Kant and Hume

They might be the two people I thought most about today - apart from a little trip into the lands of freedom as seen by Nozick and Rawls. (I still find it very inspirational that both of them worked at the same university, Harvard, and kept so different views of society! That is my sense of academia, needless to say it is not as much that feeling today for me...)

Kant apparently said Hume woke him up from his sleep... and Hume was a scientist as well as a historian and a philosopher. With Kant, there are some things I like. "Maxims should be made as they could be hold an universal law" [could be off a little with the translation] as well as "not be treated as an ends to an mean" and the autonomy of a person. Rawls make it all a little more "modern" in his A theory of Justice and Nozick writes his reply in the book Anarchy, State and Utopia. (Night watch state as a minimal state with less rights than the individual etc.)

Hume on the other hand handles causality and empirism interestingly and as a scientist I do like some of the more complex thoughts he presented. He worked from Locke, a large influence, and improved some of the more "old" empirists and also showed that some things are deductable, rather then experimental - touching rationalism just a little.

I guess that is some of what I truly like, a little bit of rationalism and deduction mixed with empirism and true dogmas (like the 'universal law'). This is also one of the reasons I detest stupid people who try to make all issues simple, easy and think the discussion is unnecessary unless you agree with eachother from the beginning. Really, an easy and worthless argument of never having a discussion and never increase your own view of the world. Of course, it is easy to say if you do not agree with me, you are dead stupid.

I prefer to say, if you can not even argue your own stand point or admit the complexity of the world, then you are truly stupid... and your place in science is, as far as I am concerned, questionable.