Hume’s Empiricism: Knowledge, Causality, and Morality

Posted on Nov 19, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Hume: Theory of Knowledge

• Hume was the most radical empiricist, taking the limits of Locke and Berkeley and extracting from them what their predecessors did not dare say.
• Unable to refer to an outside world until we have proved its existence, Hume believes that we only know that some representations in our consciousness are sharp and intense, and others less so. The first impressions are known and can be of sensation and reflection, and the latter are ideas.

True to the empiricist principle of not admitting as true anything that is not the product of pure experience, Hume sets the correspondence principle: there can be no other source for ideas than impressions, and any idea must correspond to an impression.

• Not all ideas are simple. There are complex ideas that result from the aggregation in the mind of several simple ideas that have no direct connection with any impression (e.g., a winged horse). Simple ideas necessarily come from previously received impressions.
• Once we have these ideas, we can distinguish two types of knowledge:
• Relations of ideas: mathematical and logical propositions linked to the definition of things, regardless of whether they exist or not. Relations of ideas are the most certain, but do not inform us of the existence of any object, only the conditions to be met if they exist.
• Matters of fact: They deal with what actually happens, known from experience and not by demonstration. Statements of matters of fact are contingent, not necessary, like relations of ideas. Experience tells us that an event has occurred, but it could have occurred otherwise.

The laws of association of ideas explain the flow of ideas in the mind.

e) Critique of metaphysics: anything that cannot be traced back to experience is meaningless.

f) Critique of the idea of substance: We have impressions of the qualities of things, but not the things themselves. Therefore, substance is just a name for a set of qualities joined together.

Hume also focuses on the idea of causality, considering the cause-effect relationship fundamental. When we analyze such cases, we always perceive the same impressions.

g) While we lack metaphysical certainty, we can have moral certainties, probable convictions based on experience.

Hume undermines metaphysical knowledge and adopts a skeptical phenomenalism, affirming only the phenomena we experience.

Criticism of Substance and Causality

Criticism of Substance

Hume criticized the idea of substance as a permanent substrate. We say “the table is green” or “the table is hard,” but we receive impressions of greenness and hardness, not the table itself. The table is the permanent substance inferred from the qualities we perceive.

Experience gives us a set of qualities, some appearing simultaneously. Our mind imagines a necessary connection between these qualities and uses a single name for the substance, which is just a name for a set of joined qualities.

Hume applied his correspondence principle to the idea of self. The thinking substance is a collection of perceptions. We perceive mental representations, not the mind itself.

Criticism of Causality

Hume identified three factors in the cause-effect relationship:

• Contiguity: Cause and effect occur in the same or close space and time.
• Temporal priority: The cause precedes the effect.
• Constant conjunction: If the cause is replaced by a similar one, the same effect occurs. The two always occur together.

Experiences lead to a habit or custom, making the mind expect the conjunction of certain phenomena. This allows us to anticipate events, but thought cannot predict the future or the true nature of things by itself.

This critique leads to a skeptical position. Eliminating reason from experience makes rational exercise impossible, but the lack of metaphysical certainty does not preclude moral certainty.

Custom and Belief

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The reason you can not extract from experience the necessity of causal connection. When viewing a billiard ball moving towards another at rest, we are convinced that once you are still bump will start to move. According to Hume this conviction is a habit of the imagination. It is the force of habit that leads to establishing causal relationships.

Thus the constant conjunction of events in the mind generates belief in a necessary connection. This is not an idea, but merely a habit that leads us to have a belief in the inevitability of succession. Maybe if there are causal connections but we can not know, just believe they exist.

• The moral.
• Leading thinkers base their moral theories in their findings in the field of knowledge but what shall those who deny moral foundation of reason, as Hume, computer and power limited to its role as repository of impressions?
• Hume put morality beyond the limits of reason because it is responsible for approving or not the actions. The reason for the moral assessment describes and expresses what made us feel. The moral approval or disapproval are not facts but the facts reveal feelings in us to the extent that we associate with what is pleasant or unpleasant, useful or harmful. The feeling is the moral and value is the end.
• Hume’s ethics can be described as emotivist because for the only function of reason is the description of relations of ideas or matters of fact. However, between being and there must be a bridge that reason can go and jump this distance is an error so serious as frequent.
• Emotivism moral ethical propositions are neither true nor false: they merely express a feeling, which is why Hume ensure that “not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the world rather than a scratch on my finger.” The moral choice is outside of reason in the realm of emotions. Hume accepts that the reason acts as arbiter of issues arising in the moral life, but is the feeling that decides our motives, “the reason is, and must be, only the slave of the passions, and can not claim another task to serve and obey. “

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