1. David Hume (1711-1776) “The Wrecking Ball”

2. Hume’s Work A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-49)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

3. In Context… The Enlightenment (late17th-late 18th Century)
REASON
The significance of Newton

4. Empiricism
Regards observation as the only reliable source of knowledge
Sense perception is the only reliable method for gaining knowledge and for testing claims to knowledge

5. British Empiricism Francis Bacon (1561-1626) John Locke (1632-1704)
“Tabula Rasa”
George Berkeley ( )
Characteristics
Anti-Cartesian
NOT metaphysical
Purely epistemological
Two questions:
How do you know?
What are the limits of knowledge?

6. Hume: “WE HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE”
We only have PERCEPTIONS (beliefs which we feel are true)
IMPRESSIONS: immediate sensations
Simple and complex
IDEAS: copies of impressions
No impression = No idea

7. All we know are properties
We don’t know that an apple exists; we just know its properties
Round
Red
Tasty
Try to imagine something that has no properties
YOU CAN’T!
We can’t know objects, only their properies
This is called Bundle Theory

8. The Problem with Causality
We can never know cause
We can only know custom or habit

9. Hume’s Conclusions
Reason can never discover the nature, purpose, or plan of the world.
We have no knowledge of the material world.
We can never know causes and effects in the material world.
Metaphysics is a pointless pursuit

10. Hume introduces Phenomenalism
The view that we have no rational knowledge beyond what is disclosed in the phenomena of perceptions. Mind is therefore a merely a collection of perceptions.