JCCMI- Week 6 Discussion 1 and 2

Week 6: The Origin of Our Ideas, David Hume

Although John Locke introduced empiricism to modern philosophical discussions, David Hume was a much more sophisticated empiricist. Hume sees that empiricism needs clarifications and distinctions which Locke never offered, has limitations Locke hardly recognized, and offers prescriptions that Locke didn’t think to apply.

Hume begins by dividing “all the perceptions of the mind”—of all the things that happen ‘in’ our minds, he wants to distinguish two different classes: ideas and impressions. (216) Impressions are all our perceptions—experiences of seeing, hearing, tasting, etc.—plus emotional states that seem to have external causes—loving, hating, thirsting for, etc. Ideas are about these. Thus, when you see a handkerchief at noon, you have an impression of the handkerchief at noon. At 3pm, when you think again of having seen the handkerchief, you have an idea of the handkerchief.

With this division, Hume then makes a startling claim: although our ideas seem to be utterly unconstrained, they are all—every single one of them!—arrived at by “compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing” one’s impressions, the “materials afforded us by the senses and experience”. (217) In other words, every thought you can have, according to Hume, is derived from some experience you’ve had; and, the derivation of each thought from experience involved no more than four processes: compounding, transposing, augmenting, and diminishing.

In defense of this bold claim, Hume offers two arguments. The first is perhaps more like a challenge. Hume claims that although ideas might not seem like they’re derived from experience, a little bit of scrutiny will always reveal an idea to have been grounded in experience. As a demonstrative instance, he shows how the idea of God—an idea that Descarted claimed couldn’t have come from experience—can be derived from experience and augmentation. It’s a neat demonstration. He says that the idea of an infinitely wise, intelligent, and good Being, God, is derived from impressions of wisdom, intelligence, and goodness. Take these impressions and augment each one without limit; the result is the idea of God. Having shown that even the idea of God can be derived from experience, Hume challenges anyone who disagrees with him to produce an idea that wasn’t derived from experience. Can you think of an idea like that? How could you prove that the idea hasn’t been derived from experience (rather than just say, for instance, that you can’t imagine how it wasn’t so derived)?

Second, Hume claims that if a person is unable to have impressions of certain sorts, then she won’t have the ideas of those impressions either. For instance, Hume claims that if one can’t see, then since impressions of color come only from sight, one won’t have any impressions of color; and, if one doesn’t have any impressions of color, then Hume claims that one won’t have any ideas of color. If this is true, then it suggests that impressions are necessary for corresponding ideas. (Does Hume suggest that impressions are sufficient for ideas? Do you think it’s true?)

These arguments motivate Hume’s empirical constraint on ideas. If we keep these constraints in mind, Hume suggests that many disagreements may be revealed to be frivolous. When there is disagreement, Hume suggests that we comb through the ideas discussed and for each one trace it back to the impressions in which it is grounded. In this way, we can ensure that the disagreement isn’t merely a verbal confusion—a matter of the disputants using the same words to refer to different ideas. But if there are terms that can’t be traced to any impressions, then Hume suggests that we dismiss these words as meaningless. It’s a provocative proposal.