HUME SECTIION 9

Hume talks about how even though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation there are also other parts of their knowledge from nature called instincts. Instincts are something both human beings and animals have which makes us share something in common. It teaches a human being to avoid fire and a bird the art of incubation. it is something that is not learned but it is kind of like common sense.

HUME: Sec. 9

Hume also talks about how discipline and education can have an effect of animals. When they are given rewards or punished they can be taught any action that is contrary to their natural instincts. It is experience that makes a dog become apprehensive of pain because their owner threatens to beat them. It is also experience which makes a dog answer to it's name when the owner calls them because the dog learned how to distinguish their names from anything else that is being said.

Hume Section 9: Of the Reason of Animals

Hume talks about how animals learn many things from experience and infer that the same events will always follow from the same causes. He talks about how they become acquainted with properties of external objects and gather knowledge about the nature of fire, water, earth, their surroundings, etc. He uses the example of a horse that is used to a field and becomes used to the its proper height which he can leap and will not attempt anything that exceeds his force and ability. He also uses an example comparing old animals to young animals. Young animals are inexperienced compared to the older animals that are cunning. The older animals have learned to aviod what hurts them and to pursue what makes them happy. Hume is saying that animals learn from experience and since young animals do not have experience that have not learned anything yet

HUME SEC. 2 Paragraph 8

Hume talks about this contradictory phenomen that may prove that it is impossible for ideas to come fromimpressions. He says that several ideas of color are really different from each other but still similart at the same time. If this is true about different colors then it must be true about different shades of the same color and each shade produces an independent idea. If it is not true it is possible for the different shades of color to resemble a color different from what it should be. Then he uses an example to prove this point: He asked what if a man who could see did not know what the color blue looked like. Hume said that this man is still able to have an idea from his imagination about what this color looks like even though he has never seen it before.

I don't agree with Hum on this because how can someone who has never seen a particular shade of blue know what the color is? He has never seen it before so how can he imagine it?

HUME: MORE OF SEC. 2

"If it happen, from a defect of the organ, that a man is not suceptible of any sensation we always find that he is as little susceptible of the correspondent ideas"

I think that here Hume is aying that if a man is not indluenced by any sensations then he does not experience similar ideas. He uses the example of a blind man who can't see colors or a deaf man who can't hear sounds. he says that if you restore these sense to these men then they will get ideas of what sound or color is annd that they will not have difficulty understanding what these things are. He also uses another example with a man who has a selfish heart does not have an idea of friendship or generosity. I agree with Hume on this.

Hume: Of Miracles

Paragraph 12: "Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature."

I agree with Hume when he says this. A miracle is something that happens not in the natural course of nature. A miracle is an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause. I do believe in miracles personally. I think that miracles can be simply a mental/psychological thing alone, but for those with religious views it can become a spiritual things too.

Hume: Of the Reasoning of Animals

Paragraph 2,3,4: Throughout these paragraphs Jume is speaking of how animals can learn from their own life experiences and how they can learn from discipline and education (training) of owners, trainers, breeders, etc... When they learn from a person what to do it is called a conditioned stimulus. A conditioned stimulus is when a person learns to associate certain sounds, smells, actions, etc... with something that they have learned. This causes a conditioned response. A conditioned response is a learned response.