# Question on David Hume



## Claudiu (Mar 31, 2011)

I've been reading "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" by David Hume for my Modern Philosophy class. We covered the main arguments that Hume presents, and those being so far, the difference between Relation of Ideas and Matters of Fact, how the Relation of Ideas are known through reason (i.e. 3+2=5) while the Matters of Fact are by experience (i.e. the sun rising). The experience needed for the Matters of Fact are Cause and Effect. However, Hume say's Cause and Effect is not based on reason at all, and only experience, but that we still come to believe things because of we make a connection of cause and effect. Namely, we draw conclusions about the future on the basis of past experience (but, again, these conclusions are not based on reason). The example Hume uses is that of the billiard balls where one ball strikes another. 

My question is how does Hume support his view that although we do draw conclusions about the future on the basis of past experience, those conclusions "are not founded on reasoning, or any process of the understanding"? Is he right?


----------



## Philip (Apr 1, 2011)

Claudiu said:


> My question is how does Hume support his view that although we do draw conclusions about the future on the basis of past experience, those conclusions "are not founded on reasoning, or any process of the understanding"? Is he right?



Remember that Hume rejects inductive inference and dismisses it as "mere custom." Let's say I repeat Newton's experiments to confirm the law of gravity: I drop an apple and it falls---however, it might be a unique event, so I must discount it. So I drop the apple a second time, but again, this is a unique event (since the first one has been discounted) and so I discount the second trial. And so on and so forth. Even if we do grant that using instances like this is a valid way of reasoning, how many experiments must we do? After all, it is quite possible that after even one thousand experiments, the next one could behave differently. Thus Hume thinks he has proven his point.

While there are some in the reformed camp (most notably Gordon Clark) who would agree with Hume, the majority would not. Why? Well, because of our doctrine of creation: did God create the world with certain rules of ordinary function or did He not? Did God give us inductive faculties in order to know about this world or did He not? If not, then why did He give them to us?


----------



## athanatos (Apr 1, 2011)

How does one break up a cause and an effect, and how does one show that the two events are related? There is nothing in the experience itself that demonstrates the relationship, only spatial and/or temporal coincidence. It is an inference outside experience that one concludes about experience, but without necessity (it is not ensured). Where is the reasoning in that? Finally, it seems arbitrary that we select only a small sample of the universe to make huge conclusions like when x does x', then y will do y', and this is true of all z doing z'. (if we don't generalize it, then the conclusion is trivial at best)


----------



## Philip (Apr 1, 2011)

athanatos said:


> How does one break up a cause and an effect, and how does one show that the two events are related? There is nothing in the experience itself that demonstrates the relationship, only spatial and/or temporal coincidence. It is an inference outside experience that one concludes about experience, but without necessity (it is not ensured). Where is the reasoning in that? Finally, it seems arbitrary that we select only a small sample of the universe to make huge conclusions like when x does x', then y will do y', and this is true of all z doing z'. (if we don't generalize it, then the conclusion is trivial at best)


 
The trouble with Hume here is that he fails to recognize that he's ignoring the common-sense faculties that God has given us, as his contemporary, Thomas Reid, pointed out. How do I know that there is correlation? Because it's blasted obvious to anyone who hasn't had his thinking impaired by too much philosophy. For any effect, we infer to the simplest explanation that accounts for all the phenomena--what's wrong with that? How is it unreasonable?


----------



## Claudiu (Apr 3, 2011)

If you guys have some time check out my question on John Locke too: http://www.puritanboard.com/f50/why-john-locke-does-not-successfully-explain-general-ideas-66910/#post857869


----------



## jwright82 (Apr 4, 2011)

Hume occupies for me the same place that Richard Rorty does, they both show why autonmous reason can never theoreticaly justify its own basis. They just point out why certian examples of autonomous reason don't work. Hume just points out that Modern philosophy can never achieve what it wanted to, a secure foundation for knowledge on autonomous grounds. But rather than consider a different source to acheive this he decided on a basically irrational point of view, as Reid well pointed out. This is what Van Til meant by the whole rationalist/irrattionalist tension in autonomous thought. They seek to secure an ultimate foundation apart from God, rationalist, and someone comes along and destroys that theory but this person rather than accepting God as the only true foundation chooses a overly skeptical account of things, irrationalist. Kant for instance stated that reason will always arrive at the antinomies of reason, as he called them, and concluded that all reason would always be plagued by this. But Dooyeweerd pointed out that it is only autonomous reason that is plagued by this not a christian philosophy of reason.


----------

