David Hume (1711-1776) was a strong and influential empiricist. Empiricists believe that all idea come from the sense impressions. Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and was raised by his single mother. Hume enrolled in the University of Edinburgh when he was only 12 years old. However, he did drop out of college after only three years. He wanted to pursue his intellectual interests in philosophy. He convinced himself to throw out his ideals on religion. His abandonment on religion is expressed in Soccio on page 301 as, “A short time later, Hume admitted he had lost the faith of his childhood, writing that once he read Locke and other philosophers, he never again “entertained and belief in religion”15.”
His childhood and adolescence philosophical heroes were what led him to take an opposed view on religion. He felt that religion was just a mystical experience. Hume felt that religion was good, in the fact that it gave for a wonderful feeling for some, but that was all. There is no more to religion other then the feeling of bliss it can bring. Hume used Aquinas’ idea of the design argument. It said that in religion, nobody ever looks at the negatives, just the positive. He also used the idea, “cosmological argument”. Which said that we tend to use metaphors way too much and the way you think stuff works (like religion) depends on the metaphor you use? In the case of religion, the universe is looked at as a machine and someone had to start that machine (the universe). Furthermore, he argues that we should not believe religion because it is based on scriptures from something that was written down over 2,000 years ago. The reason we should not believe ideas from this time is because scribes tended to over exaggerate what they write. Although a weaker argument, Hume says that we should not believe because of miracles, which are based on ignorance. We should try to figure out why they occur and not use God as an escape.
David Hume was a strong empiricist. He did not believe in the idea that the World is composed of two substances. In fact, he argued that the planet has no substances, and there is no such thing as one. He felt that what many people perceive as substance is just sense impressions. For example, is someone shows you an apple you sense that the apple is red, round and smooth. Hume argues that these nouns are actually shortcuts humans use for our sense impressions. And culture gives you a noun to use. Furthermore, he does say that what our five senses take in is reality.
The view that ethics is based on feelings and sentiment is not felt by David Hume. He says that there is no such thing as ethics. It is just a state of mind on what people feel about controversies. He defends this by saying something like, “Show me wrong.” He argues that since there is no clear answer to this simple question he must be correct. He also states that morality isn’t anything, it is just what people feel and that there is nothing wrong or right in the World. If people feel that something is bad then it is an unwritten rule in society that it is “wrong.” …………..
Hume feels that there is no such thing as beauty. He claims that beauty is just the effect of feeling. Examples how beauty is relative!!
Contrary to many other philosophers, Hume declares that math and geometry are simply inventions. He explains how a right triangle is an invention. He also pleads his case by saying that humans use basic 10 math which roots from the amount of fingers we have. Proving that math is an invention, he states that math could have just as easily been based on the number 15 or 17 or any other amount. He argues that math is a game, it starts out simple, but get progressively more complicated. …..
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