Nicole Carrabus
HUM 201
Dr. Jordan, Dr. Theiry
10/30/08
Hume: Arrival at Cause and Effect
The mind of a human being has countless resources for creating original thoughts. Where, however, do the building blocks of each new thought come from? David Hume’s, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding expresses the notion that humans are given knowledge and understanding through experience. Not only do our perceptions of the world come from some prior contact but also this contact is the only thing linking a cause with its effect.
Humans know perception as “the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding” (Dictionary.com). Hume’s concept of perception encompasses two types: one being an idea and the other being an impression. Ideas are “the less forcible and lively” perceptions where as impressions are “all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or fell, or love, or hate, or desire, or will” (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 10). Humans can differentiate between the two types of perceptions when dealing with the feelings found in every day life such as love, hate, or any of the five senses. Understanding the difference between an idea and an impression can lead to greater knowledge of cause and effect.
Although we as people have the ability to link conceptions together, forming ideas never introduced to us before, we do have limits to our creativity. Hume says, “...all that this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experienc ...