David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
In David Hume's seminal epistemological work, Section II (in An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), "Of the Origin of Ideas," wherein
David Hume outlines, with uncommon sharpness and uncanny skill, not only
what he believed to be the true origin of what we call ideas, but the way
we formulate them. According to Hume, little thought is truly a priori or
innate. He believed that thoughts originate from "impressions," or actual
sensual experience, that they are simply weak "echoes" of these
impressions and no stronger, and that our mind, though seemingly far
reaching, is limited by what our experiences have taught or shown us.
Hume's first and basest assumption, and the ...
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color or sound, though they
have the natural capacities for such. They simply lack the necessary
"impression" of sound or color, as so they can visualize and manipulate
these concepts with their imaginations.
These all seem like good philosophical argumentation, and are
highly convincing, except for one seemingly overlooked flaw. Later on in "…
Ideas" Hume states "those who would assert that this position is not
universally true nor without exception, have only one, and that any easy
method refuting it; by producing an idea, which, in their opinion, is not
derived from this source ("An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,"
p.164.)" He goes on to propose that, if this theory is not true, if there
is only one exception to the thought that ideas can be simplified into
elements that can be drawn to simple impressions, then his argument, with
this one piercing flaw, would be nil. Yet, strangely enough, Hume goes on
to point out himself a slight flaw in his theory. He ...
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he supports
this claim with his explanation of description. Hume says that if a person
were to describe to him a friend that is in love, that he would comprehend
what he was speaking of, and realize what it would be like to be that man
in love, but not mistake himself to be in the throes of adoration. He also
notes that in memory, when he thinks of the past, he doesn't all of a
sudden start believing himself to have the feelings he did in his memory,
or mistake himself to be in the past. If these ideas had the power of the
original impression they were formatted from, he says that he would and
should be confused and tricked, but the fact that he is not is the self-
evidence of the ...
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"David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding." Essayworld.com. October 22, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/David-Humes-Enquiry-Concerning-Human-Understanding/16275.
"David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding." Essayworld.com. October 22, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/David-Humes-Enquiry-Concerning-Human-Understanding/16275.
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