Weiye Loh's Library tagged Hume → View Popular, Search in Google

Mar

2012

Rationally Speaking: On suicide

Hume, on the contrary, thinks that suicide is morally permissible, also on the grounds of his analysis of duties. He talks about three types of duties: to god, to ourselves, and to others. I will skip the first category, since I don’t think there are any gods toward whom we have any duties.

In terms of duties to others, Hume claims that in committing suicide we do not harm others (again, with the partial exception of the distress we may cause to loved ones). However, we also — by necessity — cease to do any good for society, which may present a problem. Hume’s response here is that our duties to society are in proportion to the benefits we receive from society (a form of pragmatic reciprocal altruism, if you will), and since we do not receive any benefits from society after we die (obviously), it follows that we do not have any duties toward it either. More broadly, in Hume’s words, “I am not obliged to do a small good for society at the expense of a great harm to myself.”

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...on-suicide.html

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Deontology Hume Suicide Philosophy Bioethics

Dec

2011

http://www.alisongopnik.com/Papers_Alison/Gopnik_HumeStudies_withTOC.pdf

Abstract: Philosophers and Buddhist scholars have noted the affinities between David Hume’s empiricism and the Buddhist philosophical tradition. I show that it was possible for Hume to have had contact with Buddhist philosophical views. The link to Buddhism comes through the Jesuit scholars at the Royal College of La Flèche. Charles Francois Dolu was a Jesuit missionary who lived at the Royal College from 1723–1740, overlapping with Hume’s stay. He had extensive knowledge both of other religions and cultures and of scientific ideas. Dolu had had first-hand experience with Theravada Buddhism as part of the second French embassy to Siam in 1687–1688. In 1727, Dolu also had talked with Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit missionary who visited Tibet and made an extensive study of Tibetan Buddhism from 1716–1721. It is at least possible that Hume heard about Buddhist ideas through Dolu.

www.alisongopnik.com/...Gopnik_HumeStudies_withTOC.pdf

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Hume Buddhism

Dec

2011

The Logic of Faith: David Hume's Argument for Miracles

logos-pistis.blogspot.com/...ume-argument-for-miracles.html

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Induction Hume Science Pragmatism Rationality

(A) All humans who die stay dead after three days
So you reason by observing that this person remained dead after three days, that person remained dead after three days, so on and so forth. And after you've collected a "large" enough sample, then you infer that all humans remain dead after three days.
Now according to Hume, the problem with this reasoning is that there is no connection between past events and future events. There is only a series of various independent and particular events, i.e. this person remaining dead, that person remaining dead, etc, etc.
one way we can generalise the argument is by saying that the principle of induction assumes that the future resembles the past. This means that future events will resemble past events such that the future will simply repeat the past, so if you can gather a sufficiently large amount of samples from the past, you can infer what is going to happen in the future. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no reason to believe this. Sure, it maybe pragmatic to believe this, but that isn't the same thing as saying that it is rational to do so
3 more annotation(s)...
- One very common mistake which people make when reading this argument (a mistaken which even my philosophy professor made, horrors of horrors!), is that they simply think that this proves that we simply cannot be certain about the future or make sure inferences from finite samples collected, but we still have very strong probability of believing that it is so.
- Now, there is a simple example of how probability works. Say, you have a jar, containing 100 beads, and I tell you that 20 of them are red. So if I ask you, what is the probability of you picking a red bead when you take one bead from the jar, you answer has to be 20% or one out of five.
  Now, let's turn to the universe. Say you want to measure the probability of a person remaining dead after three days. Now what corresponds to the "100 beads" in my example would be the total number of people who had, have and will die. What will correspond to the "red beads" is the total number of people whom we have observed to have remained dead after three days. Thus to illustrate this more graphically
  Total no. of red beads_ = Probability of picking a red bead
  Total no. of beads
  Total no. of people observed in the past remaining dead after 3 days = Probability
  Total no. of dead people in the past, present and future
  Now, this is where Hume comes in. He would say that the numerator of our formula is finite. We can only observe a finite number of people who have died in the past, if for no other reason then only a finite number of people have ever existed in the past. But our denominator, or sample space, is infinite. It is supposed to encompass not only the past, but all and every possible human being. When you divide a finite number by an infinite number, no matter how large you finite number, your probability is zero. Well, actually, no, not quite zero, the more mathematically precise answer is that it tends towards zero or shrinks towards zero but never quite reaching it.
- no matter how many samples of the numerator you gather, you shall never be able increase one whit or even a tiniest bit, the probability of your claim, as long as your denominator is infinitely large. Therefore, the induction samples of the past is absolutely no proof as to what is going to happen in the future, nor can you make any inference from it.