Down with Hume, up with Reid

Don't vote for David Hume. Give your vote to the father of common sense philosophy, Thomas Reid.

This is my first youtube clip - and wow, they sure do compress the sound, don't they?

Category:

Education

Tags:

• humanities
• comedy
• humor
• politics

[ChaneyBrinkmanBurlin]

A couple of people have claimed that it misrepresents Hume?!!! You are an absolute imbecile! Have you read *any* of the secondary literature on Hume? The general consensus among Hume commentators throughout the whole of the 20th century and now into the 21st century is that Hume is *not* an inductive skeptic. Needless to say, YouTube is not the place to argue about this. I'm not given enough characters ...

[berettaNZ]

@ChaneyBrinkmanBurlin I don't think you know what you're responding to.

[feidaoming1]

nice effort at an english accent

[berettaNZ]

@feidaoming1 English? I was just using my own accent. I'm a New Zealander.

[Guaguanco11]

Reid has nothing over Hume, which explains why his supporters must resort to political propaganda to prop up his philosophy!

[Philosobard]

Well, let's be clear: Hume says we DO rely on induction, but that it's merely "out of custom and habit." But he most certainly DID show that, using a strictly empirical epistemology, we have no rational basis for trusting induction. He pointed out that there was no question-begging way to justify the belief that future causal events would behave like they have in the past. So the video's characterization of this famous (and embarrassing) upshot of Hume's epistemology is exactly correct.

[ChaneyBrinkmanBurlin]

@berettaNZ, I know *exactly* what I'm responding to. I'm responding to Philosobard's and others' comments about Hume which are manifestly untrue and which betray the ignorance of YouTube viewers when it comes to philosophy.

[ChaneyBrinkmanBurlin]

What's really quite humorous about this video is not simply that it misrepresents Hume, but that Hume and Reid agree about so much!

[ChaneyBrinkmanBurlin]

Philosobard, you are confusing the claim that our causal inferences are not determined by reason with the claim that our causal inferences are irrational or unjustified. Hume makes a descriptive, not a normative, claim. He says that our causal inferences are not produced by the faculty of reason, not that they are unjustified. In fact, it is perfectly obvious from a cursory reading of the Treatise and Enquiry that he thinks they are justified.

[granddad2002]

Skepticism in itself requires that all claims are subject to evidence. Common sense is a faculty to manage known circumstances and valid practical tasking. The Universe or the proposed divine may have no interest in what we pedestrians experience as common sense.

[Nervousification]

@berettaNZ If he admitted that we get by using induction, doesn't that mean he would use induction without being a hypocrite? If you don't agree, then we've reached a stone wall and thus should move on from logical argument and just berate one another. Allow me to begin: Ya fucking cock eyed wanking moron, Hume shits on you and your mama!! #OnlyOnYouTube

[berettaNZ]

@Nervousification Well, he admitted that we use it and we get by using it. But to found one of his allegedly greatest arguments (against miracles) on a principle that his other greatest argument is committed to claiming cannot be *justified*, yeah I think there's an element of hypocrisy there. And humour.

[Nervousification]

@berettaNZ Very true, but he did never the less admit that induction works, even though it makes absolutely no sense to him. Ergo; it would be a misrepresentation to call him a hypocrite for using induction himself. Also, and I may be wrong, since he defined 'miracles' as anything that breaks the known laws of nature and claimed that the laws of nature are uniform, then if a miracle did occur, the law it broke would not be uniform, thus not a law, thus not a miracle.

[AshleyKScott]

Is that a TURBAN?! Lol!