Title: Navigating the Challenges of Writing a Thesis: David Hume's Copy Thesis

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In his 1748 essay “Of the Original Contract,” he argues that political allegiance is not grounded in
any social contract, but instead on our general observation that society cannot be maintained without
a governmental system. This assumption cannot be justified by logic, experience, or by assuming the
future resembles the past, as that would be circular. In the first (Sections 1 and 4), Hume argues that
polytheism, and not monotheism, was the original religion of primitive humans. Contrary to
mercantilists who advocated locking up money in one’s home country, Hume argued that increased
money in one country automatically disperses to other countries. Suppose that I consider them purely
in the abstract—or “consider’d simply” as Hume says ( Treatise, 2.3.9.6). I will then desire to win
the lottery and have an aversion towards being burglarized. But our experience in the past can be a
proof of nothing for the future, but upon a supposition, that there is a resemblance betwixt them. He
accounts for this erroneous notion in terms of a mistaken association that people naturally make
between visual and tactile space ( Treatise, 1.2.5.21). Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading
goals. He opens his discussion in the Treatise by telling us what moral approval is not: it is not a
rational judgment about either conceptual relations or empirical facts. I wish I had written what she
wrote but thank goodness she did. His thesis is that natural instincts—such as fear and the
propensity to adulate—are the true causes of popular religious belief, and not divine intervention or
rational argument. His background was politically Whiggish and religiously Calvinistic. He defended
the skeptical position that human reason is inherently contradictory, and it is only through naturally-
instilled beliefs that we can navigate our way through common life. Others, though, are not
connected with instinct and are more the result of social conditioning. Check-in dates are used to
track yearly reading goals. Among these was Jean Jacques Rousseau who in 1766 was ordered out of
Switzerland by the government in Berne. To ascertain this reasoning, it were requisite that we had
experience of the origin of worlds; and it is not sufficient, surely, that we have seen ships and cities
arise from human art and contrivance” (ibid). For Hume, the natural virtues include benevolence,
meekness, charity, and generosity. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. Appealing
to both forces, we ascribe interruption to perceptions and continuance to objects ( Treatise, 1.4.2.52).
Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. Check-in dates are used
to track yearly reading goals. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. As a child he
faithfully attended the local Church of Scotland, pastored by his uncle. Hume was upset by Beattie’s
relentless verbal attacks against him in the work, but the book made Beattie famous and King George
III, who admired it, awarded Beattie a pension of ?200 per year. But these concessions would be
such a bare-faced violation of liberty, that they will probably be the last efforts of a despotic
government. He concludes his essay with the following cryptic comment about Christian belief in
biblical miracles. First, he skeptically argues that we are unable to gain complete knowledge of some
important philosophical notion under consideration. This claim places Hume squarely in the
empiricist tradition, and he regularly uses this principle as a test for determining the content of an
idea under consideration. Instead, the “ unbounded liberty of the press” is “one of the evils”
associated with mixed forms of government.
In Great Britain, mercantile policies were instituted through the Navigation Acts, which prohibited
trade between British colonies and foreign countries. According to Hume, the second pan will
always outweigh the first. When my perceptions are remov’d for any time, as by sound sleep; so
long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. Chief among the critics was
clergyman William Wishart (d. 1752), the Principal of the University of Edinburgh. To avoid over-
characterizing royal prerogative, Hume occasionally condemns arbitrary actions of monarchs and
praises efforts for preserving liberty. In the first (Sections 1 and 4), Hume argues that polytheism,
and not monotheism, was the original religion of primitive humans. Just as we can refine our
external senses such as our palate, we can also refine our sense of artistic beauty and thus cultivate a
delicacy of taste. Best known as a proponent of radical empiricism, he considered the Essays to be
one of his chief works; it was highly influential in his own time and onwards. He explains this
mistaken belief by the natural tendency we have to impute subjectively perceived qualities to
external things ( Treatise, 1.3.14.24). By sympathetically experiencing this pleasure, I thereby
pronounce your motivating character trait to be a virtue, as opposed to a vice. Therefore, according
to Hume all beliefs about unobserved matters, including the future, are unjustified. Further, if we
closely inspect human nature, we will never find a primary instinct that inclines us to acknowledge
private property. The Treatise explores several philosophical topics such as space, time, causality,
external objects, the passions, free will, and morality, offering original and often skeptical appraisals
of these notions. The second theme in Hume’s political essays is that revolutions and civil wars
principally arise from zealousness within party factions. We do not even tacitly consent to a contract
since many of us have no real choice about remaining in our countries: “Can we seriously say that a
poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or
manners, and lives from day to day by the small wages which he acquires?” Political allegiance, he
concludes, is ultimately based on a primary instinct of selfishness, and only through reflection will
we see how we benefit from an orderly society. This was a collaborative publication with the
important Scottish bookseller Alexander Kincaid, with whom the bookseller Andrew Millar had a
lucrative but sometimes difficult relationship. In his 1748 essay “Of the Original Contract,” he argues
that political allegiance is not grounded in any social contract, but instead on our general observation
that society cannot be maintained without a governmental system. Below are a few works that cover
all aspects of Hume’s philosophy. The specific version of the argument that Hume examines is one
from analogy, as stated here by Cleanthes. Priority and proximity alone, however, do not make up our
entire notion of causality. By contrast, a matter of fact, for Hume, is any object or circumstance
which has physical existence, such as “the sun will rise tomorrow”. In epistemology, he questioned
common notions of personal identity, and argued that there is no permanent “self” that continues
over time. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. Check-in dates are used to track
yearly reading goals. When billiard ball A strikes billiard ball B, there is a power that the one event
imparts to the other. For example, if I throw a rock, and at that moment someone’s window in China
breaks, I would not conclude that my rock broke a window on the other side of the world.
Concerning the idea of proximity, if I say that A causes B, then I mean that B is in proximity to, or
close to A. This contains “My Own Life” and “Letter from Adam Smith, LL.D. to William Strahan,
Esq.”. And, as a “philosophical historian,” he tried to show how human nature gave rise to the
tendency towards royal prerogative. It is nothing like the primary instinct of nest building in birds.
Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. Uniformily bound in contemporary calf, spines
with 5 raised bands, some gilt ruling, vol. And though none but a fool or madman will ever pretend
to dispute the authority of experience, or to reject that great guide of human life, it may surely be
allowed a philosopher to have so much curiosity at least as to examine the principle of human nature,
which gives this mighty authority to experience, and makes us draw advantage from that similarity
which nature has placed among different objects. This is apparently not absolutely fresh news but
we heard the magic phrase for the first time this morning. It’s from. This claim places Hume
squarely in the empiricist tradition, and he regularly uses this principle as a test for determining the
content of an idea under consideration. In 1744-1745 he was a candidate for the Chair of Moral
Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. In the Enquiry, however, he takes a more compatiblist
approach. Next, a character named Demea, who is a religious rationalist, defends the causal argument
for God’s existence, but rejects the design argument. He explains this mistaken belief by the natural
tendency we have to impute subjectively perceived qualities to external things ( Treatise, 1.3.14.24).
He concludes his essay with the following cryptic comment about Christian belief in biblical
miracles. Wherein the chief Argument of that Book is farther Illustrated and Explained (1740). In
epistemology, he questioned common notions of personal identity, and argued that there is no
permanent “self” that continues over time. But our experience in the past can be a proof of nothing
for the future, but upon a supposition, that there is a resemblance betwixt them. In the second we
place our life-long experience of consistent laws of nature. It is probably this main argument to
which Hume refers. This produces a habit such that upon any further appearance of A, we expect B
to follow. Hume also appreciates the mixed form of government within Great Britain, which fosters
liberty of the press. The American patriots ignore Hume’s backpedaling and an early unedited
version of the essay circulates widely in the American press under the title “the celebrated Mr.
Hume’s Observations on the Liberty of the Press”. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading
goals. New product price is lower than exchange product price. One is our natural inclination to
believe that we are directly seeing objects as they really are, and the other is the more philosophical
view that we only ever see mental images or copies of external objects. Check-in dates are used to
track yearly reading goals. Works collected here include masterpieces by David Hume, Immanuel
Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as religious sermons and moral debates on the issues of the
day, such as the slave trade. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that
we are essentially different in this particular. This notion of necessary connection is the specific
focus of Hume’s analysis of cause-effect. In the second part (Sections 2-3, 5-8), Hume establishes
the psychological principles that give rise to popular religious belief. Simplistic versions of the causal
argument maintain that when we trace back the causes of things in the universe, the chain of causes
cannot go back in time to infinity past; there must be a first cause to the causal sequence, which is
God. First, advancing what is commonly called Hume’s copy thesis, he argues that all ideas are
ultimately copied from impressions. The past that is not dealt with eats away at us in our (collective)
subconscious and paralyses us for action.
By the end of the century Hume was recognized as the founder of the moral theory of utility, and
utilitarian political theorist Jeremy Bentham acknowledged Hume’s direct influence upon him.
Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. The larger aim of his critique was to
disentangle philosophy from religion and thus allow philosophy to pursue its own ends without
rational over-extension or psychological corruption. He suggests that sometimes these passions are
sparked instinctively—for example, by my desire for food when I am hungry. This agent-receiver-
spectator distinction is the product of earlier moral sense theories championed by the Earl of
Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Joseph Butler (1692-1752), and Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747). In the
concluding section of his Enquiry, Hume again addresses the topic of skepticism, but treats the
matter somewhat differently: he rejects extreme skepticism but accepts skepticism in a more
moderate form. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?
No. A strong, centralized and moderating force was the best way to avoid factious disruption from
the start. That is, for any idea we select, we can trace the component parts of that idea to some
external sensation or internal feeling. In response, the character Cleanthes argues that the flaw in the
cosmological argument consists in assuming that there is some larger fact about the universe that
needs explaining beyond the particular items in the series itself. Report this Document Download
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useful, Mark this document as not useful Embed Share Print Download now Jump to Page You are
on page 1 of 5 Search inside document. Thus, we cannot argue that God’s existence is required to
initiate a sequence of temporal causes. I, then, will sympathetically experience agreeable feelings
along with the receiver. The third contradiction involves a conflict between causal reasoning and
belief in the continued existence of matter. Discussing this issue in his 1741 Essays, he holds that we
should learn “the lesson of moderation in all our political controversies.” However, from the
perspective of how British history actually unfolded, he emphasized royal prerogative. In
epistemology, he questioned common notions of personal identity, and argued that there is no
permanent “self” that continues over time. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals.
Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. In 1744-1745 he was a candidate for the
Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Examine their lives: You will scarcely
think that they repose the smallest confidence in them. There is also another variant of the 4th edition
of vol. They also provide a table that catalogues the contents of the various editions from 1741 to
1771 and several helpful appendixes relating to their publication. Just as we can refine our external
senses such as our palate, we can also refine our sense of artistic beauty and thus cultivate a delicacy
of taste. He explains in detail the psychological process that triggers indirect passions such as pride.
To Hume’s way of thinking, the loudest voices favoring liberty were Calvinistic religious fanatics
who accomplished little more than dissention. For example, if I throw a rock, and at that moment
someone’s window in China breaks, I would not conclude that my rock broke a window on the other
side of the world. Hume published a pamphlet defending his actions and was exonerated. I as the
spectator would then sympathetically experience the receiver’s pain and thereby pronounce your
motivating character trait to be a vice, as opposed to a virtue. The four essays in Four Dissertations
were later added to various sections of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. Hume used all of
the rhetorical devices at his disposal, and left it to his readers to decode his most controversial
conclusions on religious subjects.
He sees, though, that in time he will be drawn back into philosophical speculation in order to attack
superstition and educate the world. By contrast, a matter of fact, for Hume, is any object or
circumstance which has physical existence, such as “the sun will rise tomorrow”. Hume is often
grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist. He
concludes his essay with the following cryptic comment about Christian belief in biblical miracles.
From a theoretical and idealistic perspective, he favored a mixed constitution, mediating between the
authority of the monarch and that of the Parliament. For example, if I throw a rock, and at that
moment someone’s window in China breaks, I would not conclude that my rock broke a window on
the other side of the world. The psychological account of this erroneous view is that we mistake time
for the cause of succession instead of seeing it as the effect ( Treatise, 1.2.5.29). The individual
volumes are these: Vol. 1: Early Responses to Hume’s Moral Theory Vol. 2: Early Responses to
Hume's Essays Vols. 3 and 4: Early Responses to Hume's Metaphysical and Epistemological Writings
Vols. 5 and 6: Early Responses to Hume’s Writings on Religion Vols. 7 and 8: Early Responses to
Hume’s History of England Vols. 9 and 10: Early Hume’s Life and Reputation, with Bibliography of
Early Responses to Hume and Indexes to all 10 volumes. The third contradiction involves a conflict
between causal reasoning and belief in the continued existence of matter. Hume uses the familiar
example of a golden mountain: this idea is a combination of an idea of gold and an idea of a
mountain. After a few minor lapses in judgment, and a few too many concessions to Catholics,
Protestant zealots rose up against him, and he was ultimately executed. He dramatically makes this
point at the conclusion of his Enquiry. A strong, centralized and moderating force was the best way
to avoid factious disruption from the start. The main assaults on theistic proofs are conveyed by both
Cleanthes and Philo, and, to that extent, both of their critiques likely represent Hume’s views.
Monotheism, he believes, was only a later development that emerged with the progress of various
societies. As early as the Anglo Saxon period, the commons did not participate in the king’s advisory
council. A Government website, Values Education, has provided a list of the nine most important.
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Download now Jump to Page You are on page 1 of 5 Search inside document. His thesis is that
natural instincts—such as fear and the propensity to adulate—are the true causes of popular religious
belief, and not divine intervention or rational argument. For Hume, we have no primary instinct to
recognize private property, and all conceptions of justice regarding property are founded solely on
how useful the convention of property is to us. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they
repose the smallest confidence in them. Nearly all of that document was written by Jefferson, but
Franklin’s modification in the first line totally changed the character of the Declaration, and thus of
the United States, and thus the whole world. Thus, he writes, “Reason is, and ought only to be the
slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (
Treatise, 2.3.3.4). That is, for any idea we select, we can trace the component parts of that idea to
some external sensation or internal feeling. The memory is a faculty that conjures up ideas based on
experiences as they happened. The first volume was unfavorably received, partially for its defense of
Charles I, and partially for two sections which attack Christianity. Check-in dates are used to track
yearly reading goals. This contains “My Own Life” and “Letter from Adam Smith, LL.D. to William
Strahan, Esq.”. Two years later, in 1779, Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion appeared.
Suppose, for example, that I paint a picture, which gives me a feeling of pleasure. His claim to
greatness lies in his appreciation of ordinary experience, his descriptions of consciousness and his
humane, tolerant approach to religious disputes. During the Enlightenment, there were two pillars of
traditional Christian belief: natural and revealed religion. The third part of this work (Sections 9-15)
compares various aspects of polytheism with monotheism, showing that one is no more superior than
the other. By sympathetically experiencing this pleasure, I thereby pronounce your motivating
character trait to be a virtue, as opposed to a vice. It is one of the first systematic attempts to explain
the causes of religious belief solely in terms of psychological and sociological factors. Reason, he
argues, is completely inert when it comes to motivating conduct, and without some emotion we
would not engage in any action. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. According to
Philo, the design argument is based on a faulty analogy: we do not know whether the order in nature
was the result of design, since, unlike our experience with the creation of machines, we did not
witness the formation of the world. I knew that Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence
was copy-edited by Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams but I didn’t know the most critical line in it
was modified by Franklin. The larger aim of his critique was to disentangle philosophy from religion
and thus allow philosophy to pursue its own ends without rational over-extension or psychological
corruption. From causes which appear similar we expect similar effects. Check-in dates are used to
track yearly reading goals. In subsequent editions some essays were dropped and others added; the
collection was eventually combined with his Political Discourses (1752) and retitled Essays, Moral,
Political and Literary in Hume’s collection of philosophical works, Essays and Treatises on Several
Subjects (1753). In one passage Hume notes that the first Protestant reformers were fanatical or
“inflamed with the highest enthusiasm ” in their opposition to Roman Catholic domination. Examine
their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them. In 1751 he
published his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which recasts parts of Book III of the
Treatise in a very different form. This produces a habit such that upon any further appearance of A,
we expect B to follow. In spite of this uniform standard of taste, two factors create some difference
in our judgments: “the one is the different humours of particular men; the other, the particular
manners and opinions of our age and country.”. In Great Britain, mercantile policies were instituted
through the Navigation Acts, which prohibited trade between British colonies and foreign countries.
Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. First, in securing peace, a monarchy with
strong authority is probably better than a pure republic. He has been managed like an unlucky skier
in an induced coma these many months since September 2013, when the floor of the Migently
Mansions. But what is the experience which gives us the idea of necessary connection. In 1763, at
age 50, he was invited to accompany the Earl of Hertford to the embassy in Paris, with a near
prospect of being his secretary. In the second part (Sections 2-3, 5-8), Hume establishes the
psychological principles that give rise to popular religious belief. His thesis is that natural
instincts—such as fear and the propensity to adulate—are the true causes of popular religious belief,
and not divine intervention or rational argument. Thank you for your support over the years. Dismiss.
These internal experiences are too elusive, and nothing in them can give content to our idea of
necessary connection. (2) The idea we have of necessary connection arises as follows: we experience
a constant conjunction of events A and B— repeated sense experiences where events resembling A
are always followed by events resembling B. Priority and proximity alone, however, do not make up
our entire notion of causality.
In one passage Hume notes that the first Protestant reformers were fanatical or “inflamed with the
highest enthusiasm ” in their opposition to Roman Catholic domination. Thus, we cannot argue that
God’s existence is required to initiate a sequence of temporal causes. All I can allow him is, that he
may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. His analysis of
the subject eventually appeared some ten years later in his essay “Of Miracles” from the Enquiry, and
is his first sustained attack on revealed religion. As a philosophical historian, he defended the
conservative view that British governments are best run through a strong monarchy. He particularly
stresses the technical artistry involved when an artistic work imitates the original. New product price
is lower than exchange product price. Upload Read for free FAQ and support Language (EN) Sign in
Skip carousel Carousel Previous Carousel Next What is Scribd. When I was a young lad in an
English-style boarding school (of course!) we were permitted, once a term, to leave our prison to
spend a day with our parents. At least and at last some of the scum has begun oozing out under the
parliamentary doors. The thought of a scar on my hand leads me to think of a broken piece of glass
that caused the scar. By contrast, the artificial virtues include justice, keeping promises, allegiance
and chastity. The four essays in Four Dissertations were later added to various sections of Essays
and Treatises on Several Subjects. Finally, I, as a spectator, observe these agreeable feelings that the
receiver experiences. These sympathetic feelings of pleasure constitute my moral approval of the
original act of charity that you, the agent, perform. His claim to greatness lies in his appreciation of
ordinary experience, his descriptions of consciousness and his humane, tolerant approach to religious
disputes. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals. Two years later, in 1779, Hume’s
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion appeared. Hume also took this opportunity to alter two
particularly offending paragraphs in the Natural History. The first of this two-part essay contains the
argument for which Hume is most famous: uniform experience of natural law outweighs the
testimony of any alleged miracle. To make his case he criticizes Samuel Clarke’s rationalistic account
of morality, which is that we rationally judge the fitness or unfitness of our actions in reference to
eternal laws of righteousness, that are self-evidently known to all humans, just as is our knowledge
of mathematical relations. During the modern period of philosophy, philosophers thought of
necessary connection as a power or force connecting two events. Third, he explains how some
erroneous views of that notion are grounded in the fancy, and he accordingly recommends that we
reject those erroneous ideas. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a
handful of others as a British Empiricist. This produces a habit such that upon any further
appearance of A, we expect B to follow. So, when Hume blurs the distinction between ideas and
impressions, he is ultimately denying the spiritual nature of ideas and instead grounding them in our
physical nature. Thus, our proper notion of space is not like a “primary quality” that refers to some
external state of affairs independent of our perceptual mental process. In the conclusion to Book 1,
though, he appears to elevate his skepticism to a higher level and exposes the inherent contradictions
in even his best philosophical theories. Hume also argues that moral assessments are not judgments
about empirical facts. His philosophical writings were among the most controversial pieces of
literature of the time, and would have been impossible to publish if Britain was not a friend to liberty.