epistemology term paper

Understanding the distinction between impressions and ideas that Hume draws in the opening paragraph of his " A Treatise on Human Nature " is essential for understanding much of Hume's philosophy. This however is a task that has been the cause of a good deal controversy that rocks the literature of Hume. There is an alternative reading to the distinction as being between original mental entities and copied mental entities. Hume takes himself to discover this distinction as that which underlies our pre-theoretical sorting of mental entities. Hume's reading on human nature make him a more philosophical robust one and avoids many of the difficulties of previous interpretations. The focus of this essay is to show how ideas which are abstract in nature come about. This work shows how we gained knowledge through impressions and ideas. Hume also pointed this out on his " A Treatise on Human Nature " when he said everything we are of can be classified under two headings which are impressions and ideas. It is the duty of this work to show how impressions and ideas constitute our knowledge of the world.

The Cambridge Companion to Hume

By the time Hume started to work on his Treatise, the notion of an idea as the primary, most general sort of mental item dominated European philosophy. Although Descartes noted that, strictly speaking, only those "thoughts that are as it were images of things" were appropriately described as ideas, in practice he used "the word 'idea' to refer to whatever is immediately perceived by the mind." 1 Not only do we have ideas of trees and the sun, but we also have ideas of our own activities of thinking and willing. Locke characterizes 'idea' as "being that Term, which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding when a Man thinks." Locke also thinks that we not only have ideas that derive from things or objects in the world (ideas of sensation), but also of the activities and operations of our own minds (ideas of reflection). Ideas of sensation are acquired through the operation of external objects on our sense organs, while ideas of reflection come from introspection, from thinking about what happens within our own minds. He also thinks that these ideas of reflection are of two basic sorts of mental activity, perception and willing, that correspond to two faculties of mind: the understanding (or the power of thinking) and the will (or the power of volition). 2 Hume introduced important innovations concerning the theory of ideas. The two most important are the distinction between impressions and ideas, and the use he made of the principles of association in explaining mental phenomena. Hume divided the perceptions of the mind into two classes. The members of one class, impressions, he held to have a greater degree of force and vivacity than the members of the other class, ideas. He also supposed that ideas are causally dependent copies of impressions. And, unlike Locke and others, Hume makes positive use of the principle of association, both of the association of 80 ideas, and, in a more limited way, of the association of impressions. Such associations are central to his explanations of causal reasoning, belief, the indirect passions (pride and humility, love and hatred), and sympathy. These views about impressions and ideas and the principles of association form the core of Hume's science of human nature. Relying on them, he attempts a rigorously empirical investigation of human nature. The resulting system is a remarkable but complex achievement. I. IMPRESSIONS AND IDEAS Hume begins Book 1 of the Treatise, "Of the Understanding," by saying: "All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS" (T 1.1.1.1, SBN 1). In his later Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (hereafter Enquiry) he says much the same thing, but adds an example: "Every one will readily allow, that there is a considerable difference between the perceptions of the mind, when a man feels the pain of excessive heat, or the pleasure of moderate warmth, and when he afterwards recalls to his memory the sensation, or anticipates it by his imagination" (EHU 2.1, SBN 17). In neither work does he make an attempt to explain what he means by the phrase, "perceptions of the mind," but it would have been obvious to any eighteenthcentury reader that he is using that expression much as Descartes and Locke had used the term "idea": for anything that mind is aware of or experiences. As he put it later in the Treatise: "To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive" (T 1.2.6.7, SBN 67). Hume's initial step in the Treatise is to show that perceptions of the mind may divided into "two distinct kinds," impressions and ideas. These two kinds commonly differ, he says, "in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind." Among our impressions, those perceptions with the most "force and vivacity," are sensations (including those of pain and pleasure) and the passions and emotions. Ideas are described as "the faint images" of impressions that are found "in

Icon of Faith Journal, 2020

Descartes’s belief in innate ideas still looms, in one form or another, over the history of philosophy today. In typical Early-Modern, Rationalist fashion, Descartes presents readers with main arguments for his belief in these pre-packaged ideas, via appeals to God and the application of logical thinking techniques. That is, Descartes asserts that the so-called inherent idea of God derives from God and that the mind can establish this notion as well as the surety of its supposed innate ideas of immortality and identity. However, such ideas may appear alien to some, and even unfounded upon critique. First, this essay will present Descartes’s philosophy of innate ideas by using his Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Next, this piece will then describe the philosopher Hume’s Empiricist understanding of ideas and the problems of abstraction, and then challenge the Cartesian view that innate notions like God, immortality of the soul, and identity may not be so innate, or as precise as Descartes leads us to believe.

Roczniki Filozoficzne, 2020

René Descartes ist in der Tat der wahrhafte Anfänger der modernen Philosophie … Die Wirkung dieses Menschen auf sein Zeitalter und die neue Zeit kann nicht ausgebreitet genug vorgestellt werden. Er ist so ein Heros, der die Sache wieder einmal ganz von vorne angefangen und den Boden der Philosophie erst von neuem konstituiert hat, auf den sie nun erst nach dem Verlauf von tausend Jahren zurück gekehrt ist. Die große Wirkung, die Cartesius auf sein Zeit alter und die Bildung der Philosophie überhaupt gehabt hat, liegt vornehmlich darin, auf eine freie und einfache, zugleich populäre Weise mit Hintansetzung aller Voraussetzung von dem populären Gedanken selbst und ganz einfachen Sätzen angefangen und den Inhalt auf Gedanken und Ausdehnung oder Sein geführt, dem Gedanken gleichsam diesen seinen Gegensatz hingestellt zu haben. René Descartes is a bold spirit who re-commenced the whole subject from the very beginning and constituted afresh the groundwork on which Philosophy is based, and to which, after a thousand years had passed, it once more returned. The extent of the influence which this man exercised upon his times and the culture of Philosophy generally, cannot be sufficiently expressed; it rests mainly in his setting aside all former presuppositions and beginning in a free, simple, and likewise popular way, with popular modes of thought and quite simple propositions, in his leading the content to thought and extension or Being, and so to speak setting up this before thought as its opposite.

In this paper I aim to investigate Hume’s well-known distinction between impressions and ideas, following the methodology of the history of ideas, and showing its specificity and suggesting a possible source, which has not been given much attention by the scholarship, namely the logical doctrines of the physician and anatomist William Harvey, which provide the key concepts to understand Hume’s logic of ideas. After some introductory remarks, the second part deals with the many issues involved in Hume’s distinction, and in the third part I examine Harvey’s logic of ideas. In conclusion I assess Hume’s debt to the English physician.

Philosophy and progress, 2019

John Locke, Bishop Berkeley and David Hume are the pioneers of modern British Philosophy during 17 th and 18 th centuries. Among them, John Locke"s epistemological work is one of the greatest defenses of modern empiricism. He attempts to determine the limits of human understanding and seeks to clear the ground for future developments by providing a theory of knowledge compatible with the study of human nature. In his discussion the term "ideas" plays an important role. To understand Locke"s empiricism, one must realize what he means by "ideas". For Locke, ideas are all signs which represent the external world of physical objects and the inner world of consciousness. However, in his book, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he discusses "ideas" in details but he does not provide a sufficiently clear account of the nature of ideas. This paper is an attempt to give a critical exposition of John Locke"s theory of ideas in which I will try to show that his explanation about the nature of idea is not sufficient enough to establish the theory of ideas he presented.

The present thesis: (representing to oneself aside) only a thinker (in Descartes’ demanding sense) can represent something as something. 1) I would like to make this idea compelling. Missing the point, I think, does harm. On recent rereading two sections, 8 and 9, seemed to me to miss this mark. They are rewritten here. 2) This version is a composite of two others, each written for a slightly different purpose. The appendix comes from one of these; section 10 from another. The reader is (of course) free to pick and choose.