Naturalism,Experience, and Hume’s ‘Science of Human Nature’

Abstract

A standard interpretation of Hume’s naturalism is that it paved the way for a scientistic and ‘disenchanted’ conception of the world. My aim in this paper is to show that this is a restrictive reading of Hume, and it obscures a different and profitable interpretation of what Humean naturalism amounts to. The standard interpretation implies that Hume’s ‘science of human nature’ was a reductive investigation into our psychology. But, as Hume explains, the subject matter of this science is not restricted to introspectively accessible mental content and incorporates our social nature and interpersonal experience. Illuminating the science of human nature has implications for how we understand what Hume means by ‘experience’ and thus how we understand the context of his epistemological investigations. I examine these in turn and argue overall that Hume’s naturalism and his science of man do not simply anticipate a disenchanted conception of the world.     

David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature

This ‘untimely review’ of Hume’s Treatise is written as if the book had just been published. I use this fiction to argue that the Treatise is a more fundamental critique of the concept of reason than most readers have thought. Hume’s analysis of human reasoning is grounded in empirical psychology, in which he made significant discoveries. He presents a non-propositional theory of desires, in which choice can be neither rational nor irrational. He shows that the idea that reason has authority, either in morality or science, has no substance. I argue that this critique remains valid and is not self-defeating.     

Second Nature,Critical Theory and Hegel’s Phenomenology

ABSTRACT

While Hegel’s concept of second nature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase ‘second nature’ in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures ‘natural consciousness’, ‘natural notion’, and ‘inorganic nature’, in order to elucidate the distinctive concept of second nature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept of second nature supplements the ‘official’ version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an ‘unofficial’ version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a ‘second nature’.     

Preserving Human–Nature’s Interaction for Sustainability: Quran and Sunnah Perspective

Science and Engineering Ethics - Environmental sustainability is one of the contemporary discourses that has abundant values embedded in the Quran and Sunnah teachings. Islam gives great emphasis...     

Hakuin,Scepticism, and Seeing into One’s Own Nature

One of the most significant figures in the history of Japanese philosophy is the Zen master Hakuin. Yet, in the West, little attempt has been made to present and evaluate his thought in a way that would make it accessible to Western philosophers. This article attempts to redress this neglect. Here, it is shown how Hakuin uses kōan meditation to create ‘the great doubt’ or scepticism concerning the self. Hakuin’s method shares elements in common with both ancient Greek scepticism and Descartes. Kōan-induced scepticism leads to ‘the great death’ or a rejection of the self as a delusion. Hume’s similar rejection of the self helps to explain the basis of this delusion. The rejection of this delusion carries with it the realization that one is not separate from the rest of reality. This is the instant of seeing into one’s own nature and, for Hakuin, is the experience of nirvana.     

Cohen’s Conservatism and Human Enhancement

In an intriguing essay, G. A. Cohen has defended a conservative bias in favour of existing value. In this paper, we consider whether Cohen’s conservatism raises a new challenge to the use of human enhancement technologies. We develop some of Cohen’s suggestive remarks into a new line of argument against human enhancement that, we believe, is in several ways superior to existing objections. However, we shall argue that on closer inspection, Cohen’s conservatism fails to offer grounds for a strong sweeping objection to enhancement, and may even offer positive support for forms of enhancement that preserve valuable features of human beings. Nevertheless, we concede that Cohen’s arguments may suggest some plausible and important constraints on the modality of legitimate and desirable enhancements.     

Pascal’s Wager and the Nature of God

This paper argues that Pascal’s formulation of his famous wager argument licenses an inference about God's nature that ultimately vitiates the claim that wagering for God is in one’s rational self-interest. Specifically, it is argued that if we accept Pascal’s premises, then we can infer that the god for whom Pascal encourages us to wager is irrational. But if God is irrational, then the prudentially rational course of action is to refrain from wagering for him.     

Encounter between Soul and Human Nature: An Examination of Xia Dachang’s “Xingshuo”

Matteo Ricci introduced into China the Western theory of soul, a term which he translated as linghun 靈魂. Afterwards, two other Italian Jesuits, Giulio Aleni and Francesco Sambiasi, separately completed two Chinese interpretations of the De Anima (On the Soul), the former privileging the word linghun, and the later, yanima 亞尼瑪, a transliteration for anima. Xia Dachang 夏大常 (Mathias Hsia) is probably the first Chinese person to write specifically on the topic of the soul. However, he used a different term, lingxing 靈性 (human spiritual nature), and also he titled his work “The Theory of Human Nature” (“Xingshuo” 性說). Xia’s work has received little scholarly attention, and this paper aims at investigating how he adopts the Western theory of the soul, why he still uses the concept of lingxing, and which Chinese editions of De Anima or other works written by the Jesuits had influenced him. We shall also see how Xia Dachang uses traditional Chinese sources and Catholic doctrine to support his viewpoint of human nature and how he criticizes theories of human nature within Chinese philosophy. This will enable us to comprehend how Chinese Christians in the Early Qing dynasty understood the theory of the soul and to reflect on the contemporary relevance of this theory in Chinese culture today.     

Erikson’s Schedule of Human Strengths and the Church’s Self-Images

This article focuses on Erik H. Erikson’s schedule of human strengths presented in his essay, “Human Strength and the Cycle of Generations” (Erikson 1964) and suggests that certain images of the church support these human strengths. In supporting these human strengths, they also contribute to our understanding of the importance of the fact that the church is an intergenerational body.     

Aquinas’s Transformation of the Virtue of Courage

Courage is an important moral virtue for both Aristotle and Aquinas. For Aristotle, courage is a virtue that belongs to warriors who are ready for a noble death on the battlefield. As a Christian theologian as well as an Aristotelian expert, Aquinas aims to give this Aristotelian moral virtue a fully theological expression. This paper analyzes the differences between Aquinas’s conception of courage and Aristotle’s, as well as explores Aquinas’s transformation of Aristotelian courage through a three part process. Firstly, based on Aristotle’s paradigm of courageous warriors in battle, Aquinas extends the scope of “battle” from the military sense to a broader one. By doing so, Aquinas expands the range of application of courage. Secondly, Aquinas explicitly defines endurance as the chief act of courage based on the reason that endurance is more difficult than aggression, thereby shifting our attention from the attack aspect of courage to the endurance aspect. Finally, Aquinas defines the principal act of perfect courage as martyrdom thereby pointing to Christ, who was the perfect martyr, as the paradigm of a courageous person. The result of this transformation is a successful theological virtue of courage.     

Knowledge, Naturalism, and Cognitive Ethology: Kornblith’s Knowledge and its Place in Nature

This paper explores Kornblith’s proposal in Knowledge and its Place in Nature that knowledge is a natural kind that can be elucidated and understood in scientific terms. Central to Kornblith’s development of this proposal is the claim that there is a single category of unreflective knowledge that is studied by cognitive ethologists and is the proper province of epistemology. This claim is challenged on the grounds that even unreflective knowledge in language-using humans reflects forms of logical reasoning that are in principle unavailable to nonlinguistic animals.     

Estrangement,Nature and ‘the Flesh’

In this paper I address the question of what it is to be alienated from nature. The focus is alienation in the sense of estrangement, a ‘being cut off from’ a wider world. That we are so estranged is a claim associated with ecological critique of contemporary society. But what is it to be estranged from nature given that everything we are, do and produce, always remains within a wider nature? I explore the possibility that this might be understood with reference to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘flesh’. I set the scene for this with some discussion of Honneth’s recent account of reification as a ‘distorted praxis’ and then, drawing upon Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and especially his later ontology of flesh, develop the idea of estrangement from the natural world as an inadequate participation in a ‘primordial’ perceptual relation. This idea of estrangement brings together various elements of ecological critique. However, I argue that although this idea of estrangement might inform and help to articulate such a critique, it cannot be the sole concern of an environmental political philosophy: other kinds of alienation within the humanised environmental context need to be considered too.     

Does Semantics Need Normativity? Comments on Allan Gibbard,Meaning and Normativity

In the book Gibbard proposes, first, that statements about meaning are normative statements and, second, that they can be given an expressivist treatment, along the lines of Gibbard’s preferred metaethics. In my paper, I examine the first step: The claim that meaning statements are to be construed as being normative, as involving ‘oughts’. Gibbard distinguishes two versions of the normativity of meaning thesis – a weak version, according to which every means implies an ought, and a strong version, according to which for every means, there is an ought that implies it. I argue that neither thesis withstands scrutiny. The weak thesis depends on assumptions about the notion of semantic correctness that the anti-normativist rejects, and the strong thesis does not solve the problems Gibbard wants it to solve: the problems of indeterminacy and meaning skepticism. I conclude that semantics does not need normativity.     

‘A Mark of Perfection:’ Receiving and Perfection in Aquinas’s Trinitarian Theology

In the last three decades, some Thomists have argued that receiving is a pure perfection, others that it is a transcendental, and others that it is neither. All agree, however, that Aquinas himself holds that it is neither a pure perfection nor a transcendental. I argue here that, while Aquinas does not number receiving among the pure perfections or the transcendentals, he comes closer to doing so than has been acknowledged, and – at least in one respect – he even associates reception more radically with perfection than do any of the more recent champions of receptivity.     

Why be a good Human Being? Natural Goodness,Reason, and the Authority of Human Nature

The central claim of Aristotelian naturalism is that moral goodness is a kind of species-specific natural goodness. Aristotelian naturalism has recently enjoyed a resurgence in the work of philosophers such as Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Michael Thompson. However, any view that takes moral goodness to be a type of natural goodness faces a challenge: Granting that moral goodness is natural goodness for human beings, why should we care about being good human beings? Given that we are rational creatures who can ‘step back’ from our nature, why should we see human nature as authoritative for us? This is the authority-of-nature challenge. In this essay, I state this challenge clearly, identify its deep motivation, and distinguish it from other criticisms of Aristotelian naturalism. I also articulate what I consider the best response, which I term the practical reason response. This response, however, exposes Aristotelian naturalism to a new criticism – that it has abandoned the naturalist claim that moral goodness is species-specific natural goodness. Thus, I argue, Aristotelian naturalists appear to face a dilemma: Either they cannot answer the authority-of-nature challenge, or in meeting the challenge they must abandon naturalism. Aristotelian naturalists might overcome this dilemma, but doing so is harder than some Aristotelians have supposed. In the final sections of the paper, I examine the difficulties in overcoming the dilemma, and I suggest ways that Aristotelians might answer the authority-of-nature challenge while preserving naturalism.     

Human Structure,Bildung and Freedom: Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Education

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - Philosophy since Nietzsche and Heidegger has been averse to essentialism and considered to be old-fashioned and outmoded in the mainstream flow...