Ladies and
gentleman, it is actually possible for me to dislike someone more than I
dislike Dante. David Hume is the author of An
Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, and the book, along with the title
not being properly capitalized, really bothers me in a way I haven’t felt since
Inferno. It’s a biased, one-sided
piece that contains all of Hume’s thoughts about understanding humans. It’s
really complicated to read because he doesn’t believe in simple terminology,
and so I have tasked myself with attempting to explain what he thought was a
good read. However, I am focusing on one section (Section VII: Of the Idea of
Necessary Connexion) due to the fact my brain will explode if I try to decipher
the whole book
Let’s begin!
Hume actually
begins section seven by stating that mathematics is not as useless and dead as we had originally thought; oh, and the
moral sciences (i.e. philosophy) are pretty lame. He basically argues for an
entire page about how useful and wonderful mathematics actually are. They’re
always legit, and we can totally see whenever something isn’t correct.
Additionally, (haha, get it, additionally) the terms we use in math do not
change; an oval is not a circle, and two plus two will always equal four (44).
But the inner workings of the mind and our ability to understand things are
totally beyond us; ambiguity creeps into our reasoning (44), and we’re pretty
much left with more questions than answers.
However, Hume
does say that when we think about both sciences in a proper light, we find out
that they actually go together (kind of). They are equal in their own ways. He
states that if our minds are able to remember what we learned in geometry
clearly then we have the ability to reason in some pretty intricate ways, and
we can compare ideas in a broader way to reach the truth. But if our moral
ideas fall into confusion then the conclusions we come to (and the ways we
reach those conclusions) are few compared to the answers we find in numbers
(44). Therefore, if we can trace the principles of the human mind through a few
steps we are more likely to be pleased with our progress. But nature likes to
be a troll; after you think you have come up with some great idea something
happens, and you’re left thinking just how ignorant you really are. Hume suggests that our
biggest obstacle dealing with the moral sciences is the obscurity of our ideas
and terms, and the biggest issue with math is how long it takes to actually
form a conclusion (45).
Now, if you
thought that things couldn’t get any more complicated to understand I have some
bad news for you. Hume states that there are no ideas that are harder to wrap
our minds around the ideas of power, force, energy, or necessary connection. So
we need to be extra careful when talking about them in our investigations of
the world.
But where in the
world does the idea of necessary connection come from? Hume proposes that all
of our ideas are actually just “copies of our impressions” (45); this literally
means that everything we think about is based on things we have experienced.
Those big complex ideas you think of are really just smaller ideas added
together. But the idea of necessary connection is not an observation of
something external (46). When we look at external objects we do not see an
“operation of causes” or in simple terms, we do not see the thing making the
cause be a cause; we only see that one object follows another (46). We cannot
predict what cause an object will have from its first appearance because we
cannot see the power operating it.
Confusing,
right? Well it gets a little more complex. Hume begins explaining that we are
conscious of an internal power, and no, it is not the Force from Star Wars. This power within us allows
us to move parts of our bodies or think freely. We call this power the will .
So our good buddy Hume questions whether or not it is the will that caused the
idea of necessary connection, and then he goes, “No.” It can’t be the will that
this idea comes from because the will is a mysterious thing that we know
nothing about. We cannot control some things such as our liver or heart, and we
cannot explain why we cannot (that’s a mouthful). So it’s not the will that is
the cause.
With
another possible explanation debunked, Hume goes on to question if we got the
idea of necessary connection from our minds. And, just like before, he goes, “No.”
We do not understand the will’s power over the body, and we do not understand
the will’s power over the mind. Hume says that we do not have complete control
over our own thoughts; this means we do not understand completely the power it
has. Also, our self-command of our minds actually changes over time; “we are
more master of our thoughts in the morning than in the evening” (50). Just like
we do not understand the will’s power over the body, the will’s power over the
mind is pretty shady and not the cause of the idea of necessary connection.
Lastly
Hume talks about God being the cause. He states that there are people who
believe that a deity is the cause of everything in the world – i.e. you ate an
apple because the Lord told you to. However, Hume argues that if there is a God
whose will is beyond us than we must have had an experience somewhere that let
us come to that conclusion; “we have no idea of the Supreme Being but what we
learn from reflection on our own faculties” (53). So if there is a God who wills everything His will is just as
uncertain as ours.
I truly believe
David Hume had one goal in mind when writing this section: to troll us. He
writes an entire piece on the idea of necessary connection just to say it is
not something we can understand and we’re basically wasting our time trying to
figure it out. Nevertheless I hope that this was helpful to understand at least
one part of what has to be the worst book I have ever read.
