Preface and Acknowledgments.....................vii List of Abbreviations...........................ix Introduction 1 Ideas.........................................13 2 Demonstration.................................43 3 Probable Reasoning............................69 4 Metaphysics...................................107 5 Skepticism....................................137 6 The Passions..................................161 7 Human Action..................................195 8 Moral Theory..................................223 9 Political Theory..............................261 1O Economics....................................299 11 Aesthetics...................................315 12 Religion.....................................339 13 History......................................377 Conclusion......................................415 Bibliography....................................429 Index...........................................453
Hume introduces his examination of the "nature and principles of the human mind" in the Treatise with an account in Book 1, Part 1 of the "origin, composition, connexion, abstraction, &c" of our ideas, which he identifies as "the elements of this philosophy" (T 1.1.2.1, 1.1.1.1, 1.1.4.7 [SBN 8, 1, 13]). Hume's analysis of ideas has often been taken to reflect an atomistic, passive, and individualistic account of the human mind. In this chapter I show that Hume attempts not only to identify the contents of our mental states but also to characterize the different intentional states in which we apprehend this content. I also examine his account of the various activities of the mind, as these appear in our abilities to recall, compare, distinguish, rearrange, connect, and combine the ideas we derive from sensations, in order to formulate fanciful images, abstract ideas, and judgments. In addition, I argue that Hume recognizes the influence of social and historical existence on our formation and application of abstract ideas, by indicating that these operations are facilitated in the individual, and coordinated among individuals, as they learn the language of a particular community. Finally, I show that Hume presents both of the "first principles" in his "science of human nature"-that ideas are copies of impressions, and that the imagination is able to rearrange our ideas-as principles of analysis which we should apply conjointly in order to trace the genealogy of our complex ideas, including ideas which are signified by various philosophical terms.
PERCEPTIONS
Hume introduces the term "perception" in the Treatise to designate the contents, or constituent elements, of human consciousness. He initially states that "nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions," and later adds that "the only existences, of which we are certain, are perceptions," since these alone are "immediately present to us by consciousness" (T 1.1.1.1, 1.2.6.7, 1.4.2.47 [SBN 1, 67, 212]). Hume also describes a perception as an "object of our thought," or an "object" in the primary sense of the term. He distinguishes an object in this sense, as the content of any conscious state, from "external objects," which are supposed to have a continued existence apart from the mind, but are known to us only "by those perceptions they occasion" (T 1.2.6.2-7 [SBN 66-67]). Among our perceptions he includes all of the sensory, affective, and cognitive modifications of the human mind, such as "the actions of seeing, hearing, judging, loving, hating, and thinking" (T 3.1.1.2; cf.1.3.7.5n20, 1.4.2.7 [SBN 456; cf. 96-97n1, 190]). Finally, he argues that individual perceptions may be regarded as "substances," at least according to the definition of a "substance" as whatever may be "consider'd as separately existent, and may exist separately," and has "no need of any thing else" to support its existence (T 1.4.5.5 [SBN 233]). As we will see in Chapter 4, Hume eventually seeks to show that our ideas of external objects and of the self are produced by the mind through its various activities in combining our perceptions, and that we have no foundation or justification for these ideas apart from the constructive activity of the imagination.
Next, Hume divides our perceptions into "impressions" and "ideas," which he initially states are distinguished from each other by the different "degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind." Of these, impressions are generally more forceful and lively, and include "all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul," while ideas are the "faint images" of these in our "thinking and reasoning." However, Hume also concedes that our impressions and ideas may in some cases "very nearly approach to each other" in vividness. Thus, for example, "in sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any very violent emotions of soul" our ideas may resemble impressions in their vivacity, while on the other hand our impressions may at times become "so faint and low" that we cannot distinguish them from ideas. Here, in addition to his quantitative distinction between impressions and ideas in terms of their degrees of vivacity, Hume appears to endorse a qualitative distinction between the types of conscious states in which we respectively apprehend impressions and ideas, which we recognize as "the difference betwixt feeling and thinking" (T 1.1.1.1 [SBN 1-2]). This qualitative distinction is more explicitly indicated in the Abstract, where he states that "when we feel a passion or emotion," or the influence of external objects on our senses, our perception is called an "impression," while "when we reflect on a passion or an object which is not present, this perception is an idea" (A 5 [SBN 647]). Here he suggests that we can recognize a difference in the subjective quality of our conscious states between our immediate apprehension of a sensation or emotion and our reflective apprehension of the same sensation or emotion when it is represented by an idea. This reference to the two types of intentional states involved in our apprehending of perceptions, either as impressions or as ideas, anticipates his account of belief, in contrast to the imagination, as a distinctive "manner" of conceiving ideas, as we will see later in this chapter (cf. T 1.3.7.7 [SBN 629]).
Hume further divides our impressions, or feelings, into "impressions of sensation" and "impressions of reflection." An "impression of sensation" is one that "strikes upon the senses, and makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain of some kind or other" (T I. 1.2. i [SBN 7-8]). He later divides our impressions of sensation into three apparent types: impressions of shape, motion, and solidity, which we generally regard as qualities of external objects; impressions of color, taste, smell, heat, and cold, which we commonly attribute to objects but which modern philosophers regard as modifications of the mind arising from the influence of external objects; and impressions of pleasure and pain, which everyone regards as mental states rather than qualities of external objects (T 1.4.2.12 [SBN 192]). By contrast, "impressions of reflection" include the "passions, desires, and emotions," which arise in the mind in response to our ideas of pleasurable or painful sensations (T 1.1.2.1 [SBN 7-8]). In the first Enquiry Hume characterizes this division of our impressions as a distinction between "outward" and "inward" sensations: a view echoed by Philo's observation in the Dialogues that the "materials" of human thought include the ideas derived from "internal sentiment, added to those of the external senses," which together comprise "the whole furniture of human understanding" (EHU 2.9 [SBN 22]; DNR 3.156).
Finally, Hume introduces a distinction between "simple" and "complex" perceptions, which he applies to both impressions and ideas. Of these, simple perceptions "admit of no distinction nor separation," while complex perceptions may be "distinguish'd into parts" (T 1.1.1.2 [SBN 2]). Unfortunately, Hume's characterization of simple perceptions is almost immediately obscured by his rather haphazard presentation of his own examples, and by an ambiguity in his account of two apparent ways in which ideas may be "distinguished" or "separated" by the mind.
In his initial example, Hume identifies the "colour, taste, and smell" of an apple as simple impressions of sensation, since these qualities are "not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each other" (T 1.1.1.2 [SBN 2]). Here and elsewhere he apparently identifies the idea of a quality, such as a particular color, as a "simple idea" (cf. T 1.1.7.7n5 [SBN 637]). Next, referring to our idea of a winged horse, he indicates that the imagination can separate and rearrange our ideas of the spatially extended parts of complex impressions. In this context he argues that "there are not any two impressions which are perfectly inseparable," so that "wherever the imagination perceives a difference among ideas, it can easily produce a separation," in this case by imagining part of one type of animal body as separated from that type of animal and attached to another (T 1.1.3.4 [SBN 10]). Finally, he describes the union of color and shape in a visual impression, for example in our view of a globe of white marble, as a "simplicity" (T 1.1.7.18 [SBN 25]). In these cases he apparently characterizes first the qualities of a complex perception, then the parts of a complex perception, and finally a given combination of qualities in our perception of an external object, as simple perceptions.
While the parts of an animal body can clearly be imagined as existing separately from that body, and as attached to another object, Hume's analysis becomes less straightforward when he considers the senses in which the qualities of complex perceptions can be "distinguished" from each other. In the discussion of abstract ideas with which he concludes the presentation of his theory of ideas, he reaffirms the principle "that all ideas, which are different, are separable," and further identifies what is "separable" with what is "distinguishable." He then argues that although we cannot separate certain types of qualities, such as color and shape, from each other in a literal sense as separate impressions or images, we can recognize and consider these as separate qualities by comparing one perception to another and attending to their resembling or contrasting qualities: an activity he calls a "distinction of reason." In his example, we cannot distinguish the color of a marble globe from its shape by forming separate images of its color or shape. However, we can distinguish color and shape from each other, and from the object as a whole, in a figurative sense through a distinction of reason, by directing our attention toward various resemblances and differences between our perception of the globe and our perceptions of other objects (T 1.1.7.17-18 [SBN 24-25]). A "distinction of ideas" is thus distinguished from the "real difference" which subsists between those perceptions we can imagine as existing separately (T 1.2.6.6 [SBN 67]).
Interestingly enough, while he denies in Part 1 that we can imagine the qualities of color and shape as existing separately, in Part 4 he affirms that even though "the colour, taste, figure, solidity, and other qualities, combin'd in a peach or melon, are conceiv'd to form one thing," the mind recognizes these qualities as "different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other." In this context he even maintains that since each quality is "a distinct thing from another," every quality "may be conceiv'd to exist apart, and may exist apart," not only from a supposed substance, but also from every other quality (T 1.4.3.5-7 [SBN 221-22]).
In order to provide a clearer reconstruction of Hume's account of simple perceptions, or those perceptions which are really separable, we may turn to his discussion of our ideas of space and time in Part 2. Here he identifies the minimal points of color and texture which appear in our sensory field as simple perceptions, by describing our minimum possible impressions of color and texture as "simple and uncompounded," and our ideas of these points as "perfectly simple and indivisible" (T 1.2.1.4-5 [SBN 28]). These points have one quality, a color or texture, but no shape; and our perception of a colored or textured shape is actually a complex perception made up of these indivisible points (cf. T 1.2.2.9 [SBN 32]). Hume subsequently characterizes various other uniform but nonspatial impressions, such as pure sounds, tastes, and smells, as simple (T 1.1.7.7n5; cf. 1.2.3.10, 1.4.2.12-16, 1.4.5.10-14 [SBN 637; cf. 36, 191-94, 235-39]), along with various passions (T 2.1.2.1, 2.2.1.1 [SBN 277, 329]). However, it would seem, according to his analysis, that if we attribute simplicity to minimum visible and tangible points in space, we should also attribute simplicity to nonspatial perceptions only as they appear in minimal temporal points of awareness, since one moment in the continuing awareness of a sound or a passion can presumably be separated from another by the imagination.
As we have seen, Hume initially argues that color and shape cannot be separated from each other by "thought and imagination," but only through a "distinction of reason" (T 1.1.7.3, 1.1.7.17-18 [SBN 18, 24-25]). However, in Part 2 he maintains that minimal visible points can only be seen or imagined as points of color, although he does not offer any specific evidence that we can recognize the color of a minimum visible point (cf. T 1.2.3.4-5 [SBN 34]). According to this analysis, minimal points of color seem to be simple perceptions that can be perceived and imagined separately, although they can also be combined in the complex perception of a colored shape. By contrast, our idea of a particular shape is a complex idea, which we can only formulate, as a distinction of reason, by comparing the distribution of colored or textured points in a variety of complex perceptions.
On this reconstruction of Hume's view, simple perceptions would thus consist in those minimal points of color and texture, and those momentary appearances of uniform nonspatial qualities such as sounds, smells, and passions, which we can perceive separately, and imagine as existing separately, from other spatially or temporally minimal perceptions.
Finally, Hume also maintains that we can recognize various resemblances and
differences even between our simple perceptions, thereby indicating that we may
identify different aspects of these uniform perceptions through distinctions of
reason, even though these aspects cannot be perceived or imagined as existing
separately from a perception. These recognizable aspects of our simple
perceptions include the hue or saturation of colors, the pitch or volume of
sounds, and the painful or pleasurable character of our passions (T 1.1.7.7n5;
cf. 2.1.4.3 [SBN 637; cf. 283]). This ambiguity in Hume's use of the terms
"distinguishable," for either a "real" distinction or a "distinction of reason,"
introduces a surreptitious difficulty into the two maxims of analysis he claims
to derive from his "second principle" concerning the activity of the
imagination. These are, that "whatever objects are different are
distinguishable, and that whatever objects are distinguishable are separable by
the thought and imagination," and conversely that "whatever objects are
separable are also distinguishable, and that whatever objects are
distinguishable are also different" (T 1.1.3.4, 1.1.7.3 [SBN 10, 18]).
Continues...
Excerpted from David Hume by Claudia M. Schmidt Copyright © 2003 by The Pennsylvania State University. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.