David Hume
1711-1776 · British Empiricism · Household name
Hume was a Scottish skeptic who went looking for the link between cause and effect and found only habit. Watch one ball strike another often enough and you expect the second to move, though nothing in the past secures the future. That gap, his problem of induction, remains unsolved. Looking inward for a self, he found passing perceptions and nobody behind them. Right and wrong are feelings in the person judging.
Signature
The position Hume is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Identity
- strongly leans Changing
- Knowledge
- Sense Experience
Positions on the 13 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (25 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- mildly between Collectivism and Individualism (40 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Beauty
- mildly between Subjective and Objective (50 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- leans Nominalism (70 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- strongly leans Changing (92 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (25 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly leans Multiplicity (65 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (30 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (70 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Polity
- mildly leans Liberalism (69 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- mildly leans Ends (38 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (13 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- mildly between Local and Global (55 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
7 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Hume refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Agnosticism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Pleasure
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Social Invention
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Indirect Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational / Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Economy
- Market Capitalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Custom
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Legal Realism
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Evaluative Judgment
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- No-Self
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Friends
What is your primary bond and loyalty?