Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Hume & Locke on Human Knowledge

Hume follows Locke and sees all human knowledge as deriving from experience. He sees the contents of the mind as perceptions, implying that they have been observed in some empirical fashion, and he divides these perceptions into impressions and ideas. Impressions derive from the immediate data of experience through the senses, while the latter, the ideas, are seen by Hume as the copies or faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning. Another way he differentiates the two is in terms of their vividness, or the degree of power with which they infuse themselves into the mind. The perceptions which have the most power and enter the mind with the most force are called impressions, and these include all our sensations as well as our emotions and passions. Ideas, on the other hand, are the faint images appearing in thinking and reasoning. They are somewhat like recollections of the earlier, stronger impressions. In a broad sense, Hume is trying to differentiate between the immediate data of experience and the thoughts we have about that data.

However complex this analysis of the different types of ideas and impressions may get, the underlying truth of the approach is that experience is necessary for there to be knowledge. Generally, Hume rejects a priori knowledge entirely, though experience can be indirect and can lead to the creation of what seem to be a priori or innate ideas. Hume considers the meaning of substance and concludes that we can have no idea of the meaning of substance except as a collection of particular qualities. The concept of substance is thus inferred from concrete impressions based on experience, and the experience must predate the concept or the concept would have no meaning. Hume uses the term "idea" in an ambiguous way that makes some of what he says about them unclear, and this means that their precise relationship to experience is also unclear to a great degree, and his distinction between ...

Page 1 of 6 Next >

More on Hume & Locke on Human Knowledge...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Hume & Locke on Human Knowledge. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 03:23, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703210.html