Summary and Conclusion

Abstract

We began our inquiry into the place of meaning and reason in Hume’s theory of knowledge by an examination of his fundamental principles. In Chapter One we provided a historical setting by a brief review of the central theses of empiricism, which were promulgated, though in different language, by Locke, Berkeley and Hume — namely the conviction that all knowledge is based on experience. We found that to establish this general conviction the empirical philosophers employed a method, called by Locke the “historical plain method,” which is a retrospective procedure of finding evidence for our beliefs by looking back to the original source of our ideas. It is claimed that we can know the limit and the scope of human knowledge by using such a procedure. The predominating purpose of the empiricist in advocating the retrospective method was to free mankind from fruitless metaphysical speculation. We realized, however, that empiricists, in their endeavor to establish an empirical basis for knowledge by such a method, displayed an undue hostility towards the demonstrative sciences, especially towards syllogistic logic, which they associated with scholasticism. Having expounded the general principle that all knowledge is derived from experience, the empiricists were faced, from the outset, with the problem of accounting for the derivation of non-sensory concepts and the exactness of mathematical truths.