DAVID HUME

May 7 [April 26, Old Style], 1711—August 25, 1776

BIOGRAPHY
Brief biography of David Hume

- a Scottish philosopher, was born on May 7, 1711 (April 26, 1911 - old style) in Berwickshire,
Scottland near Edinburgh.
- Had a background for being politically whiggish and religiously calvinistic. Following moral
guidelines from "The Whole duty of a man".
- Hume was educated by his widowed mother until 11 years old when he left to study in the
University of Edinburgh.
- He left the University of Edinburgh at age 15 to pursue education privately, Hume considered
taking Law but found interest in Philosophy.
- During these years of private studying, he began raising serious questions about religion in his
early 20's, starting with A Treaties to Human Nature
- Today he is best known for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism,
scepticism, and naturalism.

LIFE WORKS
Hume’s major philosophical works

- A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding

(1748) and concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as the posthumously published
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779)
- Hume took a great interest in the traditional philosophical topic of ethics, the conundrum of
how humans can be good. He argued that morality isn’t about having moral ideas, it’s about
having been trained, from an early age, in the art of decency through the emotions. Being good
means getting into Hume also spent considerable time in his final years revising his works for
new editions of his Essays and Treatises, which contained his collected essays, the two
Enquiries, A Dissertation on the Passions, and The Natural History of Religion.
- Finding that he had intestinal cancer, Hume prepared for his death with the same peaceful
cheer that characterized his life. He arranged for the posthumous publication of his most
controversial work, the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.
- Hume died the year The Wealth of Nations was published, and in the presence of its author,
Adam Smith.

IMPACT AFTERLIFE

- Hume influenced utilitarianism, logical positivism, the philosophy of science, early analytic
philosophy, cognitive science, theology, and many other fields and thinkers. Immanuel Kant
credited Hume as the inspiration who had awakened him from his "dogmatic slumbers."
- The work establishes a system of morality upon utility and human sentiments alone, and
without appeal to divine moral commands. By the end of the century Hume was recognized as
the founder of the moral theory of utility, and utilitarian political theorist Jeremy Bentham
acknowledged Hume's direct influence upon him. David Hume (1711-1776) was a prominent
intellectual of the Enlightenment. His books and essays generated radically innovative theories
of human understanding, knowledge, religious belief, moral practice, aesthetic judgment, and
political theory. The Institute aims to cover many of these areas, as well as focusing on the
relevance of Hume's thought to some contemporary interests: Naturalism and Skepticism, The
Mind, Moral Psychology, Morality and Society, Economics, History, Non-Western Philosophy,
Race and Gender, Early Modern Women Philosophers, and Animals and the Environment.
Formal sessions will convene in mornings, with plenty of time for informal small group
discussions in afternoons.
- Due to Hume's vast influence on contemporary philosophy, a large number of approaches in
contemporary philosophy and cognitive science are today called "Humean.”
- The writings of Thomas Reid, a Scottish philosopher and contemporary of Hume, were often
critical of Hume's skepticism. Reid formulated his common sense philosophy, in part, as a
reaction against Hume's views. Hume influenced, and was influenced by, the Christian
philosopher Joseph Butler. Hume was impressed by Butler's way of thinking about religion, and
Butler may well have been influenced by Hume's writings.
- Attention to Hume's philosophical works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in
his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), credited Hume with awakening him from
his "dogmatic slumber."
- According to Arthur Schopenhauer, "there is more to be learned from each page of David
Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart and Schleiermacher taken
together."
- A. J. Ayer, while introducing his classic exposition of logical positivism in 1936, claimed:
- The views which are put forward in this treatise derive from doctrines which are themselves
the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and David Hume.
- Albert Einstein, in 1915, wrote that he was inspired by Hume's positivism when formulating his
theory of special relativity.
- Hume's problem of induction was also of fundamental importance to the philosophy of Karl
Popper. In his autobiography, Unended Quest, he wrote: "Knowledge is objective; and it is
hypothetical or conjectural. This way of looking at the problem made it possible for me to
reformulate Hume's problem of induction." This insight resulted in Popper's major work The
Logic of Scientific Discovery. In his Conjectures and Refutations, he wrote:
I approached the problem of induction through Hume. Hume, I felt, was perfectly right in pointing
out that induction cannot be logically justified.
- Hume's rationalism in religious subjects influenced, via German-Scottish theologian Johann
Joachim Spalding, the German neology school and rational theology, and contributed to the
transformation of German theology in the age of enlightenment. Hume pioneered a comparative
history of religion, tried to explain various rites and traditions as being based on deception and
challenged various aspects of rational and natural theology, such as the argument from design.
- Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard adopted "Hume's suggestion that the
role of reason is not to make us wise but to reveal our ignorance," though taking it as a reason
for the necessity of religious faith, or fideism. The "fact that Christianity is contrary to reason is
the necessary precondition for true faith." Political theorist Isaiah Berlin, who has also pointed
out the similarities between the arguments of Hume and Kierkegaard against rational theology,
has written about Hume's influence on what Berlin calls the counter-Enlightenment and on
German anti-rationalism. Berlin has also once said of Hume that "no man has influenced the
history of philosophy to a deeper or more disturbing degree."
- According to philosopher Jerry Fodor, Hume's Treatise is "the founding document of cognitive
science."
- Hume engaged with contemporary intellectuals including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James
Boswell, and Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political
philosophy).
- Morris and Brown (2019) write that Hume is "generally regarded as one of the most important
philosophers to write in English." In September 2020, the David Hume Tower, a University of
Edinburgh building, was renamed to 40 George Square; this was following a campaign led by
students of the university to rename it, in objection to Hume's writings related to race.

BELIEFS/PHILOSOPHIES
Belief of David Hume

- Hume then considers the process of causal inference, and in so doing he introduces the
concept of belief. When people see a glass fall, they not only think of its breaking but expect
and believe that it will break. Or, starting from an effect, when they see the ground to be
generally wet, they not only think of rain but believe that there has been rain. Thus belief is a
significant component in the process of causal inference. Hume then proceeds to investigate the
nature of belief, claiming that he was the first to do so. He uses the term, however, in the narrow
sense of belief regarding matters of fact. He defines belief as a sort of liveliness or vividness
that accompanies the perception of an idea. A belief, in other words, is a vivid or lively idea. This
vividness is originally possessed by some of the objects of awareness—by impressions and by
the simple memory-images of them. By association it comes to belong to certain ideas as well.
In the process of causal inference, then, an observer passes from an impression to an idea
regularly associated with it. In the process the aspect of liveliness proper to the impression
infects the idea, Hume asserts. And it is this aspect of liveliness that Hume defines as the
essence of belief.

- Hume does not claim to prove that events themselves are not causally related or that they will
not be related in the future in the same ways as they were in the past. Indeed, he firmly believes
the contrary and insists that everybody else does as well. Belief in causality and in the
resemblance of the future to the past are natural beliefs, inextinguishable propensities of human
nature (madness apart), and even necessary for human survival. Rather, what Hume claims to
prove is that such natural beliefs are not obtained from, and cannot be demonstrated by, either
empirical observation or reason, whether intuitive or inferential. Although reflection shows that
there is no evidence for them, it also shows that humans are bound to have them and that it is
sensible and sane to do so. This is Hume’s skepticism: it is an affirmation of that tension, a
denial not of belief but of certainty.