Hume's naturalism and logical positivism: Epistemological reliance upon intuition.

摘要

New interpretations of Hume have brought to light new problems in the fields of metaphysics and epistemology. This is evident in the skeptic and empiricist interpretations of Hume that both Hume's contemporaries and the logical positivists have held. Logical positivists have used Hume's writing as a foundation for their criterion of meaningfulness to eliminate metaphysical statements as meaningless utterances. In this thesis, I attempt to summarize the main interpretations of Hume that T.H. Green, Norman Kemp Smith, and David Fate Norton have offered to elucidate the epistemological naturalist interpretation that H.O. Mounce has put forth. This epistemological naturalist interpretation of Hume helps to address the problems of the positivists' attempt to construct a criterion of meaning. The problems of the criterion that I address are its inability to satisfy its own criteria, and the positivists' reliance upon the intuitions upon which the empirical sciences depend. By illustrating how the positivists and empiricists must both rely upon intuitions, I am able to argue that the overall endeavor of the positivists is, paradoxically, a metaphysical endeavor. The significance of this thesis lies in its overall implications to demonstrate that even those who attempt to eliminate metaphysics must also rely upon metaphysics.