Sign In
Not register? Register Now!
Essay Available:
Pages:
12 pages/β‰ˆ3300 words
Sources:
No Sources
Style:
APA
Subject:
Social Sciences
Type:
Coursework
Language:
English (U.S.)
Document:
MS Word
Date:
Total cost:
$ 62.21
Topic:

Different Philosophical Arguments by David Hume

Coursework Instructions:

This essay is about PHILOSOPHY!
Read 4 books(all in attachment) named: Apolpgy(Written by Plato and talk about Socrates), On Liberty(Written by Mill), Republic(Written by Plato) and An Enquiry Concerning human understanding(Written by Hume) and answer the all 6 questions!
On each question, your job is to convince people that you understand and can apply the relevant material and concepts. It is thus crucial that you answer in your own words and avoid the authors’ terminology. Long quotes and near paraphrases do not show much understanding. Answer each question completely and each answer should contain about 500 words (write them in 6 different little essays, not in a big essay that answer all questions together)!
1. Hume argues that all of our ideas can be traced to what he calls “impressions”. What does he mean by an “impression”? Summarize and critically evaluate what you take to be Hume’s most compelling argument that all ideas are founded on impressions. Test his theory by showing how, according to Hume, we might have gotten our ideas of “unicorn”, “justice”, and “love”.
2. Hume argues that we arrive at conclusions concerning matters of fact through the relation of cause and effect. Show how Hume thinks this works, and illustrate it with your own examples. Summarize Hume’s argument that our conclusions concerning cause and effect are not obtained via reasoning, but require experience. Show how Hume thinks we arrive at our ideas concerning cause and effect, in §5. Why does he call this a “skeptical solution” to the problem he raised in the previous section?
3. Hume argues that there are limits to human understanding. Summarize, in your own words, what he takes those limits to be. To what extent do you agree with him? Is the kind of skepticism and modesty that Hume’s empiricism suggests healthy, both for science and everyday life? Why or why not? Compare and contrast this sort of modesty with that shown by Socrates in his trial (when he claimed that his wisdom is that he does not claim to know things that he does not know).
4. At his trial, Socrates stated that the unexamined life is not worth living. How is this related to what Mill calls “individuality”? To what extent does examining one’s life, as Socrates contends, facilitate individuality, as Mill understands that term? Mill refers to “individuality” as one of the elements of human well-being. What does he mean by this, and why does he think it so important? Contrast Mill’s notion of “well-being” with the conception of human flourishing that underlies Plato’s Republic. Which approach makes more sense to you, and why?
5. Near the beginning of Book V, Plato discusses the role of women in the ideal state, and the extent to which they should be eligible for the highest offices. To what extent is this view far-reaching for his time, and to what extent is it conservative of the general beliefs of his day?
6. In a work called “Of Natural Characters”, Hume espoused a rather extreme racism:
I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.
We also saw that Hume argued for a deep modesty (and skepticism) concerning the limits of human understanding and knowledge. Discuss the extent to which these themes are consistent with each other. If Hume had followed how own advice in the Enquiry, would he have made (let alone defended) the racist comments in “Of Natural Characters”.
Remember, answer each question completely, write them in 6 different little essays, not in a big essay that answer all questions together!

Coursework Sample Content Preview:

Philosophy
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Question 1: Hume on Impressions and Ideas
David Hume define impressions as lively and vivacity perceptions that occur as a result of both internally and externally direct experiences. In other words, impressions are perceptions that involve live actions such as hearing, seeing and feeling instead of mere thoughts of things. Hume develops a clear distinction between impressions and ideas based on their differing level of liveliness. By contrast, ideas are perceptions originating from the mind through thinking of something rather than developing it from firsthand experience Hume added that ideas emancipate when the live perceptions engraved in humans souls begin to degenerate
In as much as the two facets are distinctively different, Hume argued that all ideas are founded on impressions. In other words, ideas are faint copies of impressions that are less active and powerful. For instance, watching a scene or listening to a music is different from imagining or remembering that scene or music since the latter is fainter and weaker, although founded from the former. In substantiating his claim that there is a strong relationship between impression and ideas, Hume added that diseases or madness can activate ideas to be as lively as impressions. In that regard, the dissimilarity of the two in terms of liveliness is inadequate. Thus, Hume settles that classifying ideas as copies of impressions is still essential since there are ideas of sensation and those of reflection such as that of color and emotions respectively.
Hume’s most compelling ideas is his qualification that the basic building blocks of all thoughts and experience are simple impressions. Simple impressions include single smells, single color, and single shapes. In all these expressions, there is a matching idea. For example, a cat presents a more complex impression that includes multiple colors, shape, and size. The conforming idea of a cat can be made more complex by imagining the sounds it makes or how it smells. Inferring that the animal is actually a cat, makes the ideas more complex since it needs experience and abstraction. In other words, the concept of a CAT does not match with any one particular set of data of impressions or any single cat. The essence is that the word “CAT” can refer to the idea, instead of what actually the idea stands for. In the process of abstraction, certain specific facets are ignored at the expense of others, so to create the concept CAT. For example, different colors and sizes of cats are ignored and identify general features such as hairiness, four legs, and tail to arrive at the conclusion that the animal is a cat.
In this case, the complex idea of a cat has been indirectly copied from a background of impressions because only simple ideas are copies of impressions. In other words, simple ideas form the foundation of the complex ideas that correspond to specific impressions. This explains why we might have gotten our ideas of “unicorn,” “justice,” and “love.” On unicorns, the mind has past experience of horses, horns, and whiteness, which when assembled, we get a unicorn. The idea of justice is based is extrapol...
Updated on
Get the Whole Paper!
Not exactly what you need?
Do you need a custom essay? Order right now:
Order

πŸ‘€ Other Visitors are Viewing These APA Coursework Samples:

HIRE A WRITER FROM $11.95 / PAGE
ORDER WITH 15% DISCOUNT!
Order Now