Analysis Of The Ten Philosophical Mistakes By Mortimer J. Adler

Western philosophy has been for the most part in serious error for the last three centuries. The book the Ten Philosophical Mistakes by Mortimer J. Adler sets out to explain where most of modern philosophical mistakes where made by the philosophers of the seventeenth century. Adler was considered to be one of the most well spoken philosophers of the 20th century and he proves that, throughout his book, when he disputes the flawed reasoning’s and introduces us to the correct reasoning’s. Adler was referred to as “the philosopher for the everyman”, because he recognized the massive importance of correct philosophical ideas in everyday life and tried to state the complex idea in terms that someone who is not a philosophy major can easily understand. Although he puts things in simple to understand ways he still uses precise words. When Adler gives examples he uses the most down to earth everyday examples so readers can relate to

and understand it.
Mortimer Adler starts out the book quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas saying that the little errors in the beginning philosophy lead to serious consequences in the end. Adler goes on to say that a more accurate title for the book would have been "Ten Subjects About Which Philosophical Mistakes Are Made" because they are not so much mistakes but more of errors made along the way. The book teaches us about each of the ten mistakes and explains them to us, giving us corrected information.
Even though we call them little errors it does not make them any less significant. Adler explains that even though it is referred to as little, they are extremely important, “ they are extremely simple mistakes, capable of being stated in a single sentence or two.” These errors have a number of related points and aspects, which can lead individuals to false conclusions. It is important to understand the mistakes made so we do not base life conclusions on false information.
The first philosophical mistake that Mortimer Adler discusses are referred to as the “Consciousness and Its Objects.” This first mistake is based upon Locke's view of consciousness, which states, “all ideas are that which we apprehend when we are conscious of anything.” Locke stated that all ideas in a persons mind are subjective and private. Locke's uses the word “thinking” for all the acts of the mind, and uses the word “idea” for all the objects of the mind when it is thinking, or for all the contents of consciousness when we are conscious. Locke also implies that each of us have our own ideas in our mind and in that mind we have ideas of which only we are conscious of. “The ideas in my mind are my ideas; the ideas in yours are yours; and the ideas in anyone’s mind are subjective: they belong to that one person and to no one else. Every person has ideas of his own.” Only one’s own ideas are, according to Locke, the objects of that person’s awareness when he or she is conscious. No one can be conscious of another person’s ideas. To concede that another individual also has ideas must always result from an act of inference, based on what others say and do. While Adler explains that by saying that our bodily feelings, including our emotions or passions, are private because they are something only ourselves, alone experience, he disputes Locke’s explanation by saying, “that by which we apprehend whatever it is that we do apprehend.” Adler is saying that we do gain some ideas through knowledge and understanding, whether it is through thought, experience or the sense. Those ideas we learned would be therefore are public. From this it also follows that we never experience our own ideas; we experience perceived objects but never the perceptions by which we perceive them.
A simple example of this would be a if someone has a headache, that is something they experience alone. But if you are and your friends go for pizza and are sitting at the table looking at the pizza pie, you and your friend are perceptually apprehending the same objects. These are not our own ideas. If the table is move the table a little, or the waiter cuts the pie into slices, you are both sharing the same experience. When you taste the pizza or have a headache this would be a private experience.
Therefore according to Adler it is necessary to introduce a distinction between ideas of perceptual experience and bodily feelings, emotions, and sensations. Whatever can be properly called an idea has an object. The ideas of perceptual experience, memories, imaginations, and concepts or thoughts are ideas in this sense of the world, but bodily feelings, emotions, and sensations are not because we experience them directly. Locke fails to observe this distinction. He uses the word “idea” for all the contents of consciousness.
The second philosophical mistake that Adler discusses are known as “The Intellect and the Senses.” This mistake goes along with the previous error. This error is due to the fact that philosophers failed to distinguish between perceptual thoughts and conceptual thoughts in other words between sensing knowledge and thinking about it. The view of Dualism, by Kant and Hagel, and previously by Plato and Descartes, go too far in their separation of the two realms. The view of Dualism is that the mind and body are radically different kinds of things. The two realms being the sensible, or body, and the intelligible, or mind, realms. The view of monism, taken without qualification by Hobbes, Berkeley, and Hume, can be stated simply as all is one, that there are no fundamental divisions.
Mortimer Adler corrects this by explaining that these two extreme views can be avoided by acknowledging first, that the intellect depends upon senses to experience things and second, that, while something’s we learn other things we learn through experience and our sense. This provides us with objects that, with rare exceptions, are never purely sensible. For the most part, we not only perceive but also understand.
We perceive things through our senses as one thing or another. We can tell the difference between a cat and a dog, a car and a motorcycle, or a flower and a tree. The particularized is an intelligible as well as a sensible object. Through intelligence and the sense we not only know the difference between a cat and a dog but you know the difference between someone else’s dog and your own dog. Sense and intellect go hand in hand, they aren’t the same but they aren’t completely different.
The third philosophical mistake that Adler discusses are known as “Words and Meaning”.

This error has to do with the philosophy of language. The error has to due with the fact that ideas are meanings and the failure to realize that we can acquire meanings from words. Locke argued that words are useless in communicating ideas and Hobbes and Russell stated that words could only be spoken about real things. Adler explains that the correct view consists in seeing that our ideas are the formal signs we can never come to understand. They enable us to apprehend all the objects we do apprehend. Adler says that we need stop wasting time trying to figure out why we call things certain things, but instead spend time figuring out how to use words. “Don’t look for the meaning; look for the use.” Adler unlike Kant and Hagel looks past why we use words because he says we can use a word without first understanding its meaning. He concludes with saying that language does not control thought, as other philosophers appear to believe. It is the other way

around.