DAVID HUME: The Empirical Strikes Back!
Even when we THINK we observe cause-and-effect in ACTION…DO we, really?
written by Fred Van Lente drawn by Ryan Dunlavey colored by Adam Guzowski
Script for ACTION PHILOSOPHERS: DAVID HUME!
PAGE ONE
Panel 1: We’re dressing DAVID HUME as a Scottish bagpiper because ethnic stereotypes are funny. He screams at the reader.
LOGO: DAVID HUME
HUME: If it’s not EMPIRRRICAL, it’s CRRRAP!
Panel 2: Hume holds up a cartoon book and stands next to a bonfire. The cartoon book, which has arms and legs, waves his arms and legs in terror, as if he knows what’s coming. (Hume quote: Rousseau’s Dog 274)
CAPTION: The branch of philosophy known as EMPIRICISM has been practiced primarily in the BRITISH ISLES.
HUME: “If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school of METAPHYSICS, for instance: let us ask,”
HUME: “Does it contain any ABSTRACT reasoning concerning QUANTITY or NUMBER?”
Panel 3: Hume hurls the terrified book into the flames!
CAPTION: Englishman JOHN LOCKE’s (1632-1704) Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) inspired it…
HUME: “No?”
HUME: It’s CRRRAP!
BOOK: AAAAHHH!!
SFX: FWOOSH!
Panel 4: Hume produces another cartoon book, which is, understandably, equally as terrified.
CAPTION: …for Locke asserts that the scope of our KNOWLEDGE is limited by EXPERIENCE—That, unlike the intellectual OPTIMISM of a Bacon or a Descartes…
HUME: “Does it contain any EXPERIMENTAL reasoning concerning matter of FACT and EXISTENCE?”
HUME: “No?”
Panel 5: Hume consigns the unfortunate tome to the bonfire!
CAPTION: …there was a WALL beyond which human reason is INCAPABLE of understanding!
HUME: It’s CRRRAP!
SFX: FWOOSH!
HUME: “Commit it to the FLAMES: for it contains NOTHING but sophistry and ILLUSION!”*
CAPTION (small): *: D.H., Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
PAGE TWO
Panel 1: Hume chalks a pool cue before a billiards table with only the cue and eight ball on it.
CAPTION: But Scotsman HUME (1711-1776) remains empiricism’s GREATEST practitioner.
SFX: squee squee squee
CAPTION: In works such as A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) Hume continued the empirical argument to its logical CONCLUSION…
CAPTION: …thereby undermining the notion of CAUSALITY, the very FOUNDATION of scientific method!
NOTE TO RYAN: Make the panel borders on these panels exceptionally thick, rough, and very much SEPARATE from each other, to further demonstrate Hume’s point of the disconnectedness between moments.
Panel 2: Hume’s stick hits the cue ball – the cue ball hits the eight ball!
CAPTION: Even when we THINK we OBSERVE cause-and-effect in ACTION…
SFX: klak! klak!
CAPTION: …DO we, REALLY?
Panel 3: Rewind, freeze the frame, and zoom in on the MOMENT when the stick hits the cue ball. Arrows point to the burst impact (SEE), the sound effect (HEAR), the speed lines around the stick (FEEL (air motion)).
CAPTION: Sure, we SEE two events happening in succession, but what SENSUAL INFORMATION do we receive suggesting that there is a NECESSARY CONNECTION between the two?
SFX: KLAK!
Panel 4: The same, but freeze-frame-zoom on the cue ball hitting the eight.
CAPTION: That’s right – we DON’T!
SFX: KLAK!
CAPTION: These are DISTINCT events, with nothing connecting them that WE can observe!
Panel 5: Rewind back to the moment of impact with the stick – except, this time, the stick goes right THROUGH the cue ball!
CAPTION: In FACT, we have no way of knowing – again, with CERTAINTY — what the outcome WILL be … there are MULTIPLE variables!
SFX: KRUNCH!
HUME (OFF): !@#$!
NOTE TO RYAN: No exaggerated borders on these panels.
Panel 6: Stat Page Ten, Panel 1 of “Wittgenstein”: Terrified peasants wait for the sun to rise.
CAPTION: Hume called these problems of INDUCTION – when experience SUPPORTS a conclusion without ENSURING it.
CAPTION: For instance, we have no IRONCLAD EMPIRICAL DATA that GUARANTEES that the sun will RISE tomorrow!
Panel 7: Hot woman looks up from her copy of Action Philosophers #9.
CAPTION: By the same logic, Hume said your sense of PERSONAL IDENTITY or SELF is ALSO illusory. Take yourself from THIS moment RIGHT NOW:
HOT WOMAN (THOUGHT): Gosh, Fred and Ryan are so FUNNY and SMART! I bet they’re HOT too… I wish I could sleep with BOTH of them!
HOT WOMAN (THOUGHT, SMALL): SEPARATELY, I mean.
PAGE THREE
NOTE: Arrange these THREE exaggerated-border panels in a single tier over the top of page with following copy over all (Stumpf 285), and leave room for copy beneath too.
TOP COPY: “When I enter most INTIMATELY into what I call MYSELF,” Hume writes, “I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch MYSELF at any time without a perception and never can observe anything BUT the perception.”
Panel 1: Stat previous panel: Hot Chick with AP.
HOT WOMAN (THOUGHT, SMALL): SEPARATELY, I mean.
Panel 2: Hot Chick with some high school buddies mugging for a camera – they’re all in gowns and motorboards and waving diplomas while Hot Chick’s mom takes a picture.
HOT SENIOR: Class of ’02 RULES! WOOOOHH!
SFX: FLASH!
Panel 3: Hot Chick is six – she’s fallen off her bike or skateboard and skinned her knees – she’s bawling her eyes out. Her mom, looking considerably younger than in the previous panel.
“HOT” WOMAN-TO-BE: WAAAAAAA!!
MOM: Wait HERE, honey, I’ll get the BACTINE…
BOTTOM COPY: In other words, our alleged IDENTITIES are nothing more than the SUM of the PERCEPTIONS we’ve amassed– It is only the “habit of ASSOCIATION” that creates cause-and-effect that leads us to believe we have one CONTINUOUS SELF – that we were the SAME PERSON in EACH of the moments of our lives!
Panel 4: A Wile E. Coyote-type cartoon predator (A fox?) chases a cartoon light bulb (idea) right off a cliff! (Quote: Stumpf 285)
CAPTION: “Let us chase our imagination to the HEAVENS, or the utmost limits of the UNIVERSE,” Hume says…
Panel 5: Fox stops and looks down in horror, realizing he stands in empty space!
CAPTION: “We NEVER advance a step beyond our SELVES, nor can we can conceive ANY kind of existence…”
Panel 6: Fox looks at reader, holding up a sign reading “HELP!”
CAPTION: “…but those PERCEPTIONS which have appeared in that NARROW COMPASS.”
Panel 7: Down Fox plummets!
CAPTION: “THIS is the universe of the IMAGINATION, nor have we ANY idea but what is there PRODUCED.”
PAGE FOUR
Panel 1: Stat Page Ten, Panel 3 of “St. Augustine”: Yuppie encounters bum.
CAPTION: But this inability for us to KNOW anything outside OURSELVES shouldn’t make you think Hume advocates MORAL RELATIVISM.
CAPTION: No, for Hume, morality has nothing to DO with REASON – rather, it is the faculty of SYMPATHY that guides the RIGHTNESS of our actions!
Panel 2: Stat Page Ten, Panel 4 of “St. Augustine”: Glow behind bum. (Quote: Dog 137)
CAPTION: Sympathy makes us feel GOOD when we do GOOD things – BAD or GUILTY when we do BAD things!
CAPTION: “It is NEEDLESS to push our researches so far as to ask, WHY we have humanity or a fellow-feeling with others,” Hume wrote. “It is sufficient, that this is EXPERIENCED to be a principle of human nature.”
Panel 3: Hume helps a grateful old lady cross a busy (21st cen.) street. (Quote: Dog 65)
CAPTION: Indeed, Hume concludes, “reason is and OUGHT to be the slave of the PASSIONS.”
CAPTION: Perhaps this is why Hume’s NICKNAME among his contemporaries was le bon David.
CAPTION: “In all my life, did I never meet with a being of a more PLACID and GENTLE nature,” a critic of the day wrote, “and it is this AMIABLE turn of his character, that has given more CONSEQUENCE and FORCE to his skepticism, than ALL the arguments of his SOPHISTRY.”
Panel 4: Hume relaxes in a rowboat on Loch Ness, his hands clasped behind his back, the ruined castle looming in the background. (Quote: Dog 136)
CAPTION: We are rescued from the PESSIMISM of reason’s limits by a kind of benign ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER:
HUME: “I DINE, I play a game of BACKGAMMON, I converse and am merry with my FRIENDS…”
HUME: “…and when after three or four hours amusement I would return to these speculations…”
Panel 5: Ryan, encase this panel in the exaggerated border, showing the boat drifting in the distance, toward the castle…
HUME: “…they appear so COLD, so STRAINED, and RIDICULOUS that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any FURTHER!”
CAPTION: In OTHER words…CONTEMPLATING the limits of Reason is just one more LIFE-MOMENT to be added to the pile!
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