1.     “Take any volume, of divinity or school of metaphysics for instance, and ask if it contains any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No? Commit it then to the flames for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
   

That’s the concluding remark of David Hume’s famous treatise which is now one of Western philosophy’s sacred texts. It is centrally an argument for the supremacy of facts and numbers over anything else that passes for knowledge. His main target is religious dogma but unfortunately moral and aesthetic truths are among the other babies that get chucked out with the bath water.

Hume is known as a sceptic and an empiricist - i.e. he believes that all knowledge comes from experience. There are no innate ideas by this account. You are born a “tabula rasa” and experience confers knowledge upon you. There is a long line of British intellectuals from Hobbes down to Bertrand Russell who formulated this type of philosophy in their various ways. Hume’s is probably the most radical of them all.

There is something in empiricism that is peculiarly British. It’s a step-at-a-time outlook, pedantic and muddling through. An example in the political context might be our unwritten constitution, or these days, our reluctance to participate in grand schemes like the European Union. The world is as it is rather than how we would like to see it. In some ways it is sophisticated in not trusting absolutes. It prefers a relative view of things inviting a plurality of differing, maybe conflicting views. Liberal democracy as articulated famously by Locke, another empiricist, is based on it. At best it encourages a healthy scepticism and open-mindedness, at worst it is un-constructive and non-committal.

Hume follows the thinking through its logical steps destroying all speculative belief systems on the way hoping at the end to be left with just the basic truth of how things are. Unfortunately his scepticism doesn’t know where to stop until even his own argument gets swallowed up in his rigorous logic. In this way he exposes the worst aspects of scepticism. The inescapable conclusion is that we may have no basis for knowing anything at all about the world. In other words the argument goes round in a circle and leaves you back where you started. The reason his text is so revered is that no one has yet been credited with a convincing refutation of its consequences.

Where does Scotland fit into this? Well, Hume was a Scot for a start. Where other empiricists stop short of the absolute Hume goes all the way and destroys everything in the process. I feel there is something quite primitive about this. Maybe the powerful mix of the Celt with the Presbyterian produces passion together with a belief in absolute values such that no further argument can be tolerated. The National Covenant was probably as religiously fundamental a document as you will find. I’ve often heard the phrase, “there’s no two ways about it” used as a way of reinforcing a particular view. “Wha’s like us” is similar. It’s the upshot of an inflated pride that has so characterised our culture. And then we get cuffed by a rank outsider!

I think belief in the supremacy of facts over other things connects with this omnipotent impulse. It’s a way of snubbing the discussion. You can’t argue with the facts after all. Alan McGee answered a question on Newsnight recently about the “Cool Britannia” phenomenon by saying “It is what it is”. All his responses were similarly without insight. There’s a Scotsman speaking I thought. Non-speculative and non-committal.

That’s the story. By this account hard facts are the right stuff. Everything else is rubbish. Spirituality is nonsense. Art is for homosexuals. You scupper useful dialogue about your work by taking a rock ‘n’ roll attitude. ‘It is what it is’. The rest is sophistry and illusion in Hume’s terms. A cafe society where people discuss ideas would never get going here. A culture that takes ideas and tries to breathe life into them would never happen. This is the Scottish context I believe. This is the down side of empiricism.

I guess there are many complex reasons for why Scotland under-performs but the character of this kind of thinking might have as much to do with it as anything else. Music-makers, film-makers, artists and writers are going to find it hard to be taken seriously unless of course they have already been taken seriously by others in another place. By then their work has been legitimated and as such can be treated as a given; as a fact; you can’t argue with success ‘n’ all that. All of our country’s successful music would never have seen the light of day if it hadn’t already gained its authority from recognition elsewhere.

These are the central philosophical issues for me and my view of being a Scot. They are exemplified in Hume’s sceptical empiricism as a national characteristic. Taken to extremes they becomes debilitating to ideas and creativity which are the crucible from which worthwhile developments emerge. At a time when there is much talk of regeneration, proposed new parliament etc., then surely all this is more relevant then ever.