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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)]]
|Major Contributions==== Hume and moral philosophy ===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. It was not a success in his own time. Hume wrote that the work fell "deadborn from the press", [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)|p. 4]] and he lamented that "I was carry'd away by the Heat of Youth & Invention to publish too precipitately So vast an Undertaking, plan’d before I was one and twenty, & compos’d before twenty five, must necessarily be very defective. I have repented my Haste a hundred, & a hundred times”. [[CiteRef:: Norton (2009)|p. 25]] It is however, today regarded as a major and important work. Hume recast the material into two later publications, ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding'', published in 1748, ''concerning the Principles of Morals'' published in 1751. Because of its controversial nature, and Hume had ''Dialogs concerning Natural Religion'' published posthumously in 1779, three years after his death. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]][[CiteRef:: Norton (2009)]] His basic philosophical project is indicated by the subtitle of the ''Treatise''; "an attempt to introduce the experimental method into moral subjects" [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)|p.7]] . An admirer of the Newtonian experimental philosophy, Hume sought to extend it from natural philosophy into what was then called '''moral philosophy''', which he defines as the "science of human nature"[[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)|p.8]]. To Hume, an understanding of the workings of the mind was the key to establishing the foundations of all other knowledge. Natural philosophers, like Newton and Boyle, he maintains, had cured themselves of their "passion for hypotheses and systems"
=== Hume and moral philosophy ===
The basic goal of the first three of these works is indicated by the subtitle of the ''Treatise''; "an attempt to introduce the experimental method into moral subjects". [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)|p.7]] An admirer of the Newtonian experimental philosophy, Hume sought to extend it from natural philosophy into what was then called '''moral philosophy''', which he defines as the "science of human nature". [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)|p.8]] Moral philosophy included topics that a modern scientist might classify as psychology or cognitive science. To Hume, an understanding of the workings of the mind was the key to establishing the foundations of all other knowledge, including "Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion". [[CiteRef:: Norton (2009)|p. 34]] Natural philosophers, like Newton and Boyle, he maintains, had cured themselves of their "passion for hypotheses and systems". [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)|p. 8-9]] Hume sought to work the same cure for moral philosophy, which he saw as full of speculative metaphysical theories and constant dispute. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]] He is noted as a skeptic because of his rejection of speculative metaphysical beliefs, and because he argues that we cannot rationally justify many of our beliefs. But he also observes that we have non-rational faculties which compel certain sorts of beliefs, and it is these faculties of which he wishes to give a positive descriptive account. [[CiteRef::Biro (2009)]] Hume sought to found an empirical science of the mind, based on experience and observation. He noted that the application of the experimental method to "moral subjects" necessarily differed from its use in natural philosophy, because it was impossible to conduct experiments "purposely, with premeditation". Instead, knowledge would be gained "from cautious observation of human life...by men's behaviour in company, in affairs, and in pleasures". [[CiteRef::Brio (2009)|p. 42]] Experimental psychology in the modern sense, conducted in the laboratory, would not make its appearance until the late 19th century. [[CiteRef::Leary (1979)]]
Hume wrote that uses the work fell "deadborn from the press"term 'perceptions' to designate mental content of any sort. He lamented that "I was carry'd away by the Heat supposes there are two sorts of Youth & Invention to publish too precipitately So vast an Undertakingperceptions, plan’d before I was one impressions and twentyideas. Impressions include feelings we get from our senses, & compos’d before twenty fivesuch as of a red tomato currently in front of me, as well as desires, emotions, passions, and sentiments, must necessarily be very defectivesuch as my current hunger for the tomato. Hume distinguishes impressions from ideas by their degree of vivacity or force. Thus, I have repented myHaste a hundredan impression of the tomato that is currently present, & and an idea of a hundred times”tomato I ate last year. While this work was not Hume supposes our ideas are copies of our impressions. Noting that there is a success regular order to our thoughts, he asserts that the mind has the power to associate ideas. Hume posits three associative principles; resemblance (as when one recognizes that currently before me resembles the one in my garden), contiguity in its own timestime and place, it is today regarded and causation (as when one recognizes cause and effect). Hume believes that by thus anatomizing human nature, its laws of operation can be discovered. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]][[CiteRef::Biro (2009)]] It was Hume's most important workcareful analysis of the mind that led to insights relevant to scientific methodology.
=== Hume and Scientific Methodology ===
==== Hume’s Fork ====
Aristotle drew a categorical distinction between '''scientific knowledge''' or ''scientia'' and '''belief''', or ''opinio''. Scientific knowledge was a knowledge of causes. Scientific explanation consisted of '''demonstration''', in which a necessary connection between a cause and its effect was proven using intuitively obvious premises independently of experience. Descartes and other corpuscularists maintained this demonstrative ideal of scientific explanation. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]] Descartes supposed that a mechanical cause is intrinsically and necessarily related to its effect. A demonstrative science was thus possible, because the general principles of physical nature could be deduced from mathematical principles concerning the shape, size, position, motion, and causal interaction among the ultimate corpuscular particles of matter. Newton's inductive method, in which general principles are derived inductively from observation and experiment, was not compatible with
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.
