Archetypes of Wisdom

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Archetypes of Wisdom

• Douglas J. Soccio
• Chapter 10
• The Skeptic David Hume

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Learning Objectives
On completion of this chapter, you should be able
to answer the following questions

• What is skeptic?
• What is empiricism?
• What is the epistemological turn?
• What is the correspondence theory of truth?
• How do primary qualities differ from secondary
  qualities?
• What is idealism (immaterialism)?

• What is epistemological dualism?
• What is the difference between impressions and
  ideas?
• What is the empirical criterion of meaning?
• What is the bundle theory of the self?
• What is inductive reasoning?

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Modern Skepticism

• A skeptic is a person who demands clear,
  observable, indubitable evidence before accepting
  any knowledge claim as true.
• Skepticism (from the Greek skeptesthai, meaning
  to consider or examine) refers to both a school
  of philosophy and a general attitude.
• Modern skepticism is primarily involved with
  epistemological issues.
• The study of the theory of knowledge,
  epistemology, is the branch of philosophy
  concerned with the origins, quality, nature, and
  reliability of knowledge.

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Modern Empiricism

• Attempts to answer fundamental epistemological
  questions gave rise to the two major orientations
  of modern philosophy rationalism (Ch. 9) and
  empiricism (from the Greek root empeiria, meaning
  experience).
• Empiricists believe that all ideas can be traced
  back to sense data, and that reason is unable to
  provide knowledge of reality (as rationalists
  claim) such knowledge can only be derived from
  experience.
• Because its three founding philosophers were all
  British, it has come to be called British
  empiricism.

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John Locke

• The earliest of the three British empiricists,
  John Locke (1632-1704), was disturbed by the
  confusion surrounding seventeenth-century
  philosophy and theology.
• Educated as a physician, Locke was aware of the
  great changes and progress being generated by
  science. He also realized that you cannot wait
  until you have reached mathematical certainty
  about the correct treatment before helping a
  patient. You have to observe and act based on
  what you perceive.
• In the winter of 1670, Locke had a series of
  philosophical discussions which convinced him
  that what was necessary first was to make clear
  the process of forming ideas and gaining
  knowledge.

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Experience is the Origin of All Ideas

• Twenty years later, in 1690, Locke published An
  Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
• In this work, he attempted to explain why
  philosophical discussions often lead to
  misunderstandings and confusion.
• This essay established the groundwork for
  empiricism as it is generally understood today.
• According to Locke, all ideas originate in
  sensation and reflection. Specifically, we can
  think about things only after we have experienced
  them. In other words, all ideas originate from
  sense data.

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Copy Theory

• Locke insisted that all ideas are copies of the
  things that caused the basic sensations on which
  they rest.
• This position is known as the copy theory.
• It is also referred to as representation
  theory, or correspondence theory of truth
  (i.e., an idea is true if what it refers to
  corresponds to actually exists).

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Lockes Rejection of Innate Ideas

• Unlike Descartes, Locke rejected the theory of
  innate or a priori ideas.
• He even accused the rationalists of labeling
  their pet ideas innate in order to convince
  others to accept them secondhand, without
  question.
• Locke suggested that the mind is better compared
  to an empty pantry, waiting to be stocked by
  experience.
• He most famously described the mind at birth as a
  completely blank tablet, or clean slate tabula
  rasa, to use the Latin equivalent.

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Lockes Dualism

• Although Locke rejected Descartes theory of
  innate ideas, he did agree with Descartes that
  something substantial underlies and holds
  together the sensible qualities of experience.
• According to Locke, the substance that holds
  extended things together is matter.
• The same thing happens with respect to a
  thinking substance, or mind.
• Thus, Locke affirms the existence of two
  substances matter and mind.

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Qualities

• Material objects have primary qualities (shape,
  size, location, etc.) which are independent of a
  perceiver and thus, are objective.
• Secondary qualities (color, sound, taste,
  texture) depend on a perceiver and so, are
  subjective.
• So, Lockes dualism is between the object as it
  is and the object as we know it, between the
  knower and the known.

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Lockes Egocentric Predicament

• Epistemological dualism is the view that knowing
  contains two distinct aspects knower and known.
• The predicament If all knowledge comes in the
  form of my own ideas, how can I verify the
  existence of anything external to them?
• Lockes epistemological dualism leads to his
  falling into the egocentric predicament.

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George Berkeley

• George Berkeley (1685-1753) was an Anglican
  Bishop who posed one of the most quoted and least
  understood questions in the history of ideas
• Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if
  no one is there to hear it?
• Berkeleys answer is no, and it is based on a
  clear sense of the predicament Lockes empiricism
  generated.
• If all we can be sure of is what we actually
  experience, then only our experiences, our ideas,
  and mental states are certain.

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Immaterialism

• Berkeley extended Lockes empiricism to claim
  that the material world does not exist.
• This makes Berkeley an idealist, or
  immaterialist.
• The very idea of matter existing without mental
  properties is self-contradictory for an
  empiricist.

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To Be Is To Be Perceived

• What Berkeley means is that it is absurd to posit
  an independent, external reality, for if it
  exists, we cannot have anything to do with it.
  If we experience things only as ideas, we cannot
  talk of anything but them.
• This leads Berkeley to his famous saying
• Esse est percipi (To be is to be perceived).
• As for the falling tree, in Three Dialogues
  Between Hylas and Philonous (1713), Berkeley
  points out that there is no difference between
  sound as perceived by us and sound as it is in
  itself. We may define sound in terms of what is
  perceived sensations, atmospheric disturbances,
  decibels, waves, etc. but in all cases sound
  remains something that is perceived.

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David Hume, The Scottish Skeptic

• The Scottish Skeptic, David Hume (1711-1776),
  stands out in the history of ideas for the
  fearless consistency of his reasoning.
• Born in Edinburgh, and raised under a strict
  Presbyterian regimen, he enrolled in the
  University of Edinburgh when he was twelve years
  old.
• After three years, he dropped out without a
  degree, planning to devote himself to philosophy
  and literature.
• A short time later, Hume admitted he had lost the
  faith of his childhood, writing that once he read
  Locke and other philosophers, he never again
  entertained any belief in religion.

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The Skeptical Masterpiece

• In 1737, after studying with the Jesuits in
  France (at Descartes old college in La Flèche),
  Hume returned to England, hoping to publish the
  first two books of his powerful and disturbing
  Treatise of Human Nature.
• After objections from the publisher, a censored
  version was published anonymously, with
  compelling arguments against supernatural reality
  and personal immortality.
• The uncensored version reduces reason to the
  slave of the passions and alters the
  conventional picture of the nature of science by
  denying cause and effect as they are generally
  understood. This version understandably sparked
  a great deal of controversy which is arguably
  why it was not published until after Humes death.

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Dialogues ConcerningNatural Religion

• In 1751, Hume wrote the most devastating, direct,
  and irreverent of his works, the Dialogues
  Concerning Natural Religion.
• In his Dialogues, Hume mounts an unrelenting
  attack on the argument from design and other
  attempts to demonstrate the existence of, or
  understand the nature of, God.
• Hume did not deny the existence of God a
  position known as atheism rather, he adopted the
  agnostic view that we do not know enough to
  assert or deny the existence of God.

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Humes Skeptical Empiricism

• Hume found most metaphysical speculation
  irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people.
• He thought such abstract speculation was useful
  only to individuals with some theological motive,
  who, being unable to defend their views on fair
  grounds, raise these entangling brambles to cover
  and protect their weaknesses.
• Humes empirical criterion of meaning holds that
  all meaningful ideas can be traced to sense
  experience (impressions).
• Beliefs that cannot be reduced to sense
  experience are technically not ideas at all,
  but meaningless utterances.

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The Self

• Applying his empirical criterion of meaning, Hume
  argues that we do not have any idea of the self
  as it is commonly understood.
• That is, we have no impression of the self
  itself.
• If we have no impression of the self, what are
  we?
• According to Hume, if there is no underlying,
  constant thing to unite our sensory
  perceptions, then the self is nothing more than
  a bundle of such perceptions.
• While Humes bundle theory of the self is
  difficult for most of us to accept, it is also
  very hard to refute.

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Identity and Continuity

• What is true of the self, is also true of other
  things. According to Hume, identity is not a
  property of things, but a mental act. Our minds
  confer identity on things we do not perceive it.
  Like the self, a thing is merely a habitual
  way of discussing certain perceptions.
• In the same way, Hume says that we feign or
  fabricate continuity. I assume that because my
  face looks the same this morning as yesterday
  morning, it has existed continuously all night
  and at other times when I had no perception of
  it.
• But his point is that we have no direct
  impression of cause and effect, the link between
  perceptions that would make our assumptions about
  identity and continuity certain.

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The Limits of Reason

• If the mind creates the ideas of causality and
  necessity, then reason alone can never be our
  guide.
• Instead, Hume had another theory
• Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
  passions, and can never pretend to any other
  office than to serve and obey them.
• Humes claim means that there are limits to
  reason which we have not acknowledged before.
• These limits have consequences for science,
  theology and ethics.

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The Limits of Science

• Scientific reasoning rests on a pattern of
  inductive reasoning, which results in generalized
  rules or principles.
• Induction is a matter of reasoning from the
  particular to the general, from some to all.
• Scientists assume that inductive inferences are
  reliable because they identify causal patterns.
  Before Hume, cause and effect were defined in
  terms of a necessary connection.
• After Hume, the best we can do is take for
  granted that the future will resemble the past,
  so there is no way to prove the certainty of our
  predictions.

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The Limits of Theology

• Given his radical view of cause and effect, it is
  not surprising that Hume rejected all efforts to
  use causality to prove the existence of God.
• The cosmological argument and the argument from
  motion were meaningless for him.
• The ontological argument was meaningless as well,
  because the very qualities ascribed to God
  perfection, omniscience, omnipotence, and so
  forth do not correspond to specific
  impressions. They are empty noises.

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The Limits of Ethics

• Hume insisted that morality is grounded in
  sentiment, not reason. But he did not deny that
  reason has a role to play in making moral
  judgments. That role, however, is secondary to
  sentiment, or the passions.
• Hume makes a crucial distinction between facts
  and values. Reason can tell us the facts what
  is the case. But only sentiment (feelings,
  emotions) can tell us what ought to be the case.
• In all cases of moral judgment, virtues are
  traits that we find agreeable (there can even be
  facts about such things). But moral virtue is
  always a matter of liking or approval, while
  moral vice is a matter of disliking or
  disapproval.
• Reason can only help us get what we want.

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Discussion Questions

• Take a moment to reconsider the Argument from
  Design (Ch. 8) and Humes critique of the
  Argument from Design.
• In light of modern-day horrors (such as chemical
  warfare, environmental disasters, AIDS, crack
  babies, crime rates, world hunger, and
  homelessness), could there exist a perfect
  designer?
• Do you think such examples refute the notion of
  design?
• Of intelligent design?

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Chapter ReviewKey Concepts and Thinkers

• Skeptic
• Epistemology
• Empiricism
• Correspondence Theory of Truth
• A priori
• Innate ideas
• Tabula Rasa
• Primary qualities
• Secondary qualities

• Epistemological dualism
• Egocentric predicament
• Idealist/immaterialist
• Esse est percipi
• Empirical criterion of meaning
• Bundle theory of the self
• Inductive reasoning
• David Hume (1711-1776)
• John Locke (1623-1704)
• George Berkeley (1685-1753)