David Charles Stove (15 September 1927 – 2 June 1994) was an Australian philosopher.

Philosophy

His work in

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

included criticisms of

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...

's Inductive scepticism. He offered a positive response to the

problem of induction First formulated by David Hume, the problem of induction questions our reasons for believing that the future will resemble the past, or more broadly it questions predictions about unobserved things based on previous observations. This inferen ...

in his 1986 work, ''The Rationality of Induction''. In ''

Popper and After ''Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists'' is a book about irrationalism by the philosopher David Stove. First published by Pergamon Press in 1982, it has since been reprinted as ''Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationali ...

: Four Modern Irrationalists'', Stove attacked the leading philosophers of science,

Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...

Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term '' paradigm ...

Imre Lakatos Imre Lakatos (, ; hu, Lakatos Imre ; 9 November 1922 – 2 February 1974) was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its "methodology of proofs and refutations" in its pr ...

, and

Paul Feyerabend Paul Karl Feyerabend (; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958 ...

, on the grounds that their commitment to the thesis that all logic is

deductive Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false ...

led to

skepticism Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...

. In 1985 Stove held a competition to find the "Worst Argument in the World", and awarded the prize to himself for the argument "we can know things only under our forms of understanding/as they are related to us, etc, therefore we cannot know things as they are in themselves". He called this argument "The Gem" and argued that it appeared widely in various forms. His book ''The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies'' contains the influential essay "What Is Wrong With Our Thoughts?" Stove was also a critic of

sociobiology Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within t ...

, describing it as a new religion in which genes play the role of gods.

Politics

Stove and David M. Armstrong both resisted what they saw as attempts by Marxists to infiltrate the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney. In 1984-5 Stove protested publicly that the faculty was favouring women in appointments. In "A Farewell to Arts", Stove wrote that he abandoned Marxism when he discovered "what real intellectual work was". In his essay "Why You Should be A Conservative", Stove argued that actions can have unforeseen and unwelcome consequences; that just because something is wrong or evil, it does not follow that the world would be better off without it; and that a decline in respect for life and property had led to a decline in quality of life. In "Racial and Other Antagonisms" (1989) Stove asserted that racism is not a form of

prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...

but common sense: "Almost everyone unites in declaring 'racism' false and detestable. Yet absolutely everyone knows it is true". In "The Intellectual Capacity of Women" (1990) he stated his belief that "the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men".

Legacy

Since his death in 1994 four collections of his writings have been published. Two were edited by art critic

Roger Kimball Roger Kimball (born 1953) is an American art critic and conservative social commentator. He is the editor and publisher of ''The New Criterion'' and the publisher of Encounter Books. Kimball first gained notice in the early 1990s with the public ...

: ''Against the Idols of the Age'' and ''Darwinian Fairytales''. Kimball also wrote the foreword to ''What's Wrong With Benevolence'', in which he writes "The most thrilling intellectual discovery of my adult life came in 1996 when I chanced upon the work of the Australian philosopher David Stove".

Personal life

With his wife Jessie, he had two children, Judith and

R. J. Stove Robert James Stove (born 1961 in Sydney) is an Australian writer, editor, composer and organist. Biography Born in 1961 in Sydney, but later resident in Melbourne, Stove graduated from University of Sydney, Sydney University in 1985. He is the a ...

. Stove enjoyed cricket, baroque music and gardening.Torrance, Kelly Jane (2011)
"Is That All There Is?,"
''

The Weekly Standard ''The Weekly Standard'' was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the ''Standard'' had been described as a "red ...

'' 17 (11). Stove committed suicide after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

's prefatory essay to Stove's ''Against the Idols of the Age''. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999, p. x.

Works

* ''Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism''. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973. * ''

: Four Modern Irrationalists'', Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982 (Reprinted as ''Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism'', Macleay Press, Sydney, 1998; and as ''Scientific Irrationalism'', New Brunswick: Transaction, 2001.) * ''The Rationality of Induction''. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986. * ''The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. * ''Cricket versus Republicanism'', (ed.) James Franklin & R. J. Stove. Sydney: Quakers Hill Press, 1995. * ''

Darwinian Fairytales ''Darwinian Fairytales'' is a 1995 book by the philosopher David Stove, in which the author criticizes application of the theory of evolution as an explanation for sociobiological behavior such as altruism. The book was originally published by ...

''. Aldershot: Avebury Press, 1995 (Repr. New York: Encounter Books, 2006). * ''Against the Idols of the Age'', ed. Roger Kimball. New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 1999. * ''On Enlightenment'', (ed.) Andrew Irvine. New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 2002. *
What's Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment
', (ed.) Andrew Irvine. New York: Encounter Books, 2011. Collaborations * "Hume, Probability, and induction". In: V.C. Chappell (ed.), ''Hume: A Collection of Critical Essays''. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966, pp. 187–212. * "Dr. Johnson, British Moralist." In: Peter Coleman, L. Shrubb & V. Smith (ed.), ''Quadrant: Twenty Five Years''. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1982, pp. 308–7. * "Why Should Probability be the Guide of Life?" In: D.W. Livingston & D.T. King (ed.), ''Hume: A Re-Evaluation''. New York: Fordham University Press, 1976, pp. 50–68. * "Hume’s Argument about the Unobserved". In: J. Hardy & J. Eade (ed.), ''Studies in the Eighteenth Century''. Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation/Taylor Institution, 1983, pp. 189–206. * "The Nature of Hume's Skepticism." In: Stanley Tweyman, (ed.), ''David Hume: Critical Assessments''. London: Routledge, 1995, Vol. II, pp. 274–94. Selected publications * "On Logical Definitions of Confirmation", ''British Journal for the Philosophy of Science'' 16, 1966, pp. 265–272. * "Deductivism", ''Australasian Journal of Philosophy'' 48, 1970, pp. 76–98. * "Laws and Singular Propositions", ''Australasian Journal of Philosophy'' 51, 1973, pp. 139–143. * "How Popper’s Philosophy Began", ''Philosophy'' 57, 1982, pp. 381–387. * "The Subjection of John Stuart Mill", ''Philosophy'' 68, No. 263, 1993, pp. 5–13.

References

External links

* Stove's

literary executor The literary estate of a deceased author consists mainly of the copyright and other intellectual property rights of published works, including film, translation rights, original manuscripts of published work, unpublished or partially completed wo ...

, James Franklin, has published a large amount of Stove's work online
here
, including links to two complete books. * James Franklin
David Charles Stove (1927-1994)
''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', 2018.

by Scott Campbell
Google scholar profile of David Stove
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stove, David 1927 births 1994 suicides Analytic philosophers 20th-century Australian historians 20th-century Australian philosophers Former Presbyterians Hume scholars Philosophers of science Suicides by hanging in New South Wales University of New South Wales faculty University of Sydney alumni University of Sydney faculty Quadrant (magazine) people People from Moree, New South Wales 1994 deaths