Descartes And Hume Essay

In, A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume writes, “… to explain the nature of personal identity which has become so great a question in philosophy, especially of late years in England, where all the abstruser sciences are study’d with a particular ardour and application” (Hume 258). In this, Hume is beginning to show his contention with placing the branch of philosophy dealing with the ideas of the self in the same category as the complex sciences. This is also a dig at John Locke, an englishman, whose theories on the self had been greatly dominating the field up until this point. Locke’s theory is that each human is born a ‘tabula rasa’ or a blank slate upon which the self is formed solely through

exists and his idea of what a perfect being is, such as God, then God exists.

The concept of self identifies the essence of one’s very being. It implies continuous existence having no other exact equal, i.e. the one and only. Whether or not the specific characteristic(s) used to define self are objectively real, i.e. physical attributes, or purely subjective, i.e. imaginary traits, the concept makes distinct one entity from another. Rationalism is the theory that truth can be derived through use of reason alone. Empiricism, a rival theory, asserts that truth must be established by sensual experience: touch, taste, smell, et al. Rene Descartes, a philosopher and rationalist concluded that one self was merely a continuous awareness of one’s own existence; one’s substance was one’s ability to think. On the other

PHI 62 Final Paper Truth While reading Hamlet, there were characters named Hamlet and Polonius looking for truth. Both of these characters had their own perception of truth and their own approach to find truth. In class we have also learned about philosophers Descartes and Hume; which can both be related to the two Hamlet characters with their own approach to truth, and the ways to obtain truth. Hamlet was contacted by the ghost of his father with the story of how he died from murder through the new king. When Hamlet hears this story, he feels as if he has to find the truth and verify it for himself.

After explaining where ideas come from, and how they connect to one another, Hume is now free to delve into the actual objects of human reason and enquiry.  Here, Hume divides all the objects into two categories:  Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact.4  The first idea can be defined as those ideas that arise from pure logic, such as arithmetic and spatial

     Now Hume proposed that all inferences come from custom, not reasoning. Through custom or habits, we have become accustomed to expect an effect to follow a cause. This is not a rational argument. This argument centers on the theory of constant conjunction, which does not fall under either fork of reason. “All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not reasoning.”(57)

Descartes’s application of method as mentioned in Meditation II, he would doubt anything in his life to find one truth of the event. He would sweep all the understanding and reorganizations for clear mind that is not biased. Though the nature of human mind may not be perfect, but he declaim that he would false anything he used to know and restart of thinking or analogizing the problem in a completely new foundation without any hesitations. Certainty is the goal of his Meditation that makes him lived to find out, and he would even doubt the existence of the body and everything surrounding him.

In addition, any fact will ultimately be dependent on a primary fact, which in turn is founded on cause and effect. It is only after Hume establishes this that he affirms that knowledge of this relation is never attained by reasonings a priori. Knowledge based on cause and effect, for Hume, relies entirely on human experience, and it is for this reason that it can not be a priori. Hume does not blindly state this proposition, he supports it with several examples that I find irrefutable. He suggests that no man when presented with gunpowder can imagine the explosion that can follow.

Hume’s second reason in contradicting the validity of a miracle is that he views all of our beliefs, or what we choose to accept, or not accept through past experience and what history dictates to us. Furthermore, he tends to discredit an individual by playing on a human beings consciousness or sense of reality. An example is; using words such as, the individuals need for “excitement” and “wonder” arising from miracles. Even the individual who can not enjoy the pleasure immediately will still believe in a miracle, regardless of the possible validity of the miracle. With this, it leads the individual to feel a sense of belonging and a sense of pride. These individuals tend to be the followers within society. These individuals will tend to believe faster than the leaders in the society. With no regard to the miracles validity, whether it is true or false, or second hand information. Miracles lead to such strong temptations, that we as individuals tend to lose sense of our own belief of fantasy and reality. As individuals we tend to believe to find attention, and to gossip of the unknown. Through emotions and behavior Hume tends to believe there has been many forged miracles, regardless if the information is somewhat valid or not. His third reason in discrediting the belief in a miracle is testimony versus reality. Hume states, “It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous

The argument I shall address for this paper is found on page 385, from David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature. In Book 1, he takes a skeptic view on the philosophy of personal identity by making the claim that there is no such thing as a self. According to Hume, for there to be a self it must be constant and stable, yet all of our knowledge comes from ‘impressions’ (perceptions that come from sensory experience) that are only fleeting: “pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time,” (Hume 385). His first argument is structured as follows:

According to Hume, it is possible for relations of ideas to be completely certain. This means that relations of ideas are made through deductive reasoning and thus have connections formed between ideas. They are rational statements that if thought about in any other way would lead to a contradiction. Relations of ideas are independent of experience and can be true because the definition is within the very object. On the other hand, he explains that matters of fact are truths made through what is experienced. Matters of fact are recognized through what is cause and effect. Our experience towards one instance can dictate what is expected of a cause that never actually happened. The conjecture made behind matters of fact is that it is necessarily true, but since it is based on probability, it does not mean that it has to be true. It may tell us about the world, but is not certainly

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.

Objects are made up of very different and unique molecules. They react and change in unique ways under different circumstances. In this case we are dealing with a clear liquid that has changed its physical properties after being placed under a closed and supervised box. There are no effects and changes being done to the box to affect the substance, creating a control environment when dealing with outside changes. Using two philosophers and their theories on external properties we are able to interpret their view on this matter. This leads us to understand and believe what might have happened to the liquid substance through philosophical thinking. The two philosophers we will consider today are Rene Descartes and David Hume. Both offer differences

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

The modern view of self is articulated in the works of 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes. He pioneered the dualistic understanding of the human being, which is made up of the "mental substance (mind) and the physical substance (body)" (Warburton, N., 1992). Here, the body has physical properties like having weight and using space, whereas the mind is a non-material substance, responsible for thought and experience and hence is the abode of consciousness. In his view, the self is a spiritual "subject of experience" which is fundamentally different from the body and nature, where the body inessential and the mind can exist independently. His radical scepticism led to the formation of the "Illusion argument", where the bodily senses are deemed unreliable and thus the existence of the external world and body is uncertain. The only thing one can be