Hume’s Empiricism: Principles and Implications
Hume’s Theory of Knowledge and Empiricism
In the treatise and in the investigation of human knowledge, Hume makes a very consistent development of empiricism.
Principles of Hume’s Empiricism
- Principle of Empiricism: Though our thought seems to have unlimited freedom, it is, in fact, reduced to very narrow limits. Reason cannot generate an original idea by itself.
- Principle of Immanence: Nothing can be in the mind except an image or perception. The senses are only conduits through which these images are transmitted, without being able to produce immediate contact between the mind and the object.
- Principle of Copy: All our ideas are copies of our impressions. Therefore, it is impossible to think of something we have not previously felt with our senses. This criterion allows Hume to build a criterion of discrimination that he uses very often.
- Principle of Association of Ideas: Ideas are not disconnected in the mind. On the one hand, imagination has great power and freedom to mix and match as it pleases. But there is also an attraction. Like Newton, Hume reduces them to laws: resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect.
- Principle of Denial of General Ideas: There are no general and abstract ideas; all general ideas are particular ideas related to something general.
Issues of Fact and Relations of Ideas
Hume’s research is done with constant use of this distinction, known as “Hume’s Fork,” which is practically absent in the treatise. There are two kinds of truths: truths of reason and truths of fact. Truths of reason are necessary, and their opposite is impossible. Truths of fact are contingent, and their opposite is possible. Truths of reason do not refer to reality and are innate. They are tautologies and are based on the principle of identity if they are affirmative or contradiction if they are negative. In contrast, truths of fact relate to reality and are based on the principle of sufficient reason.
Therefore, for Hume, relations of ideas correspond to demonstrative reasoning, and factual arguments correspond to probable reasoning.
The Problem of Reality (Factual Questions)
Immediately after establishing the distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, Hume investigates the nature of the evidence for any real existence and matter of fact. So far, impressions and memory seem more than sufficient to ensure the reality of the present and past.
The problem lies in the future because we cannot have an impression of it. However, there are future events that seem quite obvious. This evidence is based on:
- All reasoning about matters of fact seems to be based on cause and effect. Only through this relationship can we go beyond our senses.
- Causes and effects cannot be discovered by reason but only by experience.
- All the arguments based on experience are based on the similarity we find in natural objects, which leads us to expect effects similar to those previously experienced.
- Custom is the guide of human life; practice leads us to belief. Our security in the future is but a belief based on custom or habit.
Belief
We cannot have rational certainty on questions of fact, but only belief. In its existence in the world, belief is the guide of man, not objective, rational, and true knowledge.
Belief is but a particular type of feeling that accompanies an association of ideas.
Science
- Mathematics: Concerns relations of ideas and, therefore, allows demonstrative reasoning that is absolutely sure and certain a priori. Mathematical truths are not logical but are based solely on psychological laws.
- Physics: Deals with facts, which reduces to law. Its purpose is to teach us how to control and regulate future events by their causes.
- Metaphysics: Considered abstruse knowledge, it leads to dogmatic superstition.