David Hume

David Hume, a skeptical empiricist, in other words someone who only certain accepts things as fact with empirical evidence, tries to ask and answer epistemological questions in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In other words, Hume inquires into questions of knowing, or how we know what we know. In his distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas, we see that Hume sees a challenge to inductive knowledge as our means of knowing. In deductive logic, one argues from a general rule. In inductive logic, the opposite occurs because one reasons to a general rule. Inductive logic begins with reason and tries to deduce a general rule from it.

For example, we walk into a room and see Socrates at a table with a bag on it and do not know what is in the bag. We reach into the bag and pull out a handful of white beans. We reach in a second time and stir up the contents before pulling out another handful of all white beans. We repeat this. After repeating this several times and pulling out several more handfuls of all white beans, we reasonable infer that the white beans represent some kind of specific case of a more general rule, i.e. all the beans in the bag are white. The syllogism for the above example of inductive reasoning would appear as follows:

These beans from this bag are white (specific case)

These beans are white. (conclusion drawn)

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en thrown into the fire? What if we do pull a black bean from the bag? Hume sees the mind as consisting of impressions and ideas. Our impressions are our sensory impressions, i.e. our sensations, passions, and emotions. Ideas represent only a faint image of these through thought, reflection, and imagination. Another example to show Hume's distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas, would be that when we see the impression of a flame we make the inference that the flame is hot. In other words, we infer a causal relationship between flame and heat. Hume asks how we may come to infer that causal relationship. His main argument is that it is not because of reason, as inductive logic would argue. Like the piece of coal that does not burn or the bean that is black, so, too, we can conceive that the flame might be cool. Our past experiences with hot flames are not enough to infer a general rule either because our experience is limited in time and space. For instance, just because we know all flames have been hot in the past, we cannot assume that all flames will be hot in the future. Further, if we look at the idea or observation that all flames have been hot, we cannot jump to the general rule or fact that al

Category: Philosophy - D