“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”
Hume in Wikipedia, Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
David Hume is one of the most influential philosophers in all of history. He is widely known for his skepticism; his belief that the human mind cannot know "ultimate truths" about reality. Like John Locke before him, Hume was an empiricist, believing all knowledge was derived from sensory experience (there were no innate ideas). More than Locke, Hume believed that human reason is limited and often leads to misunderstandings of the world in which we live.
For Hume, not being able to know ultimate truths is not really important for what is important is that we can know what is useful to us (the "utility" of an idea). Hume's idea of utility was important to other 18th century philosophy like Adam Smith's theory of modern economics and Jeremy Bentham's theory of utilitarian ethics. Hume's advocacy of the primacy of human passion over reason in human behavior influenced the proto-romanticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Hume also influenced 19th century thinkers like Charles Darwin and ideas in 20th century philosophy of science like the falsifiabity principle and probability theory.
Like many other Enlightenment philosophers (e.g. Francis Hutcheson, Denis Diderot, Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Hume was a moral sentimentalist, a believer that humans were bound to each other through emotion connections rather than reason. For Hume, "morals" was more than just the issue of right and wrong, but was about all of the "manners and habits" of society. This idea was central to his social and political theories.
Major Philosophical Works
Treatise of Human Nature (3 volumes, published anonymously in two installments, 1738 - 1740)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) Reworked the main points of the Treatise, Book 1, with the addition of material on free will, miracles, the Design Argument,
and mitigated scepticism. Section X, Of Miracles, was often published separately.
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)
Essays Moral, Political and Literary (1758)
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Published posthumously, 1779)
Biography
David Hume was born into a political Whig family of Calvinists. His father died when he was a small child. From age 11 to 14, he attended the University of Edinburgh to study law, but did not find it to his liking. He became interested in philosophy and this led to his questioning and rejection of his religious upbringing. His work was controversial and was seen as dangerous by the conservative religious thinkers of his era. In 1745, Hume was denied a position at the University of Edinburgh after he was accused of atheism by a council of ministers.
During his lifetime Hume was more widely known as an historian rather than a philosopher. His multi-volume The History of England was widely read and made him economically secure. It has been admired for its balanced interpretation of the conflicts between the monarchists and parliamentarians during the English Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution (Hume's personal views leaned towards political conservatism in preferring monarchy over parliamentary power - i.e. he was a Tory rather than a Whig). His philosophical works became widely read in the decades immediately following his death in 1776.
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Hume's philosophical thought
Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature (his empiricism is naturalistic in that it refuses to countenance any appeal to the supernatural in the explanation of human nature). Against philosophical rationalists, Hume held that passion rather than reason drives human behavior. Hume held that genuine knowledge must either be directly traceable to objects perceived in experience, or result from abstract reasoning about relations between ideas which are derived from experience, calling the rest "nothing but sophistry and illusion" (a dichotomy later given the name Hume's fork).
Hume proposed an empiricist alternative to traditional a priori metaphysics (e.g. Spinoza and Leibniz). As a naturalist, he aims to account for the way our minds work in a manner that is consistent with a Newtonian picture of the world.
Hume portrays his scientific study of human nature as a kind of mental geography or anatomy of the mind. In the first section of the first Enquiry, he says that it has two principal tasks, one purely descriptive, the other explanatory. Mental geography consists in delineating “the distinct parts and powers” of the mind. While everyone can make some sense of the basic distinctions among the mind's contents and operations, more fine–grained distinctions are harder to grasp.
Hume, however, wants to go much further. He wants to explain how the mind works by discovering its “secret springs and principles.” He reminds us that astronomers, for a long time, were content with proving the “motions, order, and magnitude of the heavenly bodies.” But then “a philosopher” - Newton - went beyond them and determined “the laws and forces" by which the revolutions of the planets are governed and directed.” Newton's example led other natural philosophers to similar explanatory successes. Hume believed that by following the same type of caution Newton exhibited in his inquiries, he would be equally successful in finding the fundamental laws governing our “mental powers and economy.”
Major Ideas:
Space & Time
On the topic of space, Hume argues that our proper notions of space are confined to our visual and tactile experiences of the three-dimensional world, and we err if we think of space more abstractly and independently of those visual and tactile experiences. In essence, our proper notion of space is like what Locke calls a “secondary quality” of an object, which is spectator dependent, meaning grounded in the physiology of our perceptual mental processes. Thus, our proper notion of space is not like a “primary quality” that refers to some external state of affairs independent of our perceptual mental process. These impressions are then “comprehended” or conceived by the imagination; it is from the structuring of these impressions that we obtain a limited idea of space.
Hume’s treatment of our idea of time is like his treatment of the idea of space, in that our proper idea of time is like a "secondary quality", grounded in our mental operations, not a primary quality grounded in some external phenomenon beyond our experience. He notes Locke’s point that our minds operate at a range of speeds that are “fix’d by the original nature and constitution of the mind, and beyond which no influence of external objects on the senses is ever able to hasten or retard our thought.” The idea of time, then, is not a simple idea derived from a simple impression; instead, it is a copy of impressions as they are perceived by the mind at its fixed speed. In contrast to this limited view of time, he argues that we frequently entertain a faulty notion of time that does not involve change or succession. The psychological account of this erroneous view is that we mistake time for the cause of succession instead of seeing it as the effect.
The overall gist of this is that we do not actually experience space or time. What we experience is the relation between multiple objects and our minds create the idea of space. Or we see the succession of multiple events and our minds create the idea of time.
Induction and Causation
In what is sometimes referred to as Hume's problem of induction, he argued that inductive reasoning, and belief in causality cannot ultimately be justified rationally; our trust in causality and induction instead results from custom and mental habit, and are attributable to only the experience of "constant conjunction" rather than logic: for we can never, in experience, perceive that one event causes another, but only that the two are always conjoined, and to draw any inductive causal inferences from past experience first requires the presupposition that the future will be like the past, a presupposition which cannot be grounded in prior experience without already being presupposed.
The Self
Hume responded to John Locke's theory of personal identity with his "bundle theory." Hume claimed there is no evidence for a "self" (or underlying substance) to which the mental phenomena of sensations (thoughts and feelings) can be attributed. "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”
"I nevertheless have some idea of personal identity, and that must be accounted for. Because of the associative principles, the resemblance or causal connection within the chain of my perceptions gives rise to an idea of myself, and memory extends this idea past my immediate perceptions." A common abuse of the notion of personal identity occurs when the idea of a soul or unchanging substance is added to give us a stronger or more unified concept of the self.
Philosophy of Religion
Hume argued that it is unreasonable to believe testimonies of alleged miraculous events, and he hints, accordingly, that we should reject religions that are founded on miracle testimonies. Against the common belief of the time that God’s existence could be proven through a design or causal argument, Hume offered compelling criticisms of standard theistic proofs. He also advanced theories on the origin of popular religious beliefs, grounding such notions in human psychology rather than in rational argument or divine revelation. The larger aim of his critique was to disentangle philosophy from religion and thus allow philosophy to pursue its own ends without rational over-extension or psychological corruption.
The Argument from Design
Hume's anti-teleological opposition to the argument for God's existence from design is generally regarded as the most intellectually significant such attempt to rebut the teleological argument prior to Darwin.
Objection to Natural Law Theory
Hume claimed that Natural Law Theory conflates that which is the case with that which ought to be the case. One cannot logically derive a moral imperative or value judgment simply by observing facts of nature. Natural Law theorists often argue, for example, that because God’s laws (and laws of nature in this case) dictate the purpose of sexual intercourse is reproduction, it is unnatural and thus, immoral to have sex for any other purpose. The fallaciousness of this reasoning is especially obvious when we consider natural tendencies which, are seemingly irreconcilable with ethical behavior. For example, if one concedes that it is natural for human beings to care for themselves before strangers, then one must also accept that this ought to be the case.
Objection to Social Contract Theory of Hobbes and Locke
Hume denied that any people had ever formed a government by making an agreement to do so, therefore, to Hume, the social contract theory was an invalid means of doing political theory.
Ethics
Like Francis Hutcheson who influenced him, Hume was a moral sentimentalist. But rather than postulate separate moral and aesthetic senses, Hume claimed that morality was an aesthetic (goodness was beautiful). Ethics, like all other disciplines, was based on fact and observation and subject to the same limits of reason. For an action to be good, it had to be "useful, or agreeable to a man himself, or to others." People have value "public utility" because they have a sympathy for others that is as natural as their own well-being.
This idea of "public utility" influenced Jeremy Bentham in his development of utilitarian ethics near the end of the 18th century.
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