Comments on: Humean Ideas

by: ionfish

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:03:15 +0000

Yes, it came up when I was doing some reading about him last month. The Enlightenment thinkers were certainly advanced for their time, but many—probably all—of them held at least some beliefs that many of us today would find abhorrent. Voltaire, for example, viewed the Turks in a less than favourable light, and that Jefferson kept slaves still incites debate.

by: Charles Follymacher

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:22:27 +0000

In my last go-round at university, I decided to major in philosophy. I came across Hume in a first year epistemology class. I was struck by Hume’s Problem of Induction and I thought it one of the coolest problems ever. For years I would say in any conversation tangentially related (and barely masking my pride), that Hume was my most favouritest philosopher ever.

That is, til I discovered that he was a racist of the first order. I was mortified. How embarrassing (at least for me, a black man). I wondered how many people I told about him actually knew that unfortunate fact. I decided the number was probably precious few, but still.

So hard for me to separate the ideas from the person. What a web.

by: ionfish

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 16:44:45 +0000

This is a good point, and one that perhaps I didn’t address terribly clearly. As I pointed out above, it’s generally accepted that the essence of a prioricity is its independence of experience; a priori knowledge isn’t dependent on any particular set of experiences, even though the reasoning that leads to it will always be accompanied by experience.

Hume doesn’t disagree with this; he distinguishes between “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact”. In section 4 of the first Enquiry he writes

[Relations of Ideas] are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is any where existent in the universe.

So, Hume seems to hold that relations of ideas are truth-apt and necessary, and are amenable to what he calls “demonstrative reasoning”. All of which sounds very much like a prioricity to me. The question which I was attempting to ask was, if ideas are copies of impressions, and truths of mathematics and logic are “discoverable by the mere operation of thought”, are there impressions which mathematical ideas are copies of, or does Hume simply not mean his theory to apply to that class of “objects of human reason”?

by: the apprentice

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 01:06:18 +0000

Do Hume's claims ever preclude a priori knowledge? He may suggest that we only have the capacity to think about mathematical concepts a posteriori, but perhaps he leaves room for some a priori component of knowledge. Grant him that the impressions we recombine in order to form new ideas are dependent on experience. But the act of recombination might well be the result of an a priori ability. Does this constitute knowledge? Maybe. If not, then the denial of any a priori knowledge shouldn't necessarily be held against Hume. His view - along with that of other empiricists - would probably be that the burden of proof is on those who do believe mathematical knowledge to be a priori, Kant amongst them.