Chapter 8 HUME

How does the mind/body problem reveal a partial incoherence within Cartesian metaphysics? In what ways does David Hume turn away from the assumptions of Cartesian philosophy? From where does knowledge of the world originate according to Hume? How does the mind organize simple ideas into complex ideas? Why does Hume think that ideas like causation, God, and the self are nonsense? What is the basis of morality according to Hume?

Empiricism Made Puzzling

The Mind/Body Problem Do you think that your mind affects your body? Do you think your arms move because you decided that they would? Can the body produce effects on the mind? Do you experience pain when your body is hurt?

But how could this be, if the mind and body are different substances? How can something physical interact with something that is immaterial?

Materialism Thomas Hobbes held that only the material world existed.

Mind as Myth! Recall the myths discussed in Chapter 1. Could our talk about mental phenomena by similar to myths—talk about something that, at best, doesn’t really exist on its own, or, at worst, doesn’t exist at all? Is the mind a myth?

What happens to people after they die? What view MUST you reject if you are a materialist?

Do you think you have free will? COULD you have free will if materialism is true?

Are you really just a machine made largely of meat?

Berkeley and Idealism Look around you, touch your desk, listen to the sounds in the classroom. What do you experience?

Do you experience a desk that is independent of your mind… or just the experience of such a desk? If the latter…. Why believe that there is a physical desk there at all?

How would the world appear to you if it consisted only of ideas?

Berkeley Is mind the only substance that there is?

Occasionalism Proposed by Arnold Geulincx and Nicholas Malebrance

Why believe that when you desire to move your arm and your arm moves, your mind is causing your arm to move? Do you experience such causation… or merely infer it?

Meat Puppets? Maybe you’re just a puppet made of meat. But then…. Who would be the puppeteer?

This is all weird. Aren’t mind and body both real, and isn’t it obvious that they interact?

Leibniz All matter has the quality of extension. Imagine something extended, like a line. Can it be divided into smaller bits? Can these bits be divided—and so on? If this is the case, can there really be a basic material substance, or not?

So, what is the basic substance of the universe, if it’s not matter? Mind? But this doesn’t solve the mind-body problem.

MONADS Could the basic substance of the universe be neither mind nor matter, but something that encompasses qualities of both?

Spinoza Can you imagine a color floating in the air? Why not?

What sort of thing could be self-subsistent? Could we sense it? Why, or why not?

What thing could all things be dependent upon, and which is not itself dependent on anything else?

Apples Is sweetness in the apple? Is redness in the apple?

MONISM Could mind and body exist together like the sweetness and redness of an apple? If so, what would be the “Big Apple”?

Rationalism vs. Empiricism All knowledge can be grounded with certainty in the necessary relations of innate ideas All ideas come to us through our senses.

John Locke’s Empiricism Do you have any ideas in your mind that haven’t come to you from experience?

Apples again! When you bite into an apple, what do you experience? Redness, sweetness, crunchiness? Do you experience the “apple” that these qualities inhere in? Or do you just experience these qualities?

Does this mean that we can never experience the “ultimate reality” of apples? What do you think—and why?

HUME Where do you think your knowledge of the external world comes from?

Mental associations When you think of Harvard, what other schools do you naturally think of? When you think of canned soup on a supermarket shelf, do you think of soda or microwaveable noodles? When you imagine a wound, what do you then think of?

Mental Associations Does your mind connect ideas together naturally?

Knowledge Relations of ideas Have you ever gained knowledge from inspecting the relations that hold between the ideas in your memory? Matters of fact Have you ever gained knowledge from reasoning about cause and effect?

Cause and Effect Have you ever seen a necessary connection between something you believe to be a cause and something you believe to be its effect? If not… how do you know it is there?

A simple question? Do you believe that the sun will rise tomorrow? WHY?

Do you think that the future will resemble the past? Why? What’s wrong with claiming that it will because it has done in the past?

Grue “Grue” is an odd type of color. Something is grue if it is green before January 1 st, 2015, and blue afterwards. Is the grass growing on campus green, or grue? How do you know?

God? Where did you get your idea of God from? Have you ever experienced God directly? What proof do you then have of His existence?

Enough about God. What about YOU? Have you ever experienced your self directly? Really? Or have you just experienced perceptions, rather than the (alleged) perceiver?

Do you even exist as an entity that persists through time? Why believe as you do?

Empirical skepticism! No God? No self? No cause and effect? What can a Humean know?

Cannibalism Is it always wrong? Is it ever wrong? WHY?

Morality What’s the point of morality? Is it opposed to one’s self-interest?

Hume and Wondrous Distress Is being a “Scottish wrecking ball” a good thing? Isn’t it admirable for a person to pursue arguments wherever they might lead— even if they undermine your deepest and most cherished convictions?

How can we know… …that all knowledge is rooted in sensory experience?