Test

1. A skeptic is a person who demands clear, observable, undoubtable evidence based on experience before accepting any knowledge claim as true.

1. There are variations of skepticism progressing from total doubt about everything to a particular doubt just for the process of analysis.

1. The more important the issue the stricter our standards of evidence must be.

1. Ideally we should accept as true only what we can verify ourselves.

1. Often, however, we must rely on testimony of qualified experts.

1. Beginning with Descartes, Western Philosophy has been dominated by epistemological issues, the branch of philosophy concerned about knowledge.

1. Ideally, we should accept as true only what we can verify for ourselves. Often, however, we must rely on the testimony of qualified experts.

1. We should consider how rarely we demand good evidence for beliefs and knowledge claims.

1. John Locke

1. Attempts to answer epistemological questions gave rise to the two major orientations of modern philosophy, rationalism (Descartes) and empiricism.

1. Empiricism is the belief that all ideas can be traced back to sense data.

1. Abstractions and complex beliefs are said to be combinations of mental alterations of original perceptions. e.g. a man with a horses’ head.

1. Because its three founding philosophers were British, it has come to be called British empiricism.

1. Empiricists believe that reason cannot provide knowledge of reality and that such knowledge can only be provided by experience.

1. The strictest empiricists believe that even mathematical and logical principles are derived from experience.

1. The earliest of the three British empiricists was John Locke (1632-1704).

1. Locke, who was a physician, said that you cannot wait until you reach mathematical certainty about the correct treatment before helping a patient. You must observe and act on what you perceive.

1. He was critical of the Scholastics’ emphasis on formal debates which he considered showing off.

1. After a series of discussions with friends Locke realized that he had to examine the nature or limits of knowledge before trying to sort out the truth or falsity of specific ideas.

1. Locke’s solution was to study the origins of our ideas to better understand the process of acquiring knowledge.

1. Experience is the Origin of All Ideas

1. According to Locke all ideas originate in sensation and reflection.

1. We can think about things only after we have experienced them. e.g. No one born blind can ever have any idea of color.

1. Locke insisted that ideas are copies of things that cause the basic sensations on which they rest.

1. The copy theory of knowledge – an idea is true if whatever it refers to actually exists. The idea is a copy of that object.

1. Locke’s Rejection of Innate Ideas

1. Innate or a priori ideas are ideas that are not derived from observation or experience. e.g. 2+4=6.

1. Locke accused the rationalists of labeling their pet ideas innate in order to get other to accept them second hand without question.

1. Locke argued that without appealing to the test of experience reason has no standard of distinguishing truth from fantasy.

1. Rationalistic philosophers compared the mind when we are born to a pantry well stocked with innate ideas.

1. However, Lock believed that comparison was wrong. Locke compared that mind at birth to a table rasa – clean slate. He believed that as our lives went on our minds became a pantry stocked with ideas derived from sense experience.

1. Locke’s Dualism

1. Locke believed that something held together the sensible qualities of experience (color, taste, size, shape, location, etc.).

1. Locke called that something substance.

1. Locke said that observation and experience reveal that certain kinds of similar ideas seem to cluster together and form simple ideas.

1. From these clusters of simple ideas we form ideas of a man, a horse, gold water etc.

1. Locke said that the substance that hold the clusters of simple ideas together is matter.

1. Locked believed that matter, which held simple ideas together was different from the substance that the mind was made of.

1. Therefore, Locke affirms the existence of two substances, matter and mind.

1. Therefore, like Descartes Locke believed that the mind and the physical world were made up of two different substances.

1. Primary and Secondary Qualities

1. Primary qualities are sensible qualities that exist independent of perceiver. e.g. shape, size, location, motion.

1. Secondary qualities are qualities whose existence depends on the perceiver. e.g. color, sound, taste, and texture.

1. Primary qualities are objective properties that exist independently of any perceiver and secondary qualities are subjective properties whose existence depends upon a perceiver.

1. World of common sense - view that an objective world exists independently of our perceptions and is not merely a figment of our imagination.

1. Locke’s Egocentric Predicament

1. Locke holds a position known as epistemological dualism which says that knowing contains two distinct aspects, the knower and the known.

1. Locke’s egocentric predicament is the problem generated by epistemological dualism: If all knowledge comes in the form of my own ideas, how can I verify the existence of anything external to them? e.g. I verify the results of the scientific experiment from my own ideas.

1. Locke says we can never verify the objective, independent existence of an external reality.

1. Locke tries to avoid the egocentric predicament by asserting that somehow we know that mental and physical substances – and a separate external reality – exist.

1. We just don’t have a clear idea of the difference between minds and bodies and other aspects of reality.

1. Locke in the end chose to affirm certain beliefs at the expense of philosophical consistency.

1. George Berkeley

1. George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) was an Anglican Bishop.

1. Berkeley posed the question of whether a tree that falls make a sound if there is no one to hear it?

1. Berkeley’s answer is no.

1. Taking empiricism one logical step further than Locke, Berkeley argues that the material world does not exist, only ideas exist.

1. According to Berkeley, the idea of matter existing without mental properties is self-contradictory, because there is no way to conceive of what an un-perceived existence consists of.

1. Berkeley said that the so-called objects that Locke thought our ideas corresponded to lacked any fixed nature. Therefore, he did not believe in Locke’s copy theory because he said that there was nothing to copy, only a cluster of constantly changing perceptions.

1. According to Berkeley, all the qualities that we assign to material objects are relative to the perceiver.

1. Berkeley believed that we can only know things in terms of perception through the senses or as ideas perceived by the mind. Thus, the falling tree.

1. Berkeley said we could not know things in themselves, we could only know things as perceived.

1. According to Berkeley, even if an external reality existed it wouldn’t matter to us since we experience things only as ideas.

1. The external reality would be of no importance to us since we would have no effect on us.

1. If Berkeley’s philosophy were carried to its logical conclusion, only immediate perceptions could be known to exist.

1. Berkeley stopped short of the skeptical conclusion implied by his premises. He introduced God as a guarantee that he had a continuing self and there indeed was an external world, all encapsulated in the all perceiving mind of God.

1. David Hume: The Scottish Skeptic (1711-1776)

1. The Skeptical Masterpiece – Treatise on Human Nature

1. Hume’s Skeptical Empiricism

1. Hume found overly abstract, obscure, bloated metaphysical speculation irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people.

1. He thought such speculation was useful to those with theological motives who were unable to defend their views on fair grounds.

1. Hume continued the epistemological turn, moving further away from metaphysics than Locke or Berkeley had.

1. Impressions and Ideas

1. Hume proposed that we distinguished ideas from impressions. (Actually, Hume’s impressions are the same thing as sense experience.)

1. Ideas can be traced to impressions and thus are arrived from experience.

1. Impressions are our more lively perceptions such as hearing, seeing, loving, feeling etc. Ideas are the less lively perceptions that we have when we reflect on our impressions.

1. It is true that ideas can be traced to impressions even if the ideas become so abstracted and diluted that they no longer any identifiable impressions.

1. The empirical criterion of meaning – all meaningful ideas can be traced to impressions (sense experience). (Actually, this is the same thing as Locke’s copy theory of knowledge.)

1. The Self

1. Impressions of the self succeed each other and never exist at the same time. Therefore, the idea of the self cannot be derived from these impressions, which means there can be no idea of the self.

1. Hume says that the self is the self is nothing more than a bundle of different perceptions that succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement. There is no underlying thing to unite them.

1. Personal Immortality

1. According to Hume, identity is not a property of things but a mental act.

1. Hume says that the self is simply a habitual way of discussing certain perceptions.

1. There is no persistent identity for us. e.g. we speak of the oak tree in the back yard, however, each time we see it the oak tree has changed in some way.

1. The Limits of Reason

1. Hume says that we have no way of establishing the existence of an external world, we can only know our own perceptions and ideas.

1. Hume suggests that the imagination accounts for the universal notion of the independent existence of an external world.

1. Hume says it is the nature of the imagination to complete and fill in the gaps between perceptions. e. g. I assume that because my face looks the same this morning as yesterday morning it existed continuously all night when I had no perception of it.

1. Further, our experiences tend to occur with a patterned regularity which Hume refers to as coherence. e.g. I never get a perception of my whole head in the mirror, I only get various views of it and I use my imagination to fabricate an idea of my whole head.

1. According to Hume, this process explains our belief in an external world.

1. The belief in an external world is a natural quality of the mind that is more powerful than logical reasoning.

1. What Hume suggests is a fluctuating balance between reason and nature, or between logic and emotion.

1. Hume’s skepticism suggest that a purely rational view of reality is not possible, at least for not more than brief, concentrated periods.

1. Limits of Science

1. Scientific reasoning rests on a pattern of inductive reasoning which results in generalized rules or principles.

1. Induction reasons from the particular to the general or from some to all.

1. Scientific principals are never based on experience with all things. Science bases its conclusion on the behavior of just some things. e. g. Newton didn’t have to observe the behavior to all bodies to conclude they were all subject to gravity.

1. Scientists assume that such inferences are reliable because they identify causal patterns.

1. However, according to Hume we can only infer that B is caused by A. All we can actually observe is that B follows A. we cannot observe a causal connection between A and B.

1. According to Hume there is no empirical evidence for the existence of cause and effect.

1. What we observe is a series of recognizable impressions in which we expect the first part of the series to be followed by the second part.

1. The mind creates the idea of causality.

1. The Limits of Theology

1. Hume rejects the causal theories of Aquinas and Descartes for God because they do not correspond to specific impressions (sense experience.)

1. Hume disputes the argument of design, that a world as perfect as ours had to be designed by God by saying that the world started out as imperfect on only became what it is through trial and error.

1. Hume also says that all of the suffering we see in the world is evidence against the existence of God since an all good being such as God is supposed to be wouldn’t allow such suffering.

1. Hume says that based solely on our observations of human experience we find insufficient evidence to presume the existence of a good, all-wise, all-powerful God.

1. The Limits of Ethics

1. Hume insisted that morality is grounded in sentiment, not reason.

1. Hume did not deny that reason played a role in making moral judgments, rather he argued reason’s role is secondary to feelings which he called sentiments.

1. He said this is because reason can never provide ultimate ends. e.g. when asked why we exercise we say to keep our health; when you ask us why we want to keep our health we say because sickness is painful; when you ask us why we want to avoid pain we can give no reason. Note that the desire to avoid pain is based on feelings (sentiment) and not reason.

1. Reason helps us to clarify experience and identify facts, however, reason does not evaluate facts, sentiment does that. Moral judgements ultimately rest on sentiment.

1. The Facts, Just the Facts

1. Moral judgments are like causal judgments, they are not perceptions, they are mental associations.

1. When we like something we label in good and when we dislike something we label it bad. These evaluations are not based on reason they are based on experience.

1. We associate some experiences with good feelings and others with bad feelings.

1. According to Hume through experience we learn to associate certain facts with positive sentiments and other facts with negative sentiments.

1. Facts are themselves valueless. e.g. in willful murder it is not the facts that violate your morals but the sentiments associated with those facts.

1. Moral judgments are not judgments of facts but reports on moral sentiments (feelings.)

1. The facts in a police report, the person being shot, falling etc. do not constitute murder themselves, it is the sentiments that we attach to those facts that constitute murder.

1. Reason helps us evaluate the fact but our evaluation as to whether something is good or bad (moral) is based on feelings (sentiment.)

1. Moral Sentiments

1. Hume believed that the task before him was a question of fact. He believed that success was only possible by following the experimental method and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances.

1. He wanted to reject every system of ethics that was not founded on facts and observation.

1. To Hume moral sentiment was a disinterested reaction to motive. In other words when applying morality to something you should look at the facts on both sides and apply universal principles of ethics to them in determining whether it is good or bad.

1. Rejection of Egoism

1. Hume rejects the notion that our real motives regarding something are always some form of narrow self-interest. e.g. we should not assume that grief over the death of a love one is disguised self-interest, rather we should accept in as to how it is experienced.

1. We accept that animals’ conditioning does not adequately describe acts of animal loyalty and affection, therefore, humans should be considered capable of the same thing.

1. When we take our actual experience into account, self-love is not an adequate explanation for human motivation.

1. Emotions are also reasons

1.Feminist philosopher Allison Jagger said that emotions are a vital aspect of everyone’s reality because they influence what we notice or ignore.

2. Jagger says that emotional sensitivity is often the first indication that there is something wrong with the way the facts are put together.

1. Commentary

1. Hume believed that no one can actually live as a skeptic. He thought that one could not persevere in total skepticism.

1. Hume said that in order to escape from the dismal thoughts brought about by his skepticism he dined, conversed, played games, made merry with friends, and after a few hours of amusement return to his speculations.

1. Hume believed that the human beings would always be more than philosophy, religion, or science could hope to know.

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