Psychology Essay on Impressions and Ideas

Paper Type:  Course work
Pages:  3
Wordcount:  573 Words
Date:  2021-06-17
Categories: 

According to Hume impressions and ideas are distinguished by the order in which they occur. An impression in his understanding impressions is the original while ideas are the small copy versions of them. Based on this he thinks every idea is a copy of somebody is the first impression of something. The ideas from Humes point of view are dependent on the impressions. This is because without having an impression it is impossible for one to come up with an idea. Furthermore, he states that ideas are copies of the impressions thus without impression to copy from we will have no ideas coming up.

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This is necessary for Humes version of empiricism because in his view the beliefs that we originate from the ideas of the existence of bodies and where they originate from. This brings in impressions since this is a psychological process which a person build from observing something they encounter. Impressions are our natural way of reacting to things that are around us, and thus this concept on impressions and ideas best explain why this is so. It also backs Humes empiricism approach that our valuable beliefs are hard to explain philosophically but rather can be described using psychological knowledge. He concluded through observing others and considering how he viewed things also as a person by placing himself as an example.

Flow of Ideas

Hume thinks ideas are not entirely random because our understanding results in new ideas that take use beyond the impressions that we first have. According to him, the most complex ideas originate from the simplest ones. However, the creation of this complex ideas is governed by three principles which make it not random to come up with one. These laws include resemblance, contiguity and cause and effect. It is possible to do this due to the freedom of humans to engage one another due to humans free imagination.

Resemblance principle according to Hume is where one is reminded of something because they resemble somethings or person you have seen before. An example is when you showed a portrait of him you naturally reminisce because the contents of the picture resemble him.

Contiguous is a principle which describes how we are reminded of what happened in the past and how this occurred. For example, the terrorist attack that took place on 9/11 reminds you of the impact of terror.

Causality is a principle which works on both angles that are from effect to cause and cause to effect. An example is when you meet someone mother you are reminded of their daughter or when you meet someones daughter you are reminded of their father.

Classes of Human Reason

The examples he gives about ideas are geometry, algebra, arithmetic, and truths of logic.

Mathematics is the only discipline that he gives, it is only in mathematics because they contain topics that involve mathematical problems.

The priori and the posteriori are known, and they are the town objects of a human reason though they occur in different phases. They both govern human thinking and the way they both occur.

Priori and posteriori differ in several ways one is that for priori the epistemic warrant is the nature of the idea and laws that govern such ideas while posteriori their epistemic warrant is an impression which must come in experience. Priori is based on logic while posteriori comes from observations about the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dr. Stephanie Semler. Introduction to philosophy, 2017.

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Psychology Essay on Impressions and Ideas . (2021, Jun 17). Retrieved from https://midtermguru.com/essays/psychology-essay-on-impressions-and-ideas

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