ABSTRACT
Humean skepticism can be condensed into the following thesis: any representational content that empirical psychologism cannot explicate human social convention can, and if convention cannot do so, nothing can. The consequence is that any notion philosophers, mathematicians, or anyone else supposes to have a meaning that transcends consciousness and convention, or is in any way independent of them (i.e. platonism), can be nothing more than unintelligible nonsense masquerading as sense. Granted that conventionalism is as much a part of Humean skepticism as associationist psychologism, one must then reckon with the fact that, by contrast with the richly detailed, subtly nuanced treatment Hume accorded to the latter, the former figures only tangentially in his thought. Since this want has somehow to be made good if one is to properly understand and evaluate Kant’s attempt to refute Humean skepticism, the chapter integrates its psychological component with the conventionalism developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, its foremost exemplar. Subjects/authors discussed include language, mathematics, understanding and knowledge, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Michael Tomasello, Jim Baggott, David Deutsch, and Max Tegmark.
