the empiricist epistemological critique to its final extreme by using Berkeley's insight only turning it in a direction more characteristic of the modern mind. Being an empiricist who grounded all human knowledge in sense experience, Hume agreed with Lockes general idea, and too with Berkeley's criticism of Lockes theory of representation, but disagreed with Berkeley's idealist solution. Behind Hume's analysis is this thought: Human experience was indeed of the phenomenal only, of sense impressions, but there was no way to ascertain what was beyond the sense impressions, spiritual or otherwise. To start his analysis, Hume distinguished between sensory impressions and ideas. Sensory impressions being the basis of any knowledge coming with a force of liveliness and ideas being faint copies of those impressions. The question is then asked, What causes the sensory impression? Hume answered None. If the mind analyzes it's experience without preconception, it must recognize that in fact all its supposed knowledge is based on a continuous chaotic volley of discrete sensations, and that on these sensations the mind imposes an order of its own. The mind can't really know what causes the sensations because it never experiences "cause" as a sensation. What the mind does experience is simple impressions, through an association of ideas the mind assumes a causal relation that really has no basis in a sensory impression. Man can not assume to know what exists beyond the impressions in his mind that his knowledge is based on. Part of Hume's intention was to disprove the metaphysical claims of philosophical rationalism and its deductive logic. According to Hume, two kinds of propositions are possible. One view is based purely on sensation while the other purely on intellect. Propositions based on sensation are always with matters of concrete fact that can also be contingent. "It is raining outside" is a proposition based on sensation because it is con...
