David Hume Research Paper

Born in the United Kingdom; David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, and writer, who is best known today for his influence as a philosophical empiricist. Hume wrote his fair share of titles but is quite well known for a few notable pieces of work like, A Treatise of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. By the same token he is famously known for his adoption of the no self-theory, similar to that of the Buddhist following. Specifically “the mind itself, far from being an independent power, is simply a bundle of perceptions without unity or cohesive quality.” With this being one of Empiricist biggest ideas to run with, this has to be one of the biggest ideas I run

Also, he argues that our concept of the self is just a result of our natural habit of wanting to attach the existence to any collection of similar parts to make a whole. These are reasonable “anti-self” points to make, however besides these, Hume falls flat at presenting a compelling argument that isn’t filled with pure dislike for a substrate point of view. I do agree with Hume when he says that we have not “clear and intelligible” concept of self. It is true, when I try to describe what makes Langston well Langston, it’s really hard to do so without using perceptions. On the other hand, I firmly believe that one can’t be perceive without having a perceiver. It’s that simple you cannot read without a reader, listen without a listener,

For instance a good example of this you can find in the third book of the Treatise; Passions, since they don’t represent anything real and are not arguments in and of themselves. Now I would Love to be corrected if I’m wrong, but aren’t passions real things that you care about and enjoy? Does that mean my passion for music just some bundle of impressions or judgments? Sure I had to experience Music to get an impression of it, to further make a judgment from it but, after that a unexplainable sensation dwells inside that makes me want to pursue music. Moving past that, Hume speaks on cause and effect a lot and how causation and pretty much Newton’s third Law, “Every action has an opposite or equal reaction”. He believes that we can perceive cause and effect or two events being related to one another. Yet, it is no more than our desire to associate sequences together, which Hume of course finds the use of association “unfounded and meaningless”. I struggle with seeing how even Hume can stand his malarkey. Because if I push a chair over, and it falls over, there is very much a connection between those events. The