Justice is only possible because human life is not characterized by these extremes. This is because Hume believes that promises themselves only make sense if certain human conventions are already established T 3.
Thus, promises cannot be used to explain how human beings move from their natural state to establishing society and social cooperation. In addition to allowing for a sense of security, cooperation serves the common good by enhancing our productivity T 3.
Our understanding of the benefits of social cooperation becomes more acute by a gradual process through which we steadily gain more confidence in the reliability of our peers T 3. None of this requires an explicit agreement or promise.
He draws a comparison with how two people rowing a boat can cooperate by an implicit convention without an explicit promise T 3. Although the system of norms that constitutes justice is highly advantageous and even necessary for the survival of society T 3. An individual act of justice can make the public worse off than it would have otherwise been.
Artificial virtues differ from the natural virtues in this respect T 3. If not every act of justice is beneficial, then why do we praise obedience to the rules of justice? The problem is especially serious for large, modern societies. When human beings live in small groups the harm and discord caused by each act of injustice is obvious. Yet, this is not the case in larger societies where the connection between individual acts of justice and the common good is much weaker T 3.
Consequently, Hume must explain why we continue to condemn injustice even after society has grown larger and more diffuse. On this point Hume primarily appeals to sympathy. Suppose you hear about some act of injustice that occurs in another city, state, or country, and harms individuals you have never met. While the bad effects of the injustice feel remote from our personal point of view, Hume notes that we can still sympathize with the person who suffers the injustice.
Thus, even though the injustice has no direct influence upon us , we recognize that such conduct is harmful to those who associate with the unjust person T 3. Sympathy allows our concern for justice to expand beyond the narrow bounds of the self-interested concerns that first produced the rules. Thus, it is self-interest that motivates us to create the conventions of justice, and it is our capacity to sympathize with the public good that explains why we consider obedience to those conventions to be virtuous T 3.
Furthermore, we can now better understand how Hume answers the question of what first motivates us to act justly. As noted previously, it was in the immediate interest of early humans living in small societies to comply with the conventions of justice because the integrity of their social union hinged upon absolute fidelity to justice.
As we will see below, this is not the case in larger, modern societies. However, all that is required for some motive to be the first motive to justice is that it is what first gives humans some reason to act justly in all situations. The fact that this precise motive is no longer present in modern society does not prevent it from being what first motivates such behavior. Given that justice is originally founded upon considerations of self-interest, it may seem especially difficult to explain why we consider it wrong of ourselves to commit injustice in larger modern societies where the stakes of non-compliance are much less severe.
Here Hume believes that general rules bridge the gap. Hume uses general rules as an explanatory device at numerous points in the Treatise. For example, he explains our propensity to draw inferences based upon cause and effect through the influence of general rules T 1.
When we consistently see one event or type of event follow another event or type of event , we automatically apply a general rule that makes us expect the former whenever we experience the latter. Something similar occurs in the present context.
Through sympathy, we find that sentiments of moral disapproval consistently accompany unjust behavior. Thus, through a general rule, we apply the same sort of evaluation to our own unjust actions T 3. Hume believes our willingness to abide by the conventions of justice is strengthened through other mechanisms as well. For instance, politicians encourage citizens to follow the rules of justice T 3.
Thus, the praiseworthy motive that underlies compliance with justice in large-scale societies is, to a large extent, the product of social conditioning. This fact might make us suspicious. If justice is an artificial virtue, and if much of our motivation to follow its rules comes from social inculcation, then we might wonder whether these rules deserve our respect.
Hume recognizes this issue. In the Treatise he briefly appeals to the fact that having a good reputation is largely determined by whether we follow the rules of property T 3. Theft, and the unwillingness to follow the rules of justice, does more than anything else to establish a bad reputation for ourselves. Furthermore, Hume claims that our reputation in this regard requires that we see each rule of justice as having absolute authority and never succumb when we are tempted to act unjustly T 3.
Suppose Hume is right that our moral reputation hangs on our obedience to the rules of justice. Even if true, it is not obvious that this requires absolute obedience to these rules. What if I can act unjustly without being detected? What if I can act unjustly without causing any noticeable harm? Is there any reason to resist this temptation?
Yet, the knave also recognizes that there will always be situations in which it is possible to act unjustly without harming the fabric of social society.
So, the knave follows the rules of justice when he must, but takes advantage of those situations where he knows he will not be caught EPM 9. Hume responds that, even if the knave is never caught, he will lose out on a more valuable form of enjoyment. The knave forgoes the ability to reflect pleasurably upon his own conduct for the sake of material gain. The person who has traded the peace of mind that accompanies virtue in order to gain money, power, or fame has traded away that which is more valuable for something much less valuable.
The enjoyment of a virtuous character is incomparably greater than the enjoyment of whatever material gains can be attained through injustice. Thus, justice is desirable from the perspective of our own personal happiness and self-interest EPM 9. Hume admits it will be difficult to convince genuine knaves of this point. That is, it will be difficult to convince someone who does not already value the possession of a virtuous character that justice is worth the cost EPM 9.
If the ability to enjoy a peaceful review of our conduct is nearly universal in the human species, then Hume will have provided a reason to act justly that can make some claim upon nearly every human being. After providing his Treatise account of the artificial virtues, Hume moves to a discussion of the natural virtues. Recall that the natural virtues, unlike the artificial virtues, garner praise without the influence of any human convention. Hume divides the natural virtues into two broad categories: those qualities that make a human great and those that make a human good T 3.
Hume consistently associates a cluster of qualities with each type of character. The great individual is confident, has a sense of her value, worth, or ability, and generally possesses qualities that set her apart from the average person. She is courageous, ambitious, able to overcome difficult obstacles, and proud of her achievements EPM 7. By contrast, the good individual is characterized by gentle concern for others. This person has the types of traits that make someone a kind friend or generous philanthropist EPM 2.
Alexander of Macedonia exemplifies an extreme case of greatness. There are certain constraints that apply to the average person that Alexander does not think apply to himself. This is consistent with the fact that the great individual has a strong sense of self-worth, self-confidence, and even a sense of superiority. Those qualities and accomplishments that differentiate one from the average person are also those qualities most likely to make us proud and inspire confidence. However, Hume faces a problem—how can a virtuous character trait be based upon pride?
He observes that we blame those who are too proud and praise those with enough modesty to recognize their own weaknesses T 3. If we commonly find the pride of others disagreeable, then why do we praise the boldness, confidence, and prideful superiority of the great person?
Hume must explain when pride is praiseworthy, and when it is blameworthy. In part, Hume believes expressions of pride become disagreeable when the proud individual boasts about qualities she does not possess.
This results from an interplay between the psychological mechanisms of sympathy and comparison. Sympathy enables us to adopt the feelings, sentiments, and opinions of other people and, consequently, participate in that which affects another person.
Comparison is the human propensity for evaluating the situation of others in relation to ourselves. It is through comparison that we make judgments about the value of different states of affairs T 3. Notice that sympathy and comparison are each a stance or attitude we can take toward those who are differently situated.
For example, if another individual has secured a desirable job opportunity superior to my own , then I might sympathize with the benefits she reaps from her employment and participate in her joy. Alternatively, I might also compare the benefits and opportunities her job affords with my own lesser situation.
The result of this would be a painful feeling of inferiority or jealousy. Thus, each of these mechanisms has an opposite tendency T 3.
Hume supports this by considering three different scenarios T 3. First, imagine someone is sitting safely on a beach. Taken by itself, this fact would not provide much enjoyment or satisfaction. This individual might try to imagine some other people who are sailing through a dangerous storm to make her current safety more satisfying by comparison.
Yet, since this is an acknowledged fiction, and Hume holds that ideas we believe are true have greater influence than mere imaginations T 1. Second, imagine that the individual on the beach could see, far away in the distance, a ship sailing through a dangerous storm. In this case, the idea of their precarious situation would be more lively.
Consequently, the person on the beach could increase her satisfaction with her own situation by comparison. Yet, it is crucial that this idea of the suffering experienced by those in danger does not become too lively. In a third scenario Hume imagines that those in danger of shipwreck were so close to shore that the observer could see their expressions of fear, anxiety, and suffering.
In this case, Hume holds that the idea would be too lively for comparison to operate. Instead, we would fully sympathize with the fear of the passengers and we would not gain any comparative pleasure from their plight. Hume uses this principle to explain why we are offended by those who are proud of exaggerated accomplishments.
When someone boasts about some quality she does not actually have, Hume believes our conception of her pride has the intermediate liveliness that allows for comparison. Our conception of her pride gains liveliness from her presence directly before us the enlivening relation of contiguity in space and time.
Yet, because we do not believe her claims about her merit, our conception of her pride is not so lively that it causes us to sympathize T 3. Importantly, Hume does not categorically condemn pride. Justified pride in real accomplishments is both useful T 3. However, direct expressions of pride, even if based on legitimate accomplishments, still cause disapproval. Yet, it is difficult for us to have such a belief. This is because we know that people are likely to overestimate the value of their own traits and accomplishments.
It is because boasting and outward expressions of pride cause discomfort through drawing us into unfavorable comparisons that we develop rules of good manners T 3. Just as we create artificial rules of justice to preserve the harmony of society, so artificial rules of good manners preserve the harmony of our social interactions.
Among these unspoken rules is a prohibition against directly boasting about our accomplishments in the presence of others. However, if others infer indirectly through our actions and comportment that we feel pride, then our pride can garner approval T 3. Thus, Hume believes that pride can be a virtuous trait of character provided it is not overtly expressed and based upon actual accomplishments T 3. Hume uses these points to combat attacks on the worth of pride from two different fronts.
These religious moralists hold, not just that humility requires us to avoid directly boasting about our accomplishments, but that humility requires sincerely undervaluing our character and accomplishments T 3.
Here Hume seems to have in mind something like the view that we should keep in mind the comparative weakness of our own intellect in comparison to that of God. Or, perhaps, that proper worship of God requires that one humble oneself before the divine with an appropriate sense of relative worthlessness. Hume argues that such conceptions do not accurately represent the common regard we pay to pride T 3.
The second criticism of pride comes from those who charge that the pride of the great individual often causes personal and social harm. The concern is that praising pride and self-assurance can overshadow the more valuable virtues of goodness. The military hero may cause great harm by leaving the destruction of cities and social unrest in his wake. This pride is not communicated directly, but it is communicated indirectly through observing the hero overcoming daunting challenges.
Again, these traits are united by their tendency to make us considerate friends, generous philanthropists, and attentive caregivers. Hume explains that we praise such qualities both because of their tendency to promote the good of society as well as their immediate agreeability to those who possess them. Generosity, of course, is socially useful insofar as it benefits other people. Hume also sees the gentle virtues of goodness as correctives to the destructive excesses of greatness, ambition, and courage T 3.
Praise for socially useful traits comes from sympathizing with the pleasure that is caused to those who benefit from them. How far should our sympathy extend when making this evaluation? How wide is the scope of potential benefactors we must consider when judging whether someone is generous or selfish? For example, if we interpret this scope more narrowly, then we might think that the person who takes good care of her children, helps her friends in need, and pushes for positive change in local politics exhibits admirable generosity with her time, energy, and attention.
Contrastingly, if we interpret the scope more expansively, then the fact that she fails to make any positive impact on many people who are suffering all over the world will count against her. A more detailed explanation of this point requires answering two further questions. My impression of the violet I just picked is complex. Among the ways it affects my senses are its brilliant purple color and its sweet smell. I can separate and distinguish its color and smell from the rest of my impressions of the violet.
Hume initially distinguishes impressions and ideas in terms of their degree of force and vivacity. Impressions are more forceful and vivacious than ideas. At various times, Hume tries other ways of characterizing the difference between impressions and ideas, but he was never completely satisfied with them. Still, what he says works well enough to give us a handle on the felt differences between impressions and ideas. When Hume distinguishes impressions and ideas in terms of their relative force and vivacity, he is pointing out something that is generally true of them as a matter of fact.
On occasion, in dreams or a high fever, ideas may approach the force and vivacity of impressions, but these are exceptions that prove the—empirical—rule. In general, impressions and ideas are so different that no one can deny the distinction. In the Treatise , Hume qualifies his claim that our ideas are copies of our impressions, making clear that it applies only to the relation between simple ideas and simple impressions. He argues first that there is a one—to—one correspondence between simple ideas and simple impressions.
But he is so confident the correspondence holds that he challenges anyone who doubts it to produce an example of a simple impression without a corresponding simple idea, or a simple idea without a corresponding simple impression. Since he is certain they will fail, he concludes that there is a constant conjunction between simple impressions and simple ideas. There must be a causal connection between them, but do ideas cause impressions or do impressions cause ideas?
Finally, he argues that experience tells us that simple impressions always precede and thus cause their corresponding ideas. To support this claim, he appeals to two sorts of cases. First, if you want to give a child an idea of the taste of pineapple, you give her a piece of pineapple to eat. You never go the other way round. He imagines someone who has had the same sorts of experiences of colors most of us have had, but has never experienced a certain shade of blue.
Hume thinks that if he orders all the shades of blue he has experienced from the darkest to the lightest, he will see immediately that there is a gap where the missing shade should be.
Then he asks. Hume repeats the case of the missing shade almost verbatim in the first Enquiry. While scholars have wondered exactly how the person might supply the missing shade, he seems unconcerned with the details. For Hume, once again the exception proves the—empirical—rule. EHU 7. Conventional definitions—replacing terms with their synonyms—merely replicate philosophical confusions and never break out of a narrow definitional circle.
Getting clear about the content of the ideas and the meanings of the terms we are investigating requires something else. He believes he has found a way to accurately determine their content—his account of definition. Begin with a term. Ask what idea is annexed to it. If there is no such idea, then the term has no cognitive content, however prominently it figures in philosophy or theology.
If there is an idea annexed to the term, and it is complex, break it down into the simple ideas that compose it, and trace them back to their original impressions. If the process fails at any point, the idea in question lacks cognitive content. Hume uses his account of definition in the critical phase of his project to show that many of the central concepts of traditional metaphysics lack intelligible content.
He also uses it in the constructive phase to determine the exact meaning of our terms and ideas. Although we are capable of separating and combining our simple ideas as we please, there is, nevertheless, a regular order to our thoughts. This suggests that. Hume identifies three principles of association: resemblance , contiguity in time and place, and causation.
When someone shows you a picture of your best friend, you naturally think of her because the picture resembles her. Thinking of Sausalito may lead you to think of the Golden Gate Bridge, which may lead you to think of San Francisco, since they are spatially contiguous. Taking aspirin in the past has relieved my headaches, so I expect that the aspirin I just took will soon relieve my present headache.
He is interested only in establishing that, as a matter of fact, we do associate ideas in these ways. Given that his claim that the associative principles explain the important operations of the mind is an empirical one, he must admit, as he does in the first Enquiry , that he cannot prove conclusively that his list of associative principles is complete.
Perhaps he has overlooked some additional principle. We are free to examine our own thoughts to determine whether resemblance, contiguity, and causation successfully explain them. The more instances the associative principles explain, the more assurance we have that Hume has identified the basic principles by which our minds work.
Aristotle — BCE drew an absolute categorical distinction between scientific knowledge scientia and belief opinio. Scientific knowledge was knowledge of causes and scientific explanation consisted in demonstration —proving the necessary connection between a cause and its effect from intuitively obvious premises independently of experience. Even so, they accepted his distinction between knowledge and belief, and regarded causal inference as an exercise of reason, which aimed at demonstrating the necessary connection between cause and effect.
Malebranche — , and others following Descartes — , were optimistic about the possibility of demonstrative scientific knowledge, while those in the British experimental tradition were more pessimistic. Locke was sufficiently sceptical about what knowledge we can attain that he constructed one of the first accounts of probable inference to show that belief can meet standards of rationality that make experimental natural philosophy intellectually respectable.
Propositions concerning relations of ideas are intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the interior angles of a Euclidean triangle sum to degrees is true whether or not there are any Euclidean triangles to be found in nature. In sharp contrast, the truth of propositions concerning matters of fact depends on the way the world is. Asserting that Miami is north of Boston is false, but not contradictory. We can understand what someone who asserts this is saying, even if we are puzzled about how he could have the facts so wrong.
In the constructive phase , he supplies an alternative: the associative principles are their basis. Causal inferences are the only way we can go beyond the evidence of our senses and memories. In making them, we suppose there is some connection between present facts and what we infer from them. But what is this connection? How is it established? If the connection is established by an operation of reason or the understanding, it must concern either relations of ideas or matters of fact.
Effects are different events from their causes, so there is no contradiction in conceiving of a cause occurring, and its usual effect not occurring. Ordinary causal judgments are so familiar that we tend to overlook this; they seem immediate and intuitive.
But suppose you were suddenly brought into the world as an adult, armed with the intellectual firepower of an Einstein. Could you, simply by examining an aspirin tablet, determine that it will relieve your headache?
When we reason a priori , we consider the idea of the object we regard as a cause independently of any observations we have made of it. Contrary to what the majority of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors thought, causal inferences do not concern relations of ideas.
Hume now moves to the only remaining possibility. Since we neither intuit nor infer a priori that similar objects have similar secret powers, our presumption must be based in some way on our experience. But our past experience only gives us information about objects as they were when we experienced them, and our present experience only tells us about objects we are experiencing now.
Causal inferences, however, do not just record our past and present experiences. They extend or project what we have gathered from experience to other objects in the future. Hume thinks we can get a handle on this question by considering two clearly different propositions:.
The chain of reasoning I need must show me how my past experience is relevant to my future experience. I need some further proposition or propositions that will establish an appropriate link or connection between past and future, and take me from 1 to 2 using either demonstrative reasoning , concerning relations of ideas, or probable reasoning , concerning matters of fact.
However unlikely it may be, we can always intelligibly conceive of a change in the course of nature. That leaves probable reasoning. Hume argues that there is no probable reasoning that can provide a just inference from past to future.
Any attempt to infer 2 from 1 by a probable inference will be viciously circular—it will involve supposing what we are trying to prove. Hume spells out the circularity this way. Any reasoning that takes us from 1 to 2 must employ some connecting principle that connects the past with the future. Adopting [UP] will indeed allow us to go from 1 to 2. But before we can use it to establish that our causal inferences are determined by reason, we need to determine our basis for adopting it.
But to attempt to establish [UP] this way would be to try to establish probable arguments using probable arguments, which will eventually include [UP] itself. At this point, Hume has exhausted the ways reason might establish a connection between cause and effect. Having cleared the way for his constructive account, Hume is ready to do just that. Hume maintains that this principle is custom or habit :. EHU 5. Custom and habit are general names for the principles of association.
Hume describes their operation as a causal process: custom or habit is the cause of the particular propensity you form after your repeated experiences of the constant conjunction of smoke and fire. Causation is the operative associative principle here, since it is the only one of those principles that can take us beyond our senses and memories.
Custom thus turns out to be the source of the Uniformity Principle —the belief that the future will be like the past. Causal inference leads us not only to conceive of the effect, but also to expect it. What more is involved in believing that aspirin will relieve my headache than in merely conceiving that it will? If there were some such idea, given our ability to freely combine ideas, we could, by simply willing, add that idea to any conception whatsoever, and believe anything we like.
Hume concludes that belief must be some sentiment or feeling aroused in us independently of our wills, which accompanies those ideas that constitute them. It is a particular way or manner of conceiving an idea that is generated by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. If constant conjunctions were all that is involved, my thoughts about aspirin and headaches would only be hypothetical. For belief, one of the conjoined objects must be present to my senses or memories; I must be taking, or just have taken, an aspirin.
In these circumstances, believing that my headache will soon be relieved is as unavoidable as feeling affection for a close friend, or anger when someone harms us. While Hume thinks that defining this sentiment may be impossible, we can describe belief, if only by analogy, although he was never completely satisfied with his attempts to do so.
Belief is a livelier, firmer, more vivid, steady, and intense conception of an object. Hume intends these characterizations to go beyond merely recording intensity of feeling to capture how belief. The propensity is due to the associative bond that my repeated experiences of taking aspirin and headache relief have formed.
Custom, Hume maintains, in language that anticipates and influenced Darwin,. In keeping with his project of providing a naturalistic account of how our minds work, Hume has given empirical explanations of our propensity to make causal inferences, and the way those inferences lead to belief.
To get clear about the idea of power or necessary connection, we need to determine the impressions that are its source. Hume identifies three possible sources in the work of his predecessors: Locke thought we get our idea of power secondarily from external impressions of the interactions of physical objects, and primarily from internal impressions of our ability to move our bodies and to consider ideas. They are only occasions for God, the sole source of necessary connection, to act in the world.
Hume rejects all three possibilities. When I decide to type, my fingers move over the keyboard. When I decide to stop, they stop, but I have no idea how this happens. Our command over them is limited and varies from time to time.
We learn about these limitations and variations only through experience, but the mechanisms by which they operate are unknown and incomprehensible to us. Malebranche and other occasionalists do the same, except they apply it across the board. It also capitalizes on how little we know about the interactions of bodies, but since our idea of God is based on extrapolations from our faculties, our ignorance should also apply to him. In our discussion of causal inference, we saw that when we find that one kind of event is constantly conjoined with another, we begin to expect the one to occur when the other does.
Hume concludes that it is just this felt determination of the mind—our awareness of this customary transition from one associated object to another—that is the source of our idea of necessary connection.
When we say that one object is necessarily connected with another, we really mean that the objects have acquired an associative connection in our thought that gives rise to this inference. Having located the missing ingredient, Hume is ready to offer a definition of cause. In fact, he gives us two. The first,. A cause is an object, followed by another, where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second,.
A cause is an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to the other,. Only together do they capture all the relevant impressions involved. Hume locates the source of the idea of necessary connection in us , not in the objects themselves or even in our ideas of those objects we regard as causes and effects.
In doing so, he completely changes the course of the causation debate, reversing what everyone else thought about the idea of necessary connection. Subsequent discussions of causation must confront the challenges Hume poses for traditional, more metaphysical, ways of looking at our idea of causation.
He goes on to apply both his method, and its concrete results, to other prominent debates in the modern period, including probable inference, testimony for miracles, free will, and intelligent design. He takes his primary task to be an investigation into the origin of the basic moral ideas, which he assumes are the ideas of moral goodness and badness.
Determining their causes will determine what their content is—what we mean by them. His secondary concern is to establish what character traits and motives are morally good and bad. The sentiments of approval and disapproval are the source of our moral ideas of goodness and badness. To evaluate a character trait as morally good is to evaluate it as virtuous; to evaluate it as morally bad is to evaluate it as vicious.
As he did in the causation debate, Hume steps into an ongoing debate about ethics, often called the British Moralists debate, which began in the mid-seventeenth century and continued until the end of the eighteenth. He uses the same method here as he did in the causation debate: there is a critical phase in which he argues against his opponents, and a constructive phase in which he develops his version of sentimentalism.
Hume has two sets of opponents: the self-love theorists and the moral rationalists. He became the most famous proponent of sentimentalism.
Hobbes, as his contemporaries understood him, characterizes us as naturally self-centered and power-hungry, concerned above all with our own preservation. Relations of ideas are confined to the formal sciences of mathematics, geometry, and logic. Relations of ideas can not be denied as their denial would imply a contradiction in their very definition. Examples of such statements include 'the sky is blue', or 'water is odourless'. Note that the contrary of a matter of fact is not something impossible.
The two claims are only distinguishable by observation and experience. They can never be known with certainty.
As discussed above, Hume argued that knowledge of cause and effect comes only from the constant conjunction of particular phenomena in experience, which allows the use of induction to draw conclusions about cause and effect.
Newton supposed that the use of such inductive arguments could be justified by an appeal to the uniformity of nature. Consider the following argument, which might seem to justify our reliance on induction:.
But this argument itself relies on induction; the very mode of argument it seeks to justify. As Hume put it: "According to my account, all arguments about existence are based on the relation of cause and effect; our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and in drawing conclusions from experience we assume that the future will be like the past.
So if we try to prove this assumption by probable arguments, i. Hume concludes that we are compelled to use induction by a powerful natural instinct, or more specifically his principles of association.
He writes that "it seems evident that animals, like men, learn many things from experience, and infer that the same outcomes will always follow the same causes".
In the early modern Christian Europe, theology and natural philosophy were not deemed foreign to one another, but rather seen as compatible parts of an integrated mosaic of knowledge. In a letter to Henry Home published in , Hume confessed that he intended to include a skeptical discussion of miracles in his Treatise but left it out for fear of offending readers.
Critics of religion in eighteenth century Europe faced the risk of fine, imprisonment, or worse. He wrote that "A wise man No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless it is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact it tries to establish When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately ask myself whether it is more probable that this person either deceives or has been deceived or that what he reports really has happened If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event he relates, then he can claim to command my belief or opinion, but not otherwise".
Hume's arguments have gained a relevance beyond theological knowledge, and have been espoused as a methodology for evaluating other sorts of extraordinary or surprising claims, such as claims of paranormal occurrences or of extraterrestrial intelligence. They are succinctly summarized by the maxim, popularized by the twentieth century astronomer Carl Sagan , that "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence".
Having called revealed religion into question by doubting miraculous events, Hume turned his attention to natural theology in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion , which he arranged to have published posthumously because of its inflammatory nature. In it, Hume raised devastating objections to the claim that the universe showed evidence of purposeful design by an Intelligent Creator.
This claim was then widely popular among natural philosophers associated with the Royal Society 2 The Dialogues is written as a conversation between three characters; Cleanthes , a proponent of the design argument, Demea , a mystic, and Philo , a religious skeptic generally supposed to be Hume's spokesperson.
Philo argues that the analogy between the universe and a designed artifact is weak. For example, we experience only one universe and have nothing to compare it to. We recognize human artifacts by contrast with non-artifacts such as rocks. He also notes that we have no experience of the origin of the universe, and that causal inference requires a basis in experienced constant conjunction between two things.
For the origin of the universe we have nothing of the sort. Demea deems Cleanthes concept of God as cosmic designer to be anthropomorphic and limiting. By the end, Hume's characters' arguments lead the reader to the conclude, with Philo , that God's nature seems inconceivable, incomprehensible, and indefinable and therefore the question of God's existence is rendered meaningless.
Hume's skeptical arguments were troubling to many, and received a good deal of criticism. He was criticized, notably, by a fellow Scottish philosopher of his times; Thomas Reid. Hume supposed that our perceptual experience was of impressions in our minds. He also maintained that causal relations do not exist in the world, but are rather posited in our minds when two events are constantly conjoined in experience.
Such views, taken together, made it impossible to claim that our perceptual impressions are caused by objects in an external world. This would require that external objects themselves, and our impressions of them be conjoined in our experience, which is obviously impossible. Hume accepted that his belief in an external world was merely a matter of habit, custom, or instinct, and could not be justified. Reid found this unacceptable, and supposed that our perceptual experience was directly of objects in the world, just as everyday common sense tells us.
He noted that such direct experience was no more mysterious than Hume's supposition that we directly experienced impressions in our mind. By that time though, the relationship between this problem and that of external world skepticism had been substantially reconfigured. Reid likewise rejected Hume's view of causality. He noted that a view of causality based on constant conjunctions in our experience could not give a causal account of unique events.
He was an important figure in the Scottish Enlightenment and, along with John Locke and Bishop George Berkeley , one of the three main figureheads of the influential British Empiricism movement. He was a fierce opponent of the Rationalism of Descartes , Leibniz and Spinoza , as well as an atheist and a skeptic.
He has come to be considered as one of the most important British philosophers of all time, and he was a huge influence on later philosophers, from Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer to the Logical Positivists and Analytic Philosophers of the 20th Century, as well as on intellectuals in other fields including Albert Einstein , who claimed to have been inspired by Hume's skepticism of the established order. Even today, Hume's philosophical work remains refreshingly modern , challenging and provocative.
In later life, however, he largely turned away from philosophy in favor of economics and his other great love, history , and it was only then that he achieved recognition in his own lifetime. Hume was born on 26 April in a tenement on the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh , Scotland. He changed his name to Hume in because the English had difficulty pronouncing "Home" in the Scottish manner. He was well read , even as a child, and had a good grounding in Greek and Latin.
He attended the University of Edinburgh at the unusually early age of twelve possibly as young as ten , although he had little respect for the professors there and soon threw over a prospective career in law in favor of philosophy and general learning.
At the tender age of eighteen, he made a great " philosophical discovery " which remains somewhat unexplained and mysterious that led him to devote the next ten years of his life to a concentrated period of study, reading and writing, almost to the verge of a nervous breakdown.
In order to earn a living, he took a position in a merchant's office in Bristol before moving to Anjou, France in It was there that he used up his savings to support himself while he wrote his masterwork, "A Treatise of Human Nature" , which he completed in at only 26 years of age. Despite the disappointment of the work's poor reception in Britain it was considered "abstract and unintelligible" , he immediately set to work to produce an anonymous "Abstract" or shortened version of it.
After the publication of his "Essays Moral and Political" in , Hume was refused a post at the University of Edinburgh after local ministers petitioned the town council not to appoint Hume due to his Atheism. For about a year he tutored the unstable Marquise of Annandale and became involved with the Canongate Theatre in Edinburgh, where he associated with some of the Scottish Enlightenment luminaries of the time.
Clair , including as an aide-de-camp on diplomatic missions in Austria and Northern Italy, and even at one point as a staff officer on an ill-fated military expedition as part of the War of the Austrian Succession.
It was during this period that he wrote his "Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding" , later published as "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" , which proved little more successful than the "Treatise". He was charged with heresy although he was defended by his young clerical friends, who argued that, as an atheist , he was outside the Church's jurisdiction , and was again deliberately overlooked for the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. In , the Faculty of Advocates employed him as their librarian , for which he received little or no emolument, but which gave him access to a large library , and which enabled him to continue historical research for his "History of Great Britain".
This enormous work, begun in and not completed until , ran to over a million words and traced events from the Saxon kingdoms to the Glorious Revolution. It was a best-seller in its day and became the standard work on English history for many years.
Thus, it was as a historian that Hume finally achieved literary fame. For a year from , he held the appointment of Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department in London, before retiring back to Edinburgh in
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