When1: 1734
When2: 1762
Who: David Hume [Hume, David]
What: philosopher
Where: Scotland
works\ Treatise of Human Nature [1734 and 1739: including Of the Understanding, Of Passions, and Of Morals]; Essays: Moral and Political [1742]; Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding [1748]; Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals [1751]; Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751]; Political Discourses [1752]; History of England [1754 to 1762]; Essay on Miracles [1755: Miracles are illusions, because such testimony is more miraculous than the miracle]; Four Dissertations [1757]; On Suicide [1757]
Detail: He lived 1711 to 1776 and was utilitarian, empiricist, and humanist.
Epistemology
Sensation or immediate experience is certain, providing basis for ideas and knowledge.
However, observations depend on uncertain assumptions.
Mental ideas are sense-impression copies. Brain does not infer sensations and ideas. Sensations and mental ideas are similar, but sense qualities have greater degree, force, and liveness. Belief in sensations and mental ideas depends on their degree, force, and liveness.
Besides original sensations and their copies, mental contents are ideas about sensations. Simple ideas are about independent sense impressions {psychological atomism}. Complex ideas have parts that are about sense impressions. All ideas depend on sense impressions. General ideas are actually about particular perceptions that have general connotation. Ideas are about sensation relations, which are resemblances, contrarieties, magnitudes, proportions, time and space relations, identities, and causations.
People can use logic and know probability of ideas and their relations. However, such reasoning does not necessarily relate to actual world. People can only know that perceptions or ideas relate, not that real objects relate. Demonstrative knowledge is about ideas and their relations. Knowledge is uncertain and relative. Beliefs are as justified as other beliefs. No uniform principles can apply. No object implies another's existence.
Perceptions are object representations. Perceptions do not prove external objects exist, because mind only has perceptions and not external objects themselves.
Statements can be facts that depend on nature or can relate ideas without needing facts {Hume's fork}.
Deduction or causation can prove statements. Causation arguments assume that laws are universal. Deductive arguments cannot show that laws are universal.
People assume causation when same event succession or conjunction {regular succession} repeats. Causation depends on constant mental association {necessary connection} {necessary relation}, which depends on contact. Causation allows inferences about the future, which is knowledge beyond observation. Belief allows us to act in practical life.
However, people do not experience causal relations but only perceive events and objects in succession. Because sensations, ideas, and events have no logical connections, people cannot know causes and causation. Association only apparently relates cause and effect. Inductive processes depend on experience, make only contingent predictions, and cannot give rational knowledge based on logic or reflection.
People can have no rational knowledge of God, causality, substance, mind, or self, because such ideas have no associated sense impressions. People cannot prove God's existence by reason.
Ethics
Moral actions can be good for people. People can perform moral actions in systems that generally are good.
Morals are about emotions, which can then produce actions. Basis of moral actions and judgments is ability to feel what others feel {sympathy, ethics}, as they experience pain or pleasure. Social life determines feelings. People approve good actions, because people feel the pleasure others gain.
Reason clarifies, orders, and evaluates feelings that people have and the ideas behind them. Reasoning, and feelings of sympathy for simple virtues, teach people sympathy for complex virtues. Besides sense qualities, people feel pleasure from justice, benevolence, fortitude, wisdom, and prudence. Though actions resulting from these virtues can be harmful or insignificant, sympathy causes people to approve.
No Ought from an Is {Hume's principle}.
Mind
Self has interactions, causes, and effects {bundle of sensations}, depending on memory. Selves are not objects or perceptions, because no sensation corresponds to "I". Mind is sum of sense impressions and ideas. Introspection only reveals perceptions, not self {elusiveness thesis}.
Politics
Compact theories of government are incorrect.
Social Sciences>Philosophy>History>Mind
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Date Modified: 2022.0224