David Hume’s Philosophy: A Critical Analysis
From the sixteenth century, a new scientific model is shown, the hypothetical deductive method that gives rise to two philosophical currents: empiricism and rationalism. Rationalism is based on reason as a fundamental tool, takes as a model for the mathematical method, and affirms the existence of innate ideas. Descartes is the most representative. Empiricism, however, is based on experience and denies the existence of innate knowledge. The most important empiricists are Locke, and especially Berkeley and Hume.
Hume’s Life and Work
Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711. During his travels in France, he published his most important work, “Treatise of Human Nature,” which had no success. This led to the writing of the “Compendium” in 1740. He died in Edinburgh in 1776. In this “Compendium,” Hume states the novelty of his empiricist method, the desire that philosophy reaches to be as rigorous as physics, and the aims of the science of human nature that studies and analyzes human beings. He makes a more critical rationalism than Descartes, saying that the limit of knowledge is experience.
Impressions and Ideas
One of the most important points of Hume’s philosophy is the difference between ideas and impressions. As explained in the “Compendium,” a perception will be an impression when we feel a passion or emotion or when we have images of objects transmitted by the senses. So, impressions can be passion, emotion, or feeling, whereas an idea is a perception, an attenuated copy of the impressions. Note that the difference between the two is not content but intensity because impressions are stronger than ideas, which are more feeble.
From this conception arises the empiricist criterion of significance. This criterion explains that impressions precede ideas, and each idea, therefore, corresponds to an impression. So, if we check the validity of a philosophical term, we must ask what impression derives this idea, and if we cannot find the answer, it is not valid.
Critique of Locke and Innate Ideas
Hume criticizes Locke, affirming the existence of innate ideas. For Hume, ideas are innate impressions, but Locke, however, does not differentiate between impression and idea and calls it all “idea.”
Analysis of the Idea of Cause
Another important issue is the analysis of the idea of cause. Hume differentiates two kinds of propositions:
- Relations of ideas: These are propositions of logic and mathematics that cannot be denied because it falls into contradiction. What you can do is show them.
- Matters of fact: These are propositions that are justified on experience and that can be analyzed and proven.
Hume uses the latter because many of them are used because the idea appears in many areas. Therefore, substantiate the idea because the idea is important. For this, Hume uses the example of billiard balls. Hume discovered that three characteristics of the causal contiguity in time of cause and effect, the temporal priority of cause, and constant conjunction, but do not see anything. Printer connection is not necessary to consider valid the idea of cause.
Predictions and the Principle of Uniformity of Nature
Then, Hume refers to Adam to explain why we make predictions about the future because if the idea is not valid and we have no impression on the future. He concludes by showing that our reasoning about cause and effect are based on past experience and in the event that the course of nature will remain uniform and that the future will agree with the past (Principle of Uniformity of Nature). Although it is not apparent that nature will behave the same way, we are determined by custom to assume that the future will be like the past. We have no knowledge of future events; we only have beliefs (Radical Skepticism).
Conception and Belief
Hume also differentiates between conception and belief. For him, belief implies a conception but does not provide any new idea. So, the concept is all that we imagine will happen in a causal relationship. However, the belief is that we think is more likely to pass due to past experience.
Critique of Metaphysics
Hume also made a critique of metaphysics, as the abstract concepts of metaphysics do not find verification on impressions and therefore are invalid and must be eliminated. This implies a criticism of the empiricists Locke and Berkeley. For Berkeley, God was the cause of his ideas, while for Hume, neither God nor the idea because the idea is valid. For Locke, however, the reality was that caused the foreign ideas, but for Hume, the idea because it does not, and neither denies nor affirms the existence of external reality because it considers illegal. Then, we may ask they came to Hume’s ideas, but his empiricism is not to respond to this NRA beyond the experience and no knowledge beyond our impressions.
Critique of Self and Personal Identity
Another criticism of Hume is the self or personal identity because this idea is not derived from any impression that if you print the original idea of the impression, I would be unchanged throughout our life, and there is no impression constant and invariable. Hume explained the idea of referring to memory; the subject is not constant but successive impressions of the self creates memory and using an abstract idea which does not have printing and therefore invalid.
Critique of Moral Judgments
The other is the criticism of Hume’s moral judgments. For him, the only reason for intervening in the calculation of consequences of an action, but the feeling that says if an action is moral or immoral. In moral judgments, we must know all the circumstances and from here decide whether the feeling the action is moral if it produces a pleasurable feeling or immoral if it produces a feeling of rejection. Just as beauty criticized the idea because they do not find beauty in a figure, but the sentiment is what determines whether an object is beautiful or not. It also shows that we cannot qualify for moral or immoral actions of inanimate objects.
Reason and Sentiments
Finally, he shows that the ultimate aim of any human action can never be explained by reason but by sentiments. Therefore, the most important point of Hume’s theory of knowledge is the critique of the idea because, as this allows you to criticize other ideas and establish what determines our belief in the idea because it is not knowledge but the custom, and therefore this idea is invalid.
Regarding Other Authors
Hume criticizes the idea of God. While for Berkeley, God was the cause of his ideas, for Hume, this inference is invalid because we have no impression of God, and neither is more valid because the idea. Regarding the existence of external reality, Hume’s position can qualify for the agnostic. If, for Locke, the existence of external reality is justified by a causal relationship (remember that for Locke, external reality was because of his ideas), for Hume, this inference is invalid because it did not print one another, but the impressions of a different reality of these alleged.