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Hume a Dogmatist?
A Critique of Hume's Fork?

Hume a Dogmatist?

Ibrahim
seeker of nothing

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Posted 05/23/07 - 12:55 PM: Subject: Hume a Dogmatist?	#1
Hume asserts that relations of ideas indicate nothing whatsoever about matters of fact and empirical observation. The question I would like to pose is how was Hume so certain that our ideas, including our value judgments, do not affect our perception of matters of fact. His dogmatism lies in his unproven rejection of the relation between perceptual judgment and matters of fact which are somehow unrelated to these ideas. Of course I cannot deny that the order of appearances as Hume calls them does not change according to our will ( for example I cannot will a flower to fall upwards), but our understanding of both flower and upwards is dependent on the relation of ideas. My question is, how was Hume so certain that matters of fact are not a function of the relation of ideas and vice versa without asserting a dogmatic division between the two? Edited by Ibrahim on 05/24/07 - 12:57 AM. Reason: misstatement
"And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh"--Nietzsche

Pete
Assistant Professor

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Posted 05/25/07 - 11:27 AM:	#2
I'm not really sure what you're asking, but let me take a stab at it. I don't think that Hume would deny that our ideas affect our perception of matters of fact. The reason we are able to recognize a flower as a flower is because we associate our immediate impression of a flower with an idea of flower. Without the associated idea, we would see flowers only as, perhaps, plants with such and such a shape and such and such a coloring. Hume's claim that 'relations of ideas' indicate nothing about matters of fact is just the claim that, for example, "Bachelors are unmarried' or 'Flowers are plants' is true in virtue of the way those ideas are related, not in virtue of the way the world is. I'm having trouble seeing how this claim bears on your question.

jeffmcmahan
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Posted 05/26/07 - 02:31 PM:	#3
The answer is simple. Hume is not a dogmatist because what he means by the terms "matters of fact" and "idea" are such that the difficulty you ponder cannot arise. Matters of fact = the world uncognized or noumena or ultimate reality... whatever IS in spite of our thinking. Idea = cognized objects or concepts Quite obviously the division exists if we define our terms this way. Ideas affect our perception of matters of fact, but as matters of fact (in Hume's eyes) are antecedent to our cognitions of matters of fact, our cognitions cannot affect them. You can call him a dogmatist for lots of reasons, though. He does accept opposite values (true and false), without laboring any justification... but that's getting kind of picky. Edited by jeffmcmahan on 05/26/07 - 02:36 PM

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