David Hume's Philosophy Lecture Notes PDF

DAVID HUME CONTENT: 1.HOW THE MIND WORKS 2.CAUSE AND EFFECT 3.EXTERAL WORLD David Hume David Hume, the last of these great British empiricists, considered the philosophies of Locke and Berkeley so valuable that he followed them to their logical conclusion. He is also significant as the...

DAVID HUME CONTENT: 1.HOW THE MIND WORKS 2.CAUSE AND EFFECT 3.EXTERAL WORLD David Hume David Hume, the last of these great British empiricists, considered the philosophies of Locke and Berkeley so valuable that he followed them to their logical conclusion. He is also significant as the person who set the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant on the road to his philosophy. Hume asked the question, “Can we even know if the physical world exists?”  David Hume life and work: was born in , the son of a lawyer. When he was two years old, his father died, and his deeply religious mother raised him.  At the age of 12, he enrolled , and shortly after, he lost his faith. His mother hoped he would follow his father into law, but Hume found law distasteful compared to philosophy.  After three years, he left the university to devote himself to philosophy, and after reading Locke and other philosophers, he lost all belief in religion.  Hume moved to , where he wrote his first philosophical work,  For the next 13 years, Hume tutored to an insane marquis and was secretary to a general. He continued to write philosophy and became highly successful. Hume accepted the position of librarian for the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, and wrote a six-volume set entitled History of England. His unconventional ideas, however, led to controversy, and the curators asked him to resign. When he returned to France as secretary to the British ambassador, the French intellectual society treated him as a celebrity. In 1765, when he returned to Edinburgh, his house became the hub for intellectual gatherings. In the spring of 1775, Hume developed cancer, and he died the next year.  HOW THE MIND WORKS Hume found that our thoughts are really confined to our sense experience, which he called “perceptions.” We have, said Hume, two types of perceptions: impressions and ideas. By impressions, he meant our sense experience of the external world. By ideas, he meant our memory of these impressions. Impressions and ideas make up the total contents of the mind.  Without impressions, Hume said, we have no ideas, because “ideas are copies of impressions.” For every idea we must first have an impression. PERCEPTION IMPRESSIOS IDEAS MAKE UP THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND IMPRESSIONS OF SENSATION (taste, smell, sound) OF INNER (love, hate, hunger)  Without impressions, Hume said, we have no ideas, because “ideas are copies of impressions.” For every idea we must first have an impression. For Hume, there are simple ideas and complex ideas. A simple idea is a single idea: I saw a bird. A complex idea consists of more than one idea, such as imagining a flying red horse. Through our senses we have perceived impressions, such as wings, horses, and the color red. A flying red horse, however, is a false idea that we must reject if we want to tidy up our thoughts.  Relations of Ideas Hume believed we know the relations of ideas by using our reason instead of sense impressions. Yet, these relations of ideas give us no information about what exists because we need sense impressions to know what exists. (For example, two plus two equals four expresses a relation between numbers. Although true, such truths are empty because they give us no information about matters of fact or the world of our experience.)  Relations of Ideas Matters of fact, such as the Sun will rise tomorrow, are not certain. They may or may not happen. We cannot demonstrate the truth or falsehood of the statement, “The sun will rise tomorrow.” We may think we know things beyond our senses, but we cannot prove it. How do we know that the future will be like the past? With this unusual finding, Hume looked at the idea of cause and effect with new skepticism.  CAUSE AND EFFECT Hume stubbornly asked, “Is there an impression that gives us the idea of cause and effect?” “Is there a necessary connection between a cause and an effect?” He found none. So how do we get the idea of cause and effect?  CAUSE AND EFFECT Hume decided the idea must arise when we experience certain relations between objects. When we speak of cause and effect, we are saying that A causes B. For instance, you are watching billiard players. You see the cue ball (A) hit and (B) move the eight ball. Obviously, A caused B. Wait, said Hume. If you pay close attention, you will realize that you did not see the cue ball move the eight ball. You saw a sequence of events:  Contiguity (A and B are always close together);  Priority in time (A always precedes B);  Constant conjunction (B always follows A). From these events, you conclude that a “necessary connection” exists, but contiguity, priority, and constant conjunction do not imply a necessary connection between objects. Therefore, Hume  EXTERAL WORLD Hume questioned everything we thought to be true. He even asked, “Does the physical, or external, world exist?” He did not say that the external world does not exist but only that we cannot know if it exists. “Let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe,” challenged Hume, believing we can never get a step beyond ourselves. In other words, we are prisoners of our own sense experiences. There is no way to get outside them because all we can know is what we experience—our own private sensations and impressions. (Your friend may agree with you that the apple you are sharing is sour. Yet, how do you know what your friend is really experiencing? Can you know if it is the same experience you are having?)  God Hume could not accept Descartes’s idea of God as an idea that comes from outside our mind because for Hume “our ideas reach no further than our experience.” As he looked at the world around him, Hume thought he might argue for God as a designer of an orderly universe. Each year there is fall, winter, spring, and summer. We sense “the divine” in a beautiful sunrise, a noble horse, and a wild flower. We attribute these beauties to an intelligent designer, God. Yet Hume saw how destructive living things in the world were to each other. “The world is contemptible,” he said. “Nature is blind and without discernment.” Because we have no impression in nature of an orderly designer, he decided we could have no idea of a God. Therefore, the word God is a meaningless term.  Scottish philosopher David Hume questioned that we could know for certain the laws of nature, claiming, however, that they are probable. To Hume, cause and effect were habits of our association and should not provide the basis for scientific knowledge.