editor, Administrators
2,020
edits
Changes
no edit summary
|Brief=a Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist; he was one of the first important philosophers to write in English
|Summary=Hume was a skeptic.[[CiteRef::Fieser (2016)]] Hume’s two largest contributions to the field of philosophy lie within his major philosophical works: ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' and ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding''. He is perhaps most well known for his interpretation of Aristotle’s causation in terms of matters of fact and relations of ideas, and for questioning the rationality behind induction.[[CiteRef::Morris (2001)]] These are known as Hume’s Fork and The Problem of Induction respectively. These skeptical arguments posed a challenge to many great philosophical minds and continue to challenge philosophers today.
|Historical Context=David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1711. His family had a modest estate and was socially connected, but not wealthy. His father died when he was two years old, and he was raised by his mother. His family recognized that he was precocious and sent him with his brother to Edinburgh University when he was 10 or 11 (although his brother was 12). He studied Latin and Greek, read widely in history and , literature, and ancient and modern philosophy, and also studied some mathematics and natural philosophy. [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]][[CiteRef:: Harris (2015)|p. 35-65]] [[Isaac Newton ]] (1643-1727) had published his ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'') in which he put forth his '''laws of motion''', '''law of universal gravitation''', and his inductive '''experimental philosophy''' more than thirty years earlierin 1687.By about 1700 Newton's theory had become accepted in Britain. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan )2015)|p. 210]]
[[CiteRef:: John Locke had expounded his '''empiricist''' views of human knowledge in his ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' in 1689.
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)]]