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n3jr 's review for:
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
by David Hume
This was 4 philosophical-stars, and probably more like 2 enjoyment-stars. Hume is still the most agreeable philosopher I've come across, I just love his skeptical arguments. While most of this was soporific (just because of the nature of the enquiry - I'm not much interested in ideas of cause and effect, reason, impressions, and ideas) I did enjoy his probe into the testimony on miracles and religion. Glad his publisher eventually relented on including those parts.
I find Hume's skepticism interesting here, in that he's arguing against rationalising things unlike someone like Descartes. Here, for my future self, is a summary of the main topics covered in this text:
- The classification of ideas into thoughts/thoughts and impressions (impressions are much more vivid than ideas)
- The copy principle: simple ideas come from simple impressions e.g. a colourblind person can't conceive of colour and a selfish person can't conceive of true generosity
- Our ideas are connected by: resemblance, contiguity, and causation
- Human reason can be divided into: relations of ideas and matters of fact
- Causation: the fact that we don't actually perceive it, there is only constant conjunction
- Belief in the uniformity of nature is founded on habit, not reason
- Secret powers: the qualities of objects that are not apparent through sensory experience e.g. that bread is edible
- The future: we can't predict it, we can't even say that the sun will rise tomorrow, only that it is probable it will
- Fiction vs belief: the difference is how strong the feeling behind it is i.e. beliefs cause stronger sentiments than fiction
- How we experience the world: only through phenomena, not as things actually are
- That we have no justification for believing in testimony of miracles
- And hence that any religion based on the occurrence of miracles is unfounded
- That we should employ the balance of probabilities when choosing whether to trust testimony
- That compatibilism is the way to go because determinism relies on causation which we can't perceive, and 'freedom' is simply being able to act in accordance with our own will
- That the existence of God can't be inferred from its effects because we can't even begin to understand or have experience of the qualities of God (while I can infer from the effect of a footprint that a human has passed by, because I have experienced humans walking)
- That Cartesian doubt is unworkable
- That we cannot say for certain that the material world exists because this is based on experience and experience can be called into doubt
And here are some interesting thoughts (some stolen from members of my tutorial discussion):
- That Hume employs a common sense method by making a range of assumptions about the world, i.e. that there is regularity in nature, that natural laws are fixed, etc, but then he employs extreme scepticism in the final chapters
- Is the clear distinction between impressions and ideas justified? Are impressions really more vivid than impressions? Sometimes our fantasies can be more pleasurable to experience than our senses
- Does every simple idea really come from an impression? How does a person think of/create a gear, and know that inserting it into another one would make it work in a particular way
- Arguably, experience or custom is a form of reason in itself e.g. the action of eating bread because I have been able to ingest it before is a quite rational process
--> his scepticism is about induction itself. But couldn't induction count as reason? Most people who believe in induction tend to do better, so doesn't that give us a reason to use induction?
- The argument from defect (i.e. that a blind person can't have an impression of colour) doesn't necessitate that ideas are copies of impressions because what if we just have a bunch of other ideas, other than sight, that don't come from impressions at all?
I find Hume's skepticism interesting here, in that he's arguing against rationalising things unlike someone like Descartes. Here, for my future self, is a summary of the main topics covered in this text:
- The classification of ideas into thoughts/thoughts and impressions (impressions are much more vivid than ideas)
- The copy principle: simple ideas come from simple impressions e.g. a colourblind person can't conceive of colour and a selfish person can't conceive of true generosity
- Our ideas are connected by: resemblance, contiguity, and causation
- Human reason can be divided into: relations of ideas and matters of fact
- Causation: the fact that we don't actually perceive it, there is only constant conjunction
- Belief in the uniformity of nature is founded on habit, not reason
- Secret powers: the qualities of objects that are not apparent through sensory experience e.g. that bread is edible
- The future: we can't predict it, we can't even say that the sun will rise tomorrow, only that it is probable it will
- Fiction vs belief: the difference is how strong the feeling behind it is i.e. beliefs cause stronger sentiments than fiction
- How we experience the world: only through phenomena, not as things actually are
- That we have no justification for believing in testimony of miracles
- And hence that any religion based on the occurrence of miracles is unfounded
- That we should employ the balance of probabilities when choosing whether to trust testimony
- That compatibilism is the way to go because determinism relies on causation which we can't perceive, and 'freedom' is simply being able to act in accordance with our own will
- That the existence of God can't be inferred from its effects because we can't even begin to understand or have experience of the qualities of God (while I can infer from the effect of a footprint that a human has passed by, because I have experienced humans walking)
- That Cartesian doubt is unworkable
- That we cannot say for certain that the material world exists because this is based on experience and experience can be called into doubt
And here are some interesting thoughts (some stolen from members of my tutorial discussion):
- That Hume employs a common sense method by making a range of assumptions about the world, i.e. that there is regularity in nature, that natural laws are fixed, etc, but then he employs extreme scepticism in the final chapters
- Is the clear distinction between impressions and ideas justified? Are impressions really more vivid than impressions? Sometimes our fantasies can be more pleasurable to experience than our senses
- Does every simple idea really come from an impression? How does a person think of/create a gear, and know that inserting it into another one would make it work in a particular way
- Arguably, experience or custom is a form of reason in itself e.g. the action of eating bread because I have been able to ingest it before is a quite rational process
--> his scepticism is about induction itself. But couldn't induction count as reason? Most people who believe in induction tend to do better, so doesn't that give us a reason to use induction?
- The argument from defect (i.e. that a blind person can't have an impression of colour) doesn't necessitate that ideas are copies of impressions because what if we just have a bunch of other ideas, other than sight, that don't come from impressions at all?