[Lecture Eight] Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Course summary: Presented as two complementary twelve-lecture courses—Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume and Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present—The History of Philosophy covers the whole of western philosophy from its discovery in Ancient Greece to the twentieth century, including Objectivism. Dr. Peikoff argues that philosophy is the means by which we can understand any human culture and, more broadly, the history and changing course of a civilization. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture begins with an explanation of how the pragmatic theory of truth led to a subjectivist approach to ethics while showing that both areas of pragmatist thinking are parasitic and would completely lack content or values if applied from the ground up. In his discussion of Logical Positivism, Peikoff demonstrates how the acceptance of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy and a verifiability theory of meaning cut philosophy and logic off from reality.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download below a PDF study guide for the entire course.
| Describe the pragmatist view of logic. |
| Why is Dewey sometimes mistaken for a proponent of scientific ethics? |
| How does the pragmatist ethics collapse when one searches for a standard of value? |
| Why is the pragmatist ethics ultimately parasitical? |
| What implications does pragmatism have for political life? |
| Explain one of the false alternatives within the pragmatist approach. |
| How does the analytic-synthetic dichotomy lead to conventionalism? |
| What is the Logical Positivist’s theory of meaning? |
| Why were Logical Positivists unable to agree about a principle of verifiability? |
| How does metaphysics become meaningless according to Positivism? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 2:26:07 | Is it not better to say that the fallacy of the verifiable theory of meaning is not that concepts cannot be reduced to sense data, but that concepts and sense data are not interchangeable, because concepts are derived logically from sensory data automatically integrated into percepts? |
| 2:27:33 | How can one justify any anticipated effects or expectations resulting from any idea if not on the basis of logic or past experience, both of which criterion are pragmatically meaningless? |
| 2:28:40 | If it is true according to Aristotle that man is a rational being, how do you explain the majority of mankind’s acceptance of blatantly irrational ideas, such as those given from Plato through Dewey? |
| 2:30:54 | Aren’t Dewey’s ethics seekers consulting absolutes, i.e., reality, when they consult scientists about the consequences inherent in their choices of action? |
| 2:31:52 | You mention in your argument for logical positivism the law of contradiction. What is the law of contradiction? I know what the law of identity is, but I’ve never heard of the law of contradiction. |
| 2:33:06 | In what category would a positivist put the proposition “all truths are either analytic or synthetic”? Is it metaphysical? |
| 2:35:25 | As an instrumentalist, how does one personally determine the collective consensus? |
| 2:36:37 | Can you give the page numbers of your quotes from Brand Blanshard and A.J. Ayer? |
| 2:38:45 | Could you please repeat your definition of the verifiability principle? |
| 2:39:51 | Isn’t pragmatism the same as hedonism? |
| 2:41:38 | Didn’t the positivists already know which statements they wanted to regard as meaningful, and therefore weren’t they really trying to develop a principle consistent with and only with these preferred statements? |
| 2:43:03 | Would you be kind enough to re-explain the difference between a man-created law of logic and an antecedent law of logic? |