David Hume
I would like to start by stating that the
arguments I will present about David
Hume’s "An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding" are not going to be
leaning completely towards his point of
view or against it due to the fact that
I agree with certain views on his
philosophy and disagree with others. In "Of
the Origin of Ideas", Hume
divides all perceptions into two basic kinds:
impressions, which are the
"livelier" and "more vivid" perceptions; and
ideas, which are "less lively"
copies of the original impression. He gives
some excellent analogies to back
this up. For example, he says "when we think
of a golden mountain, we only
join two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain,
with which we were formerly
aquainted ". I consider this point of view to be
completely logical and agree
with Hume, but at the same time I’m a little
skeptic about it because he
himself gives a counterexample to his own claim that
simple ideas are always
copied from impression. In the whole example of
introducing a new shade of
color, I disagree with Hume when he states that
"... this instance is so
singular, that it is scarcely worth our observing,
and does not merit, that
for it alone we should alter our general maxim"
because what if there are
other instances where the same thing could happen. Did
he have an infinite
amount of time to go through all the possibilities of all
the cases that
could happen in an entire lifetime or just generally in life?
In
"Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding", he
says
that "all reasoning about matters of fact seem to be founded on the
relation
of Cause and Effect" and this was something that I agreed on with
him because
if I challenge it and put it to test, it seems to work every
time, but he
doesn’t stop there. He says if you agree with the cause and
effect concept,
then you must find out how we arrive at the knowledge of
cause and effect. Then
his answer to this is that you don’t know the cause
and effect of an object
just by looking at it and reasoning a priori, but
solely through experience.
This is yet another topic where I agree on,
but am skeptic about his conclusion
on it because he is basically saying that
nothing should be assumed do to prior
experience and should be challenged at
all times. For example, he says "All
our reasonings a priori will never be
able to shew us any foundation for this
preference", and also that "It could
not, therefore, be discovered in the
cause, and the first invention or
conception of it, a priori, must be entirely
arbitrary". Sure, this would
probably be the best way to be certain about a
factual matter, but we as
humans are not immortal so I say it would be ludicrous
to go on living life
in this frame of mind. I think Hume’s view on cause and
effect is similar to
Descartes’’ view on reality because they are both super
skeptic about the
matter of facts, but a major difference would be that Hume
actually believes
in the fact once it has been challenged and Descartes would
doubt everything
even if experienced and challenged. Like Hume, Locke believed
that you are
born with a blank mind and then through experiences you would gain
knowledge,
but there was a difference in the way each viewed this notion. Locke
believed
that an object obtained certain qualities or attributes, which were
powers
and these powers would then produce the ideas. He also broke these
qualities
into two types, which were primary and secondary. The primary were the
simple
ideas like solidity, texture, extension, figure, and motion. The
secondary
were not in the objects themselves, but were powers to produce color,
sound,
taste, and other things of the sort. This seems like a rational way to
look
at how one might come to gain knowledge, but I prefer Hume’s way of
thinking
a lot better. He says that we obtain all our conclusions from the
principle
of "Custom and Habit". He describes custom as being the repetition
of any
particular act or operation, which produces the tendency to start over
the
same act without being influenced by reason. In conclusion about custom,
he
says, " Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant
of
every matter of fact, beyond what is immediately present to the memory
and
senses". This is the statement I like the most because it’s how every
human
being lives today whether they realize it or not.