171
edits
Changes
m
no edit summary
|Historical Context=Hume is one of the most notable skeptics in all of history thanks to his skepticism of causation, and necessary connection. Within a historical context, philosophers of the time were concerned with proving axiomatic schemes, heavily relying on causation. Diverging from this reliance on causation, Hume would go to show irrationality within such a connection. More specifically, within scientific change, Hume’s arguments are most notably used against infallibilism. Famously, Hume is often associated with the terms '''The Problem of Induction''' and '''Hume’s Fork'''. Hume creates most of his arguments for skepticism within his two texts ''A Treatise of Human Nature (1738)'' and ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748)''.[[CiteRef::Morris (2001)]]
At the time, modern philosophers had strived away from Aristotle’s account of causation. In this rejection, they thought themselves revolutionary. Aristotle’s account of causation consisted of material, formal, efficient, and final causes. The philosophers of the middle ages, only retained some semblance of efficient causes in their deferral. They instead chose to categorize causes as primary or secondary efficient causes. Primary causes were the source of being of a particular thing, while secondary causes were the beginnings of motion or change. Albeit digressing from Aristotle’s model of causation, those same philosophers kept Aristotle’s distinction between scientific knowledge and belief. This distinction helped to hold propositions which were scientific vs. those which were not. Scientific knowledge consisted of propositions which could be demonstrated, i.e. they could prove to have a necessary connection between cause and effect independent of experience. Beliefs were just statements of opinion based on experience. Descartes and Malebranche, for instance, kept this distinction in that they were certain of demonstrative scientific knowledge. Locke, on the other hand, was more interested in asserting natural philosophy by appealing to the rationality of belief.[[CiteRef::Morris (2001)]][[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]]
Hume took a different approach. He divided that same distinction between scientific explanation and belief into relations of ideas and matters of fact. The distinction was still based on Aristotle's knowledge and belief, but it translated slightly differently. Similar to Aristotle’s distinction, Hume’s distinction agreed that all propositions could be exclusively divided into one category or the other. Different to Aristotle’s distinction however, it provided a different account for the two types of propositions. This distinction is commonly referred to as Hume’s Fork.[[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]]
Along with this distinction Hume also strongly disagreed with his predecessors that reason or any other rational means of understanding are behind causal inferences. Instead, Hume believed that causal inferences were caused by some other means, particularly, induction. Induction is the process by which a person makes assumptions about the future based on their experiences of the past. This process is, of course, not a rational activity, and the majority of the discourse on induction is explaining this. This argument is famously known as Hume’s Problem of Induction, and is Hume’s largest contribution to skepticism. It is through the problem of induction that Hume can be seen to conflict with modern philosophers’ accounts of causation. Because effects could no longer be rationally correlated to their causes, philosophers who built axiomatic schemes around such cases were no longer justified in their beliefs. [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] Philosophers would no longer be able to claim inference from experience as a rational activity. This argument continues to be used today as a main criticism of infallibilism.[[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]]
|Major Contributions==== Hume’s Fork ===
In Hume’s entrance to the debate of causation, Hume translates the Aristotelean distinction between scientific knowledge and belief into his own terms. These are:
# The statement ‘α exists’ proven or otherwise doesn’t say anything about the world; it is just a play on words.
Much akin to the reasoning the analytic/synthetic distinction uses, it is impossible, according to Hume, for a proposition not to fall within the distinction. In Hume’s eyes, such a proposition would be completely meaningless in that it would simply not be a rational or reasonable endeavour. It is in this binary categorization, that this distinction is historically important. Philosophers at the time were heavily reliant on innate meaningful ideas (synthetic ''a priori'' statements), but Hume’s distinction of the types of proposition did not allow for such ideas. Hume believed that innate ideas cannot be meaningful in that they never contain real world statements. This meant most axiomatic schemes were immediately broken down with Hume’s skepticism.[[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]]
=== Problem of Induction ===
# Therefore, the future will be like the past.
Within this argument, the premise assumes the conclusion and, as such, the argument is circular. In this sense, the first example shows an irrational train of thought. It seems then, that Hume established there is no way that reason could be the connection between cause and effect. Thus, Hume sought another connection between cause and effect. He eventually recognized this connection to be custom or habit. This is more commonly known today as induction. As a person experiences something repeatedly, they grow to expect it to happen again. However, despite being an adequate connection, this solution forces the abandonment of reason within causal inference. [[CiteRef:: DePierris (2006)]] As previously mentioned, such a conclusion yields grave consequences for science of the time, which was heavily dependent on causal inferences.[[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]]
|Criticism=Historically, due to the threatening nature of Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, particularly to Newtonian physics, as well as his problem of induction there have been many critics of Hume. One of the most prominent critics to criticize Hume on the account of his distinction between the types of propositions was [[Immanuel Kant]]. Kant criticized Hume, seeking to validate Newton’s propositions about the world which could never be meaningful under Hume’s distinction. Kant theorized that the world was interpreted through sensory and intellect and thus there must exist some sort of ''a priori'' synthetic proposition.4 The existence of such a proposition would of course result in a proposition that fit both categories of Hume’s distinction. Unfortunately, Kant’s ''a priori'' synthetic proposition was debunked with the arrival of probabilistic determinism.