{"id":10664,"date":"2011-05-31T13:24:13","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T13:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/05\/31\/humes-fork-and-leibnizs-fork\/"},"modified":"2011-05-31T13:24:13","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T13:24:13","slug":"humes-fork-and-leibnizs-fork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/05\/31\/humes-fork-and-leibnizs-fork\/","title":{"rendered":"Hume’s Fork and Leibniz’s Fork"},"content":{"rendered":"

No doubt you have heard of Hume's Fork.  'Fork,' presumably from the Latin furca<\/em>, suggests a bifurcation, a division; in this case  of meaningful statements into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes, the one consisting of relations of ideas, the other of matters of fact. In the Enquiry<\/em>, Hume writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

     Propositions of this kind [relations of ideas] can be discovered<\/span>
     purely by thinking, with no need to attend to anything that<\/span>
     actually exists anywhere in the universe. . . . Matters of fact . .<\/span>
     . are not established in the same way; and we cannot have such<\/span>
     strong grounds for thinking them true. The contrary of every matter<\/span>
     of fact is still possible, because it doesn't imply a contradiction<\/span>
     and is conceived by the mind as easily and clearly as if it<\/span>
     conformed perfectly to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow<\/span>
     is just as intelligible as – and no more contradictory than – the<\/span>
     proposition that the sun will rise tomorrow.<\/span><\/p>\n

One question that arises is whether Hume's Fork was anticipated by any earlier philosopher. Leibniz of course makes a distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact that is very similar to Hume's <\/span>distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact. See, for example, Monadology<\/em> #33. In a very astute comment from the old blog, 'Spur' details the similarities and concludes:<\/span><\/p>\n

     Leibniz and Hume have the same basic distinction in mind, between<\/span>
     those truths which are necessary and can be known a priori<\/em>, and<\/span>
     those which are contingent and can only be known a posteriori<\/em>. The<\/span>
     two philosophers use slightly different terminology, and Leibniz<\/span>
     would balk at Hume's use of 'relations between ideas' in connection<\/span>
     with truths of reason only, but the basic distinction seems to me<\/span>
     to be the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

I deny that the basic distinction is the same and I base my denial on a fact that Spur will admit, namely, that for Leibniz, every proposition is analytic in that every (true) proposition is such that the predicate is contained in the subject: Praedicatum inesse subjecto verae propositionis<\/em>. I argue as follows. Since for Leibniz every truth is analytic, while for Hume some truths are analytic and some are not, the two distinctions cannot be the same. To this, the Spurian (I do not say Spurious) response is:<\/span><\/p>\n

     The [Leibnizian] distinction is between two kinds of analytic<\/span>
     truths: those that can be finitely analyzed, and those that can't.<\/span>
     This is an absolute distinction and there are no truths that belong<\/span>
     to both classes. Even from God's point of view there is presumably<\/span>
     an absolute distinction between necessary and contingent truths,<\/span>
     though perhaps he wouldn't view this as a distinction between<\/span>
     finitely and non-finitely analyzable truths, because his knowledge<\/span>
     of truths is intuitive and never involves analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n

I grant that the two kinds of Leibnizian analytic truths form mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. But I deny that this suffices to show that "the same basic distinction" is to be found in both Leibniz and   Hume.<\/span><\/p>\n

One consideration is that they do not form the same mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. Though every Humean relation of ideas is a Leibnizian truth of reason, the converse does not hold. I think Spur will agree to this. But if he does, then surely this shows that the two distinctions are not the same. I should think that extensional sameness is necessary, though not sufficient, for sameness.<\/span><\/p>\n

But even if the two distinctions were extensionally the same, they are not 'intensionally' the same distinction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consider Judas is Judas <\/em>and Judas betrays Christ<\/em>. For both  philosophers, the first proposition is necessary and the second is contingent. But Leibniz and Hume cannot mean the same by 'contingent.' <\/span>If you negate the first, the result is a contradiction, and both philosophers would agree that it is, and that it doesn't matter whether the proposition is viewed from a divine or a human point of view. The negation of the second, however, is, from God's point of view a contradiction for Leibniz, but not for Hume. For Leibniz, the betrayal of Christ is included within the complete individual concept of Judas that God has before his mind. So if God entertains the proposition Judas does not betray Christ<\/em>, he sees immediately that it is self-contradictory in the same way that I see immediately that The   meanest man in Fargo, North Dakota is not mean<\/em> is self-contradictory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, for Leibniz, it is contingent that Judas exists: there are possible worlds in which Judas does not exist. But given that Judas does exist, he has all his properties essentially. Thus Judas betrays   Christ is contingent only in an epistemic sense: we finite intellects see no contradiction when we entertain the negation of the proposition in question. Given our finitude, our concepts of individuals cannot be complete: they cannot include every property, monadic and relational, of individuals. But if, per impossibile<\/em>, we could ascend to the divine standpoint, and if every truth is analytic (as Leibniz in effect holds via his predicate-in-subject principle), then we would see that Judas betrays Christ is conditionally necessary: nec
\nessary given the existence of Judas.<\/span><\/p>\n

'Contingent' therefore means different things for Leibniz and Hume. Contingency in Hume cuts deeper. Not only is the existence of Judas contingent, it is also contingent that he has the properties he has. <\/span>This is a contingency rooted in reality and not merely in our ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps my point could be put as follows. The Leibnizian distinction is not absolute in the sense that, relative to the absolute point of view, God's point of view, the distinction collapses. For God, both of <\/span>the Judas propositions cited above are analytic, both are necessarily true (given the existence of Judas), and both are knowable a priori.  But for Hume, the distinction is absolute in that there is no point of view relative to which the distinction collapses.<\/span><\/p>\n

I'm stretching now, but I think one could say that, even if Hume admitted God into his system, he would say that not even for God is a matter of fact knowable a priori. For the empiricist Hume the world is <\/span>radically contingent in a way it could not be for Leibniz the rationalist.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No doubt you have heard of Hume's Fork.  'Fork,' presumably from the Latin furca, suggests a bifurcation, a division; in this case  of meaningful statements into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes, the one consisting of relations of ideas, the other of matters of fact. In the Enquiry, Hume writes:      Propositions of this … Continue reading “Hume’s Fork and Leibniz’s Fork”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[454,97,723],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-of-philosophy","category-hume","category-leibniz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}