Abstract
Hume abandoned all questions concerning the origins of perceptions and shifted his attention to internal mental processes. Epistemology is concerned with mapping the mind and Hume thus delineated a new area of philosophical inquiry that later led to the emergence of disciplines like the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Yet these inquiries brought to light another level of scepticism. Empiricism proceeds from the rule that all knowledge must be based on observation and experience. But neither the idea of causation nor distinct existence can be derived from experience; they are based on instincts and imagination, not on reason. This conclusion seems damaging for the status of science. At that time of advancing modernity, culminating in the Enlightenment confidence in reason and cognitive optimism, such a conclusion was very disturbing indeed. Epistemology was supposed to provide rational foundations for science and this was what Hume could not deliver. Hume, however, was not concerned about natural science. He appreciated Newton’s method and presumed that by its application to human sciences this new experimental approach would be enriched, bringing new and much needed discoveries about human nature.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The metaphysical aspects of Newton’s General Scholium are discussed in 4.8.
- 3.
This passage is taken from Newton’s Account of the Book entituled Commercium Epistolicum Collinii et aliorum de analysi promota. The Commercium contains correspondence relevant to the priority dispute between Newton and Leibniz regarding the invention of Infinitesimal Calculus. It appeared anonymously, but is known to have been written by Sir Isaac Newton .
- 4.
Hume entered the University at the age of eleven, together with his brother, aged thirteen; it was common then to begin studies at 13 and to leave after 4 years – the first 2 years were devoted to Classics, followed by 2 years of natural philosophy. Hume left the University without a degree.
- 5.
Mossner points out (and is puzzled by) Hume’s rather excessive scepticism concerning natural science; note 4 of the manuscript memoranda on “Natural Philosophy,” which seems to belong to his pre-Treatise period, reads: “a Proof that natural Philosophy has no Truth in it, is, that it has only succeeded in things remote, as the heavenly Bodys, or minute as Light” (Mossner 1970, 75).
- 6.
Jerry Fodor emphasized this clash in Hume’s copy principle claiming that it contains both an explanation of how ideas acquire their content and a condition of legitimating for ideas. Thus Hume’s psychology interferes with his epistemology. Fodor’s advice is to focus primarily on Hume’s science of mind by the way of “abstracting from the aspects of Hume’s theory of mind that are dictated primarily by his epistemology” (Fodor 2003, 33). Similar tendencies appear in Garrett (2011) and Biro (2009). The interpretations of Hume that underrate the clash between the psychological and the normative aspects of the copy principle also tend to underrate the force of his epistemological scepticism. John Biro , who attributes to Hume an original contribution to the ‘New science of the mind’, argues that “his skepticism is better understood as one about pretended supra-scientific metaphysical knowledge, rather than about scientific knowledge itself” (Biro 2009, 46). But Hume in his epistemological writings was deeply sceptical about all empirical knowledge including science. The foundational aspect of epistemology was constitutive for the philosophical discourse at that time, and Hume was no exception. His provocative solution to the legitimation crisis lies in a carefree (‘Pyrrhonian’) abandonment of the problem and in shifting the inquiries to moral science instead.
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The Baloo song from the movie The Jungle Book expresses this attitude quite well: “Look for the bare necessities/The simple bare necessities/Forget about your worries and your strife/I mean the bare necessities/Old Mother Nature’s recipes/That bring the bare necessities of life.”
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Parusniková, Z. (2016). The Empiricist Roots of Hume’s Scepticism. In: David Hume, Sceptic. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43794-1_2
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