David Hume 1711 - 1776

I have just finished completely Part 1 of the TREATISE.

It is a terribly complex book not because it is obscure -- it rarely is and only when he is dealing with the extraordinary mental twistings of his un-named opponents trying to prove something exists and somehow substantial when it obviously is not -- but because it presents its arguments in a literary fashion and context whose motives, being that of a real human being named David Hume, are, in real life, very complex and riven with emotional passions which he is quite explicit about. I do not remember anything like this in the ENQUIRIES or DIALOGUES, but that was a long time ago. The real context of Hume's argument you disapprove of above is quite difficult in this literary and personally psychological context. It is not, in the TREATISE, any sort of straightforward statement of 'certain,' or as he would say 'dogmatic' truth -- something he utterly abhors. It is situational and even 'sociological.' It is a statement of "strict" truth which goes far beyond reasonableness and practicality and common humanity -- and he makes a very explicit point of this -- versus the normal way we must all think and live on an everyday level. "Strict" truth is something you have to concentrate on with great effort -- the effort cannot sustain itself and must at sometime falter -- and knowingly or unknowingly you fall back into "everyday" thinking. Hume puts things that Heidegger struggled very hard to make extremely difficult into very plain and straightforward language.

What confuses a reader is -- the normal reader approaches the book as a text detached from actual present-at-hand living and rigorously abstract like one would approach Aristotle (but should not -- Hume makes ME realise there is a living personality working in Aristotle, just not as vivid as Plato whom Hume called "divine" and I do not think that was the platitude others indulged in) or Aquinas or Spinoza or Hegel or Heidegger or Sartre or Derrida. Hume essentially implies he is saying, "Hey! Relax man! Drop the heavy vibes! This is suppose to be fun! Don't worry, be happy, man!" And that is probably the most profound difference between him and almost every other philosopher except possibly Plato himself: Hume primarily saw nothing wrong with, wanted to be, and succeeded in being HAPPY! Now, you know if you are suppose to be serious and have others take you very seriously, you must strive to be very unhappy. Aristotle and Ayn Rand would have 'said' this was totally ludicrous, but were VERY unconvincing in the way they said it. Hume, on the other hand is very confessional (how else could he have got along with Rosseau?), very concerned with not offending fair minded but ignorant people, and is not trying in the slightest to 'make' anyone believe anything. He says, if you like it, try it. If you don't like it, don't try it. You don't HAVE to do either one. He even outdoes Nietzsche in this playful, relaxed, uncommittal attitude. So "strictly" material objects are an illusion. But in life as you really have to live it they are real. I have never read anyone who so convincingly and honestly ever made such a statement. It is spiritually liberating in the extreme, and he would never belittle my saying such a thing. After all, he uses the words "soul" and "mind" and self" and "personal identity" interchangeably AFTER he has demonstrated they are all verbally and logically meaningless. There are numerous times, in this way of writting, he anticipates the linguistic philosophy of Wittgenstein in A) making his ultimate judgment of a matter that it is verbally meaningless, and B) at point point he even delineates something very much like "language games" which is almost inevitable since he puts on an equal level of situational validity both "everyday" language and "strict" logical language. Wittgenstein made it very clear at the end of the TRACTATUS that you could say very little or maybe nothing at all in being "strictly" logical.

JUD EVANS:

I own up that I am not particularly interested in his sections on history, politics or law, but his discourse on CAUSE [and by extrapolation EFFECT] are posited with such a deftness and discriminative accuracy that one is forced to conclude that if his physical condition had matched in any way the adroitness of his brainpower he would have made a remarkable swordsman. Consider the way he demolishes the traditional ideas regarding the necessity of cause with reference to the coming into existence of objects.

HUME:

"It is a general maxim of philosophy that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence. This is commonly taken for granted in all reasoning, without any proof given or demanded. It is supposed to be founded on intuition, and to be one of those maxims, which, though they may be denied with the lips, it is impossible for men in their hearts really to doubt of. But if we examine this maxim by the idea of knowledge above explained, we shall discover in it no mark of any such intuitive certainty; on the contrary shall find that it is of a nature quite foreign to that species of conviction. All certainty arises from the comparison of ideas, and from the discovery of such relations as are unalterable, so long as the ideas continue the same. These relations are resemblance, proportions in quantity and number, degrees of any quality, and contrariety; none of which are implied in this proposition.

Whatever has a beginning has also a cause of existence. That proposition therefore is not intuitively certain. At least, anyone who would assert it to be intuitively certain must deny these to be the only infallible relations, and must find some other relation of that kind to be implied in it; which it will then be time enough to examine. But here is an argument which proves at once that the foregoing proposition is neither intuitively nor demonstrably certain. We can never demonstrate the necessity of a cause to every new existence, or new modification of existence, without showing at the same time the impossibility there is that anything can ever begin to exist. Without some productive principle; and where the latter proposition cannot be proved, we must despair of ever being able to prove the former.

The separation therefore of the idea of cause from that of a beginning of existence is plainly possible for the imagination; and consequently the actual separation of these objects is so far possible, that it implies no contradiction nor absurdity; and is therefore incapable of being refuted by any reasoning from mere ideas; without which it is impossible to demonstrate the necessity of a cause. Accordingly, we shall find upon examination that every demonstration, which has been produced for the necessity of a cause, is fallacious and sophistical. All the points of time and place, say some philosophers, in which we can suppose any object to begin to exist, are in themselves" equal; and unless there be some cause which is peculiar to one time and to one place, and which by that means determines and fixes the existence, it must remain in eternal suspense; and the object can never begin to be, for want of something to fix its beginning. But, I ask, is there any more difficulty in supposing the time and place to be fixed without a cause, than to suppose the existence to be determined in that manner?

The first question that occurs on this subject is always, whether the object shall exist or not. The next, when and where it shall begin to exist. If the removal of a cause be intuitively absurd in the one case, it must be so in the other: And if that absurdity be not clear without a proof in the one case, it will equally require one in the other. The absurdity then of the one supposition can never be a proof of that of the other; since they are both upon the same footing, and must stand or fall by the same reasoning.

The second argument, which I find used on this head, labours under an equal difficulty. Everything, it is said, must have a cause; for if anything wanted a cause, it would to produce itself; that is, exist before it existed, which is impossible. But this, reasoning is plainly inconclusive; because it supposes that, in our denial of a cause, we still grant what we expressly deny, viz., that there must be a cause; which therefore is taken to be the object itself; and that, no doubt, is an evident contradiction. But to say that anything is produced, or, to express myself more properly, comes into existence, without a cause, is not to affirm that it is itself its own cause; but, on the contrary, in excluding all external causes, excludes a fortiori the thing itself which is created."

"Upon the whole, we may conclude that it is impossible, in anyone instance, to show the principle in which the force and agency of a cause is placed; and that the most refined and most vulgar understandings are equally at a loss in this particular. If anyone think: proper to refute this assertion, he need not put himself to the trouble of inventing any long reasonings; but may at once show us of an instance of a cause where we discover the power or operating principle.”

GARY C MOORE:

My 'take' on this, tenatively, at the present time, would be, The sense impressions of Quantum physics are, of course, necessarily true. But in relating these sense impressions we must necessarily use "succession and contiguity" to understand it which is something 'learned' from personal experience. This "experience" is applicable, strictly, A) only to each individual occurance, B) its only 'validity' is that, so far, the same thing has happened each time, and C), BECAUSE it is imaginable that next time it mi ght not happen, it is a rational concept since imagination is structured upon rational relationships (relationships that can be imagined, pictured [crucial in early Wittgenstein] like a golden mountain) combined with real sense impressions memory says actually occured. This fits in perfectly with many things Max Planck and Niels Bohr said about our literal, "strict", knowledge of an electron that it exists at one moment and at another moment does not exist. They have taken what Hume says our "sense impressions" "strictly" work in literal actuality and aplied it to their physical observations. Quantum physics is true in a Humean sense because the continual 'endurance' of an object independent of our observation which Hume objected so strenuously to -- on the grounds that such a faith leads to assuming spiritual type external entities needed to guarentee that continual existence even when we do not observe it -- is taken literally and seriously in Quantum physics with this difference -- they have not simply turned their attention away from the object as we do in everyday life to observe other things (but then, think about that -- maybe in some sense that is exactly what the Quantum physicist has done but in a way that is not "everyday," not in a way that is easily discovered or comprehensible - Hume would say, I think, that that must always be considered a real possibility just like tommorrow the sun MAY NOT rise) but are actively looking for it -- and do not find it, at least where it is mathematically predictable suppose to be. Quantum physics is considered 'true' primarily because it works and produces relatively reliable results. But there is a crucial difference between Quantum and Classical physics (Einstein did not like Quantum physics) is that theoretically it accepts a fundamental variability in its LITERAL observations that is actually, I think, - and I am totally incompetent in this - closely related to Chaos theory. In other words, without Hume's "strict" logical approach to physics, I do not think the environment for Quantum physics coming to be would have happened in the first place. Or, for that matter, Einstein theory of Relativity. However, I think Hume would have objected strongly to Einstein's premises and motivations for his Unified Field theory -- which, so far, no one has made to work even like Quantum physics does work.

I love the Russian dolls and have a very small collection. I received this fascination after watching the BBC production of SMILEY'S PEOPLE with Alec Guiness digging out Soviet moles in MI5. Between each segment there would be a picture of the katushka (?) with another layer taken off. And I found the relation of mutual respect between Smiley's MI5 and the ideologically committed KGB to be wonderful.