Which scores a stupendous predictive hit for Hume, even if I got it wrong. — unenlightened
and it is this idealization of the objects in your environment that you are conscious of, not a faithful recreation of the color patches that make up your putative visual field. — Srap Tasmaner
...what you are emphasizing, are the reasons for the belief,... — Manuel
If his reason cannot be trusted with respect to determining the existence of bodies, why would it be trusted to reasonably ask for the causes by which his believing that the existence of bodies is to be taken for granted? Furthermore, why would we be “induced to believe”, when the principle which grants the existence of bodies has been given to us, insofar as Nature has “….not left this to his choice….”? — Mww
…..unresolvable inconsistency which Hume finds himself up against. — Metaphysician Undercover
What I think this indicates is that we ought not claim certainty about the existence of bodies. — Metaphysician Undercover
Still, consider the times. In the treatise, Hume mentions God four times. Count ‘em. Four. In however-many-hundreds of pages. This goes great lengths to show the separation from the philosophical standard of the time he is making, and for which he is, as ↪Manuel says, definitely of historical importance. Can’t really blame the guy for not getting the finer points out in the open, when he was the first to seriously open the box out of which his successors would step. — Mww
From Hume’s point of view, from the Treatise, you mean? I’d agree with his premise, or principle, that our reason is insufficient for grounding the certainty for the existence of bodies. But it isn’t reason by which that certainty arises anyway, so his claim with respect to reason does nothing to prohibit some other means by which the certainty of the existence of things is given. — Mww
This contradiction causes an "uneasiness" within us, and begs to be resolved. One or the other, of these contrary principles must be sacrificed. The notion of identity supports smooth passage of our thoughts, so we are very reluctant to give up that idea in favour of each perception existing as a distinct being. So we turn to that side, the idea that our perceptions are not interrupted. However, the interruption can be so extensive that we are forced to consider that the perceptions may have existence independent from the mind.The smooth passage of
the imagination along the ideas of the resembling perceptions
makes us ascribe to them a perfect identity. The interrupted
manner of their appearance makes us consider them as
so many resembling, but still distinct beings, which appear
after certain intervals. — p205
You know…..it’s awful hard to maintain the conceptual schemes of outdated philosophies. One has to keep in mind what the original author knew about, and from which his terminology derives, even if he himself alters its meaning. For instance, perception. Perception now means something very different than how Hume wanted it to be understood with respect to his “new” philosophical approach. The concept of mind itself was still taken to be one half of the entirety of human nature, while in later times it became merely an apex placeholder, having no exacting import of its own, at all. — Mww
Because the cause is not identified, Hume is left saying that we "feign" continued existence. He then proceeds to analyze why we have a propensity toward believing this idea which has been feigned. — Metaphysician Undercover
he was the first to seriously open the box out of which his successors would step. — Mww
I don't want to be overwhelmingly the only person talking here. — Manuel
We may not trust our reasons, but we have no choice but to trust reason itself. — Mww
substituting 'Nature' for 'God', so it's not such an advance as it might seem. — Srap Tasmaner
Hume is quite clear that the belief in body does not arise either from the senses or from reason, but from a sort of instinct, and much of this chapter is in some ways a description of how we adapt ourselves to having this instinct — thus the 'double existence' theory. — Srap Tasmaner
My reading of Hume is that he does take reason to be a faculty on its own, but he consistently tries to show how weak it is — Manuel
….reason told us for thousands of years that we were the center of the universe, which is not at all a silly view due to the evidence available at the time — Manuel
But all that aside, you’re right, I think, in that Hume didn’t identify a sufficient cause for continued existence of our impressions. And I think there is a very good reason why he didn’t carry his theory further, re: he mistakes that all perceptions of the mind, which are only one of either impressions or ideas, can only be derived from “experience and observation”, and that impressions and ideas are necessarily connected to each other. — Mww
Ah, I see, sure in this sense we are talking about then, "instinct" is rather similar to "the human condition". In both cases, funnily enough, these are innate considerations not drawn from, nor extracted by, experience. — Manuel
Hume seems to rely here on two important premises, or principles. The first one is stated clearly and explicitly, that we cannot doubt the existence of body, that to do so would be unreasonable. — Metaphysician Undercover
The second premise appears to be a bit more obscure, but it has to do with what is present to the mind. Simply stated, the principle seems to be that the only thing present to a mind, is perceptions. This is made very evident from his description of mind as a simple unity of perceptions. — Metaphysician Undercover
However, to maintain this conclusion, it is necessary that identity could not have been truthfully, accurately, or reasonably derived from a source other than perception. — Metaphysician Undercover
Then, when he considers identity, and continued existence, and finds these not to be supported by perceptions, he wrongfully concludes continuous identity to be imaginary, fictitious, even erroneous. But this is only because he doesn't consider the other category of influences in the mind, the causes which come directly from one's own body, instinct, intuition, desire, intention, and the good. — Metaphysician Undercover
All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call Impressions and Ideas. The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only, those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure or uneasiness it may occasion. — The very first words of the book (after the Introduction)
"Unreasonable" cannot be the right word here. — Srap Tasmaner
I think your disagreement is with Book I Part I Section I, where Hume claims that all our ideas are derived from impressions. Thus, no innate ideas. — Srap Tasmaner
So, no, Hume is not ignoring other causes that arise from within your own body: they are all impressions. — Srap Tasmaner
As to the first question ; we may observe, that what we
call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different
perceptions, united together by certain relations, and suppos’d,
tho’ falsely, to be endow’d with a perfect simplicity and
identity. — 207
…..two important premises (…) The first one (...) we cannot doubt the existence of body, that to do so would be unreasonable. — Metaphysician Undercover
Relations are different, distinct from the things which are related. Yet the relations are necessarily present within the mind, and are part of the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover
Holy Crap, Batman!!! We cannot grant the existence of bodies to sensations, where it belongs as a seemingly “first appearance”, because impressions are not reasonings, but the existence of bodies is granted to ideas, because it is reasoning, but impressions cause those ideas, so….sensation of an object cannot be so low as to be the same as its idea, impression of an object causes our reasoning to an idea of that object……the very reasoning of which we have already been shown we should be skeptical of.
We’ve been granted the very thing we’ve no warrant to trust. The skeptic cannot defend his reason by reason, so how does he defend it, or does he not bother defending the very thing by which he acquires his ideas? — Mww
We’ve been granted the very thing we’ve no warrant to trust. The skeptic cannot defend his reason by reason, so how does he defend it, or does he not bother defending the very thing by which he acquires his ideas? — Mww
I think these relations are, let's say, of the mind, but not present to mind; that distinction belongs exclusively to perceptions, and the relations among perceptions are not themselves perceptions. — Srap Tasmaner
What are they then? I think they are something like laws. — Srap Tasmaner
The laws of nature are there in somewhat the same way the laws of inference are in an argument. We have our premises, we pass from one formula to another, reaching a conclusion, but if we rely on modus ponens or conjunction elimination, they are not there in the argument as premises, but as the laws that carry us from one formula to the next. We're used now to axiomatic deduction systems in which the rules of inference are explicitly chosen — and thus part of the system though part of no argument — but in olden times, modus ponens would be present only implicitly, and perhaps postulated, or discovered, as a legitimate way of getting from some claims to others. — Srap Tasmaner
With those analogies in mind — and I think they're close to Hume's intentions and world-view — most of the book is an exploration of the mechanisms by which we pass from certain perceptions, be they impressions or ideas, to other perceptions, generally (but not always) to new ideas. He says something like this on almost every page of the book — we pass smoothly from this one perception to this other one because of the resemblance between them, that sort of stuff. It's everywhere, because it's the whole point of the book. But those resemblances, for instance, they're something we can reflect on and have ideas about, as he has done, but they are not themselves perceptions present to the mind. (There's a regress argument here, but I'm not sure it's Humean. It's the same problem you would have if you had nothing with the status of an inference rule, and had to take modus ponens as a premise. That doesn't work.) — Srap Tasmaner
Our subject here, the belief in body, I believe is something like one of these laws of thought, not an idea we have but how we pass from the lamp impression to the lamp object belief, from the book impression to the book object belief, and so on. — Srap Tasmaner
But all my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head. — Manuel
This does not seem like a good way of describing reasoning, the act of passing from one perception to another. — Metaphysician Undercover
The insight which captivated and shook him, is that those laws don't look much like reason. — Srap Tasmaner
”… Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou'd be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess, that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding…." — Manuel
The way it looks to me, is that he has presented us some rather big problems — Manuel
the very faculty of reason is again ascribed to natural impulses, instincts; such that it is as inescapable (and I’ll add, a-rational) as is the natural impulse to breath: A toddler does not reason that one breaths in order to live and thereby breaths; nor does it reason that it is using its faculties of reason to develop its reasoning skills in order to better live; yet it inevitably engages in both activities a-rationally - this, the argument would then go, just as much as we adult humans do. — javra
I do not like the idea of classing all things which appear to the mind, together as perceptions. — Metaphysician Undercover
Clearly a sense perception has a completely different type of existence from an emotion. — Metaphysician Undercover
And I really think we need clarity on what Hume means by "reasoning". — Metaphysician Undercover
Without a separation between the different types of things which are present to the mind, we have no basis for saying that some perceptions are produced from the senses, and some are produced by reasoning — Metaphysician Undercover
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