Rousseau's Dog

For those of you who were interested in what I believe you referred to as the "David Hume/J.J. Rousseau love-affair" (the image of them kissing in a carriage is still tormenting me a full day later) you can find a short review of the book I was talking about in class here. I'll just post a brief excerpt:

"After only a cursory correspondence and the briefest of meetings, the two men crossed the channel together in January. At first all seemed well. Rousseau was toasted in London as a celebrity refugee, and Hume tried to secure him suitable lodging as well as a pension from the king. Soon, however, the relationship soured. When a scurrilous satire of Rousseau's morose wallowing made the rounds, the thin-skinned author suspected Hume's involvement. Soon he was accusing le bon David of participating in a European-wide plot to blacken his name.

Outraged, Hume struck back in uncharacteristically strong terms, accusing Rousseau of "monstrous ingratitude, ferocity and frenzy," and denouncing him as a "scoundrel." Rousseau dashed off a lengthy indictment, multiplying the charges, and within months Hume had published a detailed and self-serving defense."

BONUS: This article will also teach you many new and fascinating insults to use on your friends. My particular favourites are "heart of filth" and "cowardly knave".

Have fun,
Clara

Hume, giant of the Enligh-toe-nment

Here's a story by Louise Gray that appeared in The Scotsman a few weeks ago. It totally made me laugh. Especially considering what Hume thought about miracles.

Clara

The big toe of Hume's statue has become a magnet for students

HE WAS a passionate defender of rationality and a scourge of the superstitious. Yet more than two centuries after his death, a statue of David Hume has become a lucky charm for those who hope some of the great philosopher's wisdom will rub off on them.

The prominent big toe of the 9ft statue, which stands on a 15ft plinth outside the High Court building at the top of the High Street in Edinburgh, has become a touchstone for philosophy students and for children hoping to gain knowledge.

The sculptor Sandy Stoddart predicted the practice would become an "ancient tradition".

He said philosophy students had been known to touch the statue for knowledge since it went up in 1997, but it was only recently that tourists and children had been doing the same.

Mr Stoddart appeared both flattered and amused, pointing out that there were statues in the Vatican in Rome that no longer had any toes because they had been worn away by the adoration of the multitude.

However, he did not think David Hume, "the scourge of superstition and religiosity", would approve of having his toe rubbed for luck.

"The great thing is that it's so ironic that David Hume, who is the patron saint of all the atheists, should have his toe adored," he said.

Just like spitting on the nearby Heart of the Midlothian for luck, Mr Stoddart believes the action will be passed down the generations. "We are seeing the birth of an ancient tradition with this toe rubbing," he said. "What we are seeing is the future - they will be doing this 100 years from now."

Mr Stoddart said it could be interpreted as a vacuous tourist activity, but those doing the rubbing were taking the first step on the road to the aesthetic life.

"The more people are seen to do that kind of thing, the more cultivated and cultured they become," he ventured.

However, ultimately he would prefer passers-by to appreciate the statue for its art rather than focusing on what it could do for them. "What we really want in Scotland is not toe-rubbing imposed by fascination; what we want is somebody to take a dispassionate and cultivated look at the statue," he said.

Chris Corry, 19, a second-year student at Edinburgh University, touched the statue for luck before his exams last term.

"I didn't work very hard, so maybe it [touching Hume's toe] had something to do with it," said Mr Corry, who duly passed all his subjects.

Edinburgh lawyer Donald Findlay, QC, said lawyers are more likely to "touch someone for money rather than touch a toe for luck", and that people going to the High Court to be tried are more likely to touch the toe if they can't steal it.

As for the philosophy students, he suggested that "rather than touching the toe of David Hume, they would be better off reading his books".

HIS PRONOUNCEMENTS

On religion: "Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."

On the nature of government: "Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few."

On liberty: "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."

On the true quality of beauty: "Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them."

On happiness: "When we reflect on the shortness and uncertainty of life, how despicable seem all our pursuits of happiness."

On leading a good life: "The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstruction in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought, so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind."

On friends: "Truth springs from argument amongst friends."

On morality: "The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason."

Everything that you wanted to know about Hume but were too afraid to ask

Hey everyone,

Since this is our farewell to Hume week, I'm posting one final recap of what we've looked at so far. Be sure to familiarize yourselves with all these arguments - they will be useful for impending exams, essays, etc.

See you in tutorial - please bring your questions or anything else that isn't unclear.

Have fun :)

Clara

HUME:
Empiricism as criticism.

Key Terms You Should Know:

Empiricism
Epistemology
Ideas
Impressions
Causality
Sense perception
A priori
Synthetic
Analytic
Necessity
Ontology
Metaphysics
Natural belief

Empiricists attacked natural law theory through an “epistemological” analysis whereby the empiricists concluded that we cannot have the normative insight that natural law theory proposes.

REASON

Rationalist philosophers appealed to REASON to describe what is possible for us to know. The problem with this is that precisely what "REASON" meant for them was unclear. Hume is responding to this unclarity.

Hume was an empiricist in an epistemological sense. For him there were only TWO types of knowledge:

1. That founded on experience (sense perception)
2. That founded on conventionally designed rules about the relationships between concepts such as we find in math and logic, according to empiricist interpretation.

We CANNOT have knowledge that goes beyond these 2 types of cognition – therefore we CANNOT have knowledge about what we can’t experience (think: Plato’s forms/objective norms, God, etc.)

This theory therefore has ethical/religious implications, but also scientific ones, as Hume’s theory says that there is NO CORE in the natural sciences (i.e. causality) that is ABOVE possible doubt.

ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE:

Hume distinguishes between IDEAS and IMPRESSIONS

IMPRESSIONS:
-Strong and vivid perceptions that include immediate sense perceptions (colours, tastes) and direct psychological experiences (hate, joy, love).
-Impressions can be either external (related to external world) or internal (related to your mental or emotional states)
-We combine and order our impressions in various ways to create our ideas.

IDEAS
-Mental images based on (internal and external) impressions
-Ideas CANNOT arise WITHOUT preceding impressions
-Can include, for example, the idea of a house, a fundamental law, a geometric pattern, etc.

So, what counts as knowledge?

The boundaries of knowledge are found between the ideas that CAN be traced back to our impressions and those that CANNOT.

Question: can all the elements of a given idea be traced back to impressions? If so, then it is an appropriate idea; if not, it is not appropriate and therefore untenable/unacceptable.

Hume’s attack of causality is an attack on metaphysics (i.e. for Hume, there is no “material” or “spiritual” substance which causes things).

For Hume, mathematical ideas reveal NOTHING about reality. They only illuminate the relationship between concepts. Therefore, they are said to be ANALYTIC. Math is therefore not a question about correspondence with internal or external impressions, but only about logical relations between concepts. (This is called a NOMINALIST interpretation of mathematical concepts).

The ideas of SCIENCE, on the other hand, CAN be traced back to impressions; they are therefore SYNTHETIC because they DO reveal something about reality. Synthetic ideas can largely (but not always – see argument vs. causality) be traced back to impressions.

Metaphysical ideas CLAIM to reveal aspects of reality, although they CANNOT be traced back only to internal/external impressions. Hume follows Berkeley in his attack on the idea of a material substance: our sense impressions derive only from the various SENSIBLE properties. We DO NOT SENSE any material substance that supposedly lies behind these impressions. For example, we experience a table by having visual, tactile, aural impressions of it – but we NEVER experience any underlying “something” that carries these impressions. Nor do we experience a substance “behind” properties we experience. Therefore the idea of a material substance is untenable.

CRITIQUE OF KNOWLEDGE: THE NOTION OF CAUSALITY

When we have observed innumerable times how billiard balls affect each other by mechanical forces, we might claim that from this experience we can KNOW how the balls will act in the future – that is, that we can detect laws of causal connections.

Laws of connection between cause and effect tell us what effect NECESSARILY will take place if some cause occurs. (If A then B).

Hume wants to know whether on his empiricist theory of knowledge whether we can KNOW such causal laws.

When we talk about CAUSES, says Hume, we think:

1. That something FOLLOWS something else
2. That there is CONTACT between two phenomena
3. That what happens after this contact happens NECESSARILY

Therefore for Hume the CONCEPT OF CAUSE has the following characteristics:

1. Succession
2. Contact
3. Necessity

But how do we KNOW this?

Remember that knowledge: that which is rooted in EXPERIENCE.

1. Succession: can be SEEN – therefore it is KNOWLEDGE because it’s based on
experience
2. Contact: also can be SEEN and therefore knowledge.
3. Necessity: CANNOT be SEEN. All we have knowledge of is a CONSTANT REPETITION
between 2 events. But no experience tells us what will happen by NECESSITY. Therefore we have NO KNOWLEDGE of necessity.

OBJECTION to Hume: the constant repetition factor can allow us to induce a necessary causal connection. We infer that the same effect will follow the same cause, and therefore that this must always be the case.

Hume’s RESPONSE: we KNOW only what we have EXPERIENCED. But we have NOT experienced ALL CASES past and present, and we have no experience of the future. Therefore we cannot say we KNOW that something will happen in the future.

Hume does NOT say that there is NOT a necessary connection b/t cause and effect. What he says is that we cannot KNOW any such necessity. Hume’s thesis is therefore EPISTEMOLGOICAL, not ONTOLOGICAL. Hume also does not say that we shouldn’t EXPECT balls to act the same way in the future – it’s just that we can’t KNOW they will. Again, his point is EPISTEMOLOGICAL (concerned with differentiating between different kinds of KNOWLEDGE).

Two Ways of Gaining Knowledge:

1. Direct experience: we have knowledge of what we experience DIRECTLY. But one
experience doesn’t tell us that causal connections MUST come into force; knowledge gained through direct experience therefore has NO bearing on the future.
2. Induction: if, on the basis of a FINITE number of direct experiences we claim that
something MUST happen in the future. we’re saying MORE than we can KNOW.

Note: LOGIC is 100% certain b/c we define terms.

Direct experiences might not happen as we expect them to; that is, we can IMAGINE that things will turn out differently than we expect. New experiences might show us that our expectations were erroneous. Experimental truths tell us about the world.

There are only 2 forms of knowledge:

1. Logical knowledge: about the relationship between concepts; not about the world; 100% certain.
2. Experimental knowledge: based on simple sense impressions; external and internal;
about the world; not 100% certain.

For Hume, causality is composed of the following components: succession, contact, and necessity WITH repetition.

If this conception of causality is to represent KNOWLEDGE of the world, ALL its components must stem from experience. But as we have seen, this is NOT the case for necessity. The idea of necessity cannot stem from simple sense impressions. Inductive inference does not lead to genuine knowledge.

So…how we can we have a conception of causality that contains a component that does not represent knowledge in an empiricist sense?

Because of our PSYCHOLOGY! That is, when we see events happen in the same way again and again, we form EXPECTATIONS or BELIEFS that the same process will happen in the future as well. EXPECTATION is what creates an idea of necessity in reference to causal connections.

Applied to natural science, this means that there is no rational reason to think that universal laws must apply to the future as well as the past – we have no rational intuition that gives us access to necessary principles in nature, (and no access to universal moral norms.)

IN CONCLUSION

Soooo…

We may conclude that:

1. What we know about causal relations is based on experience (sense perception)
2. From this source of knowledge, we cannot KNOW that causal connections happen with NECESSITY because we cannot perceive the necessity.
3. Nor can we KNOW (that is, know with certainty) whether observed conditions in the past will also apply to the future.

At this point Hume introduces the concept of NATURAL BELIEF (or common practical knowledge), which we use to order the world and events around us in such a way that we can get along quite well in life – even if reason and what we can “KNOW” aren’t as much help as earlier philosophers thought.

Note: All this doesn’t mean that Hume things science is a waste of time – rather, Hume believes in a stepwise and self-correcting progression in the experimental sciences.

Aint you sad to see him go...?

Hello all,

A little bit of business and then some (useful, Hume-related) links:

For those of you who are posting for the first time, you can post ANYWHERE you like on this page - either scroll down to join the conversations below (see Questions 1, 2, and 3) or respond to one of the articles I've put up.

Now, some links.

First, let me direct you to Glyn Hughes' Squashed Philosophers. Here you can find his condensed version of Hume's Inquiry - for use as clarification, not as a substitute for reading the text or for copying for your essays. (Not like any of you would deign to do such a thing...)

Second, another really good outline of the Inquiry, hosted by Philosophy Pages.

Third, for those of you who would rather listen to commentary than read it, here's an episode of the radio show Philosophy Talk (yes, such a thing exists) devoted to...you guessed it, David Hume.

And finally, for the scientifically-minded among you, here is a (university-sponsored) web-page dedicated David Hume, who is, according to them, "the philosopher best known for proving, beyond any possible doubt, that Philosophy is Bullshit." It's also a pretty good recap of a lot of the arguments we've been looking at.

After all this serious contemplation, you might want some lighter fare - if so, why not take a quiz that will tell you (with unsurpassed accuracy) all about your world view?

See you soon,
Clara

On Being Hume-an

Hello All,

First of all, let me just say how very impressed I am with your comments on the blog! You guys are really thinking, and your conversations are really intriguing. I hope you keep it up - it's really a pleasure to read :)

Secondly, below is an article that I feel is very important in terms of why the Humean arguments we'll be studying this week are so very relevant to our modern world, and how they can be applied to some current situations in order to work towards some not-yet-considered solutions. This piece is from the New York Times, and it's really worth a read. If you get the chance to read it before class tomorrow (Monday) it would be great, but I'll try to get it copied for handing out. It's really a worthwhile read, and might offer you a glimpse of what's really at stake in Hume's brand of skepticism.

Hope you've all had a good week -

Clara


The World: Saddam's Swan Song
Emily Eakin

Copyright New York Times Company Dec 15, 2002

HOW many pages does it take to prove a negative? Iraq is hoping 12,000 might do the trick. That, roughly, is the number of pages in the declaration it turned over to the United Nations in a last-ditch effort to convince the world that it has no weapons of mass destruction. For the moment, the United Nations and the United States are playing along, scouring the document page by page last week for signs that Iraq is lying or fudging the truth.

But while the exercise may make for good politics, as a philosophical proposition it is arguably deeply flawed. In fact, some scholars would say the task the world has assigned Iraq -- to prove it has no weapons of mass destruction -- is logically impossible.

The problem is not, as is frequently assumed, that proving a negative simply can't be done.

''If I say I have no coins in my pocket, you can just search me,'' said Colin McGinn, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, pointing out that people verify modest negative statements all the time with little difficulty.

But philosophically speaking, there's a big difference between claiming there are no coins in your pocket and claiming there are no coins in the pockets of New Yorkers, or, more to the point, no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in the nearly 170,000 square miles that make up the state of Iraq.

As the scope of the claim grows, so do the number of philosophical objections and practical obstacles to proving it. This is where the work of the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume comes in. In a dazzling insight that changed the course of Western philosophy, Hume demonstrated that the common practice of induction (inferring general rules from particular observations) is inherently circular and unreliable.

Philosophers like to explain Hume's argument using swans. Ronald J. Allen, a law professor and evidence expert at Northwestern University, put it this way: ''Suppose somebody claims all the swans are white. He says, 'I'll prove it to you.' He takes you to the zoo, and there are 20 swans there, all white. Well, he's merely showing you a finite set of swans. This can't establish that all swans are white.''

Because no one can ever observe all the swans in the world, but only particular groups of swans, according to Hume it would be logically indefensible to conclude that all swans are white no matter how reasonable such an inference seems.

This same difficulty arises in trying to prove some large-scope negatives, Mr. Allen points out. ''Suppose you assert that there are no black swans,'' he said. ''You'd have to produce all the swans in the world to show there are no black ones'' -- an impossible undertaking.

This, he said, is the situation faced by Iraq. ''You can see the perversity of it,'' Mr. Allen said. ''The Iraqis have to show that there's no state of the universe inconsistent with the statement that they have no weapons of mass destruction.''

IF Mr. Allen is right, weapons inspections that turn up nothing, and a 12,000-page declaration that discloses no violations, are of extremely limited value. Like groups of white swans, they might tell us something particular but nothing general. They certainly don't prove anything about Iraq's claim that it possesses no weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, it is possible to argue that Iraq's situation more closely resembles Mr. McGinn's single pocket example (a small-scope, easily verified negative) than it does Mr. Allen's black swan example (a large-scope, unverifiable negative).

''Iraq is big, but not that big,'' said Simon Blackburn, a professor of philosophy at Cambridge University and a leading authority on Hume. ''There is no more difficulty to prove there are no weapons of mass destruction than to prove there's no rhinoceros in my sitting room.''

But other scholars concede that the burden of proof placed on Iraq by the United Nations is so great that no amount of evidence is likely to suffice. The Bush administration has often spoken of Iraq's intention to acquire weapons of mass destruction, said Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Once intention becomes a factor, he said, Iraq's situation begins to look more and more like the black swan problem -- an unverifiable negative.

''I'm willing to venture it's impossible for anyone to prove they don't have the intention to do something,'' he said, adding that placing such a burden on an American criminal defendant -- who, unlike Iraq, is guaranteed a presumption of innocence -- would be unthinkable.

If Iraq's task is demonstrably impossible, on what basis can it be justified? Ultimately, the best defense may hinge not on logic or law but on more nebulous concepts like experience and common sense.

''The thing we're asking them to prove, whether you put it positively or negatively, is so extremely hard to prove that we're almost rigging the outcome by the way we put the question,'' said Laurence H. Tribe, the Harvard professor of constitutional law. ''But it doesn't follow that we're acting in a way that's contrary to all our conventional jurisprudential principles.''

CITING Iraq's past use of weapons of mass destruction and long record of duplicity on the issue, Mr. Tribe argued that ''we're acting in a preventative mode where we're not prepared as an international community to take the risk that potential mass destruction will go uncontrolled.''

That's a statement that Hume might have found perfectly reasonable. A practical man, he realized that in the absence of certain knowledge, experience and common sense are often the best guides to judgment. The danger arises when fallible human judgments are confused with truth.

In the end, Hume argued, the inevitable uncertainty of knowledge requires, in response, a rigorous policy of ''mitigated skepticism'' -- the constant application of ''a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner.''

Hume's Horror (Or, the Problem with Reason)

For those of you who enjoyed thinking about Question #1 this week (concerning rationality) I would just like to share a brilliant but obscure quote from Hume:

"It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."

This is to say that for Hume, unlike for Descartes and the Rationalists, there most certainly are limits to what reason can accomplish - and indeed certain instances (see quote, above) in which reason appears to be quite, well, irrational.

Clara

Let's Be Philosophical

The following is a piece from the New York Times a few years back...I thought I'd post it because the author does seem to echo the complaints that a few of you have mentioned to me - you know, about how Hume is your new narcotic because he puts you right to sleep. But I do believe that this piece has a good "message" and it also references Descartes with whom I know you are already well (too well?) acquainted. So enjoy...or for those of you who haven't posted yet this week, keep scrolling down to get to the questions.


Clara


Let's Be Philosophical

Russell Baker

I HAVE DECIDED TO read philosophy. I had always meant to, but kept putting it off. You know how it is: You mark Saturday night on the calendar and say, ''That's when I start reading Wittgenstein,'' then you wander into the video rental shop on Saturday afternoon and next thing you know you're walking out with ''Rose Marie,'' starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.

You can always read Wittgenstein after doing the supper dishes and watching the flick, right? Just try it. Nobody can come to grips with the categorical imperative for 24 hours after watching Nelson Eddy sing ''Indian Love Call.''

Before proceeding, let me pray that America's philosophy professors not write to tell me it wasn't Wittgenstein who invented the categorical imperative. I am still answering mail from last time every philosophy professor in the land took umbrage because I'd confused Rene Descartes with David Hume.

It was that incident, in fact, that renewed my determination to get busy with reading philosophy. It is humiliating to be caught accidentally confusing Descartes with Hume.

And accident it was, of course, for I am thoroughly familiar with the thought of Descartes. It is famously stated in his ''Puto ergo sum,'' a Latin expression meaning, ''I am putative, therefore I do sums.'' This is sometimes written, ''Cogito ergo sum,'' meaning, ''Being incognito, I naturally add up.''

David Hume, on the other hand, was incapable of thinking such thoughts since he was never either putative or incognito and, being Scottish, detested the very idea of thinking in Latin. This he considered a disgusting affectation that the English used to show off Oxford educations.

In any case, the professorial mail assault reminded me that I had been intending to read philosophy ever since leaving college. There I had taken a semester of philosophy but learned little beyond the famous Nietzsche-Sartre Formulation (''Nietzsche is peachy, but Sartre is smartre'').

I later apologized to the professor for learning so little and promised to enrich the rest of my life by reading philosophy regularly, even though he would not be there to grade me.

But life presents so many distractions. First it was girls and beer, then women and gin. Then babies and the necessity to pay for groceries, cars, real estate, lawsuits, surgery. There was no end to people demanding money and, foolishly, I had chosen a life's work that afforded no opportunity whatever to be bribed. Reading was put off.

Smarting from the Hume-Descartes mail, I realized it was time to get serious. I would start with Wittgenstein. Don't ask why. Probably because of an impulse on which Zeno, Anaxagoras or Schopenhauer had written a famous treatise.

Perhaps Woody Allen had mentioned Wittgenstein in a movie; I am deeply influenced by Woody Allen. Maybe it was because Wittgenstein sounded like a football player who might have played on the great Fordham team of the late 1930's. I have always suspected that philosophy written by an old football player wouldn't be as dull as, say, Spinoza's probably is.

In any case, I went to the nearest book supermarket and asked which shelf Wittgenstein was on. They said, what's the matter, wasn't The Times's best-seller list at generous discount good enough, and if I was one of those antediluvians who went looking for bookstores, why didn't I go to London?

It took the zest for Wittgenstein right out of me. ''Be honest,'' I said to myself. ''You don't even know for sure that Wittgenstein was a philosopher, do you? For all you know, he could have been Nelson Eddy's voice teacher.''

I decided, instead, to read David Hume. All that mail was proof that Hume at least was the real thing. I would read Hume, then write all those professors learned letters full of Humisms. I went to the neighborhood bookstore, which, though small, is operated by a woman who has heard of books.

''Hume? I don't have it in stock.''

I registered contempt. Surely the world was approaching a bad pass when bookshops failed to stock Hume. I was, I declared, desperate to marinate myself in his message.

''Why not read Bertrand Russell's summary of it in his 'History of Western Philosophy,' '' she suggested.

Summary, eh? Excellent idea.

The summary was 15 pages. I started reading five weeks ago and have finished three pages. Sleep keeps distracting me. I shall try again tonight after watching ''New Moon,'' starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.

Ready, Set...Philosophize!

Okay you guys - let the fun begin! Choose ONE question below and give me a short (5-7 sentence) answer. If possible, try to respond to what your colleagues have written, staying on topic as much as possible. Of course, you can post as much as you want, but one post is sufficient. If you come up with any questions that you would like me to post, I'd be delighted to do so...just drop me an email. Next week I'm also going to start a section where you can discuss the tutorial and let me know what you'd like to get out of our class together. See you in class on Monday - any questions/concerns can be emailed to me any time. And please try to enjoy yourselves with this...

Clara

Question #1 - Can't you just be reasonable?

Aristotle famously calls man the "Rational Animal". And many philosophers (such as Plato, Descartes, etc.) also believe that reason reigns supreme over the land of the living. Do you agree? Or, like Hume, do you believe that there are limits to what reason can accomplish? What do you think these limits are? Where do emotions fit in (i.e. are they "rational" or "irrational"?) You don't have to address all these questions - just the ones that interest you the most.

Question #2 - I see blue, therefore I am?

Would you consider yourself more of a Rationalist (with Descartes) or an Empiricist (with Hume)? Be critical - what are the benefits and disadvantages of your position?

Question #3 - TV or not TV?

Obviously, TV didn't come along until well after Hume wrote the Inquiry - but according to his theory, do you think watching television would be considered to generate "sensations" or "ideas"? Does live vs. taped TV make a difference? Please be specific and justify your answer...

So...what's your impression?

Hello All :)

Well, welcome to the blog for PHL100Y1, hosted by...well, me. Basically, what I hope to do here is to generate a bit of informal discussion about what we're looking at in class, and to get you guys to try out some different approaches to the material we're covering. I really want you to get as much out of this material as you can - because trust me, it's a luxury to be able to take the time to think about this stuff. You lucky people. So, for example, we can use the blog to relate the ideas we'll be discussing to what's actually going on in your own lives (not that you have to disclose any secrets/potentially incriminating information), what's going on in your friends' lives (we swear we won't tell - and no real names necessary), or what's going on in this crazy world we live in. No need to be afraid - you can be as personal or as impersonal as you want. What I'm asking from you is to interact with our readings in the most "authentic" way possible - that means talking about any ideas, feelings, brilliant philosophical insights, etc. that came to you in lectures, tutorials, or during your readings.

Also, if you come across an article, website, or blog posting that you find relevant or useful to the course, please post it and we'll check it out.

For example:

Seeing as going back to class in January can, let's face it, be pretty depressing, even to the most dedicated philosophy students among us, I thought I'd start you off with a few fun links and then a few (yawn) useful ones (but trust me, you'll thank me later).

For those of you who'd like to try your hand at an argument with Socrates, you can do so here. If that's not your speed, perhaps you'd be interested in checking out a smart faux-Philosophy Lexicon for entertainment purposes only - that means do not use for your essays ;)

If you've been spending the past few months trying to figure out how philosophers can twist the English language around in such a way that you no longer recognize it, you might be interested in this Non-Philosopher's Guide to Philosophical Terms. Along the same lines is a very well-done site relating the Causes of Death of Famous Philosophers.

And last but not least, if you haven't heard Monty Python's Philosopher's Drinking Song, what are you waiting for? Trust me when I say that if you decide to go on in philosophy, it will come up in conversation again and again...and again. So it's a good idea to know what it's all about (take it from one who knows - the smile & nod will only get you so far). For the hard-core Python fans among you who are so inclined, you can watch it performed live here - but a brief warning, it doesn't get good until about halfway through, so try to fast-forward if you can. The lyrics can be found here - you probably won't be able to hear them very well on the mp3.

Of course, you are by no means required to visit any of these sites...but they might be useful for impressing friends and enemies with a philosophical bent.

On to a few "useful" links now:

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a really great resource - and here is their article on Hume, which might come in handy when it comes to exam time.

Also, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is very good for clearing up any uncertainties or details relating to a philosopher or a particular concept.

Another good outline of Hume dealing specifically with the work we're reading is available here.

Okay, that's it for now. I will be posting a handout relating to the past week's lectures, but that won't be up until Tuesday or Wednesday, so check back then. I'll also have a few starter questions to get some conversations going based on what comes up in Monday's tutorial.

So until then, play safe, and have fun. Any questions/comments just email me at clara.venice@gmail.com.

Clara