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One reason Hume appeals to repeatedly in denying that we get 'necessary connection' from either internal or external sense is that if we could we would be able to predict what would happen next.
'From the first appearance of an object, we never can conjecture what effect will result from it. But were the power or energy of any cause discoverable by the mind, we could foresee the effect, even without experience; and might, at first, pronounce with certainty concerning it, by mere dint of thought and reasoning.' Hume, Enquiry, Section VII Part 1.
This seems a crux, and one we have perhaps not fully come to terms with yet: if we could see a necessary connection attaching to an object (as it were) it would tell us what would have to happen next.
Do we see what Hume means here?
I think he has in mind mathematical reasoning and is saying that the connection between events is not like the relationship between mathematical pre misses and conclusions.
How did Hume think of mathematics?
He thought of it as a matter of the relation between ideas.
Let me explain in terms not of maths itself but of what we might call logical truths - truths which seem even more obviously to flow from relations between ideas.
Take the idea of a brother.
This is the idea of a male joined to the idea of a sibling.
The idea of a male is contained in the idea of a brother, so when we assert that a brother is male this is true, but true in virtue of the second idea simply being a component of the first idea.
Brothers are male
[Male + sibling] includes [male]
Male = male
So in saying 'brothers are male' we are asserting something that is necessary. The relation between brothers and maleness is a necessary one.
What we have here is one type of necessity.
It is Leibniz'. And I think it is Hume's.
'It seems to me, that the only objects of the abstract science or of demonstration are quantity and number, and that all attempts to extend this more perfect species of knowledge beyond these bounds are mere sophistry and illusion. As the component parts of quantity and number are entirely similar, their relations become intricate and involved; and nothing can be more curious, as well as useful, than to trace, by a variety of mediums, their equality or inequality, through their different appearances. But as all other ideas are clearly distinct and different from each other, we can never advance farther, by our utmost scrutiny, than to observe this diversity, and, by an obvious reflection, pronounce one thing not to be another.' Hume, Enquiry, Section XII Part 3.
If this is one clear sense of necessity, Hume appears to be saying that the relation between two events is never necessary in that sense.
If it were, as he keeps saying, having the idea of one of the events would tell us what event must follow it.
Think of brother and male. If you have a brother, he must be male.
Or think of mathematical relations. If you have a triangle it must have angles adding to 180 degrees.
The parallel he is drawing, and rebutting, is with relations between ideas.
Hume says that when it comes to events and objects we never have the kind of knowledge we have of relations between ideas.
From the idea of one event we can deduce nothing at all, and in particular we can deduce nothing about what must or must not happen.
From the idea of an eruption, we cannot deduce that a tidal wave will follow.
If we add to the idea of an eruption empirical knowledge of what has often or always followed eruptions in our experience then maybe we can deduce what is likely to happen next.
But if we stick to the idea itself of an eruption, nothing is deducible.
It is not part of the idea of an eruption that a tidal wave follows.
Compare the fact that it is part of the idea of a brother that he is male.
And that it is part of the idea of a triangle that it should have angles summing to 180 degrees.
Hume thinks it is obvious that the idea of one event does not support deductions about the occurrence of any other event for the following reason:
You can imagine the world ending after any event has happened. Then nothing would follow the occurrence of the event. So there cannot be a necessary connection between it and anything else.
He adds further support like this: we have to gain all our knowledge of the course of events through experience. Before you have acquired experience you don't know anything about the likely consequences of an eruption. The fact that tidal waves often or always follow them is something you have to learn. Therefore, their being followed by tidal waves cannot be part of the idea of an eruption.
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"There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity." Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.37 |
It seems that Hume is assuming that there is only one form of necessity: the necessity by which some pairs of ideas are related. When one idea contains another, we may assert a necessary relation based on this fact. Brothers of necessity must be male.
But that is for Hume the only kind of necessity.
Hume firms up the position you reach when you insist that all knowledge comes from experience.
You have to have an account of the sort of knowledge you seem to get from thinking in the arm chair: mathematics (geometry, algebra and arithmetic).
This must be a matter of discerning the relations that exist amongst our ideas, all of which derive ultimately from sense.
Hume articulates accordingly a distinction between matters of fact and 'relations of ideas'.
' All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstrable certain ... propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. ... Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible; because it can never imply a contradiction ... That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less ineligible a proposition and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, that it will rise.' Hume, Treatise, Appendix B.
Notice the very different view that is taken of mathematics. For the rationalists mathematics was the grand vehicle of Reason, the paradigm of all knowledge. Mathematical reasoning gave us an independent instrument with which new knowledge might be acquired. For the empiricists mathematical reasoning can tell us nothing new.
This exhaustive distinction leads to Hume's seminal envoi:
'When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, XII, iii
The idea that the person was to be identified primarily with the mental rather than with the physical had been set in irresistible motion by Descartes.
Descartes placed the self as a foundation stone of his system: the one thing we can be sure of, in the first and most powerful cycle of thought, is that I exist.
It was part of the Cartesian revolution that what a person was had to be construed as essentially a matter of how, or in virtue of what, groups of mental particles belonged to each other.
The answer to this question that had been launched in the seventeenth century that the person was whatever it was that "had" the mental particles, or that "perceived" them:
" Self is that conscious thinking thing ... which is sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery ..." (John Locke)
Hume recognizes the view of some philosophers that 'we are at ever moment intimately conscious of what we call our self.' It is mistaken however. If there were such an idea, he says:
' [I]t must come from one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv'd; and consequently there is no such idea.' Hume, Treatise, Book I, Section VI.
Hume's conception was thus that any positing of an entity which "entertained" or "experienced" mental particles had to be regarded in the final analysis as senseless. This was because any idea could only have content if it derived from experience - and what was posited as a "viewer" of mental items ('ideas', 'perceptions', 'impressions' and so on) could in the nature of the case never get itself into view.
Instead, the only proper understanding of the self thinks Hume is that of the set of experiences themselves:
'When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I also stumble on some particular perception or other ... I can never catch myself at any time without a perception ... If anyone upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can no longer reason with him. He may perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.' Hume Treatise Book I Section VI.
Hume's conclusion ultimately was that there was to a person (or self) nothing other than the impressions and ideas which were supposed to have a reference to it -
" They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind ..." Hume A Treatise of Human Nature Book 1, Part IV, Section VI Everyman Edition (Ed Lindsay) p. 240.
This is the bundle conception of the self.
Later he confesses he finds this position unsatisfactory. For there to be a bundle, something has to do the holding together. He can find no solution to this problem, which he confesses is 'too hard for my understanding' Hume Treatise Book III Appendix.
He can only turn away from the tortures of philosophy:
'I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.'
Hume Treatise Book I Section VII
Reprise:
So Hume says that when he looks inside himself he can find no trace of anything that might give rise to the idea of a self. All he sees, he says, is a sequence of ideas, but nothing corresponding to the 'I' so confidently asserted by Descartes.
There are impressions, and there are derivatives of impressions, ideas: but nothing he can see holding the perceptions together.
The self then must be just the collection of experiences, just the collection of impressions and ideas which introspection registers. It is a bundle - but only if you can have a bundle without anything holding it together.
This is known as the bundle theory of the self, although it seems to be a theory of the non-self, or a denial of the self rather than anything positive.
It sounds to me powerfully post-modern. But I'm sure I don't properly understand.
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