THUNK 70. Hume's Fork, Logical Positivism, and Quine
Jul 15, 2015
A brisk tour of British empiricism and Hume’s split between matters of fact and relations of ideas. A look at Hume’s attack on metaphysics and why theology struck him as illusion. The rise of logical positivism and its verification test are examined. Quine’s famous critique that toppled the analytic/synthetic divide gets unpacked.
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Hume's Fork: Two Kinds Of Knowledge
- David Hume split knowledge into matters of fact (empirical) and relations of ideas (logical or mathematical).
- He argued legitimate knowledge must belong to one of these exclusive categories, rejecting metaphysics and theology as meaningless.
Hume's Dramatic Rejection Of Metaphysics
- Hume famously said that books of divinity or metaphysics contain neither abstract reasoning nor experimental reasoning and therefore are sophistry.
- He urged to "commit it, then, to the flames," showing his extreme rejection of metaphysical speculation.
Verification Principle Central To Logical Positivism
- Early 20th-century logical positivists extended Hume by declaring any statement not analytic or empirical as meaningless.
- They proposed the verification principle: a statement's meaning equals the steps to verify it empirically.
