Hume’s Theory of Knowledge: Impressions, Ideas, and Experience

Posted on Dec 4, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

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Human knowledge is the object of all philosophy. Hume sought to define its limits, believing that metaphysical knowledge has been a source of error. He emphasized guided experience as the foundation of knowledge. Gnoseology, on the positive side, deals with:

  • Impressions: Collected through the senses.
  • Ideas: Exist in the mind.

There are two kinds of perceptions:

1. Impressions penetrate our consciousness with greater force and are known through the senses. They can be divided into:

  • Sensations (color, odor, temperature…)
  • Emotions and passions

2. Ideas have less force penetrating our consciousness. They are representations or copies of impressions in thinking. Both impressions and ideas can be simple (e.g., green) or complex (e.g., the class watching – various sensations). Hume asserted that first impressions are the primary element of knowledge (the real criterion), and all ideas are derived from them. He rejected the rationalist notion of innate ideas, arguing that our mind is incapable of forming ideas without prior impressions from the senses. All ideas are private. When we find similarities between them (concepts), we use a unique name to designate them. This forms the habit of considering ideas designated under one name (nominalism – names are universal).

Memory plays with greater precision regarding impressions. Imagination distorts reality, playing in a weak and faint manner, similar to a historian versus a fabulist. While the former should remain faithful to the order and position of ideas, the fabulist adapts them to individual interests.

Two kinds of knowledge:

  • Relations between ideas: Claims related to ideas without resorting to experience. We have knowledge of ideas without impressions.
  • Knowledge of facts: Factual knowledge based on impressions. These statements require a reality check and are not universal.

Hume’s definition of experience: Simple ideas come from impressions, which are the source of all simple ideas. Impressions arise from unknown causes. Sensitive experience must be reduced to contemplation, looking inside consciousness as impressions make their appearance. Ideas are derived from these impressions and are linked to each other (psychological empiricism).

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Conception of Being:

  • Plato has a univocal concept of being: a real world of ideas and a sensible world that imperfectly copies ideas.
  • Aristotle maintains an analogical conception of being: many types of beings (categories). Primary being refers to individual beings, classifying living and natural beings. Secondary being includes qualities, quantities, relations, etc.
  • Hume believes we cannot know whether or not beings are loved because we only capture impressions, not their origin.

Conception of Knowledge:

  • Plato is a rationalist, believing reason alone captures the essence of things, and senses are unreliable.
  • Aristotle considers senses a source of reliable knowledge, but reason captures essence through abstraction, thus a middle ground between empiricism and rationalism.
  • Hume limits knowledge to impressions captured by our senses; any idea beyond impressions is unidentifiable.

Conception of God:

  • Plato speaks of a demiurge modeling the sensible world after the world of ideas and the Good as the supreme source of reality and truth, concepts later incorporated into religious and philosophical notions of God.
  • Aristotle proves God’s existence through the argument of the first movement, conceiving God as a perfect, pure act, pure form of being, unrelated to the mundane world but the final cause of movement.
  • Hume considers God’s existence inaccessible to our attention because we have no impression of God; it is a matter of faith.

Conception of Man:

  • Plato views man as a temporary union of an immaterial soul from the world of ideas and a material body. The soul survives death.
  • Aristotle describes man as a special case among natural beings, applying the hilemorphic theory (matter/body and form/soul). While the body’s death involves the soul’s disappearance, part of the soul may be immortal.
  • Hume sees man as a succession of experiences; the existence of a permanent soul is a matter of faith.