Alas, poor Locke
Gary.C.Moore:
"David Hume sets up an irreconcilable opposition of Pyrronian (Radical) Scepticism versus tradition."
Stephen Cowley:
Why do you say it is "irreconcilable"? He does not reconcile it, but that is not the same as its being "irreconcilable"!
Gary.C.Moore:
Good point! It is "irreconcilable" in reason. It is not "irreconcilable" in decision and action. Here, so-called "common sense would come into play. Except there is a very large problem. "Common sense" is one of the things you must decide to choose! You can make the same decision as Hume, but Hume is very well aware--the very last section of Part 1 of the TREATISE ON HUMAN NATURE --that this decision is NOT JUSTIFIED by strict logic. It is only justified by emotion, the need for action and decision, which is why emotion is so important in the TREATISE. This is why reading the TREATISE is like reading Heidegger's BEING AND TIME made plain and sensible for English readers. I have a firm belief Heidegger absorbed Hume through Husserl who loved him and, like many others, refuses to acknowledge his influence. But Heidegger literally read everything in philosophy.
"The Radical Scepticism comes from the result one cannot discover rational structures in experience. Sense experience just happens, and in sense experience per se there is, of course, no communication, which implies language, and if no communication of rational structure, no rationality. "
Stephen Cowley:
You are, so far, confounding experience with sense-experience, which is only one facet, or condition of experience proper. Indeed, as Kant would later argue, even sense experience has its presuppoistions, for example in the unity of consciousness.
Gary.C.Moore:
Hume does not believe in a unity of consciousness. Of course you always come to sense-experience with presuppositions but, just like Heidegger, in the TREATISE he slices off all presuppositions from sense-experience just like Descartes except A) like Kant he does not believe existence is a real predicate, and B) he doesn't believe in a "Cogito" that is the absolute basis of reality and from which everything else, including God, is derived. However, it is undeniable you feel sense impressions completely outside your will, in fact, in violation of your will.
Gary.C.Moore: "However, Reason is the only extra-personal, 'external', "truly' objective standard there is. This actually might be questionable on the ground rationality is part and parcel of the inheritance of language and hince simply a part of tradition also. However, one can thoroughly divorce--at least theoretically--reson from tradition precisely because one can develope extreme rationality and hence Radical Scepticism which wholly drops tradition as having any truth value. "
Stephen Cowley:
Are you not here forgetting common sense, which is relatively unconditioned by particular cultural traditions, or at distinguishable - because presupposed - in any cultural tradition?
Gary.C.Moore:
"Common sense" is a product of the tradition of language you have learned. As Westerners have experienced in Islamic countries, the two senses of "common sense" rarely accord. There is a tremendous amount of religion in Islamic "common sense" that makes for them actions which are totally irrational for us "obvious" to them. Allah is literally taken by the mass of Muslims as the constant cause of everything.
MUST STOP! THUNDERSTORM COMING IN!
Gary.C.Moore:
"[...] Yet though everything is permitted, by pure reason alone through Radical Scepticism you have destroyed all motivation which is dependant upon the emotional motivation of desire which is depenent upon a physical context and hence upon a context of other objects, animals, and human beings which brings in the invalidated tradition. Even to manage motivation as languageless animal involves judgments of this is better than that, that is more practical to achieve than this, etc."
Stephen Cowley:
The "reason is the slave of the passions" point, I take it? As you correctly point out though, practical experience involves us in making comparative judgments. The passions themselves them, cannot be wholy blind. Indeed, "the passions" in Hume arguably bear the same burden that Kant & Hegel assign to "reason".
"Hence Hume says A) in order to act at all and fufill your desires you must accept at least as the situation one must live with as the context of what-is as a whole (this is not validated, just recognition of what the situation is); B) by the use of reason, BUT WHOLLY WITHIN THE TRADITION, criticize it for self-consistency, i. e., Is it preferable to have many tyrants, the turbulent nobles, or one tyrant who controls the nobles (Henry VII)? [...]"
Stephen Cowley:
I'm aware of people reading the History of England again to infer the "social significance" of Hume's philosophy. The reasoning you advance above though is essentially the same utilitarian reasoning found in the Essays. Still, it's an interesting project, especially given the general rethinking of British history currently ongoing.
Gary.C.Moore: "He does not like religion at all (as he told Boswell, Show me a religious man and I'll show you a scoundrel), but he by far prefers established and government controlled religion to the free-play, anarchistic religions of the English civil war just like Thomas Hobbes. He even said the Anglican ministers should be paid a salery by the government so they do not become pestiferous and interfering by collecting tithes, judgments, fees, levies, and causing all sorts of hellatious trouble and accumulating untaxable and unalienable property like the Catholic Church did and ultimately trying to seize all power whatsoever. even so, he is honest enough to recognize that the structure of the Catholic Church and its professed principles of justice and peace did at times have a civilizing effect on English history. "
Stephen Cowley:
Hume disliked the churches, but that is not quite the same as atheism. One can argue from the Dialogues (published posthumously, so with no grounds for dissembling his own views) that he was a Deist - even Philo is a Deist for example, though one with no great resepect for the Argument from Design. His position may have been much the same as Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations (book 5) - namely advocating a more "rational" religion rather than none at all.
Gary.C.Moore:
"He even makes statements about the beauty of religion, the Glory of God and of Christ. However, a number of them are obviously ironical and sarcastic. But not all. In THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION Hume does find a place for God as the ground for the expansion of the human mind which becomes in Kant transcendence so when he says he was not an atheist, agnostic, or Deist but was a philosophical Thiest he meant it as he meant it that he could not believe that any man could truly and consistently believe in a God. However, this God was trivial and harmless."
Stephen Cowley:
I agree ( - except with the last sentence, where the thought seems mangled somehow?)
Gary.C.Moore: "You notice he left Scotland in disgust after they tried to excommunicate him? This was the last straw. The Anglican Church could only villify him and watch for occasions of blasphemous-type statements as the time he thought of printing his essays on Immortality and Suicide ("But the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster."). Real excommunication would have meant jail, loss of property and civil rights, and possibly even his life. "
Stephen Cowley:
He left Scotland, but then returned & spent most of his life there. He was turned down for two university posts, but I never heard of any attempt to excommunicate him - difficult to do, as he was not a professing Christian!
Gary.C.Moore: "Remember the hanging of a retarded Scottish teenager in 1692 at Edinburgh for slandering the Old Testament. "
Stephen Cowley:
Thomas Aikenhead was a theology student at Edinburgh University. He was outspoken, perhaps even juvenile in some of his antics, but not "retarded". By the 18th Century, this event was widely regretted, and the threat it embodied had faded - witness the mild treatment of Hume himself, for example.
Gary.C.Moore: "The comments in his HISTORY OF ENGLAND about Scotland praises their courage and love of anarchistic freedom but that otherwise it is a land of ungovernable savages. "Sincerely' Gary C. Moore"
Stephen Cowley:
It would be nice to have the precise citation for this. I did by a copy of this when the CIA funded Liberty Press brought out a cheap edition during the Cold War, but the style seemed so unappealing, I never got far with it. 18th C Scotland is overrated compared to other eras IMHO anyway.
Aw the best Stephen Cowley THUNDERSTORM GONE
Gary.C.Moore: "[...] Yet though everything is permitted, by pure reason alone through Radical Scepticism you have destroyed all motivation which is dependant upon the emotional motivation of desire which is depenent upon a physical context and hence upon a context of other objects, animals, and human beings which brings in the invalidated tradition. Even to manage motivation as languageless animal involves judgments of this is better than that, that is more practical to achieve than this, etc."
Stephen Cowley:
The "reason is the slave of the passions" point, I take it?
Gary.C.Moore:
I'm glad you brought that up with precisely that phrase. Hume confronts that situation in exactly the same way as he confronts determinism: It is something we cannot know anything about since it requires a point of view outside of itself which is rationally impossible. Reason may very well be a slave to the passions but how could we possibly know it? We always have the FEELING we act with free will. That is the only thing we know. But it makes that thing known according to a passion. Though it is circular, it really doesn't tell us anything.
Stephen Cowley:
As you correctly point out though, practical experience involves us in making comparative judgments. The passions themselves them, cannot be wholy blind.
Gary.C.Moore:
Heidegger would call that "formal indication".
Stephen Cowley:
Indeed, "the passions" in Hume arguably bear the same burden that Kant & Hegel assign to "reason".
Gary.C.Moore:
Very good! I wish I had thought of that!
Gary.C.Moore:
"Hence Hume says A) in order to act at all and fufill your desires you must accept at least as the situation one must live with as the context of what-is as a whole (this is not validated, just recognition of what the situation is); B) by the use of reason, BUT WHOLLY WITHIN THE TRADITION, criticize it for self-consistency, i. e., Is it preferable to have many tyrants, the turbulent nobles, or one tyrant who controls the nobles (Henry VII)? [...]"
Stephen Cowley:
I'm aware of people reading the History of England again to infer the "social significance" of Hume's philosophy. The reasoning you advance above though is essentially the same utilitarian reasoning found in the Essays. Still, it's an interesting project, especially given the general rethinking of British history currently ongoing.
Gary.C.Moore: "He does not like religion at all (as he told Boswell, Show me a religious man and I'll show you a scoundrel), but he by far prefers established and government controlled religion to the free-play, anarchistic religions of the English civil war just like Thomas Hobbes. He even said the Anglican ministers should be paid a salery by the government so they do not become pestiferous and interfering by collecting tithes, judgments, fees, levies, and causing all sorts of hellatious trouble and accumulating untaxable and unalienable property like the Catholic Church did and ultimately trying to seize all power whatsoever. even so, he is honest enough to recognize that the structure of the Catholic Church and its professed principles of justice and peace did at times have a civilizing effect on English history. "
Stephen Cowley:
Hume disliked the churches, but that is not quite the same as atheism.
Gary.C.Moore:
No disagreement here whatsoever.
Stephen Cowley:
One can argue from the Dialogues (published posthumously, so with no grounds for dissembling his own views) that he was a Deist
Gary.C.Moore:
Hume hated being associated with that word. I am not entirely sure why. Almost all of the American founding fathers were Deists.
Stephen Cowley:-
even Philo is a Deist for example, though one with no great resepect for the Argument from Design. His position may have been much the same as Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations (book 5) - namely advocating a more "rational" religion rather than none at all.
That is indeed what Hume does but that not only covers a very large territory hard to pull together but covers over many difficult points hard to resolve.
Gary.C.Moore: "He even makes statements about the beauty of religion, the Glory of God and of Christ. However, a number of them are obviously ironical and sarcastic. But not all. In THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION Hume does find a place for God as the ground for the expansion of the human mind which becomes in Kant transcendence so when he says he was not an atheist, agnostic, or Deist but was a philosophical Thiest he meant it as he meant it that he could not believe that any man could truly and consistently NOT believe in a God. However, this God was trivial and harmless."
REWRITE: I left out an important word there.
Stephen Cowley:
I agree ( - except with the last sentence, where the thought seems mangled somehow?)
Gary.C.Moore: "You notice he left Scotland in disgust after they tried to excommunicate him? This was the last straw. The Anglican Church could only villify him and watch for occasions of blasphemous-type statements as the time he thought of printing his essays on Immortality and Suicide ("But the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster."). Real excommunication would have meant jail, loss of property and civil rights, and possibly even his life. "
Stephen Cowley:
He left Scotland, but then returned & spent most of his life there. He was turned down for two university posts, but I never heard of any attempt to excommunicate him - difficult to do, as he was not a professing Christian!
Gary.C.Moore:
These events would be between 1750 and 1760. The concervative Preysbiterians definitely started excommunication proceedings but Hume's moderate minister friends brought up the same point you do. Now it does show that the times were changing because, being a State Established Church, they legally could have prosecuted him any way as he literally violated the law in letter. That he had so many moderate Christian friends, at least at that period, and he could be at times very gungenerous and downright bitter about Christians in general is disappointing. However, it is like being a black person in America who succeeds becauswe he has outstanding abilities, yet there is always some religious person constantly trying to stab ihim in the back or in the front if they can get away with it. The abuse he had to take was extreme and over such a long period of time would emotionally harm any man.
I am pretty sure though, but vague, after his diplomatic mission to France in the 1760s he lived around London till he died. But I am not positive about that.
Gary.C.Moore:
"Remember the hanging of a retarded Scottish teenager in 1692 at Edinburgh for slandering the Old Testament. "
Stephen Cowley:
Thomas Aikenhead was a theology student at Edinburgh University. He was outspoken, perhaps even juvenile in some of his antics, but not "retarded".
Gary.C.Moore:
Now on that I have been misinformed. I have heard several different stories, all very short, all somewhat contradictory. One story said he had been burned at the stake. Do you have a good source of information about this, preferably accesible on the web?
Stephen Cowley:
By the 18th Century, this event was widely regretted, and the threat it embodied had faded - witness the mild treatment of Hume himself, for example.
Gary.C.Moore:
However, though Anglican, there was a clergyman in England around 1720 that was imprisoned for many years for denying the divinity of Christ--I think--fuzzy on details.
"The comments in his HISTORY OF ENGLAND about Scotland praises their courage and love of anarchistic freedom but that otherwise it is a land of ungovernable savages.
Stephen Cowley:
It would be nice to have the precise citation for this.
Gary.C.Moore:
I have made a note on this and shall work on it.
Stephen Cowley:
I did buy a copy of this when the CIA funded Liberty Press brought out a cheap edition during the Cold War,
Gary.C.Moore:
I would like to know more about this connection with the CIA. They are not one of my favorite organizations.
Stephen Cowley:
but the style seemed so unappealing, I never got far with it. 18th C Scotland is overrated compared to other eras IMHO anyway.
Gary.C.Moore:
If you started with volume 1 right at the beginning, I can see why. But as one wades deeper into it, the first thing that attracts one's interest is the precise reason why we need law, why we need definite laws esttablishing the succession of the king, and why we need a strong king culminating in the apothiosis of the brutal tyranny of William the Conqueror who, like Henry VII, established himself as the ONLY tyrant, therefore to be preferred to someone who let the nobles run wild.
'Sincerely'
Gary C. Moore
Stephen Cowley:
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004
"Stephen Cowley:
The "reason is the slave of the passions" point, I take it?
Gary.C.Moore:
I'm glad you brought that up with precisely that phrase. Hume confronts that situation in exactly the same way as he confronts determinism: It is something we cannot know anything about since it requires a point of view outside of itself which is rationally impossible. Reason may very well be a slave to the passions but how could we possibly know it? We always have the FEELING we act with free will. That is the only thing we know. But it makes that thing known according to a passion. Though it is circular, it really doesn't tell us anything."
Reply 2:
Well Hume does argue for the practical impotence of reason, as by "reason" he means instrucental reason, that always presupposes an end as given to it. I also reckon that the absence off free will is a separate argument from that about the instruental nature of reason. I'm not sure what connection you're making between them.
"Gary.C.Moore:
I am pretty sure though, but vague, after his diplomatic mission to France in the 1760s he lived around London till he died. But I am not positive about that. "
Reply 2:
And I'm pretty sure that he lived in St David Street in Edinburgh, where Boswell visited him on his deathbed, and where he is buried.
"Stephen Cowley:
Thomas Aikenhead was a theology student at Edinburgh University. He was outspoken, perhaps even juvenile in some of his antics, but not "retarded". Gary.C.Moore: Now on that I have been misinformed. I have heard several different stories, all very short, all somewhat contradictory. One story said he had been burned at the stake. Do you have a good source of information about this, preferably accesible on the web?"
Reply 2:
There was a fairly recent play on the subject, called The Blasphemer, by George Rosie. You might find a Scottish Encyclopaedia entry on the web if you type in "Aikenhead". Failing that, there is an account in George Davie's The Scottish Enlightenment & Other Essays (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1991). See also Cobbett's State Trials. Online see:
http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/thomasaikenhead.html
Incidentally, the Servetus referred to on the webpage was executed in Geneva on the instigation of John Calvin in the 16th C.
"Stephen Cowley:
I did buy a copy of this when the CIA funded Liberty Press brought out a cheap edition during the Cold War, Gary.C.Moore: I would like to know more about this connection with the CIA. They are not one of my favorite organizations."
Reply 2:
Nor mine, though they seem a little less underhand since the Wall came down. The source for this would be either one of Chimsky's Cold War utterances, or one of Bryan Magee's BBC interviews in the 1970s, prabably Chomsky.
"Gary.C.Moore:
If you started with volume 1 [of Hume's History] right at the beginning, I can see why. But as one wades deeper into it, the first thing that attracts one's interest is the precise reason why we need law, why we need definite laws esttablishing the succession of the king, and why we need a strong king culminating in the apothiosis of the brutal tyranny of William the Conqueror who, like Henry VII, established himself as the ONLY tyrant, therefore to be preferred to someone who let the nobles run wild."
Reply 2:
Yes, I was told it was written backwards, with volumes 5 and 6 appearing first. Perhaps that's how I should read it, time permitting!
All the best Stephen Mon, 1 Mar 2004 20:27:03 -0000 Subject: Re: [scottish_philosophy] RE: Smith-religion
Dear Dr Weinstein,
Thank you for your comment. I think you are right in saying, as you have dome in print, that Smith should be seen as a philosopher as well as an economist. We should also remember though, that he trained initially as a clergyman: I think we can see the "Moderates" in the Church of Scotland as more irreligiously sceptical than they sometimes were, seeing through Humean spectacles, and Hume through logical positivist spectacles in turn. Early representatives of the school in the 19th C for example, looked hopefully to religion in America as a model for Europe, rather than as a hotbed of atheism.
As regards the Wealth of Nations Book 5, this certainly advocates "free competition" amongst churches - i. e. no established church. But unlike Hume, his reason is not anticlerical. Rather he believes that an established religion has the inefficiency of a monopoly, and a monopolies' lack of self-criticism of its articles of faith. As you note though, he argues that free competition would not only rub the rough edges off the particular faiths, as the members meet each other in secular settings, but it would encourage the clergy to proselytise, albeit for unworthy worldly motives.
I agree that Smith is in effect advocating a predominantly "natural religion", though some historical element would not be precluded by the project of mutual criticism of beliefs. Your remarks about the "laws of nature", and an alleged Scottish consensus about naturalism in the study of human nature are suggestive, but highly abbreviated. I suspect that I might take issue even with a more extended development of these themes though!
Thanks for your tuppence worth.
Stephen Cowley
==============================================================
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
RE: Smith-religion
Greetings,
If I may get involved in a tangential issue, regarding the comment about Smith's search for a more "rational" religion in Book V, I'm not sure I agree with that interpretation.
Smith's primary concern in Book V is to minimize the possibility of factionalism. He opens religions to the public via festivals in order to "temper" their claims. There is no demand for "rationality" here, but, rather, a way of putting pressure on the more extreme religions to tone them down. Smith wants to minimize allegiance to religion over the state, and he does so by encouraging education in science and philosophy. He thinks this curbs superstition. This is, in essence, a market-oriented form of sympathy reminiscent of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. There is an assumption of socially-malleable moral sentiments in the discussion (or so I read it as such).
It seems to me that the "rational" element of religion comes in the Scottish notion of a natural religion which, although unclear, ties religious belief in with the laws of nature. Remember, for the Scotts, "the science of man" is investigated as part of the science of nature. It is not separate.
My two cents anyway.
Jack
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