Western Philosophy 18th-century philosophy
David Hume
Name	David Hume
Birth	April 26, 1711(1711-04-26) (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Death	August 25, 1776 (aged 65) (Edinburgh, Scotland)
School/tradition	Naturalism, Scepticism, Empiricism, Scottish Enlightenment
Main interests	Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion
Notable ideas	Problem of causation, Induction, Is-ought problem
Influenced by	Locke, Berkeley, Thomas Hobbes, Hutcheson, Newton, Cicero, Malebranche
Influenced	Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Arthur Schopenhauer, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Baron d'Holbach, Darwin, Thomas Huxley, William James, Bertrand Russell, Einstein, Karl Popper, Alfred Ayer, J. L. Mackie, Noam Chomsky, Simon Blackburn, Iain King

David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776)^[1] was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian, considered among the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment or The Enlightenment is a term used to describe a phase in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century Events 1467 - The miraculous image in Our Lady of Good Counsel appear in Genazzano, Italy. Year 1711 ( MDCCXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Edinburgh ( ˈɛdɪnb(ərə Dùn Èideann) is the Capital of Scotland and is its second largest city after Glasgow. Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. Events 1248 - The Dutch city of Ommen receives city rights and fortification rights from Otto III the Year 1776 ( MDCCLXXVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Edinburgh ( ˈɛdɪnb(ərə Dùn Èideann) is the Capital of Scotland and is its second largest city after Glasgow. Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. Philosophical naturalism has been described in various ways In its broadest and strongest sense naturalism is the metaphysical position that "nature is all there is In ordinary usage skepticism or scepticism ( Greek 'σκέπτομαι' skeptomai, to look about to consider see also spelling differences In Philosophy, empiricism is a theory of Knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from Experience. The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments Epistemology (from Greek επιστήμη - episteme, "knowledge" + λόγος, " Logos " or theory of knowledge Metaphysics is the branch of Philosophy investigating principles of reality transcending those of any particular science Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties Ethics is a major branch of Philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life Political philosophy is the study of questions about the City, Government, Politics, Liberty, Justice, Property, Rights Aesthetics or esthetics ( also spelled æsthetics) is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values sometimes called Philosophy of religion is a branch of Philosophy that is concerned with the philosophical study of religion including arguments over the nature and existence of God religious Causality (but not causation) denotes a necessary relationship between one event (called cause and another event (called effect) which is the direct consequence Induction or inductive reasoning, sometimes called inductive logic, is the process of Reasoning in which the premises of an argument are believed In Meta-ethics, the is-ought problem was raised by David Hume ( Scottish Philosopher and Historian, 1711 &ndash John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704 was an English Philosopher. George Berkeley (ˈbɑrkli (12 March 1685 14 January 1753 also known as Bishop Berkeley, was a Philosopher. Thomas Hobbes (born 5 April 1588died 4 December 1679 was an English philosopher, whose famous 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation Francis Hutcheson ( August 8, 1694 August 8, 1746) was a Philosopher born in Ireland to a family of Scottish Sir Isaac Newton, FRS (ˈnjuːtən 4 January 1643 31 March 1727) Biography Early years See also Isaac Newton's early life and achievements Marcus Tullius Cicero ( Classical Latin ˈkikeroː usually ˈsɪsərəʊ in English January 3, 106 BC &ndash December 7, 43 BC was a Roman "Malebranche" redirects here For the fictional demons see Malebolge. Adam Smith ( baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of Political economy. Adam Ferguson, also known as Ferguson of Raith (20 June 1723 ( O Immanuel Kant (ɪmanuəl kant 22 April 1724 12 February 1804 was an 18th-century German Philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg Jeremy Bentham ( IPA: or) (15 February 1748&ndash6 June 1832 was an English Jurist, Philosopher, and legal and Social reformer James Madison Jr (March 16 1751 – June 28 1836 was an American Politician, the fourth President of the United States (1809–1817 and one of the Founding Auguste Comte (full name Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte; 17 January 1798 – 5 September 1857 was a French thinker who is generally credited for having John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 &ndash 8 May 1873 British Philosopher, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential Paul-Henri Thiry baron d'Holbach ( 1723 – 1789) was a French - German Author, Philosopher and Encyclopedist. Charles Robert Darwin (February 12 1809 &ndash April 19 1882 was an English naturalist, who realised and demonstrated that all Species of life Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895 was an English Biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy For other people named William James see William James (disambiguation William James (January 11 1842 – August 26 1910 was a pioneering Bertrand Arthur William Russell 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970 was a British Philosopher, Historian Albert Einstein ( German: ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n; English: ˈælbɝt ˈaɪnstaɪn (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955 was a German -born theoretical Sir Karl Raimund Popper ( July 28 1902  &ndash September 17 1994) was an Austrian and British Philosopher and a professor Sir Alfred Jules ("Freddie" Ayer ( October 29, 1910 &ndash June 27, 1989) better known as A John Leslie Mackie (1917&ndash1981 was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. Avram Noam Chomsky (noʊm ˈtʃɑmski born December 7 1928 is an American linguist, Philosopher, cognitive scientist, Political Simon Blackburn (born 1944 is a British academic Philosopher known for his efforts to popularise Philosophy. Iain King (born 1971 is a contemporary British Moral philosopher. Events 1467 - The miraculous image in Our Lady of Good Counsel appear in Genazzano, Italy. Year 1711 ( MDCCXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Events 1248 - The Dutch city of Ommen receives city rights and fortification rights from Otto III the Year 1776 ( MDCCLXXVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a The 18th century lasted from 1701 to 1800 in the Gregorian calendar, in accordance with the Anno Domini / Common Era numbering system Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language An economist is an expert in the Social science of Economics. See also History An historian is an individual who studies and writes about History, and is regarded as an Authority on it Western philosophy is a term that refers to philosophical thinking in the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments

He first gained recognition and respect as a historian; but interest in Hume's work in academia has in recent years centred on his philosophical writing. His History of England^[2] was the standard work on English history for many years until Macaulay's. The history of England is similar to the history of Britain until the arrival of the Saxons The History of England from the Accession of James the Second is the full title of the multi-volume work by Lord Macaulay more generally known as " The History ^[3]

Hume was the first great philosopher of the modern era to carve out a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy. Philosophical naturalism has been described in various ways In its broadest and strongest sense naturalism is the metaphysical position that "nature is all there is This philosophy partly consisted in the rejection of the historically prevalent conception of human minds as being miniature versions of the divine mind. The Image of God (often appearing in Latin as Imago Dei) is a concept and Theological Doctrine that asserts that human beings are ^[4] This doctrine was associated with a trust in the powers of human reason and insight into reality, which possessed God’s certification. Reason involves the ability to think understand and draw Conclusions in an Abstract way as in Human thinking Hume’s scepticism came in his rejection of this ‘insight ideal’,^[5] and the (usually rationalistic) confidence derived from it that the world is as we represent it. Instead, the best we can do is to apply the strongest explanatory and empirical principles available to the investigation of human mental phenomena, issuing in a quasi-Newtonian project, Hume's ‘Science of Man’.

Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, along with various Francophone writers such as Pierre Bayle, and various figures on the Anglophone intellectual landscape such as Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Joseph Butler. In Philosophy, empiricism is a theory of Knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from Experience. John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704 was an English Philosopher. George Berkeley (ˈbɑrkli (12 March 1685 14 January 1753 also known as Bishop Berkeley, was a Philosopher. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Pierre Bayle ( November 18, 1647 December 28, 1706) was a French Philosopher and writer English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States Sir Isaac Newton, FRS (ˈnjuːtən 4 January 1643 31 March 1727) Biography Early years See also Isaac Newton's early life and achievements Samuel Clarke ( 11 October 1675 &ndash 17 May 1729) was an English Philosopher. Francis Hutcheson ( August 8, 1694 August 8, 1746) was a Philosopher born in Ireland to a family of Scottish Adam Smith ( baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of Political economy. You might also be looking for Joseph G Butler Jr, a philanthropist and historian or Joseph Campbell Butler, founding member of The Lovin' Spoonful ^[6]

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Education 1.2 Career 1.3 Religion 1.4 Later life 2 Science of Man 2.1 Causation 2.2 Problem of induction 2.3 Solutions to the Problem 2.4 The self: bundles and beliefs 2.5 Practical reason 2.6 Sentiment-based ethical theory 2.7 Free will and responsibility 2.8 The is-ought problem 2.9 The problem of miracles 2.10 The design argument 2.11 Political theory 2.12 Contributions to economic thought 3 Works 4 Hume's Influence 5 See also 6 Further reading 7 Footnotes and references 8 External links

Life

David Home, son of Joseph Home of Chirnside, advocate, and Katherine Lady Falconer, was born on 26 April 1711 (Old Style) in a tenement on the north side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Chirnside is a hillside village in Berwickshire in Scotland, 9 miles west of Berwick-upon-Tweed and 7 miles east of Duns. Events 1467 - The miraculous image in Our Lady of Good Counsel appear in Genazzano, Italy. Year 1711 ( MDCCXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Old Style (or OS) and New Style (or NS) are used in English language historical studies either to indicate that the start of the Julian year Edinburgh ( ˈɛdɪnb(ərə Dùn Èideann) is the Capital of Scotland and is its second largest city after Glasgow. He changed his name to Hume in 1734 because the English had difficulty pronouncing 'Home' in the Scottish manner. Throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells by Chirnside, Berwickshire. Chirnside is a hillside village in Berwickshire in Scotland, 9 miles west of Berwick-upon-Tweed and 7 miles east of Duns. Berwickshire or the County of Berwick is a Registration county, a Committee area of the Scottish Borders Council, and a lieutenancy

Education

Hume was sent by his family to the University of Edinburgh at the unusually early age of twelve, perhaps as young as ten (fourteen would have been more normal). The University of Edinburgh (Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann founded in 1582 is a renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. At first he considered a career in law, but came to have, in his words, "an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and while [my family] fanceyed I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Vergil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring. Scots law is a unique legal system with an ancient basis in Roman law. Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language Marcus Tullius Cicero ( Classical Latin ˈkikeroː usually ˈsɪsərəʊ in English January 3, 106 BC &ndash December 7, 43 BC was a Roman Publius Vergilius Maro ( October 15, 70 BCE &ndash September 21, 19 BCE later called Virgilius, and known in English as Virgil or "^[7] He had little respect for professors, telling a friend in 1735 that "there is nothing to be learned from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books. The meaning of the word professor ( Latin: professor, person who professes to be an expert in some art or science teacher of highest rank) varies "

At the age of eighteen, Hume made a philosophical discovery that opened up to him "a new Scene of Thought" which inspired him "to throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it". ^[8] He did not recount what this "Scene" was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations. ^[9] Due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He came on the verge of nervous breakdown, after which he decided to have a more active life to better continue his learning. Mental breakdown (also known as nervous breakdown or snapping) is a non-medical term used to describe a sudden acute attack of Mental illness such as ^[10]

Career

As Hume's options lay between a travelling tutorship and a stool in a merchant's office, he chose the latter. In 1734, after a few months in commerce in Bristol, he went to La Flèche in Anjou, France. Bristol ( ˈbrɪstəl is a city, Unitary authority and ceremonial county in South West England, west of London La Flèche is a commune of the Sarthe département in France, on the banks of the Loir river Anjou is a former County (c 880) Duchy ( 1360) and province centred on the city of Angers in the lower This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. He had frequent discourses with the Jesuits of the famous college in which Descartes was educated. The Society of Jesus ( Latin: Societas Iesu, SJ and SI or SJ, SI) is a Catholic religious order The Prytanée National Militaire, originally Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand, is a French school managed by the military, offering regular high-school education As he spent most of his savings during his four years there while writing A Treatise of Human Nature,^[10] he resolved "to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvements of my talents in literature. A Treatise of Human Nature is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, first published in 1739 – 1740. "^[11] He completed the Treatise at the age of twenty-six.

Although many scholars today consider the Treatise to be Hume's most important work and one of the most important books in the history of philosophy, the critics in Great Britain at the time did not agree, describing it as "abstract and unintelligible". The Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a State in northwest Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1800 ^[12] Despite the disappointment, Hume later wrote that "being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I soon recovered from the blow and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country". ^[13] There, he wrote the Abstract. ^[14] Without revealing his authorship, he aimed to make his larger work more intelligible by shortening it.

After the publication of Essays Moral and Political in 1744, Hume applied for the Chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. The University of Edinburgh (Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann founded in 1582 is a renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. However, the position was given to William Cleghorn, after the majority of Edinburgh ministers petitioned the town council not to appoint Hume due to his atheism. William Cleghorn (1718–1754 was a British philosopher He was born to a successful Scottish brewer Hugh Cleghorn and Jean Hamilton and died in 1754 aged Atheism ^[15]

During the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, Hume tutored the Marquise of Annandale (1720-92), who was officially described as a "lunatic". The Jacobite Risings were a series of uprisings rebellions and wars in the kingdoms of England, Kingdom of Scotland (later the United Kingdom of Great Britain ^[16] This engagement ended in disarray after about a year. But it was then that Hume started his great historical work The History of Great Britain, which would take fifteen years and run to over a million words, to be published in six volumes in the period between 1754 and 1762. The History of Great Britain (volume 1 is a book by David Hume published in 1754 During this period, he was involved with the Canongate Theatre and in this context associated with Lord Monboddo and other Scottish Enlightenment luminaries in Edinburgh. James Burnett Lord Monboddo ( October 25, 1714 - May 26, 1799) was a Scottish Judge, scholar of language evolution and The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments From 1746, Hume served for three years as Secretary to Lieutenant-General St Clair, and wrote Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding, later published as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. General James St Clair (c 1690 &ndash 30 November 1762) was a Scottish soldier and Tory politician An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish Empiricist and Philosopher David Hume, published in 1748 The Enquiry proved little more successful than the Treatise.

Hume was charged with heresy, but he was defended by his young clerical friends who argued that as an atheist he laid outside the jurisdiction of the Church. Heresy, as a blanket term describes a practice or belief that is labeled as unorthodox Atheism The Church of Scotland (Eaglais na h-Alba known informally by its Scots language name The Kirk, is the National church of Scotland. Despite his acquittal—and possibly due to the opposition of Thomas Reid of Aberdeen, who that year launched a Christian critique of his metaphysics—Hume failed to gain the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. Thomas Reid ( April 26, 1710 – October 7, 1796) Scottish Philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was Aberdeen ( pronounced; Aiberdeen Obar Dheathain is Scotland 's third most populous city and one of Scotland's 32 local government council The Chair of Moral Philosophy is a professorship at Glasgow University, Scotland, which was established in 1727 The University of Glasgow (Oilthigh Ghlaschu was founded in 1451 in Glasgow, Scotland and along with its contemporary institutions the University of St Andrews

It was after returning to Edinburgh in 1752, as he wrote in My Own Life, that "the Faculty of Advocates chose me their Librarian, an office from which I received little or no emolument, but which gave me the command of a large library. "^[17] It was this resource that enabled him to continue his historical research for his book The History of Great Britain.

Hume would achieve great literary fame as a historian. His enormous The History of Great Britain, tracing events from the Saxon kingdoms to the Glorious Revolution, was a best-seller in its day. The History of Great Britain (volume 1 is a book by David Hume published in 1754 The Saxons or Saxon people were a Confederation of Old Germanic tribes. The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England (VII of Scotland in 1688 by a union In it, Hume presented political man as a creature of habit, with a disposition to submit quietly to established government unless confronted by uncertain circumstances. In his view, only religious difference could deflect men from their everyday lives to think about political matters.

However, a volume of Political Discourses (1752) was Hume's only work that was judged by him to be successful on first publication. ^[18]

Religion

Hume's early essay Of Superstition and Religion laid the foundations for nearly all subsequent secular thinking about the history of religion. Edinburgh ( ˈɛdɪnb(ərə Dùn Èideann) is the Capital of Scotland and is its second largest city after Glasgow. Critics of religion during Hume's time were required to express themselves cautiously. Less than 15 years before Hume was born, 18-year-old University student Thomas Aikenhead was put on trial for saying openly that he thought Christianity was nonsense; he was later convicted and hanged for blasphemy. Thomas Aikenhead (c 1678 - 8 January 1697 was a Scottish student from Edinburgh, who was prosecuted and executed on a charge of blasphemy. Blasphemy is the disrespectful use of the name of one or more gods. Hume followed the common practice of expressing his views obliquely, through characters in dialogues. He did not acknowledge authorship of Treatise until the year of his death, in 1776.

Hume's essays On Suicide and On the Immortality of the Soul along with his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion were held from publication until after his death (published 1778 and 1779, respectively), and they still bore neither author's nor publisher's name. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical work written by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. So masterly was Hume in disguising his own views that debate continues to this day over whether Hume was actually a deist or an atheist. Deism is the belief that a supreme God exists and created the physical universe and that religious truths can be arrived at by the application of reason alone without dependence on revelation Atheism Regardless, in his own time Hume's alleged atheism caused him to be passed over for many positions.

Hume told his friend Mure of Caldwell of an incident which occasioned his "conversion" to Christianity. Passing across the recently drained Nor’ Loch to the New Town of Edinburgh to supervise the masons building his new house, soon to become No. The New Town, a central area of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is often considered to be a masterpiece of city planning and is a UNESCO 1 St. David Street, he slipped and fell into the mire. Hume, being then of great bulk, could not regain his feet. Some passing Newhaven fishwives saw his plight but recognised him as the well-known atheist, and so refused to rescue him unless he became a Christian and recited The Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. The Lord's Prayer, also known as the Our Father or Pater noster, is probably the best-known Prayer in Christianity. A creed is a statement of Belief — usually Religious belief — or Faith often recited as part of a religious service This he did, and was rewarded by being set again on his feet by these brawny women. Hume asserted thereafter that Edinburgh fishwives were the "most acute theologians he had ever met". ^[19]

Later life

From 1763 to 1765, Hume was Secretary to Lord Hertford in Paris, where he was admired by Voltaire and lionised by the ladies in society. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city François-Marie Arouet ( 21 November 1694 30 May 1778) better known by the Pen name Voltaire, was a French He made friends, and later fell out, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He wrote of his Paris life, "I really wish often for the plain roughness of the The Poker Club of Edinburgh . The Poker Club was one of several clubs at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment where many associated with that movement met and exchanged views in a convivial . . to correct and qualify so much lusciousness. " For a year from 1767, Hume held the appointment of Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department. In 1768, he settled in Edinburgh. Edinburgh ( ˈɛdɪnb(ərə Dùn Èideann) is the Capital of Scotland and is its second largest city after Glasgow.

James Boswell visited Hume a few weeks before his death. James Boswell 9th Laird of Auchinleck ( October 29, 1740 - May 19, 1795) was a lawyer diarist and Author born in Edinburgh Hume told him that he sincerely believed it a "most unreasonable fancy" that there might be life after death. ^[20] This meeting was dramatized in semi-fictional form for the BBC by Michael Ignatieff as Dialogue in the Dark. Michael Grant Ignatieff, MP (/ɪgˈnatʃəf/ (born May 12, 1947 in Toronto) is a Public intellectual, Historian, Hume wrote his own epitaph: "Born 1711, Died [----]. Leaving it to posterity to add the rest. " It is engraved with the year of his death 1776 on the "simple Roman tomb" which he prescribed, and which stands, as he wished it, on the Eastern slope of the Calton Hill overlooking his home in the New Town of Edinburgh at No. Calton Hill is a hill in central Edinburgh, Scotland, just to the east of the New Town. The New Town, a central area of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is often considered to be a masterpiece of city planning and is a UNESCO 1 St. David Street.

Science of Man

In the introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume writes that “the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences”, and that the correct method for this science is “experience and observation”;^[21] i. e. the empirical method.

However, there has been wide disagreement amongst commentators on the precise form of Hume’s enterprise, and, in particular, what sort of empiricism Hume favoured. The Logical Positivists took Hume’s project to be one of analysing sentences to find out the empirical conditions that make those sentences meaningful. Logical positivism (later and more accurately called logical empiricism) is a school of philosophy that combines Empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is According to the Logical Positivists, unless a statement could be verified or falsified by experience, or else was true or false by definition (i. e. either tautological or contradictory), then it was meaningless (this is their famous Verification Principle). In Classical logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more Propositions It occurs when the propositions taken together yield A verificationist is someone who adheres to the verification principle proposed by A Hume, on this view, was a proto-Positivist, who, in his philosophical writings, took to showing how ordinary sentences about objects, causal relations, the self, etc. , were semantically equivalent to sentences about one’s experiences. ^[22]

However, not all critics agree with Logical Positivist interpretation. A standard argument against it is that, whereas the Logical Positivists took the Verification Principle to lead to anti-Sceptical conclusions,^[23] Hume described himself as a mitigated Sceptic. In Logic, an argument is a Set of one or more Declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the Premises along ^[24] Instead it has been argued that, rather than exploring the experiential conditions of the meaningfulness of sentences, Hume was giving an account of conditions under which we come to form certain ideas and beliefs; that is to say, he was giving a causal account of the origin of general concepts of the external world, causation, the self, and so on. On this view, our forming and using such concepts is the result of an in-built, natural disposition to deploy faculties of the mind such as custom, habit, and the imagination. Another way of expressing this is to say that he was not concerned with advancing a theory of semantics — i. e. what we mean when we talk about, say, physical objects or causal relations — but rather was carrying out an epistemological enquiry, asking in effect how the stimuli of the senses and our conceptual apparatus work together to compel us to form various sorts of judgements and to make claims to knowledge. ^[25]

In what follows, central philosophical concepts that Hume wrote about, and different interpretations that have been offered of his arguments, will be explored.

Causation

Hume’s views on the concept of causation are a subject of much dispute, and there are at least three different interpretations represented in the literature. These are:

(i) The Logical Positivist interpretation
(ii) The Sceptical Realist interpretation
(iii) The Quasi-Realist and Projectivist interpretation

According to the positivist view, Hume is attempting to specify the semantic content of the concept of causation — i. Logical positivism (later and more accurately called logical empiricism) is a school of philosophy that combines Empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or Postmodern poets centered e. what we mean when we deploy causal terms. The traditional analytical take on Hume’s answer is that it is to be found in the regular succession of certain of our impressions; their ‘constant conjunction’. On this interpretation, Hume is saying that statements such as "A caused B" are equivalent to propositions such as "Whenever A occurs, then B does", where "whenever" refers to all possible observations of A and B. ^[26]

This has been rejected, however, by Sceptical Realists, who argue that Hume was not discussing the meaning of causal terms, but rather their source, or their causal origin, in our experience. The major disagreement with the Positivist view is over Hume’s take on the idea of Necessary Connexion. According to the Positivists, as we have seen, causality consists only in regularities in perceptions, but the Sceptical Realists point out that Hume also thought there to be a Necessary Connexion between causes and effects that goes unperceived. ^[27] The reason Hume is called a Sceptical Realist on this take is that he did not think we could have perceptual access to the necessary connexion, and thus we have no reason to believe in it (hence Scepticism);^[28] but at the same time we are compelled by natural instinct to believe there to be a necessary connexion when we observe a regularity or constancy in our perceptions, and this natural belief is of an external causal necessity (hence Realism). ^[29]

However, the Sceptical Realist reading has been rejected by Simon Blackburn, who instead proposes a Projectivist and Quasi-Realist interpretation. Simon Blackburn (born 1944 is a British academic Philosopher known for his efforts to popularise Philosophy. Projectivism in philosophy involves attributing ('projecting' qualities to an object as if those qualities actually belong to it Quasi-realism is the meta-ethical view which claims that Ethical sentences do not express Propositions Instead ethical sentences ^[30] According to this position, Hume was not arguing that we have a concept of a Real necessary connexion, where "Real" means that our idea represents something in the world, external to human minds. Instead, our concept of causation is composed of two elements (corresponding to Hume's two famous "definitions" of causation),^[31] the first of which is the regular succession given in perception, but the second of which, the necessary connexion, is actually a product of a functional change in the human mind which allows us to anticipate and predict future events based on past regularities. So the Quasi-Realist denies that the necessary connexion is a property existing in the world (hence he denies straightforward Realism), and instead sees it as representative of a change in our mental states and practical attitudes. However, this does not amount to a full-on Anti-Realism about Causation, because the Quasi-Realist is also a Projectivist, who holds that it is perfectly legitimate to "project" our predictions by making statements which express the belief in a necessary connexion. It is not that we talk "as-if" there were a necessary connexion, when really there is not: rather, our talk of there being a necessary connexion is a way of voicing a distinctive mental set, which allows us to explain and predict the behaviour of objects, and hopefully come to control them too. Thus when Hume says that “nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion”,^[32] he is not diagnosing an error in human thought, but merely giving a scientific explanation of how our concepts arise.

Problem of induction

Main article: Problem of induction

The Problem of Induction has received a great deal of critical attention, and though Hume offered his own solution to the problem, many have since queried whether he was in fact successful. The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning is valid ^[33] As a result, many modern commentators have themselves attempted solutions, and in this section some of them will be explored.

Inductive inference is the ability to infer from past regularities - e. g. from the fact that B has always followed A - to future and presently unobserved instances of that regularity - e. g. that if A occurs, B will follow. For example, the fact that fire has always burnt us in the past leads us to believe that fire will continue to burn us in the future, and that if any person is currently touching fire, it is burning them. The problem of induction is the problem of explaining this ability: how can we know the way things will behave when they go "beyond the present testimony of the senses, and the records of our memory"?^[34]

Hume argues that induction is founded on the persistence of regularities (sometimes called the Uniformity of Nature) and that we cannot know nature is uniform through reason, because reason only comes in two sorts, and both of these are inadequate. Reason involves the ability to think understand and draw Conclusions in an Abstract way as in Human thinking The two sorts are:

(i) Demonstrative reasoning (effectively, deductive reasoning)
(ii) Probable reasoning (effectively, inductive reasoning)^[35]

With regards to (i), Hume argues that we cannot prove a priori that regularities will continue, as it is "consistent and conceivable" that the course of nature might change. "A priori" redirects here For other uses see A priori. ^[36] Coming to (ii), Hume argues that founding a regularity on the fact that regularity has always operated in the past (inductive reasoning) is arguing in a circle, because induction was the very process we were trying to explain in the first place. Hence no form of reason will sponsor inductive inference.

This argument has been criticised in more than one area. For example, some have maintained that Kantian arguments can establish that nature is uniform. ^[37] It has been countered, however, that even if Kantian arguments can prove a priori that nature is uniform in general, this does not make inductive inference rational, because there is still the problem of working out which particular regularities will continue. ^[38]

A further criticism is that there are more types of reasoning than Hume allows (the two types of demonstrative and probabilistic), for one can give deductive reasons for probability distributions, and it might be that a demonstration of the high probability of success of an inductive policy can succeed in showing induction to be rational. ^[39] However, it could be argued that Nelson Goodman has shown that no purely formal treatment can work. Henry Nelson Goodman ( 7 August 1906, Somerville Massachusetts &ndash 25 November 1998, Needham Massachusetts) Goodman identified certain regularities that cannot be successfully 'projected' into the future: for example, if we define a new predicate "grue", such that something is grue if it is green until the year 3000, and blue thereafter, we know that all emeralds thus far have been "grue", but we do not assume they will continue to be grue after 3000 AD, because that would be to assume they will turn blue at a random point in time. Grue and bleen are artificial predicates coined as two Portmanteaux of " Green " and " Blue " by philosopher Nelson Goodman ^[40] Thus a non-formal distinction must be made between those predicates which can, and those which can't, be projected: Simon Blackburn, for example, has argued that the distinction is between observational predicates and non-observational predicates. Simon Blackburn (born 1944 is a British academic Philosopher known for his efforts to popularise Philosophy. ^[41] This seems to counter the idea that purely formal a priori probabilistic reasoning can show induction to be rational.

Solutions to the Problem

Turning from Hume's problem, we will exhibit different solutions that have been given to the problem. There are three main categories of contemporary response to the problem, as follows:

(i) The Analytic Solution
(ii) The Inductive Solution
(iii) The Pragmatic Solution

The first analytic solution was argued for by P. F. Strawson. Sir Peter Frederick Strawson ( 23 November 1919  &ndash 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher ^[42] Essentially, it contends that the question of whether induction is rational is nonsense, as when we say something is rational, we just mean it is inductive (or deductive). That is, any inductive inference is a ‘rational’ inference, because inductive inferences are the sort of things we take as defining the concept of ‘reason’, or ‘rational’ argumentation: “to call a particular belief reasonable or unreasonable is to apply inductive standards”. ^[43] The question, “is induction rational?” is, says Strawson, akin to the question, “is the law legal?” That is to say, induction is analytically a rational policy: to ask after its rationality is to misunderstand the definition of the concept.

However, the analytic solution has been opposed on the grounds that the question now transfers to one of whether we should prefer to be 'rational' as defined. Brian Skyrms imagines a tribe who use a Shaman to make their predictions about the future, and calls this method 'brational'. The question is now, why should we prefer 'rationality' to 'brationality'?^[44]

A possible answer might be found in the inductive solution, proposed by Max Black. Max Black ( 24 February 1909, Baku, Russian Empire [[Azerbaijan]] – 27 August 1988, ^[45] It might be thought that, as Hume argued, we cannot use induction to legitimate induction, for that would be circular. But Black argues that our justification of induction is a second-order appeal to the success not of individual predictions, but to rules of prediction. The question comes, what justifies the use of the rules of induction? Again, Black maintains, we must appeal to our past success. Furthermore, (and pre-empting anymore aimless probing), this third level of justification is justified by its past success, and so on, ad infinitum.

Skyrms has, again, argued against this. Brian Skyrms (born 1938 is a Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and Economics at the University of California Irvine ^[46] He asserts that we can imagine an Anti-Inductive policy which is just as justifiable as the Inductive one, according to Black's defence. An anti-inductive argument goes something like this: the sun has always risen in the past, therefore it will not rise tomorrow. When we ask what justifies making such an inference, the anti-inductivist appeals to a second-order anti-inductive rule: “Well, anti-inductive arguments have never worked in the past; therefore they will work this time”. If the anti-inductivist is pushed, he will respond in a like manner again and again: “The rules of anti-inductive arguments have never worked for me before, so they are sure to work this time”. Essentially the anti-inductivist is able to generate precisely the same chain of ‘justification’ as the inductivist, and there is no way now of choosing between an inductive and an anti-inductive policy: they are equally ‘justified’. Skyrms takes this as a reductio of Black's proposed solution.

The pragmatist hopes to justify induction by appeal to its tendency to be right if any policy will, because induction can factor in the successes of other predictive policies. Pragmatism generally considered to have originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Peirce, who first stated the Pragmatic maxim. ^[47] However, it has been argued that the fact that an inductive policy of prediction is as successful as, or more successful than any other does not show which particular regularities will persist, and this is what we need if we are to explain our ability to project the right regularities. ^[48]

Turning from contemporary attempts to justify induction, we can look at Hume's own response to the problem. Hume argued in effect that although Reason cannot explain our ability to make correct inductive inference, natural instinct can. Hume says that "Nature, by an absolute and uncountroulable necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel". ^[49] Some modern commentators agree with Hume's solution; for example, Oxford Professor John Kenyon, who has argued: "Reason might manage to raise a doubt about the truth of a conclusion of natural inductive inference just for a moment in the study, but the forces of nature will soon overcome that artificial scepticism, and the sheer agreeableness of animal faith will protect us from excessive caution and sterile suspension of belief. "^[50]

The self: bundles and beliefs

There are at least two broadly different ways of interpreting Hume’s views on personal identity, and these will be presented here. According to the first view, Hume was a bundle theorist, who held that the self is nothing but a bundle of interconnected perceptions. Bundle theory, originated by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, is the ontological theory about objecthood in which an object consists only This view is forwarded by, for example, Positivist interpreters, who saw Hume as attempting to specify the “sense-contents” (roughly, bits of sensory-experience) that we refer to when we talk about the self. ^[51] This account draws on Hume’s remarks that a person is “a bundle or collection of different perceptions”. ^[52] A modern day version of the bundle theory of the mind has been advanced by Derek Parfit. Derek Parfit (born December 11, 1942) is a British Philosopher who specializes in problems of personal identity, Rationality ^[53]

However, some have criticised the bundle theory interpretation of Hume on personal identity. Some account for Hume’s talk of people being bundles of perceptions as figurative, and raise the problem for such a view (at least in its basic form) that it is difficult to specify what it is that makes a bundle of perceptions the perceptions of a distinct person; for it seems that we can have similar perceptions to one another, and that the interconnections between our own perceptions (such as causal connections) can be shared with others’ perceptual states too. ^[54]

An alternative theory is that Hume is answering an epistemological question about the cause of people forming judgements or beliefs about the existence of the self. ^[55] In support of this interpretation we can point to passages that use causal terminology: “What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence thro' the whole course of our lives?”^[56]

The problem on this way of reading Hume, then, is that experience is interrupted and ever-changing, but somehow causes us to form a concept of a constant self which is the subject of these experiences. And Hume’s answer on this account is that it is the same interconnections and relations between perceptions that force the imagination to believe in the existence of mind-independent objects. He effectively argues, we cannot make sense of the notion of objects existing independently of ourselves unless we have an idea of 'ourself' as something that occasionally becomes aware of these objects. So the human mind, or consciousness, is thus conceived of as a field of experience into which various different objects appear and then disappear: "the true idea of the human mind, is to consider it as a system of different perceptions or different existences, which are link'd together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other. "^[57]

Practical reason

Hume's most famous sentence occurs at Treatise, II, III, iii, Of the influencing motives of the will: "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. " Hume here extends his anti-rationalism from the epistemological sphere into that of the theory of action, and demonstrates that the faculty of reason cannot, of itself, move the will. He starts the section by going over the by now familiar distinction between demonstrative and probable reasoning (roughly, deductive and inductive reasoning). He then argues that neither can influence the will, as both simply provide information — deductive reasoning about correct mathematical or logical inference and inductive reasoning about causal connections — and it is always open to us as to how to act on this information. Hume then argues that in order to be moved to act on the information provided us by reason, my passions, desires and inclinations must play a role. To take a simple example: using causal reasoning I can discern that if I drink a lot of wine, I will get drunk, but the truth of this conditional will not motivate me to do anything unless I have some desire, in this case the desire to be drunk. As such, Hume forwards the basic folk psychological action-theory that a motive to action requires both a belief (ascertained by the understanding) and a desire (provided by the passions). This theory is still hotly contested, with Humean philosophers such as Simon Blackburn and Michael Smith on one side, and moral cognitivists, like John McDowell, and Kantians, like Christine Korsgaard, on the other. Simon Blackburn (born 1944 is a British academic Philosopher known for his efforts to popularise Philosophy. Michael Andrew Smith (born in Melbourne, Australia on 23 July 1954) is an Australian Philosopher who teaches at Princeton University John Henry McDowell (born 1942 in Boksburg, South Africa) is a Philosopher, formerly a Fellow of University College, Oxford Christine M Korsgaard (born 1952 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American Philosopher whose main academic interests are in moral philosophy

Sentiment-based ethical theory

Hume first discusses ethics in A Treatise of Human Nature. A Treatise of Human Nature is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, first published in 1739 – 1740. He later extracts and expounds upon the ideas he proposed in Treatise in a shorter essay entitled An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is a book by Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume. Hume's approach in Enquiry is fundamentally an empirical one. Instead of telling us how morality ought to operate, he tells us how we actually make moral judgments. After providing us with various examples, he comes to the conclusion that most, though not all, of the behaviors we approve of increase public utility. He supposes that humans may be, in the language of today, 'hard-wired' to approve of things that help society – public utility. Hume used this insight to explain how we evaluate a wide array of phenomena, ranging from social institutions and government policies to character traits and talents.

Nonetheless, Hume is no utilitarian. In line with his debunking of religion, and of knowledge itself, he has no time for theories attempting to put ethics on a pedestal. But nor is he entirely contemptuous of public morality. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, Hume considers the ethical impulse a worthy one, based on more than self-interest. Thomas Hobbes (born 5 April 1588died 4 December 1679 was an English philosopher, whose famous 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation This is because, in addition to considerations of self-interest, Hume maintains that we can be moved by our 'sympathy' for others, fundamental human impulses which can provide a person with thoroughly non-selfish concerns and motivations sometimes referred to by contemporary theorists as altruistic concern.

Here, Hume follows his close friend and (at the time) much more highly respected contemporary, Adam Smith whose book entitled 'The Theory of the Moral Sentiments' (1759) starts with a chapter entitled 'Of Sympathy'. Adam Smith ( baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of Political economy. Smith's theory was intended to explain the operations of human society in much the same way as his (better-remembered) economic works on the nature of money. The theory assumes that there are, in fact, "no differences between right and wrong, just different emotional responses to acts" ^[58] as Martin Cohen has put it. This is why Hume says: "It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger" ^[59] Instead, Hume defends his sympathy-based, moral sentimentalism by claiming that we could never make moral judgments based on reason alone. Our reason deals with facts and draws conclusions from them, but, Ceteris paribus, it could not lead us to choose one option over the other; only our sentiments can do this. Also, our sympathy-based sentiments can motivate us towards the pursuit of non-selfish ends, like the utility of others. For Hume, and for fellow sympathy-theorist Adam Smith, the term "sympathy" is meant to capture much more than concern for the suffering of others. Adam Smith ( baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of Political economy. Sympathy, for Hume, is a principle for the communication and sharing of sentiments, both positive and negative. In this sense, it is akin to what contemporary psychologists and philosophers call empathy. Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or Emotion. In developing this sympathy-based moral sentimentalism, Hume surpasses the divinely implanted moral sense theory of his predecessor, Francis Hutcheson, by elaborating a naturalistic, moral psychological basis for the moral sense, in terms of the operation of sympathy. Francis Hutcheson was the name of a famous father and son Francis Hutcheson (philosopher (1694-1746 Francis Hutcheson (songwriter (c Hume's arguments against founding morality on reason are often now included in the arsenal of moral anti-realist arguments. In Philosophy, the term anti-realism is used to describe anyposition involving either the denial of an objective Reality of Entities of a certain As Humean-inspired philosopher John Mackie suggests, for there to exist moral facts about the world, recognizable by reason and intrinsically motivating, they would have to be very queer facts. John Leslie Mackie (1917&ndash1981 was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. Still, there is considerable debate among scholars as to Hume's status as a realist versus anti-realist. Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief in a Reality that is completely Ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes linguistic practices beliefs In Philosophy, the term anti-realism is used to describe anyposition involving either the denial of an objective Reality of Entities of a certain

Free will and responsibility

Hume advocated a moral theory based on the freedom of the human will and its relation to the individual's character. Hume believed that effects follow necessarily from their causes, and that this principle of determinism applies equally to people and their actions. Determinism is the philosophical Proposition that every event including human cognition and behaviour decision and action is causally determined In addition, Hume held that a person enjoyed free will, or what he often termed liberty, as long as their will wasn't constrained (for example a person would not be at liberty to give charity if they are locked up in a cell). The question of free will Given such definitions of determinism and free will, Hume wrote that the two concepts are compatible, a theory known as compatibilism. For other uses of each of these words see Compatibility. Compatibilism is the belief that Free will and Determinism are

In opposition to Christian thinkers (e. g. Samuel Clarke) who argued that in order for a person to be morally responsible, his actions must not be determined by any physical cause, Hume wrote that moral responsibility requires determinism: Hume argued that if effects are not determined by their causes then they're random, and similarly if actions aren't caused by the character then they're random and not the responsibility of the person who committed them. Samuel Clarke ( 11 October 1675 &ndash 17 May 1729) was an English Philosopher.

Beyond saying that a person is only responsible when they enjoy free will, and that free will is when one gets to act according to one's character, Hume also offers a psychological evaluation of why we judge people. A psychological evaluation or mental examination is an Examination into a person's Mental health by a mental health professional such as a Psychologist Hume says that we hold people to blame or approbation when we judge their character as being respectively harmful or beneficial to society. Following from Hume's ideas on experience and causation, this means that when, for example, we experience a person's character (the cause) as resulting in a bad action (the effect), we apply the principle that similar causes result in similar effects, judge that the character will result in future bad actions, and decide that it is important to blame that person for the good of the society.

The is-ought problem

Main article: Is-ought problem

Hume noted that many writers talk about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is (is-ought problem). In Meta-ethics, the is-ought problem was raised by David Hume ( Scottish Philosopher and Historian, 1711 &ndash In Meta-ethics, the is-ought problem was raised by David Hume ( Scottish Philosopher and Historian, 1711 &ndash But there seems to be a big difference between descriptive statements (what is) and prescriptive statements (what ought to be). Hume calls for writers to be on their guard against changing the subject in this way without giving an explanation of how the ought-statements are supposed to follow from the is-statements. But how exactly can you derive an "ought" from an "is"? That question, prompted by Hume's small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory, and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is impossible. (Others interpret Hume as saying not that one cannot go from a factual statement to an ethical statement, but that one cannot do so without going through human nature, that is, without paying attention to human sentiments. ) Hume is probably one of the first writers to make the distinction between normative (what ought to be) and positive (what is) statements, which is so prevalent in social science and moral philosophy. G. E. Moore defended a similar position with his "open question argument", intending to refute any identification of moral properties with natural properties ("naturalistic fallacy"). "GE Moore" redirects here For the cofounder of Intel see Gordon Moore. The naturalistic fallacy is often claimed to be a Formal fallacy.

Murray N. Rothbard contends that Hume in fact failed to prove that values cannot be derived from facts. Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2 1926 – January 7 1995 was an American economist of the Austrian School who helped define modern Libertarianism It is frequently alleged that nothing can be in the conclusion of an argument which was not in one of the premises; and that therefore, an "ought" conclusion cannot follow from descriptive premises. But a conclusion follows from both premises taken together; the "ought" need not be present in either one of the premises so long as it has been validly deduced. To say that it cannot be so deduced simply begs the question. In Logic, begging the question has traditionally described a type of Logical fallacy (also called petitio principii) in which the proposition

The problem of miracles

In his discussion of miracles in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Section 10) Hume defines a miracle as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent". A miracle is an event believed to be caused by interposition of Divine intervention by a Supernatural being in the Universe by which the ordinary operation An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish Empiricist and Philosopher David Hume, published in 1748 Given that Hume argues that it is impossible to deduce the existence of a Deity from the existence of the world (for he says that causes cannot be determined from effects), miracles (including prophesy) are the only possible support he would conceivably allow for theistic religions.

Hume discusses everyday belief as often resulted from probability, where we believe an event that has occurred most often as being most likely, but that we also subtract the weighting of the less common event from that of the more common event. In the context of miracles, this means that a miraculous event should be labeled a miracle only where it would be even more unbelievable (by principles of probability) for it not to be. Hume mostly discusses miracles as testimony, in context of which he writes that when a person reports a marvelous event we (need to) balance our belief in their veracity against our belief that such events do not occur. Following this rule, only where it is considered, as a result of experience, less likely that the testimony is false than that a miracle occur should be believe in miracles.

Although Hume leaves open the possibility for miracles to occur and be reported, he offers various arguments against this ever having happened in history:

• People often lie, and they have good reasons to lie about miracles occurring either because they believe they are doing so for the benefit of their religion or because of the fame that results.
• People by nature enjoy relating miracles they have heard without caring for their veracity and thus miracles are easily transmitted even where false.
• Hume notes that miracles seem to occur mostly in "ignorant" and "barbarous" nations and times, and the reason they don't occur in the "civilized" societies is such societies aren't awed by what they know to be natural events.
• The miracles of each religion argue against all other religions and their miracles, and so even if a proportion of all reported miracles across the world fit Hume's requirement for belief, the miracles of each religion make the other less likely.

Despite all this Hume observes that belief in miracles is popular, and that "The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder. "

Critics have argued that Hume's position assumes the character of miracles and natural laws prior to any specific examination of miracle claims, and thus it amounts to a subtle form of begging the question. They have also noted that it requires an appeal to inductive inference, as none have observed every part of nature or examined every possible miracle claim (e. g. , those yet future to the observer), which in Hume's philosophy was especially problematic (see above).

The design argument

One of the oldest and most popular arguments for the existence of God is the design argument – that all the order and 'purpose' in the world bespeaks a divine origin. Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers theologians and others A teleological argument, or argument from design, is an Argument for the Existence of God or a creator based on perceived evidence of order purpose design A modern manifestation of this belief is creationism. "Creationism" can also refer to Creation myths in general or to a concept about the origin of the soul. Hume gave the classic criticism of the design argument in Dialogues concerning Natural Religion and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical work written by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish Empiricist and Philosopher David Hume, published in 1748 Here are some of his points:

1. For the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order and purpose are observed only when they result from design. But order is observed regularly, resulting from presumably mindless processes like snowflake or crystal generation. Design accounts for only a tiny part of our experience with order and "purpose".
2. Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy: because of our experience with objects, we can recognise human-designed ones, comparing for example a pile of stones and a brick wall. But in order to point to a designed Universe, we would need to have an experience of a range of different universes. As we only experience one, the analogy cannot be applied. We must ask therefore if it is right to compare the world to a machine — as in Paley's watchmaker argument — when perhaps it would be better described as a giant inert animal. William Paley (July 1743 &ndash 25 May 1805) was a British Christian apologist, Philosopher, and utilitarian. The watchmaker analogy, or watchmaker Argument, is a Teleological argument for the Existence of God.
3. Even if the design argument is completely successful, it could not (in and of itself) establish a robust theism; one could easily reach the conclusion that the universe's configuration is the result of some morally ambiguous, possibly unintelligent agent or agents whose method bears only a remote similarity to human design. In this way it could be asked if the designer was God, or further still, who designed the designer?
4. If a well-ordered natural world requires a special designer, then God's mind (being so well-ordered) also requires a special designer. And then this designer would likewise need a designer, and so on ad infinitum. We could respond by resting content with an inexplicably self-ordered divine mind but then why not rest content with an inexplicably self-ordered natural world?
5. Often, what appears to be purpose, where it looks like object X has feature F in order to secure some outcome O, is better explained by a filtering process: that is, object X wouldn't be around did it not possess feature F, and outcome O is only interesting to us as a human projection of goals onto nature. This mechanical explanation of teleology anticipated natural selection. Teleology ( Greek: telos: end purpose is the philosophical study of design and Purpose. Natural selection is the process by which favorable Heritable traits become more common in successive Generations of a Population of (see also Anthropic principle)
6. The design argument does not explain pain, suffering, and natural disasters. In Physics and Cosmology, the anthropic principle states that humans should take into account the constraints that human existence imposes on the kind of theoretical

Political theory

The Utilitarianism series, part of the Politics series
Utilitarian Thinkers Jeremy Bentham John Stuart Mill Henry Sidgwick Peter Singer Forms preference utilitarianism rule utilitarianism act utilitarianism Two-level utilitarianism Total utilitarianism Average utilitarianism Negative utilitarianism animal welfare Abolitionism (bioethics) Hedonism Enlightened self-interest Predecessors Epicurus David Hume William Godwin Key concepts Pain Suffering Pleasure Utility Happiness Eudaimonia Consequentialism Felicific calculus Problems Mere addition paradox Paradox of hedonism Utility monster See Also Rational choice theory Game theory Social choice Economics
Portal:Politics

Many regard David Hume as a political conservative, sometimes calling him the first conservative philosopher. Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall Utility, that is its contribution to happiness Politics Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions This is an incomplete list of advocates of Utilitarianism. John Austin Jeremy Bentham Richard Brandt Jeremy Bentham ( IPA: or) (15 February 1748&ndash6 June 1832 was an English Jurist, Philosopher, and legal and Social reformer John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 &ndash 8 May 1873 British Philosopher, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential Henry Sidgwick ( May 31, 1838 – August 28, 1900) was an English Utilitarian Philosopher. Peter Albert David Singer (born July 6, 1946 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) is an Australian philosopher. Preference utilitarianism is quite probably the most popular form of Utilitarianism in contemporary philosophy Rule utilitarianism is a form of Utilitarianism which states that moral actions are those which conform to the rules which lead to the greatest good or that "the rightness Act utilitarianism is a Utilitarian theory of Ethics which states that the morally right action is the one which produces the greatest amount of happiness for the Two-level utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of Ethics developed by R All proponents of Utilitarianism believe that the quality of conscious experience is important indeed it is the basis of their consequentialist approach to Ethics All proponents of Utilitarianism believe that the quality of conscious experience is important indeed it is the basis of their consequentialist approach to Ethics Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall Utility, that is its contribution to happiness Animal welfare refers to the viewpoint that it is morally acceptable for humans to use nonhuman animals for food in animal research, as clothing and in entertainment Abolitionism is a Bioethical school and movement which proposes the use of Biotechnology to maximize Happiness and minimize Suffering while Hedonism is the Philosophy that Pleasure is of ultimate importance, the most important pursuit Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in Ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to William Godwin ( 3 March 1756 &ndash 7 April 1836) was an English journalist political philosopher and Novelist Pain, in the sense of physical pain, is a typical sensory experience that may be described as the unpleasant awareness of a noxious stimulus or bodily harm Suffering, or pain, is an individual's basic Affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm Pleasure is commonly conceptualized as a positive experience Happiness, Entertainment, Enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria, but is hard In Economics, utility is a measure of the relative satisfaction from or desirability of Consumption of various Goods and services. Happiness is an Emotion associated with feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to Bliss and intense Joy. Eudaimonia ( Greek:) is a classical Greek word commonly translated as ' Happiness ' Consequentialism refers to those moral theories which hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action The felicific calculus is an Algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham for calculating the degree or amount of Pleasure The mere addition paradox is a problem in Ethics, identified by Derek Parfit, and appearing in his book Reasons and Persons. The paradox of Hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox, is the idea in the study of Ethics which points out that Pleasure and Happiness The utility monster is a Thought experiment in the study of Ethics. Rational choice theory, also known as rational action theory, is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behavior Game theory is a branch of Applied mathematics that is used in the Social sciences (most notably Economics) Biology, Engineering, Social choice theory studies voting rules that govern and describe how individual preferences are aggregated to form a collective preference Economics is the social science that studies the production distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Conservatism is a term used to describe political philosophies that favour Tradition, where tradition refers to various religious cultural or nationally defined This is not strictly accurate, if the term conservative is understood in any modern sense. His thought contains elements that are, in modern terms, both conservative and liberal, as well as ones that are both contractarian and utilitarian, though these terms are all anachronistic. Social contract describes a broad class of republican theories whose subjects are implied agreements by which people form Nations and maintain a Social order Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall Utility, that is its contribution to happiness His central concern is to show the importance of the rule of law, and stresses throughout his political Essays the importance of moderation in politics. He thinks that society is best governed by a general and impartial system of laws, based principally on the "artifice" of contract; he is less concerned about the form of government that administers these laws, so long as it does so fairly (though he thought that republics were more likely to do so than monarchies).

Hume expressed suspicion of attempts to reform society in ways that departed from long-established custom, and he counselled people not to resist their governments except in cases of the most egregious tyranny. In modern usage a tyrant is a single ruler holding absolute power over a State or within an Organization. However, he resisted aligning himself with either of Britain's two political parties, the Whigs and the Tories, and he believed that we should try to balance our demands for liberty with the need for strong authority, without sacrificing either. The Whigs (with the Tories) are often described as one of two political parties in England and later the United Kingdom from the late 17th to In the political tradition of some English-speaking countries, the term Tory has referred to a variety of political parties and Creeds since it was He supported liberty of the press, and was sympathetic to democracy, when suitably constrained. Freedom Constitutional or statutory protections pertaining to freedom of the press Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is held completely by the people under a free electoral system It has been argued that he was a major inspiration for James Madison's writings, and the Federalist No. 10 in particular. James Madison Jr (March 16 1751 – June 28 1836 was an American Politician, the fourth President of the United States (1809–1817 and one of the Founding Federalist No 10 ( Federalist Number 10) is an Essay by James Madison and the tenth of the Federalist Papers, a series arguing He was also, in general, an optimist about social progress, believing that, thanks to the economic development that comes with the expansion of trade, societies progress from a state of "barbarism" to one of "civilisation". Civilised societies are open, peaceful and sociable, and their citizens are as a result much happier. It is therefore not fair to characterise him, as Leslie Stephen did, as favouring "that stagnation which is the natural ideal of a skeptic". Sir Leslie Stephen, KCB (28 November 1832 &ndash 22 February 1904 was an English author critic and mountaineer and the father of Virginia Woolf and In ordinary usage skepticism or scepticism ( Greek 'σκέπτομαι' skeptomai, to look about to consider see also spelling differences (Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co. , 1876), vol. 2, 185. )

Though it has been suggested Hume had no positive vision of the best society, he in fact produced an essay titled Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, which lays out what he thought was the best form of government. His pragmatism shone through, however, in his caveat that we should only seek to implement such a system should an opportunity present itself which would not upset established structures. He defended a strict separation of powers, decentralisation, extending the franchise to anyone who held property of value and limiting the power of the clergy. Separation of powers, a term ascribed to French Enlightenment Political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu, is a model for the Governance __FORCETOC__ Decentralization or Decentralisation (see Spelling differences) is the process of dispersing Decision-making governance closer to the people Suffrage (from the Latin suffragium, meaning "voting tablet" and figuratively "right to vote" probably from suffrago "hough" and originally Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given Religion. The Swiss militia system was proposed as the best form of protection. Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary Citizens to provide defense emergency law enforcement or Paramilitary service Elections were to take place on an annual basis and representatives were to be unpaid.

Contributions to economic thought

Through his discussions on politics, Hume developed many ideas that are prevalent in the field of economics. This includes ideas on private property, inflation, and foreign trade.

Hume does not believe, as Locke does, that private property is a natural right, but he argues that it is justified since resources are limited. Property is any physical or virtual entity that is owned by an individual If all goods were unlimited and available freely, then private property would not be justified, but instead becomes an "idle ceremonial". Hume also believed in unequal distribution of property, since perfect equality would destroy the ideas of thrift and industry, which leads to impoverishment.

Hume did not believe that foreign trade produced specie, but considered trade a stimulus for a country’s economic growth. He did not consider the volume of world trade as fixed because countries can feed off their neighbors' wealth, being part of a "prosperous community". The fall in foreign demand is not that fatal, because in the long run, a country cannot preserve a leading trading position.

Hume was among the first to develop automatic price-specie flow, an idea that contrasts with the mercantile system. The Price-specie-Flow Mechanism is a logical mechanism created by David Hume which dispelled the Mercantilist (1700-1776 notion that a nation can have a continuously Mercantilism is the idea that a colony should export more goods than it imports and that a colony should sell at higher prices and buy at lower prices Simply put, when a country increases its in-flow of gold, this in-flow of gold will result in price inflation, and then price inflation will force out countries from trading that would have traded before the inflation. This results in a decrease of the in-flow of gold in the long run.

Hume also proposed a theory of beneficial inflation. He believed that increasing the money supply would raise production in the short run. This phenomenon would be caused by a gap between the increase in the money supply and that of the price level. The result is that prices will not rise at first and may not rise at all. This theory was later developed by John Maynard Keynes. John Maynard Keynes 1st Baron Keynes CB (ˈkeɪnz "cains" (5 June 1883 &ndash 21 April 1946 was a British Economist whose ideas

Works

• A Kind of History of My Life (1734) Mss 23159 National Library of Scotland.

A letter to an unnamed physician, asking for advice about "the Disease of the Learned" that then afflicted him. Here he reports that at the age of eighteen "there seem'd to be open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought… " which made him "throw up every other Pleasure or Business" and turned him to scholarship.

• A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. A Treatise of Human Nature is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, first published in 1739 – 1740. (1739–40)

Hume intended to see whether the Treatise met with success, and if so to complete it with books devoted to Politics and Criticism. However, it did not meet with success (as Hume himself said, "It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots"), and so was not completed.

• An Abstract of a Book lately Published: Entitled A Treatise of Human Nature etc. (1740)

Anonymously published, but almost certainly written by Hume in an attempt to popularise his Treatise. Of considerable philosophical interest, because it spells out what he considered "The Chief Argument" of the Treatise, in a way that seems to anticipate the structure of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.

• Essays Moral and Political (first ed. 1741–2)

A collection of pieces written and published over many years, though most were collected together in 1753-4. Many of the essays are focused on topics in politics and economics, though they also range over questions of aesthetic judgement, love, marriage and polygamy, and the demographics of ancient Greece and Rome, to name just a few of the topics considered. The Essays show some influence from Addison's Tatler and The Spectator, which Hume read avidly in his youth. Joseph Addison (May 1 1672 – June 17 1719 was an English essayist and Poet. The Spectator was a daily publication of 1711 &ndash 12, founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in England after they met at

• A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh: Containing Some Observations on a Specimen of the Principles concerning Religion and Morality, said to be maintain'd in a Book lately publish'd, intituled A Treatise of Human Nature etc. Edinburgh (1745).

Contains a letter written by Hume to defend himself against charges of atheism and scepticism, while applying for a Chair at Edinburgh University.

• An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Contains reworking of the main points of the Treatise, Book 1, with the addition of material on free will (adapted from Book 2), miracles, the Design Argument, and mitigated scepticism. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish Empiricist and Philosopher David Hume, published in 1748

• Of Miracles

section X of the Enquiry, often published separately

• An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)

A reworking of material from Book 3 of the Treatise, on morality, but with a significantly different emphasis. " Of Miracles " is the title of Section X of David Hume 's An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748 An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is a book by Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume. Hume regarded this as the best of all his philosophical works, both in its philosophical ideas and in its literary style.

• Political Discourses, (part II of Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary within vol. Essays Moral Political and Literary (1758 is a two volume compilation of essays by David Hume. 1 of the larger Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects) Edinburgh (1752).

Included in Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1753–6) reprinted 1758–77.

• Four Dissertations London (1757). Four Dissertations is a collection of four essays by the Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume, first published in 1757

Included in reprints of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (above).

• The History of England (Originally titled The History of Great Britain) (1754–62) Freely available in six vols. from the On Line Library of Liberty. [8]

More a category of books than a single work, Hume's history spanned "from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688" and went through over 100 editions. Many considered it the standard history of England until Thomas Macaulay's History of England.

• The Natural History of Religion (1757) ISBN 0-8047-0333-7
• "My Own Life" (1776)

Penned in April, shortly before his death, this autobiography was intended for inclusion in a new edition of "Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects". It was first published by Adam Smith who claimed that by doing so he had incurred "ten times more abuse than the very violent attack I had made upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain". Adam Smith ( baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of Political economy. (Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume)

• Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Published posthumously by his nephew, David Hume the Younger. Ernest Campbell Mossner was an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical work written by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Being a discussion among three fictional characters concerning arguments for the existence of God, most importantly the argument from design. Despite some controversy, most scholars agree that the view of Philo, the most skeptical of the three, comes closest to Hume's own. [9]

Hume's Influence

Attention to Hume's philosophical works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumbers" (circa 1770). Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. Immanuel Kant (ɪmanuəl kant 22 April 1724 12 February 1804 was an 18th-century German Philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg

According to Schopenhauer, "There is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart, and Schleiermacher taken together. Johann Friedrich Herbart ( May 4, 1776 - August 11, 1841) was a German Philosopher, Psychologist, and founder Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (ˈʃlaɪɐmaxɐ ( November 21, 1768 &ndash February 12, 1834) was a German theologian "^[60]

A. J. Ayer (1936), introducing his classic exposition of logical positivism, claimed: "the views which are put forward in this treatise derive from the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume". Sir Alfred Jules ("Freddie" Ayer ( October 29, 1910 &ndash June 27, 1989) better known as A In Philosophy, empiricism is a theory of Knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from Experience. ^[61] Albert Einstein (1915) wrote that he was inspired by Hume's positivism when formulating his Special Theory of Relativity. Albert Einstein ( German: ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n; English: ˈælbɝt ˈaɪnstaɪn (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955 was a German -born theoretical Special relativity (SR (also known as the special theory of relativity or STR) is the Physical theory of Measurement in Inertial Hume was called "the prophet of the Wittgensteinian revolution" by N. Phillipson, referring to his view that mathematics and logic are closed systems, disguised tautologies, and have no relation to the world of experience. ^[62] David Fate Norton (1993) asserted that Hume was "the first post-sceptical philosopher of the early modern period". ^[63]

See also

• Hume's principle
• Hume's Law
• The Missing Shade of Blue
• Liberalism
• Contributions to liberal theory
• Hume's fork
• Scientific skepticism
• Age of reason
• Human science

Further reading

• Ardal, Pall (1966). Hume's Principle, or HP —the terms were coined by George Boolos &mdashsays that the number of F s is equal to the number of G s if there is a In Meta-ethics, the is-ought problem was raised by David Hume ( Scottish Philosopher and Historian, 1711 &ndash The Missing Shade of Blue is an example introduced by the Scottish philosopher David Hume to show that it is at least conceivable that the mind can generate an idea Liberalism is a broad array of related ideas and theories of Government that consider individual Liberty to be the most important political goal This is a partial list of individual contributions to liberal political theory on a worldwide scale In Philosophy, Hume's fork is a distinction drawn by David Hume between two different areas of human study All the objects of human reason Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism ( also spelled scepticism) sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a scientific or practical Human science (also moral science and human sciences as typical in the UK is a term applied to the investigation of human life and activities by a Rational Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
• Ernest Campbell Mossner. The Life of David Hume. Oxford University Press, 1980. (The standard biography. )
• Peter Millican. Critical Survey of the Literature on Hume and his First Enquiry. (Surveys around 250 books and articles on Hume and related topics. ) [10]
• David Fate Norton. David Hume: Commonsense Moralist, Skeptical Metaphysician. Princeton University Press, 1978.
• Garrett, Don (1996). Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy. New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• J. C. A. Gaskin. Hume's Philosophy of Religion. Humanities Press International, 1978.
• Norman Kemp Smith. The Philosophy of David Hume. Macmillan, 1941. (Still enormously valuable. )
• Frederick Rosen, Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (Routledge Studies in Ethics & Moral Theory), 2003. Routledge is a publisher of non-fiction academic books and journals ISBN 0415220947
• Russell, Paul (1995). Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Russell, Paul (2008). The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Stroud, B. (1977). Hume, Routledge, London & New York. (Complete study of Hume's work parting from the interpretation of Hume's naturalistic philosophical programme).
• Hesselberg, A. Kenneth (1961). Hume, Natural Law and Justice. Duquesne Review
• Rothbard, Murray Newton (1982) The Ethics of Liberty (Full Text / Audio Book) ISBN 0-8147-7559-4. The Ethics of Liberty, by American economist and historian Murray N

Footnotes and references

Footnotes

References

External links

• Online editions of Hume's work:
  • David Hume at the Online Library of Liberty
  • Works by David Hume at Project Gutenberg
  • A Treatise of Human Nature, available at Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works
  • The History of England, Volume I, available at Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works
  • An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, available at Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, available at Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works
  • Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, available at Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works
  • Works by David Hume in audio format at LibriVox
  • Books by David Hume at the Online Books Page
  • David Hume: The Complete Works at DaveMcKay. LibriVox is a Digital library of free Public domain Audiobooks read by Volunteers The project started in August 2005 and as of 2008-09-14 The Online Books Page is an index of E-text books available on the Internet. co. uk
• English Men of Letters: Hume, available at Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works , biography and discussion of Hume by T.H. Huxley
• David Hume resources including books, articles, and encyclopedia entries
• Hume Society, an international scholarly society
• David Hume at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hume's Aesthetics at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hume's Moral Philosophy at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hume on Religionat the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hume on Free Will at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• David Hume at James Boswell - a Guide
• 'Easier-to-read' versions of some of Hume's works by Jonathan Bennett
• David Hume Bibliography
• A Bibliography of Hume's Early Writings and Early Responses
• "A play reading at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe regarding Humes life and legacy"
• A podcast interview of Stewart Sutherland discussing Hume on the Argument from Design
• A podcast interview of Peter Millican discussing Hume's Significance
• 'The Empiricist Turn', a lecture on Hume's arguments against the existence of God given by Professor Keith Ward at Gresham College, 14th February 2008 [available for free audio, video or text download]. Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895 was an English Biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP is a freely-accessible Online encyclopedia of Philosophy maintained by Stanford University. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP is a freely-accessible Online encyclopedia of Philosophy maintained by Stanford University. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP is a freely-accessible Online encyclopedia of Philosophy maintained by Stanford University. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP is a freely-accessible Online encyclopedia of Philosophy maintained by Stanford University. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP is a freely-accessible Online encyclopedia of Philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Jonathan F Bennett (born 1930 Westport New Zealand) is a British Philosopher of language and Metaphysics, and a historian The Reverend Professor (John Stephen Keith Ward (born 22 August 1938) is a British cleric philosopher theologian and scholar Gresham College is an unusual institution of higher learning off Holborn in central London.

Persondata
NAME	Hume, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Scottish philosopher, economist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH	April 26, 1711(1711-04-26)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Edinburgh, Scotland
DATE OF DEATH	August 25, 1776
PLACE OF DEATH	Edinburgh, Scotland

Events 1467 - The miraculous image in Our Lady of Good Counsel appear in Genazzano, Italy. Year 1711 ( MDCCXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Edinburgh ( ˈɛdɪnb(ərə Dùn Èideann) is the Capital of Scotland and is its second largest city after Glasgow. Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. Events 1248 - The Dutch city of Ommen receives city rights and fortification rights from Otto III the Year 1776 ( MDCCLXXVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Edinburgh ( ˈɛdɪnb(ərə Dùn Èideann) is the Capital of Scotland and is its second largest city after Glasgow. Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain.

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