Hume 's Theory Of Free Will

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume explained two fundamental types of knowledge: Relations of ideas and matters of fact. The relation of ideas is by analyzing and pondering anoint the relations of ideas. The matter of fact is a rational nature that does not require the input of sense data such as economics, geometry, algebra, and arithmetic. Hume believes that from the past experiences, we can predict what is going to happen in the future. For example, when we we drop the pen, the pen falls. No matter how many times we repeat this action, we see the pen falling. So every time we drop the pen, we expect it to fall. In the ancient time, people do not know about the law of the physics and gravity. People observes and learn from the experiences to know how one action cause then another actions. They didn’t understand why, but it’s just a habit and what happened agin and agin. That’s why Hume thinks that we can not understand how the world works only by

There are those who think that our behavior is a result of free choice, but there are also others who believe we are servants of cosmic destiny, and that behavior is nothing but a reflex of heredity and environment. The position of determinism is that every event is the necessary outcome of a cause or set of causes, and everything is a consequence of external forces, and such forces produce all that happens. Therefore, according to this statement, man is not free.

Hume states that hoe do we know that the laws of nature tomorrow will be the same as the ones today, we only have the past to rely on which doesn’t say much about the future. We cannot prove the laws of nature and their existence.

In this paper I discuss both Hume’s and Anscombe’s view on causation. I begin with Hume and his regularity theory; then I move onto Anscombe where I provide a rebuttal of Hume’s regularity theory, and later I explain how Hume would respond to Anscombe’s objection to Hume’s regularity theory.

This is the assumption underlying all our ideas of causality. If the future does not resemble the past, then all our reason based on cause and effect will crumble. When Hume proposed questions such as “Is there any more intelligible proposition then to affirm that all trees will flourish in December and January, and will decay in May and June?” (49), Hume demonstrates that it is not a relation of ideas that future will resemble the past; it is possible that the course of nature will change. Therefore, what happens in the future is neither a relation of ideas, nor a matter of fact. “It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of past to future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance.”(51)

Hume begins to question why we believe in unobserved Matters of Fact. If we cannot observe something then why do we feel justified in thinking that events of the past will resemble events of the future. Hume argues that we believe that events of the past resemble events of the future because we believe in the relation of Cause and Effect. In the past I would eat a banana and it seems that it would cause the effect of pain in my mouth. But Hume argues that if we were to never experience Cause and Effect we wouldn’t automatically know that it exists.

The power of acting without necessity and acting on one’s own discretions, free will still enamors debates today, as it did in the past with philosophers Nietzsche, Descartes, and Hume. There are two strong opposing views on the topic, one being determinism and the other “free will”. Determinism, or the belief a person lacks free will and all events including human actions are determined by forces outside the will of an individual contrasts the entire premise of free will. Rene Descartes formulates his philosophical work through deductive reasoning and follows his work with his system of reasoning. David Hume analyzes philosophical questions with inductive reasoning and skeptism with a strong systematic order. Neither a systematic

In the book by David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the author states, "Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation arises entirely from uniformity, observable in the operations of nature; where similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the appearance of the other." (55) Hume views causation as a nonexistent concept in the world. Rather, he believes that we are presented with one event next to another event, rather than one event caused by the other event. Along with this is the concept that there is no necessary reason for the world to be as we have observed it up until this point. For example, it would not be ridiculous to say that a car that you own

Next, Hume distinguishes between relations of ideas and matters of fact. Relations of ideas are usually mathematical truths, so we cannot negate them without creating a contradiction. Matters of fact are the more common truths we learn through our experiences. We understand matters of fact according to causation, or cause and effect, such that our experience of one event leads us to assume an unobserved cause. But Hume argues that assumptions of cause and effect between two events are not necessarily real or true. It is possible to deny causal connections without contradiction because causal connections are assumptions not subject to reason.

He suggests that by cause and effect we know things about Matters of Fact even if we don’t directly observe them. He illustrates this by offering an example of how a person would know if their friend is in the country or in France. He suggests that a person would explain how they know where their friend was based on other facts such as the friend may have left a letter or the friend may have had knowledge of where the friend was prior to the conversation. Given this, Hume poses the question of how we come to know the principle of Cause and Effect. Hume answers himself by concluding that we know the principle from our experience of past events. He offers the example, if one finds a watch on a deserted island, one would conclude that there had been a man on the island at some point in time. He urges that we draw conclusions and predictions of future experiences based on past experiences. Another example of this is that we expect the sun to rise everyday based on our experience that the sun has risen every day of our lives. However, the sun rising is a Matter of Fact, thus it is possible for the sun to never rise again. For this reason, Hume concludes that we do infer connections between past and future events but there is no form of reasoning that can confirm the inferences that are

Hume’s claim that the only semblance of causation we’re able to discover is that one idea or thing follows from another, fails to recognize that we discover necessary causation through simple experiences almost daily. While it may be the case that we truly cannot see the connection between why we can move our limbs, but cannot alter the state of some organs or control their actions through experience alone, we can discover the causal relationship between other things. Hume argues that “while the impulse of one billiard ball is attended with motion in the second[,] this is the whole that appears to the outward senses” (Hume 558). His claim is that “the mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this succession of objects” and that as a result, there is nothing derived from the experience that suggests “the idea of power or necessary connection” (Hume 558). However, that which we perceive with our outward senses does allow us to derive a necessary connection between ideas or things. We are able to observe that the necessary connection allowing the billiard ball to move is that another object interferes and causes its motion. We know this through experience because we consistently perceive another object interfering and causing the effect of the ball’s motion. In this sense, we can perceive many necessary connections, as the same is true with cutting

Hume has concluded that Customs and Habits attained from past experience are necessary for us to navigate about the world. When these experiences are repeated and the outcomes are consistent, we build a causal relation between the ideas and naturally accept the Principle of Uniformity of Nature. With this we have created a custom by which grants us the reason to look forward to and expect for the future. The absence of custom and expectance may lead to a meaningless and aimless life.

It is logical to say that things happen for a reason. A ball, kicked by a child in a playground, flies through the air and eventually comes down to the ground. The child has kicked the ball enough times to expect that once the ball reaches its highest point, it will fall. Through experience of kicking the ball and it coming back to the ground, the child will develop expectations of this action. This thought process seems sound, yet a question of certainty arises. Can we be certain that future events will be like past events? Can we be certain that the ball will fall once it has been kicked? This concept was one of David Hume’s most famous philosophical arguments: the Problem of Induction. This paper will outline Hume’s standpoint, as well give criticism for his argument.

For ages, Philosophers have struggled with the dispute of whether human actions are performed “at liberty” or not. “It is “the most contentious question, of metaphysics, the most contentious science” (Hume 528). In Section VIII of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume turns his attention in regards to necessary connection towards the topics “Of Liberty and Necessity.” Although the two subjects may be one of the most arguable questions in philosophy, Hume suggests that the difficulties and controversies surrounding liberty (i.e. free will) and necessity (i.e. causal determinism) are simply a matter of the disputants not having properly defined their terms. He asserts that all people, “both learned and

David Hume is a British empiricist which means that he thought that all knowledge is ultimately rooted in sense experience and that all of our ideas derive from preceding impressions of sense or reflection, this theory had a huge effect on Humes account of causation. In this essay I will look at Humes account of causation and examine if any version of the Regularity View of causation can be defended.