Re: Election year frustrations of a geo-liberal

royls@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
-- Immanuel Kant

Kant is the principal source and exponent of the analytic-synthetic
dichotomy that rendered the Problem of Universals insoluble.

Kant was one of the major disasters that befell Western thinking. It was all David Hume's fault. If Hume had left Kant to his dogmatic slumbers, none of this would have happened. The notion of the synthetic a priori apodictic proposition is one of the nastiest memes ever cooked up.

Hume was dead on right. There are only two kinds of meaningful declarative propositions about the real world: the relationship of ideas (a priori apodictic statements) and assertions of fact (a posteriori statements which are not apodictic). There is nothing else.

"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding


David Hume. My hero!

Bob Kolker

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