OhioLINK History of Philosophy Website
Professor Gayle Ormiston
Section V: Skeptical Solution to these Doubts
1. According to DH, the passion for philosophy might lead to what/
2. What is a skeptic according to Hume?
3. How is skepticism a remedy for the malady identified in #1 above?
4. AT least three times, Hume says "custom...is the great guide of life." He also says that "all inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not or reasoning" (see 58, 57, and the "Abstract")
5. What is the difference between reason and custom?
6. What is the link between custom and genereal principles or maxims derived from experience. For help, see pp. 58-59, the note.
7. belief=?
belief + custom=?Now: say eactly what are the links for Hume between belief, imagination, custom, and fiction--in spite their differences?imagination=?
ficiton=?
8. Again: What are the three principles of the connection of ideas?
resemblanceThe other name given to these principles is what?
contiguity
casuation
Section VI: Of Probability
1. Chance is to probability what necessity is to
.
probability would be compared to what? for Hume probability is linked to
matters of fact2. What leads us to move from post to future?relations of ideas
3. What has probability to do with experience? reasoning?
Section VII: Of Necessary Connection
The great advantage of the mathematical sciences above the moral sciences consists in this, that the ideas of the former, being sensible, are always clear and determinate, the smallest distinction between them is immediately preceptible, and the same terms are still expressive of the same ideas without ambiguity or variation....The isosceles and scalenum are distinguished by boundaries more exact than vice and virtue, right and wrong....But the finer sentiments of the mind, the operations of the understanding, the various agitations of the passions, though really in themselves distinct, easily escape us when surveyed by reflection, nor is it in our power to recall the original object as often as we have occasion to contemplate it. Ambiguity, by this means, is rgadually introduced into our reasonings: similar objects are readily taken to be the same, and the conclusion becomes at last very wide of the premises (72).1. What is necessary connection? and has it to do with the moral sciences or human nature?
2. complex ideas=? How does Hume differ from Locke and Berkeley? How does he resemble Locke and Berkeley on abstract ideas?
3. Why is necessary connection a fiction in Hume's eyes?
When we look about us toward external objects and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connection, any quality which binds the effect to the cause and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. WE only find that the one does actually in fact follow the other. The impulse of one billiard ball is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that appears to the outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this succession of objects; consequently, there is not, in any single particular instance of cause and effect, anything which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connection (74-75).
power, necessary connection, force, energy are ideas of reflection (see 76).
the idea of power "is not copied from any sentiment or consciousness of power within ourselves when we give rise to animal motion or apply our limbs to their power and office" (78).
4. Now, a more general question, that is some ways relates to skepticism and the issues discussed in The Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
How do the absence of necessary connection, the association of ideas, and constant conjunction permit Hume to explain the variety of beliefs expressed regarding, e.g., the existence of a Deity, order, design, telology?
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