A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural ReligionHume, David
PhilosophyPhilosophy
A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Hume, David
Emotions; Ethics; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, English
225. Not relations of resemblance only, but those of quantity also,
treated by Hume as feelings.
226. He draws the line between certainty and probability at the same
point as Locke; but is more definite as to probability,
227. ... and does not admit opposition of mathematical to physical
certainty--here following Berkeley.
228. His criticisms of the doctrine of primary qualities.
229. It will not do to oppose bodies to our feeling when only feeling
can give idea of body.
230. Locke’s shuffle of ‘body,’ ‘solidity,’ and ‘touch,’ fairly
exposed.
231. True rationale of Locke’s doctrine.
232. With Hume ‘body’ logically disappears. What then?
233. Can space survive body? Hume derives idea of it from sight and
feeling. Significance with him of such derivation.
234. It means, in effect, that colour and space are the same, and
that feeling may be extended.
235. The parts of space are parts of a perception.
236. Yet the parts of space are co-existent not successive.
237. Hume cannot make space a ‘perception’ without being false to his
own account of perception;
238. ... as appears if we put ‘feeling’ for ‘perception’ in the
passages in question.
239. To make sense of them, we must take perception to mean perceived
thing,
240. ... which it can only mean as the result of certain ‘fictions’.
241. If felt thing is no more than feeling, how can it have qualities?
242. The thing will have ceased before the quality begins to be.
243. Hume equivocates by putting ‘coloured points’ for colour.
245. Can a ‘disposition of coloured points’ be an impression?
246. The points must be themselves impressions, and therefore not
co-existent.
247. A ‘compound impression’ excluded by Hume’s doctrine of time.
248. The fact that colours mix, not to the purpose.
249. How Hume avoids appearance of identifying space with colour, and
accounts for the abstraction of space.
250. In so doing, he implies that space is a relation, and a relation
which is not a possible impression.
251. No logical alternative between identifying space with colour,
and admitting an idea not copied from an impression.
252. In his account of the idea as _abstract_, Hume really introduces
distinction between feeling and conception;
253. ... yet avoids appearance of doing so, by treating
‘consideration’ of the relations of a felt thing as if it were itself
the feeling.
254. Summary of contradictions in his account of extension.
255. He gives no account of quantity as such.
256. His account of the relation between Time and Number.
257. What does it come to?
258. Unites alone really exist: number a ‘fictitious denomination’.
Yet ‘unites’ and ‘number’ are correlative; and the supposed fiction
unaccountable.
259. Idea of time even more unaccountable on Hume’s principles.
260. His ostensible explanation of it.
261. It turns upon equivocation between feeling and conception of
relations between felt things.
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