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Hume : The Statement of Empiricism in the Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding

I
Section II: Of the Origin of Ideas
Empiricism and the Problem of Universals

The main issue of this section is the statement of the empiricist principle, and the denial of the rationalist thesis of innate ideas. Empiricism is given in the statement
... all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones.
In a footnote at the end of the section Hume describes the innateness hypothesis as the doctrine that some, at least, of our ideas cannot be derived from impressions.
In order to explain this doctrine it is perhaps useful to ascribe to Hume a certain view which, however, he never explicitly states. This is the view that there is an external reality which causes in us certain sensory impressions. [Hume believes that there is an external reality — one that exists externally to consciousness. He states this in his final section, Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy. However, there he also acknowledges that he cannot prove the existence of an external reality.] We receive these directly through the five physical, external senses. In addition to these sensations we have a range of internal, subjective sensations, which are the immediate experiences of our emotions, pleasures, pains, passions and so forth. Since they are subjective they do not raise a new epistemological problem — they are simply the workings of our internal nature, and do not constitute a perception of some other aspect of reality not otherwise known through the material body. In addition to these immediate sensations we experience a host of mental ideas. What is the origin of these ideas? Hume maintains that they come from the external world, or from the immediate internal experiences of our emotions. Either way, our ideas are copies of sensations and immediate passions. This is the empiricist doctrine.
Hume's philosophy should be contrasted with that of Descartes. Descartes maintains that we do have ideas that cannot be derived from sensory experience. In his method of doubt he sets out to show that sensory experience is totally unreliable as a foundation for knowledge. The origin of ideas is a purely conceptual apprehension, based on reason, which has been given to us by God. The ideas have been implanted in us by God, and are consequently innate. They cannot be derived from an external reality directly, and external reality only conforms to them. Consequently, our true identity involves the existence of a purely spiritual part, so we have a soul which is made of a non-temporally and non-spatially located spiritual substance. Hume's philosophy is an attempt to deny, and to refute this conception of man. Consequently, he has to offer an alternative explanation for the origin of our ideas.
Hume does not explicitly state a realist assumption because that would be to claim to know more than he can know. So the distinction between impressions and ideas must be founded upon some other basis than the claim to know that a (transcendent) reality exists. Hume maintains in this section that there is an internal criterion — that we can draw a distinction between our experiences, and so classify them into two types — those that are marked by a very strong vivacity, intensity and liveliness, and those that are not. The latter are termed “ideas” and it is maintained, without proof, that they are “copies” of the former category.
Here, therefore, we may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by their differing degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated Thoughts or Ideas. ... By the term impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will.
But how valid is this distinction? Hallucinations are held to be derived from impressions, and yet they can have the same kind of vivacity as impressions. So how do we know that they are not also derived from an external reality?
But, except the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they [ideas] never can arrive at a pitch of vivacity, as to render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable.
Hume ignores dream scepticism — the problem that our experiences in dreams can assume the same vivacity as our waking experiences. His line between impressions and ideas is not as clear as he would like it to be.
Furthermore, it remains open to debate whether the empiricist claim that all our ideas are copies of impressions is true. One line of attack is to ask the question — is the idea (concept) of red also red? If it is a copy of a red impression, then it must be. Likewise, is the concept (idea) of a triangle a triangle?
There seems to be something strange about Hume's doctrine of empiricism if read literally. He is saying that all thought proceeds by means of faint copies of impressions. For example, if I think of buying a tin of red paint, then I will have faint images (ideas) passing through my mind of the act of purchasing, a tin of paint, and a blob of red. This is what is implied by Hume's statement
... all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones.
It seems absurd. If it is absurd we seem to be lead to acknowledge something irreducibly conceptual about thought, and this conceptual element may not be “copied” from impressions, even if it is related to them.
Other empiricists might seek to weaken relationship between ideas and impressions, and state empiricism thus
... all our ideas are abstracted from our impressions or more lively ones.
This no longer states that ideas are copies of impressions, and hence, they do not need to be distinguished from them as being feeble perceptions. However, the term “abstracted” has only a vague meaning. Hume's formulation has the virtue of being definite. The relationship of copy requires no further explanation. If we alter the statement to use the term abstracted instead, we open empiricism to the challenge to explain just what this abstraction is, and how it takes place.
In the past empiricists have found this to be a challenge. How to abstract ideas from experience has been a thorny problem.
The Platonic solution to this “problem” is to maintain that we have in addition to our sensory experience another kind of direct knowledge — knowledge of universals (also called Ideas or Forms). With knowledge of a universal we do not need a particular experience to serve as the origin of an idea.
If there are universals this would constitute an automatic refutation of empiricism.
The term “universal” indicates the distinctive quality of an idea that makes it difficult to see how it can be abstracted from sense-experience. Ideas (concepts, forms or universals) encompass a generality that is not to be found in any particular experience.
This element of generality in an idea is touched upon by Hume in this section when he considers the problem of our ability to anticipate shades of colour that we have never seen.
Suppose, therefore, a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly acquainted with colours of all kinds except one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; it is plain that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible that there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous colours than in any other.
This should (arguably) lead Hume to conclude that the concept of the colour blue embraces a generality that is not evinced by any particular shade of blue; and in grasping the concept you grasp the entire generality. Similarly, the concept of blue is not blue.
However, although Hume states this problem, he does not offer an answer to it, and then dismisses it as “so singular” as not to need consideration. In fact, in the Treatise Hume develops a reply to this problem. He rejects the idea that we have a conscious, cognitive grasp of universals. When we move from one idea to another, this is the result of a purely mechanical process.

II

Since empiricism requires that all ideas are copies of impressions, it follows that to refute empiricism all one has to do is produce an idea that is not a copy of an impression. The doctrine of universals maintains that, in fact, all ideas contain an irreducible element of generality that cannot be derived from experience. However, it remains possible to attack empiricism by offering specific cases or classes of ideas that cannot be derived from particular sensory experience. Hume acknowledges this challenge when he writes
Those who would assert that this position is not universally true nor without exception, have only one, and that an easy method of refuting it; by producing that idea, which, in their opinion, is not derived from this source.
Evidently, Hume is confident that he can meet this challenge!
In the past the following specific areas of knowledge have been cited as ideas that cannot be derived from experience: knowledge of the soul through direct acquaintance (the cogito); knowledge of God's attributes and existence; knowledge of morality; knowledge of the properties of space and time; knowledge of the existence of our own freewill, and knowledge of the principles of mathematics and logic.
However, to all of these empiricists have a reply. Hume shows us the flavour of such replies when he writes in this section
The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.
This can be taken as his reply to Descartes' ontological argument for the existence of God. The idea of God is ultimately a copy of our impressions of human intelligence, wisdom and goodness. Hume has already anticipated Feuerbach's thesis that God is the projection of the human mind. So empiricists maintain that any of those ideas that rationalists claim cannot be derived from sense-impressions are indeed derived from sense-impressions.
For example, empiricists would deny that there is any objective content to moral feelings. Empiricists maintain subjectivism with regard to ethics.
However, the domain of mathematics and logic remains a hot debating ground. The objectivity of mathematics and logic cannot be so easily denied. Kant developed the criticism that mathematics and logic contain content that cannot be abstracted from experience in his argument in the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason regarding the synthetic a priori. This is a topic for a further unit, but the debate over the existence or not of propositions that are synthetic a priori should not be omitted in any full appraisal of empiricism.
Since for Hume all ideas are derived from impressions, it follows that there is nothing in imagination that cannot be ultimately traced back to particular sense-impressions. The faculty of imagination (or fancy) is for Hume nothing more than the capacity of the mind to mechanically split up and recombine certain elements of experience.
When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted.
This can once again be contrasted with Kant, who maintains that imagination is a transcendent faculty of the mind that supplies the structure of experience in the form of space and time, and hence forces all experience to conform to certain rules, which are expressed in the laws of mathematics and logic.
Therefore, just as Descartes cannot be read without reference to Hume; so Hume, strictly speaking, cannot be read without reference to Kant, who was Hume's greatest critic and most profound commentator.

III
Anticipates Verificationism

Hume, like A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic, uses the empricist doctrine as a critical weapon to attack certain kinds of “speculative” philosophy. He maintains that since all ideas must be derived from sense-impressions, an idea which is not a copy of a sense-impression must be psuedo-idea — that is, must be meaningless.
When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent) we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived?
But this critical weapon is only as good as the doctrine of empiricism that it assumes.

IV
Section III: Of the Association of Ideas

Hume's philosophy effectively treats knowledge as a branch of psychology. He advances a particular brand of psychological connecting principle among ideas — that of a mechanical association between them.
He recognizes only three types of association between ideas — (1) resemblance; (2) contiguity and (3) cause and effect. Later he will show that the latter kind is not unique but is a form of the other two.
Resemblance means that one thing is like another. For example, one dog resembles another dog — they are similar.
Contiguity means that one thing is next to another — either in space or in time, or both. For example, the final aria of an opera is followed by rapturous applause — that is contiguity in time. One person sitting next to another is an example of contiguity is space.
Cause and effect is the relationship of one event producing another. For example, kicking a football and smashing a window.
As already indicated, Hume will show later that the relationship of cause and effect is in fact derived form the other two relations (of resemblance and contiguity). So for Hume there are only two primary relationships between ideas — those of resemblance and contiguity.
He calls these relations associations between ideas. The term association is chosen because it implies that the connection between the ideas comes about through mechanical means. Fundamentally, he believes the mind is a “machine” that associates — that is, connects — ideas. There is no need to postulate the existence of the will when explaining the formation of ideas. Ideas, for Hume, are not formed because the Will chooses to form them; nor because reason apprehends them. Events happen in a person's life, and the person, unconsciously, associates ideas as a consequence. From this, what the person calls knowledge and belief, is unconsciously constructed.
Thus, underlying Hume's account of what we know is a conception of what human nature is. The connections between ideas that he acknowledges that we can make are the sort of connections that could be made by a machine. Hume is a mechanist.
This mechanism is never proven as such, and is always assumed by Hume. It never could be proven.
If proof of Hume's system as a whole is forthcoming then it derives from its completeness, coherence and satisfaction. In other words, Hume's theory is offered as an explanation of the world and our experience of it. If any part of the world or any part of our experience fails to fall within its scope, then the assumptions can and will be challenged.
As a matter of historical observation, Hume's system has gained in popularity as time has progressed. We are now in a different era, one in which science seems to account for everything. Indeed, it is hardly possible to find a modern thinker who does not express his respect for Hume. Hume's philosophy lies at the centre of the modern zeitgeist.
Nonetheless, the validity of this system is still capable of being questioned. It can be argued that our moral ideas are connected in ways that are revealed to us by our conscience, and also not derivable from associative bonds. However, Hume, in his ethical theory explicitly denies this. More critically, logical and mathematical reasoning may exhibit connections between ideas that are not associative bonds.
Thus, once again, Kant's notion of the synthetic a priori emerges as the single greatest challenge to Hume's doctrine regarding the association of ideas.