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"Do we know the world?" traditional question, which arose in the ancient era, when philosophy took its first steps.

This issue in epistemology is considered as many other emerging issues. For example, how do our thoughts about the world around us relate to this world itself? Is our thinking able to cognize the real world? Can we, in our representations and concepts of the real world, constitute a true reflection of reality? The answers to these questions presuppose the complexity of cognition of objects, processes, situations, the presence of not only their external side, but also their internal one. Therefore, the question is not, but whether it is possible to reliably cognize objects, their essence and manifestations of essence.

In the history of philosophy, two positions have developed: cognitive-realistic and agnostic.

So, agnosticism (from the Greek agnostos - inaccessible to knowledge) is a philosophical doctrine that denies the possibility of knowing the objective world and the attainability of truth;

The presence of agnosticism in philosophy indicates that cognition is a complex phenomenon, that there is something to think about here, that it deserves special philosophical thought.

All knowledge, according to the agnostics, is acquired only through the sense organs, by the knowledge of phenomena. Consequently, the subject of human cognition can only be that which is accessible to these senses, i.e. one sensory world. Man-made moral principles and ideas about a higher being, about God, are nothing more than the result of the same experience and activity of the soul and its natural desire to find the omnipresent and all-pervading power that conditions and preserves the world order.

Initially, agnosticism referred exclusively to the possibility of knowing God, but was soon extended to the possibility of knowing the objective world in principle, which immediately opposed many natural scientists and philosophers.

D. Hume drew attention to causality, to its interpretation by scientists. According to the then accepted understanding, in causal relationships, the quality of the effect should be equal to the quality of the cause. He pointed out that there are many things in the effect that are not in the cause. Hume concluded that there is no objective cause, but only our habit, our expectation of the connection of a given phenomenon with others and the fixation of this connection in sensations. In principle, we do not know and cannot know, he believed, whether the essence of objects exists or does not exist as an external source of sensations. He argued: "Nature keeps us at a respectful distance from its secrets and presents us with only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities."

In his Treatise on Human Nature, Hume stated the problem in the following way

No amount of sightings of white swans can lead to the conclusion that all swans are white, but the sighting of a single black swan is enough to refute this conclusion.

Hume was annoyed by the fact that the science of his day experienced a shift from scholasticism based entirely on deductive reasoning (no emphasis on observation of the real world) to an over-indulgence in naive and unstructured empiricism, thanks to Francis Bacon. Bacon argued against "spinning the web of learning" without practical results. Science shifted, emphasis on empirical observation. The problem is that, without proper method, empirical observations can be misleading. Hume began to warn against such knowledge and to emphasize the need for some rigor in the collection and interpretation of knowledge.

Hume believed that our knowledge begins with experience and ends with experience, without innate knowledge. Therefore, we do not know the reason for our experience. Since experience is always limited to the past, we cannot comprehend the future. For such judgments, Hume was considered a great skeptic in the possibility of knowing the world through experience.

Experience consists of perceptions, perceptions are divided into impressions (sensations and emotions) and ideas (memories and imaginations). After perceiving the material, the cognizer begins to process these representations. Decomposition by similarity and difference, far apart or near (space), and by causality. Everything is made up of impressions. And what is the source of the sensation of perception? Hume replies that there are at least three hypotheses:

• 1. There are images of objective objects (reflection theory, materialism).
• 2. The world is a complex of sensations of perception (subjective idealism).
• 3. The sensation of perception is evoked in our mind by God, the higher spirit (objective idealism).

Hume asks which of these hypotheses is correct. To do this, you need to compare these types of perceptions. But we are shackled in the line of our perception and will never know what is beyond it. This means that the question of what is the source of sensation is a fundamentally unsolvable question. It's possible, but we'll never be able to verify it. There is no evidence for the existence of the world. You can't prove or disprove.

Sometimes the false impression is created that Hume asserts the absolute impossibility of knowledge, but this is not entirely true. We know the content of consciousness, which means that the world in consciousness is known. That is, we know the world that is in our minds, but we will never know the essence of the world, we can only know the phenomena. Causal relationships in Hume's theory are the result of our habit. A person is a bunch of perceptions. agnosticism philosophical doctrine hum

Hume saw the basis of morality in the moral sense, but he denied free will, believing that all our actions are due to affects. agnostic philosophy fetishization perception

There is, however, subjective causality - our habit, our expectation of a connection between one phenomenon and another (often by analogy with an already known connection) and the fixation of this connection in sensations. Beyond these psychic connections we cannot penetrate. “Nature,” Hume argued, “keeps us at a respectful distance from its secrets and provides us with only knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects, hiding from us those forces and principles on which the actions of these objects depend entirely”

Let us see how Hume himself defined the essence of his philosophical position. It is known that he called her skeptical.

In the "Abbreviated Statement ..." "Treatise ..." Hume calls his teaching "very skeptical (very sceptical). Convinced of the weakness of the human spirit and the narrowness of its therefore, in the "Addendum" to the first book of the "Treatise...", where Hume once again returns to the problem of space, he tries to find a more flexible designation for his skepticism and calls it only "mitigated"

Agnosticism is the most precise definition main content of Hume's philosophy. The deviation from agnosticism in the Treatise on Human Nature, expressed in the construction of a dogmatic scheme of the spiritual life of man, was undertaken by Hume not to shake agnosticism, but, on the contrary, in order to implement the recommendations arising from it. And they consisted in the rejection of attempts to penetrate into objective reality and in the cognitive sliding on the surface of phenomena, i.e., in phenomenalism. In fact, this is just another name for Hume's agnosticism, but considered as a method

Bourgeois historians of philosophy most often prefer to characterize Hume's method as "empirical (experimental, empirical)", i.e., they do not go beyond the characterization that Hume himself gave him, and fix it without further analysis, often unjustifiably identifying his method with the method Newton, about whom he wrote, for example, in the third book of Optics. Meanwhile, the empirical method empirical method strife. Hume did not conduct any experiments, including psychological ones, and his "empirical" (literally: experimental) method consisted in the requirement only to describe what directly belongs to consciousness. "... We will never be able," he wrote, "to penetrate far into the essence and construction of bodies, so that we can perceive the principle on which their mutual influence depends."

Not understanding the dialectic of the relationship between relative and absolute truth, Hume comes as a result to disbelief in scientific knowledge. A.I. Herzen aptly noted that | | Hume's skepticism is capable of "killing with its irony, with its negation all science because it is not all science."

• 1. See, for example, D. G. G. M a c N a b b. David Hume. His theory of Knowledge and Morality. London, 1951, pp. 18 - 19. McNabb believes that Hume used, in addition, to convince readers of the "challenge method", explaining to them that while wanting more than just orientation in phenomena, they themselves do not know what they really want . (Compare J. A. Passmore, Op. cit., where on p. 67 the analogy of this method with thesis 6.53 in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is drawn.)
• 3. A.I. G e rzen. Fav. philosophy prod. vol. I, p. 197.

Hume's favorite example is with bread, about which scientists will never know why people can eat it, although they can describe in different ways how people eat it. There is no need to specifically prove here that this phenomenalist ban by Hume turned out to be just as untenable as the later prediction of the positivist O. Comte that people will never be able to know the chemical composition of cosmic bodies!

Hume's phenomenalism expressed one of characteristic features bourgeois worldview - the fetishization of the directly given. Nowadays, in bourgeois philosophy, there is a peculiar phenomenon that has a direct connection with this feature - this is the desire to lower philosophy as much as possible to the level of everyday consciousness, adapt it to the attitude of the middle bourgeoisie, to his intuitive reactions to environment and the situations that arise in Everyday life. In this aspiration, most of the bourgeois philosophers of the 20th century. - the heirs of David Hume (although not all of them are inclined to openly admit this). No wonder in the "Conclusion" to the first book of the "Treatise ..." Hume wrote that a skeptical mood is best expressed in the subordination of a person to the usual course of things.

Literature

• 1. Alekseev P.V., Panin A.V. Philosophy. Textbook. M., 2000.
• 2. Philosophical dictionary. / Ed. I.T. Frolova. M., 1991.
• 3. Frolov I.T. Introduction to philosophy. Textbook for high schools. At 2 o'clock. Part 1. M.,
• 1990.
• 4. Radugin A.A. Philosophy. Lecture course. M., 1995.

Now we turn to the consideration of two questions: the question of how humanity artificially establishes the rules of justice, and the question of the grounds that make us attribute moral beauty and moral ugliness to the observance or violation of these rules. /…/

At first glance, it seems that of all the living beings that inhabit the globe, nature has treated man with the greatest cruelty, if we take into account the countless needs and needs that she has placed on him, and the insignificant means that she has bestowed on him to satisfy these needs. /…/

Only with the help of society can a person compensate for his shortcomings and achieve equality with other living beings and even acquire advantages over them. /…/ Thanks to the joining of forces, our ability to work increases, thanks to the division of labor, we develop the ability to work, and thanks to mutual assistance, we are less dependent on the vicissitudes of fate and accidents. The benefit of the social structure lies precisely in this increase in strength, skill and security. /…/

If people who have received a social education from an early age have come to realize the infinite advantages provided by society, and, in addition, have acquired attachment to society and conversations with their own kind, if they have noticed that the main disorders in society stem from those benefits that we We call them external, namely, from their instability and ease of transition from one person to another, then they should seek means against these disorders in an effort to put, as far as possible, these goods on the same level with stable and permanent advantages of mental and bodily qualities. But this can only be done by an agreement between the individual members of society, with the object of consolidating the possession of external goods, and of making it possible for everyone to peacefully enjoy all that he has acquired through luck and labor. /…/

As soon as an agreement is made to refrain from encroaching on other people's possessions, and each one secures his own possessions, the ideas of justice and injustice, as well as property, rights and obligations, immediately arise. /…/

First, we may conclude from this that neither a concern for the public interest, nor a strong and wide-ranging benevolence, are the first and original motives for observing the rules of justice, since we recognized that if people had such benevolence, then no one would talk about the rules. did not think.

Secondly, we may conclude from the same principle that the sense of justice is not based on reason, or on the discovery of certain connections or relations between ideas that are eternal, unchanging, and universally binding.

/…/ So, concern for our own interest and the public interest forced us to establish the laws of justice, and nothing can be more certain than that this concern has its source not in relations between ideas, but in our impressions and feelings, without which everything in nature remains completely indifferent to us and cannot touch us in the least. /…/

Thirdly, we can further confirm the proposition put forward above, that the impressions that give rise to this sense of justice are not natural to the human spirit, but arise artificially from agreements between people. /…/

In order to make this more obvious, it is necessary to pay attention to the following: although the rules of justice are established solely because of interest, however, the connection with interest is rather unusual and different from that which can be observed in other cases. A single act of justice is often contrary to the public interest, and if it remained the only one, not accompanied by other acts, it could in itself be very harmful to society. If a perfectly worthy and benevolent person returns a large fortune to some miser or rebellious fanatic, his act is just and laudable, but society certainly suffers from this. In the same way, each individual act of justice, considered in itself, serves private interests no more than public /... / But although individual acts of justice may be contrary to both public and private interests, it is undeniable that overall plan, or the general system of justice in the highest degree favorable or even absolutely necessary both for the maintenance of society and for the well-being of each individual. /…/ So, as soon as people could be sufficiently convinced by experience that whatever the consequences of any single act of justice committed by an individual, however, the whole system of such acts, carried out by the whole society, is infinitely beneficial both for the whole and for each part of it, as it will not be long before the establishment of justice and property. Each member of society feels this benefit, each shares this feeling with his comrades, as well as the decision to conform his actions to it, on the condition that others will do the same. Nothing more is required to induce to an act of justice a person who has such an opportunity for the first time. This becomes an example for others and thus justice is established by means of a special kind of agreement or agreement, i.e. by means of a sense of benefit which is supposed to be common to all; and each single act [of justice] is performed in the expectation that other people should do the same. Without such an agreement, no one would suspect that there is such a virtue as justice, and would never feel the urge to conform their actions to it. /…/

Now we come to the second of the questions we have raised, namely, why do we connect the idea of ​​virtue with justice, and the idea of ​​vice with injustice. /…/ So, initially people are encouraged both to establish and to observe the indicated rules, both in general and in each separate case only concern for profit and this motive during the initial formation of society turns out to be sufficiently strong and coercive. But when a society becomes numerous and becomes a tribe or a nation, this benefit is no longer so obvious, and people are not able to notice so easily that disorder and confusion follow every violation of these rules, as happens in a narrower and more limited society. /…/ even if injustice is so alien to us that it does not in any way concern our interests, it nevertheless causes us displeasure, because we consider it harmful to human society and pernicious for everyone who comes into contact with the person guilty of it. By means of sympathy, we take part in the displeasure experienced by him, and since everything in human actions that causes displeasure to us is generally called Vice by us, and everything that gives us pleasure in them is called Virtue, this is the reason. , by virtue of which a sense of moral good and evil accompanies justice and injustice. /…/ So, personal interest turns out to be the primary motive for establishing justice, but sympathy for the public interest is the source of moral approval that accompanies this virtue.

HUME, David (1711-1776). A Treatise of Human Nature: being an Attempt to introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Of the Understanding; Of the Passions; Of morals. London: John Noon and Thomas Longman, 1739-1740. 3 volumes, 8° (197-206x126mm). Four pages of publisher's advertisements at end of volume II. ( without the final blank in vol. III, occasional scattered marginal spotting.) Contemporary near uniform calf, spines with raised bands, numbered directly in gilt, compartments with gilt double rules, sides with gilt double-rule border, volumes 1 and 2 also with an inner blind roll-tooled border with crowns and sprays, edges sprinkled red (vol. I rebacked preserving the original spine, vols. II-III with spine ends repaired and joints split, corners repaired, extremities rubbed); modern blue cloth slipcase with Kennet arms in gilt. Provenance: Lord Kennet of the Dene (bookplate). PMM 194.

Care: £62,500. Auction Christie "s. Valuable Books and Manuscripts Including Cartography. 15 July 2015. London, King Street. Lot No. 177.

FIRST EDITION. THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT OF 18TH-CENTURY ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY, and a work which Hume intended to ‘produce an almost total alteration in philosophy’ (letter to Henry Home, 13 February 1739). It "sums up a century of speculation on knowledge and of theological discussion", and represents ‘ the first attempt to apply Locke "s empirical psychology to build a theory of knowledge, and from it to provide a critique of metaphysical ideas" (PMM). The clarity of Hume's writing also makes his Treatise one of the finest examples of 18th-century prose. Brunet III, 376; Jessop p.13; Lowndes III, 1140; PMM 194; Rothschild 1171.

Hume began his philosophical career in 1739, publishing the first two parts of a Treatise on Human Nature, where he attempted to define the basic principles human knowledge. Hume considers questions about determining the reliability of any knowledge and belief in it. Hume believed that knowledge is based on experience, which consists of perceptions (impressions, that is, human sensations, affects, emotions). Ideas are understood as weak images of these impressions in thinking and reasoning. A year later, the third part of the treatise was published. The first part was devoted to human knowledge. He then developed these ideas and published them in a separate work, An Inquiry into Human Cognition.

Structurally starting the exposition of his philosophy from the theory of knowledge, Hume in his first major work "Treatise on Human Nature" (1739-1740), nevertheless, points to the preparatory nature of epistemological constructions in the context of more important, in his opinion, philosophical tasks, and namely, the problems of morality and morality, as well as social interaction people in modern society.

According to Hume, the subject of philosophy should be human nature. In one of his major works, An Inquiry Concerning Human Knowledge, Hume wrote that “Philosophers should make human nature an object of speculation and study it carefully and accurately in order to discover those principles that govern our knowledge, excite our feelings and make us approve or condemn this or that particular object, deed or course of action.” He is convinced that "the science of human nature" is more important than physics, mathematics and other sciences, because all these sciences "depend on the nature of man in varying degrees." If philosophy could fully explain "the greatness and power of human mind”, then people would be able to make tremendous progress in all other areas of knowledge. Hume believed that the subject of philosophical knowledge is human nature. What does this item include? According to Hume, this is a study, firstly, of the cognitive abilities and capabilities of a person, secondly, the ability to perceive and evaluate the beautiful (aesthetic problems) and, thirdly, the principles of morality. So, main work Hume is called "A Treatise on Human Nature" and consists of three books:

1. "On knowledge";

2. "On affects";

3. "On morality."

David Hume on knowledge

Exploring the process of cognition, Hume adhered to the main thesis of empiricists that experience is the only source of our knowledge. However, Hume offered his own understanding of experience. Experience, the philosopher believes, describes only what directly belongs to consciousness. In other words, experience says nothing about relations in the external world, but only refers to the mastering of perceptions in our minds, because, in his opinion, the causes that give rise to perceptions are unknowable. Thus, Hume excluded from experience the whole external world and connected experience with perceptions. According to Hume, knowledge is based on perceptions. Perception he called "everything that can be represented by the mind, whether we use our senses, or show our thought and reflection." Perceptions he divides into two types - impressions and ideas. Impressions are "those perceptions that enter the consciousness with the greatest force." These include "the images of external objects communicated to the mind by our senses, as well as affects and emotions." Ideas, on the other hand, are weak and dim perceptions, since they are formed from thinking about some feeling or object that is not available. Also, Hume notes that "all our ideas, or weak perceptions, are derived from our impressions, or strong perceptions, and that we can never think of any thing that we have never seen or felt before in our own mind" . The next step in Hume's study of the process of cognition is the analysis of "the principle of connecting different thoughts, ideas of our mind." This principle he calls the principle of association.

“If ideas were completely disparate, only chance would connect them, the same simple ideas could not regularly combine into general ones (as is usually the case), if there were not some connecting principle between them, some associating quality, with the help of which one idea naturally evokes another.

Hume distinguishes three laws of the association of ideas - resemblance, contiguity in time or space, and causality. At the same time, he noted that the laws of similarity and proximity are quite definite and can be fixed by feelings. While the law of causality is not perceived by the senses, it must therefore be subjected to the rigorous test of empiricism.

David Hume and the problem of causality

One of the central places in Hume's philosophy belongs to the problem of causality. What is the essence of this problem? scientific knowledge aims to explain the world and everything that exists in it. This explanation is achieved through the study of causes and effects; to explain - this means to know the reasons for the existence of things. Already Aristotle in the "doctrine of four causes" (material, formal, acting and target) fixed the conditions necessary for the existence of any thing. The belief in the universality of the connection between causes and effects has become one of the foundations of the scientific worldview. Hume was well aware of this, noting that all our reasoning about reality is based on the "idea of ​​causality." Only with the help of it can we go beyond the limits of our memory and feelings. However, Hume believed that "if we want to solve satisfactorily the question of the nature of evidence, certifying the existence of facts to us, we need to investigate how we proceed to the knowledge of causes and effects." Let's suppose, wrote Hume, that we came into the world unexpectedly: in that case, on the basis of the fluidity and transparency of water, we cannot conclude that it is possible to drown in it. So he concludes:

"No object manifests in its qualities accessible to the senses either the causes that gave rise to it, or the effects that it will produce."

The next question that Hume poses is what underlies all the conclusions about the existence of causal relationships between things? Experience, as far as causality is concerned, testifies only to the connection of phenomena in time (one precedes the other) and their space-time contiguity, but does not and cannot say anything in favor of the actual generation of one phenomenon by another. Cause and effect cannot be found either in a single object or in many simultaneously perceived objects, and therefore we have no "impression of a causal relationship." But if the connection of causes and effects is not perceived by the senses, then, according to Hume, it cannot be proved theoretically. Therefore, the idea of ​​causality has an exclusively subjective, and not objective, meaning and denotes a habit of the mind. So, causality, in the understanding of Hume, is just ideas about such objects, which in experience always turn out to be connected together in space and time. The repeated repetition of their combination is reinforced by habit, and all our judgments of cause and effect are based solely on it. And the belief that the same order will continue to be preserved in nature is the only basis for recognizing a causal connection.

Hume's social views

According to Hume, in the very nature of man lies the attraction to social life The loneliness is painful and unbearable.

“People cannot live without society, and they cannot enter into a state of association apart from political rule.”

Hume opposed the theory of the "contractual" origin of the state and the doctrine of the natural state of people during their pre-social life. Hume contrasted the teachings of Hobbes and Locke on the state of nature with the concept that elements are organically inherent in people. public status and, above all, family. In one of the sections of the Treatise on Human Nature, entitled "On the Origin of Justice and Property," Hume wrote that the transition to the political organization of human community was caused by the need to form a family, which "can be considered precisely as the first and primary principle of human society. This need is nothing but a natural mutual desire that unites the different sexes and maintains their union until a new bond arises related to their relationship to their offspring. The new relationship thus becomes the principle of bond between parents and offspring, and forms a more numerous society in which the parents rule, relying on their superiority in strength and intelligence, but at the same time restrain themselves in the exercise of their authority by the natural affect of parental care. So, from the point of view of Hume, parental, kinship relations between people lead to the emergence of social ties.

David Hume on the origin of the state

Hume connected the origin of the state, firstly, with the need to defend or attack in an organized manner in conditions of military clashes with other societies. Secondly, with the realization of the benefits of having stronger and more orderly social ties. Hume offers such an understanding social development. At its first stage, a family-social state is formed, in which certain moral norms operate, but there are no coercive bodies, there is no state. Its second stage is the social state. It arises as a result of the "increase in wealth and possessions", which caused clashes and wars with neighbors, which in turn gave the military leaders a particularly important role and importance. Government power arises from the institution of military leaders and from the very beginning acquires monarchical features. The government, according to Hume, appears as an instrument of social justice, an organ of order and civil discipline. It guarantees the inviolability of property, the orderly transfer of it on the basis of mutual consent and the fulfillment of its obligations. Hume considered the best form of state government constitutional monarchy. Under an absolute monarchy, he argues, tyranny and the impoverishment of the nation are inevitable, and the republic leads to constant instability of society. The combination of hereditary royal power with narrow prerogatives and bourgeois-noble representation is, according to Hume, the best form of political government, which he defines as the middle between extremes (monarchy and republic) and as a combination of despotism and liberalism, but with "the predominance of liberalism."

Specifics of Hume's empiricism. The Significance of His Philosophy

Hume in his philosophy showed that knowledge based on experience remains only probabilistic and can never claim to be necessary and valid. Empirical knowledge is true only within the boundaries of past experience, and there is no guarantee that future experience will not disprove it. Any knowledge, according to Hume, can only be probabilistic, but not reliable, and the appearance of its objectivity and necessity is a consequence of habit and belief in the immutability of experience.

"I have to admit, Hume wrote, - that nature keeps us at a respectful distance from its secrets and provides us with only knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects, hiding from us those forces and principles on which the actions of these objects depend entirely.

The overall result of Hume's philosophy can be defined as skepticism about the possibility of objective knowledge of the world, the disclosure of its laws. Hume's philosophy had a great influence on further development European philosophy. The eminent German philosopher Immanuel Kant took many of Hume's conclusions seriously. For example, that we obtain all the material of knowledge from experience and that the methods empirical knowledge unable to ensure its objectivity and necessity and thereby substantiate the possibility theoretical sciences and philosophy. Kant set out to answer the questions: why does science exist at all? how can it produce such powerful and effective knowledge? how is universal and necessary knowledge possible? The ideas of Auguste Comte about the tasks of science, which are associated only with the description of phenomena, and not their explanation, as well as a number of other positivist conclusions, were based on Hume's skepticism. On the other hand, the further development of science and philosophy confirmed Hume's fears regarding the absolutization of any philosophical conclusions. And, if we go beyond the absolutizations of Hume himself, it is clear how important reasonable skepticism and reasonable doubt are for reaching the truth.