Seeing the “story” of ideas….
Ideas are created,
critiqued, fixed,
built-on, and/or
rejected.
Empiricism Part II: David Hume
1711-1776
Pushing Philosophy to a
Point of Crisis
Challenging Leibniz
Analytic propositions (a
priori):
– Negation is contradiction.
– True by definition.
– Necessarily true.
Hume: Okay, but these are
tautologies that tell us
NOTHING about the world.
Hume: These tell us only
about the relations of ideas.
Bill will win the election or he will
not win the election.
If Bush was president for at least
four days, then he was president
for more than three days.
2+2= ½(8) & (2x2) & (68-64) & 22
Challenging Locke
Synthetic propositions
(a posteriori).
– Derived from “sense
data” and/or
“sensations” that cause
awareness & ideas.
– Not necessarily true
(can be false).
Hmmmm….but
Substance X causes some
experience of sense data Y?
Where’s the cause?
First X, then Y….so always X,
then Y?
Does Y necessarily have to
follow X?
Causality vs. Seriality.
Psychological expectation
vs. fact.
Continuing the Challenge on Locke’s
Primary & Secondary Qualities
If causation is suspect, how
can we say some
unidentifiable “substance”
causes experience of sense
data?
There may be a
“commonsense” experience
of causation, but that doesn’t
mean there is justification for
the belief causation.
So if we can’t say our sense
data experience is caused by
substance, how can we say
we have knowledge of the
world?
Challenging Berkeley
Hume: Analytic propositions
have meaning (but are
philosophically trivial).
Hume: Synthetic propositions
have meaning if they can be
traced to sense data but are
suspect (merely reports of
psychological states?)
Hume: Propositions that are
neither analytic nor synthetic
are “nonsense.”
• God exists.
Analytic?
Synthetic?
Challenging Descartes
“I think; therefore, I am.”
What are “you” thinking about if you cut out all
sense data and all emotions and ideas? What is the
“self” that thinks?
Hume’s Accomplishment
Belief in self, world, God, and causality are
unfounded.
Human life may be incompatible with rationality.
At this point….
Which theory of
knowledge, rationalism or
empiricism, best captures
the phenomena of
knowing and knowledge?
Are the “problem of
substance” and the
“problem of self” and the
“problem of causality”
real problems?
Which theory of
knowledge seems to offer
the best prospects for rich
experiences?
Do Descartes, Locke,
Berkeley, and Hume help
or confuse us?
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The teacher is a midwife
of ideas who helps
students bring to birth the
ideas latent within their
minds.
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The mind is like a rubber
band that encompasses
the information that it
acquires from the world.
Hence, the job of a
teacher is to stretch
students’ minds so they
can accommodate larger
amounts of data.
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The students’ minds
contain seeds of
understanding. The
teacher is merely a
gardner who prepares the
soil and provides it with
nourishment so that the
seeds can grow and
produce fruit.
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The teacher is a
lamplighter who
illuminates the students’
minds so that the truth
will shine forth.
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The mind is like a copy
machine that reproduces
images of the data it has
scanned from the external
world.
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The teacher is a tour guide
who leads the students
into new and unfamiliar
territory.
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The mind is like a window
that provides access to
the outside world.
Ignorance, prejudice, and
dogmatism are like a haze
or obstacles that the
teacher must remove in
order for the light of truth
to shine through the
window of the intellect.
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The mind is like a computer. Its capabilities are only as
good as the data it receives.
Rationalist or Empiricist?
The mind is like a
computer. Without some
built-in internal content
such as logic circuits and
an operating system, it is
incapable of processing
external data.
Rationalism vs. Empiricism
What does it mean to be a
“moral” person?
Does morality exist
independent of human
thought or emotion?
How do we learn to be moral?
Why do different cultures
seem to share basic moral
principles—e.g. infanticide is
wrong, lying is wrong, etc.