Jawad Alzainati

HUME

Hume begins by pointing out that humans are essentially ignorant to the world around them.

Everything that we understand is based on someone elses findings or research. Hume points out that

on his own, with no input or previous experience, Adam would not have been able to look at the ocean

and say "Gee, I could be suffocated by that water." Though we now know through experience that fire

can burn us and water can drown us, Hume suggests that we should try to rid ourselves of the ignorance

that pertains to what is the relationship between cause and effect. He accurately points out that anytime

that we think we truly understand the nature of an object, we are just describing that object with as much

detail and precision as we have accessible to us. This idea is interesting because it leads one to question

whether our most valuable truths in science are in fact, viable.

In science classes, instructors stress the importance of determining causation. The modern

scientific method allows for many ways to describe every imaginable characteristic of something. These

descriptions lead to more testing and further detailed descriptions. “When finding these descriptions, a

scientist knows that what they are doing is describing an object or event. Causation is only inferred at

one point in the scientific method and then another scientist repeats the method to test the quality of the

new found cause. This repetition happens many times and if the cause and effect relationships hold true

throughout many clever and in depth experiments, then they are considered an accurate description of

how something works” (Myers, 13). Now according to Hume, even though we have tested thousands

of times on causation, we still do not understand what in the "necessary connexion" between the two.

Though we do not understand the connection, Hume suggests that our findings will probably hold true

to our likings because we almost always consider these findings in a similar condition. What about
mathematical proofs and geometric theorems? Hume addresses these early as relations of ideas that are

discoverable through our operations of thought. These findings do not depend on things that exist in the

universe. This is further support to the reliability of our scientific truths because our execution of science

in nature revolves greatly around the principles of the truly infallible mathematics. Our scientific truths,

however are not considered to be absolutely certain for everything. Luckily we live in a habitual society

and chaos doesn't throw all of our findings out the window.

Hume states that we are all creatures of custom. Therefore we are safe with our scientific truths

because our custom allows these truths to exist in customized environments. Hume goes on later to

wonder, what if something disrupts this custom or nature? Such a disruption is commonly referred to as a

miracle says Hume. Since we are essentially ignorant to that which we have not seen before, then the men

who attested to miracles could have been completely wrong about what they saw or its meaning. Hume

goes on and says that if miracles are things that occur out of custom and experience, then the only true

miracle is that of the faith in God or whatever that some of us hold to be true no matter what convincing

evidence points to something else. The point Hume is presenting here is wonderfully ironic. He is saying

that spiritual people search for miracles from the heavens when there is a definite miracle present in the

form of their overwhelming faith in something that has no concrete proof of existence.

It may appear to many who read Hume's work that he was just rambling on in a hard to follow

manner about something that we could not begin to explain. It seems that Hume is attacking organized

religion and the respective officials. Neither of these is true. Hume knew that he was just like us and was

ignorant in all the ways we are. He was simply trying to demonstrate that causation is not something that

is explicitly explainable in our philosophy. This doesn't mean that we are making mistakes whenever we

infer the relationship of cause and effect because whenever we make that connection, we do so in a
manner that is never absolute and in all cases never provable. This may lead to the belief that if something

is not truly provable then what is the point of valuing its worth in describing nature. The answer is that as

we are customary creatures who learn from experience we use methods and research to describe

something as provable in our most typical situations. Typical meaning that gravity hasn't just stopped

working or the sun stopped shining, etc.

Whatever propelled David Hume to such an undeveloped path of thought in the 18th century is

beyond most people. His breakdown of causation is thorough and he tackles it in a general enough

manner that his reasoning can still be at least appreciated. His goal in all of this was to show something

about the human condition. He tells about how we are ignorant to the world around us and only learn

from experiences. Everything that we understand comes from what we take in with our senses. There isn't

necessarily anything wrong with that but Hume suggests that it may be an invaluable experience to see

what we can determine using reasoning as opposed sensual stimuli. The purpose of opening this thesis

with a quote pertaining to what is unknown in our philosophy is that things that are not completely

understandable might be that way for a reason. Perhaps we were created, in whatever sense is most

comfortable to believe, to have minds that work the way the do for a reason. Maybe we aren't supposed to

know that "necessary connection" that relates to all things in nature. That is not ours to know, it is

something that we cannot fathom, but can only recognize as existing in our philosophy.

Myers, David G. Psychology. 6th ed. New York: Worth Publishers, 2000.