David Hume’s Philosophy: Skepticism and Emotivism

David Hume’s Critique of the Concept of “I”

Critics of the concept of “I”: Hume used criticism of the concept of innate ideas and the “I” to develop Cartesian skepticism. The existence of substance as a cognoscente “I” had been considered unquestionable, not only by Descartes. It seemed that the “I” was immediately called an intuition: “I think therefore I am.” Hume also criticized the “I” as a reality different from impressions and ideas. Regarding the existence of the “I” as the subject of ongoing mental acts, Hume ruled that personal identity would be something like the “identity of mind,” and it is obvious that this does not exist. You must understand this denial of “I” in a coherent manner. For Hume, “I” does not have the identity of a unique and immutable individual but is constituted by a relationship between perceptions, and perceptions change when you change. I can never know the “I” devoid of perceptions, so I do not know the substance but the set or bundle of perceptions. The “I” is constantly changing. There is no unitary or single criterion of personal identity that transcends time. The definition of “I” in Hume is “A beam of different sensations and impressions.” Every human being recognizes himself changing, becoming as they change their views and ideas. To explain the consciousness of identity, Hume has to resort to memory. Thanks to her, we recognize the connection between the different impressions that occur. The error consists in confusing succession and identity. Hume realized that this response was not entirely satisfactory but a necessary consequence of his concept of truth and, therefore, affirms a skeptical attitude and tolerance.

Hume’s Critique of the Concept of “God”

Critical to the concept of “God”: Hume denies that God can be considered due to the world because the concept of “cause” for him makes no sense. Only legitimate ideas come from impressions. We have no impression of God, and answering the question of whether God exists is impossible because impressions are the limits of knowledge. We have impressions but do not know where they come from. The simple fact of knowing that we have them is enough to live without an idea that could be interested fiction. There are good reasons to suppose that Hume was an atheist, but it is obvious that the idea of God does not serve to justify the origin of our impressions.

Hume’s Critique of the Concept of “External World”

Critical to the concept of “external world”: We have knowledge of the outside world because the extramental reality is the cause of our impressions. Hume does not accept the idea that because we can move from one impression to another, but we cannot go from impression to an alleged cause or origin of impressions. We do not know, nor can we know, where impressions came from; therefore, we cannot say if there really is a different reality from our impressions and ideas. The principles of the theory of knowledge necessarily lead to Hume’s phenomenalism and skepticism. Hume believed that impressions are the starting point of absolute knowledge. Beyond impressions, we cannot go. It is legitimate to go beyond the phenomenon, understanding the word in its etymological sense: phenomenon, Greek Fainomenon, “What appears,” “What is shown.” Phenomenalism leads to coupled skepticism. We can never be absolutely sure of our impressions, contrary to some questions of fact whenever possible. There are no unquestionable principles, only beliefs. Belief is a feeling caused by the conjunction of a series of events that are used to seeing one after another. Imagination progresses the event. No proof that experience confirms the experience of tomorrow today. The principle of causality is reduced to a succession of impressions. From now on, however, a problem appears: if science cannot use the concept of “causality” and, furthermore, the inductive method is invalid, then it seems that science is unauthorized to make necessary and universal laws. The idea of a skeptical science is just naive; science is so critical as to forget that the construction and validation of a functional can cause serious conceptual difficulties.

Hume’s Critique of the Concept of Substance

Critics of the concept of substance: Hume always remains faithful to his criterion of truth: the copy. He affirms that the certainty in our knowledge of the facts comes from a belief. The psychological mechanism of habit and custom is the only one that allows us to answer the question about causality and is also the key that allows us to analyze the concept of substance. Hume says that we can move from one sensitive impression to another, but we can never move from impression to something of which we have never had experience or impression. If intelligence can come to believe that there is substance, it is simply due to errors in the associations of ideas. Descartes and the rationalists had argued, moreover, that innate ideas and thinking substance are the causes of things. Hume also criticized the idea of substance, saying that we can only trust our senses despite that leading us to a skeptical attitude. As in the case of causality, what makes us believe in substance is that there are psychological mechanisms that make us appreciate constancy in things, but this does not imply a logical necessity.

Hume’s Critical Theory of Causality

A critical theory of causality in Hume: Hume takes any causal relationship between two facts as legiform, but this should be clarified. They have the same value of a statistical than a causal or functional causal logic. Hume thinks as if causality between objects or events always happens when, in reality, the issue is more complex. Hume does not differentiate between causality “in the media” and causality “in order,” which the schoolmen had not addressed. In fact, Hume ultimately reduces causality to “contiguity” and, therefore, logically trivializes the problem.

Emotivism as Hume’s Moral Proposal

Emotivism as a proposal for moral: Hume’s ethical theory is usually summarized with one word: EMOTIVISM. Emotivism is a theory according to which ethical and moral ideas come from emotion or feeling and have no rational justification. You can also define emotivism as a theory contrary to moral intellectualism. For an emotivist, morality is based not on reason but on sentiment or “passion.” As a liberal, he considers the importance of ethics is that tolerance can afford based on human relations, but not its logical value. According to Hume, there are two types of propositions: Ideas and Relationships, matters that depend on experience. A trial cannot be moral questions of facts or relations of ideas.

Hume wants an ethics based in the same way that Newton, the most famous intellectual of the time, based Physics. The moral value of an act depends on the feelings that cause the subject. There are events, actions, or individuals that attract us because we found them friendly, and this is what we call “good.” This “sympathy” has an almost instinctive and psychological character.

Ethics has no “real value” and has nothing to do with logical inferences. That explains why Hume is unassailable to the famous phrase, “It is not contradictory to reason to prefer the destruction of the world before a scratch on my finger.” Ethics is not a pure chance that we can use the experimental method when evaluating our actions. The theory is a relativistic emotivism with a strong mixture of analytical and psychological, but it includes a realistic assessment of the consequences of our actions that approach utilitarianism.