David Hume Claim Of Knowledge

Hume’s epistemological viewpoint is first introduced in his Treatise. He skeptically argues that we are unable to gain complete knowledge of some important philosophical notion under consideration. Seeing things, causes us to link ideas in the mind. We link ideas in three ways: similarity, contiguity and the cause and effect relationships. He challenges the metaphysical knowledge of causation because there or some ideas that cannot have laws. The cause and effect relationship claims that for every effect there must be a cause. If we distinguish the cause of the effect we know the knowledge and we can give an explanation of how it came to be.

By observing a pattern, you can experience a constant conjunction that is repeated in your experience

In relation to the principle of causality, this is not a universal law. It is just a principle of probability or possibility because you cannot make claims of universality of knowledge through the metaphysical causations. Hume is essentially thinking that we should limit the power of the mind that makes claims of knowledge that is universal and we have to be modest in the assertions we make. The mind has its own dynamic operation but our senses don’t give me the intrinsic value that mind does. Hume’s challenge to the enlightenment is that hoping to improve the human condition by seeking knowledge to better ourselves to control things and improve it to make it as perfect as possible has a weak foundation because the acclaims of knowledge at best are only probable and not certain. He is a skeptic and all of this elation and enthusiasm with science is struck with the concepts of probability and doubt. Hume believes we can’t find things that are certain to the claim of reason because we cannot have universal statement on probability statements. There is no way to

He believes they are probable and therefore are not certain. For Hume what is certain comes from our senses. Kant defends physics as a legitimate science because “scientific cognition must satisfy …strict conditions”. Regarding metaphysics, Kant responded to the challenges of metaphysics. For Kant, reason has idea of God, soul and universe but none are an object of our experience. It is symbolic. Kant says that the theories of the metaphysical that claim to give us knowledge about God, the souls and the world is at best symbolic, the mind must think these great ideas as organizing principles of reality but are never objects of our senses. We don’t have a whole experience of the world – we have bits and pieces. The soul helps us to organize and integrate experiences. So we must think of God, souls and world even though we cannot know God, souls and world because they are not objects of our experience. But one of his principles states that there must be some foundation of the possibility of happiness. What enables it is the belief that the soul is immortal that something will live