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Treatise Of Human Nature By David Hume Essay

772 Words4 Pages

Scottish philosopher David Hume’s book A Treatise of Human Nature (1738), after it was belatedly acknowledged as an important philosophical work, shocked the scientific community. In his essay, Hume presented himself as a skeptic, doubting the human’s ability to truly know what is commonly considered knowledge, and even the reliability of science. Following the empiricist tradition of fellow British philosopher John Locke, Hume questions the origin of our ideas, and concludes they must all stem from experience. Yet, where Hume differs from Locke, or from any other philosopher thus far, is in his claim that there is no real way to know if causal relationships actually exist in the world. Hume’s claim was a direct challenge to modern science, as, at the time, one of science’s main efforts was to find causal relations that explained phenomena and use these relations to make future predictions. …show more content…

Impressions include sensations, passions, and emotions. and they derive from our direct interaction with the world. On the other hand, ideas function only as representations of things in our minds. Hume would describe a process where first we would experience something (with our senses), which would result in an impression. Later, when thinking about whatever we experienced, we would be thinking about its idea. Besides their lesser degree of force and vivacity, Hume maintains that ideas and impressions are of great resemblance. More importantly, however, is Hume’s empiricist assertion that all ideas must derive from impressions. Hence, according to Hume, no idea is

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