David Hume
Enlightenment Philosopher
David Hume
Life
David Hume David Hume was born 7 May 1711 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His post secondary education started at age 12, when he entered the University of Edinburgh. He drop out of Edinburgh prior to graduating, to pursue his writing career in writing.
Works
His authorship started in 1738 with his “A Treatise of Human Nature,” and “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” in 1748. His next work “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals” in 1751 bring us the famous “is-ought problem.” His is-ought problem comes a result of his rejecting the idea of universal ideals or standard. As was the case with Aristotle who argued that:
““We have now sufficiently shown that moral virtue consists in observance of a mean, in the sense namely of holding a middle position between two vices. One of which involves excess, the other deficiencies. And also in the sense of being the kind of disposition which aims at the middle point, both in felling and in action. As it is hard to hit the exact mean we ought to choose the lesser of two evils.””
Death
Following and in between his two most influential works, would publish over a dozen other works. The most notable of his lesser know work are perhaps his volumes on The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688 (1754-1762), and his The Life of David Hume.” The former is notable simple based on the comparative scope of the work, and second because it contains a record of correspondence with Adam Smith.
David Hume was himself a nobleman by birth, which helped him to secure several high ranking positions within the British Empire’s regime. Between 1763 and his death in 1776, he held positions as, Secretary to the British embassy in Paris, British Chargé d'affaires, and Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department.
is-ought problem?
With the idea of tending toward the good or toward lawfulness mystified by Aristotle, David Hume’s is-ought problem arises. It arise from the fact that once you assume that standards are arbitrary, you open the door for everything to be qualified as a standard.
Since opinions are generated are more quickly and easily then the truth, overtime they overcome and overwhelm the truth, by virtue of their numbers. In this chaos speculation and opinion, virtually all observable option for standards are of the domain of flattery.
Flattery has no relation to lawful change, in understanding or in practice. In fact, flattery, like in the case of “cosmetics,” seeks not to act lawfully to generate positive changes but instead to mask or disguise the change with illusions.
Flatterers cannot understand lawful change so they must blind the rest of humanity to it. The world is a static place to the flatterer because his power depends on it. And though society decays under his reign, he is unmoved.
With no means or methodology other then carrots or stick to maintain a fixed stable order, they are left with only one seemingly lawful standard; the past. Which begs the question, what happens when you encounter something that has never happened before? Or more precisely, what use is some past mode of action, when faced with unprecedented circumstances?
Because unprecedented circumstances often require unprecedented actions, lack of understanding leads us to a paradox that the is-ought problem aims to solve. Without having any understanding of Ideal Judgment, the is ought problem leads you to a very rational conclusion; just because something is some way doesn’t mean that it ought to be that way.
Seems reasonable enough until you remember that the “is” refers to the standard and that the “ought” refers to lawful change. Recall that all lawful change must reflect the form or the standard, which in turn reflect the universes lawfulness.
The flatterer rejects lawful change and the standard or ideal, as result he creates for himself a static universe where there is no need to measure or understand change because change is disguised or degeneration is masked with flattery.
The universe he creates for himself is a lie that he tries to up hold with another lie, saying since no universal standard can be found in the chaos of flattery’s reign, the standard must be the past, because that is all that we are left with.
We are left with a world and a society that must alternate between chaos and tyrannically enforced peace. Into these condition comes David Hume to free us from the bondage of flatterers standards. This is the prototypical case of throwing the baby out with the bath water, in so far as accepting the conclusions of the is-ought problem forces the victim to abandon the system of ideal judgement altogether.
By accepting the conclusions of the is-ought problem, you are also saying that the first principle cannot survive without the other two. Under such conditions it is easy to contrive an is-ought problem based simply on the futility of trying to derive any lawful measurement from within the chaos.
David Hume Reflecting Gorgias
significant Quotes
“““All of our ideas are nothing but copies of impressions or in other words that it is impossible for us to even think of anything that we have not antecedently felt either by our exterior or interior sense.””
Very much like his forefather Gorgias expressed in his book “On Non-Being,” David Hume did not think very highly of the human capacity to make creative discoveries. Much to the contrary he believed that:
“““But do we pretend to be aquainted with the nature of the human soul or the nature of an idea or the aptitude of the one to produce the other? This would be a real creation. A production of something out of nothing, which would imply a power so great that may seem at first sight, beyond the reach of any being less than infinite. At least it must be owned that such a power in not felt, nor known, nor even conceiveable by the mind. We only feel the event, namely the existance of the idea consequent to a command of the will. But the manner in which it is performed, the power by which it is produced is entirely beyond our comprehension.””
Hume is hero to both atheists and skeptics, perhaps in part because he took a stance against everything considered sacred or holy. He coined the phrase costume and habit. A phrase that builds on the work of Gorgias and Aristotle before him by adding his own twist.
When the principle of ideal judgement was destroyed by way of eliminating universal standards, and laws relating to processes of change, Aristotle replaced the principle with what Gorgias believed that orator could control more effectively that reason could - pleasure and pain - but as David Hume was an innovator, he would replace Aristotle’s pleasure and pain with his own “custom of habit.”
““This principle is Custom or Habit. For wherever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning or process of the understanding, we always say, that this propensity is the effect of Custom. By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects. Perhaps we can push our enquiries no farther, or pretend to give the cause of this cause; but must rest contented with it as the ultimate principle, which we can assign, of all our conclusions from experience. It is sufficient satisfaction, that we can go so far, without repining at the narrowness of our faculties because they will carry us no farther. And it is certain we here advance a very intelligible proposition at least, if not a true one, when we assert that, after the constant conjunction of two objects, heat and flame, for instance, weight and solidity we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other. This hypothesis seems even the only one which explains the difficulty, why we draw, from a thousand instances, an inference which we are not able to draw from one instance, that is, in no respect, different from them. Reason is incapable of any such variation.The conclusions which it draws from considering one circle are the samewhich it would form upon surveying all the circles in the universe. Butno man, having seen only one body move after being impelled by an-other, could infer that every other body will move after a like impulse. All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning.”