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Category Archives: Kant and/or Hume
Learning from Hume; or, Hume and Particle Physics
Philosophy students are typically taught the wrong lesson from the great Scottish skeptic David Hume. The standard story goes something like this. British empiricists like Locke and Berkeley wanted to connect everything we know to what we experience through the … Continue reading
Posted in 3QD essays, Historical episodes, Kant and/or Hume
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On appreciating systems
How wonderful it would be to be a systematic thinker! One marvels at the Aristotles, the Aquinases, the Descarteses, the Kants, and the Hegels and the Marxes (well, the Karl Marxes anyway), the Freuds – those who know how to … Continue reading
Posted in 3QD essays, Kant and/or Hume
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David Hume – the “Assassin’s Assessor”
Edinburgh’s “Poker Club” began meeting in 1762. Each week, fifty or so gentlemen would congregate in a tavern for a long afternoon followed by dinner and argue events of the day ranging from politics to morals and culture – matters … Continue reading
Posted in Historical episodes, Kant and/or Hume
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Sloterdijk, Hume, and a healthy skepticism
As I work through the recent works of Peter Sloterdijk (Spheres I: Bubbles, Spheres II: Globes), I am chiefly amazed and enthused by his ability to find deep symbolic and mythic connections throughout the history of philosophical thought, and to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Kant and/or Hume
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More musings on Humean causality
We expect that causal laws will be the same across all experience. Hume famously claims that this expectation is grounded neither in pure reason nor in experience. Not pure reason: for one can posit a cause and deny the effect … Continue reading
Posted in Kant and/or Hume
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Hume and the expedition to Canada
In 1746, Hume returned to London after touring Europe as tutor and caretaker of the mad Marquess of Annendale. He was not sure what was next in his life. He was already 35 and somewhat ashamed of not having yet … Continue reading
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Hume falls into a bog, promises his way out
At the beginning of book three of his Treatise on Human Nature, David Hume argues that justice is something we invent. In a word, justice is unnatural. It isn’t something we just see in the world, since we only ever … Continue reading
Posted in 3QD essays, Historical episodes, Kant and/or Hume
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