David Hume - Seminar Notes

David Hume was a Scottish Philosopher and writer who lived between 1711 and 1776. He generally followed the Empiricist school of thought and was a very sceptical writer.

His essay ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’ was published in 1748 and was probably his most important work, although it was basically just a re-working over of his ‘ A Treatise of Human Nature’ which he had published unsuccessfully around a decade earlier.

Section 1 of ‘An Enquiry’ (which we looked at) was concerned with the ‘Different Species of Philosophy’.  This begins with Hume discussing the two different types of ‘moral philosophy’, which is basically the science of human nature.

Hume describes the first school of philosophy by saying that it follows the idea that ‘man was chiefly born for action’ and that we are influenced by our own particular tastes. This is a philosophy much more based on common sense and enters frequently into common life. As it is more obvious and easy to understand this means it is more likely to have an effect on everyday people.

The second manner of philosophy considers man as a reasonable, rather than active being. It suggests that philosophy doesn’t have a fixed answer.  Hume states that it is much more ‘abstruse’ and therefore has less of an effect on everyday people and as a result of this the philosopher has a  more difficult task of getting his point across – which in turn leads to more mistakes and confusion being created. Hume criticises these philosophers by adding that nature ‘ prohibits’ abstruse philosophy due to the uncertainty it brings and that these types of philosophers often lock themselves away in their thoughts and experience sadness as a result.
Hume suggests that the perfect philosophy is somewhere between the two as an abstruse philosopher is incredibly intelligent but lacks the scientific accuracy needed to clearly understand things. He uses a great phrase to summarize this which is ‘be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man’.  

This would suggest that Hume’s ideal philosophy would combine profound ideas with clarity and scientific reason.

Hume, as an empiricist prefers the first school of philosophy as accuracy is more important to him than the ‘beauty’ of abstruse thinking. This is important to us as journalists as we need to be clear and accurate in our writing to produce a short bulletin or ‘News in Brief’ story rather than a 300 page story. Hume considers ordering and reflecting on our experiences as being crucial in how our minds operate and he emphasizes the need to study human nature when he describes that it is just as important to study how our minds work, as it is astronomy.  

There is also a brief insight into Hume’s political thoughts in this section when he comments on the need for a politician to have a ‘subdividing and balance of power’ in order to create a stable government. I think that this is very similar to Machiavelli who acknowledged that the people must have some say in an ideal rule, in order to avoid continuous rebellion.  

The next section of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding focused on The Origin of Ideas and this features the topics which are probably most important to someone studying journalism such as Induction, Causation and how our thoughts and ideas work.

Hume begins with explaining that there is a difference between feeling something (for example pain) and then trying to imagine this sensation again in our mind. He describes how all the colours of poetry can never paint natural objects so that they look like the real thing and states that ‘The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation’; Suggesting that there is a clear distinction between our experiences and how we view them. His view on epistemology suggests for example that when someone tells us they are in love we use our experience of this emotion to understand what they mean even though it is different and less animated to actually experiencing the feeling yourself.
Hume takes this further by saying that we can divide the perceptions of the mind into two classes which are separated by their different degrees of force or animation.

He calls the less forceful our ‘Thoughts and ideas’ and our more lively perceptions such as hate, love and desire our ‘Impressions’.

When describing our thoughts and ideas Hume says that at first glance nothing seems as unbounded as the thought of man as our imagination can create monsters and unrealistic scenarios. However, Hume says that if you take a closer look at what we imagine you see that we are actually very narrow minded. We create these thoughts very simply by putting familiar objects together. Hume uses the example of a unicorn to show that we conjure up this animal easily by putting virtuous ideas in a horse form. This is an example of synthetic logic where our minds can add knowledge to other knowledge we have and is very similar to Locke’s view on our ideas in that they solely from what we experience.  

However Hume says that there are problems with linking ideas together in our minds as we draw inferences or jump to conclusions using this logic. He says that we tend to produce ideas by induction rather than by reason. To show this he describes Causation theory which is basically where our mind decides that one thing causes another. Two examples of this are the Billiard Ball example where the white ball hits the red and the red moves. We assume that the white ball caused this movement however there is no natural evidence that this happened. The example that Betrand Russell uses is that when biting an apple we may experience a certain taste, but that does not 100% prove that the apple caused the taste.
Obviously is it highly likely that this is the case and Hume is being extremely sceptical with this idea as it would be pretty much impossible to live without making inferences however, I think that he is correct to scientifically suggest that we should not assume one thing causes another for definite because we regularly find ourselves jumping to conclusions and then realise we were wrong. One example of I could think personally was when I’d brought a magazine from one shop and been accused by a different shop selling the magazine of stealing it from them. Though it would seem likely I had taken it from them, I actually had not.

Finally therefore Hume clearly shows a preference for the ‘Impressions’ of our ideas as these are stronger, more accurate and defined. He says that we should ask ourselves ‘from what impression is that idea derived’ in order to clarify the ideas we have and discard ideas that may not necessarily be true.  This is something that Journalists should look to do when reporting a story as it allows us to try to understand exactly what is going on and for what reason rather than drawing inferences between events.

In many ways Hume sees the world as a baby. He sees everything that happens as unusual when broken down and believes that it is all equally improbable. By stating that we should never even assume that the sun will rise tomorrow or any of the other habits of mind we make every day, it is almost like when these things do happen they’re something of miracle. This is an outlook that I feel is a great way to look at things and by not presuming one thing always causes another, we may well notice more unusual ‘miracles’ happen all the time.