PhilosophersDavid Hume
David Hume
Neither causation nor induction can be proved: custom guides us.
Empiricism · Modern skepticism1711 – 1776 United KingdomEmpiricistMitigated scepticCritic of religionHistorian
A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence
Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, 10.4.
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Custom, then, is the great guide of human life
Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, 5.6.
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Nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions
Treatise of Human Nature, 1.4.6.4.
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Commit it then to the flames
His verdict on books of metaphysics containing neither mathematical reasoning nor reasoning about matters of fact.
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Misconceptions
Nuanced
Hume denied that causes exist.
He holds that we never perceive a "necessary connexion" and that reason does not prove the future will resemble the past. But he does not ask us to stop believing it: custom guides us, and nature is stronger than doubt.
False
For Hume, we can know nothing.
He rejects radical, unliveable scepticism and defends a "mitigated" scepticism: limit our enquiries to what human understanding can handle.
Nuanced
Hume called himself an atheist.
Never publicly. His Dialogues end with a minimal, ambiguous position on the cause of the world's order. Scholars still debate what he really thought.