Explain Hume’s position on the sources and the extend of human knowledge?
Ans: Hume’s project envisages examining the contents of the mind or perceptions, which are derived from experience. He decides to delve deep into the empiricist foundations of knowledge and argues that perceptions, which constitute the basis of experiential knowledge can be further divided into impressions and ideas.
The impressions and ideas are the real
building blocks of all our knowledge. Impressions include the sensations and
feelings that are strong and vivid and they constitute either the impressions
of sensation, which are derived from our senses, or the impressions of
reflection derived from our experience of our mind. On the other hand, ideas
are related to thinking and include concepts, beliefs, memories, mental images,
etc. they are derived from and are copies of impressions and hence are
relatively faint and unclear. Hume considers colours and smells as ideas of
sensation and the idea of an emotion is treated as an idea of reflection.
The difference between impressions and
ideas is a difference of forcefulness and vivacity. Unlike impressions, ideas
are less forcible and less lively and they are unclear copies of impressions.
For example, according to Hume, when we listen to music, we have impressions
and when we remember the music we have listened, we have ideas. In other words,
impressions are our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first
appearance in the soul. We have impressions when we hear or see or feel or love
or hate or desire or will. All our thoughts and ideas are the copies of these
lively impressions.
The notion of impression is thus at the
center of Hume’s conception of knowledge. He argues that all knowledge is built
up by compounding, transposing augmenting, or diminishing impressions and since
ideas are copies of impressions, where there is no impression, there is no
idea. For example, a blind man has no notion of colour.
The process can be explained in the
following manner. The entire human system of knowledge begins with impressions.
There are impressions of sensations, which arise from unknown sources and
impressions of reflection, which are derived from the ideas which we have. The
impression of any sensation like cold may be accompanied by a pain, the copy of
which is retained by the mind as an idea. This may produce a new impression of
aversion, which is an impression of reflection, which will in turn get copied
by the memory and imagination and become ideas. The process goes on to make the
human system of knowledge.
Hume now talks about a process called
the association of ideas, whereby simple ideas are combined in order to produce
complex ideas. This is the process that takes us from impressions to knowledge.
Hume maintains that to each impression there is a corresponding idea and in the
association of ideas these simple ideas are combined. In this sense he says
that complex ideas are made up of the materials provided by the impressions.
But the process of association consists not just in combining simple ideas.
Rather, ideas are associated with one another in terms of the principles of
resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and cause and effect. Therefore, in
the formation of complex ideas, our ideas or thoughts exhibit a regularity, as
they introduce one another not abruptly, but in an orderly fashion. For
instance, a wound calls up the idea of pain suggesting a causal relationship.
Hume thus argues that complex ideas are formed by the association of ideas
according to the above mentioned principles. The association of ideas thus
functions as a uniting principle among ideas. It stands for some associating
quality by which one idea naturally introduces another. It is described as a
gentle force that introduces connections and order. It is an innate force or
impulse in man that makes human beings combine together certain types of ideas.
When we further examine Hume’s concept of knowledge, the idea of relations
needs a deeper analysis. Hume says that all our reasoning deal with the
relations between things and such relations are the objects of human reason or enquiry.
Hume basically talks about two types of relations: the relations of ideas and
matters of fact
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