The New Dante

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.