Hume's Skepticism

David Vorick

The strongest and most vivid places in the mind come from perception. The image in the mind as the different senses report their perceptions is stronger than any other form of thought. A memory of a song or emotion does not contain nearly as much vivacity as the original perception. And while the imagination can conjure images and sensations through description, the image created is weak compared to what one would actually experience. All the colors of poetry, however splendid, can never paint natural objects in such a manner as to make the description be taken for a real landscape (Hume 211). Hume takes the contrast between perceptions and other thoughts to establish two definitions. The first is impression, which refers to the stronger perceptions of the mind, and the second is ideas, which refer to the other forms of thought. And according to Hume, imagination is bounded by the limited diversity of original impressions. A thought experiment can then be performed. One can let the imagination run free and come up with most wild, original, unlimited, and creative idea possible. Regardless of how much time is spent generating the idea, one will notice that every component of the idea has roots in some impression from the memory. ... all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience (Hume 212). The scope of the imagination is defined by the limited scope of impression. A proof of this theory is established by examining the imaginations of people who have been deprived of a particular set of impressions from birth. A person who has never been able to hear cannot imagine sound, and a person who has never been able to taste or smell cannot fathom scent or flavor. No amount of description from a person who possesses the missing impressions will ever give the blind an impression of sight or the deaf an impression of sound. They can only relate the descriptions to the impressions that they already possess. Lacking a disabled person for experimentation, one can try to imagine new impressions. One

could attempt to imagine the fourth spatial dimension, or one could try and define an entirely new color for the infrared waves just beyond the visible spectrum. The key is that there must be elements within the new impression that do not come from any previous impression. While some individuals may claim to have achieved this, I have been unable to invent for myself a new impression to supplement my ideas, and so I must admit that even my most creative ideas are nothing more than a mix of my existing impressions. This combination of theories regarding impressions and ideas is called Hume's Origin of Ideas. The origin of ideas can be applied to discredit metaphysics and other highly abstract ideas. If one cannot determine the impression that produced an idea, one should not give the idea any credibility. While this works for abstractions lacking impressions, one cannot eliminate metaphysics altogether. For example, just because the average individual appears incapable of imagining new impressions does not mean that everybody is incapable of imagining new impressions. Furthermore, assuming that metaphysical beings do exist, it is possible that such a being could favor one individual or another and give them an impression that is not within the scope of the average person's impression. Hume's Origin of Ideas can be used to disprove certain metaphysical claims but it cannot eliminate metaphysics altogether. Another key feature in Hume's skepticism is Hume's Fork, which divides human reasoning into the two categories of 'Relations of Ideas' and 'Matters of Fact'. The first category is ruled entirely by definition, which allows for perfection and absolute certainty. The contrary to a relation of ideas is a logical contradiction, and the affirmation of a relation of ideas will always be true. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence (Hume 213). Squares are guaranteed to have four sides of equal length regardless of the passage of time, and to claim anything otherwise would result in guilt of logical contradiction. According to Hume, a disadvantage to relations of ideas is that there can be no true discovery.

Any extension of a relation of ideas is simply a reiteration of already known principles. To state that a bachelor is unmarried is redundant and uninteresting because bachelors are unmarried by definition. Mathematics could be used as a counter example to this argument. Although the definitions of circles and spheres and squares have been known for a very long time, some of the mathematical relationships within and between these objects are still being discovered. Calculus was a major discovery concerning already known and defined mathematical objects. Such discoveries are referred to as synthetic a priori knowledge. Matters of fact are discovered through the exploration of the senses, and are the primary source of our knowledge of the world. Matters of fact are not true by definition, therefore the opposite of a matter of fact is just as likely as the matter of fact itself. Grass is green, but to the new observer, it would have been just as likely that grass was red. There is no logical contradiction that would result from observing the opposite effect. Logical reasoning with regards to matters of fact traditionally relies on cause and effect relationships. Cause and effect is traditionally established by proving three relationships. First, the cause must precede the effect. Second, the cause and effect must be contiguous in time and space, which is to say that the cause must have an effect that both quickly follows the cause in time and is near to the cause in space. Third, the cause and the effects must have constant conjunction, meaning that the cause will consistently result in the expected effect. Hume is not satisfied that the three relationships are enough to prove cause and effect. For could it not be that although the three relationships seem to be fulfilled, the fulfillment has been entirely a coincidence? Is it not possible that when one billiard ball transfers motion to another, the first billiard ball is actually stopping for a reason that is completely unrelated to the motion of the second billiard ball? In order to truly prove that a cause and effect are related, one must prove that there is a necessary connection between the two events. Necessary connection cannot be proved because one can never be certain that all aspects of an

event have been observed. There could be phenomena unobserved by the philosopher that has influenced the outcome and would never become known. A priori knowledge cannot apply to the situation either, for the same reason that there could be unobserved effects that make the event different from events we have contemplated a priori. Experience does not have the power to overcome this obstacle either, because all experience comes only from observations of the past, which also cannot be trusted. Even if one could overcome the cause and effect problem, one must solve the the Problem of induction. Even if one could prove that one event caused another, one could not prove that it would happen again, because one cannot be certain that the laws of nature will be consistent. Nature may change, which would invalidate all experience and knowledge regarding matters of fact. No matter how many times one event causes another, even with the presence of a provable necessary connection, one will not be able to prove that the same cause will result in the same effect. Despite the evidence that the mind has no reason to believe in cause and effect or rely on induction, the mind is drawn to make such conclusions anyway. Because there is no good justification for the use of induction, it must be explained as an act that is done simply because it has been done in the past. Hume calls the act Custom. By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity (Hume 218). By calling the use of induction Custom, we avoid the responsibility of proving its applicability. After exploring the uncertainties of matters of fact and logical reasoning, Hume concludes that the mind consists of impressions and ideas, without any true ability to predict what the next perceptions might be. The mind may perceive a series of visual perceptions that it calls fire, and then it may receive a series of thermal impressions that it calls heat, and it may connect the two, and while these connections may be correct or incorrect the ideas and impressions are nonetheless in place, and these are the impressions and ideas that define the mind and the self.