On David Hume And Rene Descartes

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On David Hume and Rene Descartes
“There are more things in heaven and Earth than dreamt of in your philosophy” (Shakespeare, 211). This quote from William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark presents quite an idea. It suggests that in our modern philosophy we have not even began to scratch the surface of what causes the nature of things around us. Our philosophy is centered on the idea of cause and effect or interaction with the external world or for some philosophers being aware of certain and necessary truths. Descartes focus on the concept of methodological doubt and the concept of innate knowledge and oppose against Hume’s experimental knowledge and cause effect relations. From my perspective whether a person realizes it, every standpoint that they argue from is based on a cause and/or its effect. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this, but most people don’t bother to analyze what the true connection is between a cause and it’s effect. David Hume does an outstanding job of presenting a point of view that many people do not consider at all. He asks what is this connection and what makes us impose this connection immediately. If all of our findings are based on causes and their effects, and yet, we do not completely understand the connection between the latter, then how can we presume to hold our finding absolutely certain? Maybe this is partly what Shakespeare was hinting in his quote. Hume’s exploration of the matter of cause and effect is an excellent tool for use in understanding the possibilities and limitations of our “matter of fact” knowledge and a strong counter argument while trying to understand Descartes’ certain and necessary truths.
Hume begins his paper by pointing out that humans are essentially ignorant to the world around them. Everything that we understand is based on someone else’s findings or research. Hume points out that on his own, with no inpu...