David Hume

1296 Words3 Pages

"There are more things n heaven and Earth than dreamt of in your philosophy" (Shakespeare, 211). This quote from William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark presents quite an idea. It suggests that in our modern philosophy we have not even began to scratch the surface of what causes the nature of things around us. Our philosophy is centered on the idea of cause and effect. Whether a person realizes it, every standpoint that they argue from is based on a cause and/or its effect. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this, but most people don't bother to analyze what the true connection is between a cause and it's effect. David Hume does an outstanding job of presenting a point of view that many people do not consider at all. He asks what is this connection and what makes us impose this connection immediately. If all of our findings are based on causes and their effects, and yet, we do not completely understand the connection between the latter, then how can we presume to hold our finding absolutely certain? Maybe this is partly what Shakespeare was hinting at in the aforementioned quote. Hume's exploration of the matter of cause and effect is an excellent tool for use in understanding the possibilities and limitations of our "matter of fact" knowledge.

Hume begins his paper by pointing out that humans are essentially ignorant to the world around them. Everything that we understand is based on someone else's findings or research. Hume points out that on his own, with no input or previous experience, Adam would not have been able to look at the ocean and say "Gee, I could be suffocated by that water." Though we now know through experience that fire can burn us and water can drown us, Hume suggests that we should try to rid ourselves of the ignorance that pertains to what is the relationship between cause and effect. He accurately points out that anytime that we think we truly understand the nature of an object, we are just describing that object with as much detail and precision as we have accessible to us. This idea is interesting because it leads one to question whether our most valuable truths in science are in fact, viable.

In science classes, instructors stress the importance of determining causation. The modern scientific method allows for many ways to describe every imaginable characteristic of something.

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