Hume’s naturalistic theory of representation (original) (raw)
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Hume’s Unified Theory of Mental Representation
European Journal of Philosophy
On its face, Hume’s account of mental representation involves at least two elements. On the one hand, Hume often seems to write as though the representational properties of an idea are fixed solely by what it is a copy or image of. But, on the other, Hume’s treatment of abstract ideas (and other similar cases) makes it clear that the representational properties of a Humean idea sometimes depend, not just on what it is copied from, but also on the manner in which the mind associates it with other ideas. Past interpretations of Hume have tended to focus on one of these elements of his account to the neglect of the other. But no interpretation of this sort is likely to capture the role that both copying and association play within Hume’s discussion. In what follows, I argue that the most plausible way of understanding Hume’s discussion involves attributing to him a unified account of mental representation in which both of these elements play a central role. I close by discussing the manner in which reading Hume in this way would alter our understanding of the relationship between Hume’s thought and contemporary philosophy of mind.
Recent Scholarship on Hume's Theory of Mental Representation
In a recent paper Karl Schafer argues that Hume’s theory of mental representation has two distinct components, unified by their shared feature of having accuracy conditions. As Schafer sees it, simple and complex ideas represent the intrinsic imagistic features of their objects whereas abstract ideas represent the relations or structures in which multiple objects stand. This distinction, however, is untenable for at least two related reasons. Firstly, complex ideas represent the relations or structures in which the impressions that are the objects of their simple components stand. Secondly abstract ideas are themselves instances of complex ideas. I draw two important conclusions form these facts. Firstly, contra Schafer and Garret (to whom Schafer responds), the Copy Principle, properly emended, constitutes the entirety of Hume’s theory of mental representation. Secondly, whereas paradigm examples of complex ideas, e.g. ideas of spatial and temporal complexes, are structured by relations of contiguity, abstract ideas are those complex ideas instead structured by relations of resemblance. As such, they represent their objects not as spatially or temporally contiguous, but rather as resembling.
Representationalism and ‘Hume's Problem’
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1988
Daniel Dennett has claimed that Hume is unable to adequately account for the representational character of perceptions. Moreover, Dennett claims that this failure is the harbinger of doom for modern representational theories of mind. In this paper 1 argue that an examination of Hume's account of self-ascriptions of identity shows that Dennett's criticism of Hume fails and that Hume is nor a harbinger of doom for modern representational theories of mind.
Perceptions and Objects: Hume's Radical Empiricism
Hume Studies, 2011
In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume seems to use the term "object" to refer to different things in different contexts, including impressions, ideas, perceptions, and bodies. Does he ever use the term "external bodies" to refer to things in the extra-mental world? I argue that what Hume means by external bodies when he affirms their existence is not externally existing, material objects that are somehow presented to the mind or presented in impressions. Rather, the bodies that Hume affirms are, at bottom, no different from perceptions, but they can be distinguished from merely internal perceptions like pain or pleasure in terms of their "different relations, connexions, and durations" (T 1.2.6.9; SBN 68). I conclude that in order to be consistent, given the various statements he makes throughout Book One of the Treatise, Hume must reject the philosopher's doctrine of double existence of perceptions and objects and affirm only the existence of perceptions, sometimes conceived as internally existing and mind-dependent and sometimes conceived as existing outside and independent of the mind.
Hume and the Mechanics of Mind: Impressions, Ideas, and Association
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
The Implications of David Hume Philosophy on Impressions and Ideas
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.
Hume's (Berkeleyan) Language of Representation
(Hume Studies, Volume 41, Number 2, 2015, pp. 171–200) Although Hume appeals to the representational features of perceptions in many arguments in the Treatise, his theory of representation has traditionally been regarded as a weak link in his epistemology. In particular, it has proven difficult to reconcile Hume’s use of representation as causal derivation and resemblance (the Copy Principle) with his use of representation in the context of impressions and abstract ideas. This paper offers a unified interpretation of representation in Hume that draws on the resources of Berkeley’s doctrine of signs. On this account, while the Copy Principle still occupies the core of Hume’s “content empiricism,” the manner in which any perception represents is understood as involving a relation of sign to thing signified. A sign/signified interpretation has the virtue of allowing Hume to remain within the strictures of his empiricism, while underwriting the various senses in which an impression or idea could possess content. Such an interpretation is not only adequate to account for the role that mental representations play in everyday behavior, but also for the purposes of elaborating the foundations of civil society that are Hume’s concern in Book 3 of the Treatise.
This paper is devoted to the nature and roles of sense impressions in Hume’s account of perception. At first sight Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, a book written within the frame of reference of the Lockean ‘way of ideas’, is mostly devoted to the examination of ideas: ideas of memory and ideas of the imagination, general ideas, the ideas of space and time, the idea of cause and effect, etc. And it is true that in p. 8 of the Treatise Hume declares sense impressions to be beyond the bounds of his discussion, and only goes back again to issues directly relative to sensory perception as a source of knowledge towards the end of Book 1, in the 30-page section devoted to what he calls the ‘scepticism with regard to the senses’. Yet the pages of this work are full of vivid references to sense impressions: patches of colour such as a missing shade of blue, the purple surface of Hume’s own table, red and blue points, a hand spread against the blue colour of the firmament, the colours reflected in the clouds, a spot of ink, black characters on the white pages of history books—visual images prevail, but there are also the taste of a pineapple, the sweetness of a fig and the bitterness of an olive, the creaking of a door, a succession of notes on a flute, the warmth of the fire and the coolness of water, etc. Sense impressions are major protagonists of Hume’s theory of knowledge.