Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by Hume
Impression vs Copy
We are given sheer impressions, and we make judgements by conceptualizing impressions. Hume tries to answer the question of the Given by introducing the idea of copies: Hume says that ideas (concepts) are arrangements of copies of impressions.
Imagination and Contradiction
Ideas do not move us to the same extent that an impression does. For example, the idea of the color red is not as vivid as its impression, and the idea of love does not stir us like the impression of love.
Ideas give us the ability to imagine. We can arrange ideas in more ways than we can perceive impressions. We have perceived a horse, and we have perceived wings, so we can imagine a winged-horse, despite having never perceived one. However, imagination is not entirely free. Consider a square circle, or an orange-y blue. We can not imagine either of these, meaning that they are somehow distinguished from other concepts we could imagine. This is because they are intrinsically contradictory. This leads to Hume’s Contradiction Principle.
Hume’s Contradiction Principle
The clearly conceivable is not contradictory.
Rearrangement of ideas is not entirely free.
The Origin of Contradiction
Attending to what we can imagine gives us conceptual knowledge
Discussion
- According to Hume, all knowledge comes from experience. What could he say about Plato’s square example?
- How do we learn the relations among ideas? Given that all knowledge comes from experience, how does knowledge of these relations come about?
- Can you ever know that some event was the cause of some other event?