The Dichotomies Before Hume
Overview
An early approximation to Hume's fork may be found in Plato, and Aristotle's metaphysics may be seen as responding to some of the weaknesses in Plato's system which are relevant to Hume's fork.
Introduction
Early Greek Philosophy
An early approximation to Hume's fork may be found in Plato, and Aristotle's metaphysics may be seen as responding to some of the weaknesses in Plato's system which are relevant to Hume's fork.
Pre-Socratic Philosophy

The Greek's may be thought of as having invented, or at least as having been the first to make much of, deductive reasoning. Very early a disparity could be observed in the success with which deduction operated in different domains of discourse. The contrast is seen most clearly between mathematics, in which a growing body of accepted theory was developed, ultimately gathered together in Euclid's elements, by contrast with which, metaphysicians constantly contradicted each others conclusions. The unreliability of deduction was copiously illustrated by the paradoxes of Zeno, and by the time of Socrates the sophist Protagoras asserted that "Man is the measure of all things", thus denying that there are objective truths.

An important example of contrasting dogmas from pre-socratic philosophers were those of Heraclitus and Parmenides, of whom the first asserted that everything changes, and the second that nothing changes. The reconciliation of these two opposing points of view was one objective of Plato's philosophy, and leads him into our first approsimation to Hume's fork.

Plato

Plato's philosophy reconciles the contradictory perspectives of Heraclitus and Parmenides by having two "worlds", one of timeless ideals or forms, and one of shifting ephemeral appearances. In the former we have a domain in which the philosopher might reason with the same reliability as the mathematician, and which Plato regards as the true reality, in the other we have unreliable sensory evidence about real objects which fail to to match the ideal characteristics of the forms in which they participate.

We can see this as a precursor of the distinction between logical and empirical truth which is based on distinction of subject matter. In this picture we see the distinction in reliability between logical and empirical truth. It does not however allow that there are any essential truths about the world of appearances, does not allow that we can reason logically about the world of appearances.

Aristotle

Scepticism and Dogmatism
Rationalism and Empiricism

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