This assignment should help you to understand Hume’s skeptical philosophy; his insistence that experience is necessary to have any reasonable beliefs at all, and how in such ordinary cases as those below, even relying on experience is no guarantee of certainty. Thus his treatment of the question of whether it is reasonable to believe that God exists follows from this skeptical philosophy.
Please Read then answer the questions: Hume, Unmasking the Pretenses of Reason, pages 400-404, to Theory of Ideas, and pages 404-406, to Causation, pages 412-417, and Notes on Hume Part 1
First, briefly explain why Hume says that all of our knowledge of matters of fact depends on cause and effect by using these examples (recall the examples Hume gave, e.g., that my friend is in France). In each case, we observe something and then infer something else, which we did not observe. Remember that these are inferences we make based on cause and effect. And explain whether you could be wrong in your inference.
1. It rained last night.
2. Someone just made coffee.
3. My car’s battery is dead.
4. Evans spent too much time in the sun.
5. Someone threw a brick through my window.
In explaining human behavior in the same terms, Hume gives an example of a friend who must have missed lunch (or, as Hume puts it, “he has not dined”), because the friend is usually very friendly but on this occasion is not. We observe the unfriendly behavior and reason that its cause, which we did not observe, is that he has not dined. (Of course, we could be wrong about that.)
Next, explain why Hume says that our knowledge of cause and effect depends on experience by explaining why Adam, the first man (see notes on Hume part 1, bottom of page 2), without experience, could not have made any of the inferences #1-5.
Then explain why all our analogical reasoning, our reasoning from experience to conclusions about what we have not experienced, depends on our assuming that the future will be like the past.
Finally, give some examples (at least two) of analogical reasoning, and explain whether you could be wrong in what you expect to happen
