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Scepticism and Meaning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Stuart Hampshire
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Extract

1. It is a commonplace that contemporary empiricism, or antimetaphysical philosophy, at least in this country, is a re-statement of the essentials of Hume's position with the aid of the more complete analysis of a priori reasoning provided by logicians within the last fifty years; what logical empiricism has most substantially added to Hume's sceptical method is the means of stating and applying his distinction between purely analytic sentences and sentences conveying information about matters of fact more precisely than he was able to state or apply it. It was Hume's governing purpose in every part of his writing to defend what is now generally called the language of common-sense, which is essentially what he called natural belief, against every kind of philosophical theory, whether rationalist or professedly sceptical. By “philosophical theory” is meant in this context any attempt by the use of logical or a priori arguments either to justify or to amend our common-sense beliefs or assertions; Hume tries to show that all such attempts are mistaken in logic and ineffective in fact. The work of the genuine sceptic, who is the true philosopher, is repeatedly to draw attention to the limits of human reason; to draw attention to the limits of human reason is to point to the logical impossibility of answering philosophical demands for some general, and therefore non-empirical, justification of our natural beliefs; such demands involve the substituting of some single, imposed criterion of justification in the place of the various and shifting criteria which we in fact habitually use.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 25 , Issue 94 , July 1950 , pp. 235 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1950

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References

page 238 note 1 There may be a use of “resemblance,” in the limiting case of “exact resemblance,” in which to say of two things that they exactly resemble each other in some specified respect is to say that there is no difference between them in that respect. If there is such a use of “resemblance” or “similarity” (which I doubt), my remarks do not apply to it. Of course in any complete investigation of “the problem of universals,” something would need to be said about the very few descriptions which are absolutely determinate or specific in, the sense of being applicable only to things which are in some respect indiscriminable. My purpose here is only to deny sense to the thesis that all descriptions involve reference to a universal relation of resemblance.

page 239 note 1 Moral terms are not to be included among descriptive expressions, precisely because to state the normal conditions of their use is to state a moral Code and not merely to clarify a language; moral terms are unanalysable, in the sense that there can be no standard or correct conditions of their use; to decide the conditions is to make a moral, and not a linguistic, decision.

page 245 note 1 Of course the descriptive resources of our language are constantly being extended (apart from the deliberate introduction of technical terms) by new images and metaphors which, when stale, become literal descriptions. But how do I justify a new metaphor or image? Certainly not by any kind of logical or philosophical argument.

page 245 note 2 When we compare a vocabulary (not a statement) with “the facts,” we necessarily find ourselves comparing two vocabularies; for we must state the facts in some other vocabulary—or be silent.