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

This video was uploaded with the written permission of Gresham College.

• The Empiricist Turn, Part 3 of 6 •
Date/Time: 14/02/2008
Speaker: Professor Keith Ward.

Professor Ward has a BA from the University of Wales, an MA from the University of Cambridge, an MA and B Litt from the University of Oxford, a DD from Cambridge and a DD from Oxford.

This lecture is about Hume and the grounding of knowledge in human experience, the conflict of reason and common sense. The lecturer raises a thought-provoking question: Hume was wrong about science - was he wrong about religion too?

For more information, other lectures, transcripts, downloadable audio and video. Please visit the Gresham College website for this lecture:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=4&EventId=677

Category:

Education

Tags:

• David Hume
• religion
• empiricism
• other minds
• external world
• common sense
• knowledge
• epistemology
• scepticism
• God
• theism
• atheism
• necessity
• contingency
• creation
• philosophy
• theology
• realism
• anti realism
• Gresham College

[rmeddy1]

This is a weak criticism of Hume imo.

All he doing is making the case for instrumentalism.

[McPrfctday]

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

[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.

[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.