What, for Hume, were the ultimate determinants of behavior? Explain.
David Hume was a philosopher, economist, historian and essayist, who proposed the highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism and naturalism. He was skeptical about the religious beliefs and argued that religion is both irrational and impractical. He explained the importance of relation between science and the human nature. He wanted to reform moral philosophy using Newtonian methods, and was impressed of Newtonian works on natural philosophy.
Hume gave importance more to experience. According to him, unless we experience any object, we cannot predict that this can occur. He also focused on the inductive method of Bacon about making careful observations. He also worked on human emotions and behaviors. According to him, all humans have same emotions and hence, are motivated towards the same behavior but the degree of their action differs. He says that the pattern of emotion or passion determines one’s character, which then determines the behavior.
According to Hume, the ultimate determinants of behavior are passion, emotion, experience and character. Passion and emotions influences ideas and impressions, individual experiences are associated with certain emotions, pattern of passion determines the character and hence, all these determine the behavior. Human behavior is sometimes inconsistent but not unpredictable. Humans learn to behave and act according to the different experiences occurring in their life.
According to some philosophers, the ideas or impressions cause the human behavior but Hume opposed this view of determining human behavior. He concluded that passions associated with ideas and impressions cause human behavior and not the ideas and impressions itself. For Hume, the term experience meant cognitive experience, which is related to the behavior.