Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Welcome, Humeans!


Image result for hume turban

Let's put on our Hume caps and begin co-philosophizing about le bon David. His Treatise of Human Nature is the obvious place to begin.

I've invited my co-Humeans to state their starting point reflections, objections, concerns et al. Mine, in a nutshell, revolve around William James's claim that Hume's empiricism was insufficiently radical. "Most empiricists had been halfhearted; and Hume was perhaps the most half-hearted of the lot... The reader will recognize in Hume's famous pages a fresh example of the way in which conceptual translations always maltreat fact..." Some Problems of Philosophy

So there's the gauntlet thrown: is Jamesian radical empiricism an improvement on its Humean predecessor or not?

I take the James side, in the James v. Hume radical or skeptical empiricism debate, but Hume remains my favorite Scots freethinker and namesake. He led the way.
Photo published for Hume Walk

UPDATE, Sep.9 - "How to read Hume" podcast

UPDATE, Dec. 11 - "Dialogues Concerning Moral Nihilism"