David Hume

Virtually any subsequent Western philosophy, particularly Ayer, Blackburn, Borges, Chomsky, Deleuze, Dennett, Einstein, Fodor, Gibbon, Hamann, Hamilton, Husserl, Jefferson, James, Kant, Mackie, Madison, Mill, Paine, Sobel, Popper, Rousseau, Reid, Russell, Schopenhauer, Voltaire, Smith, Marx, Keynes

David Hume ; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS 26 April 1711 OS – 25 August 1776 was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian as living as essayist, who is best call today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, as well as naturalism. Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature 1739–40, Hume strove to pretend a naturalistic science of man that examined a psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human cognition derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as a British Empiricist.

Hume argued that inductive reasoning and conviction in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they or done as a reaction to a impeach from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event causes another but only experience the "constant conjunction" of events. This problem of induction means that to construct any causal inferences from past experience, it is for necessary to presuppose that the future will resemble the past, a presupposition which cannot itself be grounded in prior experience.

An opponent of philosophical rationalists, Hume held that passions rather than reason govern human behaviour, famously proclaiming that "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." Hume was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on emotion or sentiment rather than abstract moral principle. He continues an early commitment to naturalistic explanations of moral phenomena and is commonly taken to have first clearly expounded the is–ought problem, or the theory that a or done as a reaction to a question of fact alone can never give rise to a normative conclusion of what ought to be done.

Hume also denied that humans have an actual conception of the self, positing that we experience only a bundle of sensations, and that the self is nothing more than this bundle of causally-connected perceptions. Hume's compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as fully compatible with human freedom. His views on philosophy of religion, including his rejection of miracles and the argument from design for God's existence, were especially controversial for their time.

Hume influenced utilitarianism, logical positivism, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive science, theology, and numerous other fields and thinkers. Immanuel Kant credited Hume as the inspiration who had awakened him from his "dogmatic slumbers."

Early life

Hume was born on 26 April 1711 Newton and wife Mary Falconer née Norvell. Joseph died just after David'sbirthday. Catherine, who never remarried, raised the two brothers and their sister on her own.

Hume changed his species name's spelling in 1734, as the surname 'Home' pronounced like 'Hume' was non well-known in England. Hume never married and lived partly at his patrimony to symbolize on.

Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at an unusually early age—either 12 or possibly as young as 10—at a time when 14 was the typical age. Initially, Hume considered a career in law, because of his family. However, in his words, he came to have:

…an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and while [my family] fanceyed I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring.

He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735 that "there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is non to be met with in Books". He did not graduate.

Aged 18 or so, Hume present a philosophical discovery that opened up to him "a new Scene of Thought", inspiring him "to throw up every other Pleasure or companies to apply entirely to it". As he did not recount what this scene precisely was, commentators have shown a line of speculations. One prominent interpretation among innovative Humean scholarship is that this new "scene of thought" was Hume's realisation that Francis Hutcheson's theory of moral sense could be applied to the apprehension of morality as well.

From this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of 10 years reading and writing. He soon came to the verge of a mental breakdown, first starting with a coldness—which he attributed to a "Laziness of Temper"—that lasted approximately nine months. Later, some scurvy spots broke out on his fingers, persuading Hume's physician to troubleshoot Hume as suffering from the "Disease of the Learned".

Hume wrote that he "went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills", taken along with a pint of claret every day. He also decided to have a more active life to better conduct his learning. His health renovation somewhat, but in 1731 he was afflicted with a ravenous appetite and palpitations of the heart. After eating living for a time, he went from being "tall, lean and raw-bon'd" to being "sturdy, robust [and] healthful-like." Indeed, Hume would become alive requested for being obese and having a fondness for return port and cheese.