16 ms·
The Hume paradox: how great philosophy leads to dismal politics
- kingsuper20 5y agoI think I learned more about the politics of Julian Baggini than I did Hume's.
- vishakh82 5y agoI have a blog post that similarly talks about unintended negative consequences of Humean ideas, through the lens of Judea Pearl's work on causation: https://vishakh.medium.com/empiricism-and-scientific-change-in-judea-pearls-the-book-of-why-5e77c02a9d8b https://vishakh.medium.com/empiricism-and-scientific-change-....
- JacksonGariety 5y agoThis supposes Hume was a great philosopher, and that skepticism is an admirable philosophical position. These are questionable suppositions.
- ggm 5y agoCites?
- planet-and-halo 5y agoHappily, Hume himself would probably agree with you! The guy was even skeptical of his own skepticism.
- sitkack 5y agoIsn't that a lousy move? Doesn't it make the entire theory a tautology that cannot be attacked?
- planet-and-halo 5y agoEpoché
- MispelledToyota 5y agoif it's tautological then there's no reason to attack it. It's merely uninteresting. If people still think they don't like it than the critique would have to something else.
- sitkack 5y agoGödel showed that everything is tautological if you go low enough, but invoking it against yourself feels like an automatic point for the other side. I am not invoking it, of course it is uninteresting. In a sport amongst friends with good intent it should be a suggestion to stay within bounds and satisfy the spirit of the game.
- MispelledToyota 5y agoIf Hume isn't a great philosopher, then it's because the category isn't coherent. Any reasonable understanding of great philosopher would include him. In terms of importance, scope, originality, argumentation, he's among the greats. If skepticism isn't admirable, I'll have to ask you to behave in a less disreputable manner.
- goatlover 5y agoThe problem of induction remains an outstanding problem. Extraordinary claims do require extraordinary proof. And moral realism remains contentious. There's justification for at least some of Hume's skepticism.
- medymed 5y agoThe reaction of given period’s academic culture to Hume speaks as much about the culture as it does about Hume. We now have an academic culture with very strong social beliefs, minimally tolerant of those that don’t toe the line, and justifiably so in many ways. It may be many decades before the standards by which academics judge historical thinkers starts to soften, if ever. Because Kant and Hume may be left somewhat by the wayside for a while, there’s a grand opportunity for their replacements. I would pitch to a publisher that the old canon is appallingly ripe for disruption.
- voidhorse 5y agoOn the other hand, I think this rampant ahistoricity is problematic. We currently have a notion of tolerance which does not extend past the present, if we don’t manage to engage with historical thought in a principled way, acknowledging the faults of our predecessors while retaining their virtues, I fear we’ll lose more than we’ll gain. Ironically, Descartes was responsible for such an ignorant, damaging ahistorical program, effectively jettisoning a whole swath of philosophical work that went on after Ockham and effectively launching a virus of egoism that’s still rampant, virulent, and probably at the worst its ever been in modern western thought.
- spookybones 5y agoWhat exactly are you referring to, analytic philosophy?
- voidhorse 5y agoYes, I’d think the formal fetishists of analytic philosophy are a symptom for sure (some of the projects of Russell, Frege, etc.), but I’m referring to a more general tendency after Descartes (of which Humean skepticism might be interpreted as an example) to take the cogito quite far, insofar as one falls into solipsism, forgetting that being and knowledge need objective grounds and are highly dependent on interaction with the so called “other” (a radical Descartean position would argue that the mind is able to “know” purely of its own accord and deemphasize the communicative and collaborative aspects of knowledge creation (an ahistoricity)). If you examine anglo-saxon philosophical practice post-Descartes you’ll find solipsistic tendencies are more then rule than the exception. (Continental philosophy is more exempt from this tendency, but also has instances of this)
- Barrin92 5y agoThis particular disconnect of philosophical liberalism and empiricism that was in many ways revolutionary and empowering for individuals standing in conflict with a repressive, traditionalist and elite culture is nothing new. It's particularly common in the British (and today American, having supplanted the British) elite not only during the time of Hume. You also see it in Keynes for example, who on the one hand is a liberal hero but on the other was a fairly staunch imperialist and eugenicist. There's also Hayek, with his focus on freedom on the one hand but endorsement of monarchy or even dictatorship on the other. Personally I think this is an inevitable consequence of liberalism in general (using the word in the broad, European sense of the term) because it's fundamentally an elite, top-down driven project. A belief system based on abstract, contractual and individual freedom made by and to a large degree for the governing and intellectual class is always going to come into tension with the population at large, leading to a Conservative political mentality, both on what we today call the left or the right.
- ethn 5y agoI think this is largely embarrassing. The author pesters us with an imputation on Hume as an analytically bankrupt political thinker but fails to deliver any concrete proof. Then the author assumes (while incorrectly interpreting Hume) that their own politics are correct and any divergence proves that Hume is a failed political thinker. We don’t find Hume’s criticism of Mandeville instead we find an interpretation of modern conservatism as an obviously evil caricature which can only be developed by the inability to understand a viewpoint which doesn’t immediately affirms one’s preconceived beliefs.
- throwawaygh 5y ago> an analytically bankrupt political thinker but fails to deliver any concrete proof. Huh? I've always encountered Hume's politics in the same manner as e.g. Heidegger's; the only real question is whether you can divorce the thinker from his politics. Genuinely, I thought this was a fairly common experience of being introduced to Hume. Like, was Heidegger a Nazi? Shrug, I guess we can have an academic conversation about that... but in any case we all agree his politics don't exactly help make the case for his philosophy. So with Hume; the introductory conversations are quite similar. Could you provide a robust defense for Hume's politics? I think the standard consensus is that he was... well, wrong, at least about chattel slavery, and putting it quite mildly.
- baazaa 5y ago> I think the standard consensus is that he was... well, wrong, at least about chattel slavery, and putting it quite mildly. Is the standard consensus suddenly pro-slavery? > As much as submission to a petty prince, whose dominions extend not beyond a single city, is more grievous than obedience to a great monarch; so much is domestic slavery more cruel and oppressive than any civil subjection whatsoever. The more the master is removed from us in place and rank, the greater liberty we enjoy; the less are our actions inspected and controled; and the fainter that cruel comparison becomes between our own subjection, and the freedom, and even dominion of another. The remains which are found of domestic slavery, in the AMERICAN colonies, and among some EUROPEAN nations, would never surely create a desire of rendering it more universal. The little humanity, commonly observed in persons, accustomed, from their infancy, to exercise so great authority over their fellow-creatures, and to trample upon human nature, were sufficient alone to disgust us with that unbounded dominion. Nor can a more probable reason be assigned for the severe, I might say, barbarous manners of ancient times, than the practice of domestic slavery; by which every man of rank was rendered a petty tyrant, and educated amidst the flattery, submission, and low debasement of his slaves. Nowadays it's just assumed that any racist must be an advocate for slavery, or gas chambers, or whatever. Actually reading racists (like Hume) would quickly disabuse one of that notion.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Animats 5y agoIt's worth noting, when reading the great philosophers of that era and earlier, how static their world was. When Hume was writing, steam engines barely worked and the American Revolution hadn't happened yet. GDP growth was a few percent per century. Most people did not see the world change much in their lifetime.
- chmod600 5y agoInteresting point. If deciding whether to advocate for change or not, and you don't see much evidence that change actually happens (and/or works), that would certianly bias someone toward conservatism.
- golemiprague 5y agoOr you could derive the exact opposite conclusion, advocating for change since it hardly ever happens so we would like to have more of it. Anyway, the arguments today are not necessarily about change but rather about what kind of change. Which I suspect was always the case, conservatism or progressivism are just team names, exactly like democrats and republicans. In Australia the liberals are the right wing party, it is just a label.
- keiferski 5y agoThis might be true for Western Europe in the (early) 18th century, but it’s certainly not true of most of the rest of the world historically.
- sbierwagen 5y agoDo you have examples of other parts of the world that experienced double digit GDP growth on a century scale before 1700?
- keiferski 5y agoI’m replying to this: Most people did not see the world change much in their lifetime.
- chmod600 5y agoA better word than "dismal" might be "stagnant". Assuming you think we are better off today than 1000 years ago, it seems that calibrating to perfect conservatism is not the right approach. At the same time, that's not a blank check to unleash whatever fasionable idea on hundreds of millions of people, as that has gone horribly wrong as well.
- feoren 5y ago"Great philosophy" is an oxymoron. Philosophy has been and always will be nothing but mental masturbation. 98% of philosophical arguments are vapid debates about mere definitions of words. The entire discipline is completely unwilling to ever reject an idea, no matter how insane or nonsensical. Every philosophical question is answered with "well, Plato said this, and Hume said that, and Kant said this, and Descartes said this, and ...". If a philosopher ever accidentally makes a falsifiable claim, a testable prediction, or backs up his arguments with real evidence, he suddenly becomes a "philosopher and scientist". It's as if the term "philosophy" exists solely to describe thinking which is utterly useless.
- baybal2 5y agoYou don't need philosophy, you need action
- goatlover 5y agoSurely you need the right kind of action, which requires some thought.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago“Quick, do something, err anything!” How useful can that be…
- Der_Einzige 5y agosniffles actually the opposite is true! https://youtu.be/IgR6uaVqWsQ https://youtu.be/IgR6uaVqWsQ
- keiferski 5y agoMisguided articles like this are the consequence of deifying “Progress.” Today is treated as necessarily better than yesterday. Whether this is actually historically true, or examining what “better” is supposed to mean, are never investigated. It’s especially ironic when modern people look at past eras and think, “How could they ever have thought they were justified in doing what they did? How could they have assumed they were superior and on the right side of history?” Well, people are doing the same thing today. So it’s not particularly surprising. This has its roots in Christianity and this is made clear when you compare Western linear concepts of time to say, Hindu cyclical ones. Which is, of course deeply ironic considering the ideologies involved here. It’s an odd sort of subconscious Christian ouroboros.
- XorNot 5y agoExcessive focus on the past as better then the present leads only to stagnation. You wind up with policy-making that is just a cargo-cult of what history books and half-remembered stories say, rather then dealing with reality.
- keiferski 5y agoWell, conservatism and progressivism are largely mirror images of each other. In the Western World, at least. Both came out of the French Revolution.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoI find that people on the shall we say conservative side of the spectrum read different history books.
- sitkack 5y agoIs it overly focusing on the past or is it discounting the past because the present has to be better, while in reality we are making the same mistakes. The periodicity is there, but we ignore it because we assume we are necessarily improving regardless because of our falsely assumed temporal-progress trajectory. You see this in system design where someone makes something new, as a goal of improving an existing system, but really the only quality it has is that it is new. So they are also constructing a future shitty system at the same time. In many instances, one should ignore time and think about states. Or at least heavily discount it and don't let it distort your thinking.
- concordDance 5y agoIt seems odd to judge the correctness of a historic philosopher by whether he conforms to current fads rather than any objective wrongness. Though I guess it's not really possible to judge any philosophical thing "objectively", so all we have to go on is the fads...
- mensetmanusman 5y ago“ In practice, the world is not divided between those who are sceptical and those who are not, but along the lines of what people are sceptical of. “ There is a lot of wisdom in this sentence. When attempting a reasoned debate, it is incredibly useful to assess assumptions and skepticism. I often see a blind spot in reasoning when people assume that others are not skeptical about some domain.
- throwaway98797 5y agoPolitics is the art of compromise. Philosophy is seeking logically consistent truth. The need for compromise is antithetical to philosophy’s goal. It is nice and useful to bat around ideas but when one has to work in the world, things get dirty. Decisions get hard. Mistakes get made.
- coldtea 5y agoThe article in a nutshell: "The past ideas were wrong, and the present ideas (people like me have) are right. Hume had opinions like us in some ways, and thus was right about those, and shared the opinions of his own era in others, and thus was wrong about those others"