Chapter 19 Self-Quiz

. "Enlightenment," according to Kant, means

relying only on the light of nature.

emergence from self-imposed immaturity.

a capacity to empty the mind and receive divine light.

having a book to serve as your understanding.

. David Hume, prince of empiricists, thinks that

a science of human nature along Newtonian lines will be a strong defense against superstition.

when we have an idea we are suspicious of, we should try to deduce it from an a priori principle.

the succession of ideas in our minds is a result of necessary connections among them.

our knowledge of causality is a matter of the relations of ideas.

. Hume adopts Newton's motto, "frame no hypotheses," in order to

restrict the foundations of our knowledge to innate ideas alone.

avoid criticism by the defenders of traditional religion.

construct a science of human nature on the basis of the facts.

defend religion from its attackers.

. The idea of cause and effect, Hume thinks,

is one of those a priori clear and distinct ideas that we can rely on in proving the existence of things that are the external causes of our ideas.

embodies no idea of necessary connection between cause and effect.

is based on our experience of constant conjunctions between pairs of events.

provides the bridge that gets us to things as they really are, independent of our impressions of them.

. When Hume says that "all events seem entirely loose and separate," he means to imply that

our experience of events is not to be trusted.

there is no necessary connection to be observed among them.

you can't really rely on anything.

there is no constant conjunction of events to be discovered in the world.

. Hume's view of the idea of the self is that it

correctly represents what makes me the same person today as yesterday.

is founded on an impression of a simple, unchanging substance.

is a fiction.

is like a theater in being the permanent, unchanging thing that contains the ever-changing performance.

. Hume thinks we can have both modern science and human freedom. This is because

the human soul escapes the network of scientific causality.

modern science itself shows us that there are no laws of human behavior.

we know God would not have created us as mere puppets.

liberty and necessity, when properly understood, are seen to be compatible.

. With regard to the existence of God, Hume says that

there is no way I can be the originator of an idea of infinite perfection, since if I were, something would have come from nothing.

the well-ordered character of the world proves a posteriori that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man.

revealed truth, together with philosophical skepticism, is the only sound basis for being a believer.

the world was created by many wicked gods over a long time, during which they slowly gained skill in the art of world making.

. With regard to skepticism, Hume thinks that

a mitigated skepticism is a useful hedge against dogmatism and superstition.

the skepticism of Descartes' first meditation strikes just the right note.

once you go down the skeptical path, there is no recovery into a normal life.

all human knowledge is just sophistry and illusion.

. Value or moral judgments, according to Hume,

are matters of fact and not relations of ideas.

are founded on sentiment or feeling.

are based solely on self-interest.

can be justified only by appeal to the authority of God.

Quiz Content