Knowra A Treatise of Human Nature A Treatise of Human Nature David Hume’s three-book philosophical work, published in 1739–1740, develops an account of human understanding, the passions, and morals grounded in experience.
Impressions and Ideas : Hume’s distinction between vivid perceptions and their fainter copies in thought and memory. This distinction supplies the Treatise’s basic materials for explaining thought.
Problem of Induction : The problem of justifying inferences from observed cases to unobserved cases or future events. Hume argues that such inferences rest on custom, not demonstrative reasoning.
David Hume : Scottish philosopher and historian whose works include An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and The History of England. Hume composed the Treatise as his first major attempt to establish a science of human nature.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding : Hume’s 1748 work that recasts major arguments about knowledge, causation, and belief from the Treatise’s first book. Hume later presented related arguments in a shorter work that became more widely read.
Association of Ideas : Hume’s account of how resemblance, contiguity, and causation connect ideas in the mind. Hume uses these principles to explain how thoughts move beyond isolated perceptions.
Humean Theory of Motivation : The view that desires or passions motivate action, while reason alone does not. Book II makes the passions, rather than reason alone, the springs of action.
John Locke : English philosopher whose empiricism explains knowledge through experience and reflection. Hume develops and revises Locke’s empiricist account of the mind.
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals : Hume’s 1751 moral philosophy work, substantially revised from the third book of the Treatise. Its clearer, later treatment of moral judgment differs in form from the Treatise’s Book III.
Causation : The relation by which one event is understood as producing or regularly preceding another. The Treatise challenges the claim that reason perceives a necessary connection between events.
Hume's Is–Ought Problem : The problem of deriving prescriptions about what ought to be from purely descriptive premises. Book III highlights the unexplained transition from factual claims to moral conclusions.
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