Sunday Wry Mouth: Why I am Not a True Skeptic
David Hume (I presume)
Sorry, David Hume. You get full points for thinking about important stuff most people avoid, but your conclusions still strike me as murky at best. Truth is not subjective.
We trace his argument for the subjectivity of the perception of Truth, sketching in broad strokes along one of his lines of reasoning…
On the subject of cause and effect, Hume categorically denies our ability to form such connections – apart from experience – with any certitude:
“… All our distinct perception are distinct experiences, and … the mind never perceives any real connection among distinct experiences.”
He might argue that every event we perceive is a separate event. Oddly – and moreso, in the face of Hume’s main thesis – he held mathematics in a higher regard, valuing “abstract reasonings concerning quantity or number” – you know, stuff like geometrical proofs. I say “oddly,” because mathematics is, at its core, the discipline of pattern-spotting. But Hume wants pattern-spotting to be culturally-based, not based on some objective reality:
“… every effect is a distinct event from its cause. ….. (it would) therefore be in vain for us to pretend to determine any single event, or infer any cause or effect without the assistance of observation and experience.”
We can’t make cause-and-effect connections without experimentation, says Hume. Where is he going with this? To the land of Relative Truths! :
“All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning.”
But, Mr. Hume? Maybe you have overlooked one thing?
— — —
We side with the opposition on this one:
“Everyone who doubts knows that he is doubting, do that he is certain of this truth at least: namely, the fact that he doubts.
“Thus, everyone who doubts whether there is such a thing as truth knows at least one truth, so that his very capacity to doubt should convince him that there is such a thing as truth.”
— Augustine of Hippo
“Skepticism is the position that nothing can be demonstrated. … The skeptic asserts that nothing can be known. In his haste he said that truth was impossible. And is it true that truth is impossible? For, if no proposition is true, then at least one proposition is true – the proposition … that ‘no proposition is true.’
“If truth is impossible, therefore, it follows that we have already attained it.”
— Gordon Clark
“On the one hand, the Sceptic [sic] holds that there are no certain truths. On the other hand he cannot make a statement without admitting that the principle of contradiction is certainly true. According to this principle, being and non-being are not identical. If it is rejected, then in any statement ‘is’ and ‘is not’ are interchangeable.
“It is obvious that on these terms thought and discourse become impossible.”
but... if we were allowed to divide by zero or take negative measurements and square roots in geometric and algebraic proofs... there would be unpredictable and infinite effect to the causes: even in mathematics we must apply arbitrary cultural restrictions to arrive at predictable cause and effect...
no?
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There are only two truths, the most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia.
I forget the other.
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something about Death being on the line... 'sprolly not important.
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it's NOT important... it's NOT IMPORTANT... must. let. nerd-impulse. pass.
... '''''''' ...
dont. have. to. be. answer-man. always.
Instead I'll leave Wry with
"Idiots. Those prizes are rightfully mine."
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As he is a countryman of mine, I ought to be able to say something erudite in defence of, or agin his cause. Howevurrr...all that comes to mind concerning him is his quatrain in Monty Python's, "Bruce's Philosoper's Song" (Comitted to memory in teenhood and never forgotten.)
David Hume could out-consume Schopfenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine,
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
-----------------------------------
"Enlightenment, don't know what it is."
Van Morrison
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I'm perusing through some medium-hard apologetics... trying to close my mind on something solid, or perhaps rather re-investigating my world-view, poking and prodding.
I teach my stats students that we sometimes are faced with an event or evidence that what we believe might not necessarily be true, and then we have to decide: do we change our world-view, or do we just say that the event or evidence is "unusually deviant" and that what we believe is true anyway?
Every now and again I like to check my assumptions.
Other than that, folks like Hume and I don't get a lot of play time together. Yet, I admire these folks in at least this way: they wanted to dissect thought and existence in the same way I like to take apart saxophones and watches -- to see what all the little gears are and how they make the whole thing go.
I appreciate that impulse, even when I disagree with someone's final analysis.
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Sonja : Judgment of any system, or a priori relationship or phenomenon exists in an irrational, or metaphysical, or at least epistemological contradiction to an abstract empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself.
Boris : Yes, I've said that many times.
Woody Allen - Love and Death
Philosophy has always struck me as one of those pursuits that is more fun to perform than it is to listen to (much like avant garde jazz, for example).
You get two or three lines into what is probably a very well-thought out position when the limitations of the English language -- and I remind you that English has the largest vocabulary of any human tongue -- render the main concepts essentially meaningless. At the heart of the problem is the recursive nature of the philosophical discussion when lofty thoughts are reduced to mere words: "What is truth? What is the nature of truth? Is it knowable? How do we know if the nature of truth is its true nature? Is the true nature of a knowable truth knowable? Truly?"
It's like repeating the word 'yellow' over and over and over and over and over and over until all you're aware of are its phonics, and the word itself either a) has lost all meaning or 2) just sounds funny.
Yellow.
So, I'll try reading your treatise again, wrymouth, but I'm not optimistic I will get much out of it. My limitations, not yours.
Respectfully (truly),
Cogito
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Wry,I wish I could retain the fruits of my ponders, in this sense: the time I spent mulling-over and applying and deconstructing philosophical treatises. I could feel, like one of those old-fashioned creosote cough remedies, that it was doing me a lot of good.
Spent a lot of time with Wittgenstein, "on matter and memory", when puzzling my way through the delightful novel, "Tristram Shandy." The narrator, Tristram, sets out to re-create every hour of his life, but soon realises he has to permit and apply extraneous variables of evidence from other sources he cannot essentially vouch for. And he also goes off at huge tangents. So - the more he writes, the more he feels the constructs he wishes to outline, actually fragmenting. Tristram Shandy is my favourite wry and funny novel, and a very early one. I like the way that Laurence Sterne challenges the reader to actually stay with the book. That he/she is sure to be exasperated beyond anything they have ever, ever known. You keep reading in spite of him, to show you are stalwartly scaling his lofty digressions. Then he laughs as he spots you on the horizon, waves congratulatingly, and throws another in your path.
I have hitched myself to Sterne's "hobby horse" here, as,like him, I can ramble so painfully that my original thought has long been circumnavigated. So - I would just like to say that it is good to take the time out to revisit peeps like Hume. I will take time and digest your thoughtful article properly, and, mayhap, may wander in now unfamiliar neighbourhoods and chap on the door of Wittgenstein, or Monsieur Descartes.
Cogito - I understand your 'meaning fragmentation when repeating a word', thingy! That leads to a skeery sort of anomie, and I don't tend to go there. I once read half of Rene Descartes' "Discours de la Methode" in the original old french, trying to get a feel for any nuances of meaning brushed-off in translation. But it just added a gazillion others. Ah well, the ghost and the machine are still not quite coming together, alas. it is six am, and I am foggy-headed.
Bob - I like Hume's twisty towel. where did he get a red one? I am a little jellis.
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Rowan: I encourage Cogito to meditate upon the deftness of your reduction of this post to a remark about Hume's "twisty towel."
It is THAT which makes humans great.
P.S. I've been thinking alot about giving Tristram Shandy a go, for many reasons you give here; even a shallow listening (or reading) of the Brothers Wrymouth is sure to reveal a largeish tendency to write entire essays of nothing BUT tangents, and I -- so I like to think -- the Chief of them all.
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I, myself, unravel tangents. You all usually give me a workout.
Twisty-towels ... That is why I love Rowan.
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You guys rock.Hume's twisty towel is siting very nicely, I have to say. And it is not really red, is it? It is burnt umber. Which makes it all the more baroque and enviable.
I was thinking about Cog's reflection on meaning dislocating if it descends, through repetition of a word, into fragmented phonemes. In true tangential style, this took me to questionig whether I am indeed a true skeptic, because, in the UK, we spell it with a "c". Well, I assumed our spelling would have some sort of historical priority, as we Brits tend to do. (We tend to be a little arrogant that way.) Howevurr...this is not actually the case. You guys have the a priori recorded version of the term. So I guess that means that I am not a true skeptic after-all. Sigh. But I am an honourary one, and that makes me very happy.
"skeptic
1587, "member of an ancient Gk. school that doubted the possibility of real knowledge," from Fr. sceptique, from L. scepticus, from Gk. skeptikos (pl. Skeptikoi "the Skeptics"), lit. "inquiring, reflective," the name taken by the disciples of the Gk. philosopher Pyrrho (c.360-c.270 B.C.E.), from skeptesthai "to reflect, look, view" (see scope (1)). The extended sense of "one with a doubting attitude" first recorded 1615. The sk- spelling is an early 17c. Gk. revival and is preferred in U.S.
"Skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found." [Miguel de Unamuno, "Essays and Soliloquies," 1924]
sceptic
British spelling of skeptic (q.v.)."
(Online Etymological Dictionary.)
Wry - I vote that we all Read Tristram Shandy, and return at some as yet ill-defined point in the future to share our tangential reminiscences.
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One last muse on Hume's headgear before I step away from the internetz. There are a lot of highly successful and lucrative novels out there, with posessive connotations. "Foucalt's Pendulum", "Flaubert's Parrot", etc. I have to say that I have been beginning to find them funny, but mostly irritating, owing to their sheer proliferation. Anyhoo...there is a clear opportunity here, for someone to gather up the mantle of the Enlightenment thinker's rather fetching cranial adornment, and write the next bestseller in the genre: "Hume's Twisty-Towel."
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In regard to the British assertion that just because you all spelled it first, you get dibs. When Wry Jr was reading a biscuit label that we brought back from the UK, he noted with some satisfaction that our spelling of "flavor" was superior, because we get rid of the extraneous "u".
He was rather pleased.
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Ah, but were the biscuits flavoursome and thus worth savouring in themselves? This I want to know. :op
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...and was the colouring perfect?
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That riposte was rather laboured.
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it was my honour to participate in a small way
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It *was* very neighbourly of you...
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(just shakes head)
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And, may I conclude, as Post Author, by saying:
You-all have thus clearly demonstrated for all concerned your very wry sense of
"Hume-our."
Ah, thank you. Thank you veddy much.
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