David Hume (1711-1776)

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Philosophy Now
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David Hume (1711-1776)

Post by Philosophy Now »

Alistair MacFarlane treats of the life of a great Scot.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/119/Da ... _1711-1776
Impenitent
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Re: David Hume (1711-1776)

Post by Impenitent »

excellent history lesson...

-Imp
chrisrushlau
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Re: David Hume (1711-1776)

Post by chrisrushlau »

Hume brought the same unblinking scepticism to his consideration of human behaviour. He argued that reason, by itself, is concerned only with truth and falsehood, and so “can never be the motive for any action of the will.” This led to his famous dictum: “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”
So writes Mr. MacFarlane. This seems to raise the challenge, how does one know what one's passion is? On the other horn of Mr. MacFarlane's dilemma, the matter of convention as displacing causality, how does one know what the convention, one's own or another's, is?
It seems Mr. MacFarlane, and he has convinced me, despite my prior admiration for two dicta of Mr. Hume ("the city depends on strangers identifying with one another, as when one is being mugged and the other goes to her aid" (or words to that effect) and that golden phrase "the theater of the mind"), Mr. Hume as well, have no use for the concept of existence. MacFarlane, at least, would find refuge from the tyranny of the lie of existence within one's sensations ("passions"), but one's passions, one's "moral feelings", are either external to one's regard so as to be apprehended, or, well, we can only say they do not exist.
It serves as well to say the same about conventions in lieu of causality. To judge that a convention exists requires a judgment about facts.
The arc from Hume, as it now seems, to Kant and on to the current state of establishment thinking, is the arc of meaningless, inane authority. I offer the new, old concept of the authority of the senses.
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