Hume Sceptical Philosophy

In this section Hume talks about the inefficiency of the Cartesian doubt. He says there is a species of sceptism, antecedent to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Descartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgment. It recommends an universal doubt, of all things. He says that since these philosophers are looking for an unshakable principle by doubting all the faculties of reason, then they could not step beyond this principle because it would require them to use these faculties that are full of doubt. Therefore, the Cartesian doubt, if it were possible to be attained by humans, which it is not, would be entirely incurable; and no reason could bring us to a state of assurance on any subject. He admits the senses are not to be fully trusted, but the perceptions of the senses are not to be entirelt disregarded, like how the skeptics disregard them. They are to be corrected by reason. Hume says that our contemplation of objects do not have any effect on the objects existence. The images in our mind are not the real objects, and have no effect on the quality of those objects. Hume says it begins to be necessary to use reason to contradict the senses, but human reasoning is incapable of being infallible and cannot assume infallibility in nature.