Enquiry concerning human understanding - David Hume (1711-1776)

David Hume (1711-1176) was an influential philosopher whose Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding continues to influence philosophers to this day.

One of the central tenets of Hume's work was 'Inductive Inference', the ability to take observed behaviour of the interaction between objects, and apply those observations to make assumptions on how those objects interact when unobserved.

Hume argues that cause and effect can only be known by experience, you could not look at match if you had never seen one before, and deduce that striking it against a matchbox would cause it to burst into flame.

Neither could you conclusively make that connection if you had only ever once seen a match struck against a matchbox.  There may have been something specific about that one match or one matchbox that could not be repeated.

Hume argues that it is only repeated experience of striking the match against the matchbox and a flame appearing that allows the mind to form a belief (based on experience) that a flame will form each time a new match is struck.

Hume wants us to examine whether we actually 'know' that when you strike a match against a matchbox, a flame will appear.  Hume argues that we don't.  We have an expectation that this will happen, and this expectation is caused by our having observed this behaviour multiple times in the past.

Hume argues that although we have this expectation that the previously observed sequence of events will occur the next time we strike a match, we do not actually have a reason to expect this.

Hume's arguments have been described as 'sceptical'  by Russell (1946, p528) but are still considered as worthy of argument in the modern day.  Certainly they have caused me to re-evaluate the difference between what I think I know, and what I actually know.  There's a depressingly large gap...