Hume or Me? Quiz | People

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. David Hume was accused of atheism. (An apocryphal story about Hume has a woman finding the portly philosopher stuck in mud and requiring him to recite both the Apostle's Creed and the Lord's Prayer as the price for her assistance.) Is it true that his faith was questioned because he expressed a passionate belief that there were necessary logical connections in the natural world?

Answer: No

Hume was not guilty of trying to substitute the laws of science for religion. Hume was the first to cogently question induction, the notion that one could infer from observations in the present what must happen in the future. He felt that it was not possible to establish logical connections from observations.

2. David Hume studied law at Edinburgh University. Would it be accurate to say that he acquired a lifelong admiration for the legal profession?

Answer: No

Hume did train for the law at Edinburgh but found no joy in it. "The law," Hume said, "which was the business I designed to follow, appeared nauseous to me."

3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Hume became enemies.

Answer: True

After Hume arranged for Rousseau to escape his real and imagined enemies on the Continent, Rousseau accused his benefactor of plotting to assassinate him. It is not surprising that the barely rational, inconsistent and more than a little paranoid Rousseau, who created an intellectual framework of equal use to Jefferson and Stalin, would clash with the amiable yet rigorous and skeptical Hume.

4. Hume suggested that the books of Divinity in a library "contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

Answer: True

Hume's Fork refers to his argument that only "abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number" and "experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence" qualify as knowledge. He felt that books not qualifying in either regard should be discarded.

5. Simple numerical induction is the notion that if event B is observed to follow event A repeatedly, then as the number of times B follows A increases that the future probability that B will follow A increases. Hume would affirm this most basic statement of induction.

Answer: False

Hume rejected all methods of inference other than deduction within the realm of mathematics. No processing of "data" would justify the existence of cause an effect or even future expectation. Hume specifically asserts that no number of sun rises logically entails its rising the next morning or even justifies and expectation that it will.

6. Hume believed that the existence of something called "the self" was not established.

Answer: True

One could say what it means to be "Hume-ian" is to have no human self at all. (However, saying that would be an unforgivable word play.) Hume felt that since there was no observable and definable self but only collections of thoughts and feelings, that there was neither need nor basis to contemplate the existence of some unitary consciousness called "self".

7. In his book, "Human Knowledge", Bertrand Russell decisively refutes Hume's ideas about induction.

Answer: False

In "Human Knowledge", Bertrand Russell presents a proof showing crude induction to be demonstrably false thus supporting Hume's contention.

8. Hume averred that reason does not have an important role in determining behavior.

Answer: True

Hume maintained, "that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will." This, Hume felt, is because passion dominates.

9. According to Hume, morals do not rest on rationality.

Answer: True

Hume reasons that since morals can influence behavior and since reason cannot influence our behavior, that morals must not be based on reason. Hume, consequently, asserts that we do what we do because it feels good, but when what feels good violates a moral principle thereby making us feel bad, it is possible that the moral scruple will prevail.

10. It was Hume who quipped, "I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire."

Answer: True

Rousseau aside, friends and foes alike seemed comfortable in Hume's company. Even clergyman that disagreed violently with Hume's philosophy seemed to like him.

Source: Author uglybird

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Hume or Me? Trivia Quiz

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