The Philosophical Concept of Skepticism - Essay Example

Hume’s Skepticism Hume’s skepticism of miracles centered around the use of them to explain things that could not be explained in any other way. Doing so sets a limit on what we can achieve through human understanding. Take for instance intelligent design. Intelligent design states that there are objects occurring in nature that are too complex to be able to able to have occurred naturally on their own and the only way that they could have occurred is to have been designed. Instead of saying that there is no way that these objects could have occurred unless they were designed, it should actually be said that we are simply unaware of how they are able to occur naturally. If we have an explanation for something, then we will not attempt to push the limits of our knowledge to find the reason why something actually works the way that it does. Hume the empiricist would be essentially opposed to anything that by nature would be setting limitations upon knowledge that can be gained through human experience. It is not possible to prove a negative because that is basically outside of the scope of human reason. We can say that A will cause B, but we cannot say that B is not capable of being caused; we simply haven’t found the appropriate mechanism which will cause it. Intelligent design is simply the latest version of the argument from design, and while Hume wasn’t alive to have ever heard of intelligent design, he was opposed to the design argument on the same principles to which he was opposed to rational belief in miracles. Miracles attempt to explain things that we do not understand at the moment, and when people don’t understand how something works, we turn to the invention of connections to attempt to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Hume noted a few things about miracles, such as the fact that people will often lie, and people tend to believe in things that will justify their beliefs. If people believe that God exists, and since God is something beyond human knowledge, anything that happens that is beyond the scope of human knowledge can be explained through the use of God in the form of miracles. If people simply believe in things without any sort of reason or empirical evidence to support the beliefs, obviously there might be some sort of inherent doubt in those beliefs. People will necessarily want to believe in things that support their own views and their own beliefs. By believing in miracles, people are believing in what they view as empirical evidence that God exists. In more educated nations, where people understand more about how nature works, there tend to be less occurrences of so-called miracles because people do in fact know more about how nature works and do not need to invent reasons why certain things happen because they know exactly how they happen. What should be noted about Hume’s attitudes towards miracles is that Hume as an empiricist is reliant upon human experience, and without actually having experienced the events which people referred to as miracles, he could not actually comment on them himself. In actuality, it is not possible for a person to have experienced all events that are referred to as miracles, and since this is the case, it makes for a difficult position upon Hume to really comment on. All he knows is that in his experience he has not had any events that occurred to him that he would refer to as miracles. Hume, of course, was simply stating that he did not believe there to be a rational reason to believe in miracles and was not commenting on faith-based reasons for belief in miracles. *** Hume’s criticism of Descartes centered on the absoluteness of the skepticism which Descartes attempted to achieve. Descartes wanted to doubt anything that might not or didn’t have to be true. For instance, we know from experience that the sun has risen every morning, but according to Descartes, this did not mean that we can know without any skepticism that it will rise tomorrow. The purpose of Descartes’ skepticism was to get down to one single truth that had to be true no matter what. By doubting everything else in the entirety of human experience, Descartes claimed that he could then take this, the cogito, and rebuild the basis of human knowledge on a firm foundation. However, Hume felt that if Descartes’ skepticism was successful enough to doubt everything but the cogito, then it would have been an all encompassing skepticism that would not have allowed for Descartes to rebuild anything upon it. Hume was basically opposed to the idea that all sensory data could be called into doubt. In order to do so, Descartes needed to bring the idea of the evil demon into his logic and reasoning. The evil demon would trick people into thinking everything they see is different from the way it actually is, and since we don’t know we are being tricked and that the evil demon actually exists, then we are unaware that all of our sensory perceptions are false. Bringing such a device into the logic is obviously a rather weak ploy considering that Descartes is discussing something that we would never have anyway of actually having any sort of experience with. Basically, Descartes is discussing something that is beyond the scope of human reason, and Hume would have had issue with that. Hume had problems with anything that attempted to discuss or use anything that was simply beyond the scope of human experience, such as Descartes use of God upon which the world was supposedly to have been rebuilt once he reached the cogito. Being the empiricist that Hume was, Hume obviously would have taken issue with any amount of skepticism involving sensory perceptions or how we experience the world. If the evil demon really did exist, it is obviously beyond the scope of human knowledge, but what is not beyond the scope of human knowledge is what we are actually experiencing. Even though the evil demon is tricking us into perceptions that are actually false, it is difficult to say that to us as people that we could consider our perceptions to be false. Consider this: if, according to Hume, we cannot get beyond the scope of human sensory experience, then whatever we are actually experiencing would be our actual experience. Doubting what we are actually able to experience would bring in aspects that would be beyond human knowledge, so there can be no point or any knowledge gained by the complete skepticism of human sensory perception. By bringing in the evil demon or God into the Meditations, Descartes brought an inherent weakness into his argument. If he had been able to show how to doubt everything, including all of our sensory perceptions, without making use of the evil demon which is simply beyond the scope of human knowledge, then Descartes would have been successful in showing that the absolute only thing that we can know that absolutely has to be true was the cogito; of course, as Hume stated, if Descartes had been able to accomplish this in the first place, then this skepticism would have been absolute and there would be no way of building any sort of knowledge upon it. Read More