1) In section 4 page 11, Hume gives two categories that reason falls under which are 'relations of ideas' and 'matters of fact'. It was interesting how in relations of ideas, he thinks that the statements we can conclude from this category are either intuitively or demonstrably true. This was like Locke's idea of probable knowledge which included intuitive and demonstrable ideas, similarly. Both uses of intuitive and demonstrability must be agreeable with its conclusion. 2) What does Hume think of the difference between human reasonings and human knowledge? Does he think that what we can successfully reason is what we can know?
It is very true that humans are reasonable, social, and active beings, as Hume put it on page 3. We certainly do get "appropriate food and nourishment from the pursuit of knowledge." Curiosity is in our nature. I think that the antitheses of these qualities would spell absolute destruction to human life. Insanity, solitude, and simply being inactive are clearly all detrimental to human life.
The distinctions between relations of ideas and matters of fact are really interesting, too. The former refers to ideas that are grounded on associations formed within our minds; and also, they are also demonstrative. The latter refers to the nature of existing things and are basically contingent truths, I'd say.
1. A passage I found of interest in David Hume's writing is when he states, "Philosophers who do moral philosophy in the second way focus on man as a reasonable rather than as an active being, and try to shape his thinking more than to improve his behavior" (Hume 1) I agree that shaping someone's thinking is more efficient than shaping their behavior. When someone contains principles and morals of their own, they intend to act more properly. I like this quote because it shows just how significant our mindset is and how it controls our behavior. 2. Another passage in this reading that stood out to me is when Hume writes, "In order to spread and develop such an accomplished kind of character, nothing can be more useful than writings in the easy style and manner, which stay close to life." (Hume 1) Here, Hume is expressing that a person should be between the two extremes of mere philosopher and mere ignorance; and this can be achieved through writing in common language. Hume believes that through an easy writing style, it stays 'close to life' and knowledge becomes agreeable, entertaining, ect. I agree with this because when a 'non-philosopher' is reading a piece which holds difficult language they are less interested and lose focus. When writings are written using common language, I believe more people will understand and enjoy.
1. In clear and crisp writing, Hume rejects that we can know anything about causality, attributing our inaccessible conjectures to custom and mental habit: "now what conclusion does he draw from this experience? He immediately infers the existence of one object from the appearance of the other!" This has profound implications in that it conforms to the empiricist view, a la Locke, by rejecting metaphysics as an abstruse and unproductive philosophy.
2. Hume sounds very modern at times when he talks of mental habits and associations of ideas. He presents the mind as a playful agent narrowed to its empirical framework. We are too confined, Hume writes, and because of mental habit, we are prone to mistaken correlations and theories that don't always compute with reality. This gives ground to the idea that we are perhaps driven more by instinct and feeling rather than reason, according to Hume.
"To be a mere philosopher is usually not thought well of in the world, because such a person is thought to contribute nothing either to the advantage or to the pleasure of society,to live remote from communication with mankind, and to be wrapped up in principles and notions that they can’t possibly understand" when Hume stated this I was a little confused. Mere philosophers, I find it interesting that he breaks apart different types of philosophers.
Hume throughout the reading brings up philosophy and wanting to implement it into everything possible, like nature, science, people etc. I get the sense he wants to push people and their minds to accept philosophical views. This is just something intersting I noticed.
1.) I agreed with Hume about cause and effect since its true that individuals don’t have prior knowledge about causes until we experience them but even then we still do not know what cause produced the object. The same goes for the effect of an object that we never experienced before or encountered. For instance, Hume provides an example of Adam not knowing that water can drown him or that fire can burn him since he never experienced these elements before even if he had perfect reasoning abilities from the start.
2.) I also related to Hume’s view on skepticism in which it keeps the mind busy and from arising at judgements too quickly which could lead us to error or incorrect notions It is a “humble” philosophy since it doesn’t make any grand claims and controls our desires and passions. However, I feel being overly skeptical can be dangerous since no knowledge or truth will ever be established because an individual will doubt everything. I believe a strive towards truth with a healthy level of skepticism is practical and beneficial for someone in any philosophical ideology.
When Hume addresses the objection to his argument that is the missing shade of blue, I am not sure that this situation actually poses a serious problem for his argument. Hume himself seems to brush past this rather quickly chalking it as “hardly worth noticing.” I think this concern ought to be addressed, but I would say that while a man can observe a missing shade, he cannot properly imagine what the shade is, although he could identify it if he saw it. I think color is the sort of experience that it so dependent on sensory input that while I know the colors, I do not really create them in my mind when I remember them. Colors, like pain, are an experience that is inflicted by an external world, whether or not it is mind dependent or mind independent.
I find Hume’s thought that cause and effect cannot be derived from experience alone intriguing and convincing, although it runs counter to my intuition. I wonder what criticism it faced in response considering it is not a mainstream opinion today.
1. I study psychology, so it was interesting for me to read a philosopher add inward feelings to his theory about ideas. Some philosophers do not think about feelings, but rather just focus on senses and perception. Nevertheless, Hume assumes that “all the materials of thinking are derived either from our outward senses or from our inward feelings: all the mind and will go is to mix and combine these materials.” (8) Furthermore, when he talks about a person not being able to have some kind of sensation, therefore it results in the lack of corresponding ideas, he adds inward feelings by talking about a gentle person not being able to form the idea of revenge or cruelty for they were never introduced to them through actual feeling and sensation.
2. I agree with Hume when he talks about causes and effects, and how each is a distinct event. It makes sense to think about one event and instantaneously imagine another one. Nevertheless, many times one event (a cause) might lead to many different events (effects), and it is impossible to conceive the idea of the right effect unless there is experience involved in the reasoning of the individual. For example, people that have an intellectual disability do not understand multiple times the laws of physics, and would not comprehend that if you throw a stone upwards, it will eventually fall down; for experience and reasoning is important to form right ideas, and if the intellectual disability is moderate or severe, the cognition is affected so that the person cannot entirely comprehend their environment nor formulate common ideas easily.
1. I found Hume's distinction between the mind's perceptions to be interesting. He distinguished two different kinds of perceptions: thoughts/ideas and 'impressions". He defined impressions as "all our more lively perceptions when we hear or see or feel or love or hate or desire or will," and ideas as "the fainter perceptions of which we are conscious when we reflect on [= ‘look inwards at’] our impressions," (Hume, p. 8). He then goes on to say that our minds are within extreme limitations and all they consist of are combinations of external perceptions and internal feelings. 2. Are Hume's "impressions" just emotions? If so, by his definitions, ideas must be our reflections on our emotions. I think he is right in his thinking that we are constantly feeling emotions and our ideas often do reflect them. I did like that he included a point about other living beings when he says "Everyone agrees that non-human beings may have many senses of which we can have no conception, because the ideas of them have never been introduced to us in the only way in which an idea can get into the mind, namely through actual feeling and sensation," (Hume, 9). It is true that we will never be able to experience the feelings and sensations of other things as we don't have the same access to their "thinking" as we do to humans. I do think that we are able to infer a great deal about what certain other living beings may be thinking or feeling, but we can only do so based on the perspective we have of our own perceptions.
1. It seems that we have been talking about the origin of innate ideas for the past couple of weeks. In Section 2, Hume talks about how we analyze our thoughts or ideas. Hume states "However complex or elevated they are - we always find them to be made up of simple ideas that were copied from earlier feeling or sensations" (Hume 8). What is he trying to say here? He believes that our ideas are copies of our impressions or more lively ones.
2. In Section 3, Hume goes on to talk about the association of ideas. What I could not understand here was Hume describes compound ideas to be also the meaning of words. I believe that here he is trying to say that "This is conclusive evidence that the simple ideas of which the compound ones are made up were linked by some universal factor" (Hume 11). He believes that all ideas come from one innate idea.
1.) I really enjoyed the point Hume made about humans being reasonable in so far as they have access to the necessities of life. This simple observation has such versatility as a predictor of social behavior. The pragmatist in me found his attack on metaphysics to be extremely cathartic. "Each of these is sometimes true; and the misuse of metaphysics by the friends of popular superstition is vexatious·. Chased from the open country, these robbers run into the forest and lie in wait to break in on every unguarded avenue of the mind and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices"
2.) Upon reflection what I have learned the most from studying modernist philosophy is that as long as one subscribes to basic ideas of reason, it really doesn't matter what one believes. I say this because I have completely different metaphysical views from Hume, but I can not deny his views on the self in the context of his understanding of ideas is extremely reasonable.
1) In section 4 page 11, Hume gives two categories that reason falls under which are 'relations of ideas' and 'matters of fact'. It was interesting how in relations of ideas, he thinks that the statements we can conclude from this category are either intuitively or demonstrably true. This was like Locke's idea of probable knowledge which included intuitive and demonstrable ideas, similarly. Both uses of intuitive and demonstrability must be agreeable with its conclusion.
ReplyDelete2) What does Hume think of the difference between human reasonings and human knowledge? Does he think that what we can successfully reason is what we can know?
It is very true that humans are reasonable, social, and active beings, as Hume put it on page 3. We certainly do get "appropriate food and nourishment from the pursuit of knowledge." Curiosity is in our nature. I think that the antitheses of these qualities would spell absolute destruction to human life. Insanity, solitude, and simply being inactive are clearly all detrimental to human life.
ReplyDeleteThe distinctions between relations of ideas and matters of fact are really interesting, too. The former refers to ideas that are grounded on associations formed within our minds; and also, they are also demonstrative. The latter refers to the nature of existing things and are basically contingent truths, I'd say.
1. A passage I found of interest in David Hume's writing is when he states, "Philosophers who do moral philosophy in the second way focus on man as a reasonable rather than as an active being, and try to shape his thinking more than to improve his behavior" (Hume 1) I agree that shaping someone's thinking is more efficient than shaping their behavior. When someone contains principles and morals of their own, they intend to act more properly. I like this quote because it shows just how significant our mindset is and how it controls our behavior.
ReplyDelete2. Another passage in this reading that stood out to me is when Hume writes, "In order to spread and develop such an accomplished kind of character, nothing can be more useful than writings in the easy style and manner, which stay close to life." (Hume 1) Here, Hume is expressing that a person should be between the two extremes of mere philosopher and mere ignorance; and this can be achieved through writing in common language. Hume believes that through an easy writing style, it stays 'close to life' and knowledge becomes agreeable, entertaining, ect. I agree with this because when a 'non-philosopher' is reading a piece which holds difficult language they are less interested and lose focus. When writings are written using common language, I believe more people will understand and enjoy.
1. In clear and crisp writing, Hume rejects that we can know anything about causality, attributing our inaccessible conjectures to custom and mental habit: "now what conclusion
ReplyDeletedoes he draw from this experience? He immediately infers
the existence of one object from the appearance of the other!" This has profound implications in that it conforms to the empiricist view, a la Locke, by rejecting metaphysics as an abstruse and unproductive philosophy.
2. Hume sounds very modern at times when he talks of mental habits and associations of ideas. He presents the mind as a playful agent narrowed to its empirical framework. We are too confined, Hume writes, and because of mental habit, we are prone to mistaken correlations and theories that don't always compute with reality. This gives ground to the idea that we are perhaps driven more by instinct and feeling rather than reason, according to Hume.
"To be a mere philosopher is usually not thought well of in the world, because such a person is thought to contribute nothing either to the advantage or to the pleasure of society,to live remote from communication with mankind, and to
ReplyDeletebe wrapped up in principles and notions that they can’t possibly understand" when Hume stated this I was a little confused. Mere philosophers, I find it interesting that he breaks apart different types of philosophers.
Hume throughout the reading brings up philosophy and wanting to implement it into everything possible, like nature, science, people etc. I get the sense he wants to push people and their minds to accept philosophical views. This is just something intersting I noticed.
1.) I agreed with Hume about cause and effect since its true that individuals don’t have prior knowledge about causes until we experience them but even then we still do not know what cause produced the object. The same goes for the effect of an object that we never experienced before or encountered. For instance, Hume provides an example of Adam not knowing that water can drown him or that fire can burn him since he never experienced these elements before even if he had perfect reasoning abilities from the start.
ReplyDelete2.) I also related to Hume’s view on skepticism in which it keeps the mind busy and from arising at judgements too quickly which could lead us to error or incorrect notions It is a “humble” philosophy since it doesn’t make any grand claims and controls our desires and passions. However, I feel being overly skeptical can be dangerous since no knowledge or truth will ever be established because an individual will doubt everything. I believe a strive towards truth with a healthy level of skepticism is practical and beneficial for someone in any philosophical ideology.
When Hume addresses the objection to his argument that is the missing shade of blue, I am not sure that this situation actually poses a serious problem for his argument. Hume himself seems to brush past this rather quickly chalking it as “hardly worth noticing.” I think this concern ought to be addressed, but I would say that while a man can observe a missing shade, he cannot properly imagine what the shade is, although he could identify it if he saw it. I think color is the sort of experience that it so dependent on sensory input that while I know the colors, I do not really create them in my mind when I remember them. Colors, like pain, are an experience that is inflicted by an external world, whether or not it is mind dependent or mind independent.
ReplyDeleteI find Hume’s thought that cause and effect cannot be derived from experience alone intriguing and convincing, although it runs counter to my intuition. I wonder what criticism it faced in response considering it is not a mainstream opinion today.
1. I study psychology, so it was interesting for me to read a philosopher add inward feelings to his theory about ideas. Some philosophers do not think about feelings, but rather just focus on senses and perception. Nevertheless, Hume assumes that “all the materials of thinking are derived either from our outward senses or from our inward feelings: all the mind and will go is to mix and combine these materials.” (8) Furthermore, when he talks about a person not being able to have some kind of sensation, therefore it results in the lack of corresponding ideas, he adds inward feelings by talking about a gentle person not being able to form the idea of revenge or cruelty for they were never introduced to them through actual feeling and sensation.
ReplyDelete2. I agree with Hume when he talks about causes and effects, and how each is a distinct event. It makes sense to think about one event and instantaneously imagine another one. Nevertheless, many times one event (a cause) might lead to many different events (effects), and it is impossible to conceive the idea of the right effect unless there is experience involved in the reasoning of the individual. For example, people that have an intellectual disability do not understand multiple times the laws of physics, and would not comprehend that if you throw a stone upwards, it will eventually fall down; for experience and reasoning is important to form right ideas, and if the intellectual disability is moderate or severe, the cognition is affected so that the person cannot entirely comprehend their environment nor formulate common ideas easily.
1. I found Hume's distinction between the mind's perceptions to be interesting. He distinguished two different kinds of perceptions: thoughts/ideas and 'impressions". He defined impressions as "all our more lively perceptions when we hear or see or feel or love or hate or desire or will," and ideas as "the fainter perceptions of which we are conscious when we reflect on [= ‘look inwards at’] our impressions," (Hume, p. 8). He then goes on to say that our minds are within extreme limitations and all they consist of are combinations of external perceptions and internal feelings.
ReplyDelete2. Are Hume's "impressions" just emotions? If so, by his definitions, ideas must be our reflections on our emotions. I think he is right in his thinking that we are constantly feeling emotions and our ideas often do reflect them. I did like that he included a point about other living beings when he says "Everyone agrees that
non-human beings may have many senses of which we can
have no conception, because the ideas of them have never
been introduced to us in the only way in which an idea
can get into the mind, namely through actual feeling and
sensation," (Hume, 9). It is true that we will never be able to experience the feelings and sensations of other things as we don't have the same access to their "thinking" as we do to humans. I do think that we are able to infer a great deal about what certain other living beings may be thinking or feeling, but we can only do so based on the perspective we have of our own perceptions.
1. It seems that we have been talking about the origin of innate ideas for the past couple of weeks. In Section 2, Hume talks about how we analyze our thoughts or ideas. Hume states "However complex or elevated they are - we always find them to be made up of simple ideas that were copied from earlier feeling or sensations" (Hume 8). What is he trying to say here? He believes that our ideas are copies of our impressions or more lively ones.
ReplyDelete2. In Section 3, Hume goes on to talk about the association of ideas. What I could not understand here was Hume describes compound ideas to be also the meaning of words. I believe that here he is trying to say that "This is conclusive evidence that the simple ideas of which the compound ones are made up were linked by some universal factor" (Hume 11). He believes that all ideas come from one innate idea.
1.) I really enjoyed the point Hume made about humans being reasonable in so far as they have access to the necessities of life. This simple observation has such versatility as a predictor of social behavior. The pragmatist in me found his attack on metaphysics to be extremely cathartic. "Each of these is sometimes true;
ReplyDeleteand the misuse of metaphysics by the friends of popular
superstition is vexatious·. Chased from the open country,
these robbers run into the forest and lie in wait to break in
on every unguarded avenue of the mind and overwhelm it
with religious fears and prejudices"
2.) Upon reflection what I have learned the most from studying modernist philosophy is that as long as one subscribes to basic ideas of reason, it really doesn't matter what one believes. I say this because I have completely different metaphysical views from Hume, but I can not deny his views on the self in the context of his understanding of ideas is extremely reasonable.