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Note | Hume’s Skeptical Empiricism

Radical Skepticism

David Hume exhaustively criticized epistemology. He didn’t accept external things and the existence of the God as a cause of idea. He thought “Our perceptions can’t get out of our minds.” For John Locke and George Berkeley, experience is the path to catch ideas from the external world. But, by Hume, experience is movements themselves of ideas in a mind.

And Hume questioned identities of the world and personality, and their causality the basis of our ordinary life.

Perception, Impression and Idea

First, Hume called idea of Locke and Berkeley perception. And Hume divided perception into impression and idea.

Impression is perception has force and liveliness, and an original of idea , enters our senses, as a fondamental, original and vivid sensation in now and here. Idea is a copy of impression, remains in our minds.

Association of Ideas: Resemblance, Contiguity and Causality

Ideas reappear as a memory or an imagination. Ideas associate and unite each other, then make new impressions. Hume thought these associations or units are free also proper, and there is the universal principle of relation of ideasas resemblance, contiguity and cause and effect.

Ideas are produced by ideas and reflections called secondary impression. The process of impressions produce ideas, ideas produce impressions, and perceptions form themselves and develop continuously. This process of perceptions is experience of Hume.

Bundle of Perceptions

Hume thought perception is only certain thing. Also, even external object or personality isn’t a constant and unchangeable real existence.

Impressions which continue the same and changeless during our lives, isn’t exist. To observe internal of self, to deeply enter myself, we can grasp only perceptions of cool or warm, light and dark, love and hate, pleasure and pain. Hume stated “In any cases, we can’t grasp my self without perceptions in the least.”

For Hume, there is not a coherent mind or personality. Man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions in perpetual flux and movement, which succeed with an inconceivable rapidity.

Necessity of Cauality: Custum and Belief

Also Hume denied the objectivity of causality. There isn’t absolute necessity of unity of cause and result. Causality is only a subjective unity (one of a complex idea) based on custom (repetitions of experience). But by custom effects for imagination , we can infer another object from an object. Inference of causality is by the custom of mind. Causality is a connection of beliefs derive from custom, and is a kind of invention or fiction.

References

Jean-François Revel, Histoire de la philosophie occidentale (Nil Éditions, 1994)

Luc Ferry & Claude Capelier, La plus belle histoire de la philosophie (Éditions Points, 2014)

Roger-Pol Droit, Une brève histoire de la philosophie (Flammarion, 2008)

Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy (Simon & Schuster, 1972)

Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy (Yale University Press, 2011)

Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy (Routledge, 2002)

Gen Kida, History of Anti-Philosophy (Kodansha Academic Library, 2000)

Seiji Takeda & Ken Nishi, The First Histoty of Philosophy: To Think Profoundly (Yuhikaku, 1998)

Shigeto Nuki, Illustrated & Standard History of Philosophy (Shinshokan, 2008)

Shigeto Nuki, Philosophy Map (Chikuma New Books, 2004)

Sumihiko Kumano, The History of Western Philosophy: From The Modern Ages to The Present Day (Iwanami New Books, 2006)

Thierry Paquot & François Pépin, Dictionnaire Larousse de la Philosophie (Éditions Larousse, 2011)

Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition Revised), (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Robert Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition), (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Thomas Mautner, The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition), (Penguin Books, 2005)

Note | Locke’s Empiricist Epistemology

Criticism of Notion of Innate Ideas

John Locke’s question about epistemology or metaphysics was what is our origin of knowledge of nature and moral. Also what things we can be certain they are knowledge.

Locke denied the rationalist notion of innate ideas. The reason of the notion of innate ideas is all men already have ideas by nature. But Locke thought children don’t know complex ideas like law of contradiction or law of excluded middle. Even ideas of justice or the God should be known or made by knowledge or thinking. All of ideas must be made by men through a path. Locke named the path experience .

Locke’s Epistemology

Sensations such as white, sweet and rough we feel by the five senses, Locke called impression . The stuff, temporary impression is fixed, Locke called idea .

Human mind at birth is a tabula rasa (blank slate). Sense and reflection as workings of mind describe ideas on tabula rasa. Sense produces ideas about external things such as white, black, hot or cool. Reflection produces ideas about function of mind such as thinking, perception or will.

Ideas given by sense and reflection, are named simple ideas . The mind makes a complex idea by some simple ideas.

Locke confirmed intuitive knowledge and demonstrative knowledge based on mutual comparison among ideas are certain, and established the basis of empirical science.

Substance and Primary Quality / Secondary Quality

Locke limited certain knowledge is made by ideas on the range of perception.

Although Locke insisted substances and the God are exist in the outside of mind. Primary quantities are objective qualities such as solid body, extension or motion. Secondary qualities are qualities of which primary qualities affect a mind and associated by/in mind.

Locke’s notion of substances and qualities may be a remain of Descartes’ dualism or his desire for the truth (correspondence between subject and object).