Philosophical Arguments of Hume, Berkeley, Spinoza, and Leibniz
David Hume and George Berkeley, two famous British Empiricists, shared similar views when it comes to matters of empirical standards for knowledge: ideas generally cannot exist or develop within a vacuum and that all forms of knowledge come from experience. Given these standards, Hume and Berkeley both credit the external world with influencing the development of knowledge (Lorkowski, 2010). However, these two philosophers’ beliefs differ when it comes to matters of causation. In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume states that the human mind associates ideas in two ways: through natural relations or through philosophical relations (Lorkowski, 2010). Natural relations include resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect, and philosophical relations include identity, situation, and cause and effect. Hume claims that cause and effect, otherwise known as causation, is used the most among the natural relations, and that among the philosophical relations, it is the most important because “it alone allows us to go beyond what is immediately present to the sense and, along with perception and memory, is responsible for all our knowledge of the world” (Lorkowski, 2010). However, Hume’s beliefs about causation, probability, and the external world are characterized by skepticism, as Hume believes that experience limits people’s “casual knowledge to constant conjunction,” which would render them incapable of “making any inductive inference about the world.” Hume essentially believes that a cause is always followed by an effect, and this strict, scientific viewpoint does not allow others to make inferences beyond this rigid structure (Lorkowski, 2010).
Berkeley seeks to avoid this type of skepticism in a number of ways. First, Berkeley believes that material objects are not necessary to cause or explain people’s ideas, and that ideas can occur without “there being any external objects causing them” (Downing, 2013). Additionally, Berkeley also advocated the existence of causes that are not directly observable: “On Berkeley’s account, the true cause of any phenomenon is spirit, and most often it is the same spirit, namely, God” (Downing, 2013). Berkeley’s beliefs regarding causation, probability, and knowledge of the external world are influenced by spirituality, and his viewpoints are less restricted than those of Hume’s. Berkeley’s beliefs allow people the possibility to make inferences about their surrounding world, and he claims that approaching scientific inquiry from this viewpoint allows for “very probable conjectures, touching things that may have happened at very great distances of time and place, as well as to predict things to come.” This idealism, which Berkeley is known for (Downing, 2013), is one of his major methods for circumventing the skepticism of Hume.
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Having evaluated Berkeley’s views of causation, and its relation to probability and knowledge of the external world, it is now possible to compare and contrast these viewpoints with those of Spinoza and Leibniz. Berkeley’s views are similar to those of Spinoza’s, as Spinoza’s philosophies indicate a belief in God: “For Spinoza, a substance can have more than one attribute; indeed, for him, the one substance, God, has infinitely many different attributes” (Rocca, 2008). Thus, Spinoza also believes that God can serve as the cause for any given number of effects, just as Berkeley does. Spinoza also believes that causation is a generally broad term “whereby one thing explains another or makes it intelligible” (Rocca, 2008). Spinoza’s beliefs also have some similarities to Hume’s beliefs, namely that true causation results in conceptual connection, although Spinoza’s beliefs differ from Hume’s in that Hume does not believe in conceptual connections in the external world while Spinoza does (Rocca, 2008). Berkeley’s views also mirror some of Leibniz’s, as God also plays a central role in Leibniz’s philosophical beliefs. However, Leibniz did not believe that God is the sole cause for every effect seen in the world, and that his creation is “preordained”: “The motions and changes in bodies (and between bodies and minds) are, thanks to this divine preordination, reciprocal and have the appearance of being casually related” (Nadler, 1993). Leibniz does not believe that God constantly intervenes in this world; rather, “God, in his infinite wisdom, has so created and harmoniously coordinated substances that their sequences of states correspond to each other” (Nadler, 1993). Despite this small distinction, Leibniz’s views clearly align more with those of Berkeley and Spinoza than those of Hume, who has a “strictly empirical, positivist, nonoccult notion of mechanical causation” (Nadler, 1993). Given these philosophers’ views, it seems likely that Berkeley, Spinoza, and Leibniz would influence future theologians while Hume would influence future scientists.
- Downing, L. (2013). George Berkeley. [online] Retrieved from: http://plato.stanford.edu/
- Lorkowski, C. (2010). David Hume: Causation. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.iep.utm.edu/
- Nadler, S. (1993). Causation in Early Modern Philosophy: Cartesianism, Occasionalism, and Preestablished Harmony. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.
- Rocca, M. (2008). Spinoza. New York, New York: Routledge.
