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David Hume Chapter 2 Study Guide

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Recommended: Essays by David Hume

1. Hume’s essay forms the basis for the modern view of scientific, philosophical, and mathematical inquiry. His topic in this essay was the manner in which we establish our understanding of the Natural World. In a sentence, what is the difference between knowledge and understanding? Knowledge is awareness of information and having ideas that can be gained though experience, and understanding is based on the principle of cause and effect that have been accepted. 2. Understanding is a cognitive process. As such, understanding is the product of ideas. In a sentence, where do ideas originate? Ideas are memories or copies of our impressions and are sensations we experience in our day to day activities. 3. In order to establish an understanding of some set of phenomena, an individual’s ideas regarding the phenomenon need to be connected. Hume proposes a set of three fundamental cognitive operations of inference required to connect ideas and establish understanding. What are those fundamental operations (one phrase each)? Fundamental operations are resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause and effect. Resemblance seeing picture of tree allows a person to think of a tree. Contiguity in time or place, which is mention one part leads to discussing others. Causes and effects consider what experience is behind to know what is …show more content…

Hume argues amongst other things that sensation is our understanding because we can perceive our sensation therefore we cannot understand causation because we cannot perceive through our sensations. All objects of human inquiry are divided into two categories, relations of ideas and matters of fact. Relations of ideas are every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. Matters of fact, we should be vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. We learn though the nature of evidence which assures in real existence and it is record of our

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