In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume begins by stating that memory is never as accurate as reality. Therefore, Hume divides all perceptions of the mind into two categories: the “less forcible and lively” thoughts and ideas, and “the more lively” impressions. He draws the conclusion that “all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones”. Hence, all our ideas and thoughts can be broken down into simple ideas that came from different impressions. Berkeley, as Cesar said in the last post, talks of abstract ideas as “more compounded beings, which include several coexistent qualities”. Do Berkeley and Hume agree about the origin of thoughts and ideas? Later Hume states, “all the abstract reasoning in the world could never lead us one step towards the knowledge of it”. How does this relate to Berkeley’s attitude toward abstract thinking?
Hume later presents evidence against the presence of a Supreme Being. He states that some philosophers believe “it is the universal Creator, who discovers it to the mind, and renders it present to us”. Therefore, a supreme being places all thoughts and ideas in our minds. Hume has three issues with this argument. First, he argues that these philosophers “rob nature, and all created being, of every power”, taking away the ability of the mind to independently create a thought or idea. Second, he believes that the argument cannot be made because it “carries us quite beyond the reach of our faculties”. The conclusions drawn are regarding a world beyond our existence, and “our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses”. Our methods of argument cannot be assumed to hold in this alternate space. Thus, we cannot make assumptions about a Supreme Being. Third, Hume believes that we do not understand the workings of our own minds so we cannot claim to know how the mind of the Supreme Being works. All we know is what we learn from impressions and reflections on our own lives. Therefore, we created a God from our own experiences and impressions. As we know, Berkeley opposed Hume in that he believes God perceives all external objects, and therefore external object always exist. I am not a religious person, so Hume’s argument resonates with me strongly, but I am curious as to the response of religiously affiliated people. If you agree more with Berkeley or believe in a Supreme Being, how do you respond to Hume’s arguments?
Hume argues that we cannot prove the existence of God through our own faculties, but I think that a common response to this would be that certain things are unprovable but exist. Like his "matte of fact" statements, one can believe in something that seems probable, through past experience, that they believe it to be true; this is faith. Faith that a man was on the island where Hume says a watch lies buried in the sand is similar to a faith in God. Believing that it is provable would be blind faith, but trusting in emotions and feelings sparked within us, not necessarily caused directly from nature, that can be an understandable belief in God.
ReplyDelete(As a side note, I once heard of a mathematical/logical proof which said that some statements, though possible true, could never be proven. I wonder if this applies to Hume's reasoning versus God.)
In response to the first part of your post, I think they have similar but not exactly the same beliefs for the origin of thoughts and ideas. Berkeley thinks ideas come from perception and can be defined based on observed qualities. He also thinks abstract ideas cannot be conceived of. Hume's views are similar in that he thinks all ideas come from perception or impressions, as he calls them. But he talks more about experience, and how ideas are formed through are interaction with the world. The ideas of cause and effect are decided by our repeated experiences. Additionally, he takes Berkeley's beliefs a step farther and claims that our minds, or our idea of 'self' would cease to exist if it weren't perceiving anything.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the argument of whether not God, or any kind of Supreme Being, exists has nothing to do with the notion of humans' ability to conceive or understand the mind of God. It has to do with all that we still cannot understand, or what we still do not know about what we have discovered. If you look at the structure of the universe, it is all so perfect. Our cells are formed from proteins which are made of atoms which have electrons and nuclei that exist in space so precisely and so perfectly. The billions of components of our being combine perfectly and do amazing things. You can create mathematical models for everything. This perfection could never have happened by chance. Yes, God is beyond the concept of the human mind, but, I think, if you understand the universe (or at least a tiny fraction of it), you understand that this all didn’t happen by chance. There is a driving force behind this all; probably not controlling every step of the way, but at least setting the wheels into motion.
ReplyDeleteHume and Berkeley have a similar taste in thinking when talking about the origin of ideas, however, there seems to be a distinct quality that makes this statement not so true. While Berkeley believes that the imperfection of our understanding arises from the abstract of ideas that our mind cant conceive, Hume thinks that the mind contains copies of impressions which we call ideas. I think Hume believes ideas are perceptions of the mind that may involve thinking of the copied impressions that a person has had. In contrast, Berkeley denies universal ideas that do not exist in the mind because these are abstract ideas. However Berkeley’s radical doctrine that abstract ideas don’t exist outside or inside the mind, is settled by Hume’s beliefs that ideas in fact exist in the mind as sensations of our feelings. I agree with Hume’s argument regarding the idea of God as being created from our inward impressions of the mind, and of ideas of wisdom and goodness. I believe this may or may not however, support the idea that God doesn’t exist because we still have an idea of God, which is a copy of a real impression thus this real impression must exist in our mind according to Hume.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Hume in asserting that we humans can only have a conception of God drawn from our own impressions and experiences. I do not think this rules out the possibility of there being a supreme being - I just think it is a good point about the way we imagine God. The only way we are able to imagine things we have never seen/experienced is by projecting and combining things we have experienced - thus, the prevalent image of God in our society as a human who has the same features and the same ways of expressing himself as we do. Since we have never had the sensation of seeing God, we cannot use actual impressions to formulate an idea of him. Instead, we must mix and match impressions of other experiences we have had.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Berkeley and Hume have similar ideas about the concreteness of our outside environment. Both see the human mind as flawed and imperfect. Therefore, what we perceive of our surroundings can never be perfect or absolute. Nothing we sense of our environment is untainted by the processes of our brain that serve to complicate and confuse. Therefore, all of our ideas and impressions are abstract, although impressions are more vivid and lively. In terms of religion, I think that Hume takes a more reasonable approach to God. I am also not religious, but I feel that Berkeley uses God as a simple explanation as to how we know things exist beyond ourselves. Because religion was so involved and important during this time, it is understandable that Berkeley would look to a Supreme Being as the answer, but I feel like Hume is being a true empiricist and philosopher when he questions the ability of humans to know of God's existence and his role in our minds, lives, and environments.
ReplyDeleteEven if Hume acknowledged the presence of God, the God he would acknowledge would be as powerless as any other object. If, as wordnimage (?) suggested, we can tell that God exists based on emotion, then what would be his function? If causation is merely an invention to explain the expectations we hold based on our previous experiences of a sequence of events, then is God any more capable of "causing" things to be than man is? Thus, as implied by Hume, even if there were a God, his existence could not be used as an explanation for things we do not understand.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Berkeley's and Hume's notions about the nature of abstract ideas is similar in many respects. Berkeley argues that abstractions are not very accurate due to the impossibility of imagining all the general qualities of abstract ideas at once. Similarly, Hume believes that abstract ideas are not very useful because the ideas he believes can lead to understanding about the world are impressions. He believes that impressions are the root of all ideas and that every thought can be simplified into its basic impressions. Therefore, Hume and Berkeley agree in the regard that abstract ideas are not always useful since they can be impractical generalizations and mere representations of real impressions.
ReplyDeleteI see what could be an interesting hole in Hume's argument. As Alex mentions, he writes off the existence of a Supreme Being, partly for the reason that since we cannot understanding the workings of our own mind, we would be unable to understand the mind of that Supreme Being. This, however, goes against what Hume has previously mentioned. In Section II, he describes how we can conceive a golden mountain by joining the thought of something golden and a mountain. Similarly, "A virtuous horse we can conceive; because, from our feeling, we can conceive virtue". Would we not, much in the same way Cesar describes, be able to imagine (and I should note that I am not religious either) a being by projecting certain qualities onto a 'canvas'. That would, as Caroline mentions, make that being "as powerless as any other object", but that would still represent a thought - not an idea - with which we could associate the characteristics of our choice.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the existence of God, here are some responses:
ReplyDeleteThe first argument is not a proof that God does not exist; it is merely a criticism of other earlier philosophers of not carefully considering the possibility of God not existing. Hence, it holds no bearing on the actual logic philosophers had used before.
The second and third arguments can be grouped together. They both collectively argue that we don't know enough about the world to make conclusions about the behavior and existence of God. However, that does not mean we cannot build proofs regarding God's existence; rather, we would have to search for proofs of those things indirectly. For example, take Berkeley's position. His proof of God is essentially a consequence of his theory of existence in that things would poof in and out of existence unless God existed to perceive objects. That proof of God does not rely on any properties of God except for omniscience, which does not inference anything about the way God thinks or behaves; nor does it rely on properties of human thought, except for the empirical conclusion that we cannot perceive things that we are not perceiving, which is true by default.
Hence, those three specific arguments regarding proofs of the existence of God are not sufficient or even very responsive to many proofs of God. Rather, it rules out proofs of God that are not based on a priori logic, and honestly, that doesn't really bother me personally :)
I strongly agree with Omar. It is certain that we don not know how our minds work and it is certain that we won't be able to understand how "God"'s mind work too. There are specific ideas that no matter how we link them with ideas we have before, we would never get to anywhere because they are simply beyond human understandinf. Beside if we say God's mind, we kind of claim a similarity between God and normal humanbeings which is impossible because as Alex stated God is a "Supreme Being". Do you remember the soul in Plato? It resmebled many concepts and Plato divides it into three parts; however, he never states what the soul is exactly of. Can we argue then that the soul is impression as well ? We understand there is something called "soul" becuase we have an idea and some thoughts about it, but we are not certain if we can perceive it. Same here, some think God is there becuase they have the idea of it, it is not necessary that you should see it to understand it. This idea of the existence of God leads to different impressions. The idea stays the same, the impression changes.
ReplyDeleteI am a believer of god but I believe this has more to do with believers and non believers. This may or may not be the reason I relate to Berkeley and his views more. I do believe objects exist even when we do not see them, not because God can always see them but because they can be shown by different perspective. If Hume believes we can't understand our own minds then he cannot even trust the words and thoughts he believes himself, considering his mind is projecting them. Likewise, Hume states we can't assume there is a higher being for the very same reason. However he has shown no evidence as to why there is not a god.
ReplyDeleteThe question of whether or not there is an ultimately divine being is strongly related to the question of what is knowable and unknowable. If there is. It seems to me that a belief in a supreme being hinges on faith, on believing something without proof. This, of course, is an attitude that a rationalist cannot square with. The way I see it, whether or not to have faith comes from a personal choice, and is, by its very nature, irreconcilable with the beliefs of Hume. Since an infinite and immortal being like a God is unfathomable to our own existence, Hume's argument that we lack the capacity to fathom his existence seems valid. This impossibility to truly understand God necessitates an element of pure faith in a person's conception of any god. This faith, which seems to me an element apart from the ideas discussed by Berkeley and Hume, makes it a fundamental difference between their philosophies. Both take their faith or lack thereof for granted, and since it is largely separate from the logic they use to build their philosophies, they end up with very different conclusions. I am not religious, but I also do not think that those with faith are illogical: it's simply a case of working from different fundamental beliefs.
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