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Reflection about david hume
David Hume as an empiricist
Arguments for empiricism
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• David Hume took the logic aspects behind Locke and Berkeley theory on sensory experience leading to one’s knowledge and came up with the most comprehensible understanding of empiricism.
• Hume thought that through science he could find the reason for conflict and the justification behind every humans thoughts, whether the ideas had any equal accuracy.
• Strongly believed that the method of science would lead him to finding the understanding of how the minds of human make though and process
• Hume found that science failed him, and that human though process only extends to a certain limit.
• Locke and Berkeley both had reached the same peak of human thought process discoveries, however what distinguishes Hume is that he believed our experiences are the fundamental principle of where our ideas come from.
• The answer to how disagreements can be solved can only be found when the nature of another’s understanding has been exactly grasped to the others capacity.
• Our mind is limitless, as a body we can only reach to roam a certain aspect of our world, however our minds roam universes that can’t even be completely processed which cause confliction with our human civilization.
• Hume states that we think nearly to a limit, and that thought perception we process the material given to us by our senses and experiences, we only have two forms impressions and ideas.
• The mind creates feelings to sensations happening at a true moment in time giving us impressions, ideas are just distorted memories of the impression practically duplications of them.
• Hume only finds one difference between impressions and ideas and that is the amount of clarity one has on the actual event.
• Not to get confused not ever idea is the mirror image of...
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...e can know the cause of its effects.
• Intelligence can’t be cause created from the universe, for then a creator with intelligence of some kind can be considered a God.
• No one knows if our universe is the ultimate design or just a trial of what can be held, no one has the intelligence to achieve that knowing.
• Hume test God in the same manner he test self and substances he implies the theory of experience.
• Hume doesn’t take ethics as a joke, he acknowledges that morals are the main reason humans take so much interest in one another.
• Moral judgment takes great influence from emotions, not only intellectual reasons.
• Situation where we try to find answers from our moral judgment don’t come from the even or object but from one self our experiences that give us feeling.
• Hume only absolute to humanity is that we can agree that we find the use of situations
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.
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
... The psychological argument Hume proposes supports his claim, and also suggests the cyclic behavior human beings take. While his philosophical contributions are more extreme than Locke’s, Hume’s definition of liberty and the psychological component to his proposition provide an argument for proving all things are determined, but free will is still possible.
Man takes note of the consequences his actions have, and form his habits accordingly. Impressions are more lively and forcible due to experiencing an action, while ides/thoughts are less forcible and less lively because they are only reflections and only thinking of an action. Hume explains this in, “Impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions…Love, or hate, see, or feel...and impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less lively perceptions.” Hume also explains in the next quote explains that impressions or sense are superior to ideas alone, “…all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones…first, when we analyze our thoughts or ideas… they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment.”
Hume makes the claim that in order to make a moral judgment, one must keep in mind all the relevant aspects the situation, and recognize all the relevant ideas in relation to the situation. This means that we must take into consideration reason. Nevertheless, The moral judgment itself is not possible without passions or sentiment, which ultimately takes in all the deliverances of reason and creates the sentiment of disapproval or approval.
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
Hume distinguishes two categories into which “all the objects of human reason or enquiry” may be placed into: Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact (15). In regards to matters of fact, cause and effect seems to be the main principle involved. It is clear that when we have a fact, it must have been inferred...
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.
Hume, David. “A Treatise of Human Nature. Excerpts from Book III. Part I. Sect. I-II.”
Something must be desirable on its own account, and because of its immediate accord or agreement with human sentiment and affection” (87). In conclusion, I believe that Hume thinks that reason, while not completely useless, is not the driving force of moral motivation. Reasons are a means to sentiments, which in turn are a means to morality, but without reasons there can still be sentiments. There can still be beauty. Reasons can not lie as the foundation of morality, because they can only be true or false.
Hume’s empiricist ideology clearly informed his position on the topic of miracles. In the following, I will examine Hume’s take on empiricism. From this it will be possible to deduce how Hume’s empiricism played a prominent role in influencing his belief on miracles. First, what were the principles of Hume’s empiricism? Hume claims that everyone is born with a blank slate (tabula rasa). The tabula rasa receives impressions which are products of immediate experience. For example, the color of the computer screen I am looking at represents an impression. Ideas, similarly, are derived from these antecedent impressions; we are not born with innate ideas, rather we achieve them from experience. There are three principles that connect ideas: resemblances, contiguity of time or place, and cause and effect (Hume, 321). Hume further advances that all reasoning concerning matters of fact are “founded on the relation of cause and effect” (Hume, 323). Hume’s empiricism also states causes and effects are not discoverable by reason (the theories advanced by Descartes) but by experience. We do not know the sun will rise because of reason, but we can speculate that it will rise because of experience. Hume’s primary argument is nature teaches us through experience, therefore we develop customs and habits through these experiences which give us our beliefs.
Descartes believes that the mind and body are separate of one another causing the problem to form in the transmission of information between the mind and the body. Hume does not conquer this task of mind and body one or separate. He is more concerned with the idea of self and how one is maintained over a period of time. He believes there is no such thing as self. That each moment we are a new being due to the fact that we are forever changing and nothing remains constant within ourselves. Yes, our DNA may be the same but that is not
John Locke, Berkeley and Hume are all empiricist philosophers. They all have many different believes, but agree on the three anchor points; The only source of genuine knowledge is sense experience, reason is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge unless it is grounded in the solid bedrock of sense experience and there is no evidence of innate ideas within the mind that are known from experience. Each of these philosophers developed some of the most fascinating conceptions of the relationships between our thoughts and the world around us. I will argue that Locke, Berkeley and Hume are three empiricists that have different beliefs.
In this essay Hume creates the true judges who are required to have: delicacy of taste, practice in a specific art of taste, be free from prejudice in their determinations, and good sense to guide their judgments. In Hume’s view the judges allow for reasonable critiques of objects. Hume also pointed out that taste is not merely an opinion but has some physical quality which can be proved. So taste is not a sentiment but a determination. What was inconsistent in the triad of commonly held belief was that all taste is equal and so Hume replaced the faulty assumption with the true judges who can guide society’s sentiments.
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.