Hume's "mental geography" : the aim and scope of the first Enquiry
Abstract
The epistemological legacy inherited by Hume both from his rationalist and from his empiricist predecessors was seen by him
to be defective at its foundation. It was based upon the following principles:
A) that indubitable knowledge was attainable in at least some fields, mathematics or sense experience or divine revelation;
B) that basically all knowledge was of a kind: that is, once we have uncovered a method for acquiring indubitable knowledge in one field, this method can be extended to all others; and that consequently
the goal of certainty in all departments of human knowledge is theoretically attainable;
C) that ways of knowing and what was known were independent of the knowing mind.