According to the philosopher David Hume, a miracle is " a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, following Hume and Johann Georg Hamann, a Humean scholar, agrees with Hume's definition of a miracle as a transgression of a law of nature, but Kierkegaard, writing as his pseudonym Johannes Climacus, regards any historical reports to be less than certain, including historical reports of such miracle transgressions, as all historical knowledge is always doubtful and open to approximation.

For Hume, philosophy can be split into two general parts: natural philosophy and the philosophy of human nature ( or, as he calls it, " moral philosophy ").

Hume accepts that ideas may be either the product of mere sensation, or of the imagination working in conjunction with sensation.

( Hume 1974: 322 ) In explaining how matters of fact are entirely a product of experience, he dismisses the notion that they may be arrived at through a priori reasoning.

Unlike his predecessors, Berkeley and Locke, Hume rejects the idea that volitions or impulses of the will may be inferred to necessarily connect to the actions they produce by way of some sense of the power of the will.

Here Hume tackles the problem of how liberty may be reconciled with metaphysical necessity ( otherwise known as a compatibilist formulation of free will ).

Hume insists that the conclusions of the Enquiry will be very powerful if they can be shown to apply to animals and not just humans.

Still, Hume takes care to warn that historians are generally to be trusted with confidence, so long as their reports on facts are extensive and uniform.

Hume offers his friend an objection: if we see an unfinished building, then can't we infer that it has been created by humans with certain intentions, and that it will be finished in the future?

Hume shows that even light skepticism leads to crushing doubts about the world which-while they ultimately are philosophically justifiable-may only be combated through the non-philosophical adherence to custom or habit.

Captain Hume of HMS Scarborough reported on 6 February that a " Pyrate Ship of 36 Guns and 250 men, and a Sloop of 10 Guns and 100 men were Said to be Cruizing amongst the Leeward Islands ".

" David Hume claims that the philosophers who argue for a self that can be found using reason are confusing " similarity " with " identity ".

But it was then that Hume started his great historical work The History of England, which took fifteen years and ran over a million words, to be published in six volumes in the period between 1754 and 1762, while also involved with the Canongate Theatre.

Hume told him he sincerely believed it a " most unreasonable fancy " that there might be life after death.

Hume asked that he be interred in a " simple roman tomb "; in his will he requests that it be inscribed only with his name and the year of his birth and death, " leaving it to Posterity to add the Rest.

To be sure, Hume thought that we can form beliefs about that which extends beyond any possible experience, through the operation of faculties such as custom and the imagination, but he was skeptical about claims to knowledge on this basis.

With regard to ( 1 ), Hume argues that the uniformity principle cannot be demonstrated, as it is " consistent and conceivable " that nature might stop being regular.

Turning to ( 2 ), Hume argues that we cannot hold that nature will continue to be uniform because it has been in the past, as this is using the very sort of reasoning ( induction ) that is under question: it would be circular reasoning.

It has been suggested that this position can be lucidly brought out through the metaphor of " direction of fit ": beliefs — the paradigmatic products of reason — are propositional attitudes that aim to have their content fit the world ; conversely, desires — or what Hume calls passions, or sentiments — are states that aim to fit the world to their contents.

Given that one cannot be motivated by reason alone, requiring the input of the passions, Hume argued that reason cannot be behind morality.

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume uses Epicurus as a character for explaining the impossibility of our knowing God to be any greater or better than his creation proves him to be.

In part two, Hume inquires into how anyone can justifiably believe that experience yields any conclusions about the world:

There is one final criterion that Hume thinks gives us warrant to doubt any given testimony, and that is f ) if the propositions being communicated are miraculous.

The Philosophical Society of Australasia later offered to reimburse Hume for any costs incurred in recovering a specimen of the unknown animal, but for various reasons, Hume did not return to the lake.

There is a debate in the historiography, because Hooker lived too early, Halifax did not belong to any party, Hume was not involved in politics, and Burke was a Whig.

The use and meaning of the word " philosophy " has changed throughout history: in Antiquity it encompassed almost any inquiry ; for Descartes it was supposed to be the Queen of the Sciences, a sort of ultimate justification ; in the time of David Hume " metaphysics " and " morals " could be roughly translated as the human sciences ; and contemporary analytic philosophy likes to define itself roughly as inquiry into concepts.

In any case, Meyer, Papazian, Hume, and several casting directors spent most of July, 1982 taking numerous trips to Kansas City.

Kant made his argument in opposition to Hume, who denied that reason had any role to play in experience.

* any of several prominent landmarks named after Hamilton Hume:

Concerning " free will ", most early modern philosophers, including Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume believed that the term was frequently used in a wrong or illogical sense, and that the philosophical problems concerning any difference between " will " and " free will " are due to verbal confusion ( because all will is free ):

When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep ; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist ' ( Hume, 1739 )

David Hume offers in A Treatise of Human Nature ( 1739 ), that human beings are naturally social: "’ Tis utterly impossible for men to remain any considerable time in that savage condition, which precedes society ; but that his very first state and situation may justly be esteem ’ d social.

In 1979, he was replaced by John Hume as leader of the SDLP and he left the party altogether after he had agreed to constitutional talks with British Secretary of State Humphrey Atkins without any provision for an ' Irish dimension ' and had then seen his decision overturned by the SDLP party conference.

It has also achieved notability in debating, having won the Hume Barbour and Karl Cramp trophies more times than any other school.

In 1824 Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane asked Hovell to join with Hamilton Hume to undertake the exploration of what is now southern New South Wales and Victoria in an attempt to obtain more information about any rivers that might run south in the direction of Spencer Gulf.

Hume asks, given knowledge of the way the universe is, in what sense can we say it ought to be different? Hume calls for caution against such inferences in the absence of any explanation of how the ought-statements follow from the is-statements.

Hume famously rejected the idea of any meaningful statement that did not fall into this schema, saying:

David Hume wrote, " It is remarkable that this family of d ' Arcy seems to be the only male descendant of any of the Conqueror's barons now remaining among the Peers.

After retiring from the civil services and towards the end of Lord Lytton's rule, Hume observed that the people of India had a sense of hopelessness and wanted to do something, noting " a sudden violent outbreak of sporadic crime, murders of obnoxious persons, robbery of bankers and looting of bazaars, acts really of lawlessness which by a due coalescence of forces might any day develop into a National Revolt.

Hume objected to advertisement and refused to have any public ceremony to open the institute.