Switching gears from rationalism to empiricism, we come to the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Whereas Descartes (as we have seen) has a general distrust of his own experience and senses, Hume says that - trust them or not - human understanding would be impossible without them. Knowledge, in other words, is not innate, but builds up over time through our own experiences. Further, since these experiences are necessarily limited, so too is the knowledge we gain from them. So, is this a fair assessment of how the human mind works or might we take issue with Hume as well?
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Of the first seven sections of the Enquiry, it was in the second that I found myself most aligned with Hume’s argument. As Hume took me through this portion I was able to follow his logic and agreed with his take on the “Origin of Ideas.” It is obvious to anyone that a memory, no matter how vivid, will ever be as strong as the event from which it came. An emotion, such as anger as Hume describes, is experienced very differently as a memory than in the event itself. This begins Hume’s description of thoughts based upon experience. He explains that no thoughts are limitless, they are all based upon past experiences one has had. Our thoughts are, “compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing” what we already know from experience. This raised a question in my mind in relation to the idea of God. If all of our thoughts are based upon experience, what experience then brought about the initial idea of God? Hume goes on to explain that the thought of God came from the understandings of goodness and wisdom within the human mind. This point seems much more substantial than Descartes’ claim that God must exist because only an infinite and perfect being could give man such an idea. The most interesting part of Hume’s "Origin of Ideas" is the contradictory phenomenon of the ray of colors. If a man or woman had seen all shades of blue but one, would he or she be able to imagine that missing color within that ray? This idea had me thinking long after I concluded my reading.
In Section VII Hume begins to talk about the relationship between cause and effect. He describes this relationship as the "the idea of necessary connexion" and goes on to explain that we make many conclusions based upon this idea. For example, if you put water in the freezer it will become ice. Hume says that this kind of thinking allows us to move from one thought to the next with relative ease because our ideas of cause and effect are based upon past knowledge. And it is more than likely that whatever happened in the past will happen again under the same conditions, i.e. water turns into ice when frozen. I think that Hume is right in all respects here except for one, he believes that these idea system is based in instinct and not reason. I have to disagree with him here because it believe that cause and effect is much more reason based. One would know that if the stove is on it is most likely hot, because when you turn the oven on it gets hot. Even without this past experience one could still use reason to determine that the stove will become hot when you turn it on. For instance, the stove is used to cook food, to cook food you must use heat, then when you turn the stove on it must produce heat. This is simple reasoning and it is a better choice to base the process of cause and effect on.
“The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation” from Section II was one of my favorite quotes from Hume’s Enquiry. Hume is trying to explain to us that all of our thoughts and feelings and imagery in our mind comes fully from our perception senses, but these thoughts could never match exactly what it is that we sense. Our mind gives us a sense of these perceptions, but it can never fully nor accurately portray what our senses tell us. Hume goes on to try and prove this by saying that a mild mannered man cannot form an idea of revenge or cruelty and the selfish man cannot conceive friendship, but how is this possible? If a person is never exposed to these ideas outside of their mind, it is still possible for them to feel a feeling, such as cruelty or revenge, even if they cannot describe it. I do not ever have to perceive friendship outside of my mind in order to have it. I may not be able to describe it the same as someone else, but just from the inside there can be a sense of something, and I believe that this can be a base of creating something inside our mind without perceiving it from outside. I understand that the blind may not be able to understand color, or deaf people sound, but universal feelings can be inborn and known to a person, so I believe that Hume made a mistake in saying that things like feelings cannot be inborn.
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