Free Enquiry Essays and Papers

In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume offers up a number of virtues and qualities which are valued for any of four reasons: they are useful to the individual, useful to society, agreeable to the individual, or agreeable to society. One of the qualities which Hume elucidates is justice. This quality, however, according to Hume, is valued solely for its usefulness and not upon any agreeability to anyone. Hume explains his position thusly. Hume imagines a scenario in which all things

What is a moral? This is a question that has plagued philosophers for many years. Is it possible to have a set of universal morals? There are many questions that surround the mystery of morals. They seem to drive our every action. We base our decisions on what is right and what is wrong. But what is it that actually determines what is right and what is wrong? Is it our sense of reason? Is it our sense of sentiment? This is a question that David Hume spent much of his life pondering. What exactly

Comparing Plato’s Symposium and David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Philosophy, when broken down into the original Greek, is philos, which means love, and logos, which means word. Thus philosophy is the love of words or linguistics. There is not one way of viewing this love of words. Both Plato and David Hume examine philosophy in their texts, Symposium and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, respectively. I will outline, then compare, these two philosophers’ views

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

Comparing Knowledge in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Rationalists would claim that knowledge comes from reason or ideas, while empiricists would answer that knowledge is derived from the senses or impressions. The difference between these two philosophical schools of thought, with respect to the distinction between ideas and impressions, can be examined in order to determine how these schools determine the source of knowledge

Cause and Effect in David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume states, “there is not, in any single, particular instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connexion” (Hume, 1993: 41). Hume establishes in section II that all ideas originate from impressions that employ the senses (11). Therefore, in order for there to be an idea of power or “necessary connexion,” there must be

could be something like a man coming back to life, a child walking on water, or a woman turning water into wine. Miracles do not play by the rules for they are always under scrutiny and yet people still find themselves believing in them. Within “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” by David Hume, Hume explores the notion of miracles and questions what drives people to believe in these miracles that are not grounded in facts but by faith. Upon reading this piece, a question that may arise for some

cause found in both A Treatise of Human Nature, and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding have been the center of much controversy in regards to his actual view of causation. Much of the debate centers on the lack of consistency between the two definitions and also with the definitions as a part of the greater text. As for the latter objection, much of the inconsistency can be remedied by sticking to the account presented in the Enquiry, as Hume makes explicit in the Author’s Advertisement that

attempt to explain how we form the beliefs about the world. While his claim is wildly accepted by many philosophers, there are still problems to his principle which Hume ignored as something insufficient. By analysing sections 2 of David Hume’s “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, we are able to distinguish

Section VII of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “On Necessary Connexion”, and their relation to the propositions of Section II, “Of the Origin of Ideas”, and Section X, “On Miracles”. I will offer criticisms and alternatives to Hume’s account(s) and conclude by picking which interpretation of Section VII best works for Hume, given certain arguments elsewhere in the Enquiry. The following is a summary of the aspects of the problem of induction as presented in the Enquiry which concern my

Very briefly, philosophy might be regarded as a conceptual enquiry dealing with fundamental issues relating to life, knowledge and values. By conceptual enquiry we mean an enquiry that relies primarily on critical reasoning. This includes : Analysing the meaning of concepts Identifying logical connections between theories Evaluating arguments and exposing fallacies Here is a Chinese newspaper article from MingPao on how philosophy improves critical thinking. Philosophy and other subjects According

denomination of "immaterialism," "phenomenalism" or "idealism." He seems either to deliberately ignore this scholarly dispute or to go beyond it in an effort to let the texts speak for themselves. Thus, Berkeley's Principles, and Hume's Treatise and first Enquiry show a common fact: the world is mind-dependent. Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi, St. Augustine, De vera religione, XXXIX, 72. The first person narrative voice in "El Zahir," one of the stories included in El Aleph, states that according to

expressed a clear personal confidence in his position as the 'author or originator of an authentic political science'. It was in De Cive, published in 1647, that he made a preliminary and tentative claim to have discovered a way of 'rationalising enquiry into political behaviour,; and that he had also created a 'new science' — a science of politics [3]. Hobbes began his study of civil government by investigating its central subject, the human being as a natural and social animal, and then proceeded

Data Investigation Having allocated data of students from a school given a fabricated name, I will use this data to follow up a line of enquiry on. From the data that I have there are 1200 students in the school, where 599 are boys and 601 are girls. Below is a chart showing how many girls and boys there are in each year group. Year group Number of Boys Number of Girls Total 7 150 150 300 8 145 125 270 9 120 140 260 10 100 100

account of Ireland, and cannot forbear to solicit a prosecution of your design. Sir William Temple complains that Ireland is less known than any other country, as to its ancient state. The natives have had little leisure, and little encouragement for enquiry; and strangers, not knowing the language, have had no ability. "I have long wished that the Irish literature were cultivated.2 Ireland is known by tradition to have been once the seat of piety and learning; and surely it would be very acceptable

first two volumes were published in 1739, and the third in 1740. Immanuel Kant and other philosophers did notice his work and began respecting Hume for his reasoning. Later, he republished the first and third volumes as An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals in 1748 and 1751 respectively. The second volume was used as Part 2 of Four Dissertations in 1757. “During his lifetime Hume’s reputation derived from the publ...

existence. The existentialists maintain that there are antinomies, contradictions and distress at the root of existence. Radhakrishnan is concerned with liberation as a state of freedom. Freedom is the central concept around which the existential enquiry revolves. Though Radhakrishnan has certain affinities with existentialism, he regards it as a stage in the human's pilgrimage through life. The philosophy of Radhakrishnan is an attempt to reinterpret and reconstruct the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara

Lakatos and MacIntyre on Incommensurability and the Rationality of Theory-change ABSTRACT: Imre Lakatos' "methodology of scientific research programs" and Alasdair MacIntyre's "tradition-constituted enquiry" are two sustained attempts to overcome the assumptions of logical empiricism, while saving the appearance that theory-change is rational. The key difference between them is their antithetical stand on the issue of incommensurability between large-scale theories. This divergence generates

closely on miracles and opens his essay with the stance that, “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature . . . the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined” (Enquiry 2647). He continues throughout his essay, supporting his claim and also breaking down Christianity, highly-based in such phenomena, proving the impossibility of the existence of miracles. This trend is something a pragmatist would argue against, firmly

advancement of this field, too. Before attention can be given to the concept of reflexivity and its benefit to anthropology, the "rules of anthropology," mentioned earlier, must be understood. Bronislaw Malinowskis "The subject, Method and Scope of this Enquiry" is a highly renowned account of early anthropolog... ... middle of paper ... ...ut suggests using ones own role as another level of research to be undertaken. Anthropology began, and remains, a study of other cultures. The rules of which,