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Skepticism, says Hume (David), (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume) is true; but in practice we can’t help disbelieving it. The real truth is something that our human nature simply cannot take on board. Skepticism is true; yet the whole way we live, and we can’t help living this way – is premised on the falsehood of skepticism. So for Hume the solution to our intellectual dilemmas is that there is ‘no’ rational solution. But fortunately, this doesn’t matter, because, as Hume famously puts it, ‘reason alone can never be motive to any action of the will’. Since human reason is causally inert, it will make no difference to our behaviour and practice even if we do work out that philosophical skepticism is true as a matter of theory. ~ Page 294 (Inescapable Self)

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Dinesh ^club

According to Hume, Descartes’s cosmological proof of the existence of God relied on a coneptual foundation that he had left unquestioned, the conceptual foundation of causality. Hume argues that if you really tried ot build knowledge back up from the most basic elements of human nature (e.g., perception), then ;you could not claim that causality is something we can know to be true rather than something we can only believe to be true. Though we may see one event follow another, and see this sequence of events happen over and over again, it is impossible to see that this sequence of events must happen. In other words, we cannot experience necessity.

As Hume argues further, if we cannot experience necessity, then causality cannot be a basis for knowledge claims. For Hume, causality is a matter of probability (“The Sun will most likely rise tomorrow”) So if we cannot know causality to be true, then we cannot have knowledge as Descartes required, with regard to any claims made on the basis of causality (like Descartes’s claim that God must exist because only an infinite being like God could have been the cause of this idea of an infinite being like God)

Consequently, Hume likens philosophy to art, concluding that we must accept that our philosophical arguments are founded more on aesthetics than on rationality. As Hume writes:

Thus all probably reasoning is nothing but a species of sensations. ‘Tis not solely in poetry and music, we must follow our taste and sentiment, but likewise in philosophy. When I am convinc’d of any principle, ‘tis only an idea, which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence. ~ Pages 23 /24 25

3 years ago. Edited 3 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

3 years ago. Edited 3 months ago.

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