Erudite Relics of Loc Huu Ho

Definitions

• obstensive: represented or appearing as such; pretended
• reductio ad absurdum: assume as true for the sake of argument what you actually take to be false

Notes

• Contemporary empiricism begins with the rejection of Hume’s assumption that what we directly experience are always our own sensations.
• Physical things actually constitute the objects of perception, where “physical things” is all the other sorts of objects common within the natural world.
• We perceive not the natural world, but only mental images of it.
• You cannot ask other people whether you are consistent, for that is ruled out: your language is supposed to be intelligible to you alone.
• Private sense impressions are the objects of direct perception with the view that publicly observable physical things are the objects of perception.
• The contemporary empiricist holds that a priori knowledge is analytic; he holds that observation-now of publicly observable things-together with memory is the only source of empirical or a posteriori knowledge; he holds that any reasoning taking us beyond this source, i.e., any nondemonstrative (nondeductive) reasoning is basically empriical generalization from observations; and he holds that all meaningful ideas must ultimately come from experience.
• Every genuine descriptive word must be definable in terms of ostensive words. An obstensive word cannot be defined verbally but only by pointing out examples of what it is to which the word applies. Thus one understands a descriptive word only if one knows the observable situations to which it can correctly apply.
• Strict empiricist standards oblige contemporary empiricists to conclude that theoretical talk is a kind of convenient shorthand fiction for talk about the behavior of such genuinely real and observable things as the movement of a meter-pointer or the path of a streak in a Wilson cloud chamber. We cannot see or touch an individual electron for precisely the same reason that we cannot see or shake hands with the average man.

Definitions

• empiricism: the doctrine that says sense experience is the only source of knowledge
• epistemological: the science which deals with the origin, method and validity of knowledge
• experimental inference: a.k.a. induction by simple enumeration is the process of esitmating what can truly be ascribed to a whole class of things or events on the basis of what has been observed to be true of part of that class
• instrumentalism: the doctrine that ideas are instruments of response and adaptation, and that their truth is to be judged in terms of their effectiveness
• operationalism: the process of defining a concept as the operations that will measure the concept (variables) through specific observations
• posteriori: inductive; relating to or derived by reasoning from observed facts
• priori: deductive; relating to or derived by reasoning from self-evident propositions
• solipsism: the belief that the only thing a person can be absolutely sure of is that he or she exists. All other persons or objects do not exist independently and are merely projections of one’s mind. The solipsist, therefore, views his or her mind as the only thing that exists in reality. All other persons and objects are reflections of his or her consciousness.
  
• succinctly: with concise and precise brevity; to the point
• tenet: an opinion, belief, or principle held to be true by someone or especially an organization

Notes

• Empiricism means the employment of methods based on practical experience rather than on theories or assumed principles.
• The “science of man” (a study of the nature of man’s ideas and of the principle of his reasoning processes) must be founded on experience and observation for us to understand the true nature and scope of ordinary and scientific knowledge.
• Observations and experience teaches us that all thoughts are derived from past experience.
• Hume’s “impressions” are what we call sensations and feelings that are forceful and lively perceptions.
• Hume’s “ideas” are what we call thoughts that are nothing but the faint copies of impressions.
• Ideas are divided up into the simple and the complex; all complex ideas are constructions out of simple ideas, and simple ideas are copies of impressions.
• All the objects of human reason or inquiry may be divided into two kinds: relations of ideas and matters of fact.
• Examples of relations of ideas are the sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic, logic, and every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe…(is analytic and based on the principle of noncontradiction)
• Matters of fact-e.g. physics, chemistry, everyday factual knowledg-is a posteriori, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner, nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect.
• Hume is maintaining that all knowledge about the world is a posteriori, where a posteriori statment is one which can be confirmed or disconfirmed only by experience and observation.
• In Hume’s view, any truth discoverable by thought alone is never about the world but only about internal relations between our ideas.
• According to Hume, these are the principles of human knowledge. They set our knowledge on a firm foundation, and their application enables us to purge science and philosophy of empty metaphysical speculation.
• When Hume applied what he took to be Newton’s methods in natural science to the “science of man,” he was led, paradoxically, to the conclusion that induction, or scientific method, cannot be rationally justified. Hume was led to this conclusion when he noted that empirical generalization is founded on the principle of cause and effect and that the principle of cause and effect cannot itself be justified rationally.
• E.g. to claim that a certain virus is the cause of smallpox is to claim an invariant sequence of symptoms-preceded-by-virus.
• There are two types of legitimate inference: a priori demonstration (deduction) and a posteriori experimental inference. The inference from observed past instances to unobserved future instances clearly is not demonstrable. And to say tht this inference is experiemental is to beg the question, “for all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past.” That is, because scientific method presupposes that the course of nature will not change, it can hardly be invoked to prove it. So Hume concludes that experimental inference, which is scientific method, is not rationally justifiable.
• All you can conceivably know is that there are sensations here and now and maybe that there were sensations in teh past as well.