The Implications of David Hume’s Philosophy of Impressions and Ideas
Chapter One
Purpose
My aim or purpose in this research now is to expose the implications of the concept of Hume’s impressions and ideas theory. We shall therefore see how plausible they are, with a critical mind. This work will seek to x-ray the extent to which pure knowledge can be gotten only through impression or that we can only know something through experience and without impression, there will be no ideas.
CHAPTER TWO
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
LIFE AND WORKS OF DAVID HUME
David Hume was born in Edinburgh on the 26th of April 1711. He was of a good family, both by father and mother. His father’s family was a branch of the Earl of Hume’s and his ancestors were proprietors of the Estate, which was the daughter of Sir David Falcone, president of the college of Justice.
David wanted to study Law but could not finish, in the course of his studies; he composed and published his Treatise of Human Nature at the end of 1738, a book, which he complained, “fell dead-born from the press.” In 1747, he became judge –advocate-general to General Claire. In 1752, he became keeper of the embassy in Paris and was for a few months in-charge of its affairs. As from 1768, he was under-secretary to the secretary of state. In 1769, he retired to Edinburgh. In 1775, he contracted cancer of the bowels, a sickness which he could not survive and which led to his death in 1776.
His Works Include The Following:
- His Treatise of Human Nature first published in 1739.
- Essays moral and political published in 1741- 1742
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Principles of Morals, 1951.
- Political Dialogue, 1752
- Dialogues on Natural Religion, published post-humorously in 1779.
PHILOSOPHERS’ VIEWS ON IMPRESSION AND IDEAS
ANCIENT PERIOD
The problem of impression and idea is the origin of philosophy. Philosophy started with man’s curiosity and wonders about the existence of things. From the up-shoot of philosophy which is the treatment of the Ionian philosophers, whose main concern was to seek the basic make-up of the material substance of the universe.
CHAPTER THREE
The Epistemological Foundation of Hume’s Philosophy
Hume observed that the only way to resolve the problem of disagreements and speculations regarding ‘abstract questions’ is to:
Enquire seriously into the nature of human understanding, and show from an exact analysis of it’s powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects.
Thus, having this as his stepping-stone, he carefully analyzed a series of topics, which led him to his sceptical conclusion, beginning with an account of the contents of the mind. It was then in person of Hume that empiricism evolved.
CHAPTER FOUR
ON METAPHYSICS
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF METAPHYSICS
Leaning on the strength and auspices of the preliminary empirical criterion, which states that the senses merely represent the discontinuity of existence, and that they “cannot operate beyond the extent in which they really operate.”
CHAPTER FIVE
EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
CRITICAL EVALUATION
In the field of philosophy, primacy of pride goes to Hume as an obvious and indubitable genius in the epoch of modern history of philosophy. Evidently too, the modern empiricists have him as the progenitor of the philosophy, which they accept; and every discussion in the modern era centering on “cause and effect”, has Hume’s analysis of these concepts as it pivot. His exposition of this subject forms the bedrock and as well, tickled the fancy of the whole empiricist trend of philosophy even up to the contemporary.
The common sense theory of knowledge, on which Hume’s impressions and ideas theory is situated, is the theory most famous in the form of the assertion that “there is nothing in our intellect which has not entered it though the sense”. This, precisely, is what Hume’s impressions ideas theory implies. Hume himself was not the first to expose this theory. Karl Popper quoted Promenades as affirming satirically that: “Most mortals have nothing in their erring intellect unless it got there through their erring senses.
Democritus had held that, all knowledge is caused by images issuing from the bodies we think of and entering into our souls. By this, he meant that all knowledge arise from the impressions we make from our bodies and what we think, and which enter into our idea, soul or intellect. Thomas Aquinas had also observed in The Summa Theologica, that, “Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu.” (There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses).
If we should interpret Hume well, impressions are identified in the senses. For example, the sense of touch, just as ideas is identified in the intellect. Again, if the dictum that, “there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses,” is valid, it then follows that there is nothing in the ideas (intellect) that was not first in the impressions (senses). It was on this ground that Hume affirmed that every metaphysical statement could be asked to declare; from what impression (sense) is that supposed idea derived. Hence, Hume had built his impressions and ideas on a common parlance that had age-long existed before him.
However, Hume was quite inconsistent in the espousal of his theories. For instance, in the theory of impressions and ideas, after distinguishing between the idea of memory and that of imagination, he relapses into an auto-contradiction, and admitted that the idea of one can sometimes be taken for the other. Moreover, if this were the case, whither lies the distinction? Can one not rightly observe that the idea of memory and that of the imagination are one and the same thing? Does this position not leave the matter even more obscure than Hume found it? Yet he had asserted that:
… As an idea of memory, by losing it’s force and vivacity may degenerate to such a degree to be taken for the idea of imagination, so on the other hand, the imagination, may acquire such a force and vivacity, and pass for an idea of memory.
Hume was also quite myopic to the fact that a mere negation of a principle is not as important as the provision of a more convincing and consistent one. In his denial of causality, which he uses the phrase “constant conjunction” to explain away; one would readily say that a single case often suffices even without a background of scientific knowledge. For example, a child needs not be scratched only once by a cat to connect the cat, the injury and the pain. Thus, the function of experiment is only to show which of the seemingly necessary conjunctions are not really so. Therefore, Hume’s approach to the metaphysical principles is quite unfair and untruthful. No wonder he lost himself to the grasp of philosophical melancholy:
Where am I or what? From what cause do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favor shall I count and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me….
This affirms that even in his bid to demolish every metaphysics and metaphysical principles, he was yet immersed in metaphysical speculations. In view of this, Bradley commented that:
The man who is ready to prove that metaphysical knowledge is wholly impossible has no right to answer…. He is a brother metaphysician with a rival theory of first principle.
Again, Hume’s skepticism is characterizes mainly by undogmatic moderation and the refusal to go beyond the common life. It was simply based on the science of man, and its conclusions are merely those of common life, methodized and corrected. That is why he maintained that the metaphysical jungle must be cleared because it is a dangerous lurking place for superstition. He was quite aware of the in-exhaustive plausibility of his skepticism, hence he merely intended to tease the theologians and set them quarrelling with one another. Naturalism already deprives the skeptic of his sting and reconciles him only with the experimental scientists. It was solely for this reason that Stumpf categorically maintained that:
…. to whatever length anyone may push his speculative principles of skepticism, he must act and live and converse like other men… it is impossible for him to persevere in total skepticism.
On the question of religion and the existence of God, David Hume, as ungodded as he was, was left with nothing but the discontinuity of the divine causality attributed to God by the Cartesian school of philosophers such as Descartes, Malebranche, etc. Granted that the existence of God is a matter of fact, and precisely as a matter of fact, Hume holds that experience is the only guard for reason. Having lost himself in the calling of every metaphysical principle to appear before his “microscope,” that is, his “impression – ideas theory,” he subjected the idea and existence of God to this test and he could not find for it a corresponding impression. He then waved if aside and concluded that such a belief is absurd and the most unworthy of all beliefs.
But Hume was resigned to and confined in the common life basis, and had failed to understand that in the pre apprehension of ‘esse commone’ the absolute being is already attained, since the human spirit implicit affirms God as absolute esse. Thus, in every act of knowledge, the incomprehensible mystery of God is always the ontological silence – arising of every intellectual and spiritual encounter.
Categorically, Hume was allowed to be an atheist, but transcendentally, it is impossible for him to remain an atheist, since knowledge of the existence of God is implicitly attained in the preapprehension. Given then the preapprehension of absolute esse, everyone is already an anonymous atheist, and granted that everyone is already an anonymous atheist, and then everyone is as well already an anonymous Christian. Thus, it follows that Hume was unknowingly both an anonymous theist and an anonymous Christian. For, according to Rahner, “…. It must be possible to be not only an anonymous atheist but also an anonymous Christian.”
CONCLUSION
THE IMPLICATION OF IMPRESSION AND IDEAS THEORY ON PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL
The motive of every radical philosophical striving is to grasp and probe the rationale behind the noumenal world. In the field of philosophy, the area most apt for this endeavor is metaphysics. Now, the object of every categorical metaphysical enterprise is evidently God or the question of the noumenal realm. Precisely because the object of every philosophical striving is God or the question of the noumenal world, and granted that this issue is identified in metaphysics, it implies that Hume’s skepticism of metaphysics and metaphysical principles has debased and disconnected the belief reposed on God as the divine causal efficacy.
Hume was a modern philosopher, and every radical thinking philosopher from ancient e.g. Parmenides to modern e.g. Hume himself, had affirmed, “There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses,” that is, according to Hume, that every idea derives from an impression. Nevertheless, according to Hume, the idea of God falls short of a corresponding impression. It follows then that God, as the object of every radical philosophizing is illusory and chimerical, therefore, philosophy itself is an illusory venture.
The error of such an epistemological espousal is that human knowledge has been relegated to mere a posteriori concepts the phenomena. A prior knowledge of concepts, the Noumena, are then impossible and nothing can be known with certainty.
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