Descarte's Argument In The Sun, Tomorrow, By David Hume

A principal cause of Hume’s beliefs differ from that of philosophers like Descarte due to Hume’s rejection of the metaphysic. Hume believed that statements like ‘The sun will rise tomorrow’ were the epitome of human egotism, of which no true answers could ever be found. The only ‘valid’ argument to support such a statement would be the inductive reasoning that the sun has risen before, hence it is very likely that the sun will rise tomorrow. But that argument in and of itself is simply epistemological and strays from the actual assertion. According to Hume, there are relational ideas and then there are facts, only one of these forms of which could be based on true reason.
To Hume, the relational observation about the unseen event of the sun …show more content…
The notion that the past is indicative of the future forces presupposition upon the idea and therefore finds it rationally invalid. The only point in time in which we could realistically say that the sun will likely rise tomorrow would have to be the present moment that the sun has actually risen, at which time the need to justify our belief would be rendered obsolete. Having experienced the sun rising yet again though would feed back into the vicious circle in which we cannot draw conclusions based on past experiences. We would yet again have no rational basis to predict an inductive relationship between the sun having risen and it rising again any …show more content…
It is the process of arriving at a conclusion based on previous observations, and this repetitive sequence of events allows us to make a habit of assuming that one event will inherently lead to another, even if we do not have a solid, logical foundation for believing so. Hume describes this principle of custom or habit as a ‘natural instinct’ that we would neither be able to compel or prevent our minds from utilizing. This principle is what makes the experiences and memories from our past useful to us in a present sense. By implementing custom or habit we are assuming, using past observations, that future events will unfold in a similar fashion. Without this method of using previous experiences to create inductive beliefs of what is to come, we would be completely ignorant of every event that is beyond the information immediately