GROUP 4

DAVID
HUME
DAVID
HUME
 BORN: May 7, 1711
 DIED: August 25, 1776
 Edinburgh, Scotland
 He is a Scottish philosopher,
historian, economist and
essayist known especially
for his empiricism and
scepticism.
DAVID HUME
David Hume has a very unique way of looking at
a man. As an empiricist who believes that one can
know only what comes from the senses and
experiences. Empiricism is the school of thought
that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be
possible if it is sensed and experienced. Men can
only attained knowledge by experiencing.
 To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a
bundle of impressions.

What are impressions?

For David Hume, if one tries to examine his
experiences, he finds that they can all be categorized
into two: impressions and ideas.
Impressions are the basic concepts of our experience or
sensation. They therefore form the core of our thoughts.
When one touches an ice cube, the cold sensation is an
impression. Impressions therefore are vivid because they
are products of our direct experience.

Ideas are copies of impressions. Because of this they are

not lively and vivid as our impressions. When one
imagines the feeling of being in love for the first time,
that still is an idea.
What is self then?
Self, according to Hume, is simply a bundle
or collection of different perceptions, which
succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
movement.
 Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive,
experimental science of human nature. Taking the
scientific method of the English physicist Sir Isaac
Newton as his model and building on the
epistemology of the English philosopher John
Locke, Hume tried to describe how the mind works
in acquiring what is called knowledge.

 He concluded that no theory of reality is possible;

there can be knowledge of anything beyond
experience. Despite the enduring impact of his
theory of knowledge, Hume seems to have
considered himself chiefly as a moralist.