David Stove

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

David Stove
Born(1927-09-15)15 September 1927
Moree, New South Wales
Died2 June 1994(1994-06-02) (aged 66)
Mulgoa, New South Wales[1]
Alma materUniversity of Sydney
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic philosophy
Australian realism
Academic advisorsJohn Anderson
Main interests
Philosophy of science, metaphysics
Notable ideas
Subjective idealism rests on the worst argument

Philosophy

His work in philosophy of science included criticisms of David Hume's Inductive scepticism. He offered a positive response to the problem of induction in his 1986 work, The Rationality of Induction. In Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists, Stove attacks Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend.

In 1985 Stove held a competition to find the "Worst Argument in the World", and awarded the prize to himself for the argument concluding "we cannot know things as they are in themselves". He called this argument "The Gem" and argued that it appeared widely in various forms.[2]

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, describing it as a new religion in which genes play the role of gods.[3]

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.[4][5]

In "A Farewell to Arts", Stove wrote that he abandoned Marxism when he discovered "what real intellectual work was".[6][7]

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.[8]

In "Racial and Other Antagonisms" (1989) Stove asserted that racism is not a form of prejudice but common sense: "Almost everyone unites in declaring 'racism' false and detestable. Yet absolutely everyone knows it is true".[9]

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".[10]

Legacy

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

Stove enjoyed cricket, baroque music and gardening.[11]

Stove committed suicide after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer.[12][13]

Works
  • Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973.
  • Popper and After: 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. 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
  1. David Stove – Obituaries Australia – Australian National University
  2. https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html
  3. Stove, David (1992). "A New Religion". Archived from the original on 15 March 2007. Retrieved 17 May 2014.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) Philosophy 67, pp. 233–240.
  4. Stove, David (1985). "Jobs for the Girls: Feminist Vapours," Quadrant 29 (5), pp. 34–35.
  5. Franklin, James (1999). "The Sydney Philosophy Disturbances," Quadrant 43 (4), pp. 16–21. (Repr. in Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia. Macleay Press, 2003.)
  6. Quadrant
  7. Stove, David (1986). "A Farewell to Arts: Marxism, Semiotics and Feminism," Quadrant 30 (5), pp. 8–11, May 1986.
  8. Stove, David (2002). "Why You Should be A Conservative". In: On Enlightenment. New Brunswick and London: Transaction, pp. 171–178.
  9. Stove, David (1989). "Racial and Other Antagonisms," Proceedings of the Russellian Society 14, pp. 1–10 (Repr. in Cricket versus Republicanism. Sydney: Quakers Hill Press, 1995, p. 147.)
  10. Stove, David (1990). "The Intellectual Capacity of Women," Proceedings of the Russellian Society 15, pp. 1–16 (Repr. in Against the Idols of the Age. New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 1999.) Also see Kimball, Roger (1997). "Who was David Stove?", The New Criterion 17, p. 21; Teichman, Jenny (2001). "The Intellectual Capacity of David Stove", Philosophy 76, pp. 149–57.
  11. Torrance, Kelly Jane (2011). "Is That All There Is?," The Weekly Standard 17 (11).
  12. http://whyimcatholic.com/index.php/conversion-stories/atheist-converts/96-atheist-convert-rj-stove
  13. Roger Kimball's prefatory essay to Stove's Against the Idols of the Age. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999, p. x. ISBN 0-7658-0000-4

Further reading
  • Coman, B.J. (2008). "The New Relevance of David Stove's Critique of Darwinism", Quadrant 52 (3), pp. 58–62.
  • Franklin, James (2002). "Stove's Discovery of the Worst Argument in the World", Philosophy 77, pp. 615–24.
  • Levin, Michael (1993). "Stove on Gene Worship," Philosophy 68, No. 264, pp. 240–243.
  • Rowan, Michael (1993). "Stove on the Rationality of Induction and the Uniformity Thesis," The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (3), pp. 561–566.
  • Teichman, Jenny (2001). "On the intellectual capacity of David Stove", Philosophy, 76, pp. 149–157.
  • Thiel, Inari (1994). "On Stove on Mill on Women," Philosophy 69, No. 267, pp. 100–101.
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