Hume’s Empiricism: Causality, Skepticism, and Morality
Cultural and Historical Context
The decline of the nobility and the monarchy led to the bourgeoisie demanding more political power. They proclaimed human rights and equality before the law, weakening the privileges of the ruling class. These principles fueled the French Revolution, marking the beginning of the end for the Ancien Régime in Europe and ushering in the era of 19th-century bourgeois revolutions. The Agricultural Revolution of 1750 and the subsequent Industrial Revolution transformed economic and technical structures. In culture, the new civic morality found expression in Neoclassical art, emphasizing serenity and moral severity.
Philosophical Context
Rationalism and empiricism were the dominant philosophical currents of the 17th and 18th centuries. Rationalism posits reason as the source of knowledge, with innate ideas and self-evident truths forming the foundation of understanding. Empiricism, on the other hand, locates the origin of ideas in sensory experience. David Hume, living during the publication of the Encyclopedia (1751), witnessed the emergence of significant works like Rousseau’s “The Social Contract” and Montesquieu’s influential writings. Enlightenment thinkers, applying reason to revealed religion, advocated for natural religion based on reason alone (deism). They rejected the authority of the church and the divine right of monarchy.
Hume’s Philosophy
Hume’s primary objective was to study human nature and the scope and validity of knowledge. He adopted the scientific method of Newton, grounded in experience, considering observations and ideas as the elements of knowledge.
Ideas and Impressions
For Hume, ideas are specific contents of consciousness and awareness that we call perceptions. He categorized perceptions into two types:
- Impressions: Simple, original, vivid, and immediate perceptions derived directly from sensory experience.
- Ideas: Copies of impressions, representing weaker, less vivid perceptions.
Hume argued that all ideas originate from impressions, emphasizing sensory experience as the foundation of our understanding of reality. His position is phenomenalist: we can only know our impressions and ideas, not any external reality beyond them. Every idea must be traced back to a corresponding impression; otherwise, it is considered false. This principle forms the basis of Hume’s radical empiricism.
Association of Ideas
Hume believed that ideas are connected in the mind through the laws of association:
- Law of Similarity
- Law of Contiguity
- Law of Cause and Effect
Types of Knowledge
Based on these laws, Hume distinguished two types of knowledge:
- Relations of Ideas: Demonstrative sciences deal with analytic propositions expressing necessary relations, their truth known a priori (independent of experience).
- Matters of Fact: Knowledge of facts based on impressions, with truth known a posteriori (through experience).
Causality
Hume argued that all reasoning about matters of fact relies on the relationship between cause and effect. He reduced causality to the law of spatiotemporal contiguity, suggesting that we can have an impression of an event that hasn’t occurred yet. The cause-effect connection arises from the habit of associating an event with one that follows it. Hume challenged the validity of the principle of causality, deeming it an assumption or belief rather than a demonstrable truth.
Limits of Causal Inference
- External Reality: The assertion of an external reality, including the cause-effect relationship, is merely an assumption or belief, not a certainty derived from impressions.
- God: Attempting to prove God’s existence through the principle of causality involves moving from our impressions to an entity (God) of whom we have no direct experience. Therefore, we cannot definitively affirm God’s existence.
- The Self: We lack a direct impression of the self. While we can recognize connections between impressions and ideas, we cannot deduce the existence of a substance called “I.” The concept of substance, lacking a corresponding impression, represents a series of perceptions grouped by resemblance, space, and time.
Skepticism
Hume’s radical critique of causality and substance led him to skepticism and phenomenalism. He argued that reality is ultimately reducible to perceptions and phenomena, with knowledge limited to the realm of our experiences.
Ethics and Politics
Ethics
Hume’s ethical theory consists of two parts:
- Critique of Moral Rationalism: Hume rejected the notion that morality is based on reason. He argued that attempting to derive moral principles from human nature commits the naturalistic fallacy.
- Moral Emotivism: Hume proposed that moral judgments are not matters of reason but of “taste” or sentiment. He believed that virtue and vice evoke feelings of approval or disapproval, respectively.
Hume’s moral theory can be characterized as utilitarian, where actions are judged based on their tendency to promote happiness and well-being.
Political Theory
: the political conception of Hume is utilitarian: the foundation of obedience to political authority in the interest lies in the particular benefits that are obtained, it is useful and beneficial because it provides strength, skill and safety