Notes on the Basics of Hume
Notes on the Basics of Hume David Hume (1711-1776) was an influential figure in the Scottish Enlightenment who challenged traditional and rationalist notions of knowledge, causality, and ethics. Empiricists like Hume say that sensory experience is the only source of knowledge. Unlike rationalists who believe in innate ideas or truths accessible through reason alone, Hume argues that our ideas are derived from impressions, which are the immediate data of sensation or reflection. There are two categories of human knowledge for Hume, matters of fact and relations of ideas. Relations of ideas can be known prior to experience such as mathematical principles like the Pythagorean theorem. Matters of facts, on the other hand, are only known through experience or a posteriori. Furthermore, both of these types of knowledge are derived from either sensation or reflection. Therefore, Hume’s revolutionary move was to say that all of our ideas are derived from these impressions. If you ...