David Hume on the Difference Between Conjunction and Connection
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- Date Submitted: 11/25/2015 08:37 PM
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Course Code: PHI 2383
Professor: Graeme Hunter
Due Date: November
Difference Between ‘Conjunction’ and ‘Connection
In this section, David Hume thinks the passion for Philosophy like that for religion can corrupt morals and incline our minds towards a certain thing even though they are aimed at correcting our manners. However, “the academics always talk of doubt and suspense of judgment, of danger in hasty determinations, of confining to very narrow bounds the enquiries of the understanding, and of renouncing all speculations which lie not within the limits of common life and practice” (p. 26). He calls this the academic skepticism and it doesn’t undermine the reasoning’s of common life that is why there is no acquired knowledge in our reasoning gotten from experience.
Hume further uses conjunction as a proposition to his claim “when we assert that after the constant conjunction of two objects, heat and flame for instance, we are determined by custom to expect the one from the appearance of the other” (p. 28). For example, he asks us to consider what a person with the strongest reason and reflection, suddenly brought into this world, would conclude based on his first experience of one event following another. (p. 27) Hume argues that this conjunction may be arbitrary and casual and there may be no reason to infer the existence of one event from the appearance of another. That inference from experience is just custom or habit not of reasoning since the person hasn’t acquired the knowledge of why one event follows from another. I read this as Hume casting our ability to reason into doubt and that we have no rational justification for things we do and that all our actions are based on cause and effect. But this begs the question, why would we do an act if we did not think the action would have a reasonable consequence? As rational beings, I would like to believe we do things with rational reasoning or at least justification....
Student Number:
Course Code: PHI 2383
Professor: Graeme Hunter
Due Date: November
Difference Between ‘Conjunction’ and ‘Connection
In this section, David Hume thinks the passion for Philosophy like that for religion can corrupt morals and incline our minds towards a certain thing even though they are aimed at correcting our manners. However, “the academics always talk of doubt and suspense of judgment, of danger in hasty determinations, of confining to very narrow bounds the enquiries of the understanding, and of renouncing all speculations which lie not within the limits of common life and practice” (p. 26). He calls this the academic skepticism and it doesn’t undermine the reasoning’s of common life that is why there is no acquired knowledge in our reasoning gotten from experience.
Hume further uses conjunction as a proposition to his claim “when we assert that after the constant conjunction of two objects, heat and flame for instance, we are determined by custom to expect the one from the appearance of the other” (p. 28). For example, he asks us to consider what a person with the strongest reason and reflection, suddenly brought into this world, would conclude based on his first experience of one event following another. (p. 27) Hume argues that this conjunction may be arbitrary and casual and there may be no reason to infer the existence of one event from the appearance of another. That inference from experience is just custom or habit not of reasoning since the person hasn’t acquired the knowledge of why one event follows from another. I read this as Hume casting our ability to reason into doubt and that we have no rational justification for things we do and that all our actions are based on cause and effect. But this begs the question, why would we do an act if we did not think the action would have a reasonable consequence? As rational beings, I would like to believe we do things with rational reasoning or at least justification....