Philosophy of David Hume - Essay Example

David Hume is an English philosopher from the 18th century who has deeply influenced Western thought through his early inquiries into the nature of mind, foundations of knowledge, and methods of valid reasoning. Hume’s major works are: “A Treatise of Human Nature: Being An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects,” (1739-40) “An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding” (1748) “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals” (1751) Hume’s work is regarded by historians as being the cornerstone of modern empiricism. Hume posited a theory of objective knowledge and a method of scientific inquiry intended to produce valid results, all based upon the rationality of Newton and the values of the era of European Enlightenment. As he writes: “ALL the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain... Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing... It may, therefore, be a subject worthy of curiosity, to enquire what is the nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory. This part of philosophy, it is observable, has been little cultivated, either by the ancients or moderns; and therefore our doubts and errors, in the prosecution of so important an enquiry, may be the more excusable; while we march through such difficult paths without any guide or direction... All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses.” (1) In many ways, Hume’s writings represent initial steps towards an organized psychology in the West, for he was analyzing the way that the mind operates and created models of consciousness within a philosophical framework based upon the scientific method. The skepticism of Hume is targeted at traditional superstitions, common wisdom assumptions, and even religious beliefs as these may obscure what is actually real and true by biasing the mind and perception. “NOTHING is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision. It can feign a train of events, with all the appearance of reality, ascribe to them a particular time and place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every circumstance, that belongs to any historical fact, which it believes with the greatest certainty. Wherein, therefore, consists the difference between such a fiction and belief? It lies not merely in any peculiar idea, which is annexed to such a conception as commands our assent, and which is wanting to every known fiction. For as the mind has authority over all its ideas, it could voluntarily annex this particular idea to any fiction, and consequently be able to believe whatever it pleases; contrary to what we find by daily experience.” (2) From this Hume argued that logic operated within the greater bias or belief system that the individual subscribed to, taking a legalistic view, and through this could explain the diversity within individuality on a common pattern. Nevertheless, this pessimistic view of human nature posited by Hume in many ways fueled greater skepticism in academic inquiry and English society at large, which evolved through generations of followers to become represented in the modern era as a type of cynicism. From this, Hume establishes a moral weighting of knowledge that values the empirical over the abstract by nature, in that abstract thoughts and ideas are considered “weaker” than empirically derived impressions which are both “strong & vivid.” Despite the fact that Hume cites no documentation or evidence in his works from which this division is derived or articulating on what base it is founded, the sentiment was taken by the greater scientific community as an expression of their common philosophy, rather than rigorously testing it through epistemology to determine whether or not the method of reasoning was valid. Remembering the proto-psychological understanding Hume is introducing into English society through his writing, we see that scientific inquiry into the nature of mind in the West would become more focused on the physiological, chemical, and biological functioning of the brain and nervous system, ultimately taking a medical approach to consciousness, directly as a consequence from this fundamental moral valuation of empiricism. This is just one result of Hume’s legacy as it impacted the method of inquiry in psychology. Similar if not more pronounced domination of materialism can be found in nearly every other branch of Western education and research since Hume as well. . E.F. Schumacher rejected this approach directly by pointing out that what the scientific method excludes from society is actually that with the highest value to man, in his view – direct knowledge (Gnosis) of the ultimate Truth and the search for Enlightenment in the subjective mind and being/existence of the individual. “The maps produced by modern materialistic scientism leave all of the questions that really matter unanswered. More than that, they even deny the validity of the questions,” he wrote. (3) Compared to Hume’s “seven philosophical relations and two causes” as a model of operating consciousness, Schumacher instead posits a four-fold organization of modes of consciousness dependent on the direction of the mode of inquiry, which he calls the “Four Fields of Knowledge.” He also posits four states of natural being: the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human, discussing their relationship to each other in terms of complexity of the consciousness and organization of complexity within the organism. While this is interesting and logical, one objection is it seems that Schumacher had not encountered the Buddhist teaching of “the Wheel of Life” and its classification of beings, as it may not have been available in translation during his lifetime. Where the system posited by Schumacher includes minerals and vegetables as life forms, Buddhism does not recognize these types of life as “sentient beings” with a trans-migratory nature. Buddhist cosmology also includes gods, demi-gods, hell-beings, and hungry ghosts as trans-migratory sentient beings which Schumacher also excludes from his hierarchy of being. While the Buddhist classification of sentient beings is not accepted by modern science due to the effects of Hume’s skepticism and empiricism, we do not know the reason that these dimensions are excluded from Schumacher’s portrait of life. We can resolve this objection however by noting that Schumacher teaches not from a purely Buddhist theology, but from the unity of all religions as posited by the Satyagraha of Mahatma Gandhi. By the time of the 20th century, the results and implications of the evolutions in modernism, positive and negative, were all too evident to E.F. Schumacher as well. He was a trained economist, disciple of Maynard Keynes, and exile from the terrors of Nazi Germany, living and working in England. Unlike most early 20th century economists, Schumacher was deeply read in Eastern philosophy, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Yoga. Schumacher would pen two widely influential economics tracts – “Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered” and “Buddhist Economics” that were embraced by the environmental and counter-culture movements in the 1960- 70’s as part of their critique of corporate capitalism and the worldview of scientific materialism. Schumacher himself would give full force to the critique of scientific materialism in his book “A Guide for the Perplexed,” his last book and one he described as containing the message of his life. While this book follows Schumacher’s tendency to simplify multiple conflicting theories and philosophies of life to unifying principles, and cutting through concepts to describe the world of the mind “as it is,” it is also his most expansive work in terms of developing a critique of scientific materialism and an original theory of knowledge. In many ways, Schumacher argued against the effects of what had evolved from Hume’s skepticism and empiricism in Western society, for he saw modern culture in England lacking appropriate appreciation for culture, art, mysticism, and metaphysics. Tracing the roots of this view, we can find the prejudice against those methods of inquiry leads back to Hume’s skepticism and empiricism. For Schumacher, the highly subjective and individual path to truth is only valid if it strives for the highest reaches of knowledge & evolution of being – a search for Enlightenment in the Eastern sense. He sees in Western science a logical system that would exclude this search and mode of inquiry entirely from the realm of valid judgment, and rails against that authority from the position of art, religion, and philosophy as ways of life needing to be valued at the highest level and not in conflict at all with science. To analyze the response of Schumacher hypothetically to the doctrines of Hume is not difficult, for Schumacher accuses empiricism as it is represented in scientific materialism and commercial society, to be limiting humanity rather than liberating it: “With the rise of materialistic Scientism the soul disappeared from the description of man—how could it exist when it could be neither weighed nor measured?—except as one of the many strange attributes of complex arrangements of atoms and molecules. Why not accept the so-called ‘soul’ as an epiphenomenon of matter, just as, say, magnetism has been accepted as such? The Universe was seen simply as an accidental collocation of atoms. If the great Cosmos is seen as nothing but a chaos of particles without purpose or meaning, so man must be seen as nothing but a chaos of particles without purpose and meaning—a sensitive chaos perhaps, capable of suffering pain, anguish and despair, but a chaos all the same—a rather unfortunate cosmic accident of no consequence whatever.” (4) Schumacher’s critique of scientific materialism is in many ways related and influenced by the Marxist critique of capitalism. But Schumacher is not following Marxist philosophy for he sees its material base, atheism, and rejection of the soul as fundamentally wrong and to be opposed just as much as scientific materialism. E.F. Schumacher’s biggest influence was undoubtedly Mahatma Gandhi, who taught the doctrine of Satyagraha or “Soul Force / Love Force / Truth Force” that was the heart of all religions, morality, justice, and life. In Schumacher’s view, Hume’s empiricism, skepticism, and its descendents fundamentally miss this aspect of “Truth” (Satya) as taught by Mahatma Gandhi and all the world religions. Because of this reason, many counter-culture activists found more comfort in Schumacher’s writings than Marcuse’s, for example, as the latter was based in a materialist Marxist critique and essentially atheist. In “Small is Beautiful,” Schumacher argued that people mattered, that quality mattered, that the small moments in life were paramount. In this, he followed Pirsig in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” who also led the counter-culture in critiquing the foundations of Western philosophy and the preoccupation with materialism. “The maps of real knowledge, designed for real life—then—showed nothing except things which allegedly could be proved to exist. The first principle of the philosophical mapmakers seemed to be ‘if in doubt, leave it out’, or put it into a museum. It occurred to me, however, that the question of what constitutes proof was a very subtle and difficult one. Would it not be wiser to turn the principle into its opposite and say: ‘if in doubt, show it prominently’? After all, matters that are beyond doubt are, in a sense, dead ... they constitute no challenge to the living.” “To accept anything as true means to incur the risk of error. If I limit myself to knowledge that I consider true beyond doubt, I minimize the risk of error, but at the same time I maximize the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important, and most rewarding things in life.” (5) While not replying directly to Hume as a focal point of his criticism, Schumacher makes his views on valid knowledge clear in “A Guide for the Perplexed,” and his writing shows Hume’s empiricism to be too limited to reflect the full spectrum of human thought, emotion, and experience required of a fundamental theory of knowledge. The consequences of skepticism and empiricism, in the view of Schumacher, is that of limiting the debate to materialist foundations and provability following a certain authorized methodology, but it does not lead to the Truth as taught by the Eastern religions- Buddha, Gandhi, and others – this is the key and fundamental critique that Schumacher inserts into the Western dialogue dominated by the scientific method as the only valid means of inquiry into both objective knowledge. Where is Enlightenment in the Eastern or Buddhist definition of the term, Schumacher asks, how can we arrive at this state of Truth through the scientific method? Indeed, they are two fundamentally different modes of inquiry, subjective and objective. With Hume’s philosophy, the mysticism of Buddhist yoga cannot be part of the scientific process. In Schumacher’s concern, it must be, otherwise the individual risks losing sight of a valuable method of inquiry into the nature of reality. Through excluding a means of insight into the nature of mind or reality, empiricism limits human nature and its societal expression by limiting the way that individuals live their life, a form of repression, justifying the Schumacher critique in the author’s view. Schumacher wrote of the limitations of scientific materialism and its methodology in skeptical empiricism, and his teaching is representative of the zeitgeist or milieu in which it was formed, a period which saw massive interest in the Western counter-culture with Eastern religions, philosophy, and consciousness. Other examples of this same popular movement can be seen in books like “The Tao of Physics” and “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” where Eastern mysticism, Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy are merged with the philosophical foundations of Quantum Physics to create a new meta-physical framework that integrates the latest advances in science with the oldest recorded wisdom traditions on Earth. This is a profound development and in many ways represents an example of the creative metaphysics that Schumacher saw missing in the Western scientific tradition earlier. Hume’s view, on the other hand, seems more in alliance with modern atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens who champion scientific materialism over religious belief and “superstition”. This is very much the same debate Hume himself was embroiled in with the Church authorities in his own day. Schumacher’s critique is important not only because he introduced the Buddhist and Gandhian influence into Western economics, but also because he insightfully pointed out the ways scientific materialism was excluding the most important aspects of life, the search for Enlightenment, from valid human inquiry. To date, Schumacher’s concerns have not moved to the predominating or majority position in the debate, nor have they been reflected in Western education as foundational to curriculum design or research. Hume’s skepticism, as Schumacher clearly illustrated, was the primary cause that the mystical had been gradually and increasingly eliminated and discouraged in Western society. Schumacher’s views represent an important criticism of Western empiricism, scientific materialism, and corporate capitalism. Hume’s empiricism and skepticism led directly to the development of an antagonism against mysticism, religious belief, and even concepts such as consciousness and the soul itself in Western science. Schumacher’s views, driven by Gandhi and Buddhism, represent an important reform of scientific inquiry and the totalitarianism of the material requirement in valid knowledge. Where both writers create subjective maps of consciousness seeking to explain the workings of the mind and the relations between ideas and reality, Hume’s empiricism and skepticism may be too extreme if we are to value the elements of the soul and search for Enlightenment as posited by Schumacher. This is an old debate, but advances in understanding in quantum physics and well as in Eastern philosophy in the West have engendered new philosophical frameworks and integral relations that transcend both the works of Hume and Schumacher while building on them as a foundation. In a post-modern society based in cultural relativism and multi-cultural diversity, Schumacher’s view remains the more expansive theory of knowledge, as it has a wider base of validation in comparison to Hume’s system and it values the traditional ways of knowledge excluded by Hume but essential to human culture, history, and society in the greater context. List of Works Cited: 1. Hume, David. “An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,” Harvard Classics Volume 37 (P.F. Collier & Son: 1910), accessed Dec. 7th, 2010, http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html. 2. Ibid. 3. Schumacher, E.F. A Guide for the Perplexed, (Great Britain: Jonathon Cape Ltd, 1977) accessed Dec. 5th, 2010, http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-Community/1978-07-01/Spirituality-and-Ecology.aspx?page=4#ixzz17KeiQlOp. 4. Ibid. 5. Schumacher, E.F. The Slenderest Knowledge, Enlighten Next Magazine, 2010. Last accessed Dec. 5th, 2010, http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j11/slenderest.asp. Read More