Transcript CHAPTER 10: WHAT IS SOCIAL JUSTICE? Creating a Just State

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David Hume
 British Empiricism – a belief system that all knowledge is
based on ideas developed from sense data or sensory
experience
 David Hume(1711-1776) (Treatise on Human
Understanding, 1739)
3 Minute Philosophy: David Hume
Empiricist Epistemology
 Epistemology
 The study of knowledge (how and what we can know)
 Knowledge = true beliefs, thoughts, propositions
 Truth = a belief or proposition is said to be true if it corresponds to
reality

Ex: The proposition “this sentence has 5 words” is true if it actually has 5
words.
 Empiricist epistemology:
 knowledge consists of ideas that are true (correspond to reality)
 Ideas are objects of cognition
 All ideas/objects of cognition are derived from either sensation or
reflection
 In order for an idea to be true, it must ultimately have as its source
sensory experience with sense date and it must be verified/checked
by experience
 All knowledge begins with experience and is limited to experience
Positivism
 Also known as logical positivism and/or scientific positivism
 Positivism: a radical 20th century empiricist position that
maintains that propositions are meaningful if and only if they
are:
 Analytically true, i.e., logically true, true by definition
 A triangle is a three sided object with internal angles that add up
to 180 degrees
 Synthetically true, i.e., true empirically, factually verifiable
 This sentence has 5 words. The chalk is white
 Any claims that are not true analytically or factually are
meaningless
 Hume’s Fork: propositions are true if they are about
 Relations of ideas: “analytic a priori” claims
 Matters of fact: “synthetic a posteriori” claims
Representational Realism
 Epistemological position that all knowledge is based on ideas
developed from sense data from sensory experience of the
world

1st
The world
Presents itself
Expression
2nd
Body
Sensation
Impression
3rd
4th
Mind
Knowledge
Cognition
Idea
True claim/belief
Objective TRUTH = Accurate
representation of objects in reality
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PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES
 Primary qualities “resemble” (or
“reside in”) an object even when
we are not perceiving the object





Solidity
Extension
Figure (shape)
Motion or rest
Number
 Objective knowledge
 Secondary qualities do not
“resemble” (or “reside in”) an
object, but are “powers” of objects
to produce sensations in our minds




Colors
Sounds
Tastes
Odors
 Subjective knowledge
The Fate of Empiricism
 With the success of Newtonian physics and
Locke’s account of an empiricist metaphysics
and epistemology
 Empiricism seemed to clearly have the upper hand
against rationalism
 Hume comes along and shows that there is
something deeply troubling about empiricism
 It leads to a radical kind of skepticism
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“HUME’S FORK”: RELATIONS OF IDEAS AND
MATTERS OF FACT
 Relations of Ideas
 Matters of Fact
 Mathematical statements, such as
 Involve sense experience
those found in geometry, algebra, and
 It is possible to logically contradict a
arithmetic
matter of fact
 Tautologies, or logical truths, such as
 Hume believes that if a claim of
“A dog is a dog”
empirical knowledge cannot be
 Known by reason
reduced to a relation of ideas or a
matter of fact, it should be discarded
 To deny them is to contradict oneself;
as knowledge. He challenges:
therefore, they give us absolute
 Any necessary connection between cause
certainty
and effect
 But they have no empirical content
 The notion of material substance


The notion of mental substance (“soul”)
Inductive reasoning
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Relations of Ideas
vs
Matters of Fact
 Human knowledge falls into two kinds for Hume
 Relations of Ideas– all a priori knowledge
 Matters of Fact– all empirical knowledge
 To decide which is which you apply the following
rule
 If the negation of the proposition in question is a
contradiction then it is a Relation of Ideas
 If not, a Matter of Fact
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RoI & MoF
 Relations of Ideas
 All bachelors are unmarried
 All dogs have doggie
anatomies and physiologies
 All apples have colored skin
with flesh surrounding a core
of seeds
 All triangles have three sides
A2+B2=C2
 For any sentence S, either S
is true or S is false
 S can’t be true and also not
true at the same time
 Matters of Fact
 78% of bachelors are
messy
 Whether a dog has short
legs and a big bark
 Whether an apple is red or
green
 Whether a triangle is 3x3x3
or 4x4x4
 Subway fare is $2.00
 The truth or falsity of S is
dependent upon the
circumstances
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RoI
 Relations of ideas consists of two parts
 Ideas
 And the relations between them
 E.g. my ideas BACHELOR and UNMARRIED MALE
are related in such a way as to make it impossible
for there to be a married bachelor
 This is true for all relations of ideas
 Their truth is independent of experience in the
sense that one does not need to go and check to
see if they are true
 Mathematics and logic are purely formal systems
of inter-related definitions
 Numbers do not need to exist to make it true that
2+2-4
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MoF
 Matters of Fact on the other hand have their
truth determined by the way that the world
happens to be
 Hume argues that the idea of cause and effect
is a MoF because it fails to meet the two criteria
of something that is a priori
 To deny it is not a contradiction
 We cannot, without experience, predict what the
effect of any given cause will be
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Analytic apriori
vs. Synthetic aposteriori
 Analytic apriori
 Snythetic aposteriori
 Relations of Ideas
 Matters of Fact
 Analytic apriori
 Synthetic aposteriori
 Deduction
 Induction
 True by definition
 Truth is contingent
 Absolutely certain
 Probability
(universally and
necessarily)
Summary of the Argument so Far
 All human knowledge is either learned from experience
(matters of fact) or from reason (relation of ideas)
 MoF are composed of ideas copied from impressions
and are true or false depending on the kind of
experience we have
 ‘dogs can fly’ vs. ‘dogs don’t like cats’
 RoI are true or false depending on the relations that hold
between the ideas
 ‘triangles are four-sided objects’ vs. ‘triangles have three
sides’
 We can tell the difference between these by seeing
what happens when we negate the sentence in
question
 If it is a contradiction it is a RoI, if not a MoF
The Argument III
 All of our ideas must come from one of these two
sources
 One of the most important ideas we have is the
idea of causation
 The idea of a necessary connection between
events
 Same cause=same effect EVERY TIME
 All of science is based on this idea
 All of our common sense knowledge about the
world based on this idea
The Problem of Causality
 So, where does the concept of causality come
from?
 Is it an innate idea? No
 Is it an idea that is necessitated by and/or related
to other ideas? That is, is it derived from some
other idea, such as thing, self, substance, God,
etc.? No
 Is it an idea that can be traced back to an
experience of a primary quality in the world? NO
Causality ≠ a relation of ideas
 Causality is not an RoI
 To deny any causal relation is not a
contradiction
 It is always possible to imagine something else
happening
 But we can’t imagine a square circle
 We have to go and check
 We can’t tell what causes what without
experience
Causality ≠ MoF
 So, it must be a MoF
 That means that the idea of necessary connection
must be traceable back to an impression
 Otherwise it is a meaningless idea
 But when we look at any example of A causing B
all we see are separate events
 We see A happen (the pool stick hits the ball)
 Then we see B happen (the second ball moves)
Causality ≠ MoF (#2)
 We do not see anything that connects the two
events
 There is nothing that we can point to and say that
it is the thing that makes the second event the
necessary consequence of the first event
 So, Hume concludes, we have no rational
reason (i.e. based on our experience or reason)
to believe that the laws of physics are necessary
and universal
Causal claims are inductively
fallacious
 All inductive knowledge is based on the fallacy
of assuming that the future will resemble the past
 But just because something has happened for a
long time is no guarantee that it will always
happen
 So, the sun may have risen everyday so far, but
who can say with certainty that it will rise
tomorrow?
 Just like problem of black swans
Solution: Causality is the
product of habit
 So where does the idea come from?
 It comes from ‘a habit of expectation’
 We see A happen
 We see B happen right after
 We see A happen
 We see B happen right after
 This is repeated
 Soon when we see A happen we come to expect
that B will happen right after
Causality = a projection of
the Mind
 It is the subjective feeling of expectation that we
mistakenly ‘project’ out onto the events that we
observe
 We cannot know if there is anything more to the
word than this
 This is an epistemological claim: we can’t know if
there is a necessary connection between events
 NOT a metaphysical claim: There is no necessary
connection between events
Pavlov & Classical Conditioning
 We have been trained by nature to expect
certain events upon seeing certain other events
 Just like Pavlov’s dog
 You ring the bell and bring some food
 The dog salivates
 Repeat
 Soon the dog salivates when hearing the bell
whether or not food comes
 The dog has come to expect ‘bell then food’
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Classical Conditioning II
 Now if the dog were to reason to itself as follows,
 Every time the bell has rang food has appeared
 This has happened everyday of my existence,
every since I was a puppy
 I can infer from this that the next time the bell rings,
food will appear
 We could easily see that the dog has made a
mistake
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Classical Conditioning III
 There is no necessary connection between bell
ringing and food appearing in nature
 How can we tell that this is not the way nature is in
reality?
 Nature is regular (so was the bell ringing/food
bringing relationship)
 Things so far have happened regularly and
predictably
 But we have no reason to believe that it must
continue
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READING CRITICALLY: ANALYZING HUME’S
CASE FOR SKEPTICISM

Is Hume correct to call the appeal to God’s existence to support the existence of an external world “philosophical
hypocrisy”? Why or why not?

Summarize Hume’s arguments against certain knowledge of the principle of cause and effect. Do you agree with his
reasoning? Why or why not? Construct an alternative argument to convince Hume that the principle of cause and effect
is valid and give examples.

Would your agreeing with Hume’s critique of knowledge claims about cause and effect and induction change the way
you live your life? Why or why not?

Hume splits his practical life from his theoretical philosophical commitments. Do you agree that such a split is possible?
Should our choices in life reflect our epistemological convictions? Describe an example to support your point of view.

Hume believes that all metaphysical beliefs (that is, any belief not based on direct sense experience) should be
“committed to the flames” because they cannot be empirically justified. This would include all beliefs regarding God,
human freedom, universal moral laws, and so on. Do you agree with Hume? If not, how would you rebut his arguments?
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KANT’S “COPERNICAN REVOLUTION”
“Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge
must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend
our knowledge of objects by establishing something
in regard to them by means of concepts have, on this
assumption, ended in failure. We must, therefore,
make trial whether we may have more success if we
suppose that objects must conform to our
knowledge.” –Critique of Pure Reason
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Kant’s Dogmatic Slumber
 Kant is disturbed from thinking that everything in
science is fine by Hume’s argument
 Empiricism cannot deliver necessary truths
 ‘experience can teach us that something is the
case but it cannot teach us that it must be the
case’
 Yet science claims to discover necessary truths
about nature
 Even worse, Hume claimed to have shown that
Human Beings are essentially irrational
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Transcendental Idealism
 Kant agrees with Hume that we cannot learn
that the causal relation is necessary and
universal from experience
 But Hume has not shown that we can’t have a
priori knowledge
 For Hume something was a priori if we could not
deny it without contradiction
 For Kant something is a priori if is knowable
completely independently of experience
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An Analogy
 Suppose that I told you that there were 25
people in a room on the second floor of some
building
 What could you know about that room?
 Quite a bit actually
 Its size, what it was made out of, etc.
 Kant’s strategy is similar
 He wants to know what we can know given that
our experience is the way that it is
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The Structure of Experience
 How could our experience be the way that it is?
 How is it?
 Objects are located in space and time
 Can you imagine an object which was not at any
place?
 No
 This is something that we can know a priori
 It is not dependent on experience
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Conditions of all Possible
Experience
 It is the pre-condition for any experience at all
 Just like space in the room is a precondition of
having objects in the room
 So too space is a necessary condition of any
possible experience
 Thus we can know with absolute certainty that
whatever experiences we do have
 They will all take place at some time and at some
particular place
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The A Priori
 So Kant concludes that there is pure A priori
knowledge
 ‘pure’ because it does not depend on experience
 But is rather the pre-conditions for any possible
experience
 It is necessary
 It is not possible to have experience without space
 And universal
 All experiences will be in space
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Analytic vs. Synthetic
 An analytic truth is one that is true by virtue of
the meaning of the words themselves
 All bachelors are unmarried males
 They do not add to our knowledge
 Synthetic truths are true in virtue of the kind of
experience we have
 All bachelors are messy
 They do add to our knowledge
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Hume’s Mistake
 Hume’s criterion for being a priori
 P is a priori if the denial of p is a contradiction
 Let him divide all of our knowledge into that
which was necessary (RoI) and that which was
contingent (MoF)
 Kant argues that we really have four categories
 Analytic & A priori– truths which are true by
definition and also necessary and universal
 All analytic truths are a priori
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Hume’s Mistake II
 Analytic & A posteriori– truths which are true by
definition but also discovered by experience
 Kant denied that there were any such truths
 Synthetic A posteriori– Adds to our knowledge
and learned from experience
 Synthetic A priori– Adds to our knowledge and
also necessary and universal
 Hume denied that there were any such truths
 That was his mistake
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Kant’s 4 Distinctions
A Posteriori
A Priori
Analytic
All Bachelors
are unmarried
males
All triangles
have three 7+5=12
sides
Cause & effect
??????
?
Dogs bark
Apples taste good
Synthetic
!!!!!!
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Synthetic A Priori Knowledge
 So Kant’s answer to Hume is his theory of
synthetic a priori knowledge
 Take ‘fire causes pain’
 It is synthetic, it adds to our experience
 But it is also a priori, that is, necessary and universal
 It is a priori in the sense that we can tell by
looking at the structure of our experience that it
must be a certain way
 This Kant calls phenomena
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Phenomena vs. Noumena
 The phenomenal world is the world as it appears
to us.
 It is the world that we see touch taste etc.
 The noumenal world is the way that the world is
in-itself
 The world as it is when no one is looking at it
 All we can know is the way our experience of
the world will be
 We can’t know the noumenal world
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Phenomena v. Noumena II
Wasup?
Hi
Understandin
g
Sensibility
Noumena
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Kant’s Philosophy of Mind
 The mind has two components
 Sensibility
 Understanding
 Sensibility takes in ‘raw’ unorganized noumena
and organizes it into phenomena (our
experience)
 Each has their categories that they use in order to
construct our experience
 The sensibility has Space and Time
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Kant’s Philosophy of Mind II
 The understanding has 12 categories
 Unity, plurality, totality, reality, negation, limitation,
substance/property, cause & effect, community,
possibility/impossibility, existence/non-existence,
and necessary/contingent
 With these categories, and the two from the
sensibility, our mind constructs our experience
 We can know with absolute certainty that our
experience will conform to the categories
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Kant’s Philosophy of Mind IV
 That is the only way that experience like ours is
possible
 The same cause must bring about the same effect
or else our experience would be like a dream
 Now here, now there…
 Yet this comes at a heavy cost
 Science studies our experience of the world
 It does not, cannot, study the noumenal world
 How can I every talk to you?
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Phenomena v. Noumena III
Wasup
Hi
?
Wasup
Hi
?
Me
You
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Kant’s Philosophy of Mind V
 Kant called this a Copernican Revolution in
philosophy
 Instead of the mind passively acting like a recorder
of an outside reality
 Kant sees the human mind as actively constructing
reality
 This is his mix of Rationalism and Empiricism
 Empiricism– science is synthetic knowledge
 Rationalism– but based on a priori categories
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KANT ON THE SYNTETIC A PRIORI AND THE
PHENOMENAL AND NOUMENAL WORLDS
THE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI
 Necessary and universally true
THE PHENOMENAL AND
NOUMENAL WORLDS
 phenomenal reality is the world as we
constitute it and experience it
 a priori—can be discovered
independently of experience
 noumenal reality is the world beyond
our perceptions, reality “in-itself”
 Synthetic in the sense that it provides us
with genuine information regarding our
experience in the world
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APPLYING KANT’S THEORY: THE
ASSASSINATION OF MALCOLM X
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ALLISON JAGGAR: EMOTIONS SHAPE OUR
UNDERSTANDING
 Jaggar believes that the “new
science” of Newton and Galileo
spawned a wide split between
reason and emotion, so that
“dispassionate” reason was
considered the only source of
knowledge
 She argues that “dispassionate
investigation” is a myth, and that
emotions should be incorporated
into our epistemological
framework, including the
framework of scientific knowledge
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