Compare David Hume's ideas - Essay Example

Comparison David Hume and Descartes Ideas David Hume’s excerpt “Of the origin of our ideas” David Hume was a famous Scottish philosopher widely known for his philosophical experimentation and uncertainty. His main area of interest in philosophy was on “The Origin of Our Ideas and Skepticism about Causal Reasoning.” His emphasis was on the difference between impression and thoughts or ideas, which are the two basic categories of the human mind perception (Hume 120). He argues that impressions emanate via human senses, feelings and reactions, and other mental features, they are the active perceptions we have because of hearing, seeing, feeling, loving, hating perceptions craving and ambitions.

When we hear, see, feel love, hate, desire or will. Ideas refer to the less active perceptions and reactions we have at the thought and imagination of these sensations, the faint pictures painted in our minds by these thoughts and reasoning. He also added that the difference between ideas and impressions is in the degree of force applied by each of them on the mind (Hume, 1). Construction of ideas occurs from the impressions that we have and in three distinct ways: ideas from simple impressions in three ways: the affinity, coherence, and connection.

Hume goes ahead and categorizes human rationality as either facts or just simple ideas. In the first category, he analyses facts hatched from experience. Despite the fact that thoughts originating from association of ideas may be inexistent, their truth is rationally flawless. A good illustration is in the case of a square; it will always have four corners irrespective of whether it exists in reality or not. It is possible for us to imagine the unseen things e.g., a monster but all our self-created perceptions emanate from sense and experience.

In his second category of human rationale, Hume makes an analysis based on inference to experience and not based on philosophical denouement; he assumes experience and an occasional observation as the basis of human reasoning (7). He denotes that factual matters are unpredictable since there is a possibility of the reverse happening. An example he gives is the assumption of the possibility of the rising of the sun. He criticizes the idea of “matter of fact” on making such conclusive assumptions if there is a possibility of the opposite occurrence.

He questions this idea as an innovative and a type of logic only possible in a theoretical perspective. Hume’s argument is that assumptions of cause and effect between two correlations are not obviously true. . He further affirms that our assumptions about the future cannot be justified since there is no such law that the future will always be like the past. He emphasizes that our assumptions are based on habits and not on logic. He says that if experience teaches us that two events take place at once, then we assume a relationship between them.

However, he appreciates the importance of the assumed connections and defines them as simple repeated observations between two events. He then concludes that, in the absence of cause and effect, our actions are unpredictable. He further proves that cause and effect are based on subjective reasoning and thus causal. He denies the concept of knowledge because all beliefs emanate from ideas, which originate from reality; no conclusion can be made beyond experience (Pojman et al.). Descartes’ 6th Meditation Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his life in the Dutch Republic.

The sixth meditation consists of one of the philosophical ideas in which Descartes highlights all beliefs in things he says have no absolute truth in them and tries to find out any facts that can be established about them. The meditations were written as if he was in meditation for the six days during which he wrote them all and in each meditation, he refers to the previous as yesterday (Skirry 116). This meditation concerns the existence of material things and the actual distinction between the mind and the body.

Descartes postulates the possibility of existence of material besides the self and God. First, he affirms that such objects can possibly exist simply because God created them. He denotes that even though they are the subjects of pure mathematics, he knows that there is a possibility of their existence because he understands them separately. Since God can definitely create anything, he can grasp and that he could not judge that anything could be impossible for God (Descartes, Meditation VI: On the Existence of Material Objects from Body).

With the knowledge of the possibility of existence of such object, he then highlights the pervasiveness of imaginations as a proof. To do this, he makes a difference between imaginations and understanding, he envisages imagination as a school of thought that immediately presents to it without logic or inception. This, therefore, exists like a mental picture. On the other hand, he said that understanding does not have to be pictured; this he explains using the example of a mental image of a triangle.

He says that he finds it hard to understand that it is a three line bounded figure and sees the lines through the perceived present eyes in the mind, this he called having a mental image. Thinking of hectagon, he says he understood it to be a thousand sided figure as much as he has an understanding that a triangle is a three-sided figure, but he could not imagine the figures as if they could be present. He, therefore, concluded by making an observation that there is some effort needed by the mind for imagination as opposed to the conception of ideas or understanding.

This particular struggle of the mind distinctly distinguishes imagination and pure logic. He further denoted the difference between the mind and the body, with the idea that the body is often separable while the mind is completely inseparable. He says that in truth, when he considers himself thinking, he is able to distinguish in himself no parts but rather feels himself as whole. He believes that he cannot imagine anything in thought, which, therefore, he does not know to be divisible. This, therefore, is an illustration that the mind or soul of man is entirely different from the body.

He concludes that the mind does not suddenly receive impression from the rest of the body but only from the brain or rather from just a very tiny part of it where the common sense is said to be found which in turn gives the same perception to the mind. Difference Hume seeks to explain our understanding of the world around us rather than establishing a justification of our beliefs or anything else. Here, he does not address the existence of possible relationships between occurrences but rather that we cannot establish what the relationships are.

This means that these relationships exist, but it is only that they are not defined. Definitely, Hume argues for a mitigated skepticism. We have no good reason to believe much of what we believe about the world, but human nature helps us function in all the ways that reason cannot. On the other hand, Descartes, on the other hand, shows that there is no such thing as a relationship between the mind and the body and that the body is often separable while the mind is completely inseparable. Descartes' arguments for the existence of the body as essentially extended that then follows this strategies in the Meditations is to show that it is possible to demonstrate logically the existence of a relationship between the soul and the mind.

His ideas to view clearly and distinctly the primary attribute of the body as an extension. His arguments from the imagination and the senses clearly illustrate the logic schools of thought seem to be linked to something outside of the mind. While his argument from the imagination only leaves the existence of the body as a reasonably good guess, his argument from the senses will ultimately leave him satisfied. This, therefore, presents Descartes’ argument as the most appropriate. Work cited David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.

New York: Dover, 2003 edition Pojman, Louis and Lewis Vaughn. Philosophy: the Quest for Truth. New York: Oxford, 2009. Skirry Justin. Descartes: A guide for the perplexed.philosophy.Countinuam publishers. 2008. David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Vol. 37, Part 3.Collier & Son Company, .2009.print.