O'Reilly:General disclaimer

From O'Reilly

Disclaimer

This page is written (mostly) by Randall C. O'Reilly, and reflects my own personal views. I am not a philosopher and have not really studied philosophy formally much at all (a bit in college). So, probably professional philosophers have covered a lot of this territory before, and decided it is provably wrong or whatever. However, I don't believe much in such proofs, and I subscribe to a very pragmatic, scientific approach: whatever works and remains true for as many people over as long a time as possible is what we seek. This system of thought works for me.

I have undoubtedly borrowed many ideas from others, and where I explicitly remember doing so, I have tried to remember to give appropriate citations. However, many of these ideas creep in surreptitiously and my explicit memory is not so great, so I apologize for any oversights, and please add appropriate references or links where possible! Certainly, many of these ideas have been discussed and shaped in conversations with Yuko -- she may want to do her own wiki so it won't look so much like I'm just stealing all her good ideas!

For clarity and brevity, I typically omit the many qualifications that should accompany terms like fact, certainty, truth, etc -- see those links for appropriate qualifications.