 British empiricism, Hume's fork, the analytic-synthetic distinction, the rise of logical positivism, and Quine's refutation of it. If I get all of this done in less than 10 minutes, I'm gonna say that it was schlick as a whistle. Before we get rolling, a huge thanks to Mace Wampus and the entire philosophy subreddit for all of the feedback on my first, shall we say, dicey foray into the history of analytic philosophy. You guys are fantastic, thanks for straightening me out. Let's start our story with David Hume, a pioneering member of a particular branch of philosophical thought that's become closely associated with the British Isles. You've probably heard of Italian leather or Belgian waffles, but most haven't heard of British empiricism. It might not be that surprising in retrospect, I mean it does have the word empire in it. Hume's attitude, and the attitude of a lot of British philosophy following his work, leans towards the idea that the primary source of human knowledge is information from the senses, that we mainly justify how we know what we know based on what we see and hear and taste in the world, rather than what we can reason or imagine to be the case, which might be useful in parsing that data but isn't really informative on its own. In fact, he proposed a principle now known as Hume's fork, splitting all knowledge into two very separate groups, matters of fact and relations of ideas. For example, the statement diamond is harder than steel is a matter of fact, something that you can confirm with sensory data by finding some diamond and some steel, trying to scratch one with the other and looking at the results. Other matters of fact would be things like it's raining outside or all cats have three legs. Note that these are just statements of a particular type. They don't necessarily have to be true, they just have to be able to be confirmed or refuted by looking at actual stuff in the world. On the other hand, the statement triangles have three sides seems to be more of a relation of ideas. A triangle is a two-dimensional shape with three sides, so it's kind of like saying triangles or triangles. Other relations of ideas might include things like two equals one plus three or Josh is Josh, which can be proven true or false using only math and logic. Hume thought that these could be useful for analysis but were never too in virtue of facts about the world, only ever in virtue of themselves. This was an attractive categorization for many philosophers and is now referred to as the analytic synthetic distinction. Hume also asserted that any knowledge worth having fell into only one of these two exclusive groups. If it didn't, well... If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics for instance, let us ask, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Committed then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. Holy crap! It takes an awful lot to get a philosopher to the point of burning books. What got him so riled? Well, it's very easy to conjecture wildly about those subjects, like saying that angels can't occupy physical space or that mind is made of one kind of substance and body another. But it's very hard to tell if any of that conjecture is right or what it would mean if it were right, which guesses are better than other guesses or if it makes any sense to talk about it at all. Hume rejected the fields of theology and metaphysics based on this idea that they were attempting to hybridize the two distinct categories of knowledge that they were trying to derive how the universe is by manipulating abstractions. For Hume, that sort of stuff was only good for making some mores. Nonetheless, in the early 20th century, almost 200 years after Hume had denounced them as being mere sophistry and illusion, they were still fairly popular subjects for discussion. But some cross-disciplinary scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers started a movement called logical empiricism or logical positivism to really stick a fork in them and stop what they also thought was meaningless wordplay and philosophy. They actually went a step further than Hume and said that any statement made in that in-between region wasn't just pointless, it was actually totally devoid of meaning. The logical positivist suggested an acid test called the principle of verification, claiming that the meaningful content of any statement was identical to the steps that you would take to prove it. This was partially an echo of the scientific revolutions that were happening at this time in history. According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, the concept of simultaneity was meaningless without a reference frame and a method that you would use to time events. And according to quantum mechanics, how you measured something was just as important as what you were looking for. Under the principle of verification, the statement, there's sugar in that water, actually meant if you put that water in your mouth, it will taste sweet. The statement, ten angels could dance on the head of a pin, actually means there is some experiment you could run such that if you felt this, then that would mean that ten angels could dance on the head of a pin. If no such process existed, then there was no meaningful content to your statement. You might as well have just gone... And that's the end of our tale. The principle of verification cleared everything up. Philosophy was rid forever of all previously intractable problems. And every... no. No, it just didn't work out. Logical positivism faced difficulties from the start. There's a problem with both Hume's fork and the principle of verification in that they're kind of self-refuting. The statement, anything that isn't about numbers or a testable empirical hypothesis should be burned, isn't about numbers or a testable empirical hypothesis. The statement that the meaningful content of a statement is identical to its method of verification doesn't have a method of verification. There was also a huge problem with mathematics when Kurt Grudluss in completeness theorem was unleashed on it. It turns out that no mathematical system can prove itself 100% logically consistent, which makes it very difficult to say that it's a pure relation of ideas. And getting rid of mathematics wasn't really on the to-do list, because, you know, it's really useful. And also, these guys had day jobs. But one of the most damning objections to logical positivism came from American philosopher Willard Van Orman-Quine. In his paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism, considered by many to be the most important philosophical paper of the 20th century, Quine tore into some of the underlying assumptions necessary for logical positivism to work, including Hume's Fork. Quine argued that the category of relations of ideas or analytic statements wasn't as clear-cut as the positivists would have liked, especially considering that their entire theory of meaning was built on it. Again, analytic statements are ones which are logically necessary, which can be proven to be true or false in and of themselves using pure logic. That's pretty obvious for something like Josh is Josh, because there's no way that that could be false without self-contradiction. It gets dicier with something more like Bachelors Are Unmarried Men. To call that analytic the way that the logical positivists wanted to, you'd have to demonstrate that you can swap out the word bachelors for the word unmarried men, because then you have something like Josh is Josh. But establishing how and when you're allowed to do that isn't so easy. Perhaps most concerning for Quine is the seeming circularity of the whole definition of analytic to begin with, how it seems to be smuggling in its own definition inside the definition of synonym and hoping that nobody notices. Like the statement bachelors are bachelors is analytic because it's necessarily true. The statement bachelors are unmarried men is supposedly also analytic because it's necessarily true because you can replace bachelors with unmarried men. You can do that because they're synonyms because the statement bachelors are unmarried men is necessarily true. Quine's paper made it abundantly clear that while there may be some difference between relations of ideas and matters of fact, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to create a hard and fast rule to distinguish between them. Many philosophers still believe that such a distinction is possible. But few will argue that it's totally clear cut. Two dogmas of empiricism was sort of the final nail in the coffin of the specific enterprise of logical positivism. But many of its guiding principles had already spread to and caused revolutions in other areas of culture. And the general attitude of Hume and its founders that meaning thought and language should be very closely scrutinized to make sure that they're behaving became a huge part of modern philosophy. And in my opinion, there is certainly something to that idea that we could all benefit from. Just don't ask me to prove it. What lessons do you think are contained in the collapse of logical positivism? Would you brofist Hume if you could? Please leave a message below. Let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe, blah, share, and don't stop thunking.