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

• ad infinitum: for ever, without limit, to infinity
• Calcutta: Largest city in India, located in the eastern part of the country on the Hooghly River.
• phenomenalism: the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space

Notes

• According to this phenomenalism theory, anticipated by Hume and George Berkeley, a physical thing is a kind of construction out of our experiences.
• According to the phenomenalist, to have a visual experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience which belongs to a certain kind of group of experiences. This kind of set of experiences has a constancy and a rich and complex coherence that is lacking in the set of expereinces of which halluncinations are a part.
• The phenomenalist affirms also that all we can possibly mean in speaking of these things is confined to our experiences.
• Hume’s criterion states that every idea-and thus the idea of an “external” thing-is ultimately derived from sense impressions alone.
• The phenomenalist phase of post-Humean empiricism ended by the 1940s, for by that time it had become evident that statements about physical things could not be translated into propositions about actual and possible sense data.

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