David Hume

David Hume thought that we could never be sure of our knowledge of the world. It is just perception. We can't know that the sun will rise tomorrow just because it rose yesterday and the day before. That's an inductive fallacy. Thomas Reid tried to take Hume to task by asking, if we can't trust our senses, what can we trust? This doesn't get us far. The real answer is in how complex the universe is likely to be. To have everyone have vastly different perceptions to such a degree that we can't read a thermometer or clock, we would need one of two things: either a complex universe that can change how thermometers work from moment to moment, or we would need brains that have simultaneously evolved that can perceive in vastly different ways -- your blue is not my blue because you are actually seeing something different from what I am seeing when I see blue.

Hume also thought that there could not be a self that exists over time. The self clearly is a tricky thing. But modern brain science shows that memories are indeed stored in the neurons. False memories are not a problem here because they are anomalous. The point is that we do have memories and they do stay with us. I don't argue that Hume totally misses the mark. Again, the self is a dicey concept, but some sort of self does exist over time unless disease or damage occurs. Hume's contention that there is no self is the falsehood here, not that the self is not at all fungible. We should note that Hume's problems with induction seem a bit silly in the face of a universe that has light traveling steadily for tens of billions of years. Why should we have doubts about the future, in a Humean way, that don't seem to apply to the visible past? Hume would have to come up with some sort of vector for this sudden and inexplicable change he proposes is possible.

Also Hume says that there is no reason to prefer avoiding the destruction of the world over scratching his finger. The problems here are with the words reason and prefer. By reason does he mean a method of proof? Can we prove that the destruction of the world is less preferable to scratching an itch? We can prove that we would like it less. We would not want to see fear and pain in ourselves or others. Fear and pain are not things that we generally prefer. Can we prove that we should not? Is that necessary to show that Hume has tied himself in a knot? I doubt it. We could not make the vast majority of people prefer destroying the world over scratching one's own finger. Had Hume acknowledged this fact I feel that he would have been making some progress. As it is, he again is not accurately describing the world. He is forcing a needless skepticism on himself. I don't think in ethics we can know what all the wrong or right actions are. But that doesn't mean that we know nothing about right and wrong.

The Wren

The tiny wren is not too reticent.
Boldly, he claims his need to be content
With nothing less than his own mastery
Of song. The trills his urgency sets free,
Having surpassed their given form, outstrip
All reasoning, or parity. The grip
Exceeds the hand: the draft the cup or glass.
The height is not distance from the dewy grass.
Not greater is the wren than his brief song,
Its tune’s been sung by early wrens for long,
But this uncommon wren sings of our flight,
Fulfills its promise, mindful of the night.
No rubbish from a shrunken guilty thing
Whenever themes are given vital wing.
The virtuoso wren has song in spate.
Each April new if wren and song will mate.

prelude to a bliss

Prelude to a Bliss

Was Falstaff ever young and thin,
Or less addicted to his sin?

I would have had him on Bermuda’s shores,
Perhaps, retiring on the fat Azores,
Feasting on sweet Madeira’s ruby berries,
Or another of the warm Canaries –
Believed to be the Islands of the Blest,
Where Homer said Greek heroes take their rest.
Sertorius could have skipped the wars
And bloody Sulla, locked ambition’s doors
Upon these isles in anonymity,
Well-insulated by a tropic sea.
And thus Sertorius thought to do, to die
In peace. An t’were, like-tested, so would I.