Talk:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

some pre-article info
The table of contents for the enquiry added.Lucidish 05:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

things to do
- Comparisons with the Treatise -- personal identity -- associations between ideas

- Critiques -- in psychology -- in philosophy --- Kant- Kant's entire philosophy is a rejoinder to Hume. Given that Kant's philosophy has been one of the most influential innovations in the history of ideas, it would be negligent not to mention it.

The mention of animals exhibiting creativity has nothing to do with Hume's notion of causation.

Thesis?
How about adding a sentence or two about what the main thesis of the book is above the summaries of the chapters?

Dogmatic slumber
The expression dogmatic slumber used by Kant has become quite notable, and I'm thinking that with adequate research, it might even be deserving of its own deserving essay or article, as long as a sufficient number of sources are provided. ADM (talk) 05:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Publisher?
The article says that the book was "published in 1748" but it doesn't say who the publisher or printing house was. Presumably this was in England but this is also not made clear - was it published out of London? Usually an article about a book on Wikipedia will "spell out" who the publisher or printing house was and which city it was published out of. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.127.200.152 (talk) 01:31, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move per request as a proper noun (this could have been listed in the uncontroversial requests section).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding → An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding – Doesn't the current formatting of this article's title contravene Wikipedia's guidelines? George Richard Leeming (talk) 11:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Cause and Effect / Example of Sun Rising Every Day -- Why not in article?
I read and studied this book in a Philosophy class and it had a big impact that is long lasting for me. In particular, Hume's treatment of the issue of the problems with cause-and-effect and with induction with his famous illustration with the example that just because the sun rises every day gives us no "rational reason" that it will rise again tomorrow. I am distressed to do a search on the word "sun" in the article and nothing comes up. How is that possible? I have not gone to secondary sources yet, but I would think it is as important an example for Hume as the Allegory of the Cave is to Plato. Even the Sparknotes cover it here. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:45, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Click on Problem of induction
 * He shows how a satisfying argument for the validity of experience can be based neither on demonstration (since "it implies no contradiction that the course of nature may change") nor experience (since that would be a circular argument). (Hume 1974:330-332) Here he is describing what would become known as the problem of induction.

BlueMist (talk) 11:35, 19 November 2015 (UTC)


 * ^Thanks for the quote. I agree that the Problem of induction does a good job of explaining the problem Hume brought up in this section.  But I still feel the sun rising metaphor should be used in *both*, because it is such a good metaphor--like the Allegory of the Cave, which is why Sparknotes included it.  I could look in secondary sources to bolster my case for that.  My guess is the secondary sources will refer to the sun rising metaphor.  Also I do think the quote above is a bit too abstract for lay readers and we should have language more like this section.
 * --David Tornheim (talk) 11:04, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Secondary sources? Where are they?
When I went to look at the secondary sources used to justify the quote mentioned in the above section, I was distressed this time to see that none was footnoted for almost anything in the aticle. This article appears to be almost entirely WP:OR. --David Tornheim (talk) 11:09, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, many of the very best philosophy pages lack Wikipedia acceptable references. It is what it is. It takes scarce expertise and time to make corrections, then the pages need to be protected against well meaning but ignorant editors and just plain vandalism. BlueMist (talk) 21:28, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20140219112051/http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/h92e/ to http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/h92e/

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 22:04, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 07:40, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

1748 title
The 1748 title of this work is Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding. English Wikisource has a transcription of a scan of the 1748 edition. What is the source for the current page title? --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:39, 18 January 2023 (UTC)