Hume enquiry. David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Section 2 2022-12-12
Hume enquiry
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David Hume (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Cleanthes realizes he has painted himself into a corner, but once again he thinks there is a way out. How requisite such kind of treatment was to philosophy, in her early youth, will easily be conceived, if we reflect, that, even at present, when she may be supposed more hardy and robust, she bears with much difficulty the inclemency of the seasons, and those harsh winds of calumny and persecution, which blow upon her. Such events, as bear little analogy to the common course of nature, are also readily confessed to be known only by experience; nor does any man imagine that the explosion of gunpowder, or the attraction of a loadstone, could ever be discovered by arguments a priori. Even when ideas occur apparently simultaneously with an impression, they are still derived from them. Hume admits that, if we observe that one event repeatedly follows another, it is natural that we assume the two events will always occur together in this pattern. Six years later, he stood for the Chair of Logic at Glasgow, only to be turned down again.
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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Section XII Summary & Analysis
Such assumptions are practical and useful but not completely reliable or passable as proof. Contrary to what the majority of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors thought, causal inferences do not concern relations of ideas. Hume confesses that if the sensible knave expects an answer, he is not sure there is one that will convince him. Perhaps a sort of middle ground is that the man could manufacture the idea on the basis of the two shades adjoining it, with the foreknowledge that such a shade could be found in experience. He uses perception to designate any mental content whatsoever, and divides perceptions into two categories, impressions and ideas.
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Hume Texts Online
Should a traveller, returning from a far country, bring us an account of men, wholly different from any with whom we were ever acquainted; men, who were entirely divested of avarice, ambition, or revenge; who knew no pleasure but friendship, generosity, and public spirit; we should immediately, from these circumstances, detect the falsehood, and prove him a liar, with the same certainty as if he had stuffed his narration with stories of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies. This concurrence of several views in one particular event begets immediately, by an inexplicable contrivance of nature, the sentiment of belief, and gives that event the advantage over its antagonist, which is supported by a smaller number of views, and recurs less frequently to the mind. Is there not here, either in a spiritual or material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or energy of the will equally unknown and incomprehensible? But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. Or even when an action, as sometimes happens, cannot be particularly accounted for, either by the person himself or by others; we know, in general, that the characters of men are, to a certain degree, inconstant and irregular. When again it is asked, What is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions concerning that relation? It requires no nice discernment or metaphysical head to mark the distinction between them. Those who would assert that this position is not universally true nor without exception, have only one, and that an easy method of refuting it; by producing that idea, which, in their opinion, is not derived from this source. When any natural object or event is presented, it is impossible for us, by any sagacity or penetration, to discover, or even conjecture, without experience, what event will result from it, or to carry our foresight beyond that object which is immediately present to the memory and senses.
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Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
The matter, I think, may be accounted for after the following manner. The anatomical observations, formed upon one animal, are, by this species of reasoning, extended to all animals; and it is certain, that when the circulation of the blood, for instance, is clearly proved to have place in one creature, as a frog, or fish, it forms a strong presumption, that the same principle has place in all. For these are plain and acknowledged matters of fact. Here we mount from the effect to the cause; and descending again from the cause, infer alterations in the effect; but this is not a continuation of the same simple chain of reasoning. We understand matters of fact according to causation, or cause and effect, such that our experience of one event leads us to assume an unobserved cause.
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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
A blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. At least it must be owned, that such a power is not felt, nor known, nor even conceivable by the mind. How does his definition of liberty differ from the definition used by both hard determinists and libertarians? If we observe these circumstances, and render our definition intelligible, I am persuaded that all mankind will be found of one opinion with regard to it. When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed. With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travellers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relations of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? It is usual for men, in such difficulties, to have recourse to some invisible intelligent principle as the immediate cause of that event which surprises them, and which, they think, cannot be accounted for from the common powers of nature.
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David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Do you think this reading is plausible? Following this proposal, he thinks, could "banish all that jargon, which has so long taken possession of metaphysical reasonings. Nor does the mind perceive the workings of cause and effect: otherwise we could determine what effects would follow from causes without ever having to rely on observation. But whatever it proceeds from, the disposition itself, on which depends our happiness or misery, and consequently our conduct and deportment in life is still the same. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. By definition, then, a miracle pits our belief in the laws of nature against what? So how do we do it? It requires no nice discernment or metaphysical head to mark the distinction between them. Nothing can save us from this conclusion, but the asserting, that the ideas of those primary qualities are attained by Abstraction, an opinion, which, if we examine it accurately, we shall find to be unintelligible, and even absurd.
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David Hume (1711
After all, I may, perhaps, agree to your general conclusion in favour of liberty, though upon different premises from those, on which you endeavour to found it. A stupid fellow discovers an uncommon alacrity in his carriage: But he has met with a sudden piece of good fortune. An artificer, who handles only dead matter, may be disappointed of his aim, as well as the politician, who directs the conduct of sensible and intelligent agents. What were Epicurus and the Athenians known for? Therefore, since the idea of the supremely perfect being is caused by God himself, necessarily God exists. Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil.
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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Section 2 Summary
When, therefore, we find, that any work has proceeded from the skill and industry of man; as we are otherwise acquainted with the nature of the animal, we can draw a hundred inferences concerning what may be expected from him; and these inferences will all be founded in experience and observation. There is nothing added in multiple experiences that is not already in a single one. By the mid—eighteenth century, rationalists and sentimentalists were arguing not only against Hobbes and Mandeville, but also with each other. It is universally allowed that matter, in all its operations, is actuated by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so precisely determined by the energy of its cause that no other effect, in such particular circumstances, could possibly have resulted from it. They admit not of ambiguity.
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