Transcript Document

Archetypes ch11
David Hume (1711-1776)
Intro
• Skeptic: from Greek word skeptesthai ‘to
consider/examine; a person who demands clear,
observable, undoubtable evidence before accepting any
knowledge claim is true
• Evidence, expertise & training, time, interest, and ability
matter when justifying our beliefs
• Often rely on testimony of qualified experts but this differs
considerably from relying on universal testimony
• How often have you asked for verification on claims about
car safety, education, moral values, abortions?
• Epistemology: study of the theory of knowledge, concerns
with the origins, quality, nature, reliability of knowledge
– Beginning with Descartes in Western philosophy
Query p284
• Have you ever been angry or insulted when
someone pressed you for evidence?
• Has anyone ever gotten angry with you for asking
for evidence?
• “Can you prove?” when people make claims about
important, or even not so important, things?
Analyze this question and see if you can justify not
asking for evidence
Query 285
• Who is qualified expert in areas such as
psychic phenomena, miracles, nutrition, or
philosophy? What is the relationship between
the reports of experts and your own
experience? When the two conflict which
should you trust? How do you know?
John Locke
• Attempts to answer fundamental
epistemological questions gave rise to the two
major orientations of modern philosophy
– Rationalism (Descartes) and empiricism (Greek root
empeiria, experience)
• Empiricism: all knowledge is ultimately derived
from senses (experience) and that all ideas can
be traced to sense data; not reason
• Called British empiricism due to its 3 founding
philosophers: Locke, Berkeley, Hume
More J Locke (1632-1704)
• Went to Oxford, a physician
• Locke’s solution: study the origins of our ideas
to better understand the nature and process
of acquiring knowledge
• Emphasis on logical rigor & analytical
precision that would shake foundations of our
cherished belief
• His philosophy does contain inconsistencies as
well
Experience is the Origin of All Ideas
• Locke = earliest empiricist = all ideas come from
senses and reflection
• All ideas are copies of the things that caused the
basic sensations on which they rest
– Copy theory = representation theory or
– correspondence theory of truth (Russell Bertrand)
• An idea is true if it corresponds to a fact
• Procedure for checking the truth of an idea= confirmation or
verification
• Contrast with coherence theory of truth (rationalists)
Locke’s Rejection of Innate Ideas
• Recall Descartes’ priori (innate) ideas: ideas not derived from
experience
– Reason is as certain as the innate idea of God
• Clear and distinct
• Locke saw this speculation as dangerous because it distracts “our
inquiries from the true and advantageous”
• To him labeling a thing “innate” to convince others to accept them
secondhand, without questions
• Descartes attempt to free science from Scholastic shackles lands
us in another dogmatic shackle
• Without appealing to the ultimate test of experience, reason has
no “ground’, or standard, for distinguishing truth from fantasy.
• Compared rationalist’s mind to a pantry full of “innate ideas”
• Mind should be empty to be filled with ideas from experience
– Like mind at birth, clean slate = tubula rasa
Lockes’ Dualism
• Agreed w/ Descartes that something substantial
holds together the sensible qualities of experience
• Our everyday experiences confirm the existence of
substance, which, to Locke, is matter.
– 2 kinds of substance: matter and mind
– Like Descartes’ dualism
Primary and Secondary Quality
• He added 2 kinds of qualities:
1. Primary: sensible, objective; material objects
2. Secondary: depends on the perceiver; subjective;
mental
• Objective/subjective distinctions reflect quarrels
between Sophists and Plato + between reality and
appearance
• Objective world exists independently of our
perceptions
Locke’s Egocentric Predicament
• Locke’s epistemological dualism (the knower & the
known) presents a problem
– If all knowledge comes in the form of my own ideas based on
sense data, how can I verify the existence of anything
external
– Won’t the process of verification take place within the realm
of my own ideas?
– Called Locke’s egocentric predicament
• World of our own mental construction, a self-limited one
• How can we ever know independently existing things?
– Locke’s answer: we somehow know that mental and physical
substance exist
• Sounds like Descartes to me regarding innate/common sense reason
Locke & Descartes =
• Both shied away from pursuing the logical consequences of their
basic premises
• Descartes: establish the momentary certainty of cogito but could
not move beyond his own mind when he attempted to provide a
certain foundation for the external world and God’s existence
• Locke: Able to demonstrate experience as an element of
knowledge & show inadequacy of pure reason; BUT unable to
move from direct knowledge of his own ideas to direct knowledge
of external reality
• Locke’s empiricism does end in the egocentric predicament if
pursued to its logical conclusion:
– It will not only deny knowledge of an external, independent
reality, but are also the possibility of knowing God,
• For what simple sensations and experiences can there be
on which the idea of God rests?
• Locke chose in the end to affirm certain beliefs at
the expense of philosophical consistency.
Query 292
• Reflect on the claim that ideas are copies of
sensations by considering these ideas: love,
God, perfection, wisdom. Can you identify the
precise sensations to which they correspond?
George Berkeley tries to be more Consistent than Locke
• Berkeley (1685-1753) : 2nd empiricist; Anglican bishop; posed this question
• “Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if no one is there to hear
it?” His answer: NO
• Closer examination of matter makes more sense to deny the existence of
matter than it does to affirm it
• Took Locke’s empiricism further: material world does not exist
– Berkeley = idealist or immaterialist : only ideas (mental state) exists; material
world is fiction
– We can conceive of things only in terms of the perceptions (ideas) we have of
them.
• Attacked copy theory as having no fixed nature because there’s only cluster
of constantly changing perceptions
• All qualities we assign to objects are relative to the perceiver (secondary)
– Example: hot or cold coffee depends on the drinker; 120F? Not if no one is
there to measure/verify it!
– Example: unconscious mind; mind = think;
• Radical but logically correct when concluding that it’s true of everything
Query 293
• Think about the notion of mind as contrasted
to the brain and brain states. Could we also
have ideas, motives, and emotions we are
unaware of? Could we have an “unconscious”
mind?
More Berkeley
• To accept Locke’s reason that knowledge
derives from experience means (Berkeley) we
must conclude that all knowledge is limited to
ideas (material states are perceptions, mental)
– Pain is perception, moon is perception
– Esse est percipi (To be is to be perceived)
• Descartes’ to think is to exist; Berkeley added
to exist is to be thought about
Berkeley and God
• Had he continued with logical consequences of his
premises, he would have to accept this disturbing
picture of reality: Only particular, immediate
perceptions can be known to exist.
• Berkeley stopped short of the skeptical conclusions
implied by his premises.
– He introduced God as a guarantee that he had a continuing
self, that he existed during deepest sleep, and that there
was indeed an external world, safely encapsulated in the
never-resting, all-perceiving mind of God.
– David Hume did NOT stop; Hume kept pursuing skeptical
logic to unsettling consequences
Berkeley: empiricist but still a
metaphysician: God caused Ideas
• “…although I clearly can cause some ideas at will (e.g. ideas of
imagination), sensory ideas are involuntary; they present themselves
whether I wish to perceive them or not and I cannot control their content.
The hidden assumption here is that any causing the mind does must be
done by willing and such willing must be accessible to consciousness.
Berkeley is hardly alone in presupposing this model of the mental;
Descartes, for example, makes a similar set of assumptions.
• This leaves us, then, with the third option: my sensory ideas must be
caused by some other spirit. Berkeley thinks that when we consider the
stunning complexity and systematicity of our sensory ideas, we must
conclude that the spirit in question is wise and benevolent beyond
measure, that, in short, he is God.
Downing, Lisa, "George Berkeley", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/berkeley/>.
3rd Empiricist
David Hume (1711-1776): Fearless
consistency; Scottish Skeptic
• One of few who so relentlessly and thoroughly
follow the premises and principles on which
his or her philosophy
– Many shied away for personal, social, & political
reasons…Hume REFUSED to do so.
• Grew up Presbyterian, read Locke & others,
never again “entertained any belief in religion”
The Skeptical Masterpiece
• Got fat in France & wrote Treatise of Human Nature
• Returned to England to publish it but found resistance,
particularly his analysis on miracles
– He agreed to remove the most offensive passages but did not
destroy them
– The 2nd uncensored, edition was not published until after Hume’s
death.
• Argues against materialism, the possibility of a spiritual,
supernatural reality, “fixed-self” , miracles, and personal
immortality
• To him, neither matter nor mind exist (joke = no matter,
never mind)
• Denounce reason as “slave of passion” & denied the cause
and effect used by previous thinkers
• Thus Hume challenged the established religious beliefs,
moral judgments, reason, rationalism, earlier empiricism,
and certainty of science
An Honest Man
• Unable to earn living as writer, was rejected as when applied for
professorship
• Published more works but in much softer tone, which did last
• Wrote the most devastating, direct, and irreverent of his works, the
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published 3 yrs. after his death)
– Argued against “design” and other attempts to demonstrate the existence of
or understand of the nature of God
• Was wearied of hostility against his philosophy, turned to politics & history,
for which he was well respected
• His writing was more popular in France. “The ladies most of all”
• His home became intellectual salon for celebrities like Adam Smith
• At the dying hour, Hume confirmed that the afterlife “it is a most
unreasonable fancy that we should exist forever”
• When asked if the afterlife was desirable, he replied, “Not at all; it is a very
gloomy thought.”
Hume’s Skeptical Empiricism
• His philosophy rests on the rejection of overly
abstract, obscure, bloated speculations.
• Accused metaphysical speculations of poorly worded,
unclear, and based on unverified assumptions;
unending and never thoroughly settled
– Such “abstruse speculation” was useful only to individuals
with some theological motive, who “being unable to defend
on fair grounds, raise these entangling brambles to cover
and protect their weaknesses.”
• He suggested we inquire seriously and thoroughly
into the nature of human understanding, “and show,
from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that
it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse
subjects”
• He moved the epistemological tide further away from
metaphysics than Locke & Berkeley ad
Impressions and Ideas
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
removed Locke’s metaphysical residue
• Copies are always duller and fainter than the
original perceptions
• Proposed that we distinguish “ideas” from
“impressions”
– All ideas can be traced to impressions thus
derived from experience
The Empirical Criterion of Meaning
• Modifying Locke’s “copy theory,” Hume developed an empirical
criterion of meaning
– Meaningful ideas are those that can be traced back to sense experience
(impressions); beliefs that cannot be reduced to sense experience are
not “ideas” at all, but meaningless utterances
• Locked: all ideas derived from experience and the mind begins as
clean slate, then the idea of God must be empirically based. It
can’t be innate. What impressions can justify assertions about
God and God’s attributes?
• This empirical criterion of meaning is explosive:
– Causes us to think about the idea of God before we can begin to discuss
God’s nature and existence
– Experienced alone can’t provide the idea of an all-perfect, eternal, allpowerful, ever-present God because nothing in our experience even
remotely resembles perfection, eternity, or infinite power
– Accepting empirical criterion means the idea of God is neither true nor
false__it is meaningless
– Discussion about God conveys no information. It is simply a form of
confusion resulting from not paying close enough attention to what we
say.
Query 300
• Do you agree “talk about God conveys no
information?” Explain. Apply the empirical
criterion of meaning to such concepts as love,
creativity, and intelligence. What do you see as the
strengths and weaknesses of this criterion?
The Self
• Recall: Descartes = thinking thing (self)
• Hume: we do not have any idea of self as it is
commonly understood
– Self = a flickering series of perceptions with no
underlying, constant thing to unite them (sounds
like Buddhist & Hindu) = Bundle theory of the self
Query 302
• Where and what are “you” in the midst of
some exciting experience that totally absorbs
your consciousness? That is, what happens to
your “self” when you are not aware of it?
What exactly are you aware of when you are
self-conscious? A “self” or sweaty palms,
uncomfortable desk, boring lectures? Discuss
Personal Immortality
• Identity (self) is not a property of things but a mental
act
– Each time we see an oak tree, it’s different
– “We cannot stepped twice into the same river, for the
water into which we first…” Heraclitus
• Hume does not deny that something gives order and
continuity to our experiences, BUT
• He insists on clearer, more precise talking, reasoning,
and thinking about this and other important matters.
– Thus he challenges the limits of reason and, perhaps,
knowledge
The Limits of Reason
• Hume stops at Berkeley’s first premise:
– We have no way of empirically establishing the independent
existence of an external world
• If, as Hume thought, there’s no rational evidence
whatsoever for belief in an external reality, then why is
this notion so popular?
– His answer, the imagination accounts for the universal
notion of the independent existence of an external world. It
is the nature of the imagination to complete and fill in gaps
between perceptions…fabricate and feign continuity
– Our experiences tend to occur with a kind of pattern or
regularity (he calls coherence): look at your head from the
side or from the back, but never the whole head
• If he’s correct, nature and reasons are adversaries
• Hume suggested balance between nature & reason
• Accused reason of being a slave to emotions, shaped by psychology
and biology
Query 304
• Have you been able to take Hume’s claims
seriously? That is, have you seriously
considered the possibility that we lack
knowledge of the external world? Discuss
some factors that make taking this idea
seriously so difficult. Can you spot any errors
in Hume’s reasoning?
The Limit of Science
• Scientific reasoning rests on a pattern of inductive reasoning,
which results in generalized rules or principles. Proceeds from the
particular to the general or from “some” to “all”
• Example: Newton did not have to observe the behavior of all
bodies to conclude they are subject to gravity. He based his
conclusion on the behavior of just some bodies
• Distrust scientist’s claim on causal pattern: A was said to cause B if
the occurrence of A always and without exception was followed by
the occurrence of B.
• If Hume is correct, there is no empirical evidence for the existence
of cause and effect.
• Hume answers: we observe a series of recognizable impressions
and that we come to expect the first part of the series to be
followed by the second part. When we are correct, we assume the
connection is causal.
– The mind creates the ideas of causality and necessity; we do not
observe them
• Hume: All knowledge is limited to our own impressions; everything
else is a product of our imagination
•
The
Limits
of
Theology
By rejecting the cause and effect view, he rejected all efforts
(cosmological, motion, ontological) to use causality to prove the
existence of God
– Ontological was meaningless because the qualities ascribed to
God__perfection, omniscience, omnipotence, and so forth__do not
correspond to specific impressions. They are empty noises
• He also destroyed the design argument (teleological--Aquinas)
• Recall Design: all about us we see the evidence of God’s
handiwork, order and harmony, and beauty throughout the
universe
– Sunset, childbirth, ocean breeze
– Hume said, that’s not the whole picture
• Once a thorough, objective look around, there’s even less reason
to infer the existence of God
– Living beings as hostile/destructive to each other (Holocaust)
– Our little corner of the uni is too small to permit useful generalizations
about the whole. To conclude yea or nay about God’s existence and
nature is beyond the limits of both reason and experience
Query 307
• Reconsider the argument from design (ch9) in
light of such 20th century horrors as chemical
warfare, environmental disasters, AIDs, crack
babies, crime rates, world hunger, and
homelessness amid plenty. Do such examples
refute the notion of design or not?
The Limits of Ethics
Recall: 17th & 18th Century = Age of Reason
• Plato said that reason’s function is to rule the appetites and
emotions
• Stoics attempt to control passions through reason
• Descartes attempts to replaced authority of the church w/
authority of reason
• Attempts to ground morals in reason continues today
• Hume, however, challenged the role of reason in morality
– Morality is ground in sentiment, not reason
– Argued that reason plays a secondary role in moral judgments
• Reason helps us clarify experience & identify facts, but does
not evaluate
– Attacked on any “metaphysic of morals” influence modern &
postmodern conceptions of morality, value judgments
– Kant called Hume’s work “scandal philosophy”
The Facts, Just the Facts
• Recall: Hume said we don’t perceive ‘necessary
connection” but rather associate the feeling of
necessity with certain related events
– Moral judgments are like causal judgments
• Are mental projections, not perception of facts
• Are reports of moral sentiments/feelings, not facts
• Moral taste
– When we dislike something we label it “wrong” or “bad” and
vice versa
– These evaluations derive from experience, not reason
– Facts are neutral, valueless
• Distinguishing between descriptive and normative
language
– Descriptive : “D shot F in the chest 6 times. F died at
6:15pm”
– Normative : the term murder = moral case, moral judgment
Query
• Hume’s point here is very important. Don’t
rush by it. Take a moment and try to write a
purely factual description of something you
believe is immoral. Do you agree with Hume
that the facts are value neutral and that all
moral judgments are reports of feelings
associated with certain facts? Explain why or
why not?
Moral Sentiments
• Hume attempted a “reformation” of moral
philosophy
– Indeed lounged a revolution in moral philosophy
• Announced that it was time to “reject every system
of ethics, however subtle or ingenious, which is not
founded on fact and observation.”
• Distinction: we call things virtue because we find
them agreeable, not the other way around
• Moral sentiment is a disinterested reaction to
character (motive). Moral virtue is disinterested
approbation (liking or approval) of character/motive
– Suggest careful language analysis
Rejection of Egoism
• Moral judgments are “disinterested” = reject
egoism
• Rejects that egoism all derives from self-interest
– Grief & pets loving their owners
– Self-love is inadequate explanation as human
motivation
Commentary on Hume
• used full-blown skepticism to doubting the existence of an
external reality
• raised important points about both the limits of reason and the
needs of the human heart
• exposed cloudy and meaningless language and bogus theorizing
– Shows clearly the ultimate inadequacy of rational and empirical efforts
to prove the existence of God or infer His nature
• In his own time, a great scientific revolution had already
established the force and usefulness of the scientific method.
• His analysis of cause and effect does not destroy science but
rather modifies a bit of what some see as it arrogance
• Neither science or theology can explain the ultimate origins of life
or the ultimate nature of reality.
• showed how little we know about self, personal identity, cause and
effect, reality, the external world, the universe, and God.
– Neither the scientist nor philosopher nor priest has the method and the
answer to timeless questions
Thinker
Basic premises
God’s existence
Consistency?
A. Augustine
Theologian
Geocentric view
God-centered
Faith above reason
yes
Yes/NO
T Aquinas
Scholar
Sufficient reason
Principle of plenitude
FIVE WAYS (includes design)
yes
Yes/NO
R Descartes
Rationalist
Employed methodic doubt
I think, therefore I am (cogito)
Idea of God = existence of God
Body & mind dualism
Yes: Innate idea
God moves mind
No
J Locke
Empiricist
Copy theory
primary(objective) qualities
secondary (subjective) qualities
Yes: We somehow
know the
difference
between matter
and mind
NO
G Berkeley
Empiricist
Rejects copy theory
Esse est percipi
We know only perceptions
Immaterialist
Yes
Posited a universal
perceiver (God)
No
D Hume
Rejected all metaphysical speculation
NO
Yes