David Hume Research Paper

Hume believes that we have instances where we start with the instant reaction of sentiment but when we lack the ability to reason we loose the ability to explain why we have sentiment. Nevertheless in cases, such as fine art, we need reasoning in order to produce the feelings of sentiment.

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher known for being an empiricist and for being skeptical of religion. Like Hobbes, he was also a big influence on western philosophy. Among his many works, his major writing include, treatise of human nature and enquiry concerning the principles of morals. In an enquiry concerning the principles of morals, Hume introduces his fovarism towards the role of sentiment. He argued reason solely cannot be a motive of any action and that reason can never resist the motive of passion "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions,"(pg 415). He explains that Moral distinctions are developed from the moral sentiments such as feelings of approval and disapproval felt by an action. Hume believes that pleasure and pain are the causes of the passions that drive our actions. According to Hume, it is the pleasure and pain that are the causes of the passions which drives our actions. He claims that it is the actual experience of the pain or pleasure, not the reason we adduce to their causes that drives us to act.” Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not

For Hume, reason alone can determine how something is useful to us. He distinguishes between artificial and natural virtues; with artificial virtues depending on social structures, such as chastity, and natural virtues which are created in nature and are more universal for example friendship. A major argument for Hume is that reasons do not govern our actions, in fact reason is a slave to the passions.(Hume in Signer 1994). Hume says that in fact our actions are cause by a combination of value and emotion. In fact, reason influences our actions in only two ways: by guiding passions to focus on objects and by uncovering connections between events that will in fact create passions. The judgments a person makes about relations of ideas or about ideas themselves may be reasonable or unreasonable, but the judgments do not result in anything other than opinions. For the moral method to work, the judgments must stir up passions, which then lead us to act.

Mill came to an appreciation on human nature reading the great poets. Romantic poets emphasized the importance of emotions in human life, which contrasts the predominant psychology of the 18th Century which emphasized reason as the critical factor in any person’s life. Reason is what everybody used to understand the world around them. This is what made Rousseau stand out as much. To Hobbes, Reason was the

Hume also believed in cause and effect. I believe in this because in order for something to happen something needed to cause

Hume claims justice to be an artificial virtue; he denies that there is anything natural or rational about justice at all. Unlike Hobbes, he denies the any element of reason by which humans leave the state of nature as well. He states that justice is systematic, and thus cannot be explained by the natural virtues, which include self-interest or benevolence because if justice consisted of self-interest then we would not obey it if it were not in our best interest to do so. If it consisted in benevolence, then we would not obey it if someone wanted to take from the poor to give to the rich.

There are three ways in which one is able to find truth: through reason (A is A), by utilizing the senses (paper burns) or by faith (God is all loving). As the period of the Renaissance came to a close, the popular paradigm for philosophers shifted from faith to reason and finally settling on the senses. Thinkers began to challenge authorities, including great teachers such as Aristotle and Plato, and through skepticism the modern world began. The French philosopher, René Descartes who implemented reason to find truth, as well as the British empiricist David Hume with his usage of analytic-synthetic distinction, most effectively utilized the practices of skepticism in the modern world.

     Hume began his first examination if the mind by classifying its contents as Perceptions. “Here therefore [he divided] all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species.” (27) First, Impressions represented an image of something that portrayed an immediate relationship. Secondly, there were thoughts and ideas, which

John Locke, Berkeley and Hume are all empiricist philosophers. They all have many different believes, but agree on the three anchor points; The only source of genuine knowledge is sense experience, reason is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge unless it is grounded in the solid bedrock of sense experience and there is no evidence of innate ideas within the mind that are known from experience. Each of these philosophers developed some of the most fascinating conceptions of the relationships between our thoughts and the world around us. I will argue that Locke, Berkeley and Hume are three empiricists that have different beliefs.

Hume rejected lockes theory of experiencing cause. He argued that you do not feel the connection between your mind and arm, and thus don't sense the cause of the muscles contracting to raise your arm. Cause, in Hume's mind, is a synthetic experience used to explain the unobservable things in reality. To help explain he used the billiard ball experiement. Ball A is hit and put into motion towards ball B.When ball A collides with ball B the cause of ball B's movement is not experienced, there is no observable connection between the two. This would mean that there is no way to be certain that everytime Ball A collides with ball B that ball B will move, ball A could just as likely bounce off and begin rolling in a random direction. He believd that there is no way of knowing for certain the outcome of an event without being able to perceive the cause.

One of Hume’s major contributions to religion was his subtle yet impactful introduction of secular thinking. This criticism was artfully broached in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The radical and “enlightened” theories, thoughts, and works of David Hume also inspired such important religious figures such as Baron d’Holbach. David Hume’s political stance also greatly influenced Adam Smith; therefore Hume did have a hand in the development of the United States of America’s original governmental system. Such political influence was derived from Hume’s belief that a great amount of free will breeds a strong moral philosophy. With another of Hume’s philosophies, parallels are notable with Francis Bacon. This link is strongest with both philosophers being skeptics. However Hume took the idea of sensory input determining outlook a step further by championing sentimentalism; an idea that ethics are also based upon feelings rather than socially accepted moral principles and beliefs. Another famous figure that David Hume influenced greatly was Immanuel Kant. Kant himself acknowledged this basis by writing the statement, “I honestly confess that my recollection of David Hume’s teaching was the very thing which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber” (James Sullivan 517). This quote

According to Hume, reason has no force to move an act. We usually act followed by our feelings or emotions. I agree with Hume's reasoning about humans being emotional by nature. Through our feelings, we learn to judge things like "I like this," or "this disgusts me". For example, "I dislike seeing how they hurt someone", "I like to see others happy", these judgments are followed by our feelings or

When I considered David Hume, he gave us an understand concerning human understanding. He gave us the perception, later memory of perception and imagining a perception. Imagination goes a long way and he thought that thoughts can instantaneously take limitless directions. Part of the goal is to set the limits to the human understand and debunking religious superstition and speculations. Hume want to formulate the simple and the comprehensive principles describing human understand and a behavior. Hume though that society would be best governed by a general system of laws. He was less concerned on the form of the government who administered the laws.

David Hume argues that the concept of space can be explained only with relative to human sense of sight and touch. He says that these sensations are part of the impressions we draw from the overall perceptions we have in our minds. Since these impressions are formed from what we sense, space cannot be determined or defined independently of these sensations. He also states that space is really an interpretation of what we sense so it is not a primary quality that is unaided by any personal perceptions or precisely impressions. The notion of time is a secondary quality, which essentially means that time, can only be explained in terms of something else (primary quality) and cannot be expressed independent of all external cases and possibilities. This paper aims to analyze why David Hume explains time and space as a dependent notion and claims them to be secondary in being. Towards the second half of the paper, it aims to discuss how Kant would respond to Hume’s given definition of space

What Came First: The Chicken or the Egg? David Hume moves through a logical progression of the ideas behind cause and effect. He critically analyzes the reasons behind those generally accepted ideas. Though the relation of cause and effect seems to be completely logical and based on common sense, he discusses our impressions and ideas and why they are believed. Hume’s progression, starting with his initial definition of cause, to his final conclusion in his doctrine on causality. As a result, it proves how Hume’s argument on causality follows the same path as his epistemology, with the two ideas complimenting each other so that it is rationally impossible to accept the epistemology and not accept his argument on causality. Hume starts by