Mike Mackus

February 26th, 2009

Professor Bolton
Phil 297

Abstract Ideas and Introspection in Treatise

Hume establishes the copy principle as the foundation of his science of the cognitive

architecture of the mind. He states, “That all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d

from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent”

(4). That is, there is a causal relationship between one’s simple impressions and his simple ideas-

that a simple idea is a representation of the simple impression that caused it. As Hume notes, the

copy principle is difficult to argue with when considering, what Hume refers to as, the “constant

conjunction” between idea and impression and the way, say, for example, a blind child will lack

ideas of color if he is unable to have the correspondent impressions. However, we can see

already that there is more within the copy principle than a conjunction between impression and

idea: if we are to think of the case of a visual impression, say of the color blue, then, for Hume at

least, we know that the correspondent idea that is formed must represent the impression and thus

ultimately be a visual idea of BLUE presented to the mind for there is no difference between

impressions and ideas except “in the degrees of force and liveliness” (5). Therefore, Hume is

assuming that the content of the mind is visual, aural, etc. The mind essentially becomes an arena

for perceptual imagery and little else.

Hume’s formulation of the copy principle forces him to work his way out of a few holes

before he can even get past the nature of ideas. Specifically, Hume must define abstract ideas in a

way in which allows them to be particular images presented to the mind while representing a

more general idea. For Hume, the abstract idea of MAN “represents men of all sizes and

qualities” (18); however, as we’ve already noted, an idea is a specific image yet the idea of MAN
does not have a specific correspondent image. Hume dismisses the possibility that every (real

and possible) man is represented in the mind and likewise disbands with the hypothesis that the

mind can form an idea without first conceiving of precise degrees of any quantity or quality. The

former appears to be intuitively wrong for it is difficult to imagine a situation where a general

idea places every member of its set before the mind- a possibility that seems antithetical to the

convenience of general ideas: if one wants to think of or discuss a particular class, say the set of

all real numbers, it does not help him to conceive of 1, 2, 3, 4,... n if he merely needs to think of

the group as a whole. As for the latter, that the mind cannot form an idea without first forming

degrees of quantity and quality, there is no real intuitive pull. As support, Hume uses an

inversion of the separability principle to argue that that which can be separated from an idea

must be different from the idea itself and, as his example goes, since a line is no different than

the distance of the line, then there is no idea LINE whatsoever without first conceiving a precise

distance of the line. Thus, Hume comes to the conclusion that abstract ideas must be individuals

and that these individuals somehow have the power to become general in their representation.

That is, by means of some convention, a particular image in the mind signifies more than the

image itself and, if this is so, Hume must give attention to this transition from idea representing

correspondent impression to idea representing another idea for it is essentially a dismissal of the

copy principle: the idea is no longer a copy of the impression, but rather it has extra meaning

within it that lies outside of the image itself (and the obvious question becomes ‘where?’).

Yet, Hume only gets bogged down in this argument because of his earlier premise that

ideas are images in the mind. What if we do not accept this as I believe we do not have to? I

cannot argue that Hume’s idea LINE is not what he says it is- a visual image of two points at a

precise distance connected in space. However, my idea of LINE is different: it is an idea that I
can conceive of without appealing to a visual image before my mind; I simply think that a line is

what is it: two points connected in space (without a visual image and without a precise distance

between them). For Hume, such an argument would be impossible because the copy principle

demands that the idea be a representation of the correspondent impression, already binding ideas

to images. But representation, especially when dealing with abstract ideas and general terms,

does not bear a necessary connection with images presented to the mind. Hume’s theory of

abstract ideas must be applauded for the truth cognitive psychology still finds in it today as there

is a striking resemblance between the contemporary theory of prototypes and the Humean theory.

Psychology’s view today, however, does not postulate that a definite image is present to the

mind; rather, the theory of prototypes hypothesizes that when dealing with abstract ideas, say

BIRD for example, a person has a prototypical bird in mind, usually something like a sparrow

even though there are plenty of birds that do not look like sparrows. This is postulated in order to

explain the fact that people have slower response times when answering questions of the form

“Is x a y?” where in this case y is the category of birds and x is a “non-traditional” bird, maybe a

penguin. As immediately evident, prototypes are unique to individuals although they are usually

very similar as most cultures have a common conception of what is a ‘normal y’. The prototype

theory has two advantages over Hume’s: first, there is no need to require the prototypical idea to

have precise quantities and qualities; and secondly, there is no need to postulate another

mechanism in the mind that allows a particular idea to signify a more general group of ideas of

which it is a member- that is, the prototype is exactly that, a prototypical example of a member

of a certain class, while the Humean theory turns the prototype into a representative that stands

in for the whole class.

 Furthermore, the theory of prototypes, unlike Hume’s theory, does not make a claim of

completeness. While a theory of prototypes still leaves open to debate the question of how

abstract ideas are represented in the mind, Hume’s theory claims to answer the question in its

entirety: it is not the entire set of ideas that fall within the domain of the general idea that is

“present to the mind”, but rather each one is present “only in power” (20). Fighting through the

ambiguity we might want to say that Hume is arguing for a theory of general ideas that says a

general term may bring one member of its class to mind but still allow for “a readiness to survey

any of them” (20). Albeit, that is very likely to be true, it must be far from the complete story

given that the mind has an idea of the signification of the general term (and a simple resort to

convention and language- which is just convention by another name- also does nothing further to

answer the question of what is the nature of these abstract ideas, how are they formed and how

are they represented). When a general idea is present to the mind it must be more than a

particular idea or else it would simply be the particular idea. We can arrive at such a conclusion

by using the separability principle: the idea of SPARROW can be thought of without thinking of

BIRD and the idea BIRD without SPARROW so these must be two different ideas; thus we

would only be able to map the general idea onto the particular if we already had some sort of

representation of the general idea in the mind. I think this is why Hume falls back on the notions

of language and convention when trying to deal with general ideas: in using language humans

engage in a similar meaning-mapping process to the one Hume argues takes place between a set

and the members of a set. Humans cut up the phonetic spectrum and arrange the pieces

arbitrarily arriving at various acoustic segments that become meaningful when associated with an

idea: they gain the power to signify. The similarity isn’t exactly perfect but this makes it

understandable that Hume brings up language when dealing with abstract ideas for he argues,
similarly to how a linguist would say a lexicon is formed, that particular ideas gain the power to

signify more than that which is actually there. Nonetheless, this still leaves us wondering how

the separate, abstract idea is represented in the mind. That is, the mind must have the ideas of the

necessary and sufficient conditions that a particular idea must satisfy in order to be a member of

the set that falls under a general idea; and if it happens that a particular idea becomes present to

the mind in response to, say, a lexical item that stands for a more general idea, it is because the

mind is aware of the conditions for entrance into this class. Moreover, if we are to stick to

Hume’s empiricism, these conditions that define a general idea must have ultimately come to the

mind by way of the copy principle and thus it seems that they too will be images that must be

present in the mind; and if this is so then there is no need to assume that a particular image stands

in as a representative of the whole set for we were only forced to postulate this because there is

no such thing as an idea without definite quantities and qualities- yet, as we have seen, a general

idea does appear to be definite and precise. But the question to ask would then be whether or not

these parameters, the necessary and sufficient conditions for entrance into a set, can be images

represented in the mind. I would have to argue that the answer is negative: how is it that

parameters could be images, either visual, aural, or any other? Yes, we could think of parameters

visually, say on a graph that indicates the lowest and highest frequency at which you can tune

your middle C while still sounding in tune with the rest of your piano. But a graphical

representation of parameters is not easily imaginable as being the way in which our mind’s eye

“sees” who gets access into different sets. The problem, then, must be directly related to the way

in which Hume conceived of impressions and ideas being spatially extended before the mind.

More generally, the problem for Hume seems to be one that is connected to his main

method of investigation: introspection. Introspection can often be a powerful investigative tool

but we must also admit that introspection was essentially banned from psychology a century ago.

The only evidence Hume can gather is information that his mind makes aware to him which is

not necessarily the information his mind has. Hume has limited himself to that which can be

visually presented to conscious awareness by way of the mind while he is more or less cut off

from how the mind functionally prepares this information. Hume would be fine with this given

his commitment to empiricism; however, introspection can only push a science of the mind so far

until we move from examining the way impressions become ideas to the way sensory stimuli

become impressions and the way these impressions, and eventually ideas, become organized and

represented in the mind- not just how they are organized, represented, and presented to conscious

awareness.