Understanding Hume’s Empiricism: Context and Philosophy

Posted on Feb 20, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Hume

I. Context

II. Philosophical Antecedents

• The antecedents of this current begin with Ockham (nominalism):
• 1. University of Oxford:
  • Away from the ecclesiastic-university influence that was more interested in Aristotle.
  • Were devoted to the observation of nature (utilitarianism).
• 2. University of Paris:
  • The Catholic Church was dedicated especially to metaphysics and logic.

• English culture has always had a pragmatic stance.
• EXPERIENCE: starting point.
• Empire:
• • EXPERIENCE: origin and limit of all knowledge.
  • Denial of innate ideas: empiricism of Aristotle.
  • SENSITIVE EVIDENCE: the criterion of truth.
  • Human Knowledge is Limited.
  • IDEAS: what the mind knows, not things (Idealism of Descartes).
  • REASON: dependent and limited to experience. Empiricism only operates with it.

I. History II

1. Policy

• Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, British Isles: Revolutions of 1848 and 1868 – TRIUMPH OF Parliamentarism.
• Installation of a new regime: The Stuarts.
• Divided into two parties: Liberals and Conservatives.

2. Economic and Social Development

• Remarkable economic development in both agriculture and industry.
• This helps the bourgeoisie begin to grow.

3. The Development of Science

• Allows the development of physics and inductive methods.
• Arise academies:
• • Royal Society of London (scholarships).
  • Academy of Sciences.

Hume’s Philosophical Project II

• All sciences bear relation to human nature.
• • LOGIC: is interested in principles and operations of the rational faculties of man.
  • POLITICS: Considers man in connection with his truth.
  • NATURAL RELIGION: deals with the nature of the divine and the relationship of God with men.
  • THE REST OF SCIENCES: decide its truth or falsity.
  • Conclusion: we must develop a science of man applied the experimental method:
  • • Investigating human psychological processes, causes, and principles.
    • Apart from empirical data.
  • ONLY HALF: it is rigorously determine the nature of human understanding and show that it is possible to scientific knowledge in metaphysics.

III. Epistemology

III.1. Origin and Classification

• The negation of innatism, own rationalism.
• Hume’s argument accepts any lock:
• • No need to resort to innatism as ideas can be achieved through the use of human faculties.
  • Many humans die ignorant of some truth that his reason was capable of knowing.
  • There is no universal assent.
  • Can result in the consensus by other routes.
• The only thing that is innate is the ability to know, but not the content, which has to be taken up by experience.
• LOCKE: everything we perceive is an idea.
• DESCARTES: idea is the mental representation of something.
• CONCLUSION: We know ideas or representations of things.
• IDEA or perception of the Human Mind.
• TYPES:
• • IMPRESSIONS: primary data of knowledge, feelings, emotions.
  • • IMPRESSIONS OF FEELING: if from outside expertise.
    • IMPRESSIONS OF REFLECTION: if they come from inner experience.
  • IDEAS: representations or copies of impressions.
  • • MEMORY: if they are close memories.
    • OF IMAGINATION: if they are distant memories.
  • IMPRESSIONS:
  • • SIMPLE: do not support or distinction or separation.
    • COMPLEX: allow distinction between them.
• RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IMPRESSIONS AND IDEAS:
• • Complex prints can be copied into complex ideas.
  • Very complex impressions may not be copied to complex ideas.
  • Complex ideas also have their origin in simple ideas.

III. Laws of Association of Ideas

• Natural Relations: they are unconscious, are governed by the association.
• • Similarity.
  • Spatio-temporal contiguity.
  • Cause and effect.
• Philosophical account: they are aware, are governed by the comparison:
• • Similarity.
  • Spatio-temporal contiguity.
  • Cause and effect.
  • Quality grades.
  • Annoyance.
  • Quantitative or numerical proposition.