Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This vital study offers a new interpretation of Hume's famous "Of Miracles," which notoriously argues against the possibility of miracles. By situating Hume's popular argument in the context of the eighteenth-century debate on miracles, Earman shows Hume's argument to be largely unoriginal and chiefly without merit where it is original. Yet Earman constructively conceives how progress can be made on the issues that Hume's essay so provocatively posed about the ability of eyewitness testimony to establish the credibility of marvelous and miraculous events.

Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This vital study offers a new interpretation of Hume's famous "Of Miracles," which notoriously argues against the possibility of miracles. By situating Hume's popular argument in the context of the eighteenth-century debate on miracles, Earman shows Hume's argument to be largely unoriginal and chiefly without merit where it is original. Yet Earman constructively conceives how progress can be made on the issues that Hume's essay so provocatively posed about the ability of eyewitness testimony to establish the credibility of marvelous and miraculous events.

Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195127386
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Divided into two parts, part one contains a critique of Hume's argument against miricles, and part two consists of primary source material that provides the context for understanding Hume's contribution to the miracles debate.

A Defense of Hume on Miracles

A Defense of Hume on Miracles PDF Author: Robert J. Fogelin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400825776
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Since its publication in the mid-eighteenth century, Hume's discussion of miracles has been the target of severe and often ill-tempered attacks. In this book, one of our leading historians of philosophy offers a systematic response to these attacks. Arguing that these criticisms have--from the very start--rested on misreadings, Robert Fogelin begins by providing a narrative of the way Hume's argument actually unfolds. What Hume's critics (and even some of his defenders) have failed to see is that Hume's primary argument depends on fixing the appropriate standards of evaluating testimony presented on behalf of a miracle. Given the definition of a miracle, Hume quite reasonably argues that the standards for evaluating such testimony must be extremely high. Hume then argues that, as a matter of fact, no testimony on behalf of a religious miracle has even come close to meeting the appropriate standards for acceptance. Fogelin illustrates that Hume's critics have consistently misunderstood the structure of this argument--and have saddled Hume with perfectly awful arguments not found in the text. He responds first to some early critics of Hume's argument and then to two recent critics, David Johnson and John Earman. Fogelin's goal, however, is not to "bash the bashers," but rather to show that Hume's treatment of miracles has a coherence, depth, and power that makes it still the best work on the subject.

Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199869190
Category : Miracles
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Divided into two parts, part one contains a critique of Hume's argument against miricles, and part two consists of primary source material that provides the context for understanding Hume's contribution to the miracles debate.

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals PDF Author: David Hume
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description


Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198029314
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
This vital study offers a new interpretation of Hume's famous "Of Miracles," which notoriously argues against the possibility of miracles. By situating Hume's popular argument in the context of the eighteenth-century debate on miracles, Earman shows Hume's argument to be largely unoriginal and chiefly without merit where it is original. Yet Earman constructively conceives how progress can be made on the issues that Hume's essay so provocatively posed about the ability of eyewitness testimony to establish the credibility of marvelous and miraculous events.

Hume's Problem

Hume's Problem PDF Author: Colin Howson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198250371
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This volume offers a solution to one of the central, unsolved problems of Western philosophy, that of induction. It explores the implications of Hume's argument that successful prediction tells us nothing about the truth of the predicting theory.

Some Mistakes of Moses

Some Mistakes of Moses PDF Author: Robert Green Ingersoll
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
There was a time when a falsehood, fulminated from the pulpit, smote like a sword; but, the supply having greatly exceeded the demand, clerical misrepresentation has at last become almost an innocent amusement. Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The old instruments of torture are kept only to gratify curiosity; the chains are rusting away, and the demolition of time has allowed even the dungeons of the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, impotent and malicious, regrets, not the abuse, but the loss of her power, and seeks to hold by falsehood what she gained by cruelty and force, by fire and fear. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising, unreasoning, aggressive and insolent. Christianity has held all other creeds and forms in infinite contempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, and verified the awful declaration of its founder -- a declaration that wet with blood the sword he came to bring, and made the horizon of a thousand years lurid with the fagots' flames.....Robert Green Ingersoll

David Hume on Miracles, Evidence, and Probability

David Hume on Miracles, Evidence, and Probability PDF Author: William L. Vanderburgh
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498596940
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
David Hume’s argument against believing in miracles has attracted nearly continuous attention from philosophers and theologians since it was first published in 1748. Hume’s many commentators, however, both pro and con, have often misunderstood key aspects of Hume’s account of evidential probability and as a result have misrepresented Hume’s argument and conclusions regarding miracles in fundamental ways. This book argues that Hume’s account of probability descends from a long and laudable tradition that goes back to ancient Roman and medieval law. That account is entirely and deliberately non-mathematical. As a result, any analysis of Hume’s argument in terms of the mathematical theory of probability is doomed to failure. Recovering the knowledge of this ancient tradition of probable reasoning leads us to a correct interpretation of Hume’s argument against miracles, enables a more accurate understanding of many other episodes in the history of science and of philosophy, and may be also useful in contemporary attempts to weigh evidence in epistemically complex situations where confirmation theory and mathematical probability theory have proven to be less helpful than we would have hoped.

The Rise of Eurocentrism

The Rise of Eurocentrism PDF Author: Vassilis Lambropoulos
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691201811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
In the controversy over political correctness, the canon, and the curriculum, the role of Western tradition in a post-modern world is often debated. To clarify what is at stake, Vassilis Lambropoulos traces the ideology of European culture from the Reformation, focusing on a key element of Western tradition: the act of interpretation as a distinct practice of understanding and a civil right. Championed by Protestants insisting on independent interpretation of scripture, this ideal of autonomy ushered in the era of modernity with its essentialist philosophy of universal man and his aesthetic understanding of the world. After explaining the dominance of European culture through the combined archetypes of Hebraism (reason and morality) and Hellenism (spirit and art), Lambropoulos shows how the rule of autonomy has been transformed into the aesthetic, disinterested contemplation of things in themselves. Arguing that it is time to restore the socio-political dimension to the movement of autonomy, he proposes that a genealogy of the Hebraic-Hellenic archetypes can help us evaluate more recent models--like the Afrocentric one--and redefine the controversy surrounding education, Eurocentrism, and cultural politics.