Comparative Essay David Hume vs. John Locke

Two objections from David Hume [STRONG]: Hume's first objection: Reason doesn't discover moral rules. Morality is feeling, affect, or sentiment.

Locke believed that people consume simple ideas through their senses, every perception gives the mind raw material, he also stated people received these passively as they experience the environment. Locke believed that the mind can take the raw material from the simple

Empiricism states that knowledge is based on experience, so everything that is known is learned through experience, but nothing is ever truly known. David Hume called lively and strong experiences, perceptions, and less lively events, beliefs or thoughts. Different words and concepts meant different things to different people due to the knowledge, or experiences they have. He believed, along with the fact that knowledge is only gained through experience, that a person’s experiences are nothing more than the contents of his or her own consciousness. The knowledge of anything comes from the way

Hume also believed in cause and effect. I believe in this because in order for something to happen something needed to cause

David Hume Hume, David, 1711-76, Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume carried the empiricism of John Locke and George Berkeley to the logical extreme of radical skepticism. He repudiated the possibility of certain knowledge, finding in the mind nothing but a series of sensations, and held that cause-and-effect in the natural world derives solely from the conjunction of two impressions. Hume's skepticism is also evident in his writings on religion, in which he rejected any rational or natural theology. David Hume lived in the constitutional monarchy of George II under the Prime Ministers Walpole,

Relations of Ideas are the sciences which every affirmation is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. Such sciences can be Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic. Hume states that these propositions are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without depending on what is anywhere existent in the universe. Matters of Fact are more like the common truths that we learn through our experiences. Hume states that we understand matters of fact because of causation, or cause and effect, such that one event can cause us to experience an unobserved cause. That being said, he argued that the assumptions of cause and effect between two events are not necessarily true or real. The difference is that relations of ideas are certain and true unless a contradiction is implied and on the other hand, matters of fact may not be true or certain.

     Locke instead is an empiricist, and therefore he directly critiques Descartes epistemic system and tries to establish his own foundation of knowledge. Locke believes that our knowledge of the world comes from what our senses tell us. Locke’s theory state that we are all born with a blank slate, tabula rasa, before we

Hume is a philosopher who believes in the Copy Principle. That all ideas derive from vivid

Locke was also an empiricist who firmly believed that all knowledge must come from experience. John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding was a tremendously positive influence on this age through the epistemological claims that were displayed through his ideas. Locke examines in this work the human understanding to help determine the limits of human knowledge. Locke set out to determine what knowledge can be claimed legitimately and how we develop this. Locke came to the conclusion that only through experience and senses can we truly understand.

His idea of innate ideas and that people are born with ideas is one direct contrast with Hume because ideas can only be gained through our senses and ideas cannot be innate due to inexperience. I agree with Hume’s idea of ideas coming through experiences.

Knowledge would be unattainable through the use of our senses. According to Locke, reality ultimately consists of two times of things that produce ideas in our minds: those that resemble themselves, and those that don’t necessarily resemble themselves. He separates these into “primary qualities” and “secondary qualities.” Primary qualities represent size, shape, mass, and motion.

First of all, Locke and Hume are similar in many opinions and differing in some important issues that they believe in. Locke and Hume live in a similar time period in history and have relatively the same issues and are crucial. There are also some other outlooks that can be perceived by looking at the arguments of Locke and Hume, and it is that they are in depth and tend to be abstract or difficult views to understand at first. Locke’s arguments I will be discussing seem to be his most powerful views solutions to problems in the real world. Therefore, Locke and Hume are varying in view overall since there are some drastic differences.

He died October 28, 1704 in High Laver, Essex, England. Johns Locke's book ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” was a book about the basis of human knowledge and understanding. The essay was one of the main sources of empiricism, which is the theory that states that knowledge only comes from sensory experience in modern philosophy. It influenced many enlightenment philosophers. Rationalists believed that reason is the source of knowledge so many criticized John’s book.

John Locke and Rene Descartes are seen as some of the greatest philosophers of the 17th century. One of Descartes most important achievement was perhaps that he built the foundation of what knowledge should be. His famous saying is “I think therefore I am” He believed that knowledge began with doubt not faith. However John Locke has a different interpretation of knowledge which was that we learn everything through our senses. However there are two types of senses. They both are in search to find the answer to the same question. They just have two completely different interpretations and insights on it. But nonetheless both made huge contributions to the field on philosophy.

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