Hume: The Science of Man

An empiricist takes the mind apart — and finds no cause, no self, and no reason that could ever move you to act.

A course on the thought of David Hume.

What you will learn

  • State the distinction between impressions and ideas, and the copy principle.
  • Apply the principle as a test to a term that seems meaningful.
  • See why the rule is destructive rather than merely tidy.
  • Describe what is actually observed in a case of cause and effect.
  • Locate what is missing from the observation.
  • Explain what constant conjunction supplies, and what it does not.
  • State the assumption every inference from experience requires.
  • Show why neither demonstration nor experience can establish it.

Course outline

  1. The Science of Man — One rule, applied without exception: every idea must be traceable to something you actually experienced. It sounds harmless. It is a blade, and by the end of the course most of what you believe will…
  2. The Billiard Table — You believe one event makes another happen. Watch closely while it happens, and tell me which part of what you saw was the making.
  3. Custom Is the Guide — Every expectation you have about tomorrow rests on a premise no argument can supply. This is the one people call the scandal, and I have never found the answer.
  4. No Self to Find — Look inward for the thing that has your experiences. Report what you find. I did this honestly, published the result, and then admitted in print that I could not make it work.
  5. Reason, the Slave — Reason cannot move you to do anything, and no argument has ever carried you from how the world is to how you ought to act. What is left to do the work is feeling — which is not the concession it…
  6. Miracles, Design, and the Backgammon Table — The argument that cost him two professorships, the book he did not dare publish while alive — and the answer to the scepticism, which is not an argument at all.

Works read in this course

  • A Treatise of Human Nature — 1739-40, written in his twenties; the full system, including the self and the is/ought passage
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding — 1748; the causation and induction arguments rewritten for readers, plus the essays on miracles and providence
  • An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals — 1751; the moral philosophy restated — Hume thought it his best work
  • Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion — written early, withheld for decades, published posthumously in 1779; the design argument taken apart by Philo
  • Essays, Moral, Political and Literary — the public-facing Hume — including 'Of National Characters' and its notorious footnote
  • My Own Life — the short autobiography written months before his death
  • (secondary, authoring-only) The Cambridge Companion to Hume (2009) — the scholarly frame this course is built on — not ingested, not quoted

Terms introduced

impression, idea, the copy principle, matter of fact, relations of ideas, constant conjunction, necessary connexion, custom, the bundle, sentiment

Part of the Simposeum course library.