Hume: três problemas centrais

• Main Author: João Paulo Monteiro
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal do Paraná 2005-01-01
• Series: DoisPontos
• Subjects: Causation; Association; Induction; Habit; Inference; Rationality
• Online Access: http://ojs.c3sl.ufpr.br/ojs2/index.php/doispontos/article/view/1933/1614

This article aims to discuss three central problems in David Hume's philosophy. A first central problem in Humes philosophy concerns the role of the association of ideas: there are in the Treatise two distinct concepts of this association, a negligence that was corrected in the first Enquiry, where the concept of customary association is eliminated and no role is assigned to association in the formation of causal beliefs. The second is about the real meaning of induction. Humes philosophy discusses the discovery of the causal powers of objects, setting aside any generalisation about sensible qualities. Hume did discover the problem of causal induction, but only as a consequence of his analysis of causal inference. The last of our three problems concerns the exact Humean concept of the instinct he calls custom or habit. It is noticeable that Hume´s principle is just sensitiveness to the repetition of conjunctions, with no meaningful influence of the passage of time, and this goes against any interpretation of this principle as becoming accustomed or anything of the kind.