David Hume [1711-1776]
1.1
Hume’s problem
Hume’s view is empirical: our
knowledge has its source in experience; it is positivistic: our knowledge is
limited to the world of phenomena; it is agnostic: we know nothing of
ultimates, substances, causes, soul, ego, external world, universe; it is
humanistic: the human mental world is the only legitimate sphere of science and
inquiry
1.2
Science and human
nature
The most important task is to inquire
into the nature of the human understanding…to show3 that it is not fitted for
the abstruse and remote subjects which traditional philosophy has set before
it…
1.3
Origins of
knowledge
The chief problems which occupy Hume
are those of the origin and nature of knowledge…All the materials of our
thinking are derived from outward and inward impressions. All our thoughts and
ideas are copies of such impressions…Knowledge results from compounding,
transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials furnished us by the
senses and experience…Our thoughts or ideas, however, are not entirely loose
and unconnected, or joined by chance…one calls up another: a picture naturally
leads our thought to the original [resemblance], the mention of a room in an
apartment suggests an adjoining one [contiguity], the thought of a wound calls
up the idea of pain [cause and effect]. This phenomenon is called: association
of ideas
1.4
Relation of cause
and effect
All our reasonings concerning matters
of fact are based on the relation of cause and effect [which I subsume under
explanation]; that is, we always seek a connection between a present fact and
another…the mind cannot deduce the effect from the cause…for the effect is
totally different from the cause and can never be discovered in it. We cannot demonstrate
that a certain cause must have a certain effect…[but] having found, in many
instances, that any two kinds of objects have always been conjoined, we infer
that the objects are causally related, that one is the cause of the other…the
mind is led by habit or custom to believe that the two objects in question are
related…we are determined by custom to believe that the two objects in question
are connected…this belief is an operation of the mind, a species of natural
instinct…In the Treatise on Human Nature 1739-1740, Hume is still uncertain as
to the psychology of belief: he connects it with imagination, but the matter
remains obscure and unsatisfactory to him
To sum up: we can never discover any
power [“effective or moving cause”] at all, all we see is one event following
another…objects are not necessarily connected, but the ideas are connected in
our mind by association
1.5
Validity of
knowledge
All objects of human knowledge may be
divided into two kinds; relations of ideas and matters of fact. Of the first
kind are the truths of geometry, arithmetic, algebra – in short, every
affirmation which is intuitively or demonstratively certain…All evidence of
matters of fact which lies beyond the testimony of sense or memory is derived
entirely from the relation of cause and effect…Of substances we have no idea
whatever, and they have no place in knowledge…Thus we have no absolute,
self-evident or certain knowledge or matters of fact…Regarding knowledge of the
external world, Hume if the final skeptic: we can never hope to attain any
satisfactory knowledge with regard to the origin of our impressions or the
ultimate constitution of a universe behind our impressions and ideas
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