Belacqua Wrote:In order to deal with difficult subjects philosophers have often had to use special vocabulary, and to understand them we have to learn what they mean.Well, yes, but, sometimes, it's just not worth learning those things. What Flat-Earthers mean when they say "mirage" is different from what we mean when we say that, that doesn't mean it's worth learning those things. And, as far as I know, most philosophers today don't consider metaphysics to be a legitimate branch of philosophy, or consider only the part where it interferes with the philosophy of language to be legitimate.
Belacqua Wrote:Christian philosophers like Locke and Kant?In what sense was Kant a "Christian philosopher"? As far as I know, he didn't write anything about religion other than claiming that the Ontological Argument had a hidden premise that existence was a logical predicate. By "Christian philosophers", I meant the Patristic and the Scholastic philosophers.
Belacqua Wrote:I imagine that Lucretius got some things right.Well, he correctly criticized the Roman beliefs that, for instance, the lightnings were a sign of gods to be superstition. And the atomic theory is certainly a lot closer to the truth than the Aristotle's theory of matter is. Though it's not as amazingly accurate as the Boscovich'es version of atomic theory is. He also supposed the living creatures developed from less complicated ones to more complicated ones.
