Series:

Toronto Studies in Philosophy

4 total works

Cover of The External World and Our Knowledge of It
David Hume is often considered to have been a sceptic, particularly in his conception of the individual's knowledge of the external world. However, a closer examination of his works gives a much different impression of this aspect of Hume's philosophy, one that is due for a thorough scholarly analysis. This study argues that Hume was, in fact, a critical realist in the early twentieth-century sense, a period in which the term was used to describe the epistemological and ontological theories of such philosophers as Roy Wood Sellars and Bertrand Russell. Carefully situating Hume in his historical context, that is, relative to Aristotelian and rationalist traditions, Fred Wilson makes important and unique insights into Humean philosophy. Analyzing key sections of the Treatise, the Enquiry, and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Wilson offers a deeper understanding of Hume by taking into account the philosopher's theories of the external world.
Such a reading, the author explains, is not only more faithful to the texts, but also reinforces the view of Hume as a critical realist in light of twentieth-century discussions between externalism and internalism, and between coherentists and foundationalists. Complete with original observations and ideas, this study is sure to generate debates about Humean philosophy, critical realism, and the limits of perceptual knowledge.

Cover of The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Aristotelian notions of logic and causation came under serious attack. Traditional philosophy speaks of this period as marking a revolution in scientific thought. In this book Fred Wilson reinstates and extends the traditional conception of the scientific revolution and its significance, and explores the goals and directions of the new science according to the differing interpretations of rationalist and empiricist thinkers.

Wilson argues for an empiricist approach to scientific method and explanation, and defends an empiricist as opposed to an Aristotelian account of logic. Calling on an impressive range of intellectual history, he gives a sympathetic account of the earlier Aristotelian philosophy, including such topics as the role of God in explanations, and then proceeds to examine the evolution of the empiricist account of science through a number of early modern figures: Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Berkeley, and Hume. He shows that the new science was characterized not just by its methodology and the kinds of explanations it engendered, but also by a new epistemology and a new understanding of being.

A skilled and widely published author in the history of modern philosophy and the philosophy of science, Wilson brings persuasive new argument and detail to his re-evaluation of this important subject.

Cover of Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, The: Seven Studies

Cover of Hume's Defence of Causal Inference
The Scottish Philosopher David Hume (1711-76) Has Long Been Considered a sceptic on the subject of induction or causal inference. Bertrand Russell went so far as to suggest that Hume was thus responsible for the development of all subsequent irrationalism. In this book, Fred Wilson convincingly reconstructs the Humean position, showing that Hume was in fact able to defend causal inference as a reasonable practice by using an alternative set of cognitive standards.Wilson demonstrates the workability of Hume's approach to causal reasoning by relating it to more recent discussions, for example, to Bayesian views of scientific inference and to Kuhn's account of scientific rationality. He also presents a variety of intriguing related topics, including a detailed discussion of Hume's treatment of miracles. As a whole, this work successfully argues that insofar as Hume presented philosophy with the problem of induction, it is also true that he solved it.The subtly constructed arguments presented here combine a wide-ranging and detailed knowledge of Hume's texts, sophisticated insight into the problems of causal reasoning that occupied Hume, and meticulous historical scholarship concerning the context of Hume's writings on these problems. This rare combination makes for a unique contribution both to our understanding of Hume and to the philosophical issues concerning causation and scientific method that he addresses.