Changes

By the time he started work on ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' at the age of 23, Hume had become skeptical of religious belief. [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]] The term '''atheism''' was coined by Sir John Cheke almost two hundred years earlier in 1540, to refer to a lack of belief in divine providence. The term assumed its modern meaning of disbelief in the existence of God, as divine non-existence emerged as a disquieting possibility in the seventeenth century. [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]] Although Descartes' rationalism had a proof of God's existence at its foundation, it was nonetheless a challenge to the theological methodology established by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). This methodology stressed the limitations of human reason, and the necessity of reliance on divine revelation and the text of the Bible. Descartes instead stressed the human capacity to know God and nature through reason alone. Descartes' rationalist argument for God's existence and guarantorship of the certainty of scientific knowledge was soon rejected as circular. [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]][[CiteRef::Cottingham (1992)]] It was supplanted by Newton's experimental philosophy and Locke's empiricism, both of which stressed experience and observation as sources of the limited knowledge to which humans could aspire. It eschewed metaphysics and speculative hypotheses. [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]] Though they held non-standard beliefs, both Newton and Locke were devoutly religious. Like many natural philosophers associated with the Royal Society, they rejected traditional rationalist proofs of God's existence and instead espoused the '''design argument''', supposing that the experimental method could demonstrate that the universe was an artifact crafted by a cosmic Designer. Hume's ''Dialogues on Natural Theology'' (1779) was a response to such hopes, and was to raise devastating objections to them. Unlike Locke, Hume saw that empiricism must place God's existence among those speculative questions to be eschewed. [[CiteRef::Hyman (2007)]] Doubts about God's existence also arose among French intellectuals in the mid-eighteenth century, with the first to openly proclaim himself an atheist being Denis Diderot (1713-1784). [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]][[CiteRef::Bristow (2017)]]

Hume's main philosophical contributions were made via several works. The first was ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' published in three volumes in 1739 and 1740, when Hume was 29 years old. ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding'', published in 1748, ''concerning the Principles of Morals'' published in 1751, and ''Dialogs concerning Natural Religion'' published posthumously in 1779, three years after his death.

Haste a hundred, & a hundred times”. While this work was not a success in its own times, it is today regarded as Hume's most important work

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:

* Relations of ideas.

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)]]

The problem of induction stems from the reasoning behind causal inference. This is a very important problem Hume brings up because the methodology of the time called for axiomatic schemes. These schemes were based largely on causal inferences. As such, Hume’s Problem of Induction threatened science at the time as it proved causal inferences were irrational.

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.