Gresham College Lecture - Keith Ward - The Empiricist Turn (3 of 6)

[rmeddy1]

This is a weak criticism of Hume imo.

All he doing is making the case for instrumentalism.

[McPrfctday]

when he says "...in Geneva - which will probably end the universe" at 5.45 (I just looked him up and I can see now that it's from his Glasgow days) he sounded a lot like Arthur C Clarke. IMO.

[McPrfctday]

@McPrfctday by the way... the Gresham website is down... any idea what's happened?

[CharlieBBoy12345]

Good lecture, so far, though I am not so inclined to reject the value of Hume's ideas on the basis of this attack alone. The issue here seems to be a need for a distinction between (A) a denial of a priori knowledge of reality / the universe; (B) an assertion that we can know nothing more than our 'impressions' and how they relate to one another; (C) an assertion that our knowledge of reality / the universe reduces to / is derived from reasoning based on our sense experiences.

[philnoll]

Yes, but the theories are based on thing derived with the senses.