A JEREMIAD

The symbols, institutions,etc of  life have obscured and are gradually stifling the essence of life itself. People neglect the kernel of life and tussle for the shell;they overlook the substance in their pursuit of its shadows. They hold unto one shadow after another and solemnly proclaim it the substance. The human species has reached its climax.Degeneration from now onwards is going to be the case.What we now call progress is but a blind and catastrophic rush to our doom. We are returning to Hobbes' state of nature,and this is appearance in the developments in certain countries of the world (Iraq,Afghanistan,Pakistan,Somalia,etc). There cannot be civilization without improvement in morals. But in each direction we look now our eyes are greet by decadence and perversion (bestiality,homosexuality,pornography and frivolity). The American Dream is now the noisome pestilence of a world tottering on the brink of an apocalypse. The comfort of the body have been sacrifice to its glamour. People think that material prosperity is all that makes life worth living. But this have been repeatedly proven to be untrue. Prosperity carries decay and ruin as its shadows.

EXISTENTIAL REFLECTIONS

Life in general of all things that I have seen or known is the mystery of mysteries. Here on earth we are eking out our daily existence,bemoaning our woes,leaping up in ecstacy and seeming to float like balloons in the air. We are born to die: to what end is all this? What is the purpose behind this pageant of folly and misery? Why do we have to go through all these troubles?
Probably,there is an order and arrangement belong our ken,but nonetheless immanent in the fabrics of the of the tapestry of our universe. If such an order exists,then how can we find it and fulfill the purpose for which it is setup? On the other hand,if no such order exists,if life serves no higher purpose,how and what do we make of it: should it be to snatch and enjoy every species and fleeting moments of pleasure that we can lay our hands on,and then like all other before us pass into nonexistence?
I wish to understand. To pursue wisdom and knowledge to their very fountain is henceforth the goal I have set myself.

ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ANNIHILATION
Annihilation is not real,it cannot be real. We live in time. Time is indefinite. Nothing is forever gained, nothing is forever lost. The past and the future are all the same. There is nothing new. The things that exist now are possibilities of the past,not things entirely new and different. Time is cyclical,not linear. After many possibilities things return to what they were. Good and evil counterbalances each other,so also do light and darkness, and other opposites. There is no end to time,for its end implies the annihilation of all things that exist within it, which is absurd. Now,given that nothing can exist or act outside time,time, therefore,make existence possible. A fortiori,reality can never come to an end.

THE MACLORDIAN LAW OF ACTION

Know that which is possible under a particular circumstance or set of circumstances.Nothing can be absolutely possible in in every given circumstance.This is the mark of true wisdom.

DEFIANCE TO FATE AND FORTUNE

DEFIANCE TO FATE AND FORTUNE

I have so much been disappointed in things that I have a just expectation to come of successfully. I have been so much unjustly treated, persecuted and marginalized. Yet I will not yield; I will not succumb to all these woes. I will henceforth see in every failure a challenge to succeed, in every disappointment a triumph. I will conquer my fortune, I will shape myself in the image I desire, not just nature’s or chance’s own. This is what I have resolved to do. I am never going to give up the claim that Iam entitled to by nature and my assiduous application on fortune. Iam created for a higher purpose in this life. I am a member of the grand aristocracy of the cosmic order. Iam not going to allow myself to be reduced to a nullity. I will first die ere such a thing will happen. I therefore defy you fortune and fate: bring your worst and I will meet them with stoical resignation. I will not yield: I am not going to change my aspiration to the lofty heights of excellence in all I do.

थे डूआटीण इन रेस्पोंसिबिलिटी एंड FREEDOM

The Education In Responsibility And freedom
One of the fundamental aims of education generally should be the training of individuals to develop a high sense of responsibility. People ought not be made to suffer or be expected to suffer because of the voluntary and often capricious, decisions of other people. For those who presume the right to act must accept the consequences of their actions. This, however, does not mean that we should not grant other our assistance in extricating them from their problems. We should help them only after due appraisal have beer taken of the circumstances surrounding their problems especially the exculpatory circumstances.
The education of people in responsibility and freedom, as well as the practical attitude that must be imbibed in the exercise of these, should be well adjusted so that it will not serve as an inhibitory factor in their exercise. By bringing out the time sense of freedom and responsibility we do not by any means intend that people should completely abdicate or cede away their freedom to act to others, so that others, not them selves, may be held responsible. This evil has to be guarded against.
The way to counter balance this two extremes of irresponsibility (that is the irresponsibility stemming from callous disregard of the consequences of our freedom) and that emanating from a total abdication of responsibility by tacitly away right to others, should be to provide much knowledge and information as well as an elaborate programmed of cultivating the rational faculties of individuals

THE ळींईटाटीण्श्र ऑफ़ थे श्रीण्टीई वर्ल्ड-VIEW

THE LIMITATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD-VIEW
All our perceptions of the world (reality) are relative hence incomplete. We cannot, due to the nature of our mind (perceptual and concentration mechanisms) know the whole of reality, but we can rather know only parts of it. Even the parts we know, we do not know completely or as they are in themselves, but as they are created, through the mediation of the senses, in our mind.
The foregoing goes on to support the thesis that the world-view provided by science is not complete, hence cannot be taken as the whole picture. This is thus, since there is no ground to support. Therefore, science can never provide any categorical statement as to what reality is in itself or what it is ultimately comprised of.
According to scientific definition of knowledge, knowledge is the product of a consciousness that is repeatable through verification by other researchers engaged in the same pursuit. Repeatability here presupposes that the content of this consciousness are observable data commonly known as facts. Facts are observable because they are amenable to concrete verification through the direct mediation of the sense and ,indirectly, through specialized instruments.
Given, therefore, that things can be understood not by themselves but through reference or in relation to other things, the fundamental assumption of science that the universe is material cannot be justified to the extent that other realms of experience can be disregarded.
Hence, we can, based on the dialectical nature of reality and its relativity, assert that there is an incorporeal order of existence analogous to the corporeal one, and that the two realms mutual affect each other through ways we are yet to fully understand.

ON THE NEED FOR OPENNESS OF MIND

On The Need for Openness of Mind


Making allowance for prejudice and the passions, most of the problems that had bedeviled individuals, societies and civilizations can be reduced ton inadequate or pseudo knowledge. Given what we generally accept to be the paradigm of knowledge, whether there are bodies of knowledge or isolated facts that transcend this general paradigm will always remain a matter of controversy.
However, our lives will be enhanced by the recognition of the limitations of our knowledge and the essential evolutionary nature of the universe. Enlightened skepticism is the best attitude to adopt in our behavior towards ourselves, society, and the natural order of things.
For our knowledge is fragmentary and will continue the same as long as this order of things endures. Probably, for one thing we know or seem to know, there are a thousand other things we are yet to know.
Hence, we must be open-minded towards the universe in general. We must be ready to learn and correct our beliefs in light of further facts. Given this attitude, I have little doubt that our world will be much more peaceful for us all.
On the contrary, ignorance and dogmatism (its first cousin) are worst than the most contagious and fatal plague. Thus, we, who arrogate to ourselves the high place of enlightenment, have a supreme responsibility to make that illumination reach as many people as possible within and outside our immediate environment.
We have a responsibility to understand ourselves and our society. This we will achieve through a rational and critical attitude. There must be constructive criticism if progress and peace are to be possible. But we have to enlighten through persuasion and gentle presentation of facts. We must eschew violence, and never allow pride to hinder us from accepting our mistakes, since we are all alike prone to err.

THE QUEST FOR INTEREST-FREE KNOWLEDGE:AN EVALUATION OF JURGEN HABERMAS' METHOD OF RADICAL SELF-REFLECTION

THE QUEST FOR INTEREST-FREE KNOWLEDGE: AN EVALUATION OF JURGEN HABERMAS’ METHOD OF RADICAL SELF- REFLECTION.

INTRODUCTION:
Jurgen Habermas was a German philosopher and sociologist. He belongs to the school of thought known as the Frankfurt School or critical theorists. He criticizes the historical and empirical – analytical models of hermeneutics for their being embedded in interest. Hence, their conclusions are not validated as knowledge but remain at the level of doxa (opinion). Habermas, though preoccupied with search for interest-free knowledge, in his critique of previous hermeneutic models aims not at discarding those models but its subject them to criticism based on radical self-reflection which is the basis of his methodology.

INTEREST:
For Habermas there are three basic interest that dominate the search for knowledge. The first is technical interest in controlling objects in the environment. The second is the practical interest in being able to understand each other and join in common activity. The third and last is the emancipatory interest in securing freedom from distortions in our understanding. The first two interests presuppose a state of opinion, not knowledge. Knowledge comes about only when the third interest is incorporated and superimposed on the two other interests. But how is the possible?

METHOD OF RADICAL SELF-RDEFLECTION:
This method relies on analysis and criticism of the first two elements of interest in the conclusions of hermeneutic models, on the basis of the third interest. It seeks to harmonize the interests of practical outcome and technically oriented action with the interest of emancipating or avoiding distortions and misconceptions the two former interests engender. Through self-reflection, individuals become aware of forces which have exerted a hitherto unacknowledged influence over them.
The method of radical self-reflection is itself driven by an interest: of emancipating knowledge from merely pragmatic concerns by unraveling and eliminating of preconceptions and distortions through criticism. This criticism validates doxa (opinion or ideology) to the status of knowledge. Thus, through the application of the third interest, all the other interests are neutralized. Self-reflection, however, should not be seen as a personal activity. It is the presentation of the conclusions of the hermeneutic models to a general appreciation. The essence of this is to establish the conclusions and theories of the cultural sciences as objective knowledge – independent of personal and goal orientations. This is achieved, Habermas believes, based on the use of theoretical framework (emancipating interest ) to broaden out the narrow pragmatic interests. But is this not, we are obliged to ask, self- defeating?
The flaw of the logic is obvious: knowledge is marred by the first and second interests are not knowledge but opinion (ideology); to become validated as knowledge we need to add another interest.

IS INTEREST- FREE KNOWLEDGE POSSIBLE IN SOCIAL SCIENCE?
knowledge, when actively pursued, have never had an aesthetic value. It is pursued for its usefulness. This underlies Francis Bacon’s maxim that ‘knowledge is power’. In social science the subject and object of knowledge are intertwined. Hence, knowledge cannot wholly be objective- since the elements of unconscious distortion and idiosyncrasies are intently ever present. In natural science, however, this factor is not so pronounced, for the knowledge situation is quite different. The subject and object of knowledge are disparate to a very high degree. Thus in social science, going by Habermas’ radical self-reflection, the context of validation should not be the elimination of interest, as this is wholly impossible – given the knowledge situation. Knowledge in natural science is aimed ultimately at being translated into technology; likewise, in the social science it is geared towards translation into relevant and efficacious policies and programmes. Policies are determined by an aim an interest.
Hence, it is not incompatible that knowledge in this field should have interest, nor is it appropriate that such knowledge should be derided as opinion on that account. All of man’s endeavours to know in all his spheres of existence, are not ornamental but pragmatic. For knowledge is power to change, transform and overcome difficulties in our environment for our wellbeing. Thus, in so far as man is possessed by an active desire, need or interest to know, that knowledge, when acquired, cannot be divorced from the interest that engendered it.
Habermas, therefore in this method of radical self-reflection merely establish a vicious circle. For it is inconceivable for the third (emancipatory ) interest to completely neutralize the first and second interests. Hence, upon a careful examination, it inconceivable that human beings would ever pursue knowledge with no reasonable end in mind. This obtains even in natural science. No scientist can embark on any research without being motivated by an interest. This interest in the natural science, is to a large degree possible to be relegated to the background, but cannot be absolutely divorced from the knowledge itself. This is even truer in the human or social science.
CONCLUSION
Jurgen Habermas attempts at establishing objectivity in knowledge in the social science through the method of radical self reflection. This attempt is highly commendable and even necessary. However, his method is flawed by its attempt to use interest to neutral or eliminate other interests.Hence it is self-defecting. Self-reflection which is an intersubjective interest (of a wider community) cannot eliminate completely the practical and technical interest which are the most fundamental constituent of all scientific knowledge. This is not by itself a serious issue; neither should interest ridden theories be derided as opinions, for all our conscience activities are driven by interest.


END NOTE
1 David Held, Introduction to critical theory: Horkheimer
To Habermas ,(Berkeley and los Angeles: University California press, 1986). p.318

REFLECTION ON THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE MARTIN HEIDDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY

REFLECTION ON THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE IN MARTIN HEIDDEGGER’S PHILOSOPHY

INTRODUCTION:
Martin Heidegger was born in Baden and educated at Freiberg in the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl. There, in Freiberg, became Husserl’s assistant and later succeeded to his chair in 1928. Heidegger in his book Being And Time which he published as a critique of Husserl’s philosophy, launched an attack on traditional metaphysics. He seek establish a grounding for philosophy independent of traditional metaphysics-which postulate a hierarchy of Beings. Heidegger replaced this conception of being with a single ultimate being “Dasein”, which means being there or being in the world. Being manifested itself through man. However, in his later writing Heidegger completely overturn this relation between man and being. Being, here, manifest itself in different ways, one of which is through language. Language do not require man for its existence but maintains and ontological transcendence over man. This unorthodox conception of language underlines our reflection.

ONTOLOGICAL TRANSCENDENCE OF LANGUAGE
Language does not required man for its existence. It is a being on its own right independent of man and human society. It is language that speaks not man, for man can only echo the speaking of language by listening that is meditating. Man speaks only as he listens and language lands him utterance. Man thus, is subservient to language. Language, here, is not a means of social control or communication, which man can manipulate at will. It is independent of all human linguistic systems. Though language speaks, it is its nature to remain unspoken. Its speaking, however, differs from the ordinary sense of the word. It speaks by (Sagen) showing.
TRANSFORMATION
Man needs to reconceptualize the nature of language and his relationship with it. We need to discard the orthodox conception of language that gives man the status of a master. Languages has become the master and man its servant. Without this transformation, according to Heiddegger, man cannot experience language; he cannot bring himself to language; he cannot bring himself to language and be lent utterance by it.
ECHOING OF LANGUAGE
To all men is not granted the privilege of echoing the speaking of language. The greater majority of men only babbles but never echo the speaking of language. This privilege is given to select few, to poets and thinkers who have undergone experience with language by ardently listening to the speaking of language. They speak by the inspiration of language. Hence, their speech is not ordinary communicative signs but an unveiling of imaginaries surrounded by the mystique of primordial existence. Poets and thinkers are, so to speak, the high priests of language, for language speaks only through them. The medium through which language speaks to them is by unveiling (showing) them the primordial structures of existence that are not discernible to those who do not listen, those the course of whose lives are spent in the gilded and pleasurable surface of phenomenal existence.
These people have not penetrated the surface to the noumena (so the unspeakable and undescriptive holy of holies) of existence. Poets and thinkers, on the other hand, disdainfully brush aside the enchanting phenomena of temporal existence, they sequester themselves from the joys and follies of life, they say like the English poet, John Milton, in his poem Il Penseroso
Hence, vain deluding joys
The brood of folly without father bred!
How little you bestead
Or fill the fixed mind with your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,
And Fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess
As thick and numberless
As the gay notes that people the sunbeams,
Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus’ train

But hail, thou goddess sage and holy,
Hail, divinest melancholy!
Whose saintly visage is to bright
To hot the sense of human sight
And therefore to our weaker view
Overlaid with black, staid wisdom’s here….
Thus, we can aptly assert that the echoing of language is granted to poets and thinkers - who wonder in dark causes. Language is the spirit that moves them, that inspires and lends them utterance. They have subjected themselves to the lordship of language by listening.

POETICALLY MAN DWELLS WITH LANGUAGE
It is their nature of language to be hidden to be unspoken. Just as the ancient Chinese philosopher Laotzu says of Tao, “if Tao can be Taoed, its not Tao. If its name can be named, its not its name.” So language is not spoken, for speaking depraved it. Hence, language is not analyzable , it is not a subject of study. The phase “poetically man dwell” was borrowed from the poem of the German.
Poet Holderlin by Heiddegger. We in our office as interprefers, being entitle to be prerogative of a poetic licence, will bring our own experience to bear on this phase as it relates to the nature of language.
Man is a product and part of nature or the natural order of things. As such he partakes in the natural processes of generation and destruction. However, man transcends nature. He is able to create what defies the laws of nature, such creations includes symbols, works of arts, signs, etc. How does he do all this? This man does by the inspiration of the mysterious, by the agency of language - that is by responding to the appeals of language. Poetry is the art, in our own conception, of transcending nature in order to understand, to shape and portray it. It is by this art which entails, listening to language that man responds to language and through language create a permanent universe of meaning of symbols within which alone his existence is differentiated from the myriad of natural phenomena that encompasses him within this symbolic universe man dwell poetically with language as it is language alone that support and maintain this universe. Thus language speaks by showing: showing man a world beyond the phenomenal within which his essence can be appreciated. Language, through the art of transcending and listening which is poetry, shows man himself as clearly as a mirror, with sufficient illumination, reflects an image.
CONCLUSION
From what we have said so far, it s obvious that language is a spirit that moves man, when man submissively obeys it, to see meaning transcending the phenomenal reality. Man is not the master, but language is. Man can only understand language not by analyzing it but by submitting himself, through meditation (listening) to it.
Thus, language speaks and man listens. Language exists independent of man.

THE GERM OF PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY

ABSTRACT
For more than two and half Millennia of philosophy no distinctively philosophical knowledge has been unveiled. Philosophy seems to be a fossilized and abstract activity, that is removed from the more important mundane activities of life. It has no standard methodology like the various sciences, which could help to define its scope and subject-matter. As a result of this, every individual philosopher is free to postulate anything whatsoever without any genuine framework within which to administer proper censure or evaluate his achievement. Thus, everyone is a law unto himself. This phenomenon has had the unsavory effect of precluding consensus among philosophers on any matter sover. Thereby, rendering progress impossible. In stead, it engenders the accumulation of virtually insoluble problems. This situation, in this twenty-first century dominated by the overwhelming success of science in all spheres of life, has made the importance and even the future of philosophy, as an academic pursuit, uncertain. This underlies the attempt to seek a paradigm, a method, within which philosophy can have more concrete significance to daily life and to solve it present as well as future problems. The framework within which this can be possible is David Hume’s empiricism. In David Hume empiricism reach its apotheosis. Hume’s empiricism offers the conceptual tools, especially his theory of meaning and definition, for any possible methodology in philosophy within which progress can be conceived.

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO STUDY
For more than two and half millennia philosophy have played an enormous role in the advancement of human understanding of the universe, human life and institutions. It is the embryo from which most of the sciences emerged. However, in this century dominated by the success of sciences the importance and place of philosophy is becoming more and more uncertain. For juxtaposing and it with science, it unprogressive and abstruse nature becomes more glaring and manifest, while the fruits of scientific endeavor have yielded substantial benefits to human well being, understanding as well as mastery of nature, those of philosophy are interminable arguments and insoluble problems. These situations, according to Rene Descartes in his Discourse On method, have engendered skepticism and futility in philosophical matters, so much as to preclude consensus1. Consequently, philosophy makes no progress but appears to be an endless recycling of ideas, without any definite answers arrived at. Moreover, philosophy, having as its fundamental concern the search for knowledge about the universe, has failed to provide any. It lacks the appropriate methodological framework within which success in its inquiries can be envisaged. Hence, “it can not be maintained”, says Bertrand Russell in Problems of Philosophy, “that philosophy has had very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions.”2 Given this unprogressive nature of philosophy and its abstruse preoccupation with issues that are devoid of practical and direct concern to ordinary life, its very future is uncertain.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
A probe beneath the surface of both the empiricism of David Hume and the nature of philosophy raises some fundamental problems. firstly, with the cutting away, so to speak, of the ground of rational justification as Hume treatment of induction and causation did it does not require the insight of a genius to see that the role reason in knowledge and philosophy is a very insecure one. Hence, we are prompted to ask what will be the place of reason within the framework of philosophy? Secondly, metaphysics given that it purports to deal with realms that are not amenable to empirical verification, and that it has yielded no knowledge and makes no progress, as Kant complains in the prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics, what is to be done with it? Should metaphysics be discarded? Third and lastly, it has been contended that philosophical questions are perennial and that immediately answer has been found for any of them it ceases to be part of the business of philosophy. This makes us to shudder and wonder whether we are not embarked upon a futile enterprise, a wild goose chase. Thus, we are compelled to ask: what should count as progress in philosophy; and how is such progress to be measured?
1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
“It is never”, says Kant in the prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics, too late to become reasonable and wise, but if the insight comes too late, there is always more difficulty in starting the change”4 Our purpose for embarking on this ambitious task is to create a methodology and definite framework within which the discipline of philosophy can honorably take its place with other disciplines as a more practical exercise. For we believe that the challenge of the twenty-first century to philosophy is: become more practical, or become irrelevant. It is therefore the effort to meet this challenge that underlie our adoption of Hume’s empiricism as the framework within which to seek the progress of philosophy. This task, then, attempts to give philosophy the impetus to move from its state of ennui and stagnation, from the fossilization of its problems, to a new life and spirit - the pragmatic and empirical twenty-first century spirit. This we hope will, if not restore it to its primal pedestal of importance it is wont to occupy, then, at least, make it an indispensable intellectual reservoir for both ideas that have cash-value (to speak in parlance of William James) and currency for all activities.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
We hope not to overstep the bounds of modesty, if we are to say that the study we have embarked upon is an invaluable contribution to not just an in-depth understanding of the nature of philosophy but also a meticulous attempt to provide philosophy with a methodology that will en able it deal effectively with its problems. It is significant because it seeks to bring philosophy from the heights of Olympus, so to speak, to deal with the practical questions of everyday life.
The practitioners of all respectable crafts, arts and sciences have always had just pride and importance in what they are engaged. Regrettably, this is not obviously the case with the philosopher. His lot seems to have fallen on a barren ground that yields nothing meaningful to the ordinary man but interminable arguments and insoluble problems. Thus, many have boldly labelled philosophers the drones of the intellectual hive, who, affording to be idle, presumes to legislate for the world on how to think and act - in matters they have no competence - from the cozy armchairs in their studies. The significance of our endeavor lies in an ingenious and daunting effort to alter this perception of philosophy and philosophers.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
We are not embarked upon the histographical tracing of how David Hume’s empiricism have influence subsequent developments in philosophy. Our main focus is on his epistemology, especially its implication for a possible methodology in philosophy.
1.6 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Library research have not just been time-honored, reliable and creditable (as resources have undergone rigorous reviews by reputable authors and scholars), it also offers the richest volume of information. In disciplines like philosophy, which is not much amenable to field research, library research is the most appropriate source of information. Thus, we are going to depend solely on it. Thus, we are going to depend solely on it. In addition, the philosophical methodology we will adopt for our task is the expository method.

END NOTES


1. Rene Descartes, Discourse on method, trans. John Veitch
(London: Everyman’s Library, 1975) p.43.

2. Bertrand Russell,s Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1958) p.90

3. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics,
trans. Paul Carus (New York: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1977) P.2

4. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics,
p.5.

CHAPTER TWO
DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS AND LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS
Philosophy as a concept is open to diverse significations. Etymological, it is derived from two Greek words “Philo” meaning love and “Sophia” which means wisdom. Thus philosophy in this sense signifies “the love of wisdom”. According to Aristotle in his book Metaphysics, philosophy is here seen as the product of wonder, of knowledge pursues for its own sake, not for any practical utility but to escape ignorance.1 This definition, though lightening up our way, so to speak, does not suffice, for two thousand years of philosophy and general intellectual progress have rendered it redundant. Philosophy is also defined as a world-view and as set of principles an individual embraces in his actions and attitude on life. But they need not concern us, our quest is for a definition that can stand as a uniform definition of philosophy; a definition that will give philosophy a definite stamp, so that it ceases to be an amorphous entity and an intellectual no-man’s-land - where each individual is entitle to hazard a guess now and then.
Thus, we define philosophy as the intellectual activity geared towards the critical analysis of concepts, beliefs, knowledge and actions; the justification or validation of attitudes and propositions, and constructive speculations based on empirical facts derived from other disciplines and on possible experience.
Empiricism, according to Simon Blackburn in his Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, is the permanent strand of philosophy that attempts to tie knowledge to experience. Experience is thought of either as sensory contents of consciousness, or as whatever is expressed in some designated class of statements that can be observed to be true by the use of the senses. Empiricism denies that there is any knowledge outside this class, or at least outside whatever is given by legitimate theorizing on the basis of this class2. Thus, by implication empiricism rejects metaphysics -which purports to deal with realms that transcend sense experience.
We define progress from a dialectical perspective. That is, progress is the evolutionary transition of knowledge from one stage to another, based on a linear dynamics of opposing ideas derived from experience of reality as it continues to unveil itself through the medium of particular sciences. The stages are not in themselves final but transitory. As we conceive it, philosophy should progress by the clear expression of current existential state of reality through its stages of development. As such, philosophy approaches reality from a relativistic and empirical attitude, not rationalistic and dogmatic position. Philosophical progress is to be measured primarily by how its interpretations and theories concretely portray the state of reality at every given stage of its development, and its ability to make predictions, based on constant conjunction, of subsequent stages of development. This, way philosophy will provide solid basis for actions and decision in ordinary life.
2.2 LITERATURE REVIEW
The first glimmer of empiricism in Western philosophy can be traced back to the sophist Protagoras of Abdera (490-420 BC). He is accredited with the statement that man is the measure of all things, of things that are they are, of things that are not they are not. This statement has been subjected to diverse interpretations. But according to Stumpf and Fieser in their book Philosophy: History and Problems, with whom we are in agreement, whatever knowledge an individual may achieve about anything would be limited to his or her human capacities. Knowledge, for Protogoras, is limited to our various perceptions, and these perceptions will differ with each person. If two people observe the same object, their sensations would be different, because each would occupy a different position in relation to it. To say that a person is the measure of all things is to say that knowledge is measured by what we perceive.3 If knowledge is relative to each person’s perception it means that there is no objective knowledge. This shows the shortcomings of Protagoras.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) begins has work Metaphysics with the statement that, “by nature all men long to know, an indication in their delight in their senses. For this, quite apart from utility, are intrinsically delightful, and that the eyes more than any other.” From this indication of has bearing, he continues, “and the reason for this is that sight is the sense that especially produces cognition in us and reveal many distinguishing features of things.”4 From these statements Aristotle concludes that knowledge is acquired through sense perception. He rejects Plato’s theory of forms and innate ideas. But despite his empirical starting point Aristotle postulates metaphysical entities like the Active Intellect, which is seen as eternal and existing independent of particular individuals. This as well as the Unmoved mover are the permanent flaws on Aristotle’s empiricism.
Epicurus (341-270BC) holds the empirical position that the foundation of all knowledge is sense-perception. Concepts are derived from sense-perception. They are, for him, memory images impressed on the sense organs during the course of perception. Error arises not in perception but in making judgment - that is, in the course of inferring from what is given in sense-experience to what is not given. Experience, he continues, is the touchstone (the sole criterion) for determining the truthfulness and falsehood of our judgments. Thus, if any judgment is at variance with experience, its falsehood is manifest. Truths, then, for Epicurus, is the conformity between judgment and experience.5
Zeno of Citium (33-262 BC) is the founder of the philosophical school of stoicism. None of Zeno’s works is extant. However, the development of his empirical doctrines is due to the contributions of series of great thinkers drawn from diverse stations of life: from the emperor to the slave. According to stoic empiricism the mind is presume blank at birth and builds its ideas through sense-experience with objects reality. The objects make impact on the senses in the form of impressions. The repeated exposure of the senses to the world increase the number of impressions, develop our memory and enable us to form more general conceptions beyond objects immediately before us. Regardless of their empiricist position the stoics maintain a pantheistic outlook on reality. This inconsistency is apparent in Marcus Aurelius’ work Meditations in which he holds all things to be interwoven with one another.6
Roger Bacon (1210-1294) in his work Majus Opus maintains an empiricist position. Experience for him, is the bedrock of human knowledge. He opines that there are two ways of acquiring knowledge, namely argumentation and experience. By argumentation we can arrive at a conclusion, but the certainty of the conclusion is not thereby guaranteed, nor is doubt removed unless the truth of the conclusion is verified by experience. He who wishes, he insists, to enjoy the truths of things should devote his time to experiments. Experiment is the only criterion of truth7. Roger Bacon’s empiricism is a crude and inconsistent one. He never held that the constituents of consciousness (ideas) are derived from sense-experience, but that experience in its technical sense (experiment) is the guarantee of certainty. He, inconsistent with empirical thesis, postulates the extraneous factor (divine illumination) as being superior to sense-experience.
In his book Summa Theologica St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) follows Aristotle in assigning the basis of knowledge to sensation. The senses, he says, are bodily powers and know singular objects. The senses, maintains Aquinas, are appointed to man not only for procuring the necessaries of life, as is the case in the other animals but also for the sake of knowledge.8 However, like Aristotle, Aquinas believes that experiential knowledge forms just the foundation upon which reason builds. Reason, he says, in man is like God in the world.9 This marks the turning point of Aquinas’ empiricism. Moreover, contrary to empiricism, Aquinas maintains the view that universals are abstracted by the mind directly from the world, without the mediation of sense perception.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in his book Novum Organon expounds an empirical theory that rejects syllogism as an ineffectual and perplexing mode of inquiry. Syllogism, he maintains, confirms us in our errors more than it elicit and unravel new knowledge to us. Hence, induction is the best made of inquiry. But he is, however, on his guard against induction by simple enumeration. This form of induction, Bacon considers being puerile. “Induction”, he say, “starts with operation of the senses; but it requires the co-operation of the mind, though the mind’s activity must be controlled by observation.”10 Induction, he contends, must take its rise in the observation of things, of particular fact or events, and must stick to them as closely as possible. In addition, after pointing out the right track to knowledge, Bacon also point out the pitfalls to knowledge, which he calls idols. There are four of these idols namely: the idol of the tribe (which are general tendencies to be deceived inherent in our nature as human beings), the idol of the cave (are distortions arising from our particular perspectives), idol of the market place ( are errors that emanate from our communication with others, it arises through abuse of words), and the idol of the theatre (are errors introduced by theories). However, despite his immense contribution to science and philosophy - in laying the foundation of induction on which John Stuart Mill later successfully built on - and the clarion call he sends out to ruse men from medieval dogmatic slumber, Bacon’s empiricism is flawed by his belief in such metaphysical entities as “natures.”
In his book Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) contends that elements of our thought are representation or appearance of external objects. These objects operate on the eyes, ears and other parts of man’s body, and by diversely operating produce diverse appearances. “Original,” says Hobbes, “of them all, is that which we call sense; (for there is no conception in man’s mind, which have not at first; totally, or by part, but begotten upon organs of sense). The rest is derived from, that original.”11 Thus, it is obvious that, according to Hobbes, all our ideas are derived from sense-perception. However, Hobbes holds experiential knowledge in low esteem. For him the hallmark of knowledge is reason or ratiocination. Reason he believes gives knowledge the stamp of indubitability. Thus, like continental rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, Hobbes is prepossess with geometry (which he eulogizes as the only science it has pleased God to bestow on mankind). This adoption of geometry as the paradigm of knowledge by Hobbes, is a defect on his empiricism. He thereby holds formal demonstration in much higher esteem that observation - which alone can tell us what actually exist.
It is in the book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding of John Locke (1632-1704) that empiricism first finds its articulate and trenchant expression. Locke commences his empirical theory of knowledge by launching a devastating onslaught on the belief in innate ideas. Refuting this belief, Locke is free to give his own account of the origin of our ideas and knowledge. For him the mind is comparable to a blank sheet of paper that is imprinted on by sensory experience. Experience consists of, firstly, “our observation employed about external sensible objects”, and, secondly, “the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on ourselves.”12 He defines ideas as the object of human thought, memory or anything the mind operates on at any point in time. Ideas have two broad categories: simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas are the immediate impressions the senses derive from their contact with the world, such as the feel of the tabletop, the taste of honey, etc. Complex ideas, on the other hand, are composed of two or more simple ideas. Locke sees knowledge as the perception of the agreement and disagreement between two or more ideas. However, Locke’s empiricism does not entirely banish reason and metaphysics. He, in defiance of his thesis that all out ideas are derived from experience, posits the existence of material substrate, which we cannot come into direct contact with, but on which are inhered the qualities we perceive in sense experience. Locke, thus, postulates a world outside experience.
The point of departure of Berkeley (1685-1753) in his empirical theory, as expounded in his book The Principles of Human Knowledge, is the critique of John Locke’s theory of material substance and abstract ideas. With these theories in mind Berkeley propounds his famous thesis “esse est percipi” (to exist is to be perceived). Berkeley seeks with this thesis to prove that nothing exists independent of minds, and that the word “matter”, when used (as most people do) to designate such supposedly mind-independent existent, is merely a meaningless noise to which no- thing in the world corresponds. He, however, agrees with Locke concerning the origin of origin of ideas. He rejects Locke’s theory of abstract ideas. In fact, according to him, much of the errors and controversies that philosophy is ridden with is attributable to the misconception that the mind have the ability of forming abstract ideas.13 Berkeley postulate, as a substitute to John Locke’s theory of material substance, spiritual substance. “There is not,” he says, “any substance than spirit, or that which perceives.”14 He maintains that in the absence of all possible perceptions of things, and as a guarantee of their continued existence, God perceives them. It would be superfluous to say that position of Berkeley as regards what underlies our ideas is inconsistent with his thesis that to exist is to be perceived and his empirical starting point about the origin of ideas. We have no particular idea of his spiritual substance. And because it is not perceivable in our sensory experiences, it could be nothing else than a metaphysical entity. Moreover, if he had read Hobbes” Leviathan with more attention, he would have noticed the gross absurdity of postulating a spiritual substance.15

END NOTES
1. Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Hugh Lawson Tancred (London:
Penguin Books Ltd. 1998) P.9

2. Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford
University Press, 1994) p.119.

3. Samuel E. Stumpf and James Fieser, Philosophy: History and
Problems, sixth ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003) p.32.

4. Aristotle, Metaphysics, p.4.

5. Joseph Omoregbe, Knowing Philosophy (Lagos: Joja
Education Research and Publishers Ltd. 1980) p.127

6. Marcus Aurelius, Mediations, trans. Maxwell Staniforth
(London: Penguin Books, 1964) p.106

7. Roger Bacon, “Opus Majus”, Selections From Medieval
Philosophers, ed. Richard McKeon, Vol.3 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930) p.74.

8. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Thomas Gilby
(London, Oxford University Press, 1951) p.231.

9. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, p.236

10. Francis Bacon, Novum Organon, ed. James MacDonald
(London: Routledge,1990) p.17.

11. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1929) p.13.

12. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Understanding, ed. Roger
Woolhouse (London: Penguin Book Ltd, 1997) p.109.

13. George. Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, ed. Roger
Woolhouse (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1998) p.36.

14. George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, p.55.

15. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, p.30.

CHAPTER THREE
REASONS FOR LACK OF PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY
3.1 METHODOLOGICAL INADEQUACIES
A method, according to Alfred North Whitehead in his book Adventure of Ideas, is a way of dealing with evidence.1 Though commendable this definition, we are disinclined to adopt it without modification. It is too parochial to fully appreciate the intricacies involved in any rational inquiry. A method, for us, is a framework for not just dealing with evidence but also determining the scope, nature and logic of justification or validation of any area of inquiry.
In philosophy there is no standard methodology. The plethora of methods and approaches there are, such as the Descartes’ method of doubt, the phenomenological method and the recent analytical method, have one flaw common to them. They are too rationalistic. This absence of standard method have render consensus on any mater almost impossible. Consequently, the very nature of philosophy and its definition has continued to be a matter of controversy. Inevitably, this have unbarred the gate, so to speak, and invited the intrusion of all sorts of opinions and doctrines camouflaged in seemingly deep insight and reason, but which are nothing more than, as Kant would say, sophistry and illusion. Thus, is the progress of philosophy stagnated.
Philosophy, however, should not longer be a sphere for clever guesses, but of laid down procedure, or as Kant says in the Critique of Pure Reason, “Procedure according to principles.”2 Given that reality is, in all its nexuses, slippery to deal with, philosophy as it, unlike the particular sciences, claims the whole as its peculiar province ought to develop a method commensurate with its pretension. By so doing, it would cease to be a refuge for all kinds of fantastic opinions - opinions averse to the probing light of science - which should best be found in books of poetry than philosophy. This absence of an adequate method for the effective treatment of its subject must no doubt be ascribe the first and greatest impediment to progress in philosophy. For method and organization, in our opinion, will always triumph over desultoriness and chance. Philosophy should no longer be a tottering and nondescript pursuit that is nether a science nor an art, neither ritual nor theology. It should develop a method that would narrow down controversy and outline areas of inquiry where definite results are possible.
The method desired is one that would not just light up the way, so to speak, to the understanding of the nature of philosophical problems but also provide the standard for evaluating thought. It should spell out the scope and essential elements of philosophy, such that we can tell true philosophy from pretentious flight of fancy.
3.2 ENTRENCHMENT OF METAPHYSICAL CATEGORIES
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of reality in general. It is, according to Immanuel Kant in his book Critique of Pure of Reason, a purely speculative science which occupies a completely isolated position, and is entirely independent of experience. It deals with concepts applied to intuition - and in it, reason is the pupil of itself alone.3 The subject-matter of metaphysics is not amenable to experiential verification. In fact, according to Prof. Egbeke Aja in his book metaphysics, the questions relating to metaphysics arise out of and go beyond factual or scientific questions about the world.4 Having given a synoptic view of what metaphysics is, let us examine how it contributes to the impediment of progress in philosophy.
Firstly, metaphysics does this by its positing of realms independent of experience. No obvious advantage has been gained by this. On the other hand, it has served as a will-o-wisp, a false trail that misleads and perplexes thought. For granting that what we know and are capable of knowing is only within the framework of actual or possible experience, the postulation of a realm outside human experiences, at least for philosophical purposes, is self-defeating and most unrewarding. According to George Berkeley in the Principles of Human Knowledge, the human mind is finite; when it studies things that are infinite, it necessarily run into absurdities and contradictions5. Hence, by postulating a fabulous realm beyond experience, metaphysics creates a false ontological duality and entrench the category mistake in philosophy of thinking in terms of a duality that does not actually exist, except in thought. Consequently, philosophy, which has its grounding in metaphysics, is lifted from the realm of experience and phenomena in which positive knowledge is possible into a realm where all assertions have no existential truth-value. To express it figuratively, philosophy is exiled from the realm of light, of phenomena, to go and grope in the benighted realm of noumena. The above consideration, thus, impel us to consent with Jean-Paul Sartre, when he asserts in the Being and Nothingness that the duality of being and appearance, that is, of phenomena and noumena, is no longer entitled to any legal status in philosophy.6
This di-ontological conception of reality which is more appropriate to the domain of religion and mythology is imported into philosophy. By so doing, the energy that would have been gainfully channeled to the investigation of phenomenal reality, if the economy enjoined by Ockham’s razor is adhered to, is poured away into the abyss of futility. Hence, we sympathize with A.J. Ayer in his article Elimination of Metaphysics which portrays the inanity of metaphysical propositions. “We shall” he says, “maintain that no statement which refer to reality transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have literal signification, from which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven to describe such reality have been devoted to the production of nonsense.”7 The positing, therefore, of a realm transcending reality, and the attempt to describe it, are doom to ignominious failure.
Secondly, metaphysics impedes the progress of philosophy by its introduction of empty and meaningless concepts and the making of distinctions where it is unwarranted. Some of such concepts includes: being, nothingness, thing-in-itself, noumena, desein, etc. These concepts are used as if they designate entities, just as the concept “gravity” does. On analysis, however, they do not represent any objective reality. Thus, they perplex philosophical thought and render arguments interminable. No wonder George Berkeley says in the Principles of Human Knowledge that, “the difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and block up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselves. That we raised the dust and complain that we cannot see.”8 How these concepts do this is obvious.
They purport to represent aspects of reality. Hence, when they are unsuspectingly used in propositions, such proposition may appear meaningful. However, it is discoverable, when the propositions are critically examined, that they do not contain existential import. Hence, these propositions cannot be conclusively asserted or denied. For instance, the affirmative proposition “God exist” and its negations “God does not exist” have no existential import, hence can be disputed forever. Such propositions are mere juggling of words. They constitute what Kant in his book Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics, calls the dialectics of pure reason. From this he observes that we may blunder in metaphysics without fear of detection, since the concepts used are such that experience can neither confirm nor deny.9
Moreover, metaphysics makes inconsequential distinctions such as between appearance and reality, unity and diversity, mind and matter, etc and fails to understand the intergral interconnectedness of all parts of reality. This is the way the numerous problems in philosophy were generated.
Thirdly, metaphysic claims to give a comprehensive account of how the world is, that is immune to the uncertainties overshadowing all our reflections on the course and content of our experience. According to Martin Heidegger in The Questions Concerning Technology and Other Essays, metaphysics is thought of as the truth of what is as such in all its entirely.10 This dogmatic attitude of metaphysics poses problems for progress of philosophy as a whole. For given that reality is complex, our knowledge of it is fragmentary. Thus, metaphysics cannot otherwise than given an incomplete and distorted picture of reality. Being an a priori area of inquiry, it is ill-equipped and improperly placed to say what and what does not exist. Its propositions are analytical, hence are incapable of giving new information about the universe. Bases on flimsy a priori foundation metaphysicians like Plato, Spinoza, Hegel and others erected grand and all-encompassing systems. “These systems” says Hector Hawton in his book Philosophy for Pleasure, “seem to offer a royal road to knowledge quite independent of trial-and-error methods of science. They litter the historical route of philosophical inquiry like bone of extinct mammoths, for the study of nature cannot be carried out from an armchair.”11
From the foregoing, it obvious that philosophical theories built on the assumptions of metaphysics are bound to be incomplete and distorted. This have thus hampered the progress of mainstream philosophy, since most of its theories are hinged on one or more of such ill-founded metaphysical assumptions and the misguided belief that metaphysics is capable of offering any knowledge reality. Bertrand Russell, in his book Problems of Philosophy nails the coffin, so to speak, of this age-long expectation of metaphysics when he says that, “it is a vain hope that metaphysics could obtain knowledge of reality as a whole.”12
Now the inevitable questions arise. What is to be done with metaphysics? Should it be discarded? Despite the overwhelming impulse to the contrary, out answer is no, metaphysics is not be discarded altogether. Metaphysics is to be tolerated within the rubric of philosophy solely on the condition that it is no longer given the naïve trust of being capable to produce any knowledge or accurate description of reality. We believe, like Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, that it is the duty of philosophy to destroy illusions which have their origin in misconceptions, whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may be ruined by the explanations.13 Metaphysics, like logic, is to be retained within the framework of philosophy as a field for exercising the constructive imagination. It should no longer be seen as indispensable to philosophy as a map is to the explorer and the chart and compass is to the navigator. Conceived in this way, we hope that the more artificial problems in philosophy will be carefully avoided. Thus, philosophy will retrieve the pent-up energy lost in metaphysical researches, and release it into the more fruitful study of phenomenal realities. For according to R. Puligandhi in his work An Encounter with Awareness, no theory is to be accepted unless it conforms to and is in harmony with experience. Experience, therefore, of one kind or another is the ultimate court of appeal of all science worthy of the title. 14
3.3 EXTREME RATIONALISM
Rationalism is, according to Simon Blackburn in his Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, any philosophy magnifying the role played by unaided reason, in the acquisition and justification of knowledge.15 Going by this definition, the essential element in rationalism is reason. Before we proceed to point the ways rationalism pose obstacles to philosophy’s progress, we will give a profound insight into the concept of reason and it principles. When this examination of the foundation of reason is made we doubt not that the defects of rationalistic superstructure erected on them will be unraveled.
What is reason? It has been conceived in diverse ways, some of which endowed it with almost supernatural attributes and existential independence of human beings. Our working definition of the concept will be that of the percipient and subtle philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. “In sum,” says Hobbes in his book Leviathan, “in what matter so ever there is place for addition and subtraction, there is place for reason; and where these have no place, there reason have anything at all to do. Out of which we may define (that is to say determine) what that is, which is meant by this word reason, when we reckon it amongst the faculties of the mind. For reason, in this sense, is nothing but reckoning (that is adding and subtracting) of consequences of general names agreed upon, for the marking and signifying of our thoughts.”16
According to Hobbes’ definition, though reason is one of the faculties of the mind, it can by no means function independent of experience. The latter furnishes it with the data it operates on. Reason, is, functionally, a product of experience. Experience elicits and confirms its principles; without experience reason is inert. James Christian in his book Philosophy: An Introduction To The Art of Wondering, expresses this fact better. For him, the primary source all knowledge is our senses. Throughout our earlier years this remains the most immediate channel of information about us and the environment. Our five senses are exploratory organs. We use them to acquaint ourselves with the world we live in.17 Hence, it is obvious that no matter how a priori in principle reason may be, experience is indispensable to it. Given, then, that reason operates on the data provided by sense-experience, it is dependent on it, and is incapable of discovering any knowledge of existents transcending all possible experience. For according to Kant in the Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics, “all cognition of things merely from pure understanding and pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth.”18
All the deliverances of pure reason are fictitious. They do not possess existential import outside the universe of discourse of pure reason. Reasoning or ratiocination (calculation) as Hobbes calls it, within the universe of discourse pure reason is analytical. The conclusion is strictly (necessarily) contained or follow from premises or definitions. Thus, reason yields no new information and is futile, by itself, for discovering new knowledge. Included in the universe of discourse of pure reason are mathematics, deductive logic, geometry, et cetera. Unfortunately, the rationalists see these disciplines, especially geometry as the paradigm of philosophy, and as a result retard its progress. The subject-matter of philosophy is not quantifiable, hence are not amenable to wholly a priori considerations. The oversight of the above fact has had disastrous consequences for philosophy. It had occasioned all the wrangling of two and a half thousand years that have yielded no positive knowledge, except perhaps the negative knowledge of the futility of philosophy. It is undoubtedly with this fact in mind that Arthur W. Collins declaims in his book Thought and Nature that it is preposterous to suppose that we can find out the essential constitution of the world by deductions from premises that have no empirical content. But merely contain analytical truths attested by pure reason. This is absurd because since particular facts about the world are known only to those who examine the world empirically.19 Having said so much on the concept of reason, we will now be obliged to examine some definite ways in which extreme rationalism have thwarted the progress of philosophy.
One of the ways it does this is by claiming that there are sense-independent innate ideas or principles. We are full aware that since John Locke’s devastating onslaught against this notion, it has somewhat lost its vigor. However like an animal in death-throes, it still lingers and works mischief in philosophical inquiry. It has misled philosophers into assuming that philosophy is a pursuit that should be conducted in the study, in an armchair, shut away from the mundane but more significant affairs of life. Given this, should it be wondered that philosophy makes no progress?
Another way that extreme rationalism militates against the progress of philosophy is by its entrenchment of the constricted method of reasoning into philosophy. This method is exemplified in the three laws of thought, namely the laws of identity, contradiction and excluded middle. These laws work with admirable force and accuracy when the field inquiry is purely analytical. However, in areas of inquiry where external phenomena and their relations are the chief focus, the deficiency of these laws becomes ominous. Here they perplex instead of guide; hamper understating instead of facilitating it. Concerning these laws Hector Hawton in his book Philosophy for Pleasure severely castigates Rene Descartes. According to him, Descartes claimed to have proceeded by systematic doubt. Yet it never occurred to him to doubt that logic could give genuine information about the world. The possibility, Hawton continues, that logic might be a closed system, that its conclusions are contained in its premises, that axioms are tautologies, that the whole procedure of deduction from simple and distinct notions might be really argument in a circle did not seriously disturb him.20
The three laws of thought tolerate no contradictions in a world ridden with contradictions. They are out of touch with reality, and try to impose on it an absoluteness its evolutionary and relativistic character defies. They are indirectly responsible for the emergence of metaphysical problems like those of unity and diversity, change and permanence, appearance and reality. This is the result of limitations they impose on the ways (for instance, the dialectical way) of understanding reality. According George Novack in his book An Introduction To The Logic of Marxism, if the law of identity states that everything is equal to itself, then as the law of contradiction asserts, nothing can ever be unequal to itself. But inequality is a manifestation of difference - and difference indicates the operation and presence of change. There can be no real motion or change, and therefore no reason for anything to become other than it originally is. What is forever identical, and nothing more, can never undergo alteration and must by definition be immutable.12 By implication, philosophy that so much rely on these laws makes no progress, since it cannot validly take account of the evolutionary character of reality. Having come this far, we should now ask this all-important question: what role should reason play in philosophy? The role of reason in philosophy, in our opinion, should be strictly limited to the organization of actual and possible experiences in terms of their constant conjunction. Since it is only experience that has direct acquaintance with reality, and is well placed to take account of the nuances and dialectics of the evolution (unfolding) of reality, the place of reason should be a secondary one. Human reason should be solely concerned the with examination of the structures of human experience, not to preponderate over it. Reason is incapable of giving us new knowledge of reality. As such we agree with Immanuel Kant (who we have quoted earlier) that all cognition of things from pure understanding and pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth.
3.4 IDEALISM
By idealism we mean, according to Simon Blackburn in his Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, any doctrine holding that reality is fundamentally mental in nature.22 The general implications of idealism do not augur well for the progress of philosophy. Since the time of Socrates and Plato it has entrenched the misconception that a philosopher need not observe the world but isolate himself from it, and, like a spider, while wrapped up in mediation, spin out sublime propositions and facts about reality. “Another error hath” says Francis Bacon in his Advancement of Learning, “proceeded from too great a reverence, and a kind of adoration of mind and understanding of man by means whereof, men have withdrawn themselves too much from contemplation of nature, and the observations of experience, and have tumbled up and down in their own reason and conceits. Men sought truth in their own little worlds not in the greater and common world.”23 Now, how can philosophy mind and not in the external world? No progress can obviously be possible in this situation, where every mind is shut away from other minds in the stifling enclosure of, say, Leibniz’s windowless monads.
With minds being non-material entities, hence are spiritual, how can we apply the principle of individuation or even have knowledge of other minds? It would therefore mean that there are no individual entities, for since spirits are beyond our experience, there is no conceivable means or categories of identifying them. To identify them at all, we will be compelled to employ familiar physicalistic categories, and by so doing fall into a contradiction and illusion. For what we will be doing thereby is to give abstractions of what are in fact physical as spiritual. Idealism thus retards the progress of philosophy because of the aforementioned difficulties. For “the result of science have,” according to Rudolph Eucken in his book Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought, “put an end to the convenient theory of former times, which considers matter only as an instrument of mind, so that the latter uncertainly produces its activity purely from within.”24
3.5 UNREALIZABLE AIMS OF PHILOSOPHY
Since the emergence of philosophy as a critical and rational inquiry it has been saddled with two enormous but impossible tasks. The first of these tasks is the understanding of reality as a whole, and the second is that it aims at achieving indubitability in its knowledge of reality - a task forced upon it by rationalist like Plato and Rene Descartes. These aims of philosophy were rendered unattainable by two essential characteristics of reality.
The first of these characteristics of reality is that the whole of it is unknowable at any point in time. The circumstances and interconnectedness surrounding a particular phenomenon at a particular point in time cannot all be taken into account at a given time. Hence, all knowledge of reality is fragmentary. Philosophy, hitherto depending heavily on pure reason and barren metaphysics is in capable of knowing reality at first-hand talk less of knowing it as a whole. Because it attempts to deal with the whole at once it overreached itself and can make no progress. According to M. Radar and J.H. Gill in their book The Enduring Question of Philosophy, “the synthesis of all the sciences, or the interpretation of the whole of reality is a pretty big order. A person would need be a kind of god or at least a universal genius to succeed at so prodigious an undertaking.”25 This ambition of philosophy to know reality as a whole, to grasp it all at once is self-defeating. Reality is perceivable only in parts and these parts are the peculiar provinces of particular sciences. Philosophy even if it were to articulate the findings of these sciences, it cannot know the whole of reality. This leads on to the second characteristic of reality.
Reality is dynamic and evolutionary in nature. In fact according to Charles Darwin in his book Origin of Species, “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are been evolved.”26 Because of the evolutionary nature of reality, indubitability of knowledge which philosophy aspires to is unrealizable. Thus, the knowledge we have of aspects of reality is not absolute but relative, not indubitable but probable. In defiance of this fact philosophy have paid the heavy price of stagnation. The nature of our knowledge has to be commensurate with the nature of our intellectual powers - which are limited by spatio-temporal laws. Our knowledge is dependent on experience, which is incapable of giving us absolute knowledge of existential, as opposed to conceptual, reality. The probable knowledge at our disposal has served our concerns better than empty and virtually useless truths of deductive logic. Hence, “if we will disbelieve everything” says John Locke in his book An Essay Concerning Human Understating, “because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.”27

END NOTES

1. Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: New
American Library, 1955) p.224.


2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Vasilis Politis
(London: Everyman]s Library, 1993) p.544.

3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p.14

4. Egbeke Aja, Metaphysics (Enugu: Donze Press, 2001) p.3

5. George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, ed. Roger
Woolhouse (London; Penguin Books, 1998) p.37.

6. Jean-Paul Sartre, Introduction, Being and Nothingness, trans.
H Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956) xlvii.

7. A.J. Ayer, “Elimination of Metaphysics”, Range of Philosophy,
ed. Harold H. Titus and Maylon H. Hepps (New York: Nostrand and Reinhold Company, 1970) p.210.

8. George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, p.36.

9. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics,
trans. Paul Carus (New York: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1977) p.81.

10. Martin Heidegger, The Questions Concerning Technology and
other Essays, trans. William Lovett (New York: Harper and Row Publishers Inc., 1977) p.54.

11. Hector Hawton, Philosophy for Pleasure (London Natts and
Co.,1949) p.8.

12. Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998) p.14.

13. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p.5

14. R. Puligandhi, an Encounter with Awareness (New York:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1981) p.15.

15. Simon Blaeckburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996) p.318.

16. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1929) p.33.

17. James Christian, Philosophy: An introduction To the Art of
Wondering (New York: Wadsworth, 1993) p.170.

18. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics,
p.133.

19. Arthur W. Collins, Thought and Nature: Studies in Rationalist
Philosophy (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985) p.3.

20. Hector Hawton, Philosophy for Pleasure, p.35

21. George Novack, An Introduction To The Logic of Marxism (New
York: Pathfinder Press, Inc., 1971) p.41.

22. Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, p.184

23. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning (Montana:
Kessinger Publishing Company, 1987) p.30.

24. Rudolph Eucken, The Fundamental Concepts of Modern
Philosophic Thought, trans. Stuart Phelps (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1980) p.124.

25. Melvin Rader and Jerry H. Gill The Enduring Questions of
Philosophy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1990) p.2

26. Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (New York: New American
Library, 1958) p.450.

27. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed.
Roger Woolhouse (London: Penguin Books, 1997) p.37.

CHAPTER FOUR
EXPOSITION OF DAVID HUME’S EMPIRICISM
4.1 COPY THEORY AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS
Hume’s empiricism is geared towards introducing the scientific method of natural science, as developed by Isaac Newton, into in philosophy. In his book Treatise on Human Nature, he starts with thesis that all our perceptions consist of two basic components: impressions and ides. Impressions are derived from unknown sources; ideas, on the other hand, are faint copies of impressions. Ideas are used in thinking and reasoning. Hume makes a distinction between these two, not in terms of kinds but degree of force and liveliness with which they impact on the mind. There are two kinds of impressions in terms of origin. The first is impressions of sensation and the second is impressions of reflection. The latter is derived from ideas, previously derived from sensations (which have no known origin). Though according to Hume our ideas are distinguished from our impressions on the basis of their faintness, in some cases, as in feverish conditions, our ideas may acquire the intensity and vividness of impressions. Hume, by ingeniously making impressions (which themselves have no known causes) to be the source of our ideas, brilliantly bypasses the metaphysical muddle that marred Locke’s account of the origin of our ideas. Thus, at a stroke Hume sweeps away the need of positing secondary and primary qualities in things, which we cannot really knows save by their impressions. He goes further in expounding the relationship between impressions and ideas. There are, according to him, two basic considerations that hold between impressions and ideas, respectively. Firstly, there are simple and complex ideas and simple and complex impressions. Simple ideas and simple impressions cannot be analyzed into component elements, they are atomic in nature. Here we see, no doubt, the influence of the atomic theory of Democritus and Epicurus. Complex impressions and complex ideas allow for analysis into simple constituents. Secondly, simple ideas exactly correspond with simple complex impressions. However, the resemblance between complex ideas and complex impressions is not a matter of universal exactness. From these relations between simple and complex ideas and simple and complex impressions, Hume establishes the generalization: “that all our simple ideas in their first appearance are derived from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them and which they exactly represent.”1
To the question: upon what basis do simple ideas coalesce into complex ideas? Hume posits the principle of association of ideas. The principle is based on the qualities of resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. Thus, complex ideas are the product of the operation of the principle of association. The principle operates by a kind of mechanism of attraction. The presence of one simple idea, say a classroom, attracts or presupposes the ideas (by resemblance, contiguity or cause and effect) of students and teachers, from which the complex idea of school is formed. Of these three qualities or mechanisms that of cause and effect, according to Hume, produces stronger connection between ideas. The mechanisms of the principle of association of ideas embody, in the mental world, the attraction found in the natural world. Hume disclaims any knowledge of their causes, declines any investigation to that end, attribute them to the original nature of the mind.2 Here, Isaac Newton’s influence is unmistakable, especially his laws of gravity.
The principle of association expresses the dialectical relations between the memory and imagination. The imagination is free and the memory is limited by preservation of the original order in which impressions and ideas are stored in it. The memory supplies the ideas, and the imagination fuses the ideas together into complex ideas, or analysis complex ideas into simple constituents, which are then resolved back into the memory. Thus, while the memory is limited in its operations to the preservation of the original order and circumstances in which ideas appear, the imagination is free to arrange the ideas, regardless of their original order, as it wishes.
4.2 UNIVERSALS AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD
Hume holds a nominalist view regarding universals. All abstract ideas (universals), says Hume in his Treatise on Human Nature, are really nothing but particular ideas, considered in a certain light but which been annexed to general terms, are able to represent a vast variety, and comprehend objects, which as they are alike in some particulars, are in others vastly wide of each other.3 To illuminate the above conception of universals, we can say that all the perceptions of the mind are impressions and ideas, which represent particular not general existents. Universal are ideas that comprehend a collection of particular ideas, which are not derived from them (universals), but are themselves rather, inversely, derived from those particular ideas that they represent. That is, universals are not impressions of which the particulars that they represent are copies. Since universals are not impressions they can be nothing but particular ideas. However, by their representing collections or aggregates of particular ideas, the virtue by which they do this can be nothing else than names or term associated with the particular ideas based on constant conjunction of similar attributes, just as in ostensive definition. Therefore, since universals are not impressions they are names (terms) derived from and representing particular ideas. Even more so, according to W.T. Jones in his book A History of Western Philosophy, “on this basic there could be obviously be no ‘real’ universals and Hume’s argument for nominalism could in effect, be a challenge: show me a universal; I will believe it when you point it out to me. But you never me more that (1) a terms (2) a number of particular ideas, or (3) a habit.”4
Concerning the external world, Hume did not deny, or even doubt, that there is a world outside man and his experience. He is merely interested to show that neither he nor anyone else can produce any evidence to justify this belief. The arguments by which philosophers have sought to prove that an external world exists are all, according to Hume’s estimation, invalid. Hume’s case against those who think that proofs of the existence of the external world is possible, we understand, consists in rigorously drawing the conclusion inherent in the representative theory of perception: “The mind has never anything present to it but perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connection with objects. The supposition of such connection…is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning.”25
What is meant by the external world is an existence distinct from the mind and perception. But there is, and can be, no impression of continued and distinct existence. Hume supported this argument by additional considerations. It is clear that, so far as the senses are the judges, all perception - whether of pain and pleasure, of colors, tastes and smells, or of figure, bulk and motion - are the same in the manner of their existence. But we do not think that pleasure and pains have independent and continued existence. Hence, if all our perceptions are on the same basis, none of them have independent and continued existence.
43. THEORY OF CAUSATION AND INDUCTION
Causation or cause and effect relationship is the only means we can, according to Hume, infer the existence of objects outside our immediate sense-experience.6 “A cause he says, “is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that, the idea of the one determines the mind to form the ideas of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.”7 In his analysis of cause and effect relations, Hume seeks to find out the basis upon which this relations, so fundamental to the sciences, rests.
Firstly, he considers the contiguity or nearness in place between a cause and an effect. He believes this could not be the most fundamental element in the relations, as objects can affect other objects from afar, for instance, the impact of the moon’s orbit on sea currents. Secondly, he considers the idea of priority in time of cause before the effect, or temporal succession. But the above idea is insufficient to explain the relation, since an object can be contiguous and prior to another without being its cause or having any effect on it.
Failing to locate the foundation of cause and effect relation among the above ideas, Hume considers the idea of necessary connection between cause and effect. In examination of this idea he realizes that there is no rational warrant for this idea of necessary connection. He argues that since every impression is a distinct item in our consciousness, there can be no necessary connection between two ideas derived from two impressions, when placed in juxtaposition of each other. But the fact that we think of necessary connection is due largely to the psychological mechanism of constant conjunction between what we consider as a cause and what we consider as an effect. Hume’s constructive theory of causation, according to W.R Sorley in his book A History English Philosophy, is an explanation of how we can come to suppose that there is causal connection in the world, although there is really nothing more than customary association in our minds.8
Regarding induction, Hume holds that there can be no valid argument allowing us to establish, that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those of which we have experience. Hence, according to Karl Popper in his Conjections and Refutations even after we have observed the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning objects beyond which we have had no experience.9
Hume’s position here becomes clear if we appreciate the implication of this theory of causation properly. There is no necessary connection between a cause and an effect, beyond our habitual observation of their constant conjunction. It follows that we have no logical warrant (as the rule of logical inference allow: that the conclusion must follow as a matter of necessity from the premise) to inductively infer the occurrence of an effect, prior to our observation, from a cause. Thus, the warrant we have is not logical but habitual.
4.4 MEANING AND DEFINITION
For Hume definition and meaning of concepts and terms can be appreciated only within the framework of experience. Hence, his theory of definition and meaning is purely empirical. “It is impossible”, he says in the Treatise on Human Nature, “to reason justly, without understanding perfectly the idea concerning which we reason; and it is impossible perfectly to understand any idea, without tracing it up to its origin, and examining that primary impression, from which it arise.”10 Thus, meaning and definition of ideas become a closed system of experience. Even more so, any definition or theory that cannot be traced back to basic impressions or complex impressions can be justly discarded as sophistry. Following this line of approach it is not to be wondered that Hume dismisses such concepts as self, substance, et cetera as meaningless terms.
The consequences of this theory are far-reaching. It undermines the foundation of all metaphysical systems and purges out from philosophy much of the meaningless concepts that engender interminable arguments. This empirical criterion of meaning and definition will serve as the much need touchstone that will help to eliminate conceptual mistakes that generates problems. According to this criterion, in Hume’s own word:

When entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a
philosophical term is employed without any
meaning or ideas (as it is but frequently) we
need but enquire, from what impression is that
supposed idea derived? And if it were
impossible to assign any, this will serve to
confirm our suspicion. By bringing ideas into
so clear a light we may reasonably hope to
remove all dispute, which may arise,
concerning nature and reality.11


This criterion, then, is what must be adopted in our quest for progress in philosophy.
4.5 ESSENTIAL BOUNDARY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
For Hume, there are two broad categories of knowledge. The first is knowledge arising from the relation of ideas, and the second is knowledge based on matters of fact. In the first category belong such sciences as mathematics, geometry, etc. The propositions of these sciences are intuitively and demonstratively certain. However certainty is acquired at the expense of existential content. The second category deals with actual states of affairs, but can never be indubitable. It is within this category of knowledge that cause and effect relations can hold. Knowledge, generally, for Hume, consists, according to Prof. Egbeke Aja in his book Elements of the Theory of Knowledge, of intuitive and certain information grained by inspecting two or more ideas, and by finding that they stand in some relation to one another.12
Hume unequivocally delimits the boundary of human knowledge to experience by stating that the materials with which our knowledge is constituted are impressions (sensation and reflection) and ideas copied from them. For according to him, even though the imagination may seem to have unlimited freedom to transcend even the natural world, on near scrutiny it is limited within a narrow scope. Its creative power does not exceed the capacity of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded by sense-experience.13
Hence, any knowledge purporting, as in the case of metaphysics, to be outside the realm of experience is no knowledge at all. In the Treatise on Human Nature, Hume argues in support of his position by stating that, “since nothing is ever present to the mind but impressions, and since all ideas are derived from something antecedently presented to the mind, it follows, that it is impossible for us so much as to conceive or form any idea of anything specifically different from ideas and impressions.”14
Hume’s empiricism is consistent. It is the quintessence of philosophical empiricism. It avoided most of he flaws that marred the theories of his predecessors such as Locke and Berkeley. However, this consistency, his critics have remarked was gained at the expense our faith in reason. Thomas Reid in his Essays On The Intellectual Powers of Man, accuses Hume of making reason be seen as, “an ignis fatuus which misleads the wandering traveller and leaves him at last in absolute darkness [skepticism].”15

END NOTES

1. David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, ed. Charles Hendel
(New) York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955) p. 12.

2. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, p.14.

3. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, p.17.

4. W.T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy, Vol.3 (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1952) P.303.

5. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, p.20.

6. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, p.23.

7. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, p.170.

8. W.R Sorley, A History of English Philosophy (Cambridge:
University Press, 1951) p.177.

9. Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London:
Routledge, 1963) p.42.

10. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, p.23.

11. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, p22.

12. Egbeke Aja, Elements of the Theory of Knowledge (Enugu:
Auto-Century Publishing Company Ltd, 2004) pp.174-175.

13. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, pp 18-19

14. David Hume, Treatise On Human Nature, p.21

15. Thomas Reid, Essays On The Intellectual Powers of Man, ed.
A.D Woozley (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1941) p.439.
CHAPTER FIVE
DAVID HUME’S EMPIRICISM AND PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY
5.1 HUME’S EMPIRICISM AS THE PARADIGM OF PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY
Hume’s empiricism, when properly examined, provides the paradigm for philosophy. The paradigm is based squarely on experience. Experience is thus established as the touchstone of all philosophical theories. By showing the shortcomings of reason, Hume plausibly proves that there is no realm outside experience that reason have a privileged access to. It becomes obvious that the postulates of metaphysics are sophistical, illusory and unnecessary. As such, philosophy is definitively detached from religion which has served the thankless role of perpetuating metaphysical speculations. Moreover, Hume shows that human knowledge of concrete reality is never and can never be indubitable, and that experience, and experience alone, can give us knowledge of such reality. It is, for him, by experience only that we can infer the existence of one object from that of another.1 By consistently offering this criterion of knowledge, the phantom world of pure reason, of Plato’s world of form, of metaphysics, are all blown away. Bertrand Russell, in his book ABC of Relativity, collaborates this view. According to him, “it is a curious fact - of which relativity is not the only illustration - that, as reason improves, its claims to the power of proving facts grow less and less. Logic use to be thought to teach us how to draw inferences, now, it teaches us how not to draw inferences.2 Hence, philosophy is to be confined to the realm of actual or possible experience.
Going by this empirical paradigm the problems that bedevils philosophy would be, to a considerable extent, lessened. Philosophy would then be more concerned with issues that have importance to ordinary affairs of life. As a corollary, philosophy would be concerned less with abstruse questions but more concrete one. Given this, we can like Hume in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, say that, “philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected.”3 Philosophical thought, therefore, should not be evaluated solely on the logical validity of reason, but on how closer to concrete experience it is. Consequently, Philosophy would no longer be a pursuit floating, so to speak, in the air, but closely anchored onto the concrete experiences of our lives. Interminable disputes, following this empirical paradigm of Hume, could be discarded.
5.2 PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY BASED ON A POSTERIORI CONCEPTIONS.
Whatever is asserted or denied of anything beyond experience will, until subjected to experience, be inconclusive and contentions. This has been the reason for the interminable nature of philosophical arguments. Following from this, the necessity of establishing a methodology based on experience, in philosophy, cannot be denied. Thus, it is here that we propose Hume’s empiricism as the much needed method of philosophy that will, according to Edwin A. Burtt in his book In Search of Philosophy Understanding, be a way of deciding what questions may sensibly be raised, and how to progress towards definite answers.4 This method is simply that philosophical thought should start from ideas traceable to antecedent impressions, and establish theories that are reducible or verifiable by appeal to impressions or ideas copied from them. The impressions, we mean here are those impressions obtainable in everyday life, not the privileged impressions, if at all there is such, of some mystic or genius. For what, says Norman Malcolm in his book Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, is the use of studying philosophy if all that it do for us is to enable us talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc, and if it does not improve out thinking about important questions of every day life.5
Our answer is: since everyday life has to do with everyday experiences, the method philosophy should employ in dealing with everyday life, inevitably, have to be based on experience. This implies, therefore, Hume’s empiricism. Going then by Hume empiricisms, philosophical theories are longer to be evaluated merely on the validity of their arguments, but by the truth of their propositions, that is, by their empirical content. Thus, we can draw a parallel between Hume’s empiricism and the achievement of Charles Darwin in biology. According to Mary Midgley in her book, Wisdom, information and Wonder:
Darwin’s success had a great deal to do with
the large spirit of empiricism - with a ready
acceptance of the richness of experience,
and a refusal to distort it by a premature
intrusion of theory. What distinguished
Darwin from innumerable scholars who are
wrangling in his youth about relations
Between different life forms and more
especially from continental scholars - was
his direct, undisputatious, fascinating
absorption with the range of facts that the
natural world laid before him.6

The above statement evinces the essence of Hume’s empirical approach, which gives the cardinal place to experience rather than abstract reason. This therefore, presupposes that philosophy should be more progressive and practical by relying on a posteriori rather than a priori conceptions.
5.3 THE ROLE FOR PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy is not a mere collection of noble sentiments. A deluge of such sentiments does, we believe, more harm than good. Philosophy is at once general and concrete, critical and appreciative of direct intuition. It is not - or, at least, should not be - merely a ferocious debate between experts. It is a survey of possibilities in light of actualities. In philosophy theories, alternatives and ideals are weighed together. The gains derived thereby are insight and foresight, based on constant conjunctions, not rationalization.
The role for philosophy should no longer be the attainment of an a priori, indubitable and all encompassing knowledge of reality. This it has failed to do and will remain incapable of doing. Rather its role is to be the clarifying of fundamental ideas and concepts of science, and the synthesizing of the different sciences into a single comprehensive view of the fragments of the world that the sciences have succeeded in exploring. Besides this, philosophy cannot know what lies beyond; it possesses no magic wand for transforming ignorance into knowledge, as the ancient Greeks once believed.
Thus, since philosophy is dependent on science, we should make this dependence the conscious condition of our work and thought. We should know that the nature of knowledge can be studied only through analysis of science. The idea of a philosophical theory of knowledge that derives the general outline of human knowledge from a priori considerations, or from the insight into the nature of being (as is evidence in metaphysics), should be forever abandoned. There is no ontology, no separate realm of philosophical knowledge that precedes science. Philosophy, when carefully, examined, does not contribute any content to knowledge; it merely studies the forms of knowledge as exhibited in the works of scientists and specialist in specialized disciplines. Philosophy, thus, examines all claims to validity in those areas. Therefore, its examination of the nature of our beliefs, values, theories, etc, can only be productively conducted in the light of the discoveries of specialized disciplines. Hence, such beliefs, values, etc are to be approached from an empirical, not a priori perspective. For solely a priori approach to issues can only mislead us and open the interminable abyss of contentions.

5.4 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
To a considerable extent, it is true that once definite answer is found for a philosophical question, it ceases to be part of philosophy and establish itself either as an independent discipline (as psychology recently did), or become part of the subject of existing disciplines. If this is the consequence of progress on philosophy, then it is laudable, for thereby new disciplines studying new aspects of reality would evolve; by this means human knowledge and dominion over the universe would be extended. Even at this, David Hume’s empiricism invariably serves as the methodology with which this can be possible. However, we do not wholly believe that progress in philosophy is tantamount to the extinction of philosophy, or answers found become established as part of an independent discipline. Questions like how can one live a good life can be answered without it’s becoming a separate area of study, but be applied in ordinary life. What we seek for in the progress of philosophy is that it be equipped to answers these questions definitely, in the light of scientific knowledge, and that the answers arrived at serve as the basis for further inquiries. By so doing, philosophy can enrich human understanding of reality, providing more answers than raising questions -for what is the essence of raising questions if they cannot be answered? Thus, philosophy would be more practical and less abstruse. How this can be possible, as we have earlier shown, is through the application of David Hume’s empirical theory in philosophy.

END NOTES
1. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955) p.33.

2. Bertrand Russell, ABC of Relativity (London: George and
Unwin Ltd, 1969) p.135.

3. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
p.180.

4. Edwin Burtt, In Search of Philosophic Understanding (New
York: New American Library, Inc., 1965) p.4.

5. Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London:
Oxford University Press, 1958) p.39.

6. Mary Midgley, Wisdom, Information and Wonder (London:
Routledge, 1989) p.89.



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