Hume advances his claim that all ideas in our minds
Question
1. In Section III Hume advances his claim that all the ideas in our minds are connected to (some) other ideas in our minds by way of association. What are the three principles of association that he identifies in this section?
2. In Section IV, Part I, Hume tells his reader that the `objects of human reason` (by which he means judgments) come in two kinds. What are these two kinds of judgments and how is each justified?
3. According to Hume in Section IV, Part 1, are matter of fact judgments "discoverable by reason"? If not, then by what are they discoverable?
4. In Section IV, Part II, Hume says that all reasonings can be divided into two kinds. What are these two kinds?
5. In Section IV, Part II Hume explains that all "arguments from experience" (i.e., predictions about the future based on experience) are founded on a certain feature or relationship between experiences. What is this feature or relationship?
6. In Section V Part I Hume offers a thought experiment concerning the sudden arrival of a person in the world we inhabit, one gifted with great intelligence and reasoning ability. He says that this person would immediately perceive a continual succession of events, one following another. Could this person, by reasoning alone, discover which events are causally connected to which others? If not, why not?
7. In Section V Part I Hume considers whether sense experience of events can offer a justification for matter of fact judgments that there are causal relations among certain objects of our experience. He says there is some principle which determines us to form this conclusion. What is that principle?
8. What single feature of our impressions of sensation is responsible, according to Hume in Section V Part I, for a human mind forming a custom or habit of associating events of one type with events of another and coming to the idea that they are related as cause to effect?
9. Hume refined Locke`s account of how we come to acquire the various kinds of ideas human minds come to have access to. What are two improvements on Locke`s theory of ideas that came to light in our unit on Hume?
READING:
Hume`s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
Sections III, IV (Parts I and II), V (Parts I and II), VI and VII (Parts I and II)