The Big Philosophical Mistake Made About the Mind

Did early modernist philosophers John Locke, David Hume, Bishop Berkeley, and Thomas Hobbes make a big mistake concerning the mind? And if so, has that mistake played out in significant and harmful ways in our current worldview and culture?

That is the view Mortimer Adler outlined in his brief 1985 book titled Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought — How They Came About, Their Consequences and How to Avoid Them.

Adler was an American philosopher perhaps best known as head of the Board of Editors for Encyclopedia Britannica and co-founder of the Great Books of the Western World program.

As the title indicates, he takes issue with ten philosophical positions, but notes that one mistake follows from another so that they build on each other. These ideas, he says, lead to “repugnant conclusions” but that those conclusions proceed far down the line so that the false premises on which they were built have not been corrected. He suggests:

“Making new starts by substituting true premises for false would have radically changed the picture that modern philosophy presents.”

It comes down to one word

The basic mistake is remarkably simple in the sense that it involves essentially one word, and a very common one at that. “By” is the word. Before explaining how failing to use “that by which” instead of “that which” can make such a difference in our thinking, Adler explains why…