David Hume
You trust experience over grand theories and you're cheerfully sceptical of anyone claiming certainty, including about miracles, causes or the self.
“Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.”
What you’d believe
- The problem of induction and causationWe never perceive necessary connection between causes and effects — only their constant conjunction — so belief in causation rests on habit, not reason.
- The bundle theory of the selfLooking within, we find only a bundle of changing perceptions, never a simple, enduring self.
- Sentiment, not reason, grounds morality; the is–ought gapMoral distinctions come from feeling, not reason, and one cannot validly derive an 'ought' from an 'is'.
