Knowledge and Reality
Following in the footsteps of certain preceding philosophers, David Hume engaged in a form of philosophical thought that was strictly empirical and skeptical (Fieser 2017). In this sense, in regards to epistemology, Hume was a proponent of the belief that knowledge is nothing more than interpretation and that reality is unknowable but for the limited capacities of human perceptions. As one of the preeminent philosophers of skepticism, Hume was adamant in his belief that notions of absolute knowledge were inherently flawed—that belief must be supported by reason (and justification) to make up for shortcomings in the accuracy of sensation—and was severely criticized for these beliefs on the merits of both philosophy and theology.
Hume’s unique brand of philosophy was created from a mixture of an empirical foundation with a skeptical approach: the external world is only understood through the processes of human perception and sensation; however, human perception is itself an imperfect method by which to determine the nature of the external world. Professor of philosophy David Truncellito (2017) refers to this brand of epistemology as “Humean” and describes it quite simply: “my senses can tell me how things appear, but not how they actually are.” The nature of “Humean” epistemology is that sensation alone does not justify the truth of what is perceived, thus requiring reason to provide such justification in the absence of accurate information. Yet, following his nature as a skeptic, Hume also argues that due to the limitations in scope and magnitude of human sense perceptions reason can only go so far in arguing for any truth of the external world.
Hume’s belief in the impossibility of true perception of reality can be seen in Truncellito’s (2017) examples of his criticisms of (1) the equivocation of object identity and (2) the inductive nature of believing in the uniformity of objects’ existences. In the first, Hume argues that the belief of the continuance of objects equivocates the similarity (the perceived identical nature) of separate perceptions of an object with the identical nature of the object itself. By considering this a fallacious argument, he argues that the flawed nature of sense perception renders the truth of reality unattainable without an argument from reason to justify what is believed about the object. In the second, Hume argues that such a belief seems to spawn from an assumption that the external world is inherently uniform, thus perceptions are dictated by the presupposition that what has happened in the past will continue to happen in the future and that what has been perceived to happen “here” is also what would happen “there.” As this is an argument of induction rather than deduction, there must be further reasoning to justify the assumption of nature’s uniformity; without that reasoning, the argument becomes cyclical in justifying itself: “nature has always been uniform and we assume what has happened in the past will happen in the future (the very premise that the argument is trying to justify!), thus nature will continue to be uniform.”
However, his belief can be seen more simply in the skeptical approach he took towards space, time, and causality. Hume tended to approach these philosophical topics by noting how perceptions are inadequate as determinants and then explaining how reason (ideas/thoughts) can show a limited idea of the subjects (Fieser 2017). Following closely behind Locke’s ideas, he considers all three concepts to be “secondary qualities” that depend on the perceptions of the spectator rather than an inherent “primary quality” of reality. Space is derived from the sight and touch of the spectator: what can be seen and touched is relatively finite, but reason interprets the impression of those objects and extrapolates them into the idea of space. Time is derived from the fixed speed by which the mind operates: occurrences do not influence the “speed” of thought, but reason interprets that fixed speed of thought as an effect of the occurrences to create the idea of time. Causality is derived from “priority in time, proximity in space, and necessary connection”: the nature of cause and effect relies on the order in which an occurrence happened and whether or not they were close enough for a relationship to be determined, but the necessary connection that truly connects the cause to the effect is not based on any sensation, only the expectation that a certain cause will create another certain effect, resulting in the idea of causality. Hume’s positions on each of these philosophical topics clearly express the empirical and skeptical nature of his view on knowledge and reality.
The question then becomes whether his view provides an adequate conceptual scheme for understanding the world. Although it might prove limited in some aspects, Hume’s position serves appropriately to understand an inaccessible external world. There are two ways that this can be argued:
For the first, whether it is objectively (used loosely) adequate. Dr. Payne notes the relatively similarity between conceptual schemes and theories; thus, the adequacy conditions for the latter apply just as well to the former. Those adequacy conditions are as follows: consistency, simplicity, completeness, interconnectivity, and integration (Payne, 2014, p. 81). Under these conditions, Hume’s view lines up quite well. The simplicity of its premises goes a long ways towards proving its adequacy because the arguments that it spawns end up being very consistent. That is to say, many views that were contemporary to Hume’s own were influenced heavily by religion and often had to compromise between philosophy and theology. Hume’s empiricism and skepticism applied to every situation, including and especially in regards to arguments of religion, and thus ensured that his own arguments were consistent and interconnected.
Additionally, by applying such stringent skepticism to religious belief, he also ensured further simplicity and completeness to his view: much of religious thought was elusive, highly interpretable, and exceptional (in the sense of being unexplainable by grounded thought), but by applying skepticism he forced those elusive ideas to be grounded in basic philosophical thought, resulting in a much simpler and all-encompassing perspective on their natures—oftentimes proving how poorly they applied to anything other than fanciful delusions.
The second argument towards his view’s efficacy in regards to understanding the world is its acceptance of the divide between what is perceived and what is and the divide between what is believed and what is true. The first relates to the conception that reality is viewed through perceptional lenses that skew the “truth” of reality, showing that Hume had remarkable insight towards a form of epistemology that was far from popular at the time. The second relates to the beliefs belonging to people and whether or not they were adequately justified with reason. This is an important distinction because it ensures that the beliefs formed from the imagination are adequately justified before being presented as anything even close to the truth.
In the modern world of philosophy, those aspects of Hume’s view show strong evidence that his conceptual scheme is appropriate to understanding the world, as it is perceived and as it really is. It follows the conventions of conceptual schemes that could be considered as proper means of approaching understanding the world and also falls in line with fundamental beliefs of modern philosophy that, if they were not present in the conceptual scheme, would make that approach to understanding the world require significant circumvention of current consensus. While it can prove limited in some ways by leading to certain contradictions, as Hume himself notes, it is no more constrained by this limitation than most philosophical beliefs. Overall, his view provides a remarkably acceptable conceptual scheme for understanding the world, meeting conditions, adhering to modern standards, and all while having been extremely controversial in a religiously dominated time period.