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David Hume Common Sense Essay

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David Hume, one of the greatest philosophical thinkers of all time once wrote that our conclusions about matters of fact beyond observation and memory are not founded on reason. By this I take Hume to mean that we cannot obtain our knowledge of cause and effect by reasoning a priori, rather it arises from our experience. Another philosophical great, Thomas Reid, elaborates on this idea with his concept of the first principles of common sense. In the remainder of this paper I will be arguing that it is impossible to avoid Hume’s skepticism about the role of reason in our conclusion on matters of fact beyond current observation and memory by taking the principle of uniformity of nature to be a first principle of common sense. I will then explain why this is my belief and lastly I will provide what I consider to be Hume’s best response to my conclusion. …show more content…

For Hume, relations of ideas are those things that we can know a priori meaning it is a form of knowledge that arises out of pure conception and logical reasoning. Relations of ideas also represent the concept of mathematics such that “5 + 7 = 12”, a statement such as this can be know a priori and is logically sound. Similarly, ideas such as “all bachelors are unmarried” and “all islands are surrounded by water “, although unrelated to mathematics, is also logically sound and known a priori and is therefore a relation of an idea. Relations of ideas are known to be certain and denial of such an idea would be a

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