Hume’s Empiricism: Causal Relationships and Perceptions
Hume’s Empiricism: A Critical Analysis
Criticisms of Hume’s Probable Causal Relationships
- Skeptical Standpoint: Establishing probable truth from a skeptical position is impossible. If truth is unknown, proximity to it cannot be determined.
- Experience and Probability: Experience cannot provide probability. The ratio of observed cases to the infinite unobserved cases approaches zero.
- A Priori Certainty: Assuming the future probably resembles the past implies a priori certainty, contradicting Hume’s empirical stance.
The Justification of Expectations
Hume’s Lack of Explanation
Hume offers no explanation for the alignment between our psychologically-based expectations and perceived experiences, prompting further attempts, like Kant’s, to address skepticism.
Establishing Causal Relationships
Necessary Conditions
Causal relationships require temporal and spatial contiguity, constant conjunction, and a necessary connection between cause and effect.
Fundamental Theses of Hume’s Empiricism
- Source of Knowledge: Experience is the sole source of all knowledge; there are no innate ideas.
- Limits of Knowledge: Experience also defines the boundaries of our knowledge.
Defining Perception
Perception encompasses all mental content, including sensations, passions, thoughts, and reflections.
Vivid Ideas Resembling Impressions
Ideas can achieve the vividness and strength of impressions only under exceptional circumstances, such as during sleep, fever, madness, or intense emotions.
The Originality of Hume’s “Impression”
Hume’s “impression” denotes not the manner in which perceptions are produced, but rather the vivid and strong initial appearances of feelings, passions, and emotions in the mind.
Critique of Rationalism and Occasionalism
Challenging Malebranche
Hume criticizes Malebranche’s rationalism and innate ideas, arguing that all ideas derive from experience. While the imagination can manipulate ideas, it depends on impressions from sensation or reflection.
The Soul’s Acquisition of Sense Impressions
The process by which the soul acquires sense impressions remains unknown, although the Compendium may suggest a different position.
Memory vs. Imagination
Memory and imagination copy original impressions into ideas. Memory’s copies are more vivid, stronger, and faithful to the original order. Imagination, however, can decompose and recombine simple ideas to form novel complex ideas unrelated to prior experience.
Classifying Impressions and Ideas
Impressions and ideas are categorized as simple or complex, and as arising from sensation or reflection.
The Power and Limits of Imagination
Imagination appears boundless, exceeding human power and even the limits of nature and reality. However, it is constrained by the principle of non-contradiction and limited by our simple impressions.
Hume’s Definition of Substance
Substance is a collection of simple ideas united by the imagination and given a name for recall. It is not a distinct reality separate from impressions, as the idea of such a substance lacks empirical grounding.
The Existence of Universal and Necessary Truths
Only mathematical and logical truths are considered universal and necessary due to their a priori nature, but they do not expand our knowledge of the world.
The Basis of Causal Relationships
Belief in causal relationships stems from habit or custom, a psychological process of associating ideas. This conviction, lacking objective basis, arises from repeated observation of linked events. It is a product of our psychology, based on assumptions like the unchanging nature of reality. Causation is a complex idea formed by the imagination, driven by habit and custom, but without a corresponding impression of necessary connection.
Principles of Association of Ideas
The association of ideas is the natural tendency of the mind to connect ideas. One idea evokes others in a regular, though not strictly necessary, sequence. Hume identifies three principles of connection: resemblance, contiguity in time or space, and cause or effect. These principles, products of imagination rather than reason, describe the formation of complex ideas from simple ones.
The Common Problem of Rationalism and Empiricism
Both rationalist and empiricist epistemologies grapple with justifying the correspondence between thought and reality, demonstrating how mental contents can accurately represent the external world.