The Environmental Philosophy

The environmental philosophy
9/28/14

There can be only one source to our thoughts, that which is sensation and that which derives from experience. The mind is born with no knowledge other than what has been impressed upon it. These impressions become experience as they remain impressed into our mind after the source is no longer apparent. This decaying sense is experience, which forms memory. Experiences and memories form ideas, which link experiences together according to the principle of expediency.

All the thoughts which are expedient are those which increase action in response to a sensation or decrease action away from a sensation.

There are two sources of knowledge, that of deduction and induction. Something is deductively true by definition, a given phenomena has characteristic assigned to itself and not to others. Something is inductively true by observation, a given phenomenon is observed with another phenomenon and we infer a connexion.

True knowledge involves these two principles. Our knowledge begins with experience but ends with verified knowledge.

Utopia by Thomas More

A classic of political philosophy and the book that launched the genres of utopian and dystopian fiction. It is the story of the traveller Raphael Hylothloday (however that's spelled) who tells of an island in South America which has abolished poverty by adopting communism. There is no money as all receive what they need from the government and contribute as much as they are able. From each according to their ability to each according to their need.

The most difficult thing to learn from this book is whether More actually supported communism, it is a guide for the church, or a social satire. The title represents this conundrum, utopia is Greek for both nowhere and a good place. More is actually a character in the story who meets Raphael, and at the conclusion notes how strange utopia is, but how some of its measures should be replicated.