Lecture about David Hume

David Hume can be regarded as one of the most important figures in both social philosophy and journalism as he revolutionised modernist ideas such as logical positivism. Logical positivism was the modern philosophy of science which focused on physical science such as medicine and physics and social science such as human behaviour in society. Hume presented his theories of knowledge and believed that there is no absolute truth or knowledge as everything can only be possible and not absolutely true. For example, the sun rising in the mornings is only a mental illusion in your brain as the Earth orbits around the Sun but the Sun is a stationary planet so you can’t physically see the Sun rise.

Hume presented his theories of causation and logic in his book and in his book he stated that things are only caused by human beings and the causes are solely in your brain and not from the outside world. One situation in which this theory can be applied is in a game of billiards. When the white ball hits the red ball and the red ball moves we do not know for certain that the white ball caused the red ball to move we only know that the two balls moved as a result. Anything may have happened to make the balls move and Hume believed that everything that happened was like a miracle and we should not jump to conclusions about things we do not know for sure.

According to Hume there is a specific way of analysing whether events are true or false and to do this we must use two types of logic, analytical and synthetic logic. Analytical logic is where a conclusion is made from a subject for instance “all bicycles have two wheels”. Synthetic logic adds more information to the statement if it proven to be true using analytical logic. The statement “all bicycles have two wheels therefore they are referred to as bicycles” is an example of synthetic logic as more information has been added to the statement to prove it is true.  Our brain also synthesises ideas about objects and people but Hume argues that we should stick to the facts we know and not let our brains discover new ideas about them as people and objects are what they are and as humans we just have to deal with it.

This idea of logic can be linked closely to the verification principle whereby any statement of truth must be verified in order for it to be considered 100% true. Hume argued that most statements cannot be verified as they might be either true or false and it’s impossible to prove it. In addition, you can only use the verification principle on statements that can be verified for example “ the Sun is the Sun, therefore the Sun is not the Moon” can be proven to be truth as the Sun has a different appearance and location to the Moon so the Sun cannot be the Moon.