A History of Philosophy | 46 David Hume

this afternoon we turn to the third of the great English empiricists Locke Berkeley and now Hume I said English empiricists I should have said British empiricists he's a Scotsman and Hume coming as he does really only fifty years after John Locke 1690 was John Locke's essay on human understanding and 1748 was Humes inquiry concerning human understanding so in less than 50 years remarkable change takes place from John Locke's optimism almost rationalistic optimism about the possibilities of empirical knowledge to David Hume skepticism about it in fact prior to 1748 because nine years earlier when he was only in his twenties as you say 17:11 born the treatise came out in 1739 it was actually finished I think in 1736 he completed the treatise concerning human nature which is much longer than the inquiry there's an everyman edition you know those little compact blue volumes two volumes of it I was going to bring mine along but discovered that one volume I loaned to somebody and no came back so I was gonna bring along the one volume Edition which is the standard skull of the Edition and discovered that alone led to somebody and it never came back so if you know of anybody who has Hume with my name in the front chase that person and get it back I loaned them to people last year when there was a human are going on but in any case the the earlier book the treatise is longer Hume comments that it fell stillborn from the press and so apparently he wrote the inquiry in much shorter form jazzing it up a little bit in order to get the literary theme which he confesses he was so anxious for and so the treatise is longer fuller and in talking about Hume I'll be drawing on the treatise as well as the inquiry number of topics that he omits from the inquiry as we'll see the emphasis there in our knowledge of external things is really on our knowledge of cause-effect connections a little bit on our knowledge of God but in the treatise he's dealing with knowledge of cause-effect connections knowledge of space knowledge of time knowledge of matter knowledge of minds much fuller discussion of the metaphysical topics which we notice stir of importance in both law and birth we know in both of these works the treaty use and the enquiry his focus obviously is on epistemology this is the main concern of the enlightenment period catch it in the titles of the works John Locke an essay concerning human understanding George Berkeley principles of natural knowledge David Hume an inquiry concerning human understanding back an essay on human understanding and light nits in responding to no let's see it's Locke is an essay that's right the humors the inquiry and in responding to Locke you may recall that lightness had written new essays on human understanding so so in this period this is the focus of attention what is the possibilities for human knowledge what sort of reach can human knowledge have in this age of reason which of course is the age of scientific reason what is the scope of scientific knowledge in other words and it's about this that Hume becomes quite skeptical now in the treatise he takes it that the key to settling philosophical disputes is the study of human nature the study of human nature that's why the book is entitled a treatise a treatise on human nature and he he subtitles it to indicate that he's dealing with human nature by what he calls experimental method the word experimental then had nothing to do with hypotheses and confirmation it referred play to the appeal to experience so what he's trying to do is to provide an empirical account of human nature in relationship to two issues he says human belief and human action human belief and human action and in the light of that subtitling it's significant that he doesn't say human knowledge because his main emphasis is on giving a descriptive psychology of human belief and related to that of human nature as it affects ethics put that one other way if we want to explain human beliefs according to human we have to turn from rationalist explanations we believe what can be proven we believe proportionately to the objective empirical evidence remember John Locke's evidential astray Tyrion you have to turn away from that to an account of human psychology human nature leads us to believe there's a psychological account the police and similarly with regards to not just moral belief but moral action we're led to moral action again not by the force of reasoning about ethical principles but simply by the psychology of human feelings moral feelings which lead us to act so in both cases he's offering more of a descriptive psychology then he is rational logical proof or evidential justification his complaint is that the obscurity of ideas the obscurity of ideas misleads people like Descartes and Locke and Spinoza and even Berkeley now it sounds sort of odd to say the obscurity of ideas when Descartes and Locke was stressing clear and distinct ideas his point is simply that ideas are not clear and distinct and in that sense he reminds me of a friend of Mines some while ago who used to say when somebody said of an idea well it's perfectly clear to me his response would be well I'm sorry I don't find it so because after all a criterion of clarity and thus thickness is immediately relative to how a person conceives the idea yes a its person dependent and Hume does not find the ideas that Descartes not hold to be clear and distinct to be so you'll will notice as we get into his theory of ideas that Hume in place of talking of clarity and distinctness talks of force and vivacity force and vivacity notice that those are effective criteria not cognitive criteria it's not so much a matter of thinking with clarity but feeling with forcefulness that becomes important now that is the sort of thing he makes clear then in the introduction to the treatise but in section one of the inquiry he does something very parallel to it and if you've been reading that section one you may notice may have noticed I hope you noticed that what he was doing was talking of types that he calls abstruse and on the other hand practical philosopher and what he argues for in the long run is a mix of the two the ideal is some sort of mix of the two abstruse philosophy is the sort of thing in which Descartes engaged John Locke to its its value in talking theoretically about ideas and knowledge so forth its value is in logical precision it's motivated by intellectual curiosity but it provides no basis for morality the knowledge of the external world or the natural theology that is to say the the rational rationalist kinds of approach are impotent in grounding morality grounding scientific knowledge of the external world and grounding ones belief in God in rational proofs abstruse philosophy with that kind of logical demand is a value only in mathematics only in mathematics so right at the outset then in that introductory section what he is doing is proclaiming announcing his rejection of the Enlightenment spirit the Enlightenment conception of knowledge the rule of reason and in talking about practical philosophy in contrast with this he's talking about what guides action why we believe what we do and so he he says in talking of a mix for the to be a philosopher would be still a man well a woman - in other words human nature rather than the artificial demands of reason or what should really characterize philosophy an understanding of human nature so whether you start with the treatise or start with the inquiry the way we have it in Coffman the the beginning is the same he launches out by announcing in effect what he's going to do lay aside the claims of Descartes and Locke human reason and develop a psychology of belief okay is that clear enough once you get a handle on that I think you can see what Hume is doing too often unfortunately people tend to talk about Hume and did that matter teach him as if he only wrote the first four sections of the including the rule of reason and forgetting what comes next section 5 which has to do well with what he calls the skeptical solution to these doubts yes he he's skeptical about reason how does he resolved it out by developing a psychology of belief it shows that belief isn't always voluntary as Descartes and said as Locke and said you remember their attitudes if there is insufficient evidence withhold belief the will must not go ahead of the intellect to which human is in effect responding the will may not go ahead of the end well but you do but you do even if you haven't come up with any proof for the existence of an external world notice how you behave in the world around as if well alright that by way of introduction now the the development which Hume gets into in talking about knowledge and belief as you might expect against the background of Descartes and Locke the development has to be introduced by talking about the theory of ideas and I suggest that here it's particularly important that you watch for where he disagrees with John Locke if you've given Locke a careful reading you'll have caught the differences for that matter differences not only from Locke but from Berkeley as well take a look to begin with take a lot to begin with you notice that Locke starts by talking of ideas simple and complex ok alright Hume is quite happy to talk about ideas both simple and complex the diffict a difference is that whereas Locke takes it that simple ideas are the original input to the consciousness clear and distinct simple ideas on the other hand Hume inserts as the original input nan ideas that impressions impressions impressions are the original stimuli with force and vivacity there it is not clear and distinct but forceful and vivacious force and vivacity so force follows to be irresistible so lively as to catch your us forceful and vivacious now in his point is simply avert an impression that emotive affective state as it arises the rouses the consciousness and as it declines gives place to an idea so an idea is the cognitive state that follows an impression that provides you with a copy of the impression okay a copy of the impression now take it for instance if there's a bright flash of light which dazzles you what you experience initially is not a clear and distinct idea of a bright flash of light what you feel initially is the hurt the blinding force of it and if all of a sudden I go the initial impact is going to be physical rather than did I wake you up physical rather than conceptual quite plainly yes but it's most evident in those physical sensations which are associated with some degree of rot shock pain whatever that his point is what when we get to Whitehead later on he calls the primacy of causal efficacy in perception except that Hume isn't prepared to call it causal efficacy but it's the primacy of the affective if you like of the emotive rather than the cognitive in human experience the primacy of the effective of the emotive what happens if you're driving along the highway and suddenly something flashes in front of you it's not clear indistinct idea there's a reflex action and the heart beats pretty fast so he he is doing in this since his descriptive psychology now the interesting thing is that while the impression leaves you with an idea that idea as it comes to mind comes back to mind in memory remembering the impression that idea remembered also leaves its own impression and that impression leaves its idea so that what you have is this commingling of impressions and ideas the initial sensation the initial feeling giving rise to an idea which is a copy of it the impression of which is associated no the impression of which is desire dislike something of that sort didn't like that emotive response and memory again or if you like imagining something like it also leaves an impression so you have this whole strain of impressions and the word sensation which is associated with the initial impression now rather than the idea the sensation is yeah what you mean by a sensation in ordinary parlance when somebody tickles you and you say hey that's quite a sensation so that the emphasis is on the the physical the emotional rather than on the cognitive well this is one main difference from John Locke and Hume uses the word perception to refer to that whole business perception perceptions are not clear and distinct ideas perceptions are just states of consciousness states of consciousness that begin with impressions and include ideas now a second departure from Locke is not so much not so radical a change but it is I think an advance over Locke he talks about the association of ideas after all if we combine simple ideas into complex ideas as we do then he's going to become interested in the psychological process by which this goes on how do we gain ideas of substances ideas of relations ideas of modes of being contingent necessary as the case may be and he sees that there are three principles of Association which are being used I might say that at this juncture in history the beginning of the 18th century Association ists psychology was going pretty great guns so that what Hume is doing here is in line with the Association estoy ecology where they tried to find principle at associations follow well the three principles of Association that that Hume comes up with three principles of Association resemblance contiguity cause-and-effect so we seem to combine ideas to relate ideas into more complex ones when repeated impressions and ideas are like one another we combine them and it's in that sort of way that I get my idea of a particular substance how do I know that this is one of these so-called dustless dry markets well the impressions I get of it both the appearance and the sort of repulsive smell you know I had to get the repulsive in to get the effective term the repulsive smell you see that's repeated the similar similar thing is repeated what I remember from last time I got it again and that resemblance develops the idea of a substance with ongoing identity so it's as if a mental habit is being formed of thinking of this marker that way the idea of substance contiguity likewise if things are adjacent to each other we tend to associate them spatially adjacent chronologically adjacent and so we get ideas of spatial relationships and temporal relationships therefore of a location in space and a location in time there are notice these are particular locations just like the marker is a particular substance because the complex ideas that I get are not ideas of some abstract universals variety is a particular yes a not abstract general ideas but ideas of particulars and if I do get ideas of marcozzi general general ideas again it's because of resemblance that it doesn't now when he comes to the relationship of cause and effect the principle of cause and effect as a principle of Association that is where the difficulty occurs that's the problem he points up in Section 4 of the enquiring because it turns out as you try to describe empirically what we call cause effect types of relationship that all we can observe is constant conjunctions uniform associations but we never have any observation of the force that is exerted of causal power of what he calls causal connections so that the uniformity of nature is an empirical generalization but that a must cause be it's a necessary cause of it that's unknown empirically so of these three principles of Association well they all work inferences from the third to any necessary connections is invalid though psychologically yet we come to believe that and this is going to be the key for how we come to certain beliefs like beliefs in material objects external belief in God so forth because we come to believe in cause-effect connections for which there is no empirical evidence and for that matter no a priori knowledge so keep that in mind also then the association of ideas now that leads him in the third place with regards to luck that leads him to go one step further than luck and formulate what has since become known as an empiricist criterion of meaning an empiricist criterion of meaning now he's not talking of a criterion of truth or of justified belief he's talking simply of of language of what words mean and if we're talking about factual meaning reference to something reference to something specific naming something describing something then the criterion of meaning for an empiricist is going to be that the language must refer to some original no not original ideas of an empirical sort but original impressions of an empirical sort so look at page 108 back 291 in Kaufman 291 which is at the tail end of section 2 of the inquiry the last couple of sentences in fact of section 2 of the inquiry and notice what he what he says last three sentences all impressions that is all sensations either outward or inward outward sensations inward sensations he talks of the outer sense of the inner sense right all impressions all sensations inward or outward a strong and vivid the limits between them are more exactly determined nor is it easy to fall into any error of state with regards to them when we entertained therefore any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without meaning or idea as is about too frequent we need but inquire from what impression is that supposed idea derived and if it'd be impossible to assign any impression this will serve to confirm our suspicions by bringing ideas into so clearer light we may reasonably hope to remove all dispute that may arise concerning their nature and reality yeah do your ideas have any basis basis in experience or not so what you try to do is to take a complex idea analyze it into the simple ideas and ask from what original impressions to these simple ideas come and that's the acid criteria no it's this empiricist criterion of meaning which he uses with such effectiveness when he talks of the idea of necessary connection there's no original impression of Ness very connections of the idea has no meaning when he's talking of miracle he takes it that the idea of a miracle is something on a son unrelated to any original impression therefore impossible to ascertain the idea of anything abstract abstract ideas real universals in the same situation again this goes it turns out even for the concept of mind as a substance as an entity of soul you remember as we were talking about it a bit last time because he looks at bad well we have impressions of our own mental states of our wishing and hoping and feeling but where's the impression of mind substance soul substance it's doesn't leave any impressions so there is no empirical point of reference that's involved in talking that way now you might say well why didn't burn me see that a lot that mattered a cart well a big cart had started by saying no we don't have any direct clear and distinct idea of the mind but we have a notion a notion a notion that it's there so that when Descartes goes through his eyes think therefore I exist a thinking thing the notion he has is of that continuing that is the agent that's thinking and I sort of catch me in the act when I say I think I exist I got me but Locke and Berkeley follow that line of thought but not so him not so here what is the eye you see if it's not eye substance well what is it empirical and this gets to the question of personal identity and in the treatise he has one chapter that deals with the notion of minds as substance he has another chapter that deals with the concept of personal identity and if we have no basis for affirming the existence of mind substance then the question of personal identity has to be addressed what do we know of personal identity and he says all that we know of personal identity is through memory you know search yourself if you're looking for some empirical basis for talking about the are what is your I to you empirically know now plainly it's um it's not body or such because you were still you even though you trim your fingernails and toenails did you have it losing that much body doesn't affect you and now we know you can get along with transplants even heart transplants and people are writing philosophical science fiction about whether you would be you if you had a brain transplant yeah there's all sorts of fascinating literature building around that but as far as humor is concerned the the body is is irrelevant because the body is it not I and you you sense that if you see yourself in a photo see yourself on a video that's not the eye that I know I can objectify that no the the eye that I know is the inner eye I know through what they call reflection the eye that was the thinking thing on such an occasion the feeling thing another occasion the speaking thing on another occasion the eye that I experienced inwardly and and so personal identity for Hume is is really concerning consists in this whole stream strain of ideas and impressions sensations and reflections that in my memory I trace all the way back along complex streams of ideas and impressions that were mine so that he says in me in the final analysis that the self is like a theater in which ideas appear and pass one after the other so leading as they come and go that's all there is to identity then he adds another sentence by way of qualification don't let this misunderstand you the eye is a stream of ideas not the stage on which they stand not the pill just the appearances so when it comes to the nature of the self he's plainly only a phenomenal list not a realist only a phenomenal we can only talk about how the self appears not what the self is well III think that which he develops right at the end of the book two of the treatise I think that is perhaps one of the clearest examples of how this empiricist criterion of meaning works what else do we have to refer to empirically in talking about the South well as you probably are aware it's this empiricist criterion of meaning which was adopted and updated by 20th century logical empiricism and we'll be running into it again when we get to AJ and his book language truth and logic which we'll be reading on in the spring sometime oh to be in a when April is here you know it would be just about that time when some of us would say oh to be in England now that April's here it'll be a jay-ar instead and he after all is English all right any comments there about Locke and how he goes I take it back Hume and how he goes beyond luck right now still with his theory of ideas how does he compare with Berkeley how does he compare with Berkeley well I think the the first observation is an obvious one that he agrees with Berkeley's nominalism he agrees with Berkeley's nominalism that's obvious isn't it that if we're going to be strictly empiricists tracing everything back to impressions then there are no empirical impressions of abstract entities or of abstract ideas our ideas are all of them about particular qualities that are seen or felt words only become general names by customary usage that uses them indiscriminately between similar particulars we associate the particulars by virtue of their commonalities and use one would refer to the law but we never abstract any concept of a universal essence so he agrees with Berkeley in that regard and that attitude of Humes towards abstract ideas comes out in his discussion of space and time which is in part two of the treatise it's not in the inquiry he maintains that we have no empirical idea because no ultimate impression of infinite space or infinite time and when people thought of when people like some of the pre-socratics a talk of the infinite divisibility of particles of matter on and on and on well if we have no concept of infinity we can't think with any clear idea of infinite divisibility and so those notions associated with traditional discussion are out oh we can think of his finite spatial relations and temporal relations just that there is no abstract idea of space no abstract idea of time no abstract idea of substance only complex ideas of particular substances collection of simple sighs simple ideas that's all no idea of existence only of particulars that we think as we say exist but you don't have a conception of existence no impressions of existence you get impressions and have qualities of their own existence is not a quality of an idea and that is going to be significant when we get to Immanuel Kant and he talks of the ontological argument you'll see the idea of a perfect being such that it must necessarily exist well if existence is not a concept you cannot predicated of anything it's not a proper predicate it's concepts and so there's no proof there in an ontological proof so by the time you get through that orientation to Humes modified theory of ideas you can see pretty well where he's going and I think it really begins to seem as if the rest is simply a mopping up operation at least the rest of what he's doing about knowledge and belief and metaphysical and theological topics okay notice that his basic question is not can you prove such-and-such but what in experience are you talking about the basic question is one of meaningfulness empirical meaning rather than truth unless you know what empirically is being referred to how can you check the truth of a statement well question/comment there yeah did you get that here that question John seems that the peer assist criterion of meaning leads naturally I think you mean logically to nominalism no I think you're completely right when did to come out the woods or ideas something other than well Vidhan Stein is also I think a nominal list in a sense of repudiating abstract ideas John Locke of course is an empiricist who's not a novelist and perhaps your question is whether there are other than empiricists know if whether there are other empiricists in addition to Locke who are not nominalist s-- get it but you may be getting at is this was luck mistaken about the logical compatibility of empiricism and conceptualism does an empiricist always have to be anonymous does it necessarily follow well it was challenged in the somewhat in the forties but challenged in the fifties and by the sixties it was pretty well passe nineteen sixties but its challenge was not so much from the standpoint of conceptualist s-- as rather from those who claimed that the empiricist with the empiricist criterion of meaning is not being empirical enough about the diversity of language you see and that in a way was Vidkun Stein's point he would say that language clip language plays other games than simply the game of naming pointing denoting what what's involved in that is the recognition that language doesn't just consist of isolated words nor of syntactical structures but language is a social function a cultural activity a means by which in the culture we do all sorts of things in the language culture yes so the oversimplification yeah so that III think that criticism is is pertinent there was another line of criticism which I think is also very pertinent the way the logical positivists stated the criterion it was to this effect that any factual statement in order to have empirical meaning must in principle at least be empirically verifiable now is that a factual statement if so is it empirically verifiable you know it becomes obvious that it's not an empirical statement that's it it's not a factual statement that's empirically verifiable and so the positivist had to back up and say no this is a methodological stipulation on our part and in saying that they've really shifted ground and said we are going to act as if empirical reference is the only kind of me no I I think Locke's position is defensible if we recognize that the Carians of abstract ideas are not mental images okay Locke seems to think with his notion of a clear and distinct idea that what we carry in our minds is mental images of something an image of the blueness of your shirt or whatever you know when it comes to thinking abstract ly were not imaging particular qualities we're thinking verbally yes a and it's words which are the vehicles of non-empirical thinking thinking and abstraction from so that if you want to use the phrase one of the games that language plays is abstract thinking which is most noticeable in the way in which mathematics works or a dictionary works though that kind of abstract thinking where the statements are not factual statements but analytic statements it's not the only one I think poetry is another kind of abstract thinking where the words of the poet conjure up whole general ideas without picturing particulars sometimes by picturing a particular but other times just the word itself game's symbolic significance symbolism well that's that's obviously a crucial question and when this this business came up in the 20th century and we'll talk about that when we get to it one of the well two of the crucial issues involved well what does this do to moral language and what does it do to religious language yes and those were the two key issues in the 1950s okay turn our attention then to the next stage in the development having to do with knowledge and beliefs and here let's simply remind ourselves that knowledge consists of propositions of propositions which affirm something about the relationship between ideas a proposition has a subject and a predicate involves at least those two terms two ideas and so there are two kinds of propositions is human two kinds that have become known ever since as analytic and synthetic analytic propositions have to do simply with the logical relation of ideas logical relations of ideas and so if such propositions are true they are called logical truths logical truths the synthetic have to do with matters of fact and so these are called factual truths if they're true they're logical relations of ideas have to do simply with the ideas not about what they represent so if we say for instance that a bachelor is an unmarried male they were talking about the word bachelor and its meaning unmarried male were talking about the language and the meaning of these terms is such that they are logically equipment so you're simply analyzing the logical relationship between the two terms same is true with any definition and the most obvious example is in mathematics three plus five equals eight is talking about the logical relationship between the terms three five and eight here we're talking simply about the language that is being used or if you like about the ideas we're not purporting to talk anything about impressions we're not purporting to talk anything about external things whether or not there are any remaining bachelors in this room the fact is that all bachelors would be unmarried makes the other hand of course if you say well bachelors are miserable that would be a factual statement now human spends very very little time on relations of ideas that is most evident in mathematics and he wants to say nothing further about that that's where abstruse philosophy abstruse reasoning has its value and it's good mental exercise and foot drill for the rest of us not in mathematics but his concern is with matter-of-fact statements where the contrary of such a statement is logically possible it's not logically possible to have a bachelor who's married it is logically possible to have a bachelor who is not miserable and so the contrary of a matter-of-fact statement is logically possible they are falsifiable theirs so then the the big question and the question where the empirical criterion of meaning comes into play most has to do with knowledge of matters of fact and it's that which he is going to question now his line of argument for this is what develops in that crucial section for of the inquiry that crucial section for and I see that this clock is slow times run out so don't hold your breath but we'll get to that crucial section next time

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Length: 62min 15sec (3735 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2015