Innateness In David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Philosophy 4 Paper 2
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Induction Innateness

Inductive reasoning is a process of applying logic in which conclusions are made from ideas, which are believed to be true most of the time. It is based on predictions and behavior. In David Hume’s “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, he proposes two types of human enquiry: relations of ideas and matters of fact. The two common examples that represent the two enquiries are mathematics and science. Hume argues that people who rely on induction - cause and effect to perceive the world have no understanding of it since there does not exist any justification for them to believe in induction at the first place. I would like to argue that even though there seems to be no

Hume says, when a child has felt the sensation of pain from touching the flame of a candle, he will be careful not to put his hand near any candle because he will expect a similar effect from a cause which is similar in its sensible qualities and appearance” (Hume, 28). A child, who presumably has no prior knowledge but the capability to acquire the understanding from his experience that if he touches the fire, he will feel the burn. Hume suggests that there is no logical reasoning that an infant can invoke, but only a customary habit, which I largely agree. However, if it is a habit, then why most infants would exhibit the similar response? I contend that induction has the feature of universality. For example, if an infant B knows it would be a pain to touch the fire, and some other infant C will naturally obtain the same knowledge after experiencing

Alternatively, induction can be regarded as a piece of unconscious innate knowledge – intuition – as what people might commonly refer as. Apparently, Locke strongly opposes to the idea of “hidden innate knowledge”, which according to him equates to nothing since it is inaccessible to the mind. However, another philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz supports the ideas of unconscious knowledge and maintains that “general principles enter into our thoughts, serving as their inner core and as their mortar. Even if we give no thought to them, they are necessary for thought, as muscles and tendons are for walking” (Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, 23). Leibniz emphasizes the role of general principle in our mind in discovering innate knowledge. Induction can be a form of such general principle that is innate to humans because it can serve the purpose of discovering truth and knowledge, for example, “the fire is hot” or “it might rain tomorrow” even though those findings might be subjective and have no logical grounding. Moreover, Hume’s description regarding the behavior of inductive reasoning as a habit can be understood as a “customary” process of our mind trying to invoke