Erudite Relics of Loc Huu Ho

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