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Discussion :
What Hume means by his view that any idea in our mind must first come from
our Impressions is that to get an idea of something we must first experience it. The way we
experience things to form ideas is through our senses. Our senses create an impression, and
we use that impression by remembering it with our mind, that creates an idea. Hume
believed that the mind could think or imagine things, and that this power is unrestrained,
but he believed that it was impossible for the mind to make up or imagine things that the
mind has never seen, felt, heard, taste, etc. before. He believed that it would be impossible
to create an idea without experiencing through senses first because no impression was
made. This is where Hume crafted that ideas come from our senses. The major difference
between Ideas and Impressions is the difference in their degree of liveliness, sharpness, and
clarity. One way this is done is by compounding ideas. If you have an impression pink and
an impression of tree you can put these two things together and get an idea of a pink tree,
even if you have never seen one. If you never had the impression or pink and impression of
tree you could not form and idea of a pink tree.
Hume believed that reasoning of cause and effe ct is based on
experience. He also believes that nature conceals the power of objects in terms of
how they really operate, behave, or bring about certain effects. This means that
Hume thinks that we don’t see the actual power an object may have we only see the
effect that follows the object. The only reason for this is that we don’t know what an
object is capable of or its power without experience this power first which would be
the effect. For example, we don’t know that a rose thorn is sharp unless we tou ch it
and experience it poke us. The object (thorn) receives its power form the effect
(poke). At the end of the cause and effect the mind can form a conclusion and know
that from now on to touch a thorn will end in a poke, which now the mind can form
an idea from. Hume is correct about the world must be observed before cause and
effect can be learned about an object.
I have to say that I agree with Hume on his beliefs that the mind manufacture
the idea of power in cause and effect in a similar way that the mind makes up complex
ideas. The mind in other words can only create ideas from experiences that we have already
have had. If I had experienced eating something hot and I know what it will look and feel
like if I do eat something hot I probabl y wouldn’t do it again if I didn’t like it. This to me
would be what Hume describes as the principle of induction, which he states that we can
draw an inference about the future based on our past experience. I do have to agree with
Hume that our minds do try and find connections between objects and try to bring reason as
to why these things happen.