Thus far in the examined excerpts from David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he has touched on how empirical correlations are not as clear as many people assume, and also on how physical phenomena, particularly the effects of their seeming causes, cannot be proven beforehand. Without experiential prompting, there would be nothing to suggest that rain would feel wet or that dark clouds signal an incoming storm, for none of these things must be connected with the other by logical necessity. In the following quote, he uses snow as an example of something that did and does not have to possess the qualities associated with it due to experience:
"That there are no demonstrative arguments in the case, seems evident; since it implies no contradiction, that the course of nature may change, and that an object, seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects. May I not clearly and distinctly conceive, that a body, falling from the clouds, and which, in all other respects, resembles snow, has yet the taste of salt or feeling of fire?" (22)
As Hume points out, there is nothing logically impossible, though he asininely conflates subjective imagination with objective logical necessities, about snow having a different feel or taste than it does when a person touches or tastes it. Trees besides evergreens could have flourished in the winter months and decayed in the summer instead of what we see. In the same way, for it too is logically possible, recalled or present experiences prove nothing about future events. It could come about that tomorrow, snow will burn on contact wherever it is felt in the world. None of this can ever be proven false by reason ahead of time since there is no contradiction in them, though the completely wrong conclusion would be that experience grants absolute certainty and/or connects us with the core of reality while reason does not, or that reason is secondary to experience rather than experience hinging on reason metaphysically and epistemologically in full. Hume holds to the utter opposite of what is by logical necessity the case independent of and in relevance to some of the very truths he arbitrarily brushes up against:
"And though none but a fool or a madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience, or to reject that great guide of human life, it may surely be allowed a philosopher to have so much curiosity at least, as to examine the principle of human nature, which gives this mighty authority to experience . . ." (23)
All of this is demonstrably false except for the philosopher's ability to examine all things. Only a fool believes in that which cannot be proven, and it cannot be proven that experience, except for the introspective experiences within one's mind (the mere presence of thoughts and the basic existence of sensory perceptions) as well as a very particular kind of sensory contact with the external world [1], in any way reflects anything other than one's mind. It is only due to reason that one can even know that one's own mind exists, for it is logically necessary that any experience at all means a being exists as a consciousness. Reason, in turn, is true in itself. Its falsity requires its veracity both metaphysically and epistemologically! It can only be true that there is no logical truth, for instance, if this too is logical true. It can only be the case that nothing necessarily follows from anything else if it follows logically from the nature of reality that logic is false, an impossible thing.
Hume neglects all of this and pretends as if experience proves more than that there is an experiencer undergoing particular mental experiences at that moment regarding the visual world, yet he is correct that prolonged, repeated sensory exposure to a phenomena makes it more probable that this correlation/event will persist into the future:
"It is only after a long course of uniform experiments in any kind, that we attain a firm reliance and security with regard to a particular event." (23)
The person who only hears about alleged experiments conducted miles away in privacy, of course, would still not have access to as direct of evidence as we can humanly attain that electrons can be shared by atoms in covalent bonding, among other things. Some people do not realize that the majority of scientific information they are given is sheer hearsay on the level of epistemology, and still this does not mean it is false as long as it is logically possible, which disproves something without sensory experiments altogether. No typical person can tell from walking on the ground that it is supposedly comprised of various miniscule particles like neutrons and protons of that these two would break down into still smaller quarks; nothing about observing the moon in the sky with the mere eye would hint at it being inhabited or uninhabited by extraterrestrial life.
By hearing or reading about these subjects, a person can know that a given thing is supposedly true and that other people claim it is so, but in no way do they even have the thoroughly fallible evidence of direct sensory experience. Even then, most sensory experiences could be purely illusory in the sense that they do not connect with any material world, as they exist as mental experiences either way. The mind is required to perceive nature in the repeat observation Hume speaks of, while the mind itself cannot be an illusion since it is required to doubt, recognize, or experience an illusion! One's own consciousness cannot be rejected as if it does not exist or epistemologically doubted without it already existing so that rejection and doubt can occur. Someone born without senses or who loses their senses would still have their mind and could still grasp the intrinsic truths of reason that do not depend on the mind or anything else for their veracity. Hume has so many things entirely backwards.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hume, David. Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993. Print.
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