53. Introduction to David Hume

I want to deal with Hume today and tomorrow Trevor gave us the excellent introduction to kill you saw it but a part of my work done for me you all can put notes on this presentation and you are responsible by the content I am going to try to highlight what I'm gonna call talking points bullets that are features of human laws not altogether consistent with himself but if you asked him about that he would say who cares you know he's not worried about it but he has been one of the more devastating critics of the certainly the Christian approach to confidence that there is a God it's always been an open question was human self an atheist I think the hundreds of opinion is that he probably was but he certainly says things along the way which would lead you to some doubt on the question but remember he's working in a culture where to be an atheist is virtually a criminal act and so he may have just been trying to stay under the radar but he certainly brings some pretty formidable criticisms against Christian theism in general in the whole notion of the existence of God you know as a general topic his most important work for our purposes is entitled an inquiry concerning human understanding our vision that published about 17:45 an inquiry concerning human understanding one of the most famous quotes in philosophical history was from Immanuel Kant who said of Hume he awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers and we'll talk about that more when we get to Pont Hume stands for the idea that there's really not much certainty about anything you he is one of those radical skeptics in the history of philosophy but he says if there's certainty about anything at all or at least that subject matter for which there is the greatest certainty it would be things like pure logic mathematics hard empiricism that would be where you have the greatest certainty greatest uncertainty metaphysics ethics theology you really can't know about that stuff and so he makes this distinction and it's not a new one but he sort of revisits it with new horsepower between sort of things empirical things this worldly what we called an Aquinas nature what we called in Plato the receptacle he makes a pretty hard distinction between all of that and the metaphysical level the higher level it you know it becomes more of a concrete separation between those two and he's not so sure you can get from here to there all right first talking point first bullet were concerned yes the two orders ideas and impresses impressions he calls first-order experience he says they are lively and vivacious think cheerleader well don't think too hard to enjoy notes a little bit lively and by basis they come at you they impress themselves upon you they are impressive now these are what they did I have this speak I'm talk about impressions here I took him in the reverse order okay so I'm starting with impressions and working back to ideas we're talking here about impressions and depressions are lively and vivacious think cheerleader blah blah blah okay we're down to where we are all right impressions these impressions somehow strike my mind this is like LOC laksa the same thing really you have these these sort of stimuli that occur that impact you that hits you and they leave an imprint and your mind and the imprint that believes in your mind is an idea so this is his fundamental distinction you have an impression it's empirical I look outside I see a cheerleader I can't see too much too much you know super ball just alright look outside I see a 93 much more boring here and then I close my eyes or look away from the window I see a pine tree and don't you forget it so you know look outside I have this impression the impression translates into an idea now this may seem pretty simple but hang on because it becomes pretty crucial for what Hume is about Hume says that when I look out there I tend to interpret what I'm seeing my mind sort of puts an overlay on those impressions and interpretive sort of filter is imposed upon them and that interpretive filter I think is part of that objective order but there's no way I could know whether it actually is part of that object of order or whether it is simply something my mind has done to try to explain the impression because I have no direct experience of the pine tree I have no direct experience of those things that are out there all I have are these impressions and impressions are not the thing itself I live in an impressionistic world hence the artistic form Impressionism flows straight out of human they bring Presonus decart we looked at it what was characteristic of impressionistic art when we looked at what was going on Avery what was there yet I mean you'd have to stand back in order to really see and you see how that makes Humes point impressionistic art I look at a Monet painting it's lovely as a pond there's Lily whatever you know frogs and I think oh that's cool look at that man is just one groovy painting you know you don't know that turn that went out after about 15 seconds with the Beach Boys it just let its groove and then it was over nobody's grouping anymore you know I was like but anyway you look at the painting generated by an impressionistic artist and you think wow that's that's great I think I'll take a closer look that's your big mistake right because the closer you look the less you see that's the rule of Impressionism and that's from human I look at pine tree take a closer look in in his philosophy the closer you look the less you see because really all I can see are impressions and impressions are mental they are something happening in here not out there all I've got are impressions I have no confidence that there's actually anything out there at all I don't see essence I don't experience it I just see these external flashing lights and sounds and so on well to make matters worse I not only don't experience the essences of things I do not experience the what I think are the rules by which those operate you know built in this is my word I'm just putting it here to illustrate the point build into my impressions and the ideas that they create are certain what I think are rules rules by which they operate for example I have a marker in my hand I drop it on the table I hit it and I hear a sound did you all hear the sound let's try it again I can do that that was good how many of you think the dropping marker caused the sound how many of you think that that there's a causal connection I see you got a good human skeptic here do you see causation have you ever seen causation directly answer causation is not something you see causation is something you assume how do you know for sure that that vision of a dropping marker just happens to coincidentally happen at the moment that a sound comes from outer space and you just thought one thing caused the other I've heard of the fallacy what what's the fallacy that really goes to this point it's a logical fallacy you all learned it back in the eighth grade and it is called Jacobs exactly after this therefore because of this you silly people you think that because the sound follows the dropping marker that somehow one thing caused the other don't you know that's a logical fallacy don't you know that just because one thing follows another does not necessarily need that there's any causation whatsoever you have assumed it because it's customary it just seems like on an ongoing basis every time you drop the marker you hear a sound you think well you know I think that that marker is causing the sound but there's no way you can know for sure back in ancient Egypt the Pharaoh would walk out every morning before sunrise who went out very early swai moses willows meet farrell early in the morning number those texts from the exodus account it was part of his job the Pharaoh was supposed to go out early in the morning and he would do this great kind of you know religious something or other and the Sun would rise and the people thought he did it again oh what a guy you know they thought you know Post hoc ergo propter hoc well they didn't think that they thought he was actually doing it silly them silly you you think that sound is caused by the marker they thought the Rising Sun was caused by Pharaoh Hume says you're both wrong at least there's no way to demonstrate you're right there is no more way to demonstrate that Pharaoh caused the Sun to rise than too competent than to demonstrate now with any degree of certainty that this is causing the other the cigarette industry used to get a lot of mileage out of Hume they don't you don't hear this so much anymore because it's just become it's crushed beneath the silliness of it but there was a time when this back you know in the 70s probably 60s and 70s where there was a widespread kind of public opinion that smoking causes cancer ever heard that smoking causes cancer Jacob Radiohead please go ahead I was wondering if if he says this about this is this big argument then why does he say that there's more certainty because it's because Hume is not always consistent with himself you know if you want to go up to David Hume and start pointing out the inconsistencies they're all over the place he uses these little principles in a sort of an exercise inconvenience when they work for him and then he'll argue the other side of the question with equal Felicity so it I have a hard time defending human that point because I think you've got it right with the short hairs there you know but it doesn't seem to bother a much he's just kinda goes merrily along without being too disturbed by that so if you're ever dealing with a human which you may you may run into somebody who's just been the kind of fact I was dealing with a PhD once I got PhD scholar and I was talking about how I thought the classical theistic proofs basically worked you know silly guy what do I know so I'm talking to this PhD in philosophy and I said I don't know it seems to me the theistic proofs work I go back to Thomas Aquinas I look at those things I mean they look like they hold water to me it is all come on man haven't you read Hume don't you know Hume debunked causation years ago would you get up to date that's exactly what he said to me let's see so humans alive and well it's not like you just dismiss this guy like an idiot you know so if a PhD in philosophy is telling me that the theistic proofs don't work because of David Hume then for whatever reasons David Hume still has some horsepower so you may run into somebody one of these days who's a great human kind of cheerleader I'm never gonna watch the Super Bowl again I swear off the Super Bowl you know it's just more than I can handle dude it's a cheerleader there's a simple reason for me I see them when they're not there this is just among us right no this isn't gone home for dinner conversation yes yeah you know I don't know what he would say about that I don't know whether he would say say that you can prove the opposite of one thing is not the cause of another just by giving an example of it because I think he would say that either way you're still assuming something that has not demonstrated namely the principle of causation itself and that's what he's attacking that there even is such a thing and so he doesn't care whether one thing causes another because he doesn't think that if you don't approve the opposite is to prove nothing because it wasn't there in the first place to be proved or disproved that make sense I you know it's sort of like assuming the very thing he's denying all right so anyway this is this is the Corbett what he's saying is that what you think are the rules of these impressions are only what he calls this is the second bullet second talk - when II called customary relationships when one thing follows another our minds kick into action and generate an assumption that the one thing caused the other we imagine causation but he says causation amounts to little more than expectation in other words all we actually have or what he calls customary relationships customarily I drop my pin I hear a sound it's a customary relationship Bertrand Russell who loved David Hume said David Hume had reduced causation to little more than superstition this is Bertrand Russell reputedly one of those brilliant minds in the 20th century a great critic of the Christian faith a staunch follower of Hume and he says of Hume that Hume had reduced causation to little more than superstition when you see a pin drop and hear a sound you have a superstition that the pin caused the sound but just like you can usually prove superstitions I carry a rabbit what is the tale of foot rabbit the foot on my belt which I don't but you know and I have something good happen to me then I simple the rabbit foot caused you know that light to turn green just what I was getting there that's superstition and Hume says there's not a big difference between that and assuming the sound you hear from the pin falling was caused by the pin it's all and exercising these kind of fallacies of post hoc ergo propter hoc so anyway that's the and of course I think you understand that if if that's true then not only does human have the firepower to call into question the classical proofs for the existence of God but in a sense human can call into question all human knowledge because how much of human knowledge depends on explanations that involve causation if that's what's odd to me about human if he's if he's really correct then you do not just lose God or the proofs forgetting you lose everything I mean let's say I'm standing here talking right now based on the assumption that my words are causing learning to occur now I realize that's a long shot anyway but if I really didn't think that there was any connection between me standing here talking and you learning then you don't have to say this would be a colossal waste of time and energy on my part to even be up here in the first place well as a matter of fact I believe in causation you see I happen to be a Christian and I happen to believe that there is cause and effect because God has made the universe that way and so there's at least some slim chance Joel and if I stand up here and talk like this you may learn something you know I believe that there's a causal principle at work what really strikes me as odd is people who are thoroughly committed to Hugh's philosophy will also get up in a classroom and talk expecting that their lectures are causing learning a causal relationship which they thoroughly did you know disbelieve because they happen to follow Hume you follow me there it's a very strange thing it's you know and what it says to me is that people who really embrace you do so on a sort of convenience basis they want to use Hugh's principles when it works for them and that usually means when they're trying to deny the existence of God not when they're trying to deny the existence of that Mack truck which is going to run over them in the intersection if they don't stop then they believe in causation every day of the week it's only when they're trying to avoid the god hypothesis that they pull their anti causal Hume philosophy out of the you know shelf and try to apply you following what I'm saying here you kind of get that this is if you'll get a hold of this and learn how to use it it can be very effective apologetically but I find a lot of Christians just sort of run into the bushes you know when they hear this kind of conversation going and I don't want you to be any of those people you know no I didn't at the time that comment was made to me in about 1973 and in 1973 I graduated from college and I had a minor in philosophy but at that time I did not know Hume well enough to respond it needled me it disturbed me that he said that and it sent me to thinking about Hume and if the guy would have come back a year later and made the comment I would have been a little bit more prepared but you know when you're a recent college graduate you got a BA in Psychology and a PhD in philosophy tells you that Hume has debunked causation my tendency is to go wow that's a problem you know I guess I just didn't know well you know if we have that conversation today I respond a little bit differently probably more politely than I am acting right now but you know I think there's a conversation that so if you didn't believe in causation and like you're given the example about teaching doesn't that throw even his whole philosophy it's right I mean Hume is so self refuting it's breathtaking but the problem is self refutation implies causation you see so that's why he doesn't care I think that I think the most effective way to deal with this is the kind of reductio ad absurdum the point is people only use this way of thinking as a matter of convenience when they're trying to avoid ultimate truth like God and the fact that you may stand before God someday to explain your life and may face the prospect of Hell then all of a sudden well I don't think I believe in causation not only God is there but all the rest of the time Wow it's the only way you can live you know actually think about it if you met someone who as a matter of fact even half the time didn't believe in causation even half the time where would you like lis be if you met someone where would you probably be if you met someone who didn't believe in causation even half the time you know where you'd be to be in a place where they put people you know who are hallucinating who are have mental disorders that prevent them from functioning because the fact is we all assume causation all the time and that's the only way we make it from one day to the next all right so those are the first two hope you get that impressions Korean idea the ideas are what's left in your mind the ripped the residual effect of impressions people leaves and impressions he doesn't know why they happened but they do happen he believes in ideas which are fundamentally the memory of impressions and our interpreter and so ideas are where these notions of causation come from the notion of non-contradiction is part of the ideas in our mind we cannot demonstrate that it's part of the objective order of things we can only say that's what our mind assumes as we process as we sift the experiences we have impressionistic ly alright that brings us to the third talking point in human which is induction this is another point Jacob where Hume just contradicts himself right and left I have tried for a long time to figure this out and I find the despair I think Hume himself knows what he's doing here but what's going on is this he thinks that the whole principle of induction which is what if I ask to Nicole to sort of summarize in a very simple little description phrase and to the basic principle of induction it would be what would you say alright it's pretty good it's just it's the mental process of generalizing induction is the process of generalizing if we go back to Aristotle it's the process of putting primary substance into the class of things that are secondary substance looking at an object and calling it a mark that is the most fundamental form of induction generalizing beyond that you know you go out in the forest and look at squirrels you notice bushy tails you notice 10,000 squirrels you see 10,000 bushy tails you generalize all squirrels have bushy tails you say to yourself that's induction induction has to take place generally before deduction alright y'all follow that y'all follow that you should just this would be pretty easy for if I say all squirrels have bushy tails I can draw certain conclusions from that deductive Lee right all the squirrels have bushy tails Spencer is a squirrel therefore what not you of course therefore what then therefore he has a bushy tail does it also follow all the squirrels have bushy tails Spencer has a bushy tail therefore what Trevor Spencer is the squirrel good heavens are you going to try to stand on that fallacy with a straight face do you think the squirrels are the only animals in the world ahead bushy tails it's the inverted middle every time but you know you know how it works don't you have properly applied if it is true that all squirrels have bushy tails and if it is true that you know Spencer is a squirrel then it is true that Spencer has one detail he does not follow and if also girls have bushy tails that Spencer has a bushy tail maybe ease what what's another critter with a person bushy tail a rabbit Matthew I just want everyone to know Matthew to show more enthusiasm all right but of course the question is krista where didn't we ever get the idea that all squirrels have bushy tails where did that idea come from we came from the process of induction right so you got yellow about that I mean this is pretty sinister so we tend to rely on induction as the process of generalizing Hume has to what he believes are devastating critiques of the process of induction number one he says induction proceeds on the assumption that the future must resemble the past as a matter of logical necessity induction proceeds on the assumption that the future must resemble the past as a matter of logical necessity and he says why should that fall because all we have are impressions all we have are impressions causation is not demonstrated and therefore there is not ultimately any reason why the future should follow from the past as a matter of logical necessity it's just an expectation it's just as a matter of fact a superstition where you just want to a repetition of that Spencer yeah the second critique that human is to the principle of induction is that the future will likely resemble the past as a matter of probability it's a little different than the first one the future will likely resemble the past as a matter of probability Hume grants that it's probably the case that the future will resemble the past but he says there are no guarantees again it's just an assumption Hume says I gotcha Hume says under examination induction is based fundamentally on circular reasoning it's the fallacy of begging the question yes but he believes murder is wrong for probably for reasons that are different than you believe murder is wrong just an accident so it gets you right off the hook doesn't it but your honor haven't you read human consolation it is it's a great question it's a it's actually when I went to law school I thought of that very that very question not you know kind of murdering human sort of thing but uh the general you know idea you're raising there because in in the law for example in tort law where you got an auto accident you know somebody injured something like that or medical malpractice or various kinds of settings where people are injured and it's it's a very significant question something that is becomes the focus of a huge amount of interest and it's called proximate cause proximate cause that's kind of a legal word but it just boils down to the notion is event a legally responsible for event B I'm driving down division doing 60 miles an hour speed limits 35 I hit Josiah good environmentalist riding his bicycle you know he's splattering all over creation well there's at least a question whether my doing 60 miles an hour was the proximate cost of the accident that took place and while that may seem to a pretty obvious example sometimes that becomes an extraordinary subtle question but my my point here been has simply say this it was interesting to me how much attention how much very subtle attention was given constantly to the issue of caused by a whole lot of future lawyers who embraced Hume as in terms of their whole theistic outlook is again it's just one of these strange kind of inconsistencies that here's a whole profession that's built on a notion that was presumably debunked by Hume how did that happen so I just I don't know what Humes answered that but I think if you pointed a gun at Humes head he'd be streaking out the door as fast as he could because he liked you believes it caused a I hope you're getting I I'm trying to I've got two different agendas going on in this discussion one is I want you to get some feel for Hume the other is I want you to get some feel for the way the pagan tends to think you know now you have to do this gently and sometimes you have to do it lovingly but the fact is the pagan has huge gaping holes in his or her logic they don't like to have it pointed out they will get very upset with you but in fact that's what as a Christian apologist you need to do to lovingly point out these huge not-too-subtle huge holes you got to know your stuff a little bit but you've also got to be able to have the facility to recognize it and and call it to their attention a clarifying question you said that get to critiques of induction it's the second one how would he use that against the conduction well what he's saying he's not he's saying this the second one is that the future will most likely resemble the past as a matter of probability he grants that that's probably true but you cannot guarantee that it's truth it is simply what we extrapolate from observation and it's what he puts in the class of customary relationships we are accustomed to seeing certain things happen on a probability basis we gain we come to the point we expect them but there's no way finally to demonstrate see what's what's interesting about this is of course later we'll get to this probably not today Hume has one of his criticisms of the Christian faith is a criticism based on the fact that the Christian faith vindicates itself based on testimonies regarding miracle Christians who are true to their Christian conviction believed Jesus rose from the dead that by most people's standards is a miracle Christians believe that Jesus rising from the dead vindicated that Jesus is who he claimed to be the Son of God God incarnate one in whom you should place your trust one who warrants your risking eternity by investing your life in him you see how do you why do you do that you say well Jesus rose from the dead and that gives me warrant to entrust my life to him Buddha didn't rise from the dead Muhammad still in the grave yeah Jesus alive and well I'm putting my money with Jesus thank you you know it's kind of the way Christians think it's sort of a real practical you know this is the best bet to use Pascal's sort of analysis human comes along and says well look I've never seen anybody rise from the dead the probabilities are against it would you grant that Matthew the probabilities are probably against somebody rising you the dead not likely how does Hugh reason that what's his reasoning just play it up pretend you're Hume I'm a Christian Club the over the head with your human outlook based on this notion of probabilities never actually seen I say okay here it is Matthew I'm I'm a Christian poor cowering trembling before an awesome human human human like you and I say yeah I believe Jesus rose from the dead and that's why I'm a Christian I think it really there's eyewitnesses the Jesus rose from the dead Peter and the Bible says so okay go ahead bury me you're you what's your response when this sniveling Christian asserts his confidence and the Christian faith based on the preposterous notion the Sun guy was buried in three days later rose from that what do you say as human rights say all of that stuff is a little more of a pointy response I'm kind of looking for here anybody he wanted to pull this without thanks that's fine anybody Josiah what would you say you know if you're Hume to that testimony you're assuming that will raise from the great because he's God but you're seeing well maybe maybe this is it's a little bit that this is where Hume is not quite true to himself but he makes this argument sure he would that would be the base he'd say okay look Kayla I come into school tomorrow morning do you know what I saw driving school and you say no I'm mr. Dorf what did you see and I say you're not gonna believe this but as I was driving to school there was a huge pink elephant I mean not not a metaphor a real pink elephant and it was right there in the middle of Argonne and it was washing cars walking around sucking up water washing cars it was a real elephant not just a machine it was amazing do you know what happened as I drove by and looked at that pink elephant in the rear view mirror do you know what I saw I saw that pink elephant begin to flap its huge ears and it flew off into the sunset what's up right now Kayla I just want you to pretend that I say that to you with a sincere obviously I really believe it I mean I'm not joking with you I'm saying I've never seen anything like this in my life it was a pink out who's washing cars it flew off flapping its wings what are you going to assume what what you know a reasonable young lady hearing this what do you want to assume kayla is actually going to wonder if I'm quite qualified to keep this job and she's certainly gonna wonder if her parents should continue to spend money for you to take a class for me and she may even go have a conversation with mr. Williams and say you know mr. Williams I don't know if you know it but I think mr. Gore has a problem in other words when she hears something from me so improbable as to defy common human experience she is going to go with common human experience instead of my report of this highly improbable observation right and wouldn't all of you in this room do the same thing now all things being equal which is more improbable that there's a pink elephant out on Argonne that's watching cars and flies away or that a guy is dead and buried stuck in a tomb for three days and then rises from the dead say Hume says you know I'd be more inclined to believe the pink elephant story than that and so the fact the matter is Hume says if somebody reports to me from 2000 years ago that they saw somebody rise from the dead I don't care if they do swear to it on a stack of Bibles I don't care if they think they did see every day of the week I'm going to go with hallucination being mistaken misguided you know instead of accepting the testimony to some preposterous story like that and so here though he's a critic of induction he's going to use induction to avoid the testimony of miracle and he thinks he's in the the reasonable place to be on that he followed it I have reports that oh he must have a brain because what Jordan is is raised is is the very thing that can't got troubled about this is why can't said this guy awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers because Hume is so good that you not only lose Jesus rising from the dead you lose the human brain you lose everything else and Kant wants to rescue knowledge from Hume who he believes has just blown the whole possibility of knowledge you know and to keep them calm so it's a good observation Jordan will probably get better on the board was there another I thought I saw him in the theater but it's the same thing same time same ideas alright so anyway that's a little kind of a story but I want you to know right now and in terms of third talking point with you is that he discounts Hume as a rely on induction as a reliable source of confidence even though he's gonna bring it back in the back door Jacob to argue against the Christian faith and at that point get a lot of traction out of it so it's just one more point where humans a little bit kind of not quite squared with himself fair enough arrivederci [Music] you

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 3,922

Rating: 4.9344263 out of 5

Keywords: David Hume, Bruce Gore

Id: tO1oZv5dLBM

Length: 47min 45sec (2865 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 25 2018