ThePhilosophyCenter: Empiricism #3

 Hello!

I forgot to write on Monday so this Wednesday will be the replacement. 

Today we will discuss David Hume, an influential Empiricist philosopher after Locke. He is a very important figure in philosophy, politics, and religion. Before seeing his empiricist theories, let's study his other views.

1. 

He was among the first to oppose the traditional religious belief and began secular philosophy and morality. He criticized the standards of the time. This is why we definitely be careful while discussing empiricism. He was against miracles.

2. 

He was also a historian and had political views, especially pro-monarchist, supporting the statement that monarchy was optimal. He was anti-mercantilist (mercantilism being the practice of trade through import taxes to generate money).

Hume's Empiricism

He was strongly against innate ideas, which was a key rationalist belief, and then divides the knowledge in our minds into two kinds of phenomena: that being impressions and ideas. Impressions are firsthand perceptions and sensations whereas ideas are more like faint copies and reflections of said impressions. This means we reflect from our perceptions.

Sometimes, our ideas cannot be supported by impressions. Hume also had two kinds of statements, namely demonstrative or probable. We confuse the two types regularly. A demonstrative statement is a statement which can be falsified or proved by itself, its falsity or correctness is self-evident. Meanwhile, a probable statement is not self evident but needs proving, specifically through empirical experiment or evidence. 

Now, Hume uses this to falsify the idea of inductive inference, inferring past knowledge to reason, For example, we expect the sun to rise every morning, but it is not completely justifiable. The statement of the sun rising every morning is neither a demonstrative or probable statement, so it  us meaningless, according to Hume, because we cannot prove whether it is true or false. 

The same goes with causality and effect. We cannot prove Event A causes Event B all the time. However, Hume doesn't completely oppose inductive inference since we can still expect something. However, Hume says custom is a good guide. Custom referring to habits.

However, Christianity does support the idea of innate ideas.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ThePhilosophyCenter: Rationalism #2

 Hello! Another relevant rationalist philosophers is Gottfried Leibniz, a rationalist philsopher. We will do his philosopher profile first before delving deeper. ----- CHARACTER PROFILE: GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ Born: 1645, Leipzig, Germany. Died: 1716, Hanover, Germany. Works:Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas, Monadology, the Discourse on Metaphysics, etc. Ideas: Rationalism, Theory of Monads,  Text Intro: Leibniz is a polymath, meaning he had knowledge in many topics, butnhe also was a rationalist philosopher. He contributed greatly to mathematics, particularly calculus. He was religious.  ------ According to Leibniz, there was such thing as monads, which will be important later. What are monads? In usual terminology, monad an means a singular unit, anything, but in Leibniz' philosophy it has a similar yet slightly different meaning, a singular and indivisible (so infinitely simple) unit, whether it be an atom or person. We can see that "mono" is one (other examples of...
Read more

ThePhilosophyCenter: Metaphysics, Epistemology: Platonism

 Hello! Another important early greek philosophy was Platonism, established by the philosopher Plato (originally Aristocles). Here's a short introduction on the man first. ----- CHARACTER PROFILE: PLATO Born: 428-423 BC. Athens. Died: 348 BC. Athens.  Works: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Meno, Protagoras, Gorgias, Symposium, Phaedrus, Parmenides, Theaetetus, Republic, Timaeus, Laws.  Ideas: Theory of forms Text Intro: Plato, born  circa 428 BC, is an influential philosopher who has contributed much to philosophy. Born Aristocles, he was destined to a life in politics but later decided to become a philosopher. He wss a student of Socrates and died 348 AD in Athens, after establishing the Academy, a school of thought there. ------ Platonism's central belief surrounds his big theory: the Theory of Forms. Plato thinks that the material world is but a copy - a duplicate of a better, real world. According to the theory, there are two kinds of things: the material worl...
Read more

ThePhilsophyCenter: Ethics: Epicureanism

 Epicureanism is a very interesting philosophy developed by the philosopher Epicurus. Here's a profile of the man: ----- CHARACTER PROFILE: EPICURUS Born: 341 BC. Samos: Greece. Died: 270 BC. Athens.  Works: "Letter to Menoeceus", "Principal Doctrines", "On Nature" Ideas: Ataraxia and Aponia Text Intro: Epicurus, born  341 BC, is an influential philosopher and one of the most important Greek philosophers after the death of Aristotle (d. 322 BC). He lived a life devoted to study and established a school of philosophy called the Garden in Athens.  ------ Epicurus' philosophy is often viewed as hedonistic but it is also often seen as much more hedonistic than it really is, as Epicurus does encourage having certain virtues (according to him, they are prudence, temperance, justice, and courage) to attain happiness. The problem about this encouragement of virtues is the only reason behind why the Epicureans do this is to attain happiness. Epicurus'  ...
Read more