In the second section of the Enquiry, Hume writes about Idea Empiricism, claiming that "ideas... are copies of our impressions" (11). In particular, I like the phrasing of his example in the second proof that "a blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds" (12). With the exception of the missing shade of blue example that he gives, I think that this is probably how our minds must necessarily work. We are, as John Locke famously said, born a blank slate and we develop ideas based on experience and interactions with the external world. Children do not understand concepts such as “right” and “wrong” without being taught them, and the only thing that really seems to be inherent is our ability to reason and learn and understand ideas. But, as far as the ideas themselves are concerned, it seems reasonable to say that we develop them after experience and not the other way around.
One example of this comes from my own personal life, and one that I have spent a lot of time pondering. I am three different kinds of colorblind, and these three interact in odd ways depending on the lighting in a room, the material that things are made of, how much sleep I’ve gotten, etc. etc. This has the particularly annoying (interesting, some might say) effect that the same object will look like two completely different colors from day to day or even minute to minute. When I first explained this phenomenon to a close friend, he asked me the question, “then what do you think of when you think of the color red?” I had no response for him, and upon further reflection, I came to realize that I have no conception of the color “red” in any abstract sense. I am aware that such a color exists, and I have associated it with different objects from time to time in my life, but the idea of “red” is not one that I can conjure in my mind on its own. Due to the variable / non-fixed nature of colors in my experiences, I have never been able to know for sure what object is what color without asking someone else (someone who is not colorblind). If the same shirt looks purple one day, then burgundy the next, then blue, and so forth, I can never know for sure what color the shirt is, and more importantly for the context of Hume’s empiricism, I also do not know exactly what “purple”, “burgundy”, and “blue” mean. If ideas were inherent, and not derivative of experience, we might expect that this would not be the case. And yet, here I sit, living proof that it is.
While simultaneously relishing a glass of wine and also reading Hume’s Of the Origin of Ideas followed up by your post, I began to reflect on your efforts to answer your friend’s question about your personal experience. I asked myself- ‘how could I explain the perception of the mind for the experience of colorblindness to someone else, if I have never actually experienced it?’ My first ‘thought’ or ‘idea’ was to try to associate the experience of lack of color, with an ‘impression’ with which I was familiar with that could be experienced, namely the watching of a movie on a black and white television. Not satisfied with that comparison, I looked for information which could more readily simulate the impression of colorblindness. I found some websites at http://colorvisiontesting.com/what%20colorblind%20people%20see.htm and http://www.iamcal.com/toys/colors/ which offered useful information and visual demonstrations. I believe that these tests allow one to experience a so called Hume 'impression'. Perhaps you could share this with your friend, so that his idea or thought of colorblindness is accompanied by a simulated experienced impression as well.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that either by default or pure by elimination most of our perceptions are derived or contrasted from previous experiences. And that an indistinct thought or idea would run the same luck but on the opposite side of the spectrum. Stating that to be a totally independent idea, that does not depend of any previous experience, would have to be so away from any sort of internal bias that would end up just trying "not to be" what we previously experienced, instead of having its own originality on aiming for an objective concept.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, any type of perception it always appears to be routed from some acquired and augmented feeling or combined sensations. Like for example the idea of God is more of a limitless or infinite augmentation of actions or states from which we derive that all the powers or faculties we can conceive must me conglomerated on a supreme being if it deems to be God.
@Jhart:
ReplyDeleteThose are pretty cool websites. Everything is on the internet nowadays. My own solution to explaining "what do you think of when you think of the color red, then?" was to ask a question in return: What do you think of when you think of justice? "Red" is just another abstract idea, and if I picture anything, it's probably just the letters of the word itself.
@JP:
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Do you mean that it must be the case that the ideas exist external to us, and we simply perceive them? Or is it that we create the ideas out of our experience?