David Hume’s (2011) formulation of the is–ought problem.

Brian Stephenson@bstephen2·Aug 5, 2020As for the Pirnie collection, not counted it, but I am slowly going through it for my online #ChessProblem database: http://bstephen.me.uk/meson/meson.pl?opt=top… . Also going through several boxes of the White-Hume Collection which I have.

David Hume in the section of the treatise of human nature

we're telling ourselves hey no elephant in my house nothing to worry about whereas the self that we really think we have is that self which is always 01:16:36 subject never object always agent never patient that self that is the enjoyer that stands opposed to the world and experiences it that acts on the world 01:16:49 the self that has a mind and has a body but is not itself a mind or a body that's the serpent and chandra kerdi thinks that if we don't pay attention to that serpent if we don't understand what 01:17:02 it is we believe ourselves to be in our heart of hearts we will never succeed in dispelling the illusion and hume also is trying to identify here 01:17:14 the serpent and he's identifying it as the idea that the word self even means anything

hume is not in book one arguing that persons do not exist in fact in book two he's going to spend most of his time explaining what persons 01:17:41 are he when instead what he's claiming is that persons don't have selves

hume thinks that this is one of those many cases where we've got a word that we suppose corresponds to something in the world or corresponds to an idea but we 01:13:25 don't as though for instance i were to tell sarah hey i just got this really cool toy yesterday it's a round square sarah says what are you talking about 01:13:39 and i say well it's both round and square isn't that cool and sarah would say to me you're using words jay but it sounds like total nonsense to me and she'd be right

ernest becker has made a lot of is offered the same kind of argument which he calls terror management theory um shanti deva rather in the beginning of how to awaken uh how to lead an awakened 00:36:00 life talks about how terrified we are of death how terrified we are of being nothing how terrified we are what's going to happen after death becker doc talks about the same thing and shantideva 00:36:13 argues that in order to save ourselves from that terror what we do is we try to pause it make permanent and self safeguard this self becker does the same thing says we tend to reify ourselves as 00:36:24 a ball work um against terror to somehow manage our terror and but in any case self does seem the self illusion i think i think that idea is quite right by the way that the fear of death which is 00:36:36 deeply wired into us causes us to posit that self causes us to say hey maybe it can live forever maybe it can be reborn life after life after life maybe it can go to heaven things like that 00:36:48 but i also think the idea that affect is deeply related to our sense of self is really there shanti deva makes this point as well as does david hume um shanti deva uh points out that here's when you really decide you've got a self 00:37:02 it's when somebody insults you or hurts you right so somebody says garfield you idiot an and i immediately said wait a minute i'm a whole lot better than that how dare you talk to me like that i don't feel like my body's been 00:37:13 insulted i don't feel like my mind has been insulted i don't feel like my perceptions or sensations have been insulted i feel like i the thing that's got those things has been insulted and i want revenge at that point so that kind 00:37:27 of effect there or if you do something really cool like win the olympic gold medal in 100 meter sprint like i would love to do um with usain bolt's body um then you think when you're really proud of what you've done the pride 00:37:39 attaches not to my body not to my mind but to me so this idea that affect really brings up that sense of self i think is really important uh hume uh makes the same point in his treatise of human nature for those of 00:37:52 you who want to see this done in western philosophy he thinks that it's pride and shame that really bring up the idea of the self you know i mean when i'm ashamed of something that i'm done that i've done i'm not ashamed of my hand 00:38:04 that wrote badly i'm ashamed of me for having bad penmanship if i didn't give to a beggar i'm not ashamed that my mind did something wrong i'm ashamed that i did i was tight-fisted um and so the 00:38:16 idea that these and these aspects bring up the idea of self i think is very powerful and of course anger as i said earlier is another big one all of these involve egocentric attachment so it's when we're attached to things in a way that really fronts 00:38:29 our ego as the possessor then we find that we're positing that self and so this finishes the first of the three things i wanted to do this evening first was to convince you that you really do think yourself to explain what 00:38:42 that self is and to give some idea of why i think that you have why i think that you think that you have a self um no matter how much you might reject that idea on reflection

David Hume, a great philosopher, in his “History of England” — he wrote a huge history of England — there’s a chapter devoted to Isaac Newton, a full chapter. He describes Newton as, you know, the greatest mind that ever existed, and so on and so forth. He said Newton’s great achievement was to draw the veil away from some of the mysteries of nature — namely, his theory of universal gravitation and so on — but to leave other mysteries hidden in ways we will never understand. Referring to: What’s the world like? We’ll never understand it. He left that as a permanent mystery. Well, as far as we know, he was right.

This observation extends to tables, chairs, scritoires, chimneys, coaches, sadles, ploughs, and indeed to every work of art; it being an universal rule, that their beauty is chiefly deriv’d from their utility, and from their fitness for that purpose, to which they are destin’d.

Un fondement très profond dans la culture occidentale

Et voilà finalement la première définition de l’amour.

Or global warming. I can’t see or touch it. What I can see and touch are these raindrops, this snow, that sunburn patch on the back of my neck. I can touch the weather. But I can’t touch climate. So someone can declare: “See! It snowed in Boise, Idaho, this week. That means there’s no global warming!” We can’t directly see global warming, because it’s not only really widespread and really really long-lasting (100,000 years); it’s also super high-dimensional. It’s not just 3-D. It’s an incredibly complex entity that you have to map in what they call a high-dimensional- phase space: a space that plots all the states of a system. In so doing, we are only following the strictures of modern science, laid down by David Hume and underwritten by Immanuel Kant. Science can’t directly point to causes and effects: That would be metaphysical, equivalent to religious dogma. It can only see correlations in data. This is because, argues Kant, there is a gap between what a thing is and how it appears (its “phenomena”) that can’t be reduced, no matter how hard we try. We can’t locate this gap anywhere on or inside a thing. It’s a transcendental gap. Hyperobjects force us to confront this truth of modern science and philosophy.

histrionics

prejudices

every Reader has a peculiar last of Books as well as Meats.

abuse or perversion of terms from their na1ura

Of the Standard of Taste"

We may ob­serve, that every work of art, in order lo produce its due effect on the mind, must be surveyed in a certain point of view, and cannot be fully relished by persons, whose situation, real or imaginary, is not conformable to that which is required by lhe performance. An orator addresses himself to a particular audience

each mind perceives a differentbeauty.

they must acknowledge a true and decisive standard to exist somewhere, to wit, real existence and mat� ter of fact

eauty

must place 1,Jl>'u.,<I himself in lhe same situation as the audience, in order to form a true judgment of the oration.

Defect

Skil nor Art to Form

If “humans”refers to phenomena, not independent entities with inherent propertiesbut rather beings in their differential becoming, particular material(re)configurings of the world with shifting boundaries and properties thatstabilize and destabilize along with specific material changes in what itmeans to be human

The whole problem is reduced, as Hume said, to determining who are the quali-fied judges.

properties

Burke's rhetoric, bound up in communities, communal ideas, social rela-tions, religion, magic, and psychological effects, in both verbal and nonverbal com-munication, seems to encompass almost everything.

I 5~ is behaving or·thinking with a concept-not, of course, of one. Its act is abstractive and general; disregards in some respects the fonner situations and so is abstractive, and applies in some re-spects not to one single thing but to any of a sort and so is general. The theorem settles the Eighteenth-Century problem by standing it on its head. That problem was, How do we manage, from this particular concrete thing and that particular concrete thing and the other particular concrete thing, to arrive at the general abstract anything? The theorem holds that we begin with the general abstract any-thing, split it, as the world makes us, into sorts and then arrive at concrete particulars by the overlapping or common membership of these sorts. This bit of paper here now in my hand is a concrete particular to us so far as we think of it as paperish, hereish, nowish, and in my hand; it is the more concrete as we t

natural symbol-ism

reference

definitive, unquestion-1< able truths,

experience

Finally, he concludes that knowl-edge itself is based upon argument, and that there is considerable ethical and ideo-logical danger in the tendency or most arguments lo claim that they rest on im-mutable truth.

Words arc signs of our im-pulses and do not represent "u many-sided, respectable knowledge of things.

nothing but metaphors for things.

"the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation!

conformity to good taste

where there is a deficient verbal memory, or an inadequale sense of logical depen-dence, or but little perception of order, or a Jack of constructive ingenuity; no amount of instruc-tion will remedy the defect. Nevertheless, some practical result may be expected from a familiar-ity with the principles of style. The endeavour to conform to Jaws may tell, though slowly. And if in no other way, yet, as facilitating revision, a knowledge of the thing to be achieved-a clear idea of what constitutes a beauty, and what a blemish-cannot fail to be of service.

senses;

Most com-mentators, having their minds preoccupied with the prejudices of education, afford little aid; they rnthcr tend 10 darken the text by the multitude of words

And such is the powerful force of prejudice.

but any assertion about experience

Conspiracy theorists have argued that the AIDS virus was deliberately created as part of a plot to kill black or gay people

completely subjective

But allow him more experience in works of this kind, and his taste becomes by degrees more exact and enlightened. He begins to perceive not only the character of the whole, but the beauties and de-f eels of each part; and i~ able to describe the pe-culiar qualities which he praises or blames. The mist is dissipalcd which seemed formerly to hang over the object; and he can at length pronounce firmly, and without hesitation, concerning it. Thus, in taste, considered as mere sensibility, ex-ercise opens a great source of improvement.

no principle of the human mind is, in its operations, more fluctu-ating and capricious than taste.

lt so very considerable, as s apt to imagine; that this, operation of the intellect, :akness incident to all our insepamblc from our na-. take an opportunity par-:111d Origin of Experience ,i<.lcr the principal tribes 1e general name of moral !ry difficulty may be re-·etard our progress in the will be necessary, in the ! more accurately those ·hich give being to experi-, to all those attainments, that are derived from it. • sense and memory. The 1d internal, are the original ,cy inform the mind of the escnt instant are situated !ir activity, and no sooner in any particular instance rmation exhibited by them emory. Remembrance in-1tion, insomuch that the sole repository of the form sense; knowledge pository, would be as in-is gotten, and could be of Our sensations would be ing pictures of a moving cura, which leave not the :m. Memory, therefore, is er extant of those past re• ad once the evidence of 1s it were, the prints that ,le impression~. But from Jnsidered in themselves, 1owledge only of individ-1ch facts as either hereto-·esent do come, under the :Jer this knowledge useful :! nature of things, and in a further process of the h deserves to be carefully e thus illustrated. I have ohscrved :1 stone fall to the ground when nothing intervened to impede its motion. This single fact produce:; little or no effect on the mind beyond a bare remembrance. At another time, I observe the fall of a tile, at another of an apple, and so of al-most every kind of body in the like situation. Thus my sense first, and then my memory, fur-nish me with numerous examples, which, though different in every other particular, arc similar in this, that they present a body moving down-ward!>, till obstructed either by the ground or by some intcrvcnient object. Hence by first notion of gravitation. For, with regard to the similar cir· cumstam:cs of different facts, as by the repetition such circumstances arc more deeply imprinted, the mind acquires a habit of retaining them, omit-ting those circumstances peculiar to each wherein their differences consiM. Hence, if ob-jects of any kind, in a particular manner circum-stanced, arc remembered to have been usually, and still more if uniformly, succeeded by certain particular consequences, the idea of the former, in the supposed circumstance introduced into the mind, immediately associates the idea of the lat-ter; aml if the object itself, so circumstanced, be presented to the senses, the mind instantly antici-pates the appearnncc of the customary conse-quence.

But as there are other things which pass in the mind of man, beside ideas; as he is not wholly made up of intellect, but on the contr.iry, the pas-sions, and the fancy, compose great part of his complicated frame; as the operations of tl,tese are attended with an infinite variety of emotions in the mind, both in kind and degree; it is clear, that unless there be some means found, of manifest-ing those emotions, all that passes in the mind of one man can not be communicated to another. Now, as in order to know what another knows, and in the same manner that he knows it, an exact transcript of the ideas which pass in the mind of one man, must be made by sensible marks, in the mind of another; so in order to feel what another feels, the emotions which are in the mind of one man, must also be communicated to that of an-other, by sensible marks.

But all deter-minations of the understanding are not right

that they had affixed a very different meaning to their expressions.

Moreover, Blair enacts Hume's argument that good taste, based as it is on experience, can be learned.

Such people can provide us with the standards for criticism.

It is evident that none of the rules of composi-1 l tion are fixed by reasonings a priori,

While colors are brighter and give more immediate plea- sure in new paintings than old, in excess these can cause satiety, causing us to turn back to the faded austerity of older paintings.

“ that we feel more through the public exposure to others ’ emotions than through an interior circuit of sensation.