The principle of empirical verifiability by David Hume is flawed.

I would first of all like to earnestly thank my colleague and fellow philosopher dtclark for proposing a revisit to this debate, as well as for his patience with me while I review the necessary materials to make my argument. Thank you. I would also like to state my admiration for using such good examples to illustrate his point, as they help keep everyone involved in arguing or reading focused on understanding rather than nitpicking. I will attempt to follow suit. To begin, I believe that you are misrepresenting Hume, as well as unclearly stating your own objectives. You say "Hume's theory of language seems to exclude large amounts of data that is otherwise considered to be meaningful." Meaningful by what standards? What Hume is trying to argue is that empirically verifiable claims are meaningful in the search for TRUTH, and that without this ability we are almost always proven wrong. Let us use your rabbit hole example. If you told me that there was a rabbit in what appeared to be a rabbit hole, your claim would have already been empirically verified in several ways. We see a hole, in the ground, and either recognize it having seen a rabbit hole before, or else we recognize it as a hole in the ground that looks like other animal burrows and is about the size for a rabbit, which we have both seen. If indeed you saw the rabbit go into the hole, your claim is just. If however you are talking about an imaginary rabbit hole, one that nobody has seen, which simply exists in your own mind, then you are right to say that Hume would consider it to have no meaning! Or perhaps you think that Hume means that the rabbit would not exist until someone had seen it to verify its existence. That is of course absurd. Hume would say that we don't know if the rabbit exists, and have no way of knowing until we see it (or hear it, or smell it, or verify it through our senses. I use sight because it is easiest). Therefore for our purposes, the rabbit really DOESN'T exist, until we know that it does. The rabbit has an entirely different point of view, but the point is that it isn't important for us to know it. Additionally, requiring empirical proof in the manner of David Hume does not block fringe scientific theories, it simply relegates them to their proper place (read: FRINGE) until they can be proved. Without getting into a quibble about the definition of a theory, empirical verifiability is the foundation of the scientific method (being able to show your results repeatedly) and why theories tend to remain as theories until they can prove otherwise. As for your second argument, I believe your focus on existentialism is drawing your attention away from Hume's basic point. Your theory about the meaning behind the language you use, words like love, hate, liberty, and justice, come from sensory experience. To use your example, your understanding of the word and concept of "justice" comes from seeing just things happen in your daily life, from hearing about them, and from reading about them. In any infinite number of ways that you jumble together your sensory memories to form new concepts, they are all still based on senses that you've already experienced. In the words of Hume: "What never was seen, or heard of, may yet be conceived; nor is any thing beyond the power of thought, except what implies an absolute contradiction. But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall find, upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experiences. When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold and mountain...a virtuous horse we can conceive; because from our own feeling we cam conceive virtue, and this we may unite to the figure and shape of a horse...all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions of more lively ones." (1) Finally, to address Hume's claims on religion (you really pulled out all the stops for this one, eh?), it is wrong to say that terms like God, Satan, and the soul are meaningless. This is not what he claims at all. Hume has a great deal to say about the empirical viability of religion, but since you are currently focused on meaning, I will respond to that. At the risk of oversimplifying, our concept of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic God is an infinite and all powerful being. The meaning that we attach to this concept is simply our minds taking the idea of "powerful" and "really really big" and stretching them both out to infinity, making omnipotent and infinite structures of God in our own minds. Similarly we invent our idea of the Devil, combining our idea of God with our concept of oppositeness. Hume does not say that these are thoughts without meaning. He simply argues that their meaning has come from outside us, into our minds through our senses. Additionally, and perhaps speaking more to your point, Hume readily acknowledges the effect that religious ideals have on a person. Just because you cannot point your finger at something and say "look, there's God!" does not mean that feelings of faith do not influences men's thoughts, and thus their actions. In Chapter XI, Hume relates an argument he had with a friend. To paraphrase Hume, "The argument, said my friend, is solid; politics should have no connection with disputes on metaphysics and religion. There is one circumstance, I replied, which you have overlooked. Though I should allow your premises, I deny your conclusion. You conclude that religion can have no influence on life, because it ought not to; forgetting that men do not all reason as you do. Whether their reasoning is just or not, is of no importance." (2) As you can see, Hume applies meaning to much more than you assumed. He was not a skeptic trying to show everything was meaningless, but rather only that all we actually know is what comes to us through our senses (and is thus empirically understood). I think at this point there are only two things that you can do to. The first would be to re-examine Hume's writing and find evidence to support your claims of meaninglessness. The other would be to find a different way in which Hume's theory is flawed. Of course, that's only what I think, and I can't wait to see where you go with this! Best of luck! 1: Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Chapter 2 2: "" Chapter 11