Hume, Locke, Berke

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Andrew K
Prof. P
Why They Believe
Based on past philosophers, the philosophers after them are able to expand their theories and find greater knowledge. The philosophers that will be introduced in this paper are David Hume, John Locke, and George Berkeley. Each have either found a new theory or expanded it from a previous one. Although it is important to know what their theories talk, it is as important to also study how they were led to believe in those theories.

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist. He is greatly known for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. Skepticism being the requiring of evidence to prove something and empiricism being evidence from senses and knowledge. He sought to find knowledge purely based upon naturalistic “science of man.” He quotes, “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions,” concluding that desire rather than reason determined human behavior. Arguing against innate ideas, Hume believed that all knowledge comes from experience and that the mind contains nothing but a collection of perceptions, that all events are viewed and interpreted through the sensations of the mind. An example would be the visualization of an apple. If he would to say visualize a fresh green apple, with our use of perceptions we are able to imagine a fresh green apple through its properties. When he asks to try visualizing an object without properties, it’s nothing thus nonexistent. He would argue against Descartes idea of existence. Descartes famous saying, “I think, therefore I exist,” is said to false under Hume’s theory. Hume would say that the world and everything it in does not really exist. With the use of our senses and perceptions, we create a world that we believe exists. He called this the bundle theory. He also didn’t believe in God since experience must come first before knowledge. Without the experiencing God through any of the human senses, God cannot...
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