Hume - Seminar Paper

David Hume (1711-1776)

David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist was one of the most important figures in western philosophy as well as being highly influential during the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume maintained the work of his predecessors John Locke and George Berkeley and moved beyond the understanding that knowledge derived from experience in opposition to the rationalist belief, developed in the 17^th century, that ideas held an innate value. He embraced a radical scepticism suggesting that experience holds utmost importance writing that no philosopher “will ever be able to take us behind the daily experiences or give us rules of conduct that are different from those we get through reflections on everyday life.”

Hume, a well known sceptic believed that we have no reason to be certain about anything. As an empiricist, he renounced all knowledge except for that which can be gained from the senses; things that we can see, hear, taste, touch and smell drawing on the conclusion that all human knowledge is based on relations amongst ideas, or “sense impressions”. This meant that anything not given in experience is mere invention and must be ruthlessly discarded.Hume wrote three major philosophical works starting with “A Treatise of Human Nature” which he wrote during the years of 1734 – 1737 whilst staying in France. The well known Hume's Law “ You cannot derive an ought from an is” was taken from his first book that conveyed the idea that we cannot say something ‘ought’ to be, it either is or it isn't, supporting his belief that nothing is for certain.

His first work was divided into three books, dealing respectively with the understanding, the passions and morals. Hume delved into the distinctions between “impressions” and “ideas” percieveing “impressions” as strong and lively; things that we can see and touch otherwise known as direct sensations that connect information to our minds which form “ideas.” These appear fainter and are merely copied from impressions, leading Hume to believe that our brains are empty apart from all the impressions that have sunk in from the outside world. Hume presented the idea that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour thus opposing the existence of innate ideas, believing that humans have knowledge only of things they can directly experience. Hume’s empiricism consisted in the idea that it is our knowledge, and not our ability to conceive, that is restricted to what can be experienced. Hume thought that we can form beliefs that extend beyond any possible experience, through the imagination but was sceptical about claims to knowledge on this basis. Hume agrees that we cannot always trust these ideas, questioning the basis of all our beliefs, he believes that we have no reason to be 100 per cent certain, for example whether the sun will rise tomorrow can not be guaranteed.

Hume was considered a Bundle Theorist, a theory that proposed an object such as an apple is made up of a collection of properties. For example when you think of an apple you immediately think of its properties, such as its colour, size, taste and shape. When you see that apple and begin to eat it, you should expect a certain kind of taste. This law of habit according to Hume explains the existence of expectation, but does not justify it.The law of habit however is a casual law therefore Hume believes there is no reason why the expectation should continue to be conjoined. Perhaps the next time we see the apple, we shall expect it to taste like roast beef, an unlikely cause but not impossible.This theory then linked to the idea of personal identity. Hume believed that the self is nothing but a bundle of interconnected perceptions linked by the property of constancy and coherence. He presented that we never experience our own self, only the continuous chain of our experiences themselves. This led Hume to the dubious metaphysical conclusion that the self is an illusion, and that personal identity is nothing but the continuous succession of perceptual experience. “I am,” Hume famously says “nothing but a bundle of perceptions”. He presented that we tend to think that we are same person we were five years ago, though we have changed in many respects, the same person appears present as was present then. We might start thinking about which features can be changed when changing the underlying self. Hume compares the soul to a commonwealth, which retains its identity by being composed of many different, related and yet constantly changing elements. The question of personal identity then becomes a matter of characterizing the loose cohesion of one persons experience.

Causation is the relationship between two or more events, one which follows as a result of the other. Hume noticed that the force that compels one event to follow another, the causation is never experienced in sense impressions. All that is given is the regular succession of one kind of event followed by another, the supposition that the earlier event, the so called “cause” must be followed by the suceeding event, the “effect” is merely human expectation projected into reality. Hume deemed it wrong to think one thing can follow another, expressing that it could be “probable” but not justifiable, however Hume believed, that by using inductive reasoning, it would lead us to make generalizations from observations. The example I have used before of the apple links into this idea of causation, how do we know that the apple wont taste like roast beef the next time we go to eat it? Hume pushes this concept because there is no reason that because something has happened before, it does not mean it will happen again, in this example we cannot guarentee what the apple will taste like in the future, even though you expect and are familiar with the taste of the apples you have eaten in the past. Hume believed that our minds conjoin two objects, that there is no casual connection between the two and that we should “expect the unexpected”. The mind can play tricks leading us into thinking that one thing causes another, for example when you go to open your door, your house ought to be there, but how do you know it will still be there tomorrow? Nothing is 100 per cent certain.

Hume wrote an influential amount on religion but it is still uncertain where Humes personal views lye. He never declared himself as an athiest but had been deemed hostile towards religion. He believed that the very first cause was God as he is at the top of a long chain of causes, God was known to set the cause in motion but played no further role. There is no sufficient evidence or proof about the existence of God and to doubt this existence meant that you had to doubt the first cause producing this idea that if there was no first cause then how did the universe exist? Therefore God must exist.

Hume rejected the principle of induction, rarely using this term he would call upon it when supporting a specific point through an argument. Inductive reasoning as mentioned above is the process that leads us to make generalizations from observations. An example being, from having observed many white swans but no black swans, one might seemingly be justified in the conclusion that “All swans are white”. These generalizations however go beyond what is given in experience and are not logically justified. Hume claimed that inductive reasoning could not be relied upon to lead us to the truth, for observing a regularity does not rule out the possibility that next time something different will occur. Hume wanted to prove that certainty does not exist, believing that it is always logically possible that any given statement about the world is false. This led him to conclude that there are two types of logic; Analytic logic also known as deductive logic which is true by definition. It is true simply by the virtue of its meaning, for example all bicycles have two wheels. It is a known fact that bicycles have always had two wheels therefore it is true. The second type of logic is Synthetic logic also known as inductive logic meaning that it is true by observation/verification and the opposite to analysis. It means that it has to be built upon, for example the cat was sat on the mat. It is true because we can see and verify that is what is happening at this precise moment in time.