David Hume

David Hume and John Witherspoon each raise interesting, yet contrasting, views on civic virtue and its relationship with political well-being. While Hume articulates that through proper checks and balances liberty and government will be protected from an amoral statesman; to the contrary, Witherspoon states that without a proper moral footing any government is destined to fail. Witherspoon’s assertions are supported by the French philosopher Montesquieu. In contrast, Price makes statements…

David Hume wants to explain to us a radical kind of skepticism in which the contents of our mind are described into two parts. The first part is impressions, the actual experiences that we have. For example, tasting an apple is an experience that we can have. The second part is ideas, copies of impressions in which we are remembering the taste of the apple. Renee Descartes view of the external world is through God because he is not a deceiver so material objects comes to existence. The idea of…

Cottingham Fr. Kurt Messick Epistemology September 13, 2014 Kant’s and Hume’s epistemology Immanuel Kant and David Hume were notable philosophers within the modern era, each with their own respective ideology and philosophy; Kant was influenced by rationalism, crafted a theory after the Copernican Revolution explaining the role of human reason in obtaining knowledge, whereas Hume, who was influenced by skepticism, put an end to pure reason and an end to the Enlightenment Era. In the…

Beattie opposed to David Hume’s theory on black inferiority to white. Hume stated that“The negros, and in general, all the other species of men, to be naturally inferior to whites.” He claims that there is no other civilized nation of other complexion than white. Hume implies that without white people there wouldn’t be art, science of any other form of civilizations. James Beattie thought…

David Hume is a philosopher who wrote essay Of Miracles. He has clearly pointed out about miracles on his essay Of Miracles. In his essay, he defines a miracle that “miracles were violations of laws of nature, and therefore could only be performed by God or those God had entrusted with divine powers” (Craig, 28). In one word, he denied for the existence of miracles. In his theory, miracles have been brought about by God and/or invisible power, which related to God against rules of nature;…

satisfied this criteria will all reach the same verdict. The joint verdict of true judges is to be accepted as the true standard of taste and beauty. Criticism Although Hume recognises that there are no incorrect sentiments when experiencing an aesthetic object he fails to accept that there can be more than one true opinion. Hume sees sentiments as an emotional…

Hume being an empiricist, believes that we cannot have any ideas that don’t come from experience. Even when it comes to imagination and making up something that hasn’t been experienced, it ultimately breaks down into different individual elements that have been experienced. Hume created a model of mental activity comprising of impressions being copied and processed into simple ideas, which are then joined together by one or more of the principles of association (resemblance, continuity and…

As Hume had concluded, “...the existence of suffering is prima facie evidence against the Deity as described”(Churchland 1986, p.379). “Why is there so much misery?”Hume asked(Churchland 1986, p.379). According to Hume, there is an explanation for the existence of misery and suffering; God knows people are suffering but prefers not to help. Disasters, pains, and sufferings are common phenomena all over the world. We cannot ignore the truth that miseries happen everyday and everywhere, Hume…

The ‘problem of induction’ has proven to be one of the most enduring problems of epistemology. Since it was first conceived by David Hume in the eighteenth century, numerous philosophers have grappled with the challenge laid before them by Hume, resulting in a splendid amount of attempts to solve or dissolve the problem.The basic problem of induction can be summarized as follows: suppose that we observe a large number of objects with characteristic “A”,noting that all of them also possess…

According to David Hume, the moral rule which obligates us to fulfill our promises cannot be the product of natural law, firstly, because promises could not conceivably exist prior to human society and “conventions,” and, secondly, because even if this was conceivable, in such a state there could not be any obligation attached to promises (516). (*Detail what I'm going to explicate, and what I'm going to evaluate and argue) Hume claims that in order for promises to be natural they must stem…