Certainty is an elusive concept from "summary" of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
The idea that certainty is an elusive concept can be deeply unsettling to many individuals. We often seek to find solid ground on which to base our beliefs and actions, yet the more we scrutinize the nature of our knowledge, the more we may come to realize that certainty is a rare commodity indeed. In our daily lives, we rely on a variety of sources to guide our decisions - sensory experiences, reasoning, testimony from others. However, each of these sources is subject to limitations and fallibility. Our senses can deceive us, our reasoning can lead us astray, and the testimony of others may be unreliable. As a result, our beliefs are always open to doubt and revision. Even in the realm of mathematics and logic, where certainty seems most attainable, we find that our knowledge is ultimately based on unproven assumptions. We may have confidence in the consistency of our reasoning, but we cannot be certain that our axioms are true. As Hume puts it, "all the abstract reasonings in the world will never be able to make us assert a proposition, which we have not antecedently embraced, either by our senses, or instinct, or by some original princip...
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