On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 10:47:53 -0500 Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> writes:
>
> "Hume runs away from his own conclusion: he adds:-
>
> 'On the contrary, he (a Pyrrhonian) must acknowledge, if he will
> acknowledge
> anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles
> universally
> and steadily to prevail" (loc. cit.).'
>
> "I wonder how Hume knows this: it must be that there is some
> element in
> our knowledge of nature which his philosophy has failed to take
> account of.
> Bertrand Russell adopts Hume's position. He says:-
>
> 'If, however, we know of a very large number of cases in which A is
> followed
> by B and few or none in which the sequence fails, we shall in
> *practice* be
> justified in saying 'A causes B,' provided we do not attach to the
> notion of
> cause any of the metaphysical superstitions that have gathered about
> the
> word" (Analysis of Mind, Lecture V, Causal Laws).'
>
> "Again I should like to know how Russell has acquired the piece
> of
> information which he has emphasized by italics - 'we shall in
> *practice* be
> justified, etc.'
> "I do not like this habit among philosophers, of having recourse
> to
> secret stores of information, which are not allowed for in their
> system of
> philosophy. They are the ghost of Berkeley's 'God,' and are about
> as
> communicative." (Whitehead, "Uniformity and Contingency" in Essays
> in
> Science and Philosophy pp. 107-8)
>
> Perhaps a little thinking outside the box is necessary. By this I
> mean
> putting in question the assumptions about reality and experience
> from which
> the radically skeptical conclusion ('solipsism of the present
> moment') is
> deduced. This is done by Hegel and Marx. In more contemporary
> philosophy,
> this way of addressing the skepticism, which they treat as a
> reductio ad
> absurdum of the assumptions, is found in Husserl (e.g. The Crisis of
> the
> Modern European Sciences) and Whitehead (e.g. Symbolism).
The problem of radical skepticism arises if we take for granted the kinds of assumptions that empiricists from Locke & Berekeley down Russell & Ayer have tended to make concerning the nature of reality and exoerience, including such assumptions as separability of subjects and objects, the reducibility of experience to discrete sense-data and so forth. In addition to Hegel , Marx (and Engels), Whitehead, and Husserl, I would also add John Dewey who deconstructed the whole problematic of classical empiricism in his *Quest for Certainy*, amongst other writings.
Jim F.
>
> Ted Winslow
>
>
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