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Questions and Answers
According to Hume, what is the primary source of our knowledge?
What is the main distinction Hume made between impressions and ideas?
What is the primary function of the imagination, according to Hume?
What is the law of resemblance, according to Hume?
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What is required for two events to be considered causally related, according to Hume?
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What is the role of emotions in determining behavior, according to Hume?
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What is the significance of associationism in Hume's philosophy?
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What is the nature of the self, according to Hume?
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What is the role of experience in shaping our beliefs, according to Hume?
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What is the significance of Hume's skepticism?
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What was David Hume's goal as a philosopher?
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What is the main difference between Hume's approach and the Newtonian method?
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What did Hume believe was the source of the contents of the mind?
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What is the term Hume used to describe the relatively strong mental experiences caused by sensory stimulation?
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What did Hume and Berkeley agree on?
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What is the primary focus of Hume's approach?
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What did Hume believe about the notion of cause and effect?
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What is the significance of Hume's statement 'we can be sure of nothing'?
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Study Notes
David Hume's Philosophy
- Disagreed with Berkeley's contention that our perceptions accurately reflect the physical world because God would not deceive us
- Believed that we can be sure of nothing, including the notion of cause and effect
- Distinguished between impressions (vivid, strong mental experiences caused by sensory stimulation) and ideas (faint copies of impressions)
Goals and Methodology
- Wanted to combine empirical philosophy with Newtonian science to create a science of human nature
- Used the Baconian inductive method, making careful observations and generalizing from them
- Occasionally formulated hypotheses and tested them against experience, but emphasized induction over deduction
Physical Reality and Perceptions
- Believed that the contents of the mind come only from experience
- Agreed with Berkeley that we never experience the physical directly and can only have perceptions of it
- Impressions are strong, vivid perceptions, while ideas are relatively weak perceptions
Simple and Complex Ideas and Imagination
- Distinguished between simple ideas (originating from impressions) and complex ideas (formed by combining simple ideas)
- Believed that the imagination can rearrange ideas in an almost infinite number of ways
Association of Ideas
- Developed an account of the association of ideas, including three laws:
- Law of resemblance: thoughts run from one event to similar events
- Law of contiguity: events experienced together are remembered together
- Law of cause and effect: consistently observed relationships lead to beliefs about causation
- Saw the laws of association as a "gentle force" that creates certain relations between ideas
Analysis of Causation
- Believed that a causal relationship is a consistently observed relationship and nothing more
- Specified the observations needed to conclude that two events are causally related:
- Contiguity in space and time
- Cause prior to effect
- Constant union between cause and effect
- Same cause always produces same effect, and same effect never arises but from same cause
Mind and Self
- Believed that the "mind" is no more than the perceptions we are having at any given moment
- Thought that there is no self independent of perceptions
- Believed that all beliefs result from recurring experiences and are explained by the laws of association
Emotions and Behavior
- Believed that humans learn how to act in different circumstances through the experience of reward and punishment
- Thought that reasoning ability has nothing to do with it; instead, passions associated with ideas or impressions drive behavior
Influence on Psychology
- Vastly increased the importance of psychology, reducing other fields to it
- Believed that everything humans know is learned from experience
- Thought that all beliefs are simply expectations based on past correlations and are not rationally determined or defensible
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Description
This quiz covers David Hume's philosophical views on knowledge, including his disagreements with Berkeley and his ideas on perception, cause and effect, and the nature of mental experiences.
