David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

One can agree that ideas can constantly change and evolve. One can also agree that ideas follow no rules and are free to be whatever the person creating them wants them to be. For this very reason ideas cannot be called reality. Reality is defined as the state of things as they actually exist. Meaning you must be able to perceive reality with your senses. Thus, reality consists of matter and that alone.
It may be argued that our ideas are just as much reality as is matter. However, addressed in "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" by Philosopher David Hume, ideas are not the reality of the world we live in, but they are however directly connected and influenced by the realities of the world. As we gain a sense of knowledge and understanding …show more content…
In return the ideas created about the world are flawed because there is not enough experience by any one person to create an actual and true idea of the world. Thus, making what we can see and feel a reality because it is of substance, never changing, and actual. As argued among several philosophers, every physical object would be non existent without being created by a prior existing object. David Hume claims to have investigated that it is not possible for Humans to recognize or name almost identical objects such as shapes because we choose to see what is similar rather than different. "The word raises up an individual idea, along with a certain custom; and that custom produces any other individual one, for which we may have occasion." In other words, often times Humans will pass up new ideas and thoughts because it is not apart of our learned habits. Humans will also fail to recognize the uniqueness in objects, but rather group them in with a "family" based on their similarities creating major flaws in the ideas Humans are able to create. It is then that Humans are not as detailed and intelligent as we claim to be. Many often see what they want to and ignore what they do not care to see. Though "the capacity of the mind be not infinite," according to David Hume, it is not entirely our fault. Not being able to recognize …show more content…
For we cannot hear, nor feel, nor touch God. Therefore leading us to believe that maybe God does not exist at all. Argued by David Hume, "causes and effects are discoverable, not by reason but by experience". Supporting that we, as human beings, cannot quite imagine something we have not seen or experienced. This could be evidence that though many believe in God, he cannot be real due to the sole fact that we have not experienced anything like him. Thus, when we imagine God we give him characteristics and human like qualities because that is what we have knowledge and experience of. However, because this is our idea of God it does not mean that our idea is correct. Without perceiving God through our Human senses we cannot claim who he is, what he is like, or even that he exists. Hume argues that "a blind man can form no notion of colors; a deaf man of sounds" Even the simplest things, like color and sound, which many experience daily would not be comprehensible without seeing, or hearing. This again relates to our ability to truly understand God. If one cannot understand something as simple as color, then I find it difficult to believe that one can understand a difficult concept, such as the existence of God without experiencing it first hand. Concluding that our ideas are not real it is that of which we can touch, see, hear, and feel that we can claim is the truth of our