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Hume s Impressions and Ideas The Representative Account
Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in English (BSED ENGLISH 3)
Southern Masbate Roosevelt College
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Georgia State UniversityGeorgia State University
ScholarWorks @ Georgia State UniversityScholarWorks @ Georgia State University
Philosophy Honors Theses Department of Philosophy 12-
Hume’s Impressions and Ideas: The Representative AccountHume’s Impressions and Ideas: The Representative Account
Casey Fowler Follow this and additional works at: scholarworks.gsu/philosophy_hontheses Recommended CitationRecommended Citation Fowler, Casey, "Hume’s Impressions and Ideas: The Representative Account." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2013. doi: doi/10.57709/ This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Philosophy at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact scholarworks@gsu.
HUME’S IMPRESSIONS AND IDEAS:
THE REPRESENTATIVE ACCOUNT
by CASEY R. FOWLER Under the Direction of Dr. Eric Wilson ABSTRACT David Hume’s project in A Treatise of Human Nature is founded upon his loosely-defined distinction between impressions and ideas. This distinction causes problems for his theory because it has difficulty accounting for the differences between species of perceptions. In this thesis, I try to solve some of these issues using a phenomenological account of the difference between impressions and ideas. My account supplements Stephen Everson’s “functional” account to create a more robust system for differentiating Hume’s perceptions. INDEX WORDS: David Hume, phenomenology, categorical intuition, Stephen Everson, impressions, ideas
Copyright by Casey R. Fowler 2013
HUME’S IMPRESSIONS AND IDEAS:
THE REPRESENTATIVE ACCOUNT
by CASEY R. FOWLER Honors Thesis Director: Dr. Eric Wilson Honors College Associate Dean: Dr. Sarah Cook Electronic Version Approved: GSU Honors College Georgia State University Fall 2013
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, I would like to thank Dr. Eric Wilson for making Hume interesting, and for helping me become a better writer and thinker. Thank you Rebecca Harrison for always being willing to regard “thing” and “stuff” as highly technical terms. Many thanks to Alicia Higginbotham and Chris Bales for last minute copyediting. Last, I would like to thank/blame Sam Richards for opening the intentionality can of worms to begin with.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Introduction................................................................................................................................................ Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................................
- Hume’s Impressions and Ideas, and the Standard Reading
- 2 Hume’s Theory of Ideas
- 2 The Standard Reading
- Bennett’s Account
- Stroud’s Account
- Everson’s Reply to the ‘Traditional Interpretation’
- 3 The Functional Account
- 3 Where the Functional Account Leaves Off
- Phenomenology and the Representative Distinction
- 4 Phenomenological Concepts
- 4 Impressions, Ideas, Intention and Representation
- 4 Supplementing Everson’s Functional Account
- 4 Answering Stroud’s Detective
- 4 The Problem with Beliefs
- Final Thoughts
- Works Cited
2 lack of a defined distinction between impressions and ideas, and charges that Hume provides no reliable way to distinguish the two. As an alternative to the standard account, Stephen Everson formulates the functional account, which interprets force and vivacity as causal notions and defines the force and vivacity of perceptions as their ability to affect the mind. Everson states that interpreting impressions and ideas causally gives a more satisfying account than the traditional reading can; however, this functional account still lacks the something that clearly defines the difference between impressions and ideas. Everson calls for some quality, inherent in the perception, that is “over and above” force and vivacity (408). The issue with the distinction between impressions and ideas resolves into the fact that there must be some property other than force and vivacity that allows us to differentiate perceptions. Hume’s vague distinction causes two main problems for his theory: (1) It does not have provisions for differentiation in cases such as weak impressions and strong ideas; (2) it cannot fully explicate beliefs—lively ideas related to present impressions. There must be something that allows us to distinguish one type of impression from another type of impression, and impressions from beliefs. Hume’s loosely-defined distinction does not provide clarity between types of impressions and is not rigorous enough to support his theory effectively. To explicate the distinction between impressions and ideas, I will supplement Everson’s functional account with the property that makes perceptions differentiable. I will argue that this property is representative ability, and that the substantive difference between impressions and ideas is the capability to represent something. Impressions are incapable of having representative or intentional content; however, ideas inherently possess intentional content and have the ability
3 to represent by virtue of how they are formed. Explicating this representative distinction will provide clear guidelines for distinguishing impressions from ideas and will place the burden of distinction on properties that inhere in the perception, rather than on force and vivacity. I will also use the representative distinction to address the problems with Hume’s notion of belief.
5 Hume defines original and secondary impressions in the following passage. Original impressions or impressions of sensation are such as without any antecedent perception arise in the soul, from the constitution of the body, from the animal spirits, or from the application of objects to the external organs. Secondary, or reflective impressions are such as proceed from some of these original ones, either immediately or by the interposition of its idea. Of the first kind are all the impressions of the senses, and all bodily pains and pleasures: Of the second are the passions, and other emotions resembling them (T 2.1.1). What Hume means here is that original impressions are not reliant upon preceding impressions or ideas; they are foundational in this sense. Secondary impressions, by contrast, arise from ideas or other impressions, and are dependent upon them. It seems appropriate for Hume to refer to some secondary impressions as “reflective” because there is always some post-reflective or extra-experiential component involved in their creation. Original impressions are pre-reflective and experientially radical. Hume begins his treatment of the passions by dividing them into direct and indirect. He defines the direct passions as those arising “immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure.” Hume asserts that the indirect passions derive from the same principles as the direct, but with “the conjunction of other qualities” (T 2.1.2). He gives a thorough account of the indirect passions, but is very brief with the direct passions, citing that “none of the direct affections seem to merit our particular attention, except hope and fear” (T 2.3.9). Hume considers desire, aversion, grief, joy, hope, fear, despair, and security to be direct passions. The indirect passions include pride, humility, ambition, vanity, love, hatred, envy, pity, malice, and generosity. Note that Hume explicitly states that the passions do not represent; he asserts that “a passion is an original existence.. contains not any representative quality” (T 2.3.3). Here I will focus on the more thorough account of the indirect passions to prepare for later exposition of how they acquire intentional content.
6 Hume explains his account of the indirect passions by using the familiar notions of pride and humility. He asserts that pride and humility have the same object: the self. He explains that the passions must have both an object and a cause, but he stresses that the object and the cause of these passions cannot be the same. He states that one idea will produce a passion, and that the passion “turns our view to another idea” (T 2.1.2). The first idea is the cause of the passion, and the second is the object of the passion. Regarding the cause of a passion, Hume makes a distinction between the quality, which stimulates the passion, and the subject in which the quality occurs. Furthermore, he posits that the subject must be in some sort of relation to us, otherwise the quality would not stimulate the passion. To illustrate this in the case of pride, Hume gives us an example of a beautiful house. If I am proud of my beautiful house, the cause of my pride is the beautiful house. The quality of the cause in this case is beauty, and the subject is my house—a house that is related to me via possession. I am the object in this example. There is nothing in the passion itself that represents. The idea of “my beautiful house” may cause the passion of pride, but the intentional content belongs to the idea itself. My pride is directed at me, making it an intentional state, but the pride itself does not possess intentional content. The pride does not represent the beauty, the house, or any combination of the two. The passions require relations of ideas, and it seems that this is how they acquire intentional content.
8 Everson posits that both of these interpretations of Hume’s distinction are the traditional understanding, and this is what he wants to challenge. He sums up the use of force and vivacity in the traditional interpretation as such: force and vivacity “refer to intrinsic properties of images, and are non-relational” (404). What this means is that, in the traditional interpretation, force and vivacity are considered intrinsic properties of perceptions. They are considered non-relational because whatever force or vivacity a perception possesses can be ascertained by surveying the perception itself. However, Everson warns that the term ‘image’ simply means ‘copy,’ and we should take care to not attribute a strictly imagistic interpretation to Hume’s theory (405). In the following sections, I will explicate both Bennett’s and Stroud’s account of Hume’s distinction.
Bennett’s Account
In Locke, Berkeley, and Hume: Central Themes, Jonathan Bennett suggests that Hume’s distinction between impressions and ideas is overly simple, and bases this conclusion on Hume allegedly equating impressions to “intense or violent sensory states” (Bennett, 225). Bennett begins his argument by asserting that Hume’s account suggests that impressions are nothing more than forceful perceptions and that they occur only “in experience of the objective realm” (224). Bennett asserts that Hume’s “official position is that (a) the impression/idea line is just the lively/faint line within perceptions... (b) impressions occur only in experience of the objective realm, and that (c) ideas occur only in thinking and reasoning” (224). While Bennett does not give a definition for his use of the term “objective realm,” he seems to imply that he means some physically-observable world. He defines Hume’s impressions as “the sense-data of normal perceptions” (222).
9 Bennett takes issue with Hume’s initial characterization of the difference between impressions and ideas as put forth in the opening paragraph of A Treatise. A large amount of Bennett’s argument is supported by his interpretation of this passage: Every one of himself will readily perceive the difference betwixt feeling and thinking. The common degrees of these are easily distinguish’d; tho’ it is not impossible but in particular instances they may very nearly approach to each other. Thus in sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any very violent emotions of soul, our ideas may approach to our impressions (T 1.1.1). Bennett asserts that, even if this passage is misinterpreted, it is clear that Hume is equating impressions with “perceptions of the objective realm” (225). Furthermore, Bennett claims that when this is combined with Hume’s account of the distinction between impressions and ideas, then Hume is equating “‘experience of the objective realm’ with ‘intense or violent sensory states’” and that this, taken as an explanation of what it is to have perceptions of the objective realm “would be simple to the point of idiocy” (225). 3
Stroud’s Account
Stroud raises a similar objection. He argues that Hume does not make the difference between impressions and ideas very clear and does not attempt to explicate his point further. Stroud asserts that Hume is making a claim about what the difference between impressions and ideas is, and that this claim needs to be defended and explained. According to Stroud the obvious 3 It is not clear whether Bennett took into account the remainder of this passage from A Treatise: As on the other hand it sometimes happens, that our impressions are so faint and low, that we cannot distinguish them from our ideas. But notwithstanding this near resemblance in a few instances, they are in general so very different, that no one can make a scruple to rank them under distinct heads (T 1.1.1). It seems that, if Bennett were to take into account the remainder of this passage, then his suggestion that Hume is equating impressions with ‘violent sensory states’ may encounter some problems. For the purposes of this paper, I will not attempt to defend Hume from Bennett’s claims—I am providing Bennett’s account as an example of the traditional reading of the distinction between impressions and ideas.
11 situation creates problems for Hume’s theory—it indicates that an idea may have come before its corresponding impression. If Stroud’s assertion is correct, then this is damning for Hume’s theory of ideas. Stroud concludes that Hume either needs to further define force and liveliness of perceptions, or he must find some other way to differentiate ideas from impressions. Stroud suggests that one less problematic way to make the distinction would be to say that “impressions are those perceptions that are before the mind when and only when we are actually perceiving or being stimulated by some external physical object” (29).
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3. Everson’s Reply to the ‘Traditional Interpretation’
3 The Functional Account Everson argues that any account of Hume’s theory of ideas must conform to two restrictions. First, Hume does not set up force and vivacity as technical terms, so they must be understood as literally as possible. Second, the account needs to recognize Hume’s “solipsistic account of the mind” and make a perception’s force and vivacity available to introspection (403). Everson states that he considers the traditional interpretation of Hume’s terms force and vivacity as referring to “intrinsic properties of images” and posits that they are non-relational. What he means here is that force and vivacity inhere in the perception, and that the degree of force and vivacity can be discerned by surveying the perception itself (404). He explains that the nature of force and vivacity in this conception make giving an exact analysis of the terms very difficult for Hume. To explain the traditional interpretation, Everson gives an analogy between perceptions and a slide projection: when the perception is an impression, then the projector has a bright bulb and clear lens; when the perception is an idea, the bulb is dimmer and the lens is less clear. Everson admits that the analogy does not work if we appeal to a causal explanation of how the projected images differ; but an observer who is completely ignorant of image projection technology would distinguish between the two with the “intrinsic properties” of the projections (404). Everson posits that this theory conforms to the second restriction—respecting Hume’s solipsistic account of the mind—but if we are going to consider force and vivacity as ‘intrinsic properties’ then we will need to understand Hume’s entire theory in terms of images.
Hume s Impressions and Ideas The Representative Account
Course: Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in English (BSED ENGLISH 3)
University: Southern Masbate Roosevelt College
- Discover more from:Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in EnglishBSED ENGLISH 3Southern Masbate Roosevelt College85 Documents
- More from:Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in EnglishBSED ENGLISH 3Southern Masbate Roosevelt College85 Documents
