The Empiricist Epistemology of David Hume 17111776

1
The Empiricist Epistemology of David Hume
(1711-1776)

• Mental activities (such as believing and knowing)
  consist in having ideas
• All of our ideas are derived from our experiences
  with sense impressions
• All existence claims are factual claims (not mere
  relations of ideas)
• Existence claims can only be established by
  direct observation or by causal inference from
  what is directly observed

2
Humes Empiricism Undermines Much That We Claim
to Know

• External objects We experience sense
  impressions, not objects, and we never observe
  objects causing our impressions
• Selves We experience sense impressions, not an
  enduring, constant, immaterial self having the
  sense impressions
• Cause and effect We experience a constant
  conjunction between sense impressions, never a
  necessary connection

3
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and the Preconditions
of Experience

• The mind organizes sensations as objects in space
  and time
• The mind unifies sensations within a single
  consciousness (as the experiences of a self)
• The mind organizes sensations around concepts
  (such as thing, table, or person)
• The mind organizes sensations such that all
  experience of change is causal in nature

4
Kants Skepticism Differs From Humes

• Universally certain knowledge about the world of
  experience (e.g. tables and chairs) is made
  possible by knowledge of the minds own
  organizing principles
• But questions about how things are in themselves,
  independent of our experience of them, cannot be
  answered the realm of das Ding-an-sich remains
  forever unknowable

5
G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) and Absolute Idealism

• There is no unknowable reality the real is
  rational and the rational is real
• All reality is the product and concrete
  expression of infinite thought (the Absolute)
• Reality is not a collection of individuals but an
  all-encompassing thought structure (the
  dialectic) unfolding itself in cosmic history
• At the apex, Idea and Nature merge into Absolute
  Spirit (thought thinking thought)