PHILOS 25B Lecture Notes - Lecture 33: Thought Experiment, Contiguity, Lectern
Document Summary
Recap: all perceptions are impressions or ideas. The distinction is draw on purely phenomenological grounds. So these metaphysical notions are empty and useless: so the principle of ideas coming from impressions provides a test for checking what the meaning of a term is. Hume gives a thought experiment: consider a man who has seen every shade of blue except one particular shade. He has simple ideas of the entire spectrum of blue shades except for one particular shade. We would think hume, as an empiricist, would say no, but hume actually thinks the answer is yes. Problem: this seems to contradict the notion that all simple ideas come from impressions. Hume ignores this on the grounds that it is just one small counterexample and doesn"t put the general principle in jeopardy. This has been the source of much scholarly controversy. April 17, 2015: hume thinks there are psychological laws that dictate why certain ideas follow from others.
