How Did David Hume's Challenge To Knowledge

Elie Maamary Final Draft
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Hume’s Challenge to Knowledge David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, was one of the main figureheads of the potent Empiricism proclivity. During the 18th century, it was obvious the aggressiveness between the Empiricism and the Rationalism at that time. He was a drastic rival opponent of rationalism, as well as an atheist and skeptic. He had a huge influence on later philosophers and many were inspired by his skepticism of the established order. Being an Empiricist, Hume’s skepticism mainly was concerned with epistemology and the teleological argument.
Hume States in section 49 of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions. He

Does that give me a good reason to suppose that the next collision of billiard balls will work in the same way and will operate according to the same descriptive rules? Well if past experience is to give me a good reason it seems that I got to have reason for extrapolating from the past to the future. Some reason will justify my taking that past experience as relevant to what’s going to happens next. That is not a matter of logic that what happened in the past should continue to the future. My senses don’t tell me something relevant. If I tried to appeal to experience it seems that I’m begging the question, I’m taking for granted that experiences are relevant to the future. Now Hume is saying that actually we cannot give any good reason for supposing that the laws in past experience will be applicable to what happens in the future. We just think that the future will resemble the past. Even the idea human beings have of “the world” they believe in is just one more of their “fictions.” (Kasavin, 2012,

Hume’s dialogue concerning natural religion includes his most explicit attack on religious thought. Since he was one of the chief influences on the enlightenment his views clashed with the conservative religious authorities of the time. He would disguise his own opinions in his works. Hume created 3 characters representing the 3 major positions on whether believing in god is justified. This drama makes the text acceptable to religious believers even though the arguments lead to skeptical positions. Representing the conservative religious position, Demea argues that God’s existence can be proved through self-evident logic. However, these arguments cannot reveal anything about god’s nature to make any assertions about god beyond his existence he must accept a form of mysticism. Cleanthes rejects this apriori reasoning. He holds that god’s existence can be demonstrated from evidence we find in the world’s design. From these empirical arguments he believes he can draws a conclusion about the character of god. Philo, the third character, frequently contest both Demea’s and Cleanthes’s positions although he prefers Cleanthes’s empirical approach. Instead he argues that human reason does not have the capacity to draw any conclusions about the existence of god or nature although he does not go so far to