Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Essay Example

His suggestion is that the controversy could easily be solved if all people become careful with their definitions of the terms, he argues, “For how easy may it seem to give exact definitions of the terms employed in reasoning..” (17). He believes that, despite the differences in human beings, all human being has doctrines that they agree on from both fields of necessity and liberty.Hume examines the factors that define necessity and suggests that our ideas are based on the connections between certain determinations and events in life he states “Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation arises entirely from the uniformity observable…” (72).

These factors determine how we infer the ideas of necessary connections rather than from the direct observation of nature. The controversies experienced are a result of the laws that govern human nature. However, he believes that there are conjunctions between the actions of men that bring universality in principles and their operations. Debates concerning the compatibility of liberty and necessity have a long history. The debate concerns how the two can be reconciled basing on the fact the events surrounding human being human beings as being necessitated at the same time arguing that, at any situation, human beings can behave otherwise, therefore, promoting free will.

Hume argues that if all human acts are being necessitated, then their reactions should also be necessitated. This implies that liberty and determinism have to work together which has never been the case. The results of this disagreement are incompatibility; the two can never be compatible. Hume, however, goes into the field of incompatibilist to try and prove them otherwise by arguing that there is a possibility of reconciling the two. His arguments as earlier stated lie on the definition of the terms.