Hume's Skepticism

This week we'll be covering Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. Be sure to bring the reading to class (either in physical or virtual form) as we will be specifically referring to the text.

The main question to consider in Hume's account (and that you are considering within your short writing assignment before tomorrow morning) is: where do ideas come from? His answer can be stated forthrightly and simply and he provides us with a clear explanation as to why he answers the question as he does.

However, this is not the whole story. Consider the implications of this position for any and all of our ideas and bring with you an example that we can consider as a group so as to test out this idea.

Descartes' Proof of the Existence of the External World as Independent from the Thinking Subject

Descartes’ Proof of the Existence of Bodies (Sixth Meditation)

I have no clear and distinct perception of the existence of bodies. My perception of a body as existing is consistent both with that body’s existence and with its non-existence (e.g. if I am dreaming or hallucinating). Descartes nonetheless claims that we are justified in our belief that the senses are generally reliable indicators of the existence of external objects (CSM 115-6).

(1) I have a passive faculty of sensory perception (of getting and recognizing ideas of sensible objects).

(2) I could not have such a faculty unless there existed some active power, either in myself or in something else, to produce the ideas.

(3) This power cannot exist in me, for it presupposes no action of my intellect; sensory ideas are

produced without my cooperation and often against my will.

(4) So, the power inheres in some substance other than myself.

(5) This substance must contain at least as much formal reality as exists objectively in my sensory ideas.

(6) So, this substance is either a body, which contains whatever is contained objectively in my ideas; or it is God or some other creature superior to a body, which contains the reality of my ideas in a higher form (eminently).

(7) But God has given me no faculty to discover the origin of my sensory ideas and a strong

inclination to believe that these ideas proceed from bodies.

(8) If God were to cause these ideas in me, either directly or by means of some creature other than

bodies, God would be a deceiver.

(9) God is not a deceiver.

(10) Therefore, bodies exist.

Meditation III

Here is a formal way to see Descartes' progression of reasoning from the idea of the thinking subject to the infinite substance in the language of the text:

Meditation III

1. 'Cogito Ergo Sum' is an objective reality

2. The formal reality is equal to, if not greater than, the reality which exists objectively

3. The objective reality has an idea of perfection, though lacks perfection itself

4. 'Something cannot come into being out of nothing'

5. 'What is perfect cannot come into being from what is imperfect'

6. The formal reality must have caused the idea of perfection within the objective reality

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Therefore, the formal reality must be perfect