David Hume Theory Of Knowledge

David Hume, one of the most prominent figures of skepticism in philosophy, firmly believed that philosophy is the science of human nature. It is precisely why, one of his most famous and widespread work was the one revolving around the human mind and how it functions in acquiring knowledge. In his work entitled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the Scottish philosopher questions the principle of causality and postulates whether it was a mere fabrication of the human mind. Being a firm empiricist, Hume concluded that no theory of reality is possible; there can be no knowledge of anything beyond experience, and since no empirical evidence supports the theory of causality, Hume finds himself rejecting it altogether. Half a century later,

According to Hume, in experience, we are in contact with things as they are in themselves and so all of our knowledge about the world is synthetic a posteriori. However, what Kant tries to highlight is that all of our experiences with the world are with “appearances of things”, which must be adapted to our modes of experience. In other words, the only way that we can come in contact with the world is when the latter conforms to our modes of experience, implying that we do not actually experience things as they are in themselves but only the “versions” that our subjective modes of experience allow us to get involved with. Kant also agrees with Hume that the idea of a necessary and universal connection is only existent is our minds, and they are not given to us by our sensory experiences. However, what David Hume labels as a mere “habit of thinking”, Kant characterizes as one of the core mechanisms of understanding. According to the French realist, universality and necessity are purely a priori concepts of the understanding and that’s how he moves from Hume’s empirical rules by comparison to strictly universal concept of cause. (§ 29 of the Prolegomena). Nonetheless, he does not think that the fact that causal laws are in themselves synthetic a priori certainties, but that universality and necessity are “secure criteria of an a priori

He makes an important distinction between the general principle of causality, such as “every event b must have a cause a”, and particular causal laws, such as “all events of type A must always be followed by event of type B”. It is crucial to Kant’s argument to establish a clear division between an empirical rule and an objective law, to which he associates the a priori concept of cause.

David Hume does not claim that events will not be related in the future in the same ways as they were in the past. In fact, he firmly believes the contrary. Beliefs in causality and in the resemblance of the future to the past are natural beliefs, inextinguishable propensities of human nature. Rather, what Hume tries to prove is that no empirical evidence or reason gives a solid foundation for such natural beliefs. He endorses the idea that causal relations are neither synthetic nor