David Hume S Logical Proof of Empiricism S Inherent Flaw

A Brief Summary of David Hume’s logical proof of empiricism’s inherent flaw, in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

All reasonings concerning matters of fact are founded on the relation of cause and effect on sense impressions.

If we are to satisfy ourselves concerning the nature of that evidence by which we assume matters of fact, then we must inquire how we arrive at the knowledge of cause and effect. The knowledge of that cause and effect is not a priori; it comes entirely from the senses. If we come into contact with some new object, we will not be able to discover any of its causes or effects. We must admit that when we look at our own experience, when we came into contact with new objects, we were not able to automatically know what caused it or what it may cause.

The same is true for events. This is true even though we think it is not. We think that we can infer simply from witnessing one billiard ball hitting another what would happen. But we could not infer this a priori. The only reason we think we would know what would happen is that we have witnessed the result before, and that conclusion has been supported by repeated observations. Custom compels us to be firm in our belief concerning the existence of things and causes and effects of things. “And as the first imagination or invention of a particular effect, in all natural operations, is arbitrary, where we consult not experience; so must we also esteem the supposed tie or connexion between the cause and effect which binds them together and renders it impossible that any other effect could result from the operation of that cause.”

If we were to see one billiard ball hitting another for the first time, there’s no reason why we would not think that the second billiard ball would, say, not move, or fly straight up. “In a word, then, every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It could not, therefore, be discovered in the cause, and the first invention or conception of it a priori must be entirely arbitrary. Hence the reason why no philosopher has ever pretended to assign an ultimate cause of any natural operation, or to show distinct the action of that power which produces any single effect in the universe.” Even though that project is one of the utmost efforts of human reason, no philosopher has succeeded in doing so, because these ultimate causes are “totally shut up from human curiosity and inquiry.”

When we reason a priori and consider merely any object or cause which appears to the mind, independent of all operation, it never could suggest to us the notion of any distinct object such as its effect, much less show us the inseparable and inviolable connection between them.

PART 2. [THE LOGIC OF THESE ASSUMPTIONS WE MAKE IS CIRCULAR—CAUSE-EFFECT ASSUMPTIONS ARE BASED ON EXPERIENCE ITSELF]

But we haven’t got an answer, he says, to his original question, which is what is the nature of all reasoning concerning matters of fact. His answer: experience itself. What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience? Experience itself. Thus there is a circular reasoning to empirical epistemology.

Even after we have experience of the operations of cause and effect, our conclusions of that experience are not founded on reasoning. Example: we assume bread’s nutritional value only because we have associated qualities of a loaf of bread with its results—we feel its nutritional effects. Those associations are repeated again and again, which reinforces our assumptions about bread’s nutritional effect, which we think is a matter of fact.

We think a fact is fact because we assume that fact is caused by a previous fact. We make that assumption about cause and effect only because we commonly witness some things or events appearing to be caused by other things or events. But there’s no logical reason to assume that an event or thing is caused by another event or thing; all we have to go on is experience itself.

Thus, the principle by which we assume that matters of fact are indeed matters of fact is logically circular.

He confesses that this might appear arrogant of him to conclude that because an argument can’t be refuted now then no argument exists to refute it. But, he says, in this case, “there is no argument that can convince a person that an effect is a result of cause. That understanding is only to be got by experience.”

ANOTHER VERSION OF THE SAME EXPLANATION

A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF REASONING IN A CIRCLE

The Bible tells me God exists and it doesn’t lie, b/c it was written by God; therefore, God exists. The conclusion, that God exists, rests upon an assumption of the validity of that conclusion in one of the premises (to have written the Bible, God must exist).

OUR ASSUMPTION ABOUT WHY THINGS EXIST (b/c they were caused):

When we assume a thing or event exists—that that thing or event is a ‘fact’—we are assuming that ‘fact’ because we presume that something has caused that thing or event. A table exists because someone has made it. A ball is flying through the air because someone threw it or some prior natural event caused it to be doing so. We all exist on earth because our biological parents somehow joined their respective sperm & egg and, voila, we sprouted. Cause & effect is the foundation of our belief in the existence of all things and events we experience in the world.

WHY WE MAKE THAT ASSUMPTION (custom):

We assume that events cause other events because we’ve experienced what we think is cause & effect over and over, so we’ve become acclimated to thinking that things cause other things and events cause other events. We believe the grass in the yard exists, and the yard itself, b/c we assume it has been caused—either by seeding, by fencing it off from other yards, by the formation of soil as a result of the earth’s geological history, etc.—and we assume events cause other events because all our lives we’ve witnessed many events appear to cause other events, so we take cause-and-effect relations for granted. Without being aware of it, we have created a tacit epistemology.

THE FLAW IN THAT EPISTEMOLOGY (reasoning in a circle):

The only mechanism that’s compelling us to assume these cause & effect events—these matters of ‘fact’—is experience itself. But experience was the original foundation for our empiricist epistemology, which allowed us to assume that things exist. We make observations of things and assume those things have been caused by other things, and then we illogically and unthinkingly consider those observations as proof of the soundness of our epistemology. We have reasoned in a circle. We have used our epistemology to reinforce our belief in cause & effect relations. That tacit epistemology that we have internalized was formed merely by experience itself. What we think is an experience of cause-effect cannot be used logically to support an epistemology that presumes that the foundation of all knowledge comes from experience itself. Empiricism is therefore an invalid epistemology.

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT TO SUPPORT PROOF OF THE FLAW (we could’ve assumed otherwise):

To illustrate this fallacy, Hume argues that if I had not seen eggs in a nest, w/ my own eyes, and seen chickens or birds occupy that nest in some way prior to or in conjunction w/ my observation of the eggs in the nest, then there would be no reason for me not to think that something else had caused those eggs to appear in that nest. If I had not seen billiard balls move along the same plane on a pool table upon being struck by other billiard balls, there is no reason I would not assume that they would, upon being struck by other balls, not move at all, or fly up into the air.

CONCLUSION (based on reason, we don’t know anything):

Since all of our presumptions about the existence of things and events, including ourselves and all that we have experienced, is merely based on experience itself, we have no logical foundation to know anything. We nonetheless believe in certainty, but only b/c we’ve adopted that belief for our own survivals. Assuming cause-effect relationships and a certain level of certainty about the reality of our perceptions has facilitated our adoption of certain skills that have helped us survive as a species. Hume prefigures modern cognitive science.

The down & dirty one-sentence version:

When we abstract from empiricism a cause-effect relationship among two events—which is the basis upon which we believe an event or thing is true or real—we are begging the question, in that our thinking that an event is a cause comes merely from experience itself, the habitual practice of giving an event causal status merely b/c it happened near its effect or happened before that effect time and again.