The big idea about Hume is the fact that there are two main things that make up the entirety of the human experience: ideas and impressions. Note that all ideas are made up of impressions. Hume also talked about what things we can truly know. The only thing that we can know according to Hume is the fact that we are something that has the ability to think. All we can know about ourselves is that we have the ability to think. We also can’t say that we automatically know that we have a body. We only have a perception of our body that makes it feel like it should be basic knowledge.
I think Hume would say that the same principle applies to the idea of God. We all have the ability to think of a “God” or a God-like figure. However, our own perceptions of God are based on what we consider to be “God-like”. For example, imagine that you were raised as a Catholic and have been taught all of your life about what God is supposed to look like through readings, books, films, and etcetera. Since I am myself a Catholic, I am going to have a different perspective of God than someone else is going to have of God.
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He also believes that we don’t have a “self” because we have never had an impression of a self. He believes rather that we are just a bundled set of properties. In a sense, there is no “me” but rather just a number of properties that describe what I am. I think Hume would argue that since there is no self that exists because of his “Bundle Theory”, that there is no one that God may punish. God may only punish the set of properties that describe
In David Hume’s essay, Why Does God Let People Suffer, he allows the reader to question if God exists in the world we live in with all the pain and suffering that goes on. Hume suggests that an all powerful God, such as the one most believe in, would not allow a world to exist with this much pain and suffering that goes on daily. Moreover, Hume basically argues that the existence of God is something that cannot be proven in the way in which scientists look for and gather proof about other scientific issues. In the following essay, I will demonstrate how David Hume feels that there is a God despite all the suffering and pain that exists in our world. “Is the World, considered in general, and as it appears to us in this life, different from what a Man or such a limited being would, beforehand, expect from a very powerful, wise, and benevolent Deity?” Additionally, Hume argues for the existence of an omnipotent God. According to the author, a world with this much evil in it, one can’t logically assume that there exists an all powerful God that knows everything. Interestingly, Hume simply argues that we can’t infer that there is a God that exists who is all knowing and all powerful with the tremendous amounts of evil that exists in the world. More importantly, Hume speculates on the creation of the universe. One hypothesis contends that the universe was created without good or malice. In other words, according to Hume, our universe was more likely created by something other than a God with good intentions. However, throughout the essay Hume presents arguments for the existence of God and against the existence of God. Hume further argues that humans would be able to comprehend an omniscient G...
However, reviewing Berkeley’s ideals on the matter, Hume seems to have more of an epistemological standpoint. Hume believes that everything that we have knowledge of is because of past experience. Everything that we know up to this point is because we have observed and learned from the past. Although everything is also the way it is because of naturalism and causation, every cause and effect that has taken place in history has been interfered with by humans and their knowledge. Berkeley believes that the world is as we perceive it to be, as does Hume. For people to believe the world to be a certain way must come from a certain ideal that we have in mind to be true. In other words, we have an idea of what the world should look like now and what it may look like in the future based off of what the past has looked like and what it is
Hume argues that perception can be divided into two types: impressions and ideas. He states that impressions are our first-hand perception, using all of our senses and emotions to experience them (Hume 2012, 8). For example, an impression of a sensation would be experiencing pain and an impression of reflection would be experiencing anger. Hume states that an idea is thinking about an impression. You cannot use your senses to experience the sensation or emotion, you are just simply reflecting on your experience (Hume 2007, 13). For example, thinking about the pain you felt when you stubbed your toe or thinking about how angry you felt when your football team lost. Hume argues that our thought is limited. He argues that when we imagine things such as an orange sea, we are simply joining two consistent ideas together. Hume argues that ‘all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones’ (Hume 2007, 13). This is called the Copy Principle.
... and wrong. While Descartes believes that all bad things that happen were actually good if we could just see the bigger picture, Hume says this does not matter. The human and animal mind is not created to think of the bigger picture, it is only able to think about what is right in front of it. So in this aspect, humans and animals are both able to perceive what is right and wrong, therefore supporting Hume’s idea that humans and animals aren’t so different.
middle of paper ... ... The operations of our own mind have created this idea of God, which rebuts Descartes’ argument that we have knowledge of the external world because of God. Descartes would argue that Humes’ idea of God is natural and never derived from impressions. Hume’ consequently has the better argument, claiming that the idea of God is actually based on ideas of perfection and infinity is inferred from the ideas of imperfection and finitude.
His claim is that the mind is merely a bundle of perceptions that derive ultimately from sensory inputs or impressions. He follows on to say that ideas are reflections of these perceptions, or to be more precise, perceptions of perceptions, therefore can still be traced back to an original sensory input. Hume applied this logic to the perception of a ‘self’, to which he could not trace back to any sensory input, the result was paradoxical, thus he concluded that “there is no simplicity in (the mind) at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we might have to imagine that simplicity and
In this section, Hume begins by categorizing knowledge into types: relations of ideas and matters of fact. Relations of ideas are knowable a priori and negating such a statement would lead to a contradiction, and matters of fact are knowable a posteriori, or through experience, and the negation would not be a contradiction. While relations of ideas are generally used in mathematics, matters of fact are significant in determining how one experiences the world; the beliefs an individual has are formed through his experience, thus making cognition a matter of fact.... ... middle of paper ...
Cause and effect is a tool used to link happenings together and create some sort of explanation. Hume lists the “three principles of connexion among ideas” to show the different ways ideas can be associated with one another (14). The principles are resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. The focus of much of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding falls upon the third listed principle. In Section I, Hume emphasizes the need to uncover the truths about the human mind, even though the process may be strenuous and fatiguing. While the principle of cause and effect is something utilized so often, Hume claims that what we conclude through this process cannot be attributed to reason or understanding and instead must be attributed to custom of habit.
Hume began his first examination if the mind by classifying its contents as Perceptions. “Here therefore [he divided] all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species.” (27) First, Impressions represented an image of something that portrayed an immediate relationship. Secondly, there were thoughts and ideas, which constituted the less vivid impressions. For example, the recalling of a memory. From this distinction, Hume decreed that all ideas had origin within impressions.
David Hume in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Benedict De Spinoza in The Ethics run noteworthy parallels in about metaphysics and human nature. Spinoza and Hume share opinions of apriori knowledge and free will. For human nature, similar concepts of the imagination and morality arise. Although both philosophers derive similar conclusions in their philosophy, they could not be further distanced from one another in their concepts of God. Regarded as an atheist, Spinoza argues that God is the simple substance which composes everything and that nothing is outside of this simple substance. Hume rejects this notion completely and claims that nothing in the world can give us a clear picture of God. Hume rejects the argument from design
Aristotle and David Hume share very clashing views on morality. Aristotle and Hume both believe in the possibility of being a virtuous person and both emphasize importance when it comes to reason, but their respective definitions of what virtue and reason actually mean differ drastically. Aristotle believes all human actions aim at some good, while Hume believes the reason behind everything is arithmetic and that human passions rule over reason. There is one supreme good according to Aristotle, but Hume believes what is good and bad all depends on perception. Both Aristotle and Hume take on the same topics in regards to morality, but take very different approaches.
In Appendix I., Concerning Moral Sentiment, David Hume looks to find a place in morality for reason, and sentiment. Through, five principles he ultimately concludes that reason has no place within the concept of morality, but rather is something that can only assist sentiment in matters concerning morality. And while reason can be true or false, those truths or falsities apply to facts, not to morality. He then argues morals are the direct result of sentiment, or the inner feeling within a human being. These sentiments are what intrinsically drive and thus create morality within a being.
Hume believes that there is no concept of self. That each moment we are a new being since nothing is constant from one moment to the next. There is no continuous “I” that is unchanging from one moment to the next. That self is a bundle of perceptions and emotions there is nothing that forms a self-impression which is essential to have an idea of one self. The mind is made up of a processions of perceptions.
David Hume, following this line of thinking, begins by distinguishing the contents of human experience (which is ultimately reducible to perceptions) into: a) impressions and b) ideas.
Like John Locke, Hume believed that at birth people were a blank slate in terms of mental perception but his perspective was that humans do have one advantage: reason. Hume believed that everyone has the ability to reason with the natural order of the world and that it is this ability that separates us from other animals. However, Hume argues “against the rationalists that, although reason is needed to discover the facts of any concrete situation and the general social impact of a trait of character or a practice over time, reason alone is insufficient to yield a judgment that something is virtuous or vicious” (Hume’s Moral Philosophy). It is this distinction that separates him from some of his compatriots in terms of what he considers to be the drive of the whole of