The dark side of Naturalism

In an essay on Hamlet, Colin McGinn quotes a long passage by Hume about the self; about how if you look for it you don't find it, merely a string of disconnected impressions. In this we can see an example of what we might call the dark side of Empiricism.

Quotes and comments;

A. Summarizing Hume's position Mcginn says, "We speak as if there is a self that sustains us over a lifetime... but when we look inside ourselves we encounter nothing but this mental flux; honest introspection fails to turn up the supposed metaphysical substance of the simple and continuing self. There is nothing of that sort in there." [1.]

- Naturalism (or Empiricism) can be made to seem a great thing, and has become a methodology used to 'disprove' the truth of Christian doctrine on the one hand, and as the basis of science on the other. Few however talk about the more than disturbing results of applying the method to the the human sciences or to the self.

If you do this you see that not only doesn't God exist (or miracles, the incarnation, etc.) - you find that the self doesn't exist either. No matter how hard you look for it, you can't find it anywhere. You can't find it anymore than you can find God. If you can't find this self, who are you? Do you even exist? You apply the method to the other verities we've all depended on... and not only don't you see the self, you don't see truth, justice, meaning, or reality. You don't see anything solid at all. (As in Hamlet things are melting into the air... becoming dew, and then evaporating altogether beneath the glare of the method.)

- The Christian view is that we come to know the self by how we react to God's revealed word in scripture; to God's person and God's law. We either believe what we read about God and decide that he exists, or we disbelieve and decide he doesn't exist. We either agree that God's law is just, or we disagree. We either decide to be a friend (follower) of God, or we decide to be a rebel against God. This interactive process tells us who were are, and what the nature of our self is. We know who we are by reading the Bible; we learn that we are sons of Adam, and that he was created in the image of God. This is in fact the only way we can know who we are, and what the nature of the self is.

Summary;
Hume seems to have picked up his ideas on how to study the self from books on Buddhist meditation. His method of watching the internal motions of consciousness... as if one were watching refuse float down a river, is largely a waste of time, and much worse, it leads to all kinds of false ideas and pernicious results. His method is useless because involves empty abstraction. Whoever said the self was something you could 'discover' the way you discover a new species of butterfly? His idea of the self is a phantasm.

Contrary to critics who tell us that the doctrine of creation has nothing to offer the sciences, we can see by this all too brief look at the self, that the doctrine of creation is vital for a knowledge of true science. e.g. psychology and anthropology. Opposed to the abstractionism of Hume's method, biblical teaching is concrete
and grounded in the creation of God. It provides the only true 'antidote' to Hume's skepticism.

Michael Johnson

Notes;
1. Shakespeare's Philosophy - Colin McGinn/p.35
2. In the words of David Hume (quoted by McGinn)
"There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity...''
"I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and can never observe anything but the perception...''
"...I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, they they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement...'
"There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity...''
A treatise of human nature - David Hume; part 4; section 6
3. Empiricism;
'The view that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge. - American Heritage Dictionary
4. Materialism leads you to Empiricism which leads you to the void. Empiricism is only legitimate as a tool, not as a worldview; but for the materialist it's the only way of looking at things that there is. There can be no transcendence founded upon materialism. Materialism is the denial of transcendence; the denial of its very possibility.
5. Kant's convoluted philosophy was largely a response to Hume's scepticism, but it's a view that's just more abstractionism.