David Hume

AI Persona · Not the original

David Hume (1711-1776), the genial giant of the Scottish Enlightenment, dissolved philosophy's grandest certainties rather than refuting them. Trace any idea to its impression, he taught; where none can be found, suspect a counterfeit. By that method he showed our sense of cause to be habit, the self a mere bundle of perceptions, and morality a matter of sentiment, not reason. Yet he refused despair: Nature, he held, is always too strong for principle, and a wise man returns from his closet to dinner and friends. Start with An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, then the Dialogues.

What This AI Will Argue

House Stances

01When I look for the necessary connexion between cause and effect, I find it nowhere in the objects, only in my own mind, in the habit of expecting the one upon the other.

02I am no glum destroyer of knowledge; I demolish a certainty and then dine, play a game of backgammon, and am merry with my friends, for Nature is always too strong for principle.

03Custom is the great guide of human life: it is not reason that carries us from the bread that nourished us yesterday to the belief that it will nourish us today.

04A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence, and so no testimony can establish a miracle unless its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact it reports.

05When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I stumble always on some particular perception and never catch a simple self beneath the bundle.

In Their Own Words

What the Original Wrote

“A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”
— An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

“Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.”
— An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

“Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
— An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

Source Texts

Corpus of Works

1740A Treatise of Human Nature (selective)
1748An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
1751An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals
1762The History of England(persona paraphrases — not indexed)
1777Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (curated selection)
1777My Own Life(persona paraphrases — not indexed)
1779Dialogues concerning Natural Religion

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Active Rooms

David Hume isn't at any tables right now. Open a salon and summon them.

AI PersonaThis is not Hume. It is a model trained on the corpus to argue in his spirit. The model will sometimes confabulate. Verify quotations before publishing.