Philosophy- David Hume
Section 1: Tradition is a Great Guide for Life
The philosopher is often looked down upon for being too shut off from the world outside, but those who ignore philosophy entirely are even more despised for their ignorance. "Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man." Hume thought of Descartes as a snob and overly skeptical. Hume speaks in support of Tradition as a guide for life. Not as ultimate truth but as template. He’s supporter of accepting traditional beliefs about truth because they are useful. People wouldn’t get anything done if they questioned everything.
Section 2 & 3: Imagination is Constructed from Experience
Hume separates imagination from experiences. If you try to imagine something you’ve never experienced, your mind either cannot or will use your experience of aspects to construct the whole. He uses the examples of a Gold Mountain or a Unicorn. You can imagine them but it’s only through your experiences of gold, mountains and horses and horns. Can imagine things that aren't real. Everything we conceptualize in our minds are constructed from direct experience.
Section 4: Knowledge by Reason alone has it’s Flaws
Kant made the distinction famous, calling relations of ideas "Analytic" and matters of fact "Synthetic." Analytic facts are facts by definition. 2 + 2 will always be 4. A Bachelor will always been unmarried. However, a synthetic fact is something that is established by tradition, common knowledge or past experience. Making predictions about gravity or the sun rising tomorrow are known only because we’ve created that expectation from previous experience. How do we know what has happened before will happen again?
Hume's argument is that we are committed to the belief that the future will resemble the past, but that we are not rationally justified in holding this belief. Reason is a far weaker tool than we might have supposed. We don’t know the sun will rise tomorrow but from past experience it’s reasonable to expect it.
Section 5: Knowledge thru Experience
Hume suggests that belief in the unobserved is unreliable. (not impossible) He sees it as a form of imagination and if we can imagine fictional things, how can we know the difference between the two imaginations. If imagination can render things into our mind and one be connected to reality and one-not, the source is the same. We may imagine a unicorn but not connect it to reality. Many people can imagine Santa or the tooth-fairy and connect it to reality.
Soul vs body- will over body. Will over other physical objects? Will over body when disabled, injured or numbness. Will cannot effect the heart, kidney or liver. "We learn the influence of our will from experience alone." Not from mind alone but from interaction with the world. Without our senses we couldn’t learn anything new.
Human beings are pattern seeking creatures. It pays to predict an outcome. Historically our survival has been at stake in anticipating the outcome. There are many things people believe as a survival tool. These customs aren’t known but only a common belief. They can be useful, but their custom doesn’t make them true. When we see cause and effect, are we observing the chemical reaction/forces of physics or are we observing one even following another? It was commonly believed that Miasma (or bad air) made people sick. This made sense because bad smells usually accompany rotting food, infections, or human waste. People didn’t know about micro-organisms yet. The custom was useful but wrong.
We should find quick and easy use in accepting common customs of our time and culture. However, for many more important truths to be discerned, we should not trust popularity and the opinions of those around us.
This is what modern science is founded on. The highest ranking a scientific, tested and studied conclusion can get is as a theory. There’s always room for revision and unknown factors.
Predict objects fall
Why fall?
Because it did before
How did you know it would repeat?
Uniform Cause and effect
How do we know cause and effect
From past experience (circular)
How do you know it won't change?
Because we haven't experienced it changed
Section 6 & 7: Does Chance Exist?
Hume asserts that there is no such thing as chance in the workings of the universe, but that our ignorance of the real causes of events leads us to a belief in chance. We may not be able to predict the outcomes of dice rolls, but this is simply because we cannot adequately calculate all the relevant factors. There is a reason it landed on 6. (Reasons?)
We invent the notion of probability and chance, Hume suggests, because we cannot actually determine precisely how things will happen. These probabilities are determined by experience. For instance, if car crashes kill passengers 80 percent of the time, I will judge it highly probable that a car crash will result in death. Other probabilities are 100 percent certain: for instance, flames always burn. This certainty does not then result from observing directly some power of causation or necessary connection, but comes instead from a calculation of probability based on experience.
“A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”
Bought a cake – common, known, unremarkable - Majority of People
Won an Olympic medal – somewhat common, known, slightly remarkable - Plenty of People
Been to the moon – known possible, known to have happened, remarkable – Few people
Has a magic carpet – Unheard of, not known, very very remarkable – nobody known
Section 8 – Free Will & Morality
Do we have unconstrained freewill? Do we choose? Do we choose unrestrained? Do you have to choose consequence free to be freewill? Are decisions determined by nothing or by something? Could things have happened differently if something let to the decision? Do events happen without cause and effect? Are they compatible? If humans don’t have freewill can they be held accountable? What would happen if they weren’t? Would it effect our freewill?
Next, Hume faces two possible objections relating to God as being the sole author of all deeds. The first objection is that there can be no bad actions in the universe, since a perfect God is the ultimate cause of all actions.
For instance, Hume's explanation of moral judgments at the end of section VIII is based purely on observations of our natural behavior. We judge something to be good because it promotes happiness, security, peace, or what have you, and we judge something to be bad because it promotes the opposite of what we consider to be beneficial. Hume does not deny that there may be some God with some ultimate purpose and some ultimate sense of right and wrong so much as he denies that this is the origin of our own ideas of right and wrong.
If God is the creator of all things then he’s the author of all things including evil. If evil is the consequence of freewill, God created their soul and life experiences that led to that will being exercised.
Section 9 - Reasoning of Animals
Contrary to rationalist philosophy, Hume argues that our reason is not a truth- tracking device that can a priori understand the many mysteries of the universe. Rather, it is simply a tool that guides us through life. All our higher reasoning is based on perceiving necessary connections in nature, and yet we never perceive any necessary connections that go beyond constant conjunction. Thus, our higher reasoning has no more rational justification than that of animals. If a deer sees a rustling bush, it rationalizes that it is a threat. It flees whether this conclusion is true or not. The rationalization is a good guide for survival but not a way of determining truth. An empirical way of finding truth would be to check the bush each time but finding an outcome 9 times makes no truth about the 10th occurrence.
Section 10 – On Miracles
In this section, entitled "Of Miracles," Hume argues that we have no compelling reason even to believe in miracles.
Rather than believing that the observed laws of nature have been suspended we should expect that some other unknown force is at play.
People we observe an event in which the laws of nature are suspended, (Water flowing up) we should assume the unobserved natural force exists. Not random. Unexpected human behavior is not random but there’s a hidden motive or unknown personality trait. As science has advanced things that originally had no explanation have observable causes. Water can move laterally using magnetism but it isn’t the suspension of gravity. Rainbows and thunder once had no explanation but now do. If something breaks the normal course of expected behavior.
Our knowledge of miracles derives exclusively from the testimony of others who claim to have seen miracles. Since we receive this testimony secondhand from the experience of others, we should treat it as less reliable than our own experience.
Belief, Hume asserts, should be proportioned to evidence. Hume is not interested in questioning the possibility of miracles actually arising so much as he is interested in questioning the grounds according to which we justify them. Miracles may exist, but we are rationally unjustified in believing in them.
If experience the laws of nature from personal experience and miracles second hand, human reason determines us to favor first hand experience first. Also, we know people can be mistaken and that as an explanation is far more consistent with observable explanation rather than the miracle. From these arguments, it is not hard to see why Hume was accused of atheism.
Magic-
we ought to proportion our certainty regarding any matter of fact to the strength of the evidence
According to Hume, the evidence in favor of a miracle, even when that is provided by the strongest possible testimony, will always be outweighed by the evidence for the law of nature which is supposed to have been violated.
Section 11 – Laws of Inference
Inference can be arrived at by experience. The grass will be slippery when it rains, footprints in the sand come from people but God cannot be inferred from experience but from only imagination. Christianity has a win-win, everything benevolent and convenient in nature is so by design, whereas everything malevolent and inconvenient is a result of original sin. Both sides of the coin prove the inference. However, without experiencing God or some divine creation we can’t reason his existence. We know footprints in the sand because we’ve done it or seen it. We can’t infer earths divine creation. We cannot conclude the cause from the effect if it hasn’t been experienced.
“Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? then whence evil?”
Section 12 – Conclusion
Though this extreme antecedent skepticism is unworkable, Hume commends it in a more moderate form. It consists simply in forming unprejudiced opinions, progressing by small steps from sound first principles, and examining one's conclusions frequently and carefully/ This extreme form of consequent skepticism is clearly unlivable, Hume again finds it useful in a more moderate form. Dogmatic and hasty reasoning may be mitigated by a constant recognition that reasoning can go astray and judgments should never be absolute.
When called a relativist by critics, Hume responded with this letter.
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