An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding [Paperback]

Hume's major work, 'A Treatise of Human Nature', was not well received intially - according to Hume, 'it fell dead-born from the press'. Hume reworked the first part of this work in a more popular way for this text, which has become a standard, and perhaps the best introduction to Empiricism.

In a nutshell, the idea of empiricism is that experience teaches, and rules and understanding are derived from this. However, for Hume this wasn't sufficient. Just because billiard balls when striking always behave in a certain manner, or just because the sun always rose in the morning, there was no direct causal connection that could be automatically affirmed - we assume a necessary connection, but how can this be proved?

Hume's ideas impact not only metaphysics, but also epistemology and psychology. Hume develops empiricism to a point that empiricism is practically unsupportable (and it is in this regard that Kant sees this text as a very important piece, and works toward his synthesis of Empiricism and Rationalism). For Hume, empirical thought requires skepticism, but leaves it unresolved as far as what one then needs to accept with regard to reason and understanding. According to scholar Eric Steinberg, 'A view that pervades nearly all of Hume's philosophical writings is that both ancient and modern philosophers have been guilty of optimistic and exaggerated claims for the power of human reason.'

Some have seen Hume as presenting a fundamental mistrust of daily belief while recognising that we cannot escape from some sort of framework; others have seen Hume as working toward a more naturalist paradigm of human understanding. In fact, Hume is open to a number of different interpretations, and these different interpretations have been taken up by subsequent philosphers to develop areas of synthetic philosophical ideas, as well as further developments more directly out of Empiricism (such as Phenomenology).

This is in fact a rather short book, a mere 100 pages or so in many editions. As a primer for understanding Hume, the British Empiricists (who include Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley), as well as the major philosphical concerns of the eighteenth century, this is a great text with which to start.

"Hume's skeptical criticisms are usually associated with
causality; but arguments by induction-inference from past
particulars to future generalizations-was the first real
object of his attack. Hume showed, not that inductive methods
were false, but that their validity had never been established
and that all possible lines of proof seemed equally unpromising."

Keynes wrote further that:

"Hume has pointed with infallible finger to those passages which,
in the eyes of posterity as well as those of the author 'shake off the yoke of authority, accustom men to think for themselves,
give new hints which men of genius may carry further and, by the very opposition, illustrate points wherein no one before
suspected any difficulty."

The work is an important contribution to economic and political
theory, propositional logic and the historical development
of formal logic systems and arguments thereof.

To gain useful knowledge, i.e., knowledge of matters of fact, we can rely off inductive reasoning (reasoning from singular instances to a universal generalization) and sense observation. Now Hume never uses the term "induction," for his attack is explicitly on our knowledge of causation in nature, but his argument would apply to all forms of induction, not just causation, thus it is often called "Hume's attack on induction." To this day, no one has solved the problem of induction. This alone makes Hume a worthwhile read.

The argument basically goes like this: Induction involves a generalization to the unobserved on the basis of observed phenomena. To have a good reason for making such a generalization, we have to presuppose that the whole of nature exibits uniformity in its behavior (If nature were not uniform, then it would be unwise to try and infer future experience on the basis of past experience). However, to make a statement about the uniformity of the whole of nature is to make a statement about unobserved phenomena (since we can never observe the whole of nature). Since this is about the unobseved, sense observation is out of the question to cite as evidence for a uniformity maxim about nature. Thus, the only available evidence for such a maxim would have to come from induction, but we need the maxim to justify induction in the first place! Thus, inductive reasoning is essentially circular. However, please note that this is only true if all reasoning must be based on the framework of deductive logic.

Hume also attacks religion and belief in the external world. To believe in the external world is to use inductive reasoning because we generalize from the observed (the sense impressions in our mind) to the unobserved (a mind independent reality). We can have no knowledge of a mind-independent reality because all the reality that we can ever experience must be contained somehow in our minds. If it wasn't in our minds, we could never experience it. There is a large similarity between this view and the view of Protagoras the sophist, 2400 years ago. He said "As things appear to a man, so they are for him." In other words, the only reality for each individual is that which is contained (appears) in his mind. Plato set out to defeat this view in his dialogue, the Theaetetus. If Plato is successful, then Hume is defeated as well.

In numerous places, Hume anticipates Postmodern theses. And he suffers from the same problem that any skeptical or relativist position suffers: The Humean skeptic says "Knowledge is impossible," but if that was true, how could he know that? The relativist says either: a) reality is relative to each individual's construal of his appearances (Protagoras, existentialism). b) reality is relative to each socio-cultural or linguistic community's construal of its appearances (Postmodernism). c) reality is relative to the a priori categories and intuitions of space and time, which are innate in all rational beings to allow them to construe their appearances (Kant's answer to skepticism). However, if any of these 3 relativist theses are true, then some knowledge of reality must be non-relative. How could you state "Reality is relative to x" unless you were able to see the way reality worked from a standpoint that is outside the constraints of x? If you are making that statement from inside the constraints of some perspective, then anyone with a different perspective need not listen to you because your statement about relativism is not part of their reality since it is not within their framework/perspective. Basically, if Hume, or any skeptic/relativist were right, then we should be equally skeptical about whatever they are trying to convince us.

Still, Hume is very much worth the read, and he will make you think outside the box if you are going to understand and get past his arguments. Though the skeptical position seems contradictory for reasons stated above, this refutation of skepticism is only possible by first admitting that the skeptic is right! Thus, we still have a lot of work to do to find an alternative to skepticism/relativism, and Hume's book cuts out our work for us. He raises the problems that we need to solve if we are ever going to escape the hopelessness of relativism and skepticism. And even if the skeptic is unanswerable in the end, we are better off at least knowing that, and thus we will be freed from dogmatic and unfounded beliefs. Hume does us a great service by freeing us from dogmatic faith in both religion AND science -- a critical, skeptical eye in this age of empty ready-made certainties is both healthy and necessary if we are ever to get on the path to real knowledge.