Chapter 10 Flashcards
(11 cards)
How do many atheists today think of Hume?
They view him as a hero because he rejected Christianity; they see him as a mascot for skepticism against religion.
What question does representationalism raise?
How do you know the idea in your head accurately represents what is actually in the world? How can we know our senses are actually telling the truth?
What was Hume’s “science of man”? What was Hume trying to discover with this science?
Hume’s “science of man” was the application of Newton’s experimental method to humans. He wanted to answer the question: what can mankind know?
What “scientific law” does Hume come up with in regards to his science of man? What is this view called?
All knowledge begins with sense perception. This view is called empiricism.
What does Hume call “the whimsical condition of mankind?”
We have no rational reason to believe in reality or an external world, yet we can’t help believing in it.
Hume found that we can’t make a rational argument for why reason is reliable. Why?
By using reason to make the argument, one is making a circular argument” you’re assuming reason works to even make the argument.
Hume writes that all objects of human reason may naturally be divided into two kinds, “Relations of ideas” and “Matters of fact”. What is the difference between these two categories?
Relations of ideas consists of everything that is intuitively certain, e.g., 2 + 2 = 4. Matters of fact, on the other hand, are ideas you have reasoned to because of past experience, such as “the sun will rise tomorrow” or “the fire is hot”.
Hume observes that all reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relationship between cause and effect. What problem does Hume see in this?
We never actually see what the cause really is. E.g., we know that when one billiard ball knocks into a second one, the second moves. But we can’t actually know that the first billiard ball causes this; it could be a coincidence.
Hume asks the reader to imagine a full-functioning person brought into the world all of a sudden. What does he say this person’s reaction would be to cause and effect?
He writes they would see merely a successions of events without discerning cause and effect. This is because experience enables you to see cause and effect, not reason.
What does Hume conclude about all matters of fact from his observation of cause and effect?
All matters of fact are derived merely from the conjunction of one object and another.
For Hume, what are the only proper objects of knowledge and demonstration? What does he call all other subjects?
The science of qunatity and number. All other subjects beyond these, he calls mere “sophistry and illusion.”
