Pharyngula

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | July 29, 2010 12:28 PM

No wonder we haven't had any science since the 18th century. It's all David Hume's fault.

I'll betcha his grad students have some great stories for Mooney.

Posted by: jack.rawlinson | July 29, 2010 12:34 PM

Hume's the man. If it's nae Scottish it's CRAP!

Posted by: gawdmail | July 29, 2010 12:38 PM

For those of you with eReaders, you can get his complete works for $1.71 at B&N.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Works-of-David-Hume/David-Hume/e/9781607782445/?itm=1&USRI=david+hume

Posted by: Mattir-ritated | July 29, 2010 12:41 PM

I think all New Atheists should wear those spiffy wigs in order to acknowledge their debt to Hume. PZ would look quite smashing in one.

Posted by: mattheath | July 29, 2010 12:43 PM

Not bad, for a Tory ;)

Posted by: vbalbert | July 29, 2010 12:45 PM

David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Posted by: irenedelse | July 29, 2010 12:51 PM

@ gawdmail: You mean, "those of you with eReaders, you can get his complete works for $0.0 from the Gutemberg Project or Manybooks", right?

Public domain power!

Posted by: Shplane, some shit in french | July 29, 2010 1:02 PM

So are these actual quotes or are they just assuming that those are the kind of things he would say?

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | July 29, 2010 1:10 PM

Shplane, it would seem that the mock interview was based on the writings of David Hume. These were things that Hume wrote about, including the idea that one cannot say the the sun will rise tomorrow. He was very much the strict empiricist.

Posted by: Sunday Afternoon | July 29, 2010 1:40 PM

@PZ: Why thank you sir! I've often been called a rascal, but cannot recall ever being a despicable one.

Posted by: PhillipR | July 29, 2010 1:51 PM

Is this video broken for anyone else? Fails to start, and can't click on it for a direct link..

Posted by: Saul Adrem | July 29, 2010 1:58 PM

gawdmail @ #5...you can go read most if not all of Hume's work amongst many others at:

link

Posted by: secularshawshank | July 29, 2010 2:00 PM

Great clip. Hume's work stands extremely tall, and this clip actually gave a cool overview of his persona.

Posted by: InfraredEyes | July 29, 2010 2:41 PM

I'm faintly aware that there are autonomy movements in Scotland, actually.

We have our own parliament now, ye ken. Complete with its own ugly building and cost overruns and everything.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/ZtcYREgkweeGsULreuYqtWysjg_Gwy5n1A--#27f9d | July 29, 2010 2:59 PM

Hume also features in a famous story with Baron d'Holbach:

Hume was a dinner guest at the home of the good Baron. Hume said that he atheists did not exist, because he had never seen one. Holbach said "Look around you at your fellow dinner guests--I can show you fifteen atheists right off. The other three haven't yet made up their minds."

Baron d'Holbach by the way is one of the great heroes of atheism. It's a shame that his works are so neglected--you'll have a hard time finding decent editions of his books.

By the way P.Z., I don't know if you've already seen this, but here's a nice article waiting for evisceration--David B. Hart on Marilynne Robinson: http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/features/in-self-defense
Idiot on idiot!

Posted by: shonny | July 29, 2010 3:15 PM

Thanks for ... well, not exactly nothing, but incitement to give the credit card another bashing when I shouldn't!
It's all your fault, PZ, and I am grateful.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | July 29, 2010 3:31 PM

Another insufferable New Atheist

This is exactly why I am dropping the "New" and taking up identification as a Gnu Atheist. There is nothing new about us.

Posted by: Tulse | July 29, 2010 3:36 PM

I am dropping the "New" and taking up identification as a Gnu Atheist

I suggested at Ophelia's site that we need a good acronym for "GNU", preferably one that is recursive, such as "GNUs Never Unreason".

Posted by: evilDoug | July 29, 2010 3:45 PM

The Hume character sounds to me like a Sassenach wi' a fake Edinburgh accent.

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 29, 2010 4:17 PM

David Hume did not declare himself an atheist, perhaps from using logic similar to Sam Harris, perhaps from philosophical reasons, and perhaps from pragmatic reasons. He experienced genuine negative social repercussions due to his explicit skepticism, and lived in a city which had, not very many years before he was born, hanged a young man in his twenties, one Thomas Aikenhead, for blasphemy

Posted by: AnonymousCoward | July 29, 2010 4:30 PM

I see you Scotsmen are thrifty with credulous faith, too!

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlDoFRQwOn40pYlHXOtlwzDqMBoI0Yfoyo | July 29, 2010 5:34 PM

A Scot featured on Pharyngula! It makes me so proud!

On a more sober note, I'm sad to read that my university (Glasgow) refused him a professorship because of his skepticism.

PS. Whoever said Scotland is part of England should get a claymore up his ass :P Saor Alba!

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 29, 2010 5:51 PM

Not at all a fan of his friend and contemporary Scot, Adam Smith.

Perhaps there was more to Smith than one might think.

   The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

   —Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Book I, Chapter 11, Conclusion)

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | July 29, 2010 6:35 PM

Insightful Ape #40

Not at all a fan of his friend and contemporary Scot, Adam Smith.

That's a pity, because Smith was as intelligent and as good a writer as Hume. Perhaps if you read Smith instead of reacting to the quote mines used by the Cato and Von Mises Institutes you'd have a better appreciation of him.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.

Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

All quotes taken from Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London: W. Strahan & T. Cadell. 1776. (Yes, I own a first edition of Wealth of Nations.)

Posted by: antie.diaphanus | July 29, 2010 7:55 PM

This is exactly why I am dropping the "New" and taking up identification as a Gnu Atheist. There is nothing new about us.

Does that mean that we're going to be adopting the GPL?

Posted by: MadScientist | July 29, 2010 8:00 PM

Would someone care to put English captions on that one? Crappy computer speakers + Scot accent = no ken.

Posted by: David Christy | July 29, 2010 8:23 PM

According to local legend, when Hume was buried, the people of Edinburgh stayed up all night to catch a glimpse of the devil coming for him.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | July 29, 2010 9:09 PM

Yeah, we definitely have to push the 'gnu atheist' label; it makes a mockery of the use of 'new' by the anti-atheist types who are using it to denigrate atheism by associating it with such negative concepts as 'new money' and 'new coke', bringing with it such connotations as lesser or ephemeral or somehow lacking.

As we can see from Hume, there's nothing 'new' about it.

Posted by: metatwaddle.dreamwidth.org | July 29, 2010 9:55 PM

Funny you should post this: I've just been reading Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It's a wonderful book--he dismantles the argument from design with good philosophy, but unfortunately he ends by saying, "I was just trolling. Of course there's a God." Still, he was a pretty awesome religious skeptic, for the most part.

He decided not to publish Dialogues during his own lifetime for fear that his religious skepticism would damage his reputation. I think he left his nephew instructions to publish it after his death.

Posted by: Joe Bloe | July 30, 2010 1:23 AM

Aikenhead hung for blasphemy in 1697.

Hume talking like this a few decades later.

What happened? What caused the change?

Posted by: metatwaddle.dreamwidth.org | July 30, 2010 2:06 AM

Kel: I completely agree, and that's what makes me so happy to read it. I love evolutionary theory and all, but I'm more at home with philosophy, and Dialogues is so imaginative and clever and clear. Plus, Hume was a very good writer, so the book is a joy to read.

A couple of years ago, a philosophy prof of mine recommended Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to a woman who had written some angry op-ed in our local paper. She wrote that the arguments of atheists must be bad because Dawkins et al. are belligerent and strident and blah blah blah. He wrote a letter in response, very politely telling her that just maybe, if she wanted to know whether to take the arguments of religious skeptics seriously, she should read what they said. He said Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion was the best, funniest and most important work on the subject, and I'm inclined to agree.

Posted by: John Morales | July 30, 2010 2:33 AM

phlgradstudent,

[Hume] firmly held to the Whig theory of history, which is basically a secular eschatology.

For an extremely loose sense of 'eschatology', perhaps.

I think 'teleology' would be a far more apposite term, here.

--

No quibble about his philosophy, other than it's dated because he had nowhere near the amount of empirical information available today.

Posted by: John Morales | July 30, 2010 3:37 AM

phlgradstudent, thanks for that link, I appreciate it.

--

[OT - meta]

PS I feel I should make it clear I've only had two semesters' worth of formal philosophy; I appreciate good pointers from someone more familiar with it than I.

I know what I write can be interpreted as coming from someone "conceited and full of himself" (to paraphrase a recent critic) and perhaps even contrarian.
Believe me or not, that is not my intent.

Also, I tell you I bear you no animus nor have (conscious) predudice towards you; I honestly try to engage your comments, not you, and trust you're doing the same.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | July 30, 2010 4:38 AM

Regarding the sunrise issue, it's worth bearing in mind that we do know what causes a sunrise- it's the rotation of the earth so that the sun is visible above the horizon; the sun is always rising, somewhere. So the question of whether the sun will rise tomorrow becomes the question of whether the motion of the earth will continue as it has done heretofore, which in turn becomes the question of whether the laws (regularities) of nature will continue to operate as they appear to have done heretofore. I can therefore claim at least the conditional certainty :) that the sun will rise tomorrow unless the laws of nature change. This in turn is the maximum degree of certainty one can usefully have about anything, since the prospect of the laws of nature changing is not one for which anyone can plan- after all our continued existence as thinking creatures and indeed as coherent matter depends entirely on the continued operation of the laws of nature, so there is no point attempting to plan for the possibility of a change.

On Reid: I'm troubled by the idea that (from the stanford link) "Human nature could not be such as to lead us to contradictory beliefs." Observationally this happens all the time!

Posted by: John Morales | July 30, 2010 4:44 AM

[meta + OT]

phlgradstudent, glad we're on the same page.

I think you might find these two threads of interest, assuming you've not read them before.

They're long and (typically for Pharyngula) disputatious, but relevant to your last comment regarding how philosophy is perceived here.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 6:01 AM

Kel, Yup, you are absolutely right. I've said before that I am not unaware of the depths of woo that cripple my field. I will say it again. There is a lot of bad philosophy out there - and not just bad as in dated, I mean bad as in pure bullshit from people who are smart enough to know better. Moreover, there is alot of horseshit presumption and unmitigated religious posturing that poses as philosophy. And, due to the amorphous nature of thought, this is more easily done than using science to try the same shit (e.g. ID).

But presuming that one's 'mental map' needs no study - that one's own set of references and symbols perfectly models the actual word - this is also pure bullshit. So while it might be understandable that so many here equate ALL philosophy with woo, it is also a problematic hypothesis (to say the least). I would rather discriminate. Plantinga, for example, strikes me as pure woo, a religious thinker pretending to do philosophy. But there are others (including Hume) who are not.

And John, those are great threads, thanks for pointing them out. I recall the original posts, and read some (no where near all) of the threads at the time. It wasn't that I wasn't interested, but I had a whole heaping pile of work (writing) at the time and didn't partake in the fun. Ah the holidays, I will read through them now.

cheers

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 6:15 AM

More properly, I should have written that kel is right in saying that it is understandable that there is such a presumption, not that the presumption is right... all kinds of bs is 'understandable' when we know their cause. it doesn't make it right.

And thank you, Q. E. D. for making my point better than I.

Posted by: RijkswaanVijanD | July 30, 2010 8:43 AM

@21 Same here.. I bet it's due to that damn plugin container in the new FF

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | July 30, 2010 9:48 AM

And, due to the amorphous nature of thought, this is more easily done than using science to try the same shit (e.g. ID).

I'd actually disagree. While here there are many science-literate, it's amazing the amount of pure woo out there which people attach sciency labels to. In Bad Science, Ben Goldacre reported that people will go for a sciency-sounding but false explanation over a plainly spoken correct one (even undergrads in the relevant field!)

Kel, that's just not a good reason to dismiss an entire discipline that a) gave us skepticism b) logic and c) gave birth to science and d) is devoted to trying to understand the universe (the same goal as science).

I said it was understandable, I didn't say it was a good reason.

Posted by: nastasiewoerjan | July 30, 2010 11:35 AM

The story about the sunrise is one of the examples Hume used to illustrate the famous problem of induction (put forth in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding). The problem of induction is the basis of modern skeptical empiricism. For more on that, I suggest Epistemology Naturalised, by W.V.O. Quine, Hume's "heir" in 20th century epistemology.

The gist of it is that the problem of induction illustrates that the search for absolute certainty, aka essentialism, is futile. Which is how science works, isn't it? What we can attain is knowledge below the level of absolute certainty, and that is ok. This may be obvious now, but Hume and Quine (among others, but to me these two are the badasses of skeptical empiricism) are responsible for laying out the most convincing arguments for this.

Sorry, I would make a better exposition of this if I had time, but my point here was to strongly recommend reading these works by Hume and Quine if you want to get a better understanding of epistemology.

Posted by: KG | July 30, 2010 11:47 AM

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
- Adam Smith

"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable"
- Adam Smith

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."
- Adam Smith

It's true he put far too much faith in his "invisible hand", but the above should indicate that he was no fawner on the rich and powerful.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/6RBjsz4HsZx_jxDjOTAyms_CG8xZDfiNIWWXSg--#b33f0 | July 30, 2010 1:16 PM

KG #78 - my understanding is that the Quaker iron worker thing is a myth, see for example this page for more information:
http://albanach.org/kilt.html

(I am a Scot myself, and take a close interest in such things due to the horrible mess that has been made of our history by various people over the years. )

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | July 30, 2010 2:11 PM

First, about the sun - you left off the possibility of cataclysm

A cataclysm of the sort that would prevent the next sunrise from happening as expected would probably either have effects already observable, or require the laws of nature to change.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 4:15 PM

were our star to go nova ...

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | July 30, 2010 5:08 PM

If something that size were on it's way to us, we'd know by now

1) "it's" should have been "its" (and I hate when I do that).
2) Specifically, if something of that size were on its way and due to arrive in 24 hours...blah blah blah...

Posted by: nastasiewoerjan | July 30, 2010 5:31 PM

@ phlgradstudent and KOPD

As I understand it, the example of the sun rising etc. is not the point of what Hume was saying. The point was positing the problem of induction, which is that everything we know empirically about the world is based on an expectation that the regularity of nature (you can call it laws of nature) will continue to be as they always have been. We are justified in believing the sun will rise tomorrow because all evidence points to that, but there is no *necessary connection* between the statements "The sun has always risen" and "The sun will rise tomorrow". The bigger point is that Hume is conceding this to the rationalists (e.g. Descartes), who were in search of a rock bottom foundation for knowledge. There is no way to find that rock bottom foundation - there is no necessary connection in 'it has always been this way, therefore it will always be this way'. But the beauty of it is that *it doesn't matter*. The fact that it has always been like this is a reasonable basis for assuming it will always be like this (the regularity of nature, that is). Even though we cannot ascertain beyond all doubt that it will. So the point is that we don't need an irrefutable definition of what knowledge is in order to call our understanding of the world knowledge.

Other empiricists elaborated on this later, and to make a long story short, this brought about things like Quine's naturalised epistemology (which is an expansion of Hume's skeptical empiricism), which in turn brought about things like Dennett's 'intentional stance', which is a brilliant formulation of the irrelevance of essentialist demands for the definition of what consciousness is, and enabled philosophy to get closer to and benefit from science (thus rendering philosophy relevant again, imo).

So, in sum, the problem of induction as postulated by Hume may sound trivial today, but it signalled the beginning of the downfall of essentialism/foundationalism in favour of 'pragmatic' empiricism. You could argue that a lot of the philosophy of science done in the 20th century is wanky, but there were important contributions to logic, empiricism, skepticism - schools of thought that make actual contributions to science.

I blame this prejudice against philosophy on the prevalence of post-modernism in academia. If the brand of philosophy I mentioned above - aka 'analytic philosophy' - were taught instead of po-mo woo, we wouldn't be hearing things like 'but you can't know everything, all opinions are valid, everything is relative!' from the humanities departments. It's a like a fucking plague is what it is.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 6:00 PM

OK KOPD, you've made the point that you missed the point entirely. The technicalities are unimportant, the fact that you are obscuring yourself therein is not.

But let's check in with the little issues first. Your said that it is not natural for our star to go nova? really? It seems unlikely to do so anytime soon, but to make the blanket statement that it won't is absurd. I will readily admit that I am neither a physicist nor an astronomer (are you? - I ask because I don't know), but I seem to recall that stars do go nova... (AGAIN, it seems extremely unlikely to do so soon, but this is about certitude, not probability). Second, thank you for clarifying about the orbit and rotation, but, yeah I remember this stuff from pretty early on in basic school. And, um, if our planet isn't orbiting (or at least, near) a star then its rotation is not going to produce a sunrise. Third, yeah, I know that we would likely know about an asteroid strike before it came - I was describing unlikely scenarios with the point of arguing that however low the probabilities, we cannot make a definitive statement about a future event. I generally sleep well knowing the extremely low probabilities of there not being a sunrise tomorrow, but Hume was discussing the problem of absolute certitude. Not one of the 'objections' you raise touches on the point of his statement about the sunrise. (You may think you have proven my less than stellar defense of his argument, but have only displayed sophistry - it makes me want to ask if you had ever read Hume?)

And finally, your arrogance is only matched by how little you know about stuff too. I guarantee you that there is stuff you know that I don't, and stuff I know that you don't, and a hell of alot more to know in this universe than either of us can even begin to know. And yet, with all there is to learn, you choose to behave (or at least you come across) as a smug little shit who has decided that you know all there is to know about the world.

It is a significant point of Hume's philosophy that this kind of certitude is pure woo, unsupported by either empirical evidence or logical analysis. And yes, you used the word 'probably' and you probably know what it means - and on that basis, what? What have you proven? I think Hume's point is valid, have you offered anything to disprove it? or do you just reject the point because you find it threatening to your ego?

Scoffing is not skepticism, nor is it critical thinking.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | July 30, 2010 6:18 PM

phlgradstudent

Your said that it is not natural for our star to go nova? really? It seems unlikely to do so anytime soon, but to make the blanket statement that it won't is absurd.

Not if you understand how novas work. How about you go read up on it instead of making yourself look sillier. You could start by reading about how the fact that we only have one sun instead of two makes it almost impossible that our sun would undergo a nova at all, and couple that with the fact that our sun is way way too small.

And, um, if our planet isn't orbiting (or at least, near) a star then its rotation is not going to produce a sunrise

Pluto is 49 AUs from the sun and it has sunrises. It takes light from the sun over 6 hours to get that far. So if you think a change to earth's orbit could stop the sun from rising TOMORROW, you're naive or dumb. Again, stop before you make yourself look sillier.

Third, yeah, I know that we would likely know about an asteroid strike before it came

An asteroid wouldn't do it. We're talking planetoids.

Good luck coming up with a known type of cataclysm that could prevent tomorrow's sunrise. And good luck justifying any hypothetical cataclysms with what we know of physics. So we come back to either: 1) We were very wrong about the laws of physics should such a cataclysm happen, or 2) The laws changed for a while.

And after reading you in other threads, your comments about my arrogance come across as a tu quoque, so I will ignore them.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 30, 2010 6:29 PM

It seems unlikely to do so anytime soon,

It won't by current theories, as the sun isn't massive enough. Our sun will slowly expand, then shrink to a white dwarf. Do try to keep up with the science.

Not one of the 'objections' you raise touches on the point of his statement about the sunrise.

Actually, it does. But you philosophers don't see that. Something about not being tied to reality like scientists. We don't need or claim absolute knowledge. Just very good knowledge in some areas.

Philosophers have a bad name around here due to their lack of grounding in science, and their arrogant attitudes toward their alleged superior knowledge, which you also expressed above. Never mind their philosophy continually falls flat due to lack of reality via proper use of science. Plantinga, Ken Wilbur, and Matthew Seagal, and their fanbois and apologists, being prime examples. They also don't express themselves clearly, taking pages to cover what scientists do in a the same number of paragraphs. Here's some advice. Lose the 'tude.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 6:46 PM

Finally, KOPD, OK, a planetoid, whatever. I stipulate everything you say except your claim that I am unaware that any event that could cause the sun not to 'rise' tomorrow is EXTREMELY unlikely. Unlikely to the point of absurdity as a physical hypothesis. Yes, we would (now) most likely (almost, but not quite to the point of absolute certitude) know about it before it happened. That is not the point that Hume was making, not the point that I was making, and not the point of my earlier posts. The line about cataclysm @70, was a one-off. Look at the post. It's about the arguments Hume and Reid made about the nature of belief. But now that you've boxed it all in quite neatly, and again painted me as a bullshit neo-rortyesque mr. metaphor, you can bask. Kudos.

Re: @ 72, sophistry

Posted by: nastasiewoerjan | July 30, 2010 7:03 PM

@ Nerd of Redhead #97

Why do you assume philosophy is limited to nitwits like Platinga & co.? Do you know the work of Hume, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Dennett...? Or in the sphere of political philosophy: Locke, Hobbes, Stuart-Mill, etc? These people made and make actual contributions to knowledge. If you are familiar with logic, empiricism (and logical empiricism, for that matter), and you still think philosophy is useless, then fair enough. But it looks from your comment that you didn't get the point of what Hume was saying.

I'm not a staunch defender of the usefulness of philosophy, btw. I think philosophy is a conversation that's been going on for over 2,000 years, mostly stuck and going around in circles, with a few bright moments here and there. But I do think it takes a bit of familiarisation with the history of this conversation in order to be able to discern the wank from the actual useful points (there are many).

Like I said above, it's a real shame that post-modernism caught on like it did, and now there are loads of quacks purporting to understand science when they don't. But I can guarantee you that nowadays there are philosophers how do know what they're talking about when they discuss science.

But the whole of philosophy has been given a bad name, apparently.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 7:12 PM

@ 98, that was funny - I never occurred to me, but do you think Peirce was abducted by aliens ... it would explain alot ... (and yes, for those of you are so very ready to believe I'm a moron, this is a joke) But seriously, I was told that 'abduction' is synonymous with 'hypothesis', and that for me to use the term is mere affectation. It went downhill from there, and before long I couldn't even chastise my own bad (quickly written and not proofread) english without being called a grammar nazi, or being accused of setting up a situation where I could accuse others of the same (I never did figure that one out). But this was all from folks who were mostly responding to the ghost of Rorty, but not to either me, or Peirce, or the notion of abduction, or any of the 'consequences of the four incapacities' etcetera - though admittedly, I could never make my arguments as clear as Peirce (and if you've read the man, you know what I'm saying)

But I think the biggest problem came from how easily the equation, philosophy equals woo, is taken as an article of faith on this site. (Those of you who don't like this characterization of 'faith', go read what I posted about the nature of belief above.)

ps, it's late my time, but I want to post a reference (it's a quick read) that might clarify my comment on rorty - and also the whole business of philosophy and woo: it's by Haack - who is, I argue, one of the best logicians writing today: http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/rortyism-haack-3261

Posted by: nastasiewoerjan | July 30, 2010 7:24 PM

@phlgradstudent

O-k...I have read some Peirce (the essentials, I guess, "Will to Learn"), but I only know the basics of abductive logic. I guess do agree that abduction is not exactly the same as hypothesis. I'd tentatively say it antecedes hypothesis, or maybe it's just a formalisation of the process of coming up with a hypothesis. I'm not going any further than this - I don't have the habit of discussing things I do not have a good grasp on.

But I must say that in the comment John Morales linked to @100, I haven't the faintest clue as to what you were talking about, so I'm really not going there.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 7:34 PM

I gotta add this: I love being told to 'loose the 'tude' - I post something quite simple (my first comment on this thread had mostly to do with Hume's presumption of the whig theory of history), which then winds up a defense of a more complicated notion (Hume's criticism of Laplacian style certitude and Reid's definition of belief) - only to have it all knocked off kilter by folks intent on holding on to their presumption that everything 'philosophical' is necessarily some ken wilbur fanboi shit. It pisses me off particularly because I fucking despise ken 'ecology is spirituality' wilber.

Next thing you know someone will 'helpfully remind me' that this is a science blog - never mind that PZ's posting is about Hume (who was JUST LIKE Ken Wilber, don't you know).

sophistry, it's not just for philosophy any more.

Posted by: John Morales | July 30, 2010 7:43 PM

nastasiewoerjan, abduction is not a complicated concept.

--

phlgradstudent:

But seriously, I was told that 'abduction' is synonymous with 'hypothesis', and that for me to use the term is mere affectation.

Refer to #144 of the comment thread I linked to @100 for the actual contentions I made.

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 7:53 PM

John, abduction is more complicated than its wikipedia entry. You might try linking to http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/#dia
but that wouldn't make your case for you quite as well as wiki, neh?

I really don't mean to come across as arrogant, and I am certainly not claiming any great status or skill for myself, but to dismiss the serious study of formal logic (which is what Peirce is all about) with a link to wikipedia is pretty silly.

Posted by: Andrew G. | July 30, 2010 8:01 PM

There is certainly a fair amount of good philosophy around. There's also a fair amount of bad philosophy. What's missing, of course, is reliable ways to weed out the bad parts - this is of course the bit that science is good at, but suggest that to many philosophers and they'll immediately scream "scientism!" and make warding-off gestures.

Valerie Tarico takes a sideswipe at philosophy in her chapter of "The Christian Delusion" - she points out that, from cognitive science, we know that our ability to judge whether an argument is "correct" or not is in fact emotionally based and not reliable. Exposing your ideas to the real world and letting it knock them down has to be an essential part of any philosophy - and the knee-jerk rejection of attempts to expand scientific methods into philosophical fields is absolutely a bad thing.

Posted by: nastasiewoerjan | July 30, 2010 8:03 PM

@John Morales

Well, yes, I do understand the basic formulation of abduction. It's trivial, actually. But, eh, it's been over ten years since I attended a conference on pragmatism and the two talks on abductive logic were incomprehensible to me, so I was under the impression that it lent itself to very weird things. It never came up again during the course of my academic life in philosophy departments (which is over, thank fuck), so I was left with that impression.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | July 30, 2010 8:11 PM

My little spat with KOPD began the other day. I mentioned something about abduction and referred to Peirce, and then James, and he (and a few others) took this as evidence that I'm a woofilled moron.

My only contribution to that subthread was a comment about bacon. So if you're done putting words in my mouth that will be fine. And I have no idea who Pierce and Rorty are, but it sounds like the name of a Nickelodeon cartoon.

Posted by: nastasiewoerjan | July 30, 2010 8:19 PM

Andrew @113

I agree with you. The two contemporary philosophers I cited in my comment above (Quine and Dennett) are so often 'accused' of scientism, as if it were a bad thing. My reaction was to ask what the problem with that was, and then I just furrowed my brow trying to make sense of the reply. Eventually I gave up.

I remember one such knee-jerk reaction to proposals of taking a scientific approach to the problem of how we turn sensorial input into knowledge. The professor said indignantly, "Quine is basically proposing that we close down philosophy departments!" Er, no, he was proposing we look to psychology (today he would have said neuroscience) to see if it could answer some of the age-old questions about knowledge. And in any case, philosophy of mind as it's done nowadays is proof that science is a good influence on philosophy. (I would add that I have if the neurosciences eventually render philosophy irrelevant, so be it...)

Posted by: John Morales | July 30, 2010 8:23 PM

[meta]

Look on the bright side, phlgradstudent.

Anyone who reads this thread and wasn't aware of Peirce's trichotomy, hopefully now is. ;)

--

And, to try to re-rail the thread back to topic, I'll note that many of the so-called 'proofs' for God fall into the abductive category.

How convincing do you find any such? ;)

Posted by: phlgradstudent | July 30, 2010 8:36 PM

John, this is something we can agree on. It seems to me that many of the so-called 'proofs' for god fall into the abductive category.

But that's part of the point I have made about Peirce on this and other threads - people who treat their abductive inferences as some kind of 'revelation' are generally called 'religious', while people who treat their abductive inferences as 'maybe, but let's go find out' are generally 'scientific', or 'skeptical'. Peirce argued that an abductively generated hypothesis was worthless except as a focus for further research. Sets up a neat little conundrum, neh?

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | July 31, 2010 8:21 PM

I do loves me some "ken"s.