Essay Questions

What are the resemblances and differences between Hume and Locks Theory of Ideas?

Hume's first principle would declare that all of our perceptions depend on experience. This principle was already expressed in Locke's Essay. In opposition to neopositivism of this century, Hume agrees with Locke in the understanding that this foundation of perceptions its truly a genetic basis, that is, a foundation by virtue of origin: all our perceptions are based on experience precisely because at last they have been generated from it. Instead, a significant difference between the two authors is found in the way of understanding the superiority of the experience once admitted that they are previous in time and their genetic function. In this sense, it should be remembered that Locke understands that original perceptions, directly derived from experience, are simple ideas, for opposition to derived ideas that are complex ideas. In the case of Hume, however, the simple-complex contrast hardly counts when classifying our representations; What is important for him, on the contrary, is the degree of vivacity that distinguish perceptions called qualitative representations, because it is a more perfect experience.

Locke already understood that the superiority of the experience constitutes more than a mere gnoseological thesis. This is the presupposed idea of the analysis of consciousness and its contents that is carried out in Book 2 of the Essay. In the case of Hume, there is also the conviction that this truth has a methodological value, and this application appears in several passages of the Enquiry. The experience is presented as an unavoidable point of reference when wanting to specify the value of a certain philosophical position. The difference between Hume and Locke at this point is, above all, is a difference of will that separates people like Lock that understand himself as a pioneer of a certain way of thinking that laboriously strives to concretize throughout the Essay, and who, on the contrary, understands that the superiority of experience is an acquired truth and, at this point, it goes to posterity by force of its formulations of this truth.

What is Hume criteria of causality to value knowledge and decide if a proposition is valid or not?

In a sense, Hume is more than just a knowledge psychologist and he enters into the history of the theory of knowledge. Therefore, it should be added that the Humean description of causality is ambivalent, that is, it has a double value. On the one hand, it is a consequence of the will to show that our causal inferences are not deduced and that our knowledge of the outside world, more than an understanding of what we perceive is a process of habituation is about the formation of perceptive habits. But, on the other hand, there is a positive way of assessing the causal inference, particularly ostensible in sections 1O and 11 of the Enquíry. Causal inference, precisely because it relies on experience it’s understood as containing the requirements to those who generally have to adjust all our inferences about reality. The fact that the experience past endorse, in part at least, to some of our beliefs determine that these are considered superior to those that lack this supportive experience. From that, it became the difference between the man who fits the past experience and that one that moves by its passions when forming his image of the world. The "objective" inference is superior to the superstitious and therefore the causal inference is valued positively.

What are the differences between Hume's Enquiry and his Treatise?

The importance of the Enquiry is base in that not only goes around the formulation and application of an empirical method in philosophy, but also because the problem is explicitly stated. of the value of reflexive knowledge in general. This discussion takes place primarily in the first and last books of the work. The discussion centers around two fundamental concepts, namely: that of Abstruse or Metaphysical Philosophy and that of Skepticism, in sections 1 and 12, respectively. Although this contrast requires certain nuances, the two concepts represent a tension that Hume's work assumes. On the one hand, the discussion about the possibility of ultimate knowledge, namely metaphysical knowledge, would be raised, and on the other hand, it would be necessary to repair the Hume's prosecution of skepticism, that is, of a theory that denies the possibility of knowledge.

At this point, you can see a very remarkable progress in the Enquiry regarding the Treatise, which is not reheard so much to the content of his doctrines, that with a form more precise and succinct are repeated, but to something previous: the very conception of knowledge. This point had been open at the end of the Treatise, and in the Enquiry is resolved by adopting the perspective of a man of action who goes to philosophy seeking to enhance his usual activities. Since that time, knowing not only can’t but should not even justify itself. The sense of knowledge is, on the contrary, helping us live a better life. It is an instrument and, therefore, it makes no sense to demand absolute evidence. That's why it remains valid even when a rigorous reflection cannot reach conclusive results. The strength and importance of the Enquiry is precisely that it exposes an ideal of knowledge, typical of our world, aimed at helping to action.

What can we understand from Hume's moral philosophy?

An act or a moral decision cannot receive its moral qualification for a reason. Reason cannot know the validity of moral judgments. Although it could know nature, that is, what things are, hence from that can’t be inferred what they should be. And ethics is obviously not about what it is, but what it should be. Attribute to reason the ability to know (and from there, decide) what should be, what is desirable or good, involves incurring naturalistic fallacy: reducing the good to the natural.

Reason cannot move man, it is and must be a slave to passions. The foundation of moral judgments is not rational, it is emotional, it’s feeling. Feelings are the forces that determine us to act, that give moral value to a decision. Moral judgments express the feeling of approval or disapproval produced by certain behaviors and are a form of a basic feeling of sympathy, and these feelings are natural and selfless. This is the moral philosophy called moral emotivism. One problem remains, how is it possible if the feeling is who decides, that humans agree on moral judgments? Hume's answer is this: the feeling rests on a kind of humanity, which is nothing other than the notion of enlightened human nature, which leads the feeling to prefer the best for all human beings. And, since human nature is common to every man, the moral decisions exercised by that feeling of humanity will be universal, without the need for prior theoretical reflection. Gratefulness and usefulness are the common foundation of estimation and approval. The utility is based on pleasure.

What awakens the feeling of sympathy is the usefulness of the action contemplated for the community. Morality lies in feeling, in emotion. However, morality must also rely on reason to resolve conflicts that arise in the moral life. The reason should be limited to investigating the paths that lead to that good that is sought. Reason is limited to establishing the means, the feelings, the ends. Morality derives from inclination and feeling. Utility bases the moral assessment of personal qualities.

What Hume can tell us about identity?

Of the three Cartesian realities or substances (God, world, the self), we can only deal with the self as a substance other than our ideas and impressions. The existence of a self, of a cognitive substance distinct from its acts, had been considered indubitable not only by Descartes but also by Locke. And Hume cannot apply his critique of the idea of ​​cause here, since the existence of the self was not considered by its predecessors as a result of causal inference, but as an object of immediate intuition ("I think, then I exist").

However, Hume's criticism also reaches the reality of the self as a substance, as a permanent subject of our psychic acts. Against Descartes and against Locke, Hume states that the existence of the self cannot be justified by appealing to an alleged intuition of myself, since we only have intuition of our ideas and impressions, and no impression is permanent, but some happen to others in a way uninterrupted. Therefore, it is not possible to affirm the existence of the self as a substance other than impressions and ideas, as a permanent subject of the series of psychic acts. This categorical affirmation of Hume does not allow us to explain easily the conscience that we all have of our own personal identity: in fact, each human subject recognizes himself through his different and successive ideas and impressions. Who is reading this page is aware of being the same one who used to contemplate the landscape or listen to music peacefully; If there is only knowledge of impressions and ideas, and these - the page, the landscape, the melody - are so different from each other, how is it that the subject is aware of being the same?

To explain the awareness of one's identity, Hume resorts to memory: thanks to her we recognize the connection that exists between the different impressions that occur. The mistake is that we confuse succession with identity. Despite the principles that forces him to reach this conclusion, Hume realized that his explanation was not fully satisfactory, which led him to a resignedly skeptical attitude.

In which way can the critique of causality be useful to us?

The idea of cause is a fiction of the imagination based on the habit of a frequent spatial and temporal union. The causes have no active part in the production of the phenomena, of the effects. Hume affirms that we cannot avoid transferring to the natural events the custom we have acquired of waiting in the future, a succession of events similar to those that have occurred in the past. All the arguments that have been proposed in the past to prove that all events have a cause are principle requests.

So Hume's critique has helped a lot at the practical level: it is no longer possible to justify dogmatism, there are no longer reasons to subordinate life to truth-fictions. Man, Hume believes, spontaneously, naturally, will believe more in these or those principles, in these or those ideas, according to the force with which they affect him, according to his usefulness for life, according to the pleasure they provide. The legitimacy of an idea that produces happiness is greater than a true one; although, like Espinosa, he would be inclined to think that an idea always produces pleasure, or is a mechanism to escape pain. The cause is not a chimera, but a belief, solid and subject to proof but to a test, of course, empirical, that nothing has the necessary proof. The expectation of the effect can never be probable, although the accumulation of probative experiences satisfactorily increases the degree of its subjective probability.