Wednesday afternoon’s David Hume lecture was one of the most interesting yet, as ideas have gradually develop, we can see with Hume’s work that they seem more modern, however i still find it hard to understand some of the theories which are being described and do not always agree with them after reading Bertrand Russell’s chapters on David Hume and his essay concerning human understanding, as well as the lecture increasing my understanding.
Firstly discussed was Hume’s intelligence regarded as an influential philosopher and an extremely intelligent person from the empiricist school of philosophy, and an atheist, however this was not widely disclosed.
Logical positivism was then introduced; the philosophy of science and social sciences, it looks for how knowledge is obtained and does not believe in absolute truth, but instead the work is based on probability.
Causation- this was one of the hardest ideas for me to grasp at the beginning however examples from Russell and Hume allowed me to get an understanding of the point which is trying to be made by Hume. He does not believe that one thing causes another, e.g. A does not cause B, it can be in front, or behind or to the side of B, but not cause it. Instead he believes there is a conjoining of the two which makes them believed to be caused by one another through habit; however one cannot cause the other as there is a probability that it has been caused by something else. He then continues to say that it is wrong to say that one thing will definitely follow another. It is probable that it will, but it cannot be proved for certain; this is a result of past experience of an even happening leading us to believe that it will happen again in the future but this is not always the case. Frequently conjunction is associated incorrectly with cause according to Hume.
Examples are used such as an apple tasting like roast beef despite the expectation of it to taste like an apple, or the expectation of the sun rising tomorrow.
Next described is induction; the drawing of inference from synthetic logic; broken down into synthetic and analytical. Analytical logic having its conclusion derived from the subject, whereas synthetic logic can add knowledge if the axiomatic statement is true. The example used was that Socrates is a man therefore he is mortal.
Next described was Hume’s ideas of impressions, the synthesising of ideas from simple ideas so that a person can take an ideas which they have seen such as a man and a bird and then synthesise these ideas to allow an angel to be conceived despite it not being witness from experience.
Morality and the is/ought dichotomy which states that ought cannot be derived from is, nothing which is can be lined to ought as this cannot be done e.g. it is hot but it ought to be cold- nothing ought to be it either is or isn’t.
The bundle theory of self involves the theory that there can be no idea of self as there is no perception of self and the self is instead a bundle of perceptions which makes up one’s self.
The verification principle, which was last to be explained was the theory that any true statement must have independent verification whereas most statements people make are non verifiable. Statements which can be verified as true are non contradictory, ‘if the sun is not the moon then the moon is not the sun’. Whereas statements that can be verified as defiantly false are contradictory and statements which can be verified are ‘gibberish’ however this was later criticised as the statements themselves could be described as gibberish as they are no verifiable.
Learning about Hume was interesting but very hard work as I felt as though I had to read over and over to understand some of Hume’s theories.
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