tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post4163744614368036876..comments2024-01-16T09:31:45.073-04:00Comments on Anderson Brown's Philosophy Blog: Hume's NaturalismAnderson Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18358008464457746997noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-49800402659716402662008-06-27T10:22:00.000-04:002008-06-27T10:22:00.000-04:00Lamar, The way you're approaching the topic is Kan...Lamar, The way you're approaching the topic is Kantian: Kant thought that the way to resolve the Cartesian dilemma was to posit a phenomenal world (the world as we perceive it) and a noumenal world (the world-in-itself). But I think this was a setback: when one looks at the passages in Hume's Treatise discussed in the post, Hume's claim seems to be that existence is not a predicate in itself, rather that we only conceive of anything when we have sensory impressions: the real meaning of "exists" is just "makes impressions." Then the reference to Berkeley as a nominalist is interesting: we realize that we have impressions (experiences), and so we name that set (the set of experiences). We name this set "existence." But then it seems that we can think of existence per se, not any particular instance of it (which, remember, would just be a particular impression). But this is a conceptual error. A confusion of reference and use, maybe. And this is Wittgenstein's diagnosis of Plato's realism about universals. I'm claiming that Hume is anticipating that (I'm part of a new wave of Hume interpreters claiming that). The result is that it is meaningless to talk about "reality" apart from experience. And I think that this is the Buddhist view as well. Good to hear from you again.Anderson Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18358008464457746997noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-49704286159717683772008-06-24T22:15:00.000-04:002008-06-24T22:15:00.000-04:00If existence is not taken to be a predicate or a q...If existence is not taken to be a predicate or a quality, then would that mean that we could posit the existence of the "outside" world and at the same time also claim that it is absurd or meaningless to say that we are trapped inside ourselves insofar as we cannot come to know this outside world?<BR/><BR/>We can't come to know reality "in itself" because to come to know something requires one to form predicates to things. And in doing so, one is pointing out <I>qualities</I> of things. But by definition, this would require one to be "trapped" within one's self. But it is absurd to say that we are "trapped" since that suggests the logical possibility that we can "get out" of ourselves and see the world as it is. But, of course, this has already been shown to be not possible, <I>by definition</I>.<BR/><BR/>However, I still think that we can posit the <I>existence</I> of the "outside" world, as separate from the phenomenal world, because existence is not itself a quality. So the world "in itself" exists; it just doesn't exist <I>as</I> anything, and so it's absurd to suggest that we could either know it or not know it. There is nothing to know.<BR/><BR/>Am I on the right track here?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-72790722549772135112008-06-17T18:06:00.000-04:002008-06-17T18:06:00.000-04:00All good words; I have to say though that sometime...All good words; I have to say though that sometimes I get the feeling that Descartes is as mis-characterized as Berkeley has been. There is a sense in which "we are all trapped inside our heads" is an equivalent of "things disappear when they are not looked at". Its funny, as I was reading your post I actually thought of Berkeley just was you were speaking of Descartes. Most definitely, Descartes forwarded a hard-to-support representationalist view of knowledge, but without taking into view his conceptions of thinking-the-divine, his use of the imagination as a means of focusing one's "eye" upon the divine, that is, once "God" is taken out of Descartes, like Berkeley, he sounds much more absurd. One needs only to look at Descartes's analogy of "vision" to be more like a blind man who uses and experiences his cane, instead of the receipt of accurate images, to see that Descartes has within his thought more subtlety and tension than is often attributed to him. <BR/><BR/>As a Spinozist though, I like your rightful conclusion:<BR/><BR/>"That is, there is no metaphysical distinction between the mind and the body. It is true enough that when we talk about our "perceptions" we are talking about states of our own bodies; this need not involve us in the concept of "representation." And here's a remarkable outcome: this is Spinoza's view as well."<BR/><BR/>If you have not read them, Wim Klever has argued in two interesting articles, "Hume Contra Spinoza?" (1990) and "More About Hume's Debt to Spinoza" (1993), that Hume bears a hidden and strong Spinoza influence. Perhaps his line of reasoning here would also aid the point of your arguments against Descartes.kvondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07709562524431261018noreply@blogger.com