I like this post. Can you think of any pre-20th century philosophers whose works you still hold to be valid/useful today? [or from that list, any pre-21st century...]
Hume turns out to have been right about an awful lot, but still… why read Hume when you can read contemporary works of science and philosophy there are clearer, more precise, and more correct? (If you’re reading Hume for his lovely prose, I suppose that’s a different matter.)
Speaking of Hume, the Nov. 30th episode of Philosophy Bites was kind of amusing. A bunch of philosophers, including famous ones, gave their answers to “Who’s your favorite philosopher?” IIRC, when giving their reasons for liking their favorite philosopher, almost nobody said “because this philosopher turned out to be correct about so much” — except for all the people who picked Hume.
Bostrom simply said: “I’m not sure I have one favorite philosopher. Contemporary philosophy, at least the way I’m doing it, is more like science in that there are many people who have made significant contributions and you’re not so much following in the footsteps of one great individual. [Instead] you’re drawing on the heritage accumulated by many people working for a long time.”
Because Hume drew correct conclusions from very little information (relative to what it took for Science to catch up), and I want to learn how to do that.
Qiaochu_Yuan has a point, but Hume was conspicuously right about so many things that almost everyone around him was wrong about, I think there might indeed be some “Humeness” having an effect going on there. Maybe: unusual good rationality. Or maybe he was a plant from our simulators.
It’s not clear that Hume having drawn correct conclusions from very little information comes from any essential Humeness that you should be trying to emulate. If the set of reasonable-sounding answers to the kinds of questions philosophers like Hume were thinking about is small enough, you’d expect that out of a sufficiently large pool of philosophers some of them would get it mostly right by sheer luck (e.g. Democritus and atoms). You’d need evidence that Hume was doing very well even after adjusting for this before he becomes worth studying.
(I say this knowing almost nothing about Hume—I last took a philosophy course over 8 years ago—and so if it’s obvious that Hume was doing very well even after adjusting for the above then sure, study Hume.)
As I was reading your post, I kept thinking to myself: “Yeah, well this applies to almost everybody except for Hume (some of the time)” so I find myself nodding along to everything you said in this comment.
I’m not Luke, and I’m not even sure this is what he would count as philosophy, but the Stoics were right about an awful lot of practical things to help you live a better life, and research now seems to be indicating that their techniques do in fact work.
I like this post. Can you think of any pre-20th century philosophers whose works you still hold to be valid/useful today? [or from that list, any pre-21st century...]
Hume turns out to have been right about an awful lot, but still… why read Hume when you can read contemporary works of science and philosophy there are clearer, more precise, and more correct? (If you’re reading Hume for his lovely prose, I suppose that’s a different matter.)
Speaking of Hume, the Nov. 30th episode of Philosophy Bites was kind of amusing. A bunch of philosophers, including famous ones, gave their answers to “Who’s your favorite philosopher?” IIRC, when giving their reasons for liking their favorite philosopher, almost nobody said “because this philosopher turned out to be correct about so much” — except for all the people who picked Hume.
Bostrom simply said: “I’m not sure I have one favorite philosopher. Contemporary philosophy, at least the way I’m doing it, is more like science in that there are many people who have made significant contributions and you’re not so much following in the footsteps of one great individual. [Instead] you’re drawing on the heritage accumulated by many people working for a long time.”
Because Hume drew correct conclusions from very little information (relative to what it took for Science to catch up), and I want to learn how to do that.
Good answer.
Qiaochu_Yuan has a point, but Hume was conspicuously right about so many things that almost everyone around him was wrong about, I think there might indeed be some “Humeness” having an effect going on there. Maybe: unusual good rationality. Or maybe he was a plant from our simulators.
What about Epicurus.
It’s not clear that Hume having drawn correct conclusions from very little information comes from any essential Humeness that you should be trying to emulate. If the set of reasonable-sounding answers to the kinds of questions philosophers like Hume were thinking about is small enough, you’d expect that out of a sufficiently large pool of philosophers some of them would get it mostly right by sheer luck (e.g. Democritus and atoms). You’d need evidence that Hume was doing very well even after adjusting for this before he becomes worth studying.
(I say this knowing almost nothing about Hume—I last took a philosophy course over 8 years ago—and so if it’s obvious that Hume was doing very well even after adjusting for the above then sure, study Hume.)
This seems to be the case.
As I was reading your post, I kept thinking to myself: “Yeah, well this applies to almost everybody except for Hume (some of the time)” so I find myself nodding along to everything you said in this comment.
I’m not Luke, and I’m not even sure this is what he would count as philosophy, but the Stoics were right about an awful lot of practical things to help you live a better life, and research now seems to be indicating that their techniques do in fact work.
Research? Research?