, avoiding the obscurity that often mars philosophical writing. The book succeeds because it respects its readers while refusing to simplify the genuine difficulty of these questions. For anyone wanting to understand what philosophy actually is rather than what they assume it to be, this introduction offers a thoughtful entry point into the discipline's oldest and most persistent concerns.
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“There are many subjects upon which, if we hold an opinion at all, we should hold it tentatively, waiting for more light, and retaining a willingness to be enlightened. Many a bitter and fruitless quarrel might be avoided, if more persons found it possible to maintain this philosophical attitude of mind. Philosophy is, after all, reflection, and the reflective man must realize that he is probably as liable to error as are other men. He is not infallible, nor has the limit of human knowledge been attained in his day and generation. He who realizes this will not assume that his neighbor is always wrong, and he will come to have that wide, conscientious tolerance, which is not indifference, but which is at the farthest remove from the zeal of mere bigotry.””
— George Stuart Fullerton
“Men can, it is true, eat and sleep and go through the routine of the day, without giving thought to science or religion or philosophy, but few will defend such an existence. As a matter of fact, those who have attained to some measure of intellectual and moral development do assume, consciously or unconsciously, some rather definite attitude toward life, and this is not independent of their conviction as to what the world is and means.””
— George Stuart Fullerton
“idealist, Hume a skeptic, and Mill what has been called a sensationalist; yet all were empiricists of a sort, and emphasized the necessity of founding our knowledge upon experience.””
— George Stuart Fullerton
“When little is known about things, it does not seem impossible for one man to learn that little.””
— George Stuart Fullerton
“The Stoic tells us of what the world consists; what was the beginning and what will be the end of things; what is the relation of the system of things to God. He develops a physics and a logic as well as a system of ethics. The Epicurean informs us that the world originated in a rain of atoms through space; he examines into the foundations of human knowledge; and he proceeds to make himself comfortable in a world from which he has removed those disturbing elements, the gods. The Skeptic decides that there is no such thing as truth, before he enunciates the dogma that it is not worth while to worry about anything. The philosophy of each school includes a view of the system of things as a whole. The philosopher still regarded the universe of knowledge as his province.””
— George Stuart Fullerton
“Appearances and realities are experiences which are observed to be related in certain ways. That which is not open to observation at all, that of which we have, and can have, no experience, we have no reason to call the reality of anything. We have, in truth, no reason to talk about it at all, for we know nothing whatever about it; and when we do talk about it, it is because we are laboring under a delusion.””
— George Stuart Fullerton
“When we say we see a tree at a distance, we must mean, then, that we know from certain visual experiences which we have that by moving a certain distance we will be able to touch a tree. And what does it mean to move a certain distance? In the last analysis it means to us to have a certain quantity of movement sensations. Thus””
— George Stuart Fullerton
“Now, a small bluish patch of color is not, strictly speaking, a tree; but for us it represents the tree. Suppose that we walk toward the tree. Do we continue to see what we saw before? Of course, we say that we continue to see the same tree; but it is plain that what we immediately perceive, what is given in consciousness, does not remain the same as we move. Our blue patch of color grows larger and larger; it ceases to be blue and faint; at the last it has been replaced by an expanse of vivid green, and we see the tree just before us. During our whole walk we have been seeing the tree. This appears to mean that we have been having a whole series of visual experiences, no two of which were just alike, and each of which was taken as a representative of the tree. Which of these representatives is most like the tree? Is the tree really a faint blue, or is it really a vivid green? Or is it of some intermediate color? Probably””
— George Stuart Fullerton
“Shall I call it a quality of a thing, or shall I call it a sensation? To this I answer: I may call it either the one or the other, according to its setting among other experiences. We””
— George Stuart Fullerton
