LECTURE 4 Flashcards
Copy Principle of Hume
- Description: Hume’s Copy Principle posits that all ideas are ultimately derived from impressions. According to Hume, impressions are the direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience, whereas ideas are the faint images of these impressions in thinking and reasoning.
- Example: Imagine tasting a new fruit, dragon fruit, for the first time. The sensory experience (impression) of its taste, texture, and appearance is vivid and strong. Later, when you think about dragon fruit without actually tasting or seeing it, you have a mental image or idea of it, which is a less vivid copy of the original impression
Problems with the Copy Principle and Hume’s Solutions
Problem 1: The problem of missing shade of blue. Hume acknowledges that a person who has experienced various shades of blue but missed one might still form an idea of the missing shade.
-Solution: Hume concedes that this is a rare exception that does not significantly undermine the general rule that all ideas are derived from impressions.
Problem 2: Complex ideas not directly traceable to simple impressions.
-Solution: Hume argues that complex ideas can be broken down into simpler components, each of which can be traced back to original impressions.
The Enlightenment Period
Description: The Enlightenment was an intellectual and cultural movement in the 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason, individualism, and skepticism of traditional authority. Key ideas include the power of reason, scientific inquiry, and the pursuit of knowledge and progress.
Hume’s Theory of Causality
Description: Hume argues that causality is not a property inherent in objects but a habit of thought. We cannot directly observe causation; we only see one event following another and infer a causal connection based on past experience.
The Induction Problem
The problem of induction: causality is a term without empirical content, meaningless!
- Humans believe in causality because of ‘operations of the mind’
- Humans assume (but do not observe) uniformity in nature
- We cannot logically use inductive reasoning…
…because, we cannot conclude to general laws based on finite observations
(…because past results are not future guarantees)
Description: The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning can justify our beliefs about the unobserved based on past observations. Hume argues that there is no rational basis for assuming that the future will resemble the past
Reason is Passion’s Slave
Description: Hume asserts that reason alone cannot motivate action; it serves the passions by discovering the means to achieve the ends dictated by our desires.
Role of Habit in Hume’s Philosophy
Description: Habit or custom is central to Hume’s explanation of how we form beliefs about causation and the continuity of the world. It is through repeated experience that we come to expect certain outcomes, which shapes our understanding and behavior.
Hume on God, Free Will, and Freedom
God: Hume is skeptical of traditional arguments for God’s existence, suggesting that belief in God is not rationally justifiable.
Free Will: Hume believes in a form of compatibilism, where free will is compatible with determinism. Human actions can be free if they align with one’s desires and motivations.
Freedom: Freedom, for Hume, means acting according to one’s own will without external constraint.
Hume on Scientific Knowledge
Description: Hume views scientific knowledge as fundamentally grounded in empirical observation and inductive reasoning. However, he also recognizes the limitations of induction, thus adopting a skeptical stance towards the certainty of scientific knowledge.
Metaphysical Microscope (Hume)
If a concept cannot be divided into
simple ideas, the empirical content is
missing, and thus it is meaningless.
- If you cannot experience something,
you cannot have knowledge about it.
- God? Energy? Attitude? Gravity?
Substance?
The idea of causality under the MM
- Causal relationship = universal and neccesary cause and effect relationship
But what do we actually observe?
1.) Contiguity
2.) Priority
3.) Constant Conjuction
…We do NOT see neccesity or universality!
Therefore…
Hume philosopher of Bias:
Yet, people believe that the red ball
will move after the collision with the
white ball – principle of assocation
– Beliefs are result of habit formation
- ‘Operation of the mind’
- Reason is a slave to passion (…and
this is a good thing!)
Every morning I see the sun rise
I develop habit of expecting to see the sun rise
I conclude: the sun rises every morning
No logical grounds No empirical grounds
for this conlusion: for this conclusion:
The sun might not rise cannot observe future
(unlikely but conceivable) rising of the sun
No reasonable grounds for the belief,
habit is the guide for life).
Kant’s Problems with Hume’s Philosophy
Description: Kant was troubled by Hume’s skepticism about causality and the limits of human knowledge. Kant sought to show that certain concepts, like causality, are necessary conditions for experience and thus have a basis in the structure of the human mind
Kant’s Agreement with Hume
Description: Kant agrees with Hume that knowledge begins with experience and that human understanding is limited. However, he believes that the mind plays an active role in shaping experiences through innate categories.
Hume’s fork
- Analytic a priori: Statements that are true by definition and can be known independently of experience. Example: “All bachelors are unmarried.”
- Analytic a posteriori: This is impossible because analytic statements are true by definition and do not depend on experience.
- Synthetic a priori: Statements that are informative about the world and known independently of experience. Example: “7 + 5 = 12.”
- Synthetic a posteriori: Statements that are informative about the world and known through experience. Example: “The sky is blue.”
A Copernican Revolution in Philosophy
Developed a philosophical system that makes certain (universal and necessary) knowledge about the world possible
Building blocks of Kant’s argument: We have to differentiate in
1.) Types of judgements
2.) Two worlds
3.) Stages of knowledge acquisition
Noumenal vs. Phenomenal World (Kant)
Phenomenal World: The world as we experience it, shaped by our sensory and cognitive faculties.
Noumenal World: The world as it is in itself, independent of our perception. According to Kant, we cannot have direct knowledge of the noumenal world.
Kant’s Four Logical Stages of Human Knowledge
- Noumenal world impinges through our senses → impressions
(Empfindungen) - Ratio sorts impressions in time and space into → intuitions
(Anschauungen) - The mind, applying the categories of human reason, categorizes intuitions
into → experiences (Erfahrung) - Unification of experiences synthesized into a whole → systematic
knowledge
Important Terms
- Enlightenment: Intellectual movement emphasizing reason, science, and individualism.
- Causality: The relationship between cause and effect.
- Induction Problem: The challenge of justifying inductive reasoning.
- Naturalism: The idea that everything arises from natural properties and causes.
- Transcendental Philosophy: Kant’s approach that examines the conditions for the possibility of experience.
- A priori: Knowledge that is independent of experience.
- A posteriori: Knowledge that is dependent on experience.
- Analytic: Statements true by definition.
- Synthetic: Statements that add informative content.
- Ding an sich: The thing-in-itself, the reality independent of perception.
Important Individuals
David Hume (1711 - 1776): Scottish philosopher known for his empiricism and skepticism.
Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804): German philosopher who developed the transcendental philosophy in response to Hume’s skepticism.
