David Hume: From Empiricism to Skepticism about the External World by Leonard Peikoff, part 39 of 50

History of Philosophy by Leonard Peikoff - Lesson 39 of 50

Of all the British empiricists David Hume had the greatest impact on 20th-century philosophy. Leonard Peikoff shows how Hume rigorously deduced the consequences of the premises of Locke and Berkeley and ended up a skeptic who regarded philosophy as impossible to live by.

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[PSchearer]

From my long-ago reading of him, Hume ends one of his writings with something like this: "Of course, if you are crossing the road and see a carriage bearing down on you, nothing of what I have said should mean you shouldn't step out of the way." So much for the relationship of philosophy to human life.

[jrb]

Didn't Aristotle also say that there was 'substance' and various 'accidents' adhering to it? How is that different from Locke's 'substratum'?

[drbudgy]

Hume also used a stolen concept when it comes to the very idea of nominalism which cannot be 'perceived'. Nominalism is a concept. It is as Peikoff labelled other acts in philosophy 'grand larceny'

[reason]

Hume, Bertrand Russell, Carnap and Quine were irrational thinkers.

[zamkam]

Misleading and amateurish presentation of Hume's philosophy. The skeptical interpretation has been debated for centuries (specially the 20th) and one can find hundreds (if not thousands) of publications that argue for the opposite view, quite a few published long before this lecture took place. Mr. Peikoff is just parroting the interpretation put forward by Thomas Reid, James Beattie and others....about 250 years ago.