Journal of Interdisciplinary Cycle Research ISSN NO: 0022-1945
Empiricism and Skepticism: An Overview of Hume Philosophy
Sandeep Sharma
Lecturer in Philosophy
Government Degree College, Akhnoor
ABSTRACT
The present paper has attempted to give insight about Hume philosophical ideas about empiricism and skepticism. It is because of the metaphysical as well as the epistemological uncertainty, which developed due to giving undue importance to innate principles accepted by modern rationalist; utmost importance is started given to the experience. But, what happens when experience itself push you in the field of skepticism. Empiricist believes that reason is not sufficient to explore the nature of ultimate reality. Therefore, Empiricism as an epistemological school develops in reaction to rationalism. Their primary aim was to take philosophy at zenith, as they accepting empiricism as a scientific approach as well as philosophical techniques to philosophizing. Empiricism came into existence with Locke, who survives with Berkeley and culminates in the writing of Hume. It is Hume who gave us the world view of empiricism as a system of philosophical enquiry, by limiting everything to experience which he has tried well to show how everything’s end up in skepticism. Focusing on this piece of writing the present paper has put light on the empiricism as a tool of philosophical inquiry and also its limitation which Hume has focused upon.
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KEYWORDS: Empiricism, Skepticism, Knowledge, Causation, Impression, Ideas, Relation, Experience
INTRODUCTION
The epistemological turn in modern western philosophy attained a new height with the introduction of Locke’s work ‘The Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, where he explains the foundational doctrines of the empiricist school of philosophy. In the beginning, he was influenced by Descartes, but later condemned his philosophical ideas and developed the foundations of empiricism. The concept of empiricism given by Locke became a very vital and influential philosophical thought during the modern period. Locke begins his philosophical journey with this simple question how knowledge is obtained? He also tried to show the importance of experience in the formation of knowledge. He has uncovered some fundamental flaws of the rationalist tradition, which stresses on knowledge that is gained by the mind a priori. With his stress on sensations and reflections, Locke initiates a new beginning in philosophy that makes empirical observation and experience at the center stage.
Locke philosophy ends up in realism and Berkeley ends up in subjective idealism. These both philosophical positions are not logically defendable by accepting experience as the sole source of knowledge. Interesting points in these philosophical views is that they are not pure empiricist philosophers as they fail to deny the importance of reason. One of the fundamental assumptions of empiricist school is the belief that knowledge is linked with the ideas the mind has. Locke thought that there exists a world outside our mind from where we get ideas through sensations. It can be seen in the Locke's classification of knowledge into empirical, intuitive and demonstrative knowledge. Realism being a philosophical position surpasses experience as a source of knowledge and it is more grounded in reason rather than experience. The coming into being of idealism out of empiricism is also challengeable; this is the only reason G. E. Moore challenged Berkeley's famous dictum 'Esse est percepi', and Moore in his simple argument proposed that, Berkeley failed to make the distinction between subject and object. The distinction between subject and object as clearly known to us by experience but Berkeley failed to recognize it and gave the world idealism which is untenable..
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When it comes to Hume, he has a clear plan as compare to his empiricist predecessors. Locke and Berkeley focused more on building a theory of knowledge rather than exploring the principles which help us to acquire that knowledge. Therefore they simply declared that everything is known to us by experience. But, unlike both, Hume gave more importance to principles of knowledge than knowledge itself. This is the only reason Hume chooses to begin with critically examining these basic questions like, how knowledge originated, and also explore the very possibility of knowledge. Therefore, along with his own vision of knowledge, Hume also accepts the empirical theory of the origin of knowledge proposed by Locke and also Berkeley’s doctrine of ‘Esse Est Percipi’. He deduces from these basic assumptions a radical form of empiricism that makes room for skepticism and even nihilism.
Hume understood that only knowledge which is not founded on observation and experience has no claims to be called as knowledge. For this reason, he undertakes the task of reinterpreting many commonly accepted notions of his time and considered them with great philosophical skills to arrive at the truth about their nature. A very important contribution of Hume in this regard is his reinterpretation of the relations of cause and effects and the problem of induction and interlink between the both. The entire enterprise of Hume’s empiricism exists around impressions and ideas. Only realty is impressions for Hume. Impressions are received through perception and sensation (an experience we get when we see, feel, love, hate, desire, or will anything). According to Hume, impressions are more 'lively' than ideas, by which he seems to mean that they are clearer and more detailed. Ideas are the fainter copies of impressions; we form the idea because of impression. Impressions are distinguished from ideas being livelier and vivid, whereas ideas are the copies of impression. This was his copy principle. All our knowledge is restricted to impressions, if there are no impressions and then there is no idea, so we have nothing to philosophize. There are also no innate ideas as all as accepted by rationalist, as our ideas are copies of impressions. It is impossible for us to have an idea of something which we have not first experienced as an impression. Therefore, formation of all the content of human consciousness in the form of ideas is reduced to impressions.
Hume proposed three types of connections between ideas. There is a secret tie between the ideas. These provide an explanation of how it is that we move from one thought to another. These connections are known as the ‘principle of association’- Resemblance, Contiguity, and
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Causation. Hume believes that once the distinction between impression and ideas is understood and knowledge of the three principles of association of ideas is worked out properly, only then we are able to account for all the working of our conscious mind. Of these three, cause and effect relation is the strongest or philosophical one; in fact, this is the only principle which supports us to go beyond the scope of senses and memory.
Since Hume accepts that nothing exists beyond impressions and ideas; this is how Hume accounts for the relation like cause and effect will worth considering. Hume opines that we can observe the various phenomenon are going around us which seem related to each other. Causation, in simple words, means, to observe two different things occurring in such a close connection that it seems to us that they are connected. For instance, when we sit around the fire we experience its warmth; since Hume is the believers of an impression only. We have an impression of fire, therefore it is the impression of the cause which is the fire in this context, and we have the impression of warmth which is the effect in this regards, so we have the impression of both cause as well as effects but we don't have the impression of the relation between cause and effects. Then how, we can claim for that, as it has been claimed by philosophers. In fact, we cannot have impressions of the relations of cause and effects. Causation is also an idea but from where this idea comes. Hume in his ‘copy principle’ argues that if there is no impression then there is no idea. Causation is a relation that exists between A and B, i.e. cause and effect, we either have the impression of the cause or impression of the effect but we never have the impression of the relationship that exists between cause and effect. Therefore, it is important to argue that if we don’t have a direct impression of the relationship that exists between cause and effect then the knowledge of the causation as relation seems absurd and meaningless when observed from an empirical point of view.
As Hume argues, we observe things happening in connections, and also our bulk of understanding is based on causation. All our thinking about the ‘matter of fact’ involves arguing from known cause to expected effects or from perceived effects to probable cause. This type of reasoning about the future based on past regularities is known as induction. Induction is based on probability and it cannot be considered as Logical or Philosophical. Hume believes that Causation has its ground in the principle of induction. So from the logical point of view, it is also liable to doubt.
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For Hume, we have no absolute, self-evident, or certain knowledge of 'matter of facts'; our knowledge never reaches absolute certainty. We base our conclusions on experience, we believe that the future will be like the past, but we have no absolute assurance that things will not change. However, Hume doesn’t deny the causal relation for his amusement. He also believes that there is some truth hidden in what we call causation. Thus he accepts that there is a connection between the present fact (cause) and that which is inferred from it (effect). But, the nature of this connection is not empirical; rather it is a psychological one. It is not that Hume persuades us to abandon our trust in relations between causes and effects, which is not possible for us nevertheless. Instead, he aimed to show how little our behaviour is dependent on reason, and how much on our customs and habits. He gave utmost importance to customs and instincts as guiding forces to human life. Those who take reason as their master, he seems to suggest, will always end up in confusion. It is customs and habits that guide us through life, not our power of reason.
Going by empiricism, Hume concludes that if our knowledge is limited to impressions and ideas, there is no evidence that all our knowledge about the physical world is caused by the external objects. Hume rejects the notion of substances because we have no idea of a substance but an impression; a substance is entirely different from impressions, therefore we have no idea of a substance. Impression and sensation simply appears and reappears in our experience. There is no way to establish that impression is caused by the external world, therefore, it is possible to doubt upon the existence of such a world at all. Hume goes on rejecting everything that exists beyond the realm of impressions; this is the reason clear cut skepticism is seen in the philosophy of David Hume where he denies the philosophical knowledge of all the metaphysical entities. And particularly about the existence of God, he simply put that it is illusory to assume either a spiritual or a material substance as the cause of our sensation. Thus philosophical knowledge of nothing is possible, no matter whether it is about the external world, mind, or anything subtle. This results in skepticism.
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CONCLUSION
To conclude, in nutshell it can be said that Hume skepticism is the result of his attempt to reduce the experience into the impressions and also the denial of causation as a philosophical principle. Being an empiricist he reduced, experience into ideas and there are no ideas without impression. Cause and effect is a relationship but we have no impression of that relationship, so causation is beyond the limit of experience. So, it is our habit to see things happen after one another. Merely doubt on the certainty of causation as a knowable relation is sufficient to doubt the entire knowledge of the ‘matter of facts’. One thing that he made sure of is, experience alone is not sufficient to unfold various epistemological as well as metaphysical mysteries. And it can be clearly seen in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant where he not only reconciled the reason and experience, instead also bring back causation as the very structure of human consciousness. Unlike Locke and Berkeley, Hume was at least successful in one thing, to defend his position as a pure empiricist philosopher, and it hardly matters that all end up in skepticism.
REFERENCE
1. Kenny, Anthony. An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006. 2. Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy, and its connection with political and social circumstances from the earliest times to the present day. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1961. 3. Scruton, Roger. A Short History of Modern Philosophy, From Descartes to Wittgenstein, 2nd Ed. London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2002. 4. Warburton, Nigel. Philosophy The Classics, 2nd Ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. 5. Creel, Richard E. Thinking Philosophically. USA: Blackwell Publishers Inc, 2001.
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