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|Brief=a Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist; he is widely considered the most important philosopher to write in the English language.|Summary=Hume’s contributions to our understanding of the processes of scientific change and the nature of scientific knowledge come from his major philosophical works including ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1738) and ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding'' (1748). He is most noted for his skeptical views on a variety of topics including the powers of human reason, metaphysics, human identity, and the existence of God.[[CiteRef::Fieser (2016)]] He is perhaps best known, first, for rejecting Aristotle’s epistemological distinction between knowledge and belief and replacing it with his own distinction between matters of fact (which depend on the way the world is) and relations of ideas (that are discoverable by thought, such as mathematical truths). This new distinction is known as Hume's Fork. Secondly, he is known for questioning whether knowledge derived from inductive reasoning can be justified. The problem he posed is known today as Hume's Problem of Induction. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]] Thirdly, Hume questioned whether theological knowledge is possible,and played a substantial role in its removal from the scientific mosaic of the modern world. [[CiteRef::Gavin Hyman (2007)]] The impact of these skeptical fallibilist arguments is still felt to this day.|Historical Context=David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1711. His family had a modest estate and was socially connected, but not wealthy.[[CiteRef::Norton (2009)]] They recognized that Hume was precocious, and sent him to Edinburgh University two years early (at the age of 10 or 11) with his older brother (who was 12). He studied Latin and Greek, read widely in history, literature, and ancient and modern philosophy, as well as some mathematics and natural philosophy. [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]][[CiteRef:: Harris (2015)|p. 35-65]] Both at home and at the university, Hume was raised in the stern '''Calvinist faith''', with prayers and sermons as prominent features of his home and university life. [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]] Following the completion of his studies, Hume rejected his family's plan that he become a lawyer, and instead determined to become a scholar and philosopher, engaging in three years of intensive personal study. Living in the aftermath of the acceptance of [[Isaac Newton]]'s(1643-1727) revolutionary theories of motion and gravitation, eighteenth century thinkers proclaimed the ''''Age of Enlightenment'''' and expected philosophy (which then included what we would call the natural and social sciences) to dramatically improve human life. [[CiteRef::Bristow (2017)]] Hume, like many of his times, revered Newton, calling him "the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species". [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]]

Although little Following the completion of his studies, Hume rejected his family's plan that he become a lawyer, and instead determined to become a scholar and philosopher, engaging in three years of intensive personal study. Living in the aftermath of the acceptance of [[Isaac Newton]]'s(1643-1727) revolutionary theories of motion and gravitation, eighteenth century thinkers proclaimed the ''''Age of Enlightenment'''' and expected philosophy (which then included what we would call the natural and social sciences) to dramatically improve human life. [[CiteRef::Bristow (2017)]] Hume, like many of his times, revered Newton, calling him "the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species". [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] Little is known of Hume's activities during his schooling and afterwards. According to the curriculum then in place at Edinburgh, he would have spent the his fourth year of the curriculum at Edinburgh studying natural philosophy, and would have been exposed to experimental natural philosophy, including Newton's theories. [[CiteRef::Harris (2015)|p. 38-40]] More than thirty years earlier, in 1687, Newton had published his ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'') in which he put forth his '''laws of motion''', '''law of universal gravitation''', and his inductive '''experimental philosophy'''. [[CiteRef:: Westfall (1999)]][[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]] By about 1700 these theories had become [[Theory Acceptance|accepted]] in Britain. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 210]] The works of other experimental philosophers were also available to the young Hume. The natural philosophy library at Edinburgh, to which Hume is known to have contributed, contained an extensive collection of the works of Robert Boyle(1627-1691), the works of [[Rene Descartes]] (1596-1650), and [[John Locke]]'s (1632-1704) ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding''. This work, published in 1689, more than twenty years before Hume was born, propounded Locke's '''empiricist''' view of human knowledge. [[CiteRef::Harris (2015)|p. 38-40]][[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]] Boyle, Newton, and Locke were all associated with the '''Royal Society of London''', which was founded in 1663, almost 50 years before Hume's birth, and sought to promote the experimental method and the new natural philosophy. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]][[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]]

Natural philosophers, like Newton and Boyle, Hume maintained, had cured themselves of their "passion for hypotheses and systems". [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)|p. 8-9]] He sought to work the same cure for moral philosophy, which he saw as full of speculative metaphysical hypotheses and constant dispute. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]] He proposed an empiricist alternative to ''a priori'' metaphysics based on pure reason and the speculative belief systems to which it led. [[CiteRef::Norton (2009)]] As a naturalist, Hume rejected any appeal to the supernatural in explanations of human nature. For such beliefs, and because he argued that we cannot justify many of our beliefs, he is noted as a skeptic. But Hume himself rejected skepticism. While skepticism can't be defeated by reason, he also observed that we have non-rational faculties which compel certain sorts of beliefs (such as the belief that there is a world external to my mind of which my senses provide knowledge), and . He wrote that "it is fortunate that Nature eventually breaks the force of all skeptical arguments, keeping them from having much influence on our understanding". [[CiteRef::Hume (2017)]] It was these faculties of which he wishes sought to give a positive descriptive account. [[CiteRef::Biro (2009)]][[CiteRef::Wright (2012)]]

|Criticism=Hume's skeptical arguments were troubling to many, and received a good deal of criticism. He was criticized, notably, by a fellow Scottish philosopher of his times; Thomas Reid. [[CiteRef::Fieser (2016)]][[CiteRef::Nichols and Yaffe (2016)]] Reid rejected Hume's theories of perception and causation because of their skeptical consequences. Hume supposed that our perceptual experience was of impressions in our minds. He also maintained that causal relations do not exist in the world, but are rather posited in our minds when two events are constantly conjoined in experience. Such views, taken together, made it impossible to claim that our perceptual impressions are caused by objects in an external world. This would require that external objects themselves, and our impressions of them be conjoined in our experience, which is obviously impossible. Hume accepted that his belief in an external world was merely a matter of habit, custom, or instinct, and could not be justified. Reid found this unacceptable, and supposed that our perceptual experience was directly of objects in the world, just as everyday common sense tells us. He noted that such direct experience was no more mysterious than Hume's supposition that we directly experienced impressions in our mind. [[CiteRef::Nichols and Yaffe (2016)]][[CiteRef::Reid (2007)|pp. 1-10]] Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume's supposition that the direct objects of perception were mental entities such as ideas, impressions, sensations, or sense data remained widely popular into the twentieth century, [[CiteRef::Hatfield (2004)]] but had been strongly challenged by the beginning of the twenty first century [[CiteRef::Warren(2005)]][[CiteRef::Thompson (2007)]]. By that time though, the relationship between this problem and that of external world skepticism had been substantially reconfigured. [[CiteRef::Clark (2017)]]

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant(1724-1824) sought to respond to Hume's skeptical challenge regarding cause and effect, in his ''Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781) and most explicitly in his ''Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics'' (1783). Kant sought to synthesize early modern rationalism with empiricism, and thereby avert Hume's skepticism. He did this by supposing that the world as we can experience it, the sensible world, is structured by the ''a priori'' forms of our cognitive faculties. Experience requires the The understanding as its is thus a prerequisitefor experience. Possible human experience thus conforms to certain necessary laws, which we can know through our reason, independently of experience. For Kant this ''a priori'' structuring framework included Euclidean space and time, and cause and effect. The Kant argued that by such means, the idea of necessary causal laws that human reason could know was thus restored. [[CiteRef::Rohlf (2016)]][[CiteRef::De Pierris and Friedman(2013)]]

In the twentieth century, Karl Popper (1902-1994) challenged Hume's skepticism on quite different grounds. Popper rejected Hume's Newtonian inductivism. Popper argued that induction is never actually used in science, since all observation is selective and theory-laden . [[CiteRef::Popper (1959)]][[CiteRef::Thornton (2016)]]

 [[Wesley Salmon]] responded The strongest criticisms directed against Hume were based on his skepticism about theological knowledge. Due to his religious views, he was never able to obtain an academic faculty appointment. His critics called him "The Great Infidel". Hume's arguments in the ''Dialogs'' did not put a stop to this criticism the claim that natural philosophy could find evidence of intelligent design in Hume’s placenature, stating theories still need predictions in part because Hume failed to be testedsupply an adequate alternative explanation for apparently purposeful complexity. When Popperians have multiple theoriesIn 1802, each sharing twenty three years after the same quantity publication of empirical contentHume's ''Dialogues'', William Paley (1743-1805), an English clergyman, Popperians would choose expounded the theories which were better corroborated but lack any justification design argument in this decisionhis ''Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity''. The Popperians either make Paley argued that the purposeful sophistication of biological "contrivances", such as the eye, were clear evidence of design by an inductive claimIntelligent Being. [[CiteRef::Ayala (2003)]][[CiteRef:: # A theory was reliable in Paley (1809)]] Among those who read and appreciated Paley's arguments were the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882). In his ''Origin of Species'' (1859) Darwin argued that biological species were not separately created and are instead physically descended from pre-existing species, with all living things ultimately descended from a common ancestor. He explained Paley's contrivances by positing the pastprocess of natural selection, which he justified with extensive studies of animal breeding.# It will be reliable By explaining the appearance of design in living systems, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection dealt a severe blow to the future having survived falsificationdesign argument among natural scientists.Or they admit corroboration is not an indication Scientists [[Theory Acceptance|accepted]] methodological naturalism, and theological propositions were no longer considered part of predictive powerthe [[Scientific Mosaic|scientific mosaic]].[[CiteRef::Salmon Ruse (1999)]][[CiteRef::Ruse (19672003)]]|Page Status=Needs EditingEditor Approved