tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post5634906015908186997..comments2024-03-28T12:34:14.649-07:00Comments on dangerous idea: Explaining Hume's ForkVictor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-15999152773877509712010-03-28T16:22:28.060-07:002010-03-28T16:22:28.060-07:00Hume may be a nominalist, but that doesn't mea...Hume may be a nominalist, but that doesn't mean numbers, say, have no existence whatsoever. Or he's inconsistent, as in claiming mathematical/logical truths hold yet also denying universals. <br /><br />Either way he doesn't really flesh out the constructivist problem--given his Treatise maxim of "no ideas without antecedent impressions" he would seem to imply something like an empirical account of mathematics....Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-59189766677662009352010-03-27T19:12:11.864-07:002010-03-27T19:12:11.864-07:00It's not quite right to say that Hume thinks r...It's not quite right to say that Hume thinks relations of ideas concern things known apart from experience; on a Humean view nothing is known apart from experience. The key difference here is existence, not experience: knowledge based on relations of ideas does not depend on any attribution of existence to the ideas, while knowledge based on matters of fact does. (Confer the opening of ECHU Section IV Part I.)Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-73492902994467694772010-03-25T07:36:22.393-07:002010-03-25T07:36:22.393-07:00That's one of Hume's "forks"--re...That's one of Hume's "forks"--really the analytic/synthetic distinction--relations of ideas are mathematics/logic, ie analytic, a priori. Matters of fact---are the propositions of natural science, physics, social science--synthetic, a posteriori (obviously that's a bit quaint, since natural science depends greatly on advanced mathematics). <br /><br />But it's also used in other senses, as the wiki indicates. <br /><br />Hume's not saying ethics reduces merely to feelings. The is-ought problem shows that ethics cannot be established purely by logic. There's no contradiction between preferring a bomb dropped on a city to a prick on the finger,etc.--you can't really prove obligations via reason. <br /><br />So I think he wants to say ethics becomes a type of moral psychology--reason should help further our goals, so forth. Maybe Hume's wrong, but it's not just "whatever X thinks is good, is good"--Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.com