Analyzing Plato's and David Hume's View of Death - Essay Example

? Plato argues in many works that there is 'apriori' knowledge, and in the Phaedo he argues in particular that it was 'reincarnation' that is the cause of it. The notion of prior knowledge is further inferred to have come from a time before this life. In other words, it is an argument which goes further than merely defending a tradition philosophical position concerning the nature of ‘rationalism’, but that there is a further inference that this prior knowledge must have come to us at a time before the present existence – hence, immortality. The following will break down his argument concerning ‘prior knowledge’ or ‘recollection’. In turn, the philosophy of David Hume will be presented. Concerning death, Hume was famously a non-believer in any type of an afterlife, and famously, when his good friend Adam Smith visited him when he was dying, he just joked about it with him and was quite cheerful [Norton 23]. For Hume, all that exists, is within the 'perceptable' world. Where Plato maintained that we have prior knowledge, Hume argues that any notion of 'continuity' or 'sameness' through time, is a notion not that we are born with, but have been conditioned to have. What might appear to come from beyond the senses, is just the product of conditioning that begins in perception and the perceivable world. To state or argue that we have a priori knowledge, is to necessarily posit this as succinct from the senses. In other words, this is a form of knowledge which can be understood as ‘interacting’ with the senses or perception, but it is also a form of knowledge which is distinct as well. Toward establishing this important distinction, Plato raises the problem with respect to the notion of “equals” and unequal's. However, he arrives at these abstractions through an argument which claims that “learning is recollection” [Plato 73B]. Specifically, it is a recollection of the notions of similarity and difference – sameness and difference. When we distinguish one thing from the next, we do so on the basis of ideas concerning similarity and difference. In other words, some object looks ‘familiar’ to some object which has already been experienced, and distinct from other objects and so forth: “in all these cases the recollection is occasioned by things that are similar, but it can also be occasioned by things that are dissimilar” [Plato 73D]. However, this process of learning necessarily involves ‘recollection’, and second, we are capable of making abstractions concerning this process of learning. For example, from the notion of similarity and difference, we can arrive at more abstract notions such as ‘equal’ and ‘unequal’. Further, we can abstract these notions from the sensible or perceivable objects which there are often predicated of: “what of the equals themselves” [Plato 74C]. The “knowledge of the nature of the equal itself” [Plato 75B], is a problem which leads Plato to distinguish “prior knowledge” [Plato 74E] from “perception” [Plato 75B]. This is an important argument in relation to Plato’s notion of a “dualism between reality and appearance” [Russell 134], and moreover, it is an important problem with respect to the ontological difference between ‘continuity’ and ‘change’ which was raised in the introduction of the present analysis. In a sense, the “nature of the equal itself”, is given a different ontological status than things which are ‘unequal’. For example, in the world of ‘perception’, all things are different or unequal. In other words, there is change, decay, growth, death, corruption, generation, and so forth. As mentioned in the previous section, all of nature is marked by a process of “becoming” [Plato 71E]. Thus, if everything which we perceive is different and changing, and yet we are capable of abstracting notions such as ‘equality’ – that is, we have “knowledge of the nature of the equal itself”, then, where does this knowledge come from? We could not have acquired this knowledge through ‘experience’ or ‘habit’, precisely because we could not have experienced this in a perceptible world of becoming, and therefore, Plato argues that the knowledge of the “equal itself”, must therefore be “prior knowledge”. Further, he makes the ‘inference’ that if it is not knowledge which is ‘prior’ in this life, we must have ‘recalled’ this from a past life: “ . . . if we acquired this knowledge before birth, then lost it at birth, and then later by the use of our senses in connection with those objects we mentioned, we recovered the knowledge we had before, would not what we call learning be the recovery of our own knowledge, and we are right to call this recollection” [Plato 73E]. Plato is inferring that because we have knowledge which we could not have acquired through perception, and that all knowledge is associated with recollection, then, our ‘prior knowledge’ must have been acquired prior to this life, given that we could not have acquired this type of knowledge through the experiences of this life. While this is a good argument concerning ‘prior knowledge’ or a good argument for philosophical rationalism and even idealism, it is also not necessary that we infer that we acquired this knowledge prior to this life. For example, why couldn’t we infer that we have ‘prior knowledge’ because we have the neuro-physiological structure which allows for this? In other terms, why can we not just infer that this knowledge is ‘innate’ rather than one which our soul had prior to this life? Some of these problems will be taken up in the following section which is third and final major argument for the immortality of the soul. For Hume, all that exists is perceived, and therefore, his defence of materialism is inseparable from his epistemology based on “scepticism” [O'Connor 12] which will be examined in the following. What needs to be examined at this juncture, are these principles of association. It is being argued in the present analysis, that we can or could only understand the continuity of the ‘wax’ through ‘habit’ and ‘experience’, according to Hume. However, more must be outlined with respect to the ‘nature’ or the ‘essence’ of the principles of these forms of “association”. The problem with respect to these principles, can be stated in the following terms. First, if we only have ideas through impressions, where or how do we get “impressions” of the very notion of “association”? In other words, I can have impressions of virtually any sensible or perceivable object which is external to me, but what about the relationship between these objects? Concerning this, Hume argues that there is no impression which give us the idea of ‘causality’, ‘resemblance’ or ‘necessity’, and some remarks concerning his scepticism concerning these relations or associations must be outlined in order to demonstrate why it is that he argues that these associations are only the consequence of “experience” [Hume 20] and the consequence of “habit” [Hume 28], rather than notions that we are born with or have some form of 'apriori' connection to as Plato argues. It is the ‘distinctive’ nature of impressions which prevent us from accepting that these impressions, and therefore the phenomenon which they represent, are associated with. For example, when we claim that there is a relationship between an ‘effect’ and a ‘cause’, we are speaking about a ‘middle term’ – that is, the relationship which defines this connection as causal or the relationship which defines this as resemblance. However, we do not, and cannot perceive the relationship. Concerning this argument, Hume uses the analogy or example of billiard balls. For example, we can perceive one billiard ball at one place at one time, and then another place at another time, but we cannot really have an impression between these two states. In other words, our mind is operating like a movie camera. We are gathering a sequence of impressions, such that we perceive a billiard ball moving from one place to another, and moving over a given period of time. However, like the individual frames within a film, we are merely perceiving a continuum of sequences – that is, a frame by frame perception of these sequences. This is implied not only in terms of the ‘starting place’ of the ball as contrasted with the ‘resting place’ for this ball. It is implying each and every state between the beginning and the end. In other words, just as though we could film the ball being shot, and in turn, examine the event on a frame by frame basis, so too with the impressions of the mind. All we experience are the impressions which record these “sequences”, and moreover, on the basis of these impressions alone (the sense experience of empiricism), we have no sense of a relationship between these [Penulhum 106]. Each and every impression is distinct, just as each and every frame in a film is slightly different. We do not have an impression of the relationship between these impressions, just as there is not a ‘frame’ between the frames of a film which explain the relationship between these images: “Motion in the second billiard ball is a quite distinct event from motion in the first; nor is there any thing in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other . . . and as the first imagination or invention of a particular effect, in all natural operations is arbitrary, where we consult not experience; so must we also esteem the supposed tie or connexion between the cause and effect, which binds them together . . . when I see, for instance, a Billiard-ball moving in a straight line towards another [Hume 18]. There are a number of important points in the above quote pertaining to what is being argued in the present analysis. First, is a claim regarding the idea that each and every impression is a “distinct event”. In conclusion, Plato's apriori notion of an afterlife, goes beyond 'sense experience' as an explanation. It has been argued that for Hume, and by contrast, the distinctness of ‘events’ as they are known through ‘impressions’, and this ‘distinctness’ raises the problem with respect to how we ‘associate’ the events in question which will be argued to be manifest through “experience”. It is experience which is central to his position of materialism. It has to be stressed that Hume wants to approach this notion of ‘change’ and ‘constancy’ or notions such as Plato's equality without any recourse to metaphysics, rational or “apriori” knowledge which is explicit in Plato: “all reasoning a priori will never be able to show us any foundation for this preference” [Hume 19]. The ‘emphasis’ on experience is an important aspect of Hume which differentiates him from Plato or other rationalists, and it is at the heart of his critique of a 'before life' and an 'after life', so to speak. It is in this sense that what exists, is perceived, and that abstract ideas are merely the product of habit and the association of perceptions. This is the basis for his materialism, and represents a solid critique of Plato's 'apriori' knowledge. If we can explain 'continuity' and 'change' in terms of habit and experience, there is no need to 'infer' something that is beyond experience. While it is true that no two sensible things can be 'equal' (Plato), and that our knowing that must come beyond perception, the mind for Hume is one that formulates 'equality'. It can experience the same patterns of a billiard ball and can even replicate patterns and 'shots' because of this 'experience', however, this has come through conditioning and not a past life or an 'after life' as Plato argued. Why go to a 'beyond' to explain something that can be explained with what is real and tangible and known through experience. Works Cited: Hume, David. 1993. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Eric Steinberg. Indianapolis: Hackett. Norton, David Fate. (Ed.) 1993. The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O'Connor, David. 2001. Routledge Guidebook to Hume on Religion. London: Routledge. Penulhum, Terence. 1992. David Hume: An Introduction to his Philosophical System. Chicago: Purdue University Press. Plato, “Phaedo”. 1995. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Reprinted in Classics of Western Philosophy. Fourth Edition. Edited by Steven M. Cahn. Indianapolis: Hackett. Russell, Bertrand. 1996. A History of Western Philosophy. London: Unwin. Hume contra Plato on Death Read More