Dewey And Hume Essay Research Paper As

Dewey And Hume Essay, Research Paper

As stated in the school handbook, “The purpose of Michigan University is to make its students more valuable human beings and more useful members of society. Michigan seeks to help its students realize their fullest intellectual and personal potential combined with a deep sense of ethical and social concern.”

When my parents read this passage for the first time three years ago, my father’s comment was that “for $120,000 they better make you realize something there.” When I read this passage as a prospective student, I was worried that it would be a very painful process. My rationale at the time was that some people do not reach their fullest intellectual and personal potential their whole lives. I was going to do it in four years! Let’s just say, it seemed a little intimidating.

Little did I know the first day I arrived at Michigan but the contemporary conception of knowledge which pervades the university is a mixture of Deweyan and Humean thought. This becomes increasingly clear to me when I look back on some of my classes and activities at Michigan. For instance, the university prides itself on constantly trying to promote progress and improvement throughout society, which is very Deweyan. Michigan epitomizes the saying that “growth itself is the only moral end” (Dewey 177). Through Lang scholarships and other grants, Michigan regularly sponsors/funds students’ and professors’ efforts to try and benefit the community. The caring nature of the university community can be contagious. After speaking with a student or professor and hearing them speak so passionately about their work, one cannot help but feel inspired and eager to get involved.

This is exactly what happened to me after I spoke to a female friend of mine about her community service project. The project is very simplistic in its goal: to help Chester High School students achieve higher scores on the SAT. The project will not lower the crime rate in Chester nor will it solve the city’s other problems. However, the program has proven to work over the years and that is why we do it. Until now I did not know that this pragmatic view could be attributed to Dewey’s philosophy. By going into Chester twice a week and working with the high school students on improving their math and verbal proficiencies, we hope to polish their skills in those subjects. We do not have “perfection as a final goal” but we are in the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, and refining what we can (Dewey 177).

If Hume were alive today, he would probably sound a lot like a lawyer using disclaimers to protect Michigan University students from any possible legal trouble. Hume would no doubt send a notice home with every Chester high school student taking part in the SAT program. In the notice Hume would remind parents that just because these techniques have worked to improve SAT scores in the past, there is no certainty that they will work in the future because they are based on observations and experience. While we may claim to know what causes these good results, in Hume’s mind there is no proof that the cause is responsible for the effect’s occurrence.

My first university class ever was a Chemistry class early Monday morning. I did not know it at the time, but when Professor Smith spoke of the scientific method I was learning more than just simple chemistry. I was learning a process which John Dewey applied to all areas of life.

During his lifetime, Dewey adopted an “experimentalism” which stressed the continuity of human thought and natural conditions. He also emphasized the ways in which human intelligence could be applied through inquiry to solve real problems. Dewey’s ’scientific method’ of inquiry could be described as the process of moving from an indeterminate situation that blocks action towards a determinate situation in which action may proceed.

However, there were many parts of the Chemistry class that had more in common with Hume than anyone else. Hume believed that all knowledge came from experience. He denied the existence of innate ideas because he believed the human mind invented nothing. Therefore, Hume probably would have appreciated the long Chemistry lab sessions in which we gained knowledge by making observations and performing experiments.

Even though, Hume would have probably disagreed with certain parts of the Chemistry lab as well. The reason being that unlike Descartes who believed in the capacity of human reason/rationalization to achieve knowledge, Hume did not believe that certainty and knowledge through reason was possible. Hume repudiated the possibility of certain knowledge, finding in the mind nothing but a series of sensations, and held that cause-and-effect in the natural world derives solely from the conjunction of two simple impressions. He would not have agreed that the knowledge we gained by doing the experiment resulted in any type of certainty. For instance, he would not have accepted the idea that adding the hydrochloric acid to the solution caused the precipitate. At least he would not do so claiming certainty. Plus, doing so would not be in accordance with his beliefs on necessary connection.

Hume claimed that the only necessary connections of which human beings have any knowledge are those found in mathematics. In all “matters of fact,” the only connection we can find is made