POL 2108 Lecture : POL 2108 A - Modern Political Thought I - Guy Côté - 18 Mar. 06.docx

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POL 2108
• Professor: Mark Salter

Document Summary

Pol 2108 a - modern political thought i - guy c t - 18 mar. David hume (1711-1776: if he was asked if a tree made noise and nobody was around to hear it, his answer would be mixed. We can"t be certain it made noise if nobody saw it. We can only say it made a noise based our our previous experience with falling objects, based on the cause-effect idea: he"s a skeptic and empiricist, if not the founding father. First political thinker to place reason in a secondary role in the way we should think: his main philosophy is based on how to acquire knowledge. Knowledge can never be truly known, is never 100% certain. For hume, knowledge can only be known from experience, not reason/science. Science can only explain our experiences, not give us knowledge: according to hume, people do not have access to objects, but only their perceptions of said objects.