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Questions tagged [hume]

David Hume is a 18th century philosopher and contemporary of Immanuel Kant. He is best known for his skeptics views, empirical analysis, and naturalist positions.

David Hume was a 18th century philosopher and contemporary of Immanuel Kant. He is best known for his skepticism , empirical analysis, and naturalist positions.

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What did David Hume mean when he said that "reason is a slave to the passions"?

I don't understand the meaning of this oft-quoted quotation of Hume's in On Reason, namely his saying that "reason is a slave to the passions." What exactly does he mean by that ? Is it simply that reason is subsequent to a deeper moral sense? Is…
Uticensis
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Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?

So there's this supposedly an 'interaction' problem for substance dualism, that isn't there for physicalism or idealism. I've never understood this. So as Hume pointed out, we see event a followed by event b. We don't see a link connecting event a…
Ameet Sharma
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Is Hume's Fork self-refuting?

David Hume wrote: If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter…
Ben
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Did Putnam prove Hume wrong about the impossiblity of grounds for ethical claims?

Hume's argument in A Treatise of Human Nature that we can't derive normative judgments from descriptive statements is well known. Recently one of my teachers said that Putnam proved Hume wrong by showing that ethical judgments are in fact connected…
Gabriel
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Why isn't existence a predicate?

According to SEP There are two sets of reasons for denying that existence is a property of individuals. The first is Hume and Kant's puzzlement over what existence would add to an object. What is the difference between a red apple and a red…
Mozibur Ullah
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Is the notion in Hume that you cannot deduce an "ought" from "is" related to his assertion that reason must be the servant of the passions?

I hear it asserted that David Hume said one cannot deduce an "ought" from an "is". I also find it asserted that he said reason must be only the servant of the passions. I had long uncritically thought that the argument was: one cannot deduce an…
Michael Hardy
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Does Karl Popper's work address the Principle of Uniformity of Nature?

It seems to me that Popper's solution does not address the more difficult problem of induction that Hume calls the Principle of Uniformity of Nature. In other words, we might find evidence against a scientific claim not because it was incorrect…
Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
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How can I know that I am not immortal?

You think that you will die just because everyone dies. And you would like to know if you are immortal. How can you know if you are immortal or not?
Pratik Deoghare
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Did the Logical Positivists accept synthetic a priori knowledge?

My understanding of Logical Positivists is that, following Wittgenstein, they accepted only 2 types of proposition as meaningful: Propositions based on formal logic (i.e. tautologies) Empirically verifiable statements It seems to me that these…
Alexander S King
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How does Kant respond to Hume's problem of induction?

It's generally well-known that Kant was responding, amongst other influences, to Hume's critique of the empirical method on purely logical grounds. One could consider him as a modern-day Pyrrhonniste. The problem of induction is sourced from a brief…
Mozibur Ullah
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Hume on infinity

I know Hume argued against dividing finite space into infinitely many regions, but I can't seem to find anything regarding his thoughts on infinity itself. From his Enquiry you sort of get that he thinks it is not productive to talk about the…
Andrei Buruntia
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Why do we need a reason for believing that inductive method is necessarily true?

I've been a bit perplexed about the "problem" of induction. Hume challenges other philosophers to come up with a deductive reason for the inductive connection. If the justification of induction cannot be deductive, then it would beg the…
Annotations
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What is the contrast between Hume's and Locke's philosophies of science?

I'm writing an essay on Hume and was hoping to contrast his empiricism to Locke's in it. I have come across a commentary, which doesn't go into great depth; could someone explain it in a little greater detail to me? "Hume's method proceeds from…
Maths That Imo
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Is number π empirical or a priori?

I used the example of π, but this applies to other transcendental numbers as well, such as e Kant classified statements into 4 epistemic categories based on two criteria: The Analytic/Synthetic distinction (Are statements true by definition or do we…
Alexander S King
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What is the difference between correlation and causation?

What is the difference between correlation and causation? Pirates and Global Temperature Example For example, how do we know when we're dealing with correlation only and not also causation here? more examples: SpuriousCorrelations.com What Certain…
Geremia
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