David Hume: Empiricism and the Human Mind
David Hume was one of the leading representatives of British empiricism. His clear and profound criticism of rationalism awakened Immanuel Kant from his “dogmatic slumber”. Hume applied the scientific method to study the human mind, analyzing the psychological processes with a similar or comparable model to that used for the analysis of physical phenomena. The basic elements or “atoms” are here perceptions (impressions and simple ideas) that relate to each other spontaneously under the laws of association
Read MoreKant’s Moral Philosophy: Goodwill, Duty, and Imperative
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
Objective reality, the metaphysical questions: What is its nature and what features it has? This inappropriate use of reason leads to faulty reasoning.
- Cosmology: For Kant, the regulative idea of reason leads to directing the investigation as if the universe were a unit. When this idea becomes a regulatory order that is called “world”, it is full of contradictions.
- Theology: The regulative idea of reason leads us to believe that after the material and psychic reality,
Plato and Descartes: Key Philosophical Concepts
What is Known as the Second Sailing in Platonic Philosophy?
Plato introduced a universal intelligence to explain things, undertaking what he calls navigation. In the first navigation, driven by natural philosophy, he tried to explain sensitive data through the senses, where all responses related to nature. The second navigation reveals Plato’s philosophy, leading to the discovery of the supersensible, seeking a release from the senses and a move towards the plane of the logos and what can be grasped
Read MoreHume and Kant: Causality, Skepticism, and the Categorical Imperative
Hume on Causality
Hume defines causes as the event or phenomenon involved in the production of another. The cause, then, precedes the effect.
If only the validity of what gives us the experience is accepted, it only shows that in the causal link, we call a phenomenon that precedes another.
For example, if a stone hits a glass and breaks it, what we see are the two facts, one after another. So, the cause is but a temporal succession observed many times. We get used to it, and we create the habit of
Read MoreDavid Hume’s Philosophy: Empiricism and Human Understanding
Hume’s ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’
David Hume, often called the Newtonian of moral science, aimed to apply the experimental method of reasoning to moral subjects. His major work, “A Treatise of Human Nature,” explores this concept. Hume believed that all sciences relate to human nature to some extent. Thus, the role of this new science is to examine the extent of human understanding and explain the nature of the ideas we use. The most important instrument of analysis in this book is the laws of
Read MoreEpistemology: Understanding Knowledge and Its Origins
Epistemology
Epistemology is concerned with defining knowledge and related concepts, sources, criteria, types of knowledge possible, the degree to which each is true, and the exact relationship between the knower and the object known.
What is the act of knowing? What is the essence of knowledge? What is the relationship between cognitive men and things around you?
- The simplest operation tells us that to know is to obtain information about an object. To know is to get a point or a story about something.