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1. A Treatiseof HumanNature by DavidHume
A Treatise of HumanNature (1738–40) is a bookby Scottishphilosopher David
Hume, considered by many to be Hume's most important work and one of the most
influential works in the history of philosophy. The Treatise is a classic statement of
philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. In the introduction Hume
presents the idea of placing all science and philosophy on a novel foundation:
namely, an empirical investigation into human nature. Impressed by Isaac
Newton's achievements in the physical sciences, Hume sought to introduce the
same experimental method of reasoning into the study of human psychology, with
the aim of discovering the "extent and force of human understanding". Against the
philosophical rationalists, Hume argues that passion rather than reason governs
human behaviour. He introduces the famous problem of induction, arguing that
inductive reasoning and our beliefs regarding cause and effect cannot be justified
by reason; instead, our faith in induction and causation is the result of mental habit
and custom. Hume defends a sentimentalist account of morality, arguing that ethics
is based on sentiment and passionrather than reason, and famously declaring that
"reason is, and ought only to be the slave to the passions". Hume also offers a
skeptical theory of personal identity and a compatibilist account of free will.
Contemporary philosophers have written of Hume that "no man has influenced
the history of philosophy to a deeper or more disturbing degree", and that Hume's
Treatise is "the founding document of cognitive science" and the "most important
philosophical work written in English." However, the public in Britain at the time
did not agree, and the Treatise was a commercial failure. Deciding that
the Treatise had problems of style rather than of content, Hume reworked some of
the material for more popular consumption in An EnquiryConcerning Human
Understanding(1748) and An EnquiryConcerning the Principles of
Morals (1751), which Hume wrote is "of all my writings, historical, philosophical,
or literary, incomparably the best."
Hume's introduction presents the idea of placing all science and philosophy on a
novel foundation: namely, an empirical investigation into human psychology. He
begins by acknowledging "that common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings
[i.e., any complicated and difficult argumentation]", a prejudice formed in reaction
to "the present imperfect condition of the sciences" (including the endless scholarly
disputes and the inordinate influence of "eloquence" over reason). But since the
truth "must lie very deep and abstruse" where "the greatest geniuses" have not
found it, careful reasoning is still needed. All sciences, Hume continues, ultimately
depend on "the science of man": knowledge of "the extent and force of human
understanding,... the nature of the ideas we employ, and... the operations we
perform in our reasonings" is needed to make real intellectual progress. So Hume
hopes "to explain the principles of human nature", thereby "propos[ing] a compleat
system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one
upon which they can stand with any security." But an a priori psychologywould
be hopeless: the science of man must be pursued by the experimental

2. methods of the natural sciences. This means we must rest content with well-
confirmed empirical generalizations, forever ignorant of "the ultimate original
qualities of human nature". And in the absence of controlled experiments, we are
left to "glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of
human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by
men's behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures."
Hume begins by arguing that each simple idea is derived from a simple impression,
so that all our ideas are ultimately derived from experience: thus Hume
accepts conceptempiricism and rejects the purely intellectual and innate
ideas found in rationalist philosophy. Hume's doctrine draws on two important
distinctions: between impressions (the forceful perceptions found in experience,
"all our sensations, passions and emotions") and ideas (the faint perceptions found
in "thinking and reasoning"), and between complex perceptions (which can be
distinguished into simpler parts) and simple perceptions (which cannot). Our
complex ideas, he acknowledges, may not directly correspond to anything in
experience (e.g., we can form the complex idea of a heavenly city). But
each simple idea (e.g., of the color red) directly correspondsto a simple impression
resembling it—and this regular correspondencesuggests that the two are causally
connected. Since the simple impressions come before the simple ideas, and since
those without functioning senses (e.g., blindness) end up lacking the corresponding
ideas, Hume concludes that simple ideas must be derived from simple impressions.
Notoriously, Hume considers and dismisses the 'missing shade of blue'
counterexample.
Perceptions in Treatise 1.1
Perceptions Impressions Impressions of sensation
Impressions of reflection
Ideas Ideas of the memory
Ideas of the imagination
In Part 1 of Book 1, Hume divides mental perceptions into
different categories. The simple/complex distinction, which
may apply to perceptions in all categories, is not pictured.
Briefly examining impressions, Hume then distinguishes between impressions
of sensation (found in sense experience) and impressions of reflection (found
mainly in emotional experience), only to set aside any further discussion for Book
2's treatment of the passions. Returning to ideas, Hume finds two key differences
between ideas of the memory and ideas of the imagination: the former are more
forceful than the latter, and whereas the memory preserves the "order and position"
of the original impressions, the imagination is free to separate and rearrange all
simple ideas into new complex ideas. But despite this freedom, the imagination

3. still tends to follow general psychological principles as it moves from one idea to
another: this is the "association of ideas". Here Hume finds three "natural
relations" guiding the imagination: resemblance, contiguity, and causation. But the
imagination remains free to compare ideas along any of seven "philosophical
relations": resemblance, identity, space/time, quantity/number, quality/degree,
contrariety, and causation. Hume finishes this discussion of complex ideas with a
skeptical account of our ideas of substances and modes: though both are nothing
more than collections of simple ideas associated together by the imagination, the
idea of a substancealso involves attributing either a fabricated
"unknown something, in which [the particular qualities] are supposedto inhere" or
else some relations of contiguity or causation binding the qualities together and
fitting them to receive new qualities should any be discovered.
Hume finishes Part 1 by arguing (following Berkeley) that so-called 'abstract ideas'
are in fact only particular ideas used in a general way. First, he makes a three-point
case against indeterminate ideas of quantity or quality, insisting on the
impossibility of differentiating or distinguishing a line's length from the line itself,
the ultimate derivation of all ideas from fully determinate impressions, and the
impossibility of indeterminate objects in reality and hence in idea as well. Second,
he gives a positive account of how abstract thought actually works: once we are
accustomed to use the same term for a number of resembling items, hearing this
general term will call up some particular idea and activate the associated custom,
which disposes the imagination to call up any resembling particular ideas as
needed. Thus the general term 'triangle' both calls up an idea of some particular
triangle and activates the customdisposing the imagination to call up any other
ideas of particular triangles. Finally, Hume uses this account to explain so-called
"distinctions of reason" (e.g., distinguishing the motion of a bodyfrom the body
itself). Though such distinctions are strictly impossible, Hume argues, we achieve
the same effect by noting the various points of resemblance between different
objects.
Hume recalls the seven philosophical relations, and divides them into two classes:
four which can give us "knowledge and certainty", and three which cannot. (This
division reappears in Hume's first Enquiryas "relations of ideas" and "matters of
fact", respectively.) As for the four relations, he notes, all can yield knowledge by
way of intuition: immediate recognition of a relation (e.g., one idea as brighter in
color than another). But with one of the four, "proportions in quantity or number",
we commonly achieve knowledge by way of demonstration:step-by-step
inferential reasoning (e.g., proofs in geometry). Hume makes two remarks on
demonstrative reasoning in mathematics: that geometry is not as precise as algebra
(though still generally reliable), and that mathematical ideas are not "spiritual and
refin'd perceptions", but instead copied from impressions.

4. Knowledge and probability
Immediate Inferential
Relations ofideas intuition demonstrative reasoning
Matters of fact perception probable reasoning
As for the other three relations, two of them (identity and space/time) are simply a
matter of immediate sensory perception (e.g., one object next to another). But with
the last relation, causation, we can go beyond the senses, by way of a form of
inferential reasoning he calls probablereasoning. Here Hume embarks on his
celebrated examination of causation, beginning with the question From what
impression do we derive our idea of causation? All that can be observed in a single
instance of cause and effect are two relations: contiguity in space, and priority in
time. But Hume insists that our idea of causation also includes a
mysterious necessary connection linking cause to effect. "[S]toptshort" by this
problem, Hume puts the idea of necessary connection on hold and examines two
related questions: Why do we accept the maxim 'whatever beginsto exist must have
a cause'?, and How does the psychological process of probable reasoning
work? Addressing the first question, Hume argues that the maxim is not founded
on intuition or demonstration (contending that we can at least conceive of objects
beginning to exist without a cause), and then rebuts four alleged demonstrations of
the maxim. He concludes that our acceptanceof this maxim must be somehow
drawn "from observation and experience", and thus turns to the second question.
Hume begins by arguing for the validity of empiricism, the premise that all of our
knowledge is based on our experiences, and using this method to examine several
philosophical concepts. First, he demonstrates that all of our complex ideas are
formed out of simpler ideas, which were themselves formed on the basis of
impressions we received through our senses. Therefore, ideas are not
fundamentally different from experiences. Second, Hume defines “matters of fact”
as matters that must be experienced, not reasoned out or arrived at instinctually.
Based on these two claims, Hume attacks metaphysical systems used to prove the
existence of God, the soul, divine creation, and other such ideas. Since we have no
experience of any of these things and cannot receive a direct impression of them,
we have no real reason to believe that they are true.
Hume systematically applies the idea that ideas and facts come from experience in
order to analyze the concepts of space, time, and mathematics. If we have no
experience of a concept, suchas the size of the universe, that conceptcannot be
meaningful. Hume insists that neither our ideas nor our impressions are infinitely
divisible. If we continued to try to break them down ad infinitum, we would
eventually arrive at a level too small for us to perceive or grasp conceptually. Since
we have no experience of infinite divisibility, the idea that things or ideas are
infinitely divisible is meaningless. Mathematics, however, is a system of pure
relations of ideas, and so it retains its value even though we cannot directly

5. experience its phenomena. Many of its principles do not hold in matters of fact, but
it is the only realm of knowledge in which perfect certainty is possible anyway.
Hume introduces two of his three tools of philosophical inquiry, the “microscope”
and the “razor.” The microscopeis the principle that to understand an idea we must
first break it down into the various simple ideas that make it up. If any of these
simple ideas is still difficult to understand, we must isolate it and reenact the
impression that gave rise to it. The razor is the principle that if any term cannot be
proven to arise from an idea that can be broken into simpler ideas ready for
analysis, then that term has no meaning. Hume uses his razor principle to devalue
abstract concepts pertaining to religion and metaphysics.
Despite his apparent hostility to abstract ideas of a metaphysical nature, Hume
does not deem all abstract ideas worthless. Hume argues that the mind naturally
forms associations between ideas from impressions that are similar in spaceand
time. In the mind, a general term becomes associated with further specific
instances of those similar impressions and comes to stand for all of them. This
process explains why we can visualize particular events that we may not have
actually experienced, based on their association with those events that we have
experienced.
Hume’s third philosophical tool is the “fork,” the principle that truths can be
divided into two kinds. The first kind of truth deals with relations of ideas, such as
true statements in mathematics—for example, that the sum of the angles in a
triangle equals 180 degrees. These kinds of truth are necessary—oncethey’ve been
proven, they stay proven. The second kind of truth deals is in matters of fact,
which concerns things that exist in the world.
Analysis
The theories Hume develops in the Treatise have their foundations in the writings
of John Locke and George Berkeley, and Hume is associated with these two men
as the third in the series of great British empiricists. Like Hume, Locke denied the
existence of innate ideas, dividing the sources of our ideas into two categories:
those derived from sensation through the use of our sense organs and those derived
from reflection through our own mental processes. Hume makes use of Locke’s
distinction in his own theory of ideas, though he alters the terminology. For Hume,
sensations and reflections bothfall under the term impressions, while he reserves
the term ideas for the results of mental processes suchas imagination and memory.
Hume’s discussionof abstractideas rests on his acceptance of Berkeley’s claim
that the idea we have of a general term always springs from a specific experience,
though used in a general way. Hume praised this explanation but further clarified
how a general term could stand for several similar, but specific, experiences.
I see David Hume, very much as a kind of successor to Aristotle. He too believed
in the power of reason, but also deeply appreciated it’s limitations. He rejected the

6. Cartesian rationalism which believed that by pure reason alone we could achieve
knowledge of what matters in life. He believed the way that we reason is a far
more imperfect and almost impossible to justify from a purely logical point of
view. It’s a method of generalising from experience for making inferences on the
basis of the way things seem to the way we think they are. From a purely logical
point of view, this is absolutely outrageous, but we depend upon it. The idea of
cause and effect for example; we can’t conclude by pure reason that there is a thing
called ’cause and effect’, nor by observation can we conclude that, because all we
actually see is one thing after another. Nonetheless, we must assume there is such
a thing as cause and effect in the world in order to make sense of it. There are
many other riches to Hume’s thought, but I think what he does like Aristotle, is he
get us to use our reason as vigorously as possible, but also pointing out to us what
the limits of reason are. He takes us to the edge of reason, and because of that – he
is very important.
Hume was the first western philosopher to work within a non-theological
framework. His Treatise (published when he was 28) showed how to understand
the nature of humans as natural beings within a natural world. Hume saw clearly
how much of previous thinking had to be abandoned, and how much could be
preserved. I’m not sure anybody has done a much better job of working out the
details of a naturalistic world view in the three centuries since.

7. Suleyman Demirel University
The Treatise of
Human Nature by
David Hume
Made by: Yessenkeldi Z.
Checked by: Chongarov E.
Kaskelen 2017