“According to Hume, the mind is passive merely gathering the
In the Treatise Hume is quite certain that all the mind consists of is impressions and ideas and associations between them. He believed that there is no ‘self’ because we can never have a single impression of the self; instead all we experience is a continuous flow of perceptions that replace one another in succession. Therefore we have no idea of a self, for every real idea must be derived from some one impression, and the “self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have reference”. However, a quick answer to this would be to quote “ Observation collapses the wave function” – that by trying to observe the self, Hume could change it, and so by saying we can not experience it with our senses, with the technology that we have today, not being able to experience something does not matter. For example can we see particles of light without aid? or can we have empirical experiences of imaginary numbers?, of course we can’t but they are still relevant to the way we have come to understand the world. In today’s terms, being unable to experience something directly does not mean it does not exist. His views on association of ideas are equally as determi
However, there are many problems with this, and the no-self argument. Firstly resemblance, without a mind as an agent to note a resemblance, there is no way that resemblance between two ideas can be responsible for the association. In order for sense datum to add to something more than a stream of consciousness, there must be some kind of unity between the data – a “unity of apperception” as called by Kant. Deciding on whether the mind is passive and the outcomes that different people arrive at seems here to be largely reliant on the standards of proof they apply. For example, under Hume’s Copy Principle we can not allow the worthiness of the imagination, the self, or any a priori knowledge, unless it has derived from a single impression, but using the copy principle is self-refuting, where does the single impression of the Copy Principle come from. Hume’s strict empiricism betrays even his own ideas and renders his own proof of knowledge useless. This has serious consequences for Hume when he has to explain the part the mind plays, it is hard for him to admit that there is some unifying agent to note the resemblance between ideas because to do this would break his level of acceptance.
Some topics in this essay:
Copy Principle,
Association Ideas,
Treatise Hume,
Principle Hume’s,
Whilst Hume,
Due Kant,
Kant Hume’s,
Unlike Hume,
cause effect,
single impression,
copy principle,
association ideas,
unity apperception,
Hume’s Copy,
hume’s copy principle,
explain mind,
resemblance ideas,
believed imagination,
hume’s copy,
involvement association,
involvement association ideas,
transcendental unity apperception,
world cause effect,
agent note resemblance,
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Approximate Word count = 1631
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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