Hume Section II. The Origins of Ideas

Question 1

How does Hume introduce the difference between sensation and reflection?

Answer 1

“Everyone will readily allow, that there is a considerable difference between the perceptions of mind…and when he afterwards recalls to his memory the sensation, or anticipated it by his imagination”

Question 2

What quote demotes thoughts as totally inferior to sensation?

Answer 2

“The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation”

Question 3

How does Hume acknowledge the helpfulness of memory or reflection?

Answer 3

“our thought is a faithful mirror, and it copies its objects truly”

Question 4

How does Hume distinguish thoughts/ideas from impressions?

Answer 4

“distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity”

Question 5

How does Hume define impression/sensation?

Answer 5

“all our more lively perceptions”

Question 6

What features do impressions have that ideas do not?

Answer 6

Incorrigible, involuntary

Question 7

Describe Hume’s considerations of how we may initially perceive the mind

Answer 7

Hume says at first the mind seems unbounded and that we can imagine anything “except what implies an absolute contradiction”

Question 8

What is the mind’s true nature according to Hume? (Copy Principle)

Answer 8

“though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty…it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the sense and experience”

Question 9

What is the example of the golden mountain?

Answer 9

“When we think of a golden mountain, we only join to consistent ideas, gold, and mountain”; gold mountain amounts to nothing more than simple ideas of gold and mountain which we have impressions of

Question 10

Give the pen example to explain why Hume’s definition of sensations and ideas is weak

Answer 10

• You glance at your pen on your desk per chance everyday and so according to Hume you have a sensation of this pen
• You lose your pen and are trying to describe to someone in great detail; you have an idea/thought of this pen
• Hume is committed to saying that you’re idea of the pen is less forceful and vivacious than your earlier impression; seems wrong
• If Hume concede to this point, tantamount to accepting he is implicitly committed to classifying the initial perception as an idea while the thought of the pen (more vivacious and forceful) an impression by Hume’s definition

Question 11

Give the pen example to explain why Hume’s definition of sensations and ideas is weak

Answer 11

• You glance at your pen on your desk per chance everyday and so according to Hume you have a sensation of this pen
• You lose your pen and are trying to describe to someone in great detail; you have an idea/thought of this pen
• Hume is committed to saying that you’re idea of the pen is less forceful and vivacious than your earlier impression; seems wrong
• If Hume concede to this point, tantamount to accepting he is implicitly committed to classifying the initial perception as an idea while the thought of the pen (more vivacious and forceful) an impression by Hume’s definition

Question 12

So what is Hume’s CP?

Answer 12

All thought can do is compound materials that ultimately derive without exception from sense experience and our inner feelings

Question 13

What is the first argument Hume puts forward for his CP?

Answer 13

• Testing the hypothesis and always successfully reduce even the most complex ideas into simpler ones
• “we shall always find, that every idea which we examine is copied from a similar impression”

Question 14

What is the second argument Hume puts forward for his CP? (N.B also works against innate ideas)

Answer 14

• When a defect in an organ deprives a particular category of impressions, the corresponding ideas are lacking
• “A blind man can form no notion of colours”

Question 15

Issues with Hume’s arguments for CP; (explanatory weakness of simple vs. complex ideas)

Answer 15

• Explanatory weakness in that simple ideas cannot be broken down further
• But “Mountain”, as in simple idea from gold mountain, could be reduced into a rocky hill, snowy peak etc.
• Doesn’t sufficiently address what ideas count as simple and leaves room for simple ideas to be infinitely reduced

Question 16

What is Hume’s missing shade of blue?

Answer 16

Hume asks us to consider a person who is acquainted with a comprehensive spectrum of colours except for one particular shade of blue, he agrees with common judgement that it would be possible “to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by the senses”

Question 17

How does Hume dismiss the missing shade of blue as a criticism to his claim that all ideas derive from corresponding impressions?

Answer 17

He claims it “scarcely worth our observing, and does not merit, that for it alone we should alter our general maxim”

Question 18

Support for Hume’s dismissal of shade of blue (secondary literature)

Answer 18

• As Bailey and O’Brian point out, just because free divers can hold their breath under water for a long time doesn’t mean that it would be irresponsible for us to conclude somebody who isn’t a free diver could survive 8 minutes underwater without any apparatus to help them breathe
• Similarly, if all ideas are almost invariably derived from correspondent impressions, it’s plausible to hold of any particular idea that it’s most unlikely to exist if no correspondent impression exists even if we accept that it’s not impossible
• Hume adopts this attitude

Question 19

How could Hume amend his distinction between impressions and ideas rather than the vague definition?

Answer 19

• Rather than claiming an idea “never can entirely reach the force and vivacity of the original sentiment”, Hume could appeal to the difference in reaction between an idea and an impression
• If i had an impression of a snake I would scream and run away where as I wouldn’t if I merely imagined a snake