okay so I'm going to continue discussing the philosophy of David Hume and uh just a quick review of what was covered in the previous lesson remember that Hume is an empiricist philosopher and he presents what is called two Criterion of meaningful statements that is he basically presents a guideline by which you can distinguish between a meaningful versus a non-meaningful statement so I want to quickly clarify once again though that when hum speaks of meaningful statements he basically refers to a statement that is capable of being either true or false so it's meaningful in that sense it's important to realize that because sometimes when we use that word or terms meaningful statement we may may think of something that uh that a person finds significant so I may say well this is this meaningful to you that means that you find it significant but Hume is not using those terms in that way for him when he says that um you know when he speaks about a meaningful statement he speaks about a statement that is capable of being true so what hum does once again which was covered in the previous lesson is that he presents this two-fold criteria by which um you can decide that from obviously assuming empiricism as the right approach to knowledge and so the two criteria uh sometimes that those two criteria is called Humes fork and the idea here is this it's that a meaningful statement uh is true if they can be classified in one of two two ways first it's true if it's a relation of idea so a relation of idea is a statement that is basically True by definition so for example 2 + 2 is 4 how do we know that well we know because of the that's the way it was um sort of like set up right in other words that people created that human beings created that symbolic system and they use that symbolic system to make sense of reality uh so that's so those are statements that are true by definition and then you have statements that are matters of fact and these are things that can be confirmed via sense experience right so if you ask the question how do I know that there's a tree outside of my uh house obviously you can go and verify it through sense experience so human is going to maintain that um any belief or any statement that can't really be uh classified or reducible to one of these two guidelines or criteria then that tells you that that belief is probably meaningless in the sense that uh it is not a rational belief okay all right so we're going to see a couple of illustrations here in the remaining part of this video where you can sort of see hume's skepticism in action okay and there's going to be four quick areas four brief four areas where I'm going to briefly um describe uh hume's skepticism concerning a number of beliefs that human beings have okay so the first one has to do with morality um if you can see there um notice that in this quotation that you have before you um notice that Hume basically reduces morality to feeling in other words he reduces morality to a sentiment so hum says for example take the action of something like murder or something like this uh when you examine it carefully what is the source of that particular belief according to Hume the source is actually a matter of fact and what is that matter of fact that is it's the source is something within experience so according to hum is's going to maintain that morality can be reducible to Sentiments or passions okay so what does that basically mean okay well okay so obviously hum is not saying that the belief in Morality is meaning less uh because it can be reducible to one of those two things that I mentioned earlier that is moral beliefs can be reducible to matters of fact that is things that can be verified by experience however hum's proposal here actually challenges uh the traditional view of morality that is the traditional view of morality at least at least during the time of David hum was that moral beliefs are objectively true and so the basic idea there is that something is a a particular moral belief that we are obligated to follow that particular belief uh regardless of my perspective regardless of my particular way of looking at the world so if uh let's say if all human beings have an obligation to treat others with dignity uh then that particular belief is objectively true in the sense that it is true independently of my own point of view my own sentiments my own feeling ings concerning the matter so even if I don't feel like it I should still treat another person with dignity okay so notice that what Hume does is he actually challenges that idea because he traces beliefs immorality and he traces them to a sentiment or a feeling so as an example to say that killing is wrong according to David hum is actually to say that I don't like it when people get killed or I don't feel good right when I think about people getting killed hence human beings developed this moral principle um that says that we shouldn't do that all right so that is uh hum's um skepticism in a sense right towards moral beliefs there's obviously lots of issues that are raised there a number of philosophers later on criticize hum for this idea um concerning his beliefs concerning morality but obviously that's another lesson okay moving on to the next belief uh what about the self so uh his historically or traditionally people used to think that uh human beings are composed of both a physical part obviously your body but then you also have some immaterial part of you that forms the essence of who you are that is it's and that will be called the self religion sometimes referred to it as the spirit or the soul and so the idea here is that there's something in material within human beings that um that basically serves as the as the foundation for uh your identity as a person because from a purely physical point of view you you change um but that part of you right that the self is that part of you that doesn't really change at the end of the day and example of of someone that had that belief was the philosopher dayart which you see there in the screen that I uh presented before you okay so Hume sort of takes that belief and then he once again he goes through his true criteria right he sort of says the kind of asks the following question he says well is the belief in the self that is is the self as as as a belief Bel that there is an immaterial substance right so there's something immaterial that is the self is that belief something that is true by definition in other words does it follow from the definition of the self that the self has to be understood as a immaterial substance Hume would say no there's nothing about that term that indicates that that is the right way of understanding it so it's not true by definition okay so one strike again there right uh the second thing Hume is going to raise the question is the belief in the self can you verify it through sense experience that is can you point to something within experience some impression within experience that indicates that there is something there that is called the self some immaterial uh substance that serves as the basis for our identity and that is the point of this quotation here right hum says that for my part when I enter into what I call myself the only thing that I see according to Hume is I I see myself in different let's say psychological uh States uh so sometimes I I I I I I I'm in a state of Love hatred pain pleasure okay then he says I can never catch myself at any time without a perception and never can observe anything but the perception okay so Hume summarizes his view here and he's basically says that when I encounter the self so hum says when I encounter myself I don't really find an impression of something that is simple something that is unchanging something that is continuing instead the only thing that I encounter and experience when I reflect on that is is I just see uh a bunch of fleeting Perceptions in other words I have Sensations I have feelings I have emot emotions Etc and so hum concludes that the self is nothing but a bundle of perception so his his basic uh idea here is that humans going to argue that belief in the self is not really a rational belief at all if you refer to the self as somehow indicating the existence of some kind of immaterial substance that does not change um hum argues that there is no basis for that particular belief because the only thing that you can verify through sense experience is you just uh you just encounter different s types of Sensations right different perceptions you find yourself in different psychological States and that is the most that can be said with respect to the belief in the self so it's very interesting um that Hume actually takes a view here which is very similar to to the a view that's taken by one of the major world religions if you know anything about Buddhism uh Buddhism is a world religion that basically denies the existence of the self um and so uh Buddhists would completely agree with what Hume is saying here okay so here are two criticisms right that Hume presents um in other words he analyzes two major beliefs that human beings have beliefs about morality and also belief about the self and in both cases in in with respects to beliefs about morality uh Hume doesn't completely reject it but he modifies it in a very different way uh than the way in which it was held during his time period and then when it comes to belief in the self or the soul hum going to argue that there is no rational basis for that particular belief why because it is not a relation of idea nor can you prove it through sense experience you can't establish it you can't verify it through sense experience and so he's going to argue that that particular belief is not a rational belief to have so in the next video I will look at two other examples of his skepticism