Hume La Trobe University
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- Education
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If Descartes is the father of modern philosophy, Hume is the person who gave shape to the contemporary philosophical world. First by querying Descartes' theories about knowledge, and then developing his own modest account of knowledge, and later his theories of ethics and aesthetics.
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Inter-Species Sympathy/Empathy
According to Hume, many nonhuman animals (or beings whom he sometimes calls 'sensible creatures') are analogous to human beings in respects of the body and the mind. We are able to sympathise with an animal in similar ways we sympathise with another human being.
Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions. -
Inter-Species Sympathy/Empathy (handout)
According to Hume, many nonhuman animals (or beings whom he sometimes calls 'sensible creatures') are analogous to human beings in respects of the body and the mind. We are able to sympathise with an animal in similar ways we sympathise with another human being.
Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions. -
Sympathy/Empathy
‘Sympathy’ (or what is now often called ‘empathy’) is in Hume’s view a complex mechanism of the human mind which relies on the combined operation of three more fundamental principles: the ‘copy principle’, principle of ‘association of ideas’, and the principle of more vivid perceptions ‘enlivening’ less vivid associated perceptions.
Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions. -
Sympathy/Empathy (handout)
‘Sympathy’ (or what is now often called ‘empathy’) is in Hume’s view a complex mechanism of the human mind which relies on the combined operation of three more fundamental principles: the ‘copy principle’, principle of ‘association of ideas’, and the principle of more vivid perceptions ‘enlivening’ less vivid associated perceptions.
Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions. -
What Can we Know?
According to Hume, all the objects of human inquiry and knowledge can be divided into two kinds (and only two kinds). They are 'relations of idea' on the one hand, which are discoverable by reason independent of real existence in the universe, and 'matters of fact' on the other, which are discoverable by experience.
Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions. -
What Can we Know? (handout)
According to Hume, all the objects of human inquiry and knowledge can be divided into two kinds (and only two kinds). They are 'relations of idea' on the one hand, which are discoverable by reason independent of real existence in the universe, and 'matters of fact' on the other, which are discoverable by experience.
Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions.