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VISION OF
REALITY
PHILOSOPHY
Nomenclature
Impressions are original
stimuli. They have greater force and
vivacity.
Ideas are copies of impressions. Ideas, or
memories, are less forceful and vivacious.
There are no clear and distinct ideas as
Descartes and Lock thought.
Perceptions are impressions and ideas. they
are mentally present.
Both can
be simple or complex.
There are 2 kinds of
impressions:
impressions of sensation, and impressions of
reflection.
Sensations
are everyday perceptions: pain, cold, sweet
etc.
We can’t
know their causes.
Impressions of reflection are emotions &
passions.
They're
caused by sensations and ideas.
The
emotion sorrow is caused by memories
(ideas),
and appearances (sensations).
The
passion love is caused by appearances and
memories
of beautiful things.
Ideas are copies of
sensations.
Sensations are more vivid.
Memory is more vivid than imagination.
We
remember sensations in order.
Imagination reorganizes simple ideas to form
complex
ideas with no corresponding
impression.
):(
Hume's
Method:
The mind starts as
a blank slate
(Tabula Rosa).
Nothing is in
the intellect that was not first in the
senses
Simple
ideas are copies of simple impressions.
One Possible Exception:
Suppose a person born blind suddenly can see, and this color
chart is
the first, and only thing, she can see. She would notice the
gap in
color, but could she imagine what these colors are. Hume
thinks it's
possible.
Ideas not derived from the senses are meaningless.
This is called the empiricist criteria of
meaning.
Knowledge comes
from experience.
Hume's Fork:
We
determine if an idea has meaning by asking:
a. Does this idea concern matters of fact?
b. Does this idea concern the relation
between ideas?
(Math / Logic) Is it a
contradiction to deny it?
If both answers are no, then the idea is rejected.
Hume's Microscope and
Razor:
If an idea
doesn't concern relations between ideas,
then:
a. Distill complex ideas to simple ideas.
b. Are the simple ideas copied from simple
impressions?
c. If they aren't, the complex idea is
rejected.
There are no original
impressions of: abstract ideas like: space,
time, matter, mental and physical substance,
God, soul, or necessary existence.
):(
Propositions
Knowledge requires
beliefs that are justified.
Beliefs
concern propositions. There are two kinds of
propositions:
- Analytic
(true by the relations of ideas and logic
alone)
Example: All bachelors are unmarried men.
It's a contradiction to deny this. It's true by
definition.
-
Synthetic (true by experience)
Some roses are red. It's not a contradiction to
deny this.
Determine Concept Meanings
Collaborate:
Determine what
propositions have
meaning. Are they synthetic -
justified by experience? Are they analytic: justified by reason?
1. All bachelors
are unmarried.
2. All bachelors are unhappy.
3. A house made of gold would be beautiful.
4. People have souls.
5. There is life after death.
6. God exists.
7. God exists, or God doesn't exist.
8 . The greatest conceivable being exists necessarily.
9. Being burned hurts.
10. It's raining.
11. Every effect has a cause.
12. Every event has a cause.
13. Either it's raining, or it's not raining.
We have no
experience of external physical objects.
We have no experience of
God.
We have no experience
of the soul. We believe we are immortal
because evolution gave us an aversion to death.
Plato has a simple argument for the soul; you can't imagine half a
consciousness, so it isn't made of parts. Things made of parts come
into existence, and pass away. We could think of this as 1/2 a
Tabula Rosa.
Our minds are
bundles of impressions and ideas.
We have no experience of
general impressions.
What about free-will? If we did not, then there would always be an
antecedent impression.
):(
Association
of Ideas
Three Principles of Association
1.
Resemblance
2. Contiguity
3. Cause and Effect
Resemblance - We believe that
there are substances that abide because
similar impressions are repeated.
Contiguity - We associate
adjacent things; a hammer hitting glass.
The Problem of Cause and Effect
We have no experience of
necessary connections.
Experience only
shows that past impressions have been
followed by similar impressions.
We associate
ideas that regularly go together. (association of ideas)
Evidentialism states that beliefs are
justified based on the evidence.
Hume is not an Evidentialist. Beliefs are formed by
psychological
habits. They are forceful and constant. The force increases
with
psychological probability - not mathematical probability.
):(
The Problem of
Induction:
There are two kinds of arguments - deductive
and inductive.
Deductive Arguments:
The conclusion always follows from the evidence
(premises).
Example:
John
teaches philosophy and logic. (evidence /
premise)
Therefore John teaches philosophy.
(conclusion)
Question: What justifies the truth of the conclusion?
Answer: The conclusion is contained in the
evidence.
. . . . . .
Inductive
Arguments:
The
conclusion probably follows from the
evidence (premises).
Wesley Salmon’s Urn Example:
Some black balls from an urn were observed. (evidence /
premise)
All observed black balls taste like licorice.
(evidence / premise)
Therefore all black balls in the urn taste like
licorice. (conclusion)
Question: What justifies the truth of the conclusion?
Hume's Answer: There is no justification because:
- The conclusion is not contained in the evidence.
It's not true by the relation of
ideas.
-
The argument requires an unstated premise:
Some
black balls from the urn were observed.
(evidence / premise)
All observed black balls taste like licorice. (premise
/ postulate)
* The future will be
like the past. (uniformity of nature)
Therefore all black balls in the urn taste like
licorice. (conclusion)
The problem with this added premise is that we are assuming
the very thing we
are
trying to prove - inductive reasoning.
This
is called begging
the question - or circular reasoning.
The future may
not be like the past.
We believed that all swans are white until black swans
were
observed.
Finite observations can never entail
universal conclusions.
All
scientific laws suffer this problem.
):(
Miracles
He defined a miracle as: a violation of the
natural law. This bring an interesting
example of giving the strongest
interpretation first, and then arguing for
or against it. What is the strongest
interpretation of natural law?
1. The necessary connections
of things?
2. Experiences we have of uniformity?
):(
Skepticism
Is he an absolute skeptic or
mitigated skeptic?
What does he think we know?
Can we know extramental
things outside the mind?
Do we know about cause and effect
connections?
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