An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding - David Hume Flashcards
Introduction
David Hume (1711-76)
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding presents the views for which he is now most famous:
Scepticism about induction and causation
Compatibilist account of free will (can co-exist with determinism)
Rejection of religious miracles
Advocacy of ‘mitigated scepticism’
Hume’s special significance is that he challenged a view of the world as created by divine reason AND as potentially ‘intelligible’ to human reason. This was done over a century before Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859).
He argued that human reason is founded on instinct rather than quasi-divine insight into things. Hence science must proceed by experiment, rather than by metaphysical theorising or a priori speculation.
This outlook was powerfully vindicated in the 20th century when general relativity and quantum physics forced scientists to accept that intuitive ‘unintelligibility’ to human reason is no impediment to empirical truth.
The magnitude of Hume’s achievement is best appreciated by surveying the depth of the tradition he undermined, stretching back to the beginnings of philosophy in Ancient Greece.
1/ From Ancient to Modern Cosmology
Aristotle was supremely honoured in the medieval period because his philosophical outlook could be comfortably combined with Christianity, a synthesis impressively refined by Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 74).
Aristotelian physics and cosmology was based on the idea that material things have natural movements according to their elemental composition. The 4 terrestrial elements: earth, water, air and fire, strive to reach their natural place in the cosmos.
Heavenly bodies such as stars are made of a fifth element, a celestial ‘ether’ - crystalline solid. Again the perpetual movement of the stars was driven by a teleological striving: the actuality of God.
In 1543, Copernicus famously advanced the theory that the Earth is a plant orbiting the Sun. It was not until the early 17th century that Galileo mounted a decisive challenge to Ptolemaic astronomy through observational evidence via the telescope.
2/ From Aristotelian to Cartesian Intelligibility
If the Earth is not at the centre of the Universe, then not only Aristotle’s cosmology, but also his account of terrestrial motion must be seriously in error.
Galileo and Descartes between them established a new way of understanding the physical world, replacing purposive strivings by mathematically formulated laws, framed exclusively in terms of mechanical ‘efficient’ causation.
