David Hume!

David Hume (1711-76)

David Hume was an 18^th century Scottish philosopher who is widely regarded by the general intelligent population to be one of the smartest men to come out of the British Isles. He had imperialistic ideas which synthesise both philosophy and journalism. David Hume had many views, a lot of them where drawn from John Locke and dealt with proving the existence of pretty much anything. He was an un-renounced Atheist but thought the idea of a god was ridiculous.

 Empiricism is a philosophical term which in laments terms means that all knowledge is derived from the senses; He considered Human experience as close as we can get to the truth and understanding of everything in existence.

Hume’s causation theory refers essentially to the mind being the root of all things which exist, therefore everything is possible as it is created internally known as sense data.

Skepticism, in philosophy is the epistemological position that true knowledge is completely unattainable; the real world, if there is one is unverifiable. This was mainly John Locke’s belief and David Hume merely expanded on his theory in intense detail.

Bundle theory formed from the expansion of John Locke’s theory; no object actually exists, only its feature or properties. E.g. a world cup football is round, shiny and makes a thumping sound when you kick it. Take all of these properties away and you are left with nothing... merely things envisioned by our human mind and senses, therefore it unverifiably exists due to our unverifiable collaboration of the mind and our senses. Because of this bundle theory it is even unverifiable that we, ourselves even exist.

Induction; all science is based on a logical fallacy. You cannot assume that something is going to happen or something is going to be the same. You may be held to the ground with gravity one minute, but that doesn’t mean to say that the next minute you will be.

Hume’s arguments against scientific theory are pretty interesting as well. He believes that even though scientists can provide a lot of evidence due to the re occurrence of situations for example, a high number of smokers eventually ending up with some form of cancer does not actually prove that smoking is the cause of it. It just shows what has happened and can’t be used in order to predict future inevitabilities. This theory of David Hume’s I do not agree with as I feel (along with the majority of the intelligent population) a high number of statistics can pretty much ascertain a nearly certain outcome.