David Hume

1711-1776
Ideas and Impressions
Thinking Feeling

Low force and vivacity High force and vivacity

Conception, volition, Perception, emotion,

memory, imagination, pain, etc.
etc.
 Nihil est in intellectu quod non
antea fuerit in sensu
Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the
senses

The mind at birth is a blank slate, a tabula rasa

Hume’s statement of empiricism:

 All simple ideas are copies of impressions
 Complex ideas may be copied from or constructed out
of impressions
 Arguments for empiricism
1. Counterfactual dependence
 Those who don’t undergo the relevant
experiences don’t acquire the relevant
concepts

2. Analyzability
 All legitimate complex concepts can be
analyzed into simple concepts
 Against Descartes
 We can be mistaken about what we’re thinking
 though it’s easier to be mistaken about ideas than
impressions, since they’re less vivacious

 Descartes is wrong to think there are pure ideas

of the understanding. All ideas are ideas of the
imagination
 It follows that we cannot think about something
we couldn’t experience!
 Two subjects of inquiry
Relations of Ideas Matters of fact
knowledge obtained knowledge obtained
by mere investigation by empirical
of our concepts investigation

 A priori  A posteriori
 Necessary  Contingent
 Denial is contradictory  Denial is consistent
 Knowledge of matters of fact
Direct knowledge:
 Perception
 Memory

Indirect knowledge:
 All involves knowledge of cause and effect

 Too much alcohol causes hangovers

 My car is in my driveway
 More than half of Arkansas voters intend to vote for McCain
 We will all eventually die
 Knowledge of matters of fact

Direct knowledge Indirect knowledge

All involves knowledge of cause
and effect
Perception Memory
• Too much alcohol causes
hangovers
• My car is in my driveway
• More than half of Arkansas
voters intend to vote for
candidate x
• There are 726 pages in this
book
• We will all eventually die
 How do we know cause and
effect?

All indirect a posteriori knowledge relies on

it; where does it come from?
 Not from reason
 Causal connection not logically necessary
 Unfamiliar causal relations not known by ideas
alone
 water suffocates
 two sheets of marble can’t be pull apart
 Nothing inconceivable about billiard ball simply
stopping after contact
 Can’t deduce the effects from ultimate cause,
because we don’t know ultimate cause
 Belief in causation comes from
experience
But how?

We only experience correlations: A is

constantly conjoined with B

We never experience a causal connection

between them
 The Problem of Induction
Any argument whose conclusion goes beyond direct
experience would have the following form:
1. A has always been followed by B.
2. Things we have not observed will resemble things we
have
3. Therefore, the next A will be followed by B.
 The Problem of Induction
Any argument whose conclusion goes beyond direct
experience would have the following form:
1. A has always been followed by B.
2. Things we have not observed will resemble things we
have
3. Therefore, the next A will be followed by B.

 All causal/experimental reasoning---all indirect

knowledge of matters of fact---relies on the Uniformity
Principle (UP):
 Things we have not observed will resemble things we have
 But how can we know the
Uniformity Principle?

Relation of Ideas Matter of Fact

(a priori) (a posteriori)
UP can’t be a priori
• contingent Direct Indirect

• denial is logically UP can’t be UP can’t be indirect

direct
consistent • all indirect matters of
• about things fact rely on UP
we haven’t
experienced • so argument would
be circular
 So we can’t have any reason to believe
the Uniformity Principle

 But all induction is based on the UP

 So there’s no rational justification for

inductive reasoning!
 How/why do we form inductive
beliefs?
Habit/custom/conditioning

 Repeated exposure to A being followed by

B makes us expect B upon presentation of
the next A
 Not by any reasoning on our part
 By a Pavlovian tendency of the mind to treat
similar things as the same
 Concept of causation
 We never experience causal relations ---only
constant conjunction --- in sensation or reflection
 We can’t have an idea of something we can’t
experience
 Idea of causation comes from experience of our
conditioned expectation
 Not from experience of causation among external
objects

 So the concept of cause is subjective; it’s about

us, not the world around us
 Hume on Causation
As cause Bs if and only if:
Bs always follow As, and
Upon observing an A, the mind anticipate
occurrence of a B
Bertrand Russell
(1872--1970)
 Russell on the Problem of the
External World
We can’t prove the existence of mind-independent
objects
But,
a. We instinctively believe in them, and instinctive
beliefs should be trusted unless there is a
positive reason not to
b. The hypothesis that there is an enduring mind-
independent world is simpler than any known
hypothesis that would explain our experiences
Ockham’s Razor: choose the simplest explanation,
i.e., the one that posits fewer kinds of new entities