David Hume (1711-1776) is one of the most influential philosophers of the 18th century and is regarded as one of the greatest British philosophers. Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is best known today for his philosophical empiricism, naturalism and skepticism. There were empiricist philosophers before him like Locke and his ideas follows from the findings of Locke and Berkley. But the empiricist idea was really put together harmoniously by David Hume. He inspired many philosophers like Immanuel Kant, who famously said that Hume had waken him from dogmatic slumbers. Hume also became a source of inspiration for the Utilitarian ethics is the 19th century. His work includes A Treatise of Human Nature, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals but his best and most robust work includes a 1748 book Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
Hume's Epistemology
According to Hume, our mental representation is divided into two class:
- Impressions
- Ideas
Impressions are the experiences or senses that are the input to our mind. Visual sense of objects, sense of touch, sound etc. are the impressions. Impressions are the perceptions, what we feel, see, hear. Ideas however are the copies of impressions. Ideas are the mental representation of things in the absence of impressions. My mental representation of a laptop when I close my eyes is a copy of actual senses datum of laptop. According to Hume what separates impressions from ideas is the degree of force, vivacity and liveliness with which they strike upon mind. Impressions are powerful and lively while ideas are faint images of thinking. For example, visual representation of something is powerful than just the recollection of what it looks like. A important thing to remember is no distinct ideas can be formed without impressions. We have no idea of what a bottle looks like before actually seeing it. Ideas follows impressions. This is known as 'Temporal Sequence.'
Hume was going to establish his philosophy on the basis of scientific observation. Based on his observation, there are three principles of association:
1. Resemblance
The ideas are associated because the image of a cube and an actual cube resemble one another. Let's say, the picture of a Rubik's cube strongly resembles the cube that you have at your table.
2. Contiguity
The ideas are associated because the things are near to each other in time or space. When we see the lightning strike we immediately think of a thundering sound of the clouds, it means they are contiguous with respect to time. Let's say you are reading this blog in a laptop that is right in front of you, then you and the laptop are contiguous in space.
3. Cause and Effect
The ideas are associated because the events or objects are causally related. For example, I have a pen and I drop it, then my action of letting the pen go causes it to fall. The effect here is the fall of pen, due to my causal action.
Hume further explores the third principle which is the principle of Cause and Effect to answer many questions. While the third principle of association is essential in understanding Hume's philosophy, he goes further into dividing knowledge into two classes:
1. Relation of Ideas
This type of knowledge as Hume calls it, is either intuitively certain or it is demonstrable. There is a relation between ideas in a formal sense. Example includes mathematical propositions, laws, equations. The truth lies in the relation between ideas. For Hume however, this type of knowledge has no existential implications. It doesn't teach about the world rather it can be used as a vocabulary in talking about the world. For Hume, the algebraic equations or the geometrical principles have no real world application even though they are mathematical correct and consistent.
2. Matters of Fact
Contrary to the relation between ideas, the matters of fact knowledge has existential implications and according to Hume, there is no logical basis for it because if I press Y key on my keyboard then it is logically possible that a picture of basketball will appear in the desktop screen. Even though we have never observed this, it isn't logically constrained. The matters of fact knowledge is the result of our experience, impressions and perception. You know for a fact that there is a flower in front of you when you see it.
Constant Conjunction
According to Hume, Cause and Effect is not a priori knowledge (known before experience), rather it is just constant conjunction. Every time I release a pen I know for certain that it will fall and how do I know that? Because it has happened before. I have seen before that the action of releasing a pen causes it to fall. How do I know that eating Momo will satisfy my hunger? I know this because whenever I eat Momo, it satisfies my hunger. The cause 'eating Momo' and the effect 'hunger satisfaction' is nothing but constant conjunction. The current experience of cause and effect is the product of constant conjunction. One event follows the other.
People associate cause and effect with causal force or necessary connection. In fact, the very idea of necessary connection is nothing but constant conjunction. We observe things happening in succession, we see a cause and a effect and we imply that there is a causal necessity or a connection between cause and effect. But according to Hume, the cause is not actually forcing the output of effect, it is just that when an event 'a' happens then 'b' follows, like hunger satisfaction follows eating Momo and because the same effect follows the same cause again and again, we assign that there is a necessary connection between these two and Hume says that, it is nothing but constant conjunction. Hume also goes forward and says that the beliefs that people acquire are also due to constant conjunction. He says that because we observe events happening in constant conjunction, we develop a habit, a custom or an expectation for those things and that is nothing but beliefs.
Is and Ought problem
The fact that we make moral judgements based on real world's facts constitutes the 'Is-Ought' problem. According to Hume, what happens in the real world shouldn't influence the morality of act. For example, we know that stealing is illegal so we ought not to steal. But why? How have we reached this conclusion? How does a fact like 'Stealing is illegal' tell us what we ought to do? How does our moral values derive from non moral natural facts? Just because something is a particular way doesn't mean it ought to be that way. According to Hume, there exists a gap between facts and values.
Hume's Theory of Morality
According to John Locke, moral knowledge is demonstrative knowledge (Relation of Ideas) like Math. He disagrees with Locke's ethics. He also disagrees with 'Natural Law' ethics which says that moral knowledge is inherent in people. Hume strongly refuses the rationalist approach to moral judgements according to which the basis of moral judgement is reason, which is a priori knowledge. But Hume says that reason is needed to discover the facts of any situation but it alone is insufficient to yield a moral judgement. For Hume there is no moral judgements but only moral feelings. Hume is an utilitarian ethical philosopher so the goodness of the act is determined by the increase in overall utility( happiness, satisfaction). Hume sides with the Moral Sense theorists who say that moral knowledge is an emotional responsiveness manifesting itself in approval or disapproval. According to it, when we see a virtuous act we sense a calm, pleasant feeling which is the feeling of approval and when we see hideous act we sense a violent, unpleasant and painful feeling which is the feeling of disapproval. But why do we have these sense of approval and disapproval? Hume says that it is because we are the kinds of creatures we have with the dispositions we have for pain ad pleasure. Moral requirements are natural but some are the product of convention. According to Hume, we are both selfish and humane. To convict someone of bad actions, it is not enough that the action be morally reprehensible, we must impute the badness of the act to the agent. Sometimes bad acts a re done by accident. When the act is caused by the passion or trait of character in the agent then he is to blame for it.
Skepticism (Problem of Induction)
Hume says that any knowledge gained from 'Inductive reasoning' cannot be true knowledge. Inductive knowledge are the knowledge in which if the premises are true we are likely to reach a probable conclusion. We have to experience to confirm Inductive knowledge. This follows from the idea of constant conjunction. According to Hume, what we know are the things we experience at present. Our past experience doesn't tell us anything about future experience. For example, yesterday the sun rose from the east so it is likely that it will rise from the east today too because we have always seen it rising from the east, but we don't know it for certain. It is logically possible that you wake up tomorrow and the sun will rise from west. So we lack information about what will happen in future. We have no exact idea about what will happen even at present as all we can do is just experience the events. We can only derive probable conclusions based on previous knowledge. There is no any necessary connections. This implies that we know nothing about the world. So this puts us in a constant state of skepticism, doubting our knowledge about the world.
Hume on God
Hume's view on religion is skeptical and natural and that feature is prominently seen in Treatise of Human Nature . But he really talks about religion in Natural History of Religion (1957) and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779).
Hume says that the idea of god is like a blind man's idea of fire, he lacks any positive idea about it and only knows it because he feels the warmth. For Hume to have an idea, there must be an impression and if there is no impression then the idea is almost insignificant. In case of god we lack relevant impressions of it. The idea of god is abstract so any conclusions can be made, the good is existent and also equally non existent.
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