The Main Point of the Reading
In Section 2 of the book Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume traces human perception to two sources: impressions and thoughts or ideas. Impressions are direct and vivid sensations that people experience through their senses. At the same time, thoughts are less intense reflections of those impressions.
He shows an example with anger: its feeling is definite and distinguishable from others and profoundly influences a person. However, if one simply thinks about anger, one does not experience such bright emotions; one just reflects on them. Hume argues that ideas are derived from impressions through various mental operations, such as combining, separating, and comparing them. He emphasizes the importance of imagination in this process and suggests that people’s concepts and knowledge are built upon it: association and reflection, which create ideas from sensations.
Furthermore, Hume discusses the distinction between complex and simple ideas. The latter is derived directly from impressions, while the former is formed by combining simple ideas via mental instruments. He also explores these instruments, primarily association and imagination, which enable one to work with ideas, relate them, and combine them to obtain new concepts, increasing one’s knowledge. In summary, Section 2 explores the origin of ideas, highlighting the role of impressions, thoughts, and imagination in forming concepts and knowledge through mental operations.
New Terms
While terms used in Section 2 were familiar to me, Hume often used them in a new context, so there is a list of his concepts with short explanations.
- Impressions are direct and vivid feelings caused directly by one’s senses.
- Ideas are reflections of impressions, much less intense but manageable via mental instruments such as association and imagination.
- Simple ideas are basic and elemental ones derived directly from impressions.
- Complex ideas are formed by combining simpler ones.
- The association is the mental operation that connects ideas and relates them to one another.
- Imagination is the mental instrument that transforms impressions into ideas, allowing the formation of new concepts.
Memorable Quotes
Lastly, two citations from these sections impressed me, and I would like to discuss them.
“Let us, then, take the liberty of calling them ‘impressions’, using that word in a slightly unusual sense. By the term ‘impression’, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions when we hear or see or feel or love or hate or desire or will.”
In this introductory quote, Hume defines and describes impressions, showing how they differ from thoughts, which are their reflections. Impressions are strong and impact humans profoundly and directly, forcing them to feel something and do something out of affection. Therefore, they are direct sources of humans’ experience and behavior, directing them. At the same time, thoughts have much less power, even though one can use mental operations to deal with them.
“All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure so that the mind has only a weak hold on them. In contrast with this, all our impressions—i.e., all our outward or inward sensations—are strong and vivid.”
Here, Hume shows how ideas are much fainter than impressions, being only their reflections, but are much easier to manage. Therefore, all prior experience is obtained via direct and vivid sensations, then processed by cognitive instruments to produce ideas and meanings.
Reference
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford University Press, 2000.