Hume, Kant and Reason
Together, David Hume and Emanuel Kant, have a very crucial influence to modern philosophy. Hume challenges conventional philosophical views with his skepticism as well as his new take on what is metaphysics. His views and ideas where influential to many, including Kant, however they lead to his philosophical reasoning and empiricism to be viewed lead to negatively and atheistically. Kant, whose philosophy was so strongly influenced by Hume that in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics wrote “I openly confess that my remembering of David Hume was the very thing which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave me new investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction” (Kant, Preference) defends and overcomes Hume by advancing philosophy in a revolutionary way. Kant’s philosophy has its foundation on Hume’s work, specifically his skeptical view on causality.
David Hume is was a strong advocator and practitioner of a scientific and empirical way of thinking which is reflected in his philosophy. His skeptical philosophy was a 180 degree shift from the popular rational philosophy of the time period. Hume attempted to understand “human nature” through our psychological behaviors and patterns which, when analyzing Hume’s work, one can clearly see its relation to modern day psychology. Hume was a believer in that human behavior was influenced not by reason but by desire. He believed that “Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit—these passions, mixed in various proportions and distributed throughout society, are now (and from the beginning of the world always have been) the source of all the actions and projects that have ever...
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Hume left a very controversial but necessary philosophy behind. His skeptical and empirical take on philosophy was something which was critically needed in a rationally dominated era of philosophy. His philosophy makes many excellent points while some are too radical. Kant, who was greatly influenced by Hume’s work is one of the most resourceful and innovative philosophers. He uses Hume’s work as a foundation to build a balanced philosophy taking the key components of both rational and Humean philosophies while tying in loose ends through his own theories such as a synthetic a priori. Kant’s philosophy clears up, for many, Hume’s loose ends as well as overcoming some of Hume’s more radical ideas. Hume’s influences on Kant allow Kant to create a modern viewpoint and definition on how metaphysics, a priori knowledge and human understanding is perceived.
Hume was the first thinker to point out the implications of the "representative theory of perception." He had inherited this theory from both his rationalist and empiricist predecessors. According to this view, when one says that he/she perceives something such as an apple, what it actually means is that the one has in the mind a mental idea or image or impression. Such a datum is an internal, mental, subjective representation of something that I assume to be an external, physical, fact. But there are, at least, two difficulties inherent in ascribing any truth to such perceptions. If truth is understood as the adequacy between the image and the object, then it is impossible to infer that there is a true world of objects since the only evidence. From this fundamental point, human reason loses its contingency in moral issues and decision making, letting feelings come to the first place. Hume emphasises the utility of knowledge as opposed to its correctness and suggests that morality begins with feeling rather than thought. In this case, Hume also believes that sympathy plays an essential role in morality. Sympathy is a fundamental feature of the human nature, that motivates us to make decisions. Sympathy can be described as an attempt to find or see one’s own nature in another object. Hume states that it is the start for all other human feelings.
Wollheim, Richard, ed. 1963. Hume on Religion. London: William Collins Sons/Fontana Library. (editor's introduction, 7-30)
Ideas built from impression can arise independently of their impressions, and each of them is distinct from the others. Hume offers two
David Hume was an imperialist philosopher who revolutionized scientific argument and methodology with his skepticism. His arguments about the way people though up to his day, and still today, are fundamental in explaining how we gain knowledge and what we do with this knowledge. Hume helped pave a road leading toward a higher state of consciousness for humanity with his theory concerning the perceptions of the mind. He divided the minds perception into two distinct group's impression and ideas. With these two classifications Hume rationalized the depths of human understanding. Impressions consist of the perception regarding all that is seen, felt and heard. Ideas are formulated thoughts based upon impressions. They are the perceptions of the mind involved with thought rather than experience. Hume used impressions to test the relevance of ideas through his "microscope" system. This theory challenged the mind to test out inconsistent ideas by means of the impressions. The essence of ideas and impression defines the nature of the mind and all that it perceives. Together they rationalize clear and distinct thoughts and sensations Impressions are lively perceptions that implore all the sensation and emotion that the mind perceives. They are not misleading, for their essence is based entirely on experience. It is a perception that ignites the way all is felt, seen, or heard. External causes or objects affect the senses, influencing the way the mind perceives things. For instance to understand the essence of a rose is to recognize that it is red, the pedals feel like silk, it smells of sweet perfume and it evokes happiness. All of these perceptions are derived from the senses. Beautiful words could never conjure enough realism to replace...
Contrasting to this we will explore the critical discussion of the argument from design found in David Hume’s (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion).
In order to further discredit Hume, Reid critiques Hume’s skepticism. Reid’s main criticism is the Hume is not a true skeptic. Rather, Reid points out, Hume is merely a semi- skeptic. He supports this accusation by clarifying the fact that Hume is not
The Transcendental Deductions of the pure concept of the understanding in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, in its most general sense, explains how concepts relate a priori to objects in virtue of the fact that the power of knowing an object through representations is known as understanding. According to Kant, the foundation of all knowledge is the self, our own consciousness because without the self, experience is not possible. The purpose of this essay is to lay out Kant’s deduction of the pure concept of understanding and show how our concepts are not just empirical, but concepts a priori. We will walk through Kant’s argument and reasoning as he uncovers each layer of understanding, eventually leading up to the conclusion mentioned above.
David Hume’s epistemology was informed by empiricism and tempered by a skeptical bent which denied knowledge the privileged position of reliable foundation attributed it by Cartesians and other rationalists of his day. Throughout his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume’s broad strategy in discussing such topics as space, time, causation, and self involves argument that we cannot glean sufficient knowledge related to some crucial philosophical concept, our understanding grants us only a vague idea of that concept, and explanation as to how some false views of that concept are rooted in fallacy (Norton, 93).
In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume reasons that until we know the “necessary connection” or cause of things then all knowledge is uncertain, “merely a habit of thinking based upon repeated observation” (induction), and which depends on the future being like the past. Ultimately, he concludes that matters of fact can only be known through experience therefore matters of fact are only justified by recourse to experience, but any attempt to do this ends up being “circular”, “we have no good reason to believe almost everything we believe about the world, but that this is not such a bad thing. Nature helps us to get by where reason lets us down.”
To understand Kant’s account on causality, it is important to first understand that this account came into being as a response to Hume’s skepticism, and therefore important to also understand Hume’s account. While Hume thinks that causation comes from repeated experiences of events happening together or following one another, Kant believes that causation is just a function of our minds’ organization of experiences rather than from the actual experiences themselves.
Something must be desirable on its own account, and because of its immediate accord or agreement with human sentiment and affection” (87). In conclusion, I believe that Hume thinks that reason, while not completely useless, is not the driving force of moral motivation. Reasons are a means to sentiments, which in turn are a means to morality, but without reasons there can still be sentiments. There can still be beauty. Reasons can not lie as the foundation of morality, because they can only be true or false.
Hume uses senses, like Descartes, to find the truth in life. By using the senses he states that all contents of the mind come from experience. This leads to the mind having an unbound potential since all the contents are lead by experiences. The mind is made up two parts impressions and ideas. Impressions are the immediate data of the experience. For example, when someone drops a book on the desk and you hear a loud sound. The sight of the book dropping and hitting the desk is registered by an individual’s senses- sight, sound, feeling. Hume believes there are two types of impressions, original and secondary impressions. Original impressions are based on the senses,
Hume wrote, “be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man,” (qtd. in Jones 351). This statement strikes me more than all others, written by Hume or any of the philosophers from W. T. Jones’ Hobbes to Hume. It demonstrates to me that even after all of the inquisition towards what and how we can know anything, and the very methodical ways in which Hume is reputed to examine these things, he realizes that nothing is truly certain and begins to lean towards a pragmatic and radically empirical point of view. It is, therefore, also my conclusion that, as much as we may aspire to find the universal, indubitable, and objective truth, none of it can be proven to be universal, indubitable, and objective.
Hume’s view of knowledge is based on the empiricist theory which states that knowledge is only acquired through a sensory experience. Hume’s specific view on this is that everyone starts out the same with no knowledge or experiences when they are born and gain experiences and consequently knowledge throughout life. Even the most complex ideas are merely just a compilation of simple experiences. An objection to this could be that the human mind can go beyond what it knows and propose ideas that others cannot imagine, such as a creative person can. Hume would respond to this by stating that anything that goes beyond what people can perceive has no cognitive content. However Hume argues that the concept of putting two known things tog...
In the world, there are two categories of what people think about. One of them is relations of ideas. This is the type exemplified by geometry and algebra since facts within these subjects are found through reason of thought. However, the other type, matters of fact, could be discoverable through evidence and empirical thinking. One of David Hume’s greatest contributions to philosophy is his skepticism in challenging what people think by proposing that even “fundamental truths” could be subjective and caused by our limitations as humans. In his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he claims that all matters of fact are developed through people’s experience in life (Hume, David. Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding in Readings in Modern Philosophy, edited by Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins, 336-349. Indianapolis: 11-1, 2000.) In this paper, I will argue that David Hume’s argument for the reduction of matters of fact into experience is faulty since his framework contradicts with itself. In the first section, I will construct Hume’s reasoning for empiricism. To do this, I summarize his argument that what people believe in all come from their