An Inquiry Into Human Enquiry

In Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion we are introduced to three characters that serve the purpose to debate God and his nature, more specifically, what can mankind infer about God and his nature. The three characters; Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes all engage in a debate concerning this question and they all serve the purpose of supporting their views on the subject. It is the “argument from design” put forth by Cleanthes that is the focal point of the discussion, and it is Demea and Philo who attempt to discredit it.

Hume argues that we cannot prove that there is a real world outside our experience, much less that our experience is an accurate representation of that world. He says we need to get outside our experience to see whether it does fairly represent the world, however, its near impossible to do that.

While Hume would disagree with Descartes’ proof for God’s existence as well as what influence God has on our thoughts, they would both agree that our knowledge and imagination do not come from within ourselves. Furthermore, both provide skeptical analyses of our experiences as humans that question reality, such as when Descartes’ recognizes the uncertainty of the existence of anything beyond his own mind, or when Hume questions whether we can conceive of anything we have yet to experience externally. Therefore, while the philosophers have marked differences, they share a fundamentally skeptical inquiry of the

David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion provide conflicting arguments about the nature of the universe, what humans can know about it, and how their knowledge can affect their religious beliefs. The most compelling situation relates to philosophical skepticism and religion; the empiricist character, Cleanthes, strongly defends his position that skepticism is beneficial to religious belief. Under fire from an agnostic skeptic and a rationalist, the empiricist view on skepticism and religion is strongest in it’s defense. This debate is a fundamental part of the study of philosophy: readers must choose their basic understanding of the universe and it’s creator, upon which all other assumptions about the universe will be made.

ABSTRACT: Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) may be read in the way Cleanthes (and Philo as well) reads Nature, as analogous to human artifice and contrivance. The Dialogues and Nature then are both texts, with an intelligent author or Author, and analogies may be started from these five facts of Hume's text: the independence of Hume's characters; the non-straightforwardness of the characters' discourse; the way the characters interact and live; the entanglements of Pamphilus as an internal author; and the ways in which a reader is also involved in making a dialogue. These and other analogies should reflect upon the Author of Nature as they do upon Hume's

     Hume began his first examination if the mind by classifying its contents as Perceptions. “Here therefore [he divided] all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species.” (27) First, Impressions represented an image of something that portrayed an immediate relationship. Secondly, there were thoughts and ideas, which

David Hume was a British empiricist, meaning he believed all knowledge comes through the senses. He argued against the existence of innate ideas, stating that humans have knowledge only of things which they directly experience. These claims have a major impact on his argument against the existence of miracles, and in this essay I will explain and critically evaluate this argument.

Although like Descartes, Hume practiced the art of radical skepticism, he felt that if he could not utilize his senses to prove something it was meaningless. Hume continued development of Leibniz’s analytical-synthetic distinction, or in Hume’s words “…a distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact” (Palmer 197). Analytical propositions are true by definition and are a priori, and therefore necessarily true. Synthetic propositions are not true by

Hume's skepticism is limiting but not as limiting as Cartesian doubt. Hume calls this mitigated skepticism. "Another species of mitigated skepticism which may be of advantage to man-kind… is the limitation of our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding" (Section XII part. 3). We should direct our focus and studies to experiences of everyday life and to common occurrences. Extraordinary or remote ideas and thoughts should be left to the imaginations of people of the arts. By looking at the natural powers of the mind one can find what should be the objects of enquiry and study.

David Hume was a Scottish empiricist who became renowned as a philosopher for his metaphysical skepticism and his account of the mind. Born in the 18th century, Hume follows Locke, a fellow empiricist and Descartes, an idealist, in the philosophic cannon. As a result he responds to each. From Locke Hume builds upon his concept of perceptions. Hume’s defining skepticism pertains to idealistic claims of substance, god, and the self.

This kind of division also can be called as “Hume’s fork”. Relation of ideas are a priori which are “intuitively or demonstratively certain” and “discoverable by the mere operations of thoughts” (Hume, 1748, p.422). In this group, we can include mathematical ideas and math proofs, for example, statement like two plus two equals four. So, the denial of such statements is inconceivable and logically impossible. For example, we can think about the triangle and we all know that it has three sides. Later, we can imagine a triangle with four sides and immediately face a contradiction because four-sided figure is rectangle. This statement is a priori true for the reason that it has nothing to do with the external world and gives us no information back about the world. The second kind is “matters of facts” which is a posteriori. “Matters of facts” are statements that give us knowledge about the world and the sources providing knowledge for these statements are “the present testimony of our senses” and “the record of our memory” (Hume, 1748, p.423). Statements of this group and the denial of these statements are not self-contradictory and conceivable. For example, we can tell that the house of my neighbors is yellow, and we can easily conceive this statement as true, but we can at the same time conceive it as false, and imagine their house in blue

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume states, “there is not, in any single, particular instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connexion” (Hume, 1993: 41). Hume establishes in section II that all ideas originate from impressions that employ the senses (11). Therefore, in order for there to be an idea of power or “necessary connexion,” there must be impressions of this connection present in single instances of cause and effect; if there are no such impressions, then there cannot be an idea of “necessary connexion” (52). To illustrate his statement, Hume examines four situations:

The dawn of the Enlightenment brought forth a slew of radical notions that challenged society’s dominant sentiments at the time. With the onslaught of conversations about the nature and purpose of humanity, Enlightenment thinkers conceived novel concepts of anti-authoritarian thinking, empiricism, and the role of reason in humanity. As the Enlightenment led to an upheaval in how intellectuals took the authority of traditional learning, new conversations about the human condition were born. Namely, an emphasis on reason and logic as the primary mechanisms of humanity was developed. Prolific Scottish philosopher David Hume, best known for his radical use of skepticism to examine every possible concept in the vast index of Enlightenment values, emerged as a revolutionary departure from the traditional French and English Enlightenment thinkers. Hume was known for applying a brand of skepticism in his consideration of concepts such as reason, human sympathy, and the authority of traditional ideas. While David Hume’s extreme skepticism challenges preconceived notions of Enlightenment values, his approach is ultimately quite reflective of the core beliefs that represent the pinnacle of Enlightenment thought; thereby reinforcing such values while simultaneously casting them in an increasingly realistic light.

Philosophers David Hume and Renee Descartes have opposing views about the origination of ideas. Hume claims that all ideas are copies of impressions, which come from sensation. Descartes disagrees with this, arguing that in order to obtain knowledge, there must be a rational method for obtaining it, and that the senses are not a reliable source. This essay will present both philosopher’s arguments and compare and contrast each perspective regarding matters of knowledge and ideas. I will then argue how Hume’s philosophy is the more viable theory, and give you my reason’s as to why it is a stronger argument, in comparison to Descartes’ more rational take on the origin of ideas and knowledge.

The ultimate question that Hume seems to be seeking an answer to is that of why is that we believe what we believe. For most of us the answer is grounded in our own personal experiences and can in no way be justified by a common or worldly assumption. Our pasts, according to Hume, are reliant on some truths which we have justified according to reason, but in being a skeptic reason is hardly a solution for anything concerning our past, present or future. Our reasoning according to causality is slightly inhibited in that Hume suggests that it is not that we are not able to know anything about future events based on past experiences, but rather that we are just not rationally justified in believing those things that