Hume would of thought that?

David Hume was an empirical philosopher who had a strong belief that the world exists though 'synthesised' mental phenomena.  For this very reason, Hume opposed the views of Decartes, an Idealist philosopher.
Hume was thought to be an Atheist, though through fear of death, this is something he never openly admitted.

Hume links to Journalism in a really important way and the main argument that is a crucial point to learn is that as journalists we must never jump to conclusions. This idea is derived from Hume's theory of causation. He believed that causation did not appear in nature and is actually a mental illusion that humans perceive to be real.
He offered an example to illustrate this...

The sun does neither rise nor set, this is a mental illusion. What is actually happening, is the Earth is orbiting the Sun making it appear to humans that the Sun is moving across the sky as the goes on.

He also provided a very famous example to explain how we can never really be completely sure that causation exists, he explained this through Billiard Balls. Hume explained how we would see a white ball hit into the red ball and would then automatically assume that the red ball's movement was a result of the impact from the white ball. Hume argued we cannot be sure that the impact was a result of the red ball's movement and suggested that an extraneous force could have been responsible and that the timing for this event coincided with the impact of the white ball perfectly. In my opinion, this argument by Hume is one that is very difficult to challenge as he is correct in saying that we cannot ever be 100% sure when we make this assumptions.

Hume was against synthetic logic and Induction. This is the idea that from past events and regular patterns that appear in our life we can make informed guesses about what might happen in the future. For example,  the sun rose today and yesterday so this must mean the sun will rise tomorrow. This is something Hume felt was inaccurate and he believed that past events such as the sun rising offered no accurate reason why the sun should rise tomorrow.

Hume took the work of John Locke and developed his ideas further, this is why Hume's work bears a lot of ideas that were mentioned by Locke in particular how knowledge is gained through experience and sensation. Hume developed this by suggesting that impressions are objects in our life or experiences that we have seen or have made us feel a particular way, these are then used at a later point to form an idea often when we are reminded of the impression or we reflect upon it. He also believed that many of our ideas come from our senses and he believed that causation acted almost like a seventh sense. From the reading, Bertrand Russell uses 'taste' to try and explain this. He said that when we look at an apple, we will naturally expect it to taste a particular way. This has happened through association. Hume suggests that there is no logical reason for us to assume that the apple will taste a particular way, just because it has every time we have eaten an apple in the past. He claimed that there is no reason why the next time we bite into an apple it will not taste of roast beef. Through association and habit, we assume there will be a connection but of course, according to Hume there might not be.

According to the views of Hume, things are only happening in the universe because humans perceive them to be. This is something I agree with, if I take colours for example, there is no real way of knowing we all as humans see exactly the same colours or if for instance I said 'emerald green', you would understand 'emerald green' to be the exact same colour as me. Colours are simply what we interpret them to be.
Hume did however mention that for more complex ideas, impressions are not always necessary as our brains have the power to synthesise. This meaning, that we are clearly able to imagine and winged horse because we have the impression of wings already along with a horse and we can put these together:

Wings + Horse = Winged Horse.

This idea then led him to question whether impressions were necessary at all. He used an example of a thirty year old man with perfect eyesight, he explained how the man had seen every shade of blue expect for one whilst he had been growing up. The man is then presented with a spectrum of all the shades of blue ranging from the lightest to the darkest, however, there is a gap where the shade he has not seen belongs. Hume questions whether it would be possible for the man to imagine what this shade of blue will look like using the impressions of all the other shades he has seen. In this occasion, I do agree that impressions are perhaps not always needed to imagine such objects, however some impressions are otherwise we would not have the ability to synthesise.

Most empiricists would agree with Hume by saying that causation cannot be accurately proved to exist, however there are some instances that would leave the the prospect of doubting causation absurd. For example, the way pain is usually followed by a cry. Although not impossible, that an extraneous force could have caused the cry, it seems unlikely.

I think I have learnt lots of knowledge from Hume and it certainly has made me ponder over the conclusions I make on an everyday basis. Perhaps, I will have to limit it somewhat though, after all, the idea of dismissing causation completely is enough to drive anyone crazy.