David Hume’s
Epistemology
• Scottish Philosopher
• 1711 – 1776
• Strict Empiricist
– Human knowledge extends only as
far as actual human sense
experience does.
• Agrees, therefore, with Berkeley about
sensible objects.
– All that humans actually experience
when they perceive sensible objects
are bundles of sensible qualities.
– Therefore, humans can take sensible
objects to be only that, bundles of
sensible qualities.
– Humans have no rational basis for
saying there are material objects in
which sensible qualities inhere.
• Critique of Mind
– Hume applies the same reasoning he
applied to sensible objects to the concept
of mind (consciousness) or self.
– All that humans actually experience is a
passing parade of experiences.
– Humans never actually experience a
mind or self that has the experiences and
binds them together into a unified
consciousness.
– Thus, there is no basis for calling the
mind or self anything more than a bundle
of experiences.
– “For my part, when I enter most
intimately into what I call myself, I
always stumble on some particular
perception or other, of heat or cold,
light or shade, love or hatred, pain or
pleasure. I never catch myself at any
time without a perception, and never
can observe anything but the
perception.”
A Treatise of Human Nature
(1739)
– “The mind is a kind of theatre, where
several perceptions make their
appearance; pass, re-pass, glide
away, and mingle in an infinite variety
of postures and situations. There is
properly no simplicity in it at one time,
nor identity in different; whatever
natural propension we may have to
imagine that simplicity and identity.”
A Treatise of Human Nature
– Had he lived at a later time, Hume
might have compared the mind to a
never ending movie in which
disconnected scene after
disconnected scene passes one after
another.
– Humans only experience the never
ending movie.
– Humans never experience a mind or
consciousness that unites the
separate scenes to one another.
• Critique of the Principle of Universal
Causation
– Everyone assumes, if only
unconsciously, the Principle of
Universal Causation.
– Principle of Universal Causation:
All events have a cause.
– Hume claims humans have no
rational basis for believing in the
Principle of Universal Causation.
– Two types of Truths
• Relations of Ideas: Truths that are
true because of the meanings of
and the logical relationships
between the ideas involved.
– All bachelors are unmarried.
• Matters of Fact: Truths that are
true because they correspond to a
direct sense experience.
– The walls of Blinn classroom
G241 are white.
– The claim ‘All events have a cause’ is
not a Relation of Ideas.
• In the case of ‘All bachelors are
unmarried’ unmarriedness is built
into the definition of ‘bachelor,’ i. e.
a bachelor is an unmarried man.
• The definition of ‘event’ is
‘something that happens.’
• The definition of ‘cause’ is ‘to bring
about.’
• Since ‘being brought about’ is not
built into the definition of ‘event,’ the
Principle of Universal Causation is
not a Relation of Ideas.
– The Principle of Universal Causation
is not a Matter of Fact.
• One never actually experiences
one event’s causing another.
• One experiences an event always
immediately followed by another, i.
e. a constant conjunction of events.
• One, however, never actually
experiences the first event’s
bringing about the second.
• One merely assumes that the first
event brought about the second.
• There is, however, no logically
necessary connection between the
first event’s happening and the
second’s happening because one
can imagine the first event’s
happening without the second’s
happening.
• For example:
– One can imagine placing a lighted
match to a candle’s dry wick and the
candle’s not lighting.
– One can imagine that the candle,
instead of lighting, shrieks in pain,
sprouts legs, and runs away.
– The point is that, unlike the connection
between bachelorhood and
unmarriedness, there is no logically
necessary connection between placing
a lighted match to a candle’s dry wick
and the candle’s lighting.
• Since humans never actually
experience one event’s causing
another, the Principle of Universal
Causation is not a Matter of Fact.
– Since it is neither a Relation of Ideas
nor a Matter of Fact, the Principle of
Universal Causation is not a genuine
truth.
– The Principle of Universal Causation,
like the concepts of material objects
and of the mind, is, philosophically
speaking, a bogus concept.
• Since humans can know only boring
Relations of Ideas and very limited
Matters of Fact, human knowledge is
very limited.
• Humans must take a skeptical attitude
toward all other sorts of truth claims, e.
g. the Principle of Universal Causation.
• “When we run over libraries, persuaded
of these principles, what havoc must we
make? If we take in our hand any
volume, of divinity or school
metaphysics, for instance; let us ask,
• “‘Does it contain any abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number?’ No.
‘Does it contain any experimental
reasoning concerning matters of fact
and existence?’ No. Commit it, then, to
the flames. For, it can contain nothing
but sophistry and illusion.”
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(1748)
• Does all this mean that humans should
no longer believe in, material objects,
the mind (as a unified consciousness)
or in the Principle of Universal
Causation?
– NO!
• What it means is that humans should
realize they believe in these things,
NOT because they have a rational
basis for their beliefs, but because they
have an emotional need to believe in
these things.
• Following in the footsteps of the 17th
Century English philosopher, Thomas
Hobbes, Hume maintains humans find
fulfillment, not by seeking and attaining
truth, but by seeking and attaining
pleasure.
• As Hume himself says in the famous
conclusion of his Treatise of Human
Nature: “Most fortunately it happens
that since reason is incapable of
dispelling these clouds, nature herself
suffices to that purpose, and cures me
• “of this philosophical melancholy and
delirium, either by relaxing this bent of
mind, or by some avocation and lively
impression of my senses, which
obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I
play a game of backgammon, I converse,
and am merry with my friends; and, when
after three or four hours’ amusement, I
wou’d return to these speculations, they
appear so cold, and strain’d, and
ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart
to enter into them any farther.”
• All this might be fine and well, perhaps,
if everyone else were just like Hume,
getting their pleasure from dining and
conversing with friends and playing
backgammon, but what if someone gets
his pleasure from crashing jumbo jet
liners into skyscrapers?
• In that case, would you still feel as
sanguine about Hume’s contention that
humans are fundamentally emotional,
not rational, beings?
• Our next epistemologist, Immanuel
Kant, could not accept that humans
were essentially emotional, not rational,
beings.
• Nor could Kant accept Hume’s
dismissal of philosophy (and science,
too, for that matter) as mere
“melancholy and delirium.”
• Kant set about to rescue both
philosophy and science from the
quagmire into which Hume had hurled
them.