Hume on Reason and Observation
Introduction to Political Philosophy
Introduction to Political Philosophy is primarily aimed at first- and second-year undergraduates interested in moral, political and social philosophy, along with high school students and professionals with an interest in humanities. The objective of the course is to familiarise the students with the main ideas and themes of Western Philosophy from the Ancient Greeks to the present day with a special focus on moral, social and political problems. The course also touches upon the ideas in metaphysics, ontology and religious philosophy, but only to extent that these conceptual areas illuminate moral and political issues. The course aims to broaden the students background to help prepare them for more advanced courses, including the second year course Modern Political Theory and third year course in International Political Theory. Man is born free and yet everywhere he is in chains. We cherish individual liberty, and yet we find our deepest values & commitments largely shaped by the societies into which we are born. We want to be happy, and yet apparently, we are unable to flourish outside of a well-ordered community of our fellow human beings. Such is the nature of human condition – our political nature – and therefore the fundamental problem of political philosophy. Colleagues! Greetings and welcome to the course! My name is Alexander Koryagin, I am a Lecturer in Philosophy of Science & Political Theory at HSE. In the next 16 Lectures I will guide you through the most fundamental questions discussed by the foremost minds of the Western Political Philosophical Tradition. We shall begin from the foundation of our discipline in Plato & Aristotle, with their emphasis on the flourishing of human excellence in well-constituted poleis. We shall then continue through the Enlightenment optimism of Hobbes & Rousseau, the strength of the Nation derived only from the free & eager consent of the Citizens, the free consent to the rational laws. Finally, we shall arrive at the anxiety and the suspicion of the Modern Critical Tradition of Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault – their unmasking of the ideological indoctrination, of the progressive exploitation, of alienation and of ultimate potential self-destruction of humanity enslaved by the structural pursuit of efficiency for the sake of efficiency. Some of the questions that we shall discuss in our course are: - to what extent: societies enable, or restrict our individual flourishing? - are we in control of our destiny, or is human nature merely a product, of larger structural forces of Biological & Cultural Evolution? - are we progressing, towards a more enlightened society; or towards self-destruction? - what should be the balance between reform (maybe even revolution); and conservatism? Why study Political Philosophy? In many ways, a strange question!.. If you do not think for yourself, others think for you. Is the unexamined life worthy of a human being? "What are we? Where do we come from? What does the future hold? And what can we do about it, individually and collectively?" Colleagues, let me invite you into the dialogue, to examine these fundamental questions in the company of the greatest minds of the Western Philosophical tradition.
Hume: Reason and Passions
Experience and knowledge: ideas/impressions; facts and values: passions/reason, moral judgement, natural and artificial virtues, justice and conventions; Hume's criticism of the social contract (consent) theories. Was Hume a Utilitarian?
Hume in Context16:05
Hume's Empiricism and Skepticism16:52
Hume on Reason and Observation9:20
Hume on Reason and Passions8:55
Hume on Justice and Virtue15:29
Hume's Critique of the Social Contract 19:27
Hume on Tranquillity7:13
Emotion and Reason in Ethics10:10
Social Construction of Reality9:18
Alexander D. Koryagin
Seleccionar un idiomaInglés (English)
Now, in this segment, I want to do a very brief rundown of some technical aspects of Hume's theory of knowledge. If this was our general course in philosophy, we'd maybe spend a whole lecture on this, but our last time is short. Hume introduced the distinction, and this appears to be a very fruitful distinction. By and large this is accepted to this day general philosophical outlook. Hume is going to say that our statements, and in case our statements are true then our truths, truths or statements come in two flavors. Synthetic statements or truths, and analytic statements or truths. Now, these terms, synthetic and analytic, I think are due to actually Leibniz. Hume calls them matters of fact and relations of ideas. Some statements are true or false by virtue of matter of fact. Some statements are true or false by virtue of relations of ideas. The matters of fact rely very much on empirical observations. An example could be, there's a glass board in front of me right now. That's a true empirical statement. It is cold and snowing right now. That's a false matter of fact. This is broadly speaking associated with induction. I mentioned induction already in the previous segment. Now, on this side of the board, we have analytic statements which are true or false by virtual relations of ideas. They're supposed to be not empirical, but purely rational or purely logical. An example of true analytic statement would be, all triangles have three sides. An example of a false analytic statement is going to be, let's say, all triangles have four sides, or something like that. These are the two broad classes of knowledge, and Hume is going to insist that no other possibilities exist. Now, Immanuel Kant, in the next lecture, we'll see tries to challenge this dichotomy but many philosophers do not think that Kant has succeeded. It's going to be a big question, whether Kant actually is able to contribute anything to this picture. This distinction seems to be robust. Hume was going to point to problems with both sides of the board, and this is going to be, again, the vindication of his skepticism. If we talk about matters of empirical fact now, of course, it is true right now that I see the glass board. Let's say, I have an impression of a glass board in front of my face. That is definitely true, or as Descartes could say that maybe the evil demon is deceiving me. But I certainly have certain impressions right then and there. Descartes, for example, has this famous statement, [FOREIGN]. I know that right now I exist, even if evil demon is deceiving me about everything, still very patently at this moment, I am having certain kinds of impressions, and I cannot be mistaken about that. That may be true. Immediate sense data, has a certain immediate veracity. The problem comes when we try to generalize. Let's say the sun rises in the East every morning. This has happened over and over again. Is it going to happen tomorrow? Can we generalize? Hume, basically, again, I mentioned this. This is the problem of induction. Hume, basically, wants to say a certain thing can happen a trillion times and this is never a guarantee that the regularity will continue into the future. Ever since Hume wrote, actually, now we have more reasons to agree with David Hume. Again, you can think of some extravagant scenarios, some eschatological apocalypse such as the laws of nature breakdown for a miraculous reasons, but you don't even have to postulate miracles. There are interesting physical hypotheses, which for all we know may be true. For example, there's a possibility that the Higgs field has a false vacuum and could quantum tunnel to a different value. If this were to happen, then there would be catastrophic change in the operation of the basic laws of physics propagating at the speed of light all throughout the universe, such as, for example, stable matter would be impossible. This could happen in principle. If this theory is true, and there are reasons to believe it's true, this could happen with a calculable probability in the next moment. All laws of physics will break down, because of this possibility. Again, in times of Hume it was more difficult to imagine but now, again, within our best models of the universe, within the standard model of particle physics, within the quantum field theory underlying this then model of particle physics, there are a few reasons to believe that this could happen. Again, all regularities that we are used to could cease to operate in the next moment. This is basically the problem of induction. Again, the simplest way to phrase the problem of induction is that, because we do not have experience of the future, we cannot guarantee that future will continue to resemble the past. In the past, future had resembled the past, but how do we know that in the future, future will continue to resemble the past? This seems to be an unwarranted assumption. This is the empirical side of the board. Now, what is Hume's criticism of the rational or the logical side of the board? In the 20th century, now we have interesting problems of deduction, which are associated with the names of Kurt Godel and Ludwig Wittgenstein, which basically have to do with the, if we follow a rule according to a rule, do we need then an infinite regress of rules, if we run into an infinite regress of rules? There's also circularity in the problem of deduction. That's a bit too technical. Hume has a simpler argument against rational analytic derivations. I say that all triangles have three sides or let's say two plus two is equal to four. But Hume says, I know that in the past when doing the mathematical calculation, two plus two is equal four that's one thing. But let's say 15 times 19. That's slightly more difficult than two plus two is equal to four. What does that equal to? I know that in the past I have made mistakes. Again, for Hume, in many ways, when I do a mathematical problem in my head, this is also an empirical question. It's a question of internal perception. I perceive the internal working on my mind. In some sense, all of our knowledge is derived from experience. Even the analytic knowledge is derived through internal experience, that's neither here nor there. Hume knows that in the past I've made mistakes, but the problem is that my memory could also be faulty. This is why I have these words, memory and error on the board. When I try to estimate how trustworthy my mind is, I could also make a mistake. If I'm trying to estimate the trustworthiness of my estimate, the error bars, the uncertainty becomes larger. I could then try to estimate the uncertainty of the estimate of my estimate. You understand. Every time I do this iterative procedure, the error bars, the uncertainty is going to become larger and larger, until the point that basically my confidence in the trustworthiness of my rationality is going to be from minus infinity to plus infinity. This is going to be completely uncertain, with every iterative step, because I know that sometimes my memory is unreliable, this leads to proliferation of this error. Again, it's a vicious regress. Again, philosophers ever since Hume, try to refute these skeptical arguments but I think that by general consensus, all of these attempts have failed. This seems to be the state of knowledge in the 21st century. If you open the best textbooks, especially textbooks in philosophy of science, any good textbook which is worth its money, it's going to tell you that the best sciences that we have do not tell us any certainties or truth with capital T. The best thing that human beings have are hypotheses which seem to be useful and seem to accord to the data, but we are never entitled to claiming that we have arrived at the knowledge of the truth with capital T. This is the general disconcerting drive of Hume's philosophy. Again, we're going to see down the line in a little bit, the implications that this general picture has for morality and politics.