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An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

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Hume, I and many others think, was the greatest philosopher to have written in English, and this is the book to pick up if you want to introduce yourself to Saint David's distinctive brand of classical empiricism. This is a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in philosophy, and it's hard for me to see how anyone interested in the history of modern thought can avoid reading this book or the corresponding sections of Hume's Treatise.

As is well-known, the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was intended as an encapsulation and popularization of the views Hume defended in Book I of his magnum opus, A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume assumed that book's commercial failure could be accounted for by its length, difficulty, and lack of accessibility, and so, being a man who desired literary fame, he hoped to acquire commercial success by presenting the same ideas in a more appealing and accessible manner. Unfortunately, it seems Hume misunderstood what the literati of his day were looking for in a philosophical treatise. For the Enquiry, like the Treatise before it, didn't bring him the fame he sought. Still, Hume did understand what goes into writing excellent philosophical prose, and consequently this book is a much easier read than Book I of the Treatise. Indeed, this book constitutes an excellent introduction to Hume's thought, and, except for maybe Berkeley's Three Dialogues, I can't think of another primary source that would serve as a better introduction to classical British empiricism.

Now, let's get to the ideas here. Hume, like the other classical empiricists, was primarily concerned with the psychological question of the origin of our concepts. About the answer to this question, the empiricists were all agreed--our concepts are furnished by experience, which includes both sensory experience and introspection (i.e., the experience of our own mental states). And the empiricists also agreed about the way we can justify our beliefs. Some beliefs are true (or false) in virtue of the ideas they contained, and we can know their truth (or falsity) simply by thinking about them; other beliefs are true (or false) in virtue of how the external world is, and we can know their truth (or falsity) only by drawing on our experiences of the world. According to Hume, all substantial conclusions about the world fall into this second category. That is, the truth (or falsity) of all substantial claims about the existence and nature of things in the external world can be discovered only by checking those claims against the evidence of our senses.

The traditional way of placing Hume within the story of empiricism goes something like this. Hume takes up the empiricism of Locke and Berkeley and pushes it to its logical conclusion. Whereas Locke and Berkeley hadn't been wholly consistent empiricists, Hume, the true believer, demonstrates that classical empiricism leads to a pretty thoroughgoing skepticism. Since he's wholly convinced of the truth of his empiricist premises, Hume is willing to accept the skepticism that goes along with them. However, those who aren't convinced of that his empiricism is obviously correct think that Hume has actually demonstrated the implausibility of his empiricism. If this is where empiricism leads, they think, then it's clear that we need to reject empiricism. Indeed, some, like Thomas Reid, view Hume's arguments as constituting a reductio ad absurdum of his sort of empiricism. On this interpretation, Hume's philosophy essentially presents a dilemma for all future thinkers: abandon empiricism, or accept empiricism along with Humean skepticism.

But a different view of Hume, one of Hume as proposing a wholly naturalistic account of the human mind, has recently emerged as a competitor to the general conception of Hume's place within philosophy sketched in the previous paragraph. This interpretation downplays Hume's skepticism and emphasizes his professed intentions to provide a positive account of the operation of the human mind that appealed to nothing beyond the evidence of our senses. According to proponents of this interpretation, Hume is most interested in a description of the operation of the human mind. He's describing what human nature allows us to know and what it doesn't allow us to know. Furthermore, he argues that our nature is such that, where it fails to provide us with the resources to acquire the knowledge we might want, it provides us with a natural habit of forming the right conclusions anyway. Even though our nature limits our knowledge of the world, it ensures that we possess the habits of mind needed to make our way in the world. Hume dubs all these habits of mind "custom."

If this view is correct, then Hume has abjured many of the normative aims of traditional epistemological inquiry. He isn't attempting to show how we can answer a skeptic or why we have good reason to believe what we think we know. Instead, he wants us to stand back from our everyday beliefs and think about the natural processes that result in them. How, exactly, do our minds operate? How do we come to think what we do about the world? Hume thinks that this sort of inquiry will lead us see that, at some point, the explanation of why we think what we think reaches certain brute facts about the operation of the human mind. When we reach these points, there is nothing more to be said. We simply can't help thinking in these ways, and we lack the resources to demonstrate that these ways of thinking constitute an accurate way to represent the operation of the external world. And, Hume claims, it turns out that many of the fundamental elements of our conception of the world--the belief that things stand in causal relations to one another, the belief that we can know that there is a world outside our minds, the belief the future will resemble the past--end up not being open to ratification by experience. With respect to beliefs of these sorts, we ultimately have to appeal to custom in order to explain their existence and popularity. Hume, then, can be seen as demolishing the pretensions of reason in order to make room for a wholly naturalistic account of human thinking.

This is a superb edition of one of the basic works in Western philosophy. Designed to be used by both casual and serious students of philosophy, this edition contains the text of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (EHU) and a series of other sections that provide background and further directions for studying Hume. Included are an excellent precis of the EHU, a first rate annotated bibliography concerning works by and about Hume, considerable background material on Hume, and excellent notes to the text of the EHU.

The EHU is a concise and charmingly written presentation of Hume's views of the nature and particularly the limitations of human knowledge. The EHU presents Humes basic concepts of human thought, human pattern recognition, and then proceeds to Hume's revolutionary analysis of the problem of induction. Hume exposes our limitations in establishing certain cause and effect relations. Hume's analysis of this problem and its corollaries leads to ultimate skepticism about our ability to know the external world with certainty and undermines much of the basis for religion. Hume presents his ideas in an attractive style that owes much to famous 18th century essayists like Addison.

A fundamental work and very readable work.

This book was written in 1748 and I must say it certainly humbled me to realize that modern philosophical concerns are neither new nor unique. Terminology may have changed since the time when this book was written, but the underlying deliberations and contemplations remain unchanged. Hume's first 100 pages discuss the experiential foundation of knowledge. His arguments are compelling, but too enduring. The final 45 pages are superb. In these pages, Hume presents his treatises on miracles and academic skepticism and I must admit that it is one of the best discussions on practical skepticism that I have had the pleasure of reading.

This review mostly concerns the Enquiry. The Letter is primarily a defense of Hume's earlier Treatise of Human Nature, while his Abstract is an anonymous review of the Treatise. It strikes me as very funny, though not surprising, that Hume would review his own work. Funny because any author would give his right arm to get at least one favorable review when all the other critics are completely missing its point. Unsurprising because Hume was probably one of the only people alive at that time who could truly grasp all the facets of his radical philosophical claims.

The Enquiry was written after the Treatise. Hume, though he claimed the opposite, seems never to have really recovered from the blow he took from seeing his Treatise "fall dead born from the press." As a result, his Enquiry is far more cautious in the steps it takes. (For those of you who have read both, yes, I swear, Hume IS more cautious. Compare the claims.) A more robust philosophical stance is taken in his Treatise, while a more focused stance is taken in his Enquiry.

The Enquiry is mainly a work of epistemology and as such, scrutinizes our methods of acquiring knowledge. Making perhaps the most radical (and poignant) claim in all of modern philosophy, it posits, and supports, that there is NO causation, only conjunction. That, for example, when we see a glass drop and break, we cannot say we know gravity caused this (in the way we know two plus two equals four). All we see is constant conjunction. The connection is lacking, i.e., it is not inconceivable that the glass wouldn't bounce, turn to ash, or dissolve into sand (the way it is inconceivable that two plus two equals five). This, in effect, nullifies all the so called "laws" of nature that are formed by science. (Note that this does not state that there are no laws of nature, just that we really can never make the claim that we ever really know there are laws of nature.)

This could be thought of as the philosophical shot heard round the world. Agree or disagree, Hume must be answered. Hume has historically been charged with creating an intellectual and philosophical cul-de-sac with his skepticism. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, Hume makes a claim which none can refute, but at the same time one which none can accept. In effect, Hume's philosophy seems to bind the human mind, stopping its journey of discovery and ultimately accomplishing what his predecessor, John Locke, set out to do, i.e., map the extent of human knowledge.

However, where one may see Hume's philosophy as shackles and fetters in the search for truth, one could also equally see his philosophy as liberation. Implicit in his philosophy is the idea that ANYTHING is possible. There are no shackles, no fetters, no limits; only those that we create for ourselves. Our limits are self-imposed, constructs of our observance (and inference) of connection. In this way Hume appears in the same light as the Eastern masters seeing that reality is not what we have (through experiential knowledge) believed it to be. It is something much more wondrous. In Zen, our causal thinking is the only barrier between the person and enlightenment. Hume could be seen as implying that when the idea of causality is removed, with only conjunction remaining in its place, the state of true knowledge and wisdom (true zen) is achieved.

This, of course, is only idle speculation. But it is stated so as to demonstrate the richness and immense possibility Hume's philosophy possesses when seen in the correct light. Instead of saying, "Nothing is certain," after reading Hume, one can say, with equal validity, "Anything is possible." The first statement approaches philosophy with despair. The second approaches it with a sense of childlike wonder and hope at the immense possibilities of reality. It approaches life as a beginning, not an ending. It approaches life as the philosopher approaches it.

This is a good edition of the first but fundamental book published by Hume in 3 volumes (1 and 2 in 1739; 3 in 1740) dedicated to the methodical study of knowledge, passions and moral, through experience and practical observation. It is with Hume that empiricism (following Locke and Berkeley) reaches its complete expression as a "modern" classical system, against previous dogmatic visions of philosophy. According to Kant, Hume awoke him from the dogmatic dream......
With Hume, english illustration comes to a definitive expression. Through his opus, empiricism is systematized and acquires a new dimension that expands its influence on all fields of philosophy. Previous conceptions about the theory of knowledge, ethics, politics, esthetics, and the philosophy of religion, all are transformed or renovated by Hume. In spite of his critics, Hume's system dwelled with different topics of modern interest: positivism, psychology, nominalism, critical skepticism, determinism, agnosticism, moral philosophy, political economy, etc.
No serious philosopher after Hume, has been able to avoid a careful look at his system. So if you are a student or scholar of the subject matter, I highly recommend this edition of Hume's seminal work.

Hume is underappreciated, as even the casual reader of the Enquiry will see. Kant credited Hume with "awakening me from my dogmatic slumbers," but Kant's thought owes more to the structuralism (if one may call it that) of Rousseau than the ernest and tentative scepticism of Hume. Unlike Kant, Hume does not try to rescue Platonic dualism by positing an 'idealistic' connection between the consciousness of man and what lies beyond our sensory awareness. Unlike Wittgenstein, Hume does not say we should remain silent about that for which words may fail us. In contrast to some of his famous successors, Hume does not attempt to rationalize religion to justify the power of the state; nor does he sacralize philosophy with a neo-mystical faith in analysis. Hume exemplifies honesty in critical thinking in a way that one seldom sees in any sort of writing. The ideas are as fresh now as they were 250 years ago, and the clarity of writing is extraordinary given the genuine newness of the ideas expressed.

For years I have passed over Hume's work, but after reading An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, I would like to urge all philosophically minded readers to not make the same mistake as I did.
Hume's writing is as poetic as it is profound. His ideas are forceful, yet expressed with such gentle eloquence. I cannot stress enough how impressed I was with this book.
Furthermore, the clarity and insight of Peter Millican's introduction and end notes did much to enhance my comprehension and fit this work into a larger context.

David Hume was perhaps the leading light in the Empiricist movement in philosophy. Empiricism is seen in distinction from Rationalism, in that it doubts the viability of universal principles (rational or otherwise), and uses sense data as the basis of all knowledge - experience is the source of knowledge. Hume was a skeptic as well as empiricist, and had radical (for the time) atheist ideas that often got in the way of his professional advancement, but given his reliance on experience (and the kinds of experiences he had), his problem with much that was considered conventional was understandable.

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 philosophers 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.

First I would like to commend the excellent review of this book by CT Dreyer in which he correctly shows how Hume extended the empiricism of Locke and Berkeley to the point where skepticism seemed our only honest way of thinking about our knowledge of the world. Hume's questioning of induction, of how we can be sure tomorrow will be like today , his questioning of how we can trust our senses to know the outside world, his questioning of how we can hold our world logically together when analysis reveals that there is no necessary connection between ' cause' and 'effect' in everyday life action means he wakened not only Kant from his dogmatic slumber but Philosophy itself from the sense that it will provide absolute understanding.
Hume is a very clear writer. I remember reading the famous billiard ball account of causality in which our common sense view of ' before' and ' after' is questioned and taken apart. I believe Hume says after this account, something to the effect and ' still when we leave the room we leave by the door and not by the window'. A friend of mine in this class when the class ended opened the window ( on the ground floor ) and went out that way.
This is difficult and great philosophy. I do not pretend to understand it or its implications fully. A test of the mind and a necessary read for anyone who would know Western Philosophy.

This book will make you question many things; indeed Hume makes our quest for knowledge look like the struggle of Sisyphus rolling his rock up a hill, only to have it fall down again and again as he fruitlessly makes his repeated efforts. Hume argues to the logical conclusion of the empiricist tradition that began with John Locke.

According to the empiricist thesis, sensory experience is the foundation for all knowledge about the world. This knowledge is what Hume calls Matters of Fact. Matters of Fact include such statements as "The sun will rise tomorrow" or "The cat is on the mat." Deductive knowledge, such as mathematics and logic, is termed "Relations of Ideas" by Hume. These are necessary truths, or true in all possible worlds, thus they are not truths about the actual world, according to Hume. However, Hume thinks that Relations of ideas are useless to us because they contain an empty sort of knowledge that tells us nothing about the world. Hume says Relations of Ideas are CREATED meanings, unlike Plato and Aristotle who would say that mathematical and logical truths are facts about the world as well, not merely our creation. The relation of ideas/matters of fact dichotomy is the same as the analytic/sythetic distinction of contemporary philosophy. Hume does not doubt the truth of relations of ideas, he just thinks they are useless. For a skeptical attack on even the analytic/synthetic distinction, and hence analytical truth, see "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" by W.V. Quine.

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.