Hume’s Empiricism: Knowledge, Causality, and Ethics
Connection to Hume’s Empiricism
Core Tenet: All knowledge derives from experience.
- Knowledge originates in experience.
- Knowledge is confirmed through experience.
- Propositions lacking experiential confirmation are meaningless.
- There are no innate ideas.
Influenced by Newton, Hume grounded his philosophy on observation and experience. He believed all knowledge stems from perceptions, the contents of the mind. These perceptions are categorized into:
Impressions and Ideas
Impressions are vivid and more intense than ideas. Ideas are copies of impressions, fainter representations. If an idea doesn’t originate from an impression, it’s considered meaningless. Impressions exist in the present, while ideas are stored in memory. For Hume, truth hinges on an idea’s derivation from an impression.
Mechanisms of Association of Ideas
Ideas are associated through:
- Resemblance: Connecting ideas based on similarity.
- Contiguity: Linking ideas based on their proximity in space or time (e.g., sounds from a room under a door, then through the wall).
- Cause and Effect: Observing an event and inferring its cause.
Hume emphasizes causal knowledge as crucial for understanding and controlling nature. Predicting the future relies on understanding cause-and-effect relationships. He distinguishes two types of knowledge:
Relations Between Ideas and Relations Between Facts
Relations Between Ideas (Analytic):
These are determined by analyzing the meaning of terms. They are a priori (independent of experience) and include mathematics and logic. They are tautological and their contradictions are self-evident. Hume considers them less important because they don’t apply to the physical world.
Relations Between Facts (Synthetic):
These are more significant to Hume. Their truth or falsehood is determined by experience. They are a posteriori (dependent on experience). They are contingent, meaning they could be otherwise. Hume argues that synthetic knowledge cannot be certain or necessary. We can’t definitively know future events (e.g., the sun rising tomorrow) based on past experience. Our belief in the regularity of nature is psychological, not logical.
Causality
Hume argues that causality is not a property of objects but a perceived relationship. Cause and effect are contiguous, but the connection isn’t directly observable. We infer the connection from experience. The necessary connection is a subjective notion based on repeated observation. We cannot know with certainty the necessity of natural laws.
Hume’s Skepticism
How do we know if our perceptions accurately represent external reality? Hume suggests that our perceptions themselves might be caused by external reality, but we have no guarantee. We only have access to our representations. The world is reduced to a structure of phenomena. An apple, for example, is the sum of its sensory qualities.
Hume asserts that appearances are not deceptive; they are all we have. The world of phenomena is subjective and influenced by individual perception.
Emotivist Ethics
Hume rejects reason as the foundation of ethics. He believes ethics studies good and bad actions. Reason can only determine the truth or falsehood of statements, not motivate action. We are moved to act by the prospect of pleasure or pain. Moral judgments are determined by feelings. Reason is the slave of the passions.
Hume argues that good and bad are not properties of objects but feelings within us. We don’t reject an action because it’s wrong, but we feel it’s wrong and therefore reject it. Societal prohibitions arise when individual pleasures threaten the collective good (e.g., laws against murder).
Comparison with Plato and Descartes
Hume’s ethics contrasts with Plato’s emphasis on reason as the governing principle. Hume’s concept of adventitious ideas (derived from experience) differs from Descartes’ notion of innate ideas.