Hume

3. Method

In his Introduction to the Treatise, Hume bemoans the sorry state of philosophy, evident even to "the rabble without doors," which has given rise to "that common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds" (T, xiv). He hopes to correct this miserable situation by introducing "the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects," establishing "a science of human nature" that will put philosophy on a "solid foundation" of "experience and observation" (T, Introduction).

Hume's positive, naturalistic project has much in common with contemporary cognitive science. Recent readers have paid more attention to these aspects of his philosophy than his earlier critics apparently did. As a result, no contemporary Hume scholar entirely accepts the traditional view that Hume was solely a negative philosopher whose goal was to make manifest the sceptical consequences of the views of his empiricist predecessors. But there remains considerable disagreement about the role and extent of scepticism in his philosophy, and disagreement about its relation to the naturalistic elements of his system. What Hume says about his aims and method helps clarify these issues.

In An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume says that he will "follow a very simple method," which will nonetheless bring about "a reformation in moral disquisitions" like that already accomplished in natural philosophy, where we have been cured of "a common source of illusion and mistake" -- our "passion for hypotheses and systems." To make parallel progress in the moral sciences, we should "reject every system...however subtle or ingenious, which is not founded on fact and observation," and "hearken to no arguments but those which are derived from experience" (EPM, 173-175).

The "hypotheses and systems" Hume rejects cover a wide range of philosophical and theological views. These theories were too entrenched, too influential, and too different from his proposed science of human nature to permit him just to present his "new scene of thought" as their replacement. He needed to show why we should reject these theories, so that he might have space to develop his own.

Hume outlines this strategy in the first section of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. He considers two prominent types of "false metaphysics" (EHU, 12). Though each type has as its basis an appealing human characteristic, both views extend their accounts of these characteristics beyond their basis in experience, and so beyond the bounds of cognitive content.

The first view looks at humans as active creatures, driven by desires and feelings. It paints a flattering picture of human nature,

...