Exploring Hume’s Philosophy: Ideas, Morality, and Causality
Natural Relationship
A relationship of ideas is formed through imagination, a faculty by which two ideas are spontaneously introduced one after the other. This relationship manifests in three major ways: similarity, continuity in space-time, and causality.
Start of Copy
This refers to ideas, which are like copies of prints, as these are images of perceptions.
Philosophical Relation
This is a type of association of ideas. It’s an arbitrary and conventional relationship that the imagination establishes between two ideas because it considers it appropriate to compare them. There isn’t one principle of connection, but a number of principles.
Relations of Ideas
One of the two major fields of knowledge. It is the realm of formal sciences, offering demonstrative certainty and devoid of contradiction.
Matters of Fact
This represents the world of facts and things, encompassing empirical sciences, moral philosophy, and human behavior. In these matters, there can be no demonstration, but only probabilities and beliefs: a statement is as conceivable as its opposite, although it may not be likely.
Connection Required
Hume argues that there is no discernible link between cause and effect because we have no impression of it. We intuitively experience contiguity and temporal succession of two events, but not the necessary connection.
Moral Sentiment
This is Hume’s moral foundation. It is governed not by reason but by passion. This sentiment is grounded in human nature, which is evidently the same in all people. Therefore, a natural instinct makes us distinguish right from wrong.
Cause and Effect
This is the principle of causality. For Aristotle, every effect has a cause, which is not captured by the senses but by feelings.
In Aristotle
Ethics for Aristotle is teleological in that all beings move towards an end according to their nature, which is happiness. However, being an independent ethic, it doesn’t dictate what one must do. This happiness is attainable only by complying with human nature at all times and practicing virtue.
In Hume
This is the third part of the Treatise, exploring the foundation of morality. This foundation is human nature itself, the same for all people. Good is what is useful, and bad is what is harmful. An instinct makes us appreciate the good and reject the bad, based on self-interest. The common assessment of good lies in virtuous actions, which fall under the category of the useful. Moral judgment is always determined by a pleasant feeling of approval.
That the sun will rise tomorrow is not a less intelligible proposition. That statement will come out tomorrow. Hume defended in this argument the possibility (not probability) of conceiving the act contrary to that which is supposed to occur in matters of fact, thus negating the possibility of establishing a principle of causality and therefore this knowledge. The causes and effects cannot be disclosed by the right, but by the experience. Hume rejects the rationalist conception of reason as the only valid source of knowledge and instead posits experience, as an empiricist. Morality is determined by feeling. Also, as explained in the definition of moral feeling, it is the feeling, the passion, not reason, which governs our conduct. In the matters of fact, no demonstrative assurance is possible. Experience is the source of certainty about facts. Against every fact, I can think otherwise, but I cannot always believe it. Experience begets habit, custom, belief. It gives rise to a sense of habit that makes us hope and believe that the former will continue the latter.
Perception
It is anything that comes to our mind through the senses, or impulse of passion, or exercise of reflection.
Impression
Impressions are perceptions that come with greater force and violence; they are the most lively and immediate. There are two types: impressions of sensation and reflection. From the first, impressions are obtained for reflection, and these can be derived from ideas of reflection.
Idea
Ideas are images of perceptions, used in thinking and imagining. When something is perceived, what remains in the mind is an impression. We cannot have ideas if we have not previously had impressions.
Habit
Habit indicates a constant, or less frequently, a tendency to act in a certain way. It is thus intermediate between character and action.
Belief
The denial of the principle of causality requires Hume to replace certainty with belief or probability. We believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, but we have no absolute certainty. This belief has shades of irrationalism.
Habit
It is repeated experience. It turns on the dynamism of our imagination and leads us to believe that whenever we see 1, necessarily 2 must appear.
Vice
What is bad for me and others.
Virtue
It is the opposite of vice. It means what is nice and good for me and others.
Nature
For empiricists, nature is everything perceptible and sensible, acquired through experience.
Usefulness
It is the foundation of morality. This criterion of positive moral sentiment serves satisfaction and the good; what is not useful is not good.