Different Philosophical Arguments by David Hume

Philosophy
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Question 1: Hume on Impressions and Ideas
David Hume define impressions as lively and vivacity perceptions that occur as a result of both internally and externally direct experiences. In other words, impressions are perceptions that involve live actions such as hearing, seeing and feeling instead of mere thoughts of things. Hume develops a clear distinction between impressions and ideas based on their differing level of liveliness. By contrast, ideas are perceptions originating from the mind through thinking of something rather than developing it from firsthand experience Hume added that ideas emancipate when the live perceptions engraved in humans souls begin to degenerate
In as much as the two facets are distinctively different, Hume argued that all ideas are founded on impressions. In other words, ideas are faint copies of impressions that are less active and powerful. For instance, watching a scene or listening to a music is different from imagining or remembering that scene or music since the latter is fainter and weaker, although founded from the former. In substantiating his claim that there is a strong relationship between impression and ideas, Hume added that diseases or madness can activate ideas to be as lively as impressions. In that regard, the dissimilarity of the two in terms of liveliness is inadequate. Thus, Hume settles that classifying ideas as copies of impressions is still essential since there are ideas of sensation and those of reflection such as that of color and emotions respectively.
Hume’s most compelling ideas is his qualification that the basic building blocks of all thoughts and experience are simple impressions. Simple impressions include single smells, single color, and single shapes. In all these expressions, there is a matching idea. For example, a cat presents a more complex impression that includes multiple colors, shape, and size. The conforming idea of a cat can be made more complex by imagining the sounds it makes or how it smells. Inferring that the animal is actually a cat, makes the ideas more complex since it needs experience and abstraction. In other words, the concept of a CAT does not match with any one particular set of data of impressions or any single cat. The essence is that the word “CAT” can refer to the idea, instead of what actually the idea stands for. In the process of abstraction, certain specific facets are ignored at the expense of others, so to create the concept CAT. For example, different colors and sizes of cats are ignored and identify general features such as hairiness, four legs, and tail to arrive at the conclusion that the animal is a cat.
In this case, the complex idea of a cat has been indirectly copied from a background of impressions because only simple ideas are copies of impressions. In other words, simple ideas form the foundation of the complex ideas that correspond to specific impressions. This explains why we might have gotten our ideas of “unicorn,” “justice,” and “love.” On unicorns, the mind has past experience of horses, horns, and whiteness, which when assembled, we get a unicorn. The idea of justice is based is extrapolated from the middle ground between the virtues of equality, good, against and inequality, evil, in the society. Hume argues that people are likely to act unjustly if justice was not necessary for society. Therefore, justice gains its existence from being needed and found useful in the society. On love, the notion is created based on ideas of caring, kindness, compassion, and equanimity drew against ideas of uncaring, unkindness, indifference and heartless. Although many ideas are derived from a sense of conforming experience, still some ideas such as unicorns, love, and justice seem to match nothing in our sense of experience.
Hume’s hypotheses is that ideas are copied from related impressions, such that nothing is perceived, rather it is what is in the mind that perceives it. In testing Hume’s general hypothesis that simple impressions always come before simple ideas, it becomes clear that his basis of empiricism is fleeting. Ideas serve as the mental reconstructions of impressions, but they remain incomplete based on their lack of sensation and fidelity, which made them the part of impressions they resemble. In essence, the copy principle cannot be genuine because some ideas are not directly derived from simple impressions. Hume’s conclusion is lacking as it suggests that there are no substantial beings with original knowledge in the universe. This is absurd because humans have the capacity to compound ideas to approximate sensations and create the basis of the underlying knowledge in the mind that allow ideas to be perceived without relying on impressions. In other words, knowledge is formed from the replication of ideas that are added to the original idea to generate larger ideas than what the original idea presented. This is the reason why humans form an Idea of God and Unicorn without having any pre-existing experience of him, and thus qualifying his hypothesis.
Question 2: Hume on Conclusion Based Cause and Effect
According to Hume, humans arrive at conclusions based on matters of facts by relating cause and effect and not what we perceive. In other words, all beliefs originate from our pre-existing believes that there is a relationship between cause and effect between various phenomenon in the world. Hume notices that we arrive at conclusion by believing that there is always something behind the occurring effect. For example, on finding a hat in a cave, I will assert that there must formerly be a person in that cave. The inference of the conclusion is that the cause of the hat in a cave is as a result of another person visiting the cave and leaving it there. In another example, I am bound to believe that it is cloudy outside by inferring the cause of the TV weather news that predicted it was going to be a cloudy day.
Thus, the majority of humans’ beliefs about matters of facts solely rely on their beliefs about causation relationship. Hume’s aim was to discover the aspects that made people believe in the existence of the causal relationship. Hume asserted that there is a close relationship between past experience and the belief in causation. Humans have a habit of expecting similar or constant results on particular objects that appear constantly linked to each other after observing the previous patterns of the object in the past, and thus concluding that is a relationship between them. For example, we believe that the sun is going to rise again the following morning based on the prior knowledge that it has risen prior morning. Similarly, we have past experience that the sun shines accompanied by heat and light, accordingly, we have come to believe that the sun, heat, and light must always accompany each other and the sun is the cause of heat and light.
Hume argued that our belief cannot be found on the ground of reasoning since they are majorly based on our notion of causation gained on past experience. For this reason, our beliefs are less likely to be contradicting when denied unlike the beliefs found on the basis of reasoning. For example, the factual belief that “1+1 = 2” will lead to a logical contradiction when denied because it can be justified by reasoning. Therefore, it is valid to assert that the beliefs based on matters of facts are less likely contradictory and beliefs about causations cannot be validated by reasoning.
Hume refers to the process on which we arrive at mots our beliefs about the world as a skeptical solution as it comes through inductive reasoning. Putting it more verbosely, Hume describes skeptical solution as a problem of induction on how we draw inferences from a causal relationship. Hume added that our inferences about the world are not derived from reasoning but rather from a habit of custom. The process of drawing the inferences is a skeptical solution since it conforms to the claim that we do not have any reasoning to arrive at the certain conclusion from past experiences. The element of skepticism is depicted by our uncertainty about our drive for making inferences.
Questions 3 Hume’s on the Limitation of Human Understanding
Hume held skepticism by doubting the perfection of human understanding and knowledge. According to Humans, the human understanding suffers some limitation with regard to reasoning. The formula of reasoning may be perfect, but the human imperfections limit its maximum exploitation. Based on this platitude, we have no validity to trust our reasoning all the time. The explanation behind this claims is that no one doubts their reasoning whether it is wrong on not. Hume’s focus on naturalism gives an important insight that explains the limits of human reasoning. The first one is skepticism with regard to reason. This is argument can be explained as follows when performing any set of calculation to induct the inference, we are prone to errors regardless of how simple we try to act. The truth in this claim is always known from past experience and this explains why we attempt to be extra careful in believing on our inferences before reaching the calculations. There is a claim that perfection improves with experiences, but the probability that we are correct in our conclusion can never reach 1. The chance that we might have made a mistake in our reading will always exist. Therefore, humans should never be fully sure of any their beliefs even those surrounding basic mathematics since their reasoning is not perfect.
With the underlining of the above argument, Hume developed another argument by claiming that all our conclusions are strong skepticism. Our inferences are doubtful because of our natural unreliability that renders our reasonable incredible. For example; when we are contemplating over issues in our mind, we might reach a decision, but since we have an experience of committing mistakes and errors in the past, we have to be skeptical with the decision according to Hume. Instead, we perceive ourselves as more prudent and quite sure that in the past whenever we are deriving conclusions. In reference to Hume’s claim, we are tied by our reasoning and we should include a doubt in our reasoning since there is always a possibility of error in the process of all level of reasoning. However, this should not be an inhibitor in perusing our reasoning and deriving inferences.
Human understanding is basically limited by the awareness of their frailty. Whenever we pursue our reasoning while having the awareness of imperfection in mind, it leads to a series of minds that subsequently undermines our initial belief. For this reason,...