Topic > Analysis of David Hume's theory and his beliefs regarding reason

This essay will briefly analyze David Hume's theory and his beliefs regarding reason, and especially his rejection of it; and imagination, which he sees as "the source of our belief in the continuous and distinct existence of objects." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay David Hume is one of the most influential philosophers of the modern period. He belongs to the tradition of British empiricism which also includes George Berkeley, Francis Bacon and John Locke, with whom he shares the belief that knowledge is based on sensory perception. However, in contrast to Locke and Berkeley, Hume thinks that our knowledge is limited to sensory experience, and therefore offers a more coherent empiricism than that of his predecessors. Furthermore, David Hume believes that moral distinctions arise from feelings of pleasure and special kinds of pain, and not from reason. In fact, he maintains that reason alone cannot produce any action or prevent it from occurring. His thought, born in the light of the Enlightenment currents of the eighteenth century, aimed to create a 'science of human nature', endowed with the same capacity for certainty and mathematical organization that Newton had used for physics, in which he carried out a systematic analysis of the various dimensions of human nature, considered the basis of other sciences. With Hume the critical revision of traditional systems of ideas reaches a radical turning point. He outlines an "empirical model of knowledge" that will be critical of the Enlightenment faith in reason. It follows that Hume is today considered one of the most important theorists of modern liberalism. Hume's fundamental thesis is that the relationship between cause and effect can never be known a priori, that is, with pure reasoning, but only by experience: given that no one can know what he will obtain before having actually experienced it. The connection between cause and effect is not based on any objectivity, but is subjective and arbitrary and always concerns what has happened, without it being possible for me to necessarily deduce what will happen in the future: the relationship of cause and effect. That is, it is a relationship between two facts that have already occurred and been empirically ascertained, but there is no guarantee that this account is also valid for the future, because in fact the opposite is always possible and only experience can tell us whether it is also real. or not. In the end, what Hume mainly does is bring empiricism to a skeptical conclusion: relying on experience, which has limits, knowledge cannot be certain, but only probable. Hume sees perceptions as the only basis of our knowledge. What Hume is mainly talking about is skeptical empiricism. He mainly expounds this theory in his writings on the theory of knowledge. Hume says that human knowledge can be considered neither universal (or valid for all) nor necessary (or valid forever); therefore it destroys at the root the attempt to build a metaphysics but at the same time undermines the very validity of scientific knowledge of nature. Hume arrives at skeptical conclusions starting from the attempt to build a human science always on experimental bases; it is no coincidence that, in addition to talking about epistemology, he also dealt in depth with politics, aesthetics, religion and touched on many other important areas of human knowledge: he was in fact also a great historian. One of the major discoveries Hume claims to assert, as a “scientist of man,” is that men are forcibly governed by their imaginations. According to him, the ability to imagine is responsible for significant characteristics of both the mind of each individual person and ofsocial arrangements that people form collectively. Regarding each individual's mind, Hume believes that imagination clarifies how we can form "abstract" or "general" ideas. Furthermore, the most influential of his philosophical arguments is his analysis of causality, where he deals with probable reasoning. Hume recognizes two sections or subfaculties within the imagination: exclusive imagination and reason. The distinction between these subfaculties can be explained in two different ways. To begin with, these subfaculties vary in their function or what they do. By "reason" Hume means the sub-faculty through which we formulate decisive and probable thoughts. In contrast, exclusive imagination is the subfaculty through which we form nonrational impulsive notions and prejudices and various imaginative "fictions." Second, these subfaculties contrast with respect to the permanence, overbearing quality, and all-encompassingness of their activities. The tasks of reason, such as deriving causes from their effects, are enduring, compelling, and universal features of the human mind. In contrast, whims and prejudices due to exclusive imagination occur only on specific occasions and in specific places, and can be avoided with adequate fortitude. In any case, perhaps Hume holds that some activities of the exclusive imagination are as immutable, powerful, and universal as those of reason. He says that probable reasoning and our belief that sensible objects continue to exist, even when no one sees them, are "equally natural and necessary in the human mind." However, he also states that our belief in the continuous and unperceived presence of sensible objects is a fiction due to the exclusive imagination. Thus, he seems to argue that at least one exclusive activity of the imagination is as permanent, overwhelming, and universal as the tasks of reason. Hume's Treatise of Human Nature sporadically displays skepticism, empiricism, and naturalism in epistemology. These evidently contrasting signs can be revealed by following them into a solitary basic epistemology of knowledge and probability quietly at work in the text. Hume embraces Locke's division between knowledge and probability and reassigns the causal conjecture from its conventional place in knowledge to the area of ​​probability: his greatest departure from previous records of knowledge. To facilitate this transition, it uses an epistemic status shared by knowledge-producing demonstration and causal inference: the status of justified belief. In the interpretation developed here, he distinguishes knowledge with infallible belief and sustained belief with reliable belief. For example, belief created by truth-conducive and belief-forming operations. Since infallibility suggests reliable belief, knowledge infers justified belief. This common status entails an ideal correlation between casual inference and demonstration, which Hume needs to defend his associationism, since he takes up this examination in arguing for it. However, associationism supports and encourages some doubts about causal induction. In the third section of this Treatise, Hume says: The fables which we meet with in poems and romances put this entirely beyond question. Nature there is totally confusing and nothing is mentioned except winged horses, fiery dragons and monstrous giants. Nor will this freedom of the imagination appear strange, if we consider that all our ideas are copied from our impressions, and that no two impressions are perfectly inseparable. Not to mention that this is a clear consequence of the division of ideas into simple and.