editor, Administrators
2,020
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
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.
* Matters of fact.
Relations of ideas are ideas that are absolutely certain through either demonstration or purely through intuition. They are ''a priori'', in that they are discoverable independent of experience. This categorization does not necessitate ideas to carry information dependent on the world and thus ideas falling into this category are independent of any existing thing. They are universal constants in that they hold true in all worlds. It should be noted, relations of ideas cannot provide any new information about the world. These types of propositions are simply a means used to help understand more complex ideas. They can be thought of as symbols or a series of simpler ideas describing a larger more complex idea. Common examples usually include geometry or math as formal sciences fall within this categorization. Examples of such statements include 'a square’s sides add up to 360 degrees' or '1 + 1 = 2'. Alternatively, a worded proposition may look something like 'when you run, you move your body,' or, 'all bachelors are unmarried'. Relations of ideas can never be denied as their denial would imply a contradiction in the very definition of the terms within the proposition.[[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]]
Matters of fact are the complete opposite of relations of ideas. Matters of fact are ''a posteriori'' statements and thus based on experience. Unlike relations of ideas, matters of fact do not hold true in all possible worlds. The contrary of matters of fact imply no contradiction and such statements cannot be established by demonstration. Matters of fact can show new information about the world but rely on the experience of the world. Examples of such statements include 'the sky is blue', or 'water is odourless', or 'all guitars have 6 frets.' It should be noted that false statements, such as the last example, can still be matters of fact. The level of coherence within false statements or contrary statements remains the same as within true statements despite being incorrect. In this sense, contrasting statements are, too, matters of facts.[[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]]
The reason behind this distinction was simple; it was to provide criteria by which to organize scientific statements. Through this distinction, all statements were categorized into either matters of fact or relations of ideas. This also ultimately meant that there was no type of idea which was certain and provided information about the world. In the case of matters of fact, propositions are reliant on senses and due to the fallibility of the senses, have no certainty. In the case of relations of ideas, propositions can be proven with absolute certainty through the use of other relations of ideas. Unfortunately, however, these statements cannot give any new information about the world. This distinction was often taken by the scientific community as a strike at Newton’s theory of motion. [[CiteRef::Kant (2007)]] Such a distinction has large consequences in the fields of science, religion, and even philosophy due to its prevention of certain real world statements. As an example this distinction would make useless the attempt to try to prove non physical entities as matters of fact.
# α is a non-physical entity.
# It has no observable effect on the world and its not made up of a physical thing.
# α is a relation of ideas.
# Relations of ideas are just assigned symbols helping to explain more complex symbols.
# 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 ====
no edit summary
By Hume's time, [[Aristotle]]'s (384 BC-322 BC) teleological account of causation had been rejected in favor of the '''corpuscular mechanistic''' view of causation espoused by Descartes, Locke, and the Royal Society. In this view, derived from ancient atomism, material bodies are made of invisibly small particles, called corpuscles. The only form of causation is mechanical, by direct physical contact of bodies or their constituent corpuscles [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] Natural philosophers continued to accept Aristotle's distinction between scientific knowledge and belief. Scientific knowledge was taken to be knowledge of causes and consisted of '''demonstration'''; proving the necessary connection between cause and effect. Locke supported this view of knowledge and made the popular notion of a hypothetical hidden corpuscular microstructure and the associated notion of a metaphysically necessary connection between cause and effect central to his system. He nonetheless viewed demonstrative knowledge as seldom attainable because of the unobservability of corpuscles [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]][[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]] Although many early eighteenth century thinkers regarded Newton's theories and Locke's empiricism to constitute a unified system, there was a distinct tension between them, which Hume recognized. Newton had been unable to explain his gravitational force in terms of a corpuscular mechanism. He saw his inductive method as an alternative to the demands of a corpuscularism that stood in the way of the acceptance of a mathematically lawful gravitational force on its own terms. Hume's Newton inspired skepticism of speculative metaphysical hypotheses led him to reject corpuscularism, and his enthusiastic championing of Newton's inductive method led him to challenge Locke's concept of causation, and Aristotle's taxonomy of knowledge and opinion. Hume translated this latter distinction into a distinction between relations of ideas, which are discoverable by thought (for example, mathematical truths), and matters of fact, which depend on how the world actually is. This distinction became known as '''Hume's Fork'''. Rejecting necessary causation, his careful analysis of Newton's inductive method led him to identify '''Hume's Problem of Induction''', questioning our ability to rationally justify knowledge of causation obtained by induction. [[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]][[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]]
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 (20172011)]]
|Major Contributions=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, Hume had ''Dialogs concerning Natural Religion'' published posthumously in 1779, three years after his death. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]][[CiteRef:: Norton (2009)]]
=== Hume and moral philosophy 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 The field of moral philosophy was much broader then than today, and 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 Biro (2009)|p. 42]] Experimental psychology in the modern sense, conducted with controlled experiments in the laboratory, would not make its appearance until the late 19th century. [[CiteRef::Leary (1979)]]
Hume uses the term ''''perceptions'''' to designate mental content of any sort. He supposes there are two sorts of perceptions, '''impressions ''' and '''ideas'''. Impressions include feelings we get from our senses, such as of a red tomato currently in front of me, as well as desires, emotions, passions, and sentiments, such as my current hunger for the tomato. Hume distinguishes impressions from ideas by their degree of vivacity or force. Thus, I have an impression of the tomato that is currently present, and an idea of a tomato I ate last year. Hume supposes our ideas are copies of our impressions. Noting that there is a 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 time and place, 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 careful analysis of the mind that led to insights relevant to scientific methodology.
=== Hume and Scientific Methodology ===
==== Hume’s Fork The Problem of Induction ====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 retained 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
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)]]
==== 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:
* Relations of ideas.
* Matters of fact.
Relations of ideas are ideas that are absolutely certain through either demonstration or purely through intuition. They are ''a priori'', in that they are discoverable independent of experience. This categorization does not necessitate ideas to carry information dependent on the world and thus ideas falling into this category are independent of any existing thing. They are universal constants in that they hold true in all worlds. It should be noted, relations of ideas cannot provide any new information about the world. These types of propositions are simply a means used to help understand more complex ideas. They can be thought of as symbols or a series of simpler ideas describing a larger more complex idea. Common examples usually include geometry or math as formal sciences fall within this categorization. Examples of such statements include 'a square’s sides add up to 360 degrees' or '1 + 1 = 2'. Alternatively, a worded proposition may look something like 'when you run, you move your body,' or, 'all bachelors are unmarried'. Relations of ideas can never be denied as their denial would imply a contradiction in the very definition of the terms within the proposition.[[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]]
Matters of fact are the complete opposite of relations of ideas. Matters of fact are ''a posteriori'' statements and thus based on experience. Unlike relations of ideas, matters of fact do not hold true in all possible worlds. The contrary of matters of fact imply no contradiction and such statements cannot be established by demonstration. Matters of fact can show new information about the world but rely on the experience of the world. Examples of such statements include 'the sky is blue', or 'water is odourless', or 'all guitars have 6 frets.' It should be noted that false statements, such as the last example, can still be matters of fact. The level of coherence within false statements or contrary statements remains the same as within true statements despite being incorrect. In this sense, contrasting statements are, too, matters of facts.[[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]]
The reason behind this distinction was simple; it was to provide criteria by which to organize scientific statements. Through this distinction, all statements were categorized into either matters of fact or relations of ideas. This also ultimately meant that there was no type of idea which was certain and provided information about the world. In the case of matters of fact, propositions are reliant on senses and due to the fallibility of the senses, have no certainty. In the case of relations of ideas, propositions can be proven with absolute certainty through the use of other relations of ideas. Unfortunately, however, these statements cannot give any new information about the world. This distinction was often taken by the scientific community as a strike at Newton’s theory of motion. [[CiteRef::Kant (2007)]] Such a distinction has large consequences in the fields of science, religion, and even philosophy due to its prevention of certain real world statements. As an example this distinction would make useless the attempt to try to prove non physical entities as matters of fact.
# α is a non-physical entity.
# It has no observable effect on the world and its not made up of a physical thing.
# α is a relation of ideas.
# Relations of ideas are just assigned symbols helping to explain more complex symbols.
# 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)]]
==== Skepticism about theological knowledge ====
