David Hume's Theory Of Knowledge

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We, as humans, are constantly learning, constantly acquiring knowledge. For every new experience, every new action, our brains capture, categorize, and file away as knowledge. But how do we know this knowledge is true? What can we know for absolute certain? I think that we can never be fully certain of anything, but that groups of humans agree on specific truths and that this agreement makes that knowledge practically true. It is true if everyone believes it to be. I follow David Hume’s logic in my thinking. Hume, and I, are skeptical empiricists, we believe in doubting everything. All we know are our perceptions, or as he called it our sense impressions. For example, when I see a red car I may see the color red, a metal door, and glass headlights among many other impressions. This makes up, in my mind, the idea of the car. I know the car is there because I can perceive it at that exact moment. However, the moment after the car passes, these sense impressions turn into memories in my mind.
Memories are ideas, mental constructs based on previous sense impressions. Hume argues that no ideas exist. Since we cannot point exactly back to the sense impressions which created the idea, we must doubt it and assume that it is false. I agree and add that since time is always moving at an infinite speed forward, every moment passes and is turned into a …show more content…

No one has ever seen or felt a “four” or an “eight”. Maybe someone has picked up a single stick and called it “one”, but we can only remember that and our memories cannot be trusted as true. Besides the concept of “one” is still a name for a concept that does not actually exist. But if everyone I interact with, or the majority I care about, agree that “one” exists and that “one” quadrupled is “four” and that “four” twice is “eight” then I can believe with relative, practical certainty that

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