Q: Would you say our #CurrentTimes will mark the #end of all the #ideals that came from the #Enlightenment era, including #rationalism, #empiricism, #progress, #tolerance and #fraternity, #constitutional #government, and the formal #separation of #church and state?
A:
I’ve just read about a set of David Hume’s letters being auctioned, and I have to say that were I ridiculously wealthy, I would absolutely spend all my money making sure things like this were safely archived in museums where people could see them, and where they would be protected from the elements and ravages of time.
He was such an extraordinary writer, his snide turns of phrase, his elegant dismissal of the external divine, his belief that humanity was humanity’s greatest hope and enemy. These were letters to a friend, and they stayed in that family from the 1700s until now. I hope the purchaser puts, at the very least, archival copies of the letters online, so we can read them.
#hume #philosophy #empiricism #skeptics #enlightenment
A primer on Hume: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume
I don't want faith. I can't do anything of any use with faith. I want to believe true things. Faith has no criteria of determining what is and what isn't true, and this is evident in the fact that you can believe anything on faith, whether true or untrue. Empiricism (please look up this word) only allows you to believe things that can be observed or experimented on, i.e., things that can be proven to be true.
The crux of the rationalist/empiricist debate lies in how we explain our possession of ideas that seemingly could not come from experience, such as the ideas of infinity or perfection... #historyofphilosophy #intellectualtraditions #johnlocke #empiricism #georgeberkeley #Idealism #rationalism #metaphysics #epistemology #philosophy #dualism #experience https://philosophyindefinitely.wordpress.com/2020/08/21/lockes-empiricism-berkeleys-idealism/
New in our electronic #collection:
The Building Blocks of Thought. A Rationalist Account of the Origins of Concepts
https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/92579/1/9780192898838.pdf
There has been an intersection of modern empiricism and rationalism of the enlightenment in the synthesis affected by Immanuel Kant, out of this grew a distinction between two methodologies that have persisted in philosophy... read more at philosophy indefinitely #historyofphilosophy #empiricism #rationalism #epistemology #FrancisBacon #johnlocke #ImmanuelKant #ReneDescartes #DavidHume #Leibniz #johnstuartmill #spinoza #BertrandRussell #Compatibilism #philosophyofscience https://philosophyindefinitely.wordpress.com/2020/07/11/19th-century-empiricism/
Looking for resources on David Hume, particularly on the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding? Here's my playlist with 37 videos in it so far. Talks, course lectures, and shorter core concept videos
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4gvlOxpKKIjNy7v1WoLB81ASLsqm1I92
#Hume #Philosophy #Videos #Resources #Empiricism #Skepticism
The history of modern philosophy stems from the intersection of two lines of thought, British philosophy/empiricist tradition and continental rationalist tradition... the following article focuses on the work of Francis Bacon...
#philosophy #empiricism #rationalism #continentalphilosophy #analyticalphilosophy #FrancisBacon #historyofphilosophy #philosophyofscience #knowledge #enlightenment #reason #realism #metaphysics #scientificmethod https://philosophyindefinitely.wordpress.com/2019/11/17/francis-bacon/
In the Way of Inquiry • Reconciling Accounts
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/24/in-the-way-of-inquiry-reconciling-accounts-a/
The Reader may share with the Author a feeling of discontent at this point, attempting to reconcile the formal intentions of this inquiry with the cardinal contentions of experience. Let me try to express the difficulty in the form of a question:
What is the bond between form and content in experience, between the abstract formal categories and the concrete material contents residing in experience?
Once toward the end of my undergrad years a professor asked me how I'd personally define mathematics and I told him I saw it as “the form of experience and the experience of form”. This is not the place to argue for the virtues of that formulation but it does afford me one of the handles I have on the bond between form and content in experience.
I have no more than a tentative way of approaching the question. I take there to be a primitive category of “form‑in‑experience” — I don’t have a handy name for it yet but it looks to have a flexible nature which from the standpoint of a given agent easily passes from the “structure of experience” to the “experience of structure”.
Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview
Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles
#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Experience #Expectation #EffectiveDescription #FiniteMeans
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Empiricism #Rationalism
#Concretion #Information #Comprehension #Extension #Intension
In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-exigency-a/
A turn of events so persistent must have a cause, a force of reason to explain the dynamics of its recurring moment in the history of ideas. The nub of it's not born on the sleeve of its first and last stages, where the initial explosion and the final collapse march along their stubborn course in lockstep fashion, but is embodied more naturally in the middle of the above narrative.
Experience exposes and explodes expectations. How can experiences impact expectations unless the two types of entities are both reflected in one medium, for instance and perhaps without loss of generality, in the form of representation constituting the domain of signs?
However complex its world may be, internal or external to itself or on the boundaries of its being, a finite creature's description of it rests in a finite number of finite terms or a finite sketch of finite lines. Finite terms and lines are signs. What they indicate need not be finite but what they are, must be.
Fragments —
The common sensorium.
The common sense and the senses of “common”.
This is the point where the empirical and the rational meet.
I describe as “empirical” any method which exposes theoretical descriptions of an object to further experience with that object.
Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview
Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles
#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Experience #Expectation #EffectiveDescription #FiniteMeans
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Empiricism #Rationalism
In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-exigency-a/
Our survey of obstacles to inquiry has dealt at length with blocks arising from its formal aspects. On the other hand, I have cast this project as an empirical inquiry, proposing to represent experimental hypotheses in the form of computer programs. At the heart of that empirical attitude is a feeling all formal theories should arise from and bear on experience.
Every season of growth in empirical knowledge begins with a rush to the sources of experience. Every fresh‑thinking reed of intellect is raised to pipe up and chime in with the still‑viable canons of inquiry in one glorious paean to the personal encounter with natural experience.
But real progress in the community of inquiry depends on observers being able to orient themselves to objects of common experience — the uncontrolled exaltation of individual phenomenologies leads as a rule to the disappointment and disillusionment which befalls the lot of unshared enthusiasms and fragmented impressions.
Look again at the end of the season and see it faltering to a close, with every novice scribe rapped on the knuckles for departing from that uninspired identification with impersonal authority which expresses itself in third‑person passive accounts of one's own experience.
Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview
Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles
#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Empiricism #Rationalism
Okay, idea.
French toast, but bagel.
Will it work?
I'm about to find out.
Update at lunch: Items that go on a bagel sandwich need to have a certain compression strength. A fried egg has this. Egg salad does not. #Empiricism
In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency 6
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-exigency-2/
Experience exposes and explodes expectations. How can experiences impact expectations unless the two types of entities are both reflected in one medium, for instance and perhaps without loss of generality, in the form of representation constituting the domain of signs?
#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Experience #Expectation #Representation #Semiotics
#Form #Matter #Empiricism #Rationalism
Learning from mistakes is inefficient, because in any noteworthy human enterprise there is always a huge combination of factors that can go wrong and derail it. With a success you know that everything that needed to work - worked. But with a failure, there is no way of knowing what went right and is worth repeating in the next attempt, and what went wrong and needs to be changed.
The trick is to both reject authority and to reject conspiracy nutjobs.
#empiricism
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RT @JacquelynGill
It's easy to mock the Ancient Rome Wasn't Real/Ancient Aliens/Lost Ancient Civilization conspiracy theorists, but I'm deeply alarmed at how quickly disinformation about the past is being spread by people whose entire arguments essentially rest on a rejection of authority.
https://twitter.com/JacquelynGill/status/1596540816633495552
What is a skeptic? Here is Dr. Steven Novella’s summary:
“A skeptic is one who prefers beliefs and conclusions that are reliable and valid to ones that are comforting or convenient, and therefore rigorously and openly applies the methods of #science and #reason to all empirical claims, especially their own. A skeptic provisionally proportions acceptance of any claim to valid #logic and a fair and thorough assessment of available #evidence, and studies the pitfalls of human reason and the mechanisms of deception so as to avoid being deceived by others or themselves. Skepticism values method over any particular conclusion.”
