David Hume On Liberty And Necessity

David Hume on liberty and necessity.

It is not clear whether people's behavior can be adapted to the doctrine of necessity. But he thinks that decisions are causally determined by antecedent conditions. According to Hume, certain motives always leads to a similar action: the same events flow from the same causes. Similar events follow a similar reasons. As an example could be our daily observations or observations of history. It is clear that people on certain emotions or motives behave similarly and these emotions or motives generally remain constant. The main sources of action are: ambition, greed, self-love, luxury, friendship, generosity, public spirit and other passions. The only difference is the degree and prevalence of these sources in society. If someone would tell us that there is a person who behaves otherwise in the presence of such motives or emotions, we would say that it is a lie. For example: if the traveler who is returned from journey, would say that he found a country in which dominate the kindness and generosity, and there is no greed, ambition, revenge manifestations, we would think that he is lying to us. According people, all human motives are the same and no matter where they are, circumstances are not changing human behavior. People ar not tend to believe in situation where identical motives led to unussual actions. By observing nature, which provide differing results, we hope that the results will be the same. Some of the grounds for action, we are unable to discern. Some people do not behave as expected, perhaps because they are hungry or have a toothache. But we still hope that people will behave according to certain settings.

However, Hume, recognizes that there is a large variety of human action, even if the motivation and the circumstances are similar. It is true that the difference in education, customs, form a different mind, and lead a man to act otherwise in different circumstances. The same person also could react to circumstances differently with respect to age and what he is going through at that particular moment in his life.

Hume accepts, that there are some actions that will have "no regular connection to known motives". To explain this, we have to look at nature and how some events take place without any known regularity. As nature can do something unexpected, so can and man. For example, you can invite friend to visit you, and he will rob you. You can build a house, and hope that it will stand firm, but it can be destroyed by the earthquake.

However, these examples are not the reasons to not to consider that human behavior is necessary. On the contrary, it is proof that human behavior is complex. The fact that it is possible to predict the behavior of people we know, can be accepted as evidence that people follow the regular rules.