Part I - The elements of Hume's philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
Summary
'Tis very difficult to talk of the operations of the mind with perfect propriety and exactness; because common language has seldom made any very nice distinctions among them, but has generally call'd by the same term all such as nearly resemble each other.
T105It becomes, therefore, no inconsiderable part of science barely to know the different operations of the mind, to separate them from each other, to class them under their proper heads, and to correct all that seeming disorder in which they lie involved when made the object of reflexion and enquiry.
E1.8The first part of this work is consecrated to what Hume “consider'd as the elements of this philosophy” (T13). They include: the division of perceptions into impressions and ideas by virtue of their differing force and vivacity; the simplicity and complexity of perceptions; the relations in which impressions stand to ideas (viz. their resemblance, their relation as originals and copies, and the production of impressions of reflexion by ideas of sensation); the distinction between ideas of memory and imagination; the association of ideas in imagination by means of the relations resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect; the distinction between natural and philosophical relations; substance and mode; and abstract ideas.
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- Information
- Hume's Theory of Consciousness , pp. 25 - 26Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994