DAVID HUME
BIOGRAPHY
David Hume was born on 26 April 1711 in a tenement on the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh,
Scotland.
He’s a scottish philosopher, historian and economist known especially for
his empiricism and skepticism.
he thinks that much of our alleged knowledge essentially involves beliefs that cannot be rationally
justified and that hence much of our alleged knowledge is not knowledge at all.
In much of his work he questioned the epistemological bases of philosophical beliefs, and in so doing
he
attempted to establish that some longstanding assumptions were
devoid of epistemological proof.
He was a fierce opponent of the Rationalism of Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, as well
as an atheist and a skeptic.
The problem with ancient philosophy was its reliance on “hypotheses”—claims based on
speculation and invention rather than experience and observation
His father was Joseph Home (an advocate or barrister of Chirnside, Scotland), and the
aristocrat Katherine Lady Falconer.
He entered Edinburgh University when he was about 12 years old
Pressed a little later to study law
soon decided that it was “a laborious profession” requiring “the drudgery of a whole life.”
He
(in the family tradition on both sides), but he found it distasteful and instead read
voraciously in the wider sphere of letters.
Because of the intensity and excitement of his intellectual discovery
He had a nervous breakdown in 1729, from which it took him a few years to recover.
In order to earn a living, he took a position in a merchant's office in Bristol before
moving to A France in 1734. It was there that he used up his savings to support himself
while he wrote his masterwork, "A Treatise of Human Nature",
which he completed in 1737 (at only 26 years of age). Despite the disappointment of the
work's poor reception in Britain (it was considered "abstract and unintelligible"), he immediately
set to work to produce an anonymous "Abstract" or shortened version of it.
After the publication of his "Essays Moral and Political" in 1744,
Hume was refused a post at the University of Edinburgh after local
ministers petitioned the town council not to appoint Hume due to his Atheism.
From 1746, Hume served for three years as Secretary to a distant relative, Lieutenant-
General St. Clai
In 1752, the Faculty of Advocates employed him as their librarian,
for which he received little or no emolument, but which gave him access to a large
library, and which enabled him to continue historical research for his "History of Great
Britain". It was a best-seller in its day and became the standard work on English history
for many years. Thus, it was as a historian that Hume finally achieved literary fame.
From 1763 to 1765, Hume was Secretary to Lord Hertford in Paris
For a year from 1767, he held the appointment of Under Secretary of State for the
Northern Department in London, before retiring back to Edinburgh in 1768.
He died in Edinburgh on August 25 1776, aged 65, probably as a result of a
debilitating cancer he suffered from in his latter years,
CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY
CAUSE AND EFFECT (CAUSAL INFERENCE)
According to Hume, the notion of cause-effect is a complex idea that is made up of three
more foundational ideas: priority in time, proximity in space, and necessary connection.
Concerning priority in time, if I say that event A causes event B, one thing I mean is that
A occurs prior to B. If B were to occur before A, then it would be absurd to say that A
was the cause of B.
Concerning the idea of proximity, if I say that A causes B, then I mean that B is in
proximity to, or close to A. For example, if I throw a rock, and at that moment
someone’s window in China breaks, I would not conclude that my rock broke a window
on the other side of the world. The broken window and the rock must be in proximity
with each other. Priority and proximity alone, however, do not make up our entire
notion of causality. For example, if I sneeze and the lights go out, I would not conclude
that my sneeze was the cause, even though the conditions of priority and proximity were
fulfilled. We also believe that there is a necessary connection between cause A and effect
B. During the modern period of philosophy, philosophers thought of necessary
connection as a power or force connecting two events.
The idea we have of necessary connection arises as follows: we experience a constant
conjunction of events A and B— repeated sense experiences where events resembling A are
always followed by events resembling B. This produces a habit such that upon any further
appearance of A, we expect B to follow. This, in turn, produces an internal feeling of expectation
“to pass from an object to the idea of its usual attendant,”
There can be no progress without scepticism, since otherwise existing beliefs would never be
challenged. Established approaches are challenged, and either survive or are supplanted by
new approaches which are thought to give better explanations or guidance. Hume’s sceptical
attitude to empiricism marked one of the great turning points in philosophy
INDUCTIVE REASONING
Humans have a tendency to observe an unchanging pattern and assume that it will
continue in that fashion forever.
For example, we notice the sky getting dark every night and the sun setting, and so
we infer that it will do the same tomorrow.
Related to causation, the concept of always seeing one thing follow another and
concluding that
• A) They are connected (A causes B)
• B) Will always react the same way (A will always cause B)
The closer we are to certainty although we don’t quite get there,which is what David
Hume, the skeptical scotsman has to say about the problem of induction. That
really,when it comes down to it, the induction cannot ever lead us to certain knowledge
because it presupposes that things, will stay the way they always have been. So, for
example if. I were to say “the sun always rises in the East” what Im really saying is there
is a very high probability that the sun will rise in the East-that it always does because we
have always seen it that way. But are we certain that the sun will rise in the East
tomorrow?
In reality, we have no true way of knowing that the future will conform to the past and
no reason to believe that just because things have always been one way, they will
continue to do so. This kind of reasoning where we infer one thing from another is called
„inductive reasoning‟ It is one of Hume’s most prominent theories
MORAL PHILOSOPHY
He also made many important contributions to moral philosophy. Hume’s ethical thought
grapples with questions about the relationship between morality and reason, the role of human
emotion in thought and action, the nature of moral evaluation, human sociability, and what it
means to live a virtuous life.
Where he defines “moral philosophy” as “the science of human nature”
Hume’s aim is to bring the scientific method to bear on the study of human nature.
He rejects the rationalist conception of morality whereby humans make moral
evaluations, and understand right and wrong, through reason alone.
In place of the rationalist view,
Hume contends that moral evaluations depend significantly on sentiment or feeling
because we have the requisite emotional capacities.
in addition to our faculty of reason, that we can determine that some action is
ethically wrong, or a person has a virtuous moral character.
Hume sees moral evaluations, like our evaluations of aesthetic beauty, as arising
from the human faculty of taste.
Furthermore, this process of moral evaluation relies significantly upon the human
capacity for sympathy, or our ability to partake of the feelings, beliefs, and emotions
of other people.
For Hume there is a strong connection between morality and human sociability.
Finally, the overall orientation of Hume’s moral philosophy is naturalistic. Instead of
basing morality on religious and divine sources of authority, Hume seeks an
empirical theory of morality grounded on observation of human nature.
MORAL APPROVAL
It is an emotional response, not a rational one. The details of this part of his theory rest on a
distinction between three psychologically distinct players:
Three psychologically distinct players:
1.Moral agent - is the person who performs an action
2. Receiver – is the person impacted by the conduct
3. Moral spectator - is the person who observes and, in this case, disapproves of the agent’s
action
The moral agent is the person who performs an action, such as stealing a car; the receiver is
the person impacted by the conduct, such as the owner of the stolen car; and the
moral spectator is the person who observes and, in this case, disapproves of the agent’s action.
Most generally, moral sense theories maintained that humans have a faculty
of moral perception, similar to our faculties of sensory perception.
Just as our external senses detect qualities in external objects, such as colors and
shapes, so too does our moral faculty detect good and bad moral qualities in people and
actions.
For Hume, all actions of a moral agent are motivated by character traits, specifically either
virtuous or vicious character traits.. For example, if you as the agent give food to a starving
person, then the receiver will experience an immediately agreeable feeling from your act. Also,
the receiver may see the usefulness of your food donation, insofar as eating food will improve
his health. When considering the usefulness of your food donation, then, the receiver will
receive another agreeable feeling from your act. Finally, I, as a spectator, observe these
agreeable feelings that the receiver experiences. I, then, will sympathetically experience
agreeable feelings along with the receiver. These sympathetic feelings of pleasure constitute my
moral approval of the original act of charity that you, the agent, perform. By sympathetically
experiencing this pleasure, I thereby pronounce your motivating character trait to be a virtue, as
opposed to a vice. Suppose, on the other hand, that you as an agent did something to hurt the
receiver, such as steal his car. I as the spectator would then sympathetically experience the
receiver’s pain and thereby pronounce your motivating character trait to be a vice, as opposed
to a virtue.
Constitute moral virtue:
(1) qualities useful to others, which include benevolence, meekness, charity, justice, fidelity and
veracity;
(2) qualities useful to oneself, which include industry, perseverance, and patience;
(3) qualities immediately agreeable to others, which include wit, eloquence and cleanliness; and
(4) qualities immediately agreeable to oneself, which include good humor, self-esteem and
pride.
When Hume spoke about an agent’s “useful” consequences, he often used the word “utility” as
a synonym.
Moral theorists after Hume thus depicted his moral theory as the “theory of utility”—namely, that
morality involves assessing the pleasing and painful consequences of actions on the receiver. It
is this concept and terminology that inspired classic utilitarian philosophers, such as Jeremy
Bentham (1748–1832).
Our moral feelings are the result of the education of our sentiments. Hume’s attitudes to
causality and human behaviour are consistent. In his view they both arise from
dispositions, formed in the one case by experience, and in the other by social
Belief
Hume then considers the process of causal inference, and in so doing he introduces the
concept of belief. When people see a glass fall, they not only think of its breaking but expect
and believe that it will break. Or, starting from an effect, when they see the ground to be
generally wet, they not only think of rain but believe that there has been rain. Thus belief is a
significant component in the process of causal inference. Hume then proceeds to investigate the
nature of belief, claiming that he was the first to do so. He uses the term, however, in the narrow
sense of belief regarding matters of fact. He defines belief as a sort of liveliness or vividness
that accompanies the perception of an idea. A belief, in other words, is a vivid or lively idea. This
vividness is originally possessed by some of the objects of awareness—by impressions and by
the simple memory-images of them. By association it comes to belong to certain ideas as well.
In the process of causal inference, then, an observer passes from an impression to an idea
regularly associated with it. In the process the aspect of liveliness proper to the impression
infects the idea, Hume asserts. And it is this aspect of liveliness that Hume defines as the
essence of belief.
Hume does not claim to prove that events themselves are not causally related or that they will
not be related in the future in the same ways as they were in the past. Indeed, he firmly believes
the contrary and insists that everybody else does as well. Belief in causality and in the
resemblance of the future to the past are natural beliefs, inextinguishable propensities of human
nature (madness apart), and even necessary for human survival. Rather, what Hume claims to
prove is that such natural beliefs are not obtained from, and cannot be demonstrated by,
either empirical observation or reason, whether intuitive or inferential. Although reflection shows
that there is no evidence for them, it also shows that humans are bound to have them and that it
is sensible and sane to do so. This is Hume’s skepticism: it is an affirmation of that tension, a
denial not of belief but of certainty.
LEGAL
His central concern was to show the importance of the rule of law
The important point for Hume was that society be governed by a general and impartial
system of laws, based principally on the "artifice" of contract (Contractarianism).
Contractarianism holds that social rules are justified if, and only if, they serve
to increase the utility of each member of the community taken severally. For the
contractarian, each individual must be made better off by a set of social rules.
Hume's frequent remarks that justice exists because of its usefulness or utility, that it is this
feature of justice which distinguishes it from superstition, and so forth .
Public utility is the general object of all courts and he constantly describes laws using moral
terminology.
But Hume always describes the sources of law in moral terms, in terms of how, whatever the
law is, it necessarily promotes utility.
Hume pointed out
that certainty will more likely come from abstract reasoning
(such as mathematics, logic, or tautologies), while knowledge is
derived from empirical data. Even then, we must rely on probable knowledge and not proven
certainties.
