HUME SECTIION 9

Hume talks about how even though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation there are also other parts of their knowledge from nature called instincts. Instincts are something both human beings and animals have which makes us share something in common. It teaches a human being to avoid fire and a bird the art of incubation. it is something that is not learned but it is kind of like common sense.

HUME: Sec. 9

Hume also talks about how discipline and education can have an effect of animals. When they are given rewards or punished they can be taught any action that is contrary to their natural instincts. It is experience that makes a dog become apprehensive of pain because their owner threatens to beat them. It is also experience which makes a dog answer to it's name when the owner calls them because the dog learned how to distinguish their names from anything else that is being said.

Hume Section 9: Of the Reason of Animals

Hume talks about how animals learn many things from experience and infer that the same events will always follow from the same causes. He talks about how they become acquainted with properties of external objects and gather knowledge about the nature of fire, water, earth, their surroundings, etc. He uses the example of a horse that is used to a field and becomes used to the its proper height which he can leap and will not attempt anything that exceeds his force and ability. He also uses an example comparing old animals to young animals. Young animals are inexperienced compared to the older animals that are cunning. The older animals have learned to aviod what hurts them and to pursue what makes them happy. Hume is saying that animals learn from experience and since young animals do not have experience that have not learned anything yet

HUME SEC. 2 Paragraph 8

Hume talks about this contradictory phenomen that may prove that it is impossible for ideas to come fromimpressions. He says that several ideas of color are really different from each other but still similart at the same time. If this is true about different colors then it must be true about different shades of the same color and each shade produces an independent idea. If it is not true it is possible for the different shades of color to resemble a color different from what it should be. Then he uses an example to prove this point: He asked what if a man who could see did not know what the color blue looked like. Hume said that this man is still able to have an idea from his imagination about what this color looks like even though he has never seen it before.

I don't agree with Hum on this because how can someone who has never seen a particular shade of blue know what the color is? He has never seen it before so how can he imagine it?

HUME: MORE OF SEC. 2

"If it happen, from a defect of the organ, that a man is not suceptible of any sensation we always find that he is as little susceptible of the correspondent ideas"

I think that here Hume is aying that if a man is not indluenced by any sensations then he does not experience similar ideas. He uses the example of a blind man who can't see colors or a deaf man who can't hear sounds. he says that if you restore these sense to these men then they will get ideas of what sound or color is annd that they will not have difficulty understanding what these things are. He also uses another example with a man who has a selfish heart does not have an idea of friendship or generosity. I agree with Hume on this.

Hume: Of Miracles

Paragraph 12: "Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature."

I agree with Hume when he says this. A miracle is something that happens not in the natural course of nature. A miracle is an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause. I do believe in miracles personally. I think that miracles can be simply a mental/psychological thing alone, but for those with religious views it can become a spiritual things too.

Hume: Of the Reasoning of Animals

Paragraph 2,3,4: Throughout these paragraphs Jume is speaking of how animals can learn from their own life experiences and how they can learn from discipline and education (training) of owners, trainers, breeders, etc... When they learn from a person what to do it is called a conditioned stimulus. A conditioned stimulus is when a person learns to associate certain sounds, smells, actions, etc... with something that they have learned. This causes a conditioned response. A conditioned response is a learned response.

Hume Section 2 OF THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS

"our thoughts or ideas, however compunded or sublime, we always find, that they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment. Even those ideas, which, at first view, seem the most wide of this origin, are found, upon a nearer scrutiny, to be derived from it."

I think what Hume is saying here is that our thoughts are confined and derived from outward and inward feelings which he calls impressions. He defines impressions as living perceptions(when we hear, see, feel love, hate , desire, or will). He then uses the idea of God as an example. He says that the idea of God comes from the operations of our mind increasing without limit the qualities of goodness and wisdom. He believes that every idea comes from an impression. So I think he is saying that the idea of God comes from the impression of wisdom and goodness because most people believe that God is good and all-knowing.

Hume: Of the Origin in Ideas

Paragraph 5: "But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall find, upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all 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 experience."

Here Hume is kind of contradicting himself. First he says that people have no boundaries or limits to their thoughts, but here he is saying that we are limited to what we know because of our experiences and our senses. This, to my understanding, still gives us a lot of space for cognitive growth, but Hume seems to change his mind on the matter. We may be 'thought-limited' by our experiences and our senses, but there are always more experiences to be experienced and, of course, more sensations to be sensed.

Hume: Of the Origin of Ideas

Paragraph 4: "And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty; the thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe; or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion."

Hume is saying here that the mind has no limits. People in his time were kept on Earth and no where else, but he believed that our thoughts and ideas could take us anywhere we wanted to go. Of course, his statements about this are proven to be correct because some people have traveled to other places other than Earth. I think that anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it.

Hume: Of the Origin of Ideas

Paragraph 2: "When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed."

What Hume is saying here is that we can look back at our memories and remember them so vividly, but the physical colors of everything in it will never be the same as when the original actions took place. He seems to be talking about long-term memory in this section of "Of Origins of Ideas". Having a long-term memory is having the ability to remember something forever, but one characteristic of a long-term memory is that we can remember everything that happened so clearly, but the colors and every little detail will never be so vivid ever again, no matter how hard we try to remember them.

Hume: Of the Origin of Ideas

Paragraph 1: "The utmost we say of them, even when they operate with greatest vigour, is, that they represent their object in so lively a manner, that we could almost say we feel or see it: But, except the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity, as to render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable."

Hume is saying that many people have thoughts so vivid that they say that they can feel them or see them. He says that only people with a diseased mind can do this and that people without a diseased mind cannot see or feel them until they become real. I disagree with Hume on this. I think that people can see their ideas very vividly inside their minds. Otherwise, how would artists be able to make such beautiful paintings? How could architects draw out blue prints? How could anyone speak, draw, or create something without picturing it and thinking about it first?

The Truth Problem

[IV. v. 5] "...mental, wherein the ideas in our understandings are without the use of words put together, or separated by the mind, perceiving, or judging of their agreement, or disagreement... verbal propositions, which are words the signs of our ideas put together or separated in affirmative or negative sentences. By which way of affirming or denying, these signs, and truth consists in the putting together and separating."

Okay... a lot to take in at once, but I agree with Locke's approach to the propositions of receiving or figuring out the truth. Mental propositions are only ideas in our minds. They have no word value and we do not speak them. They are kept within our minds personally. Verbal propositions are ideas that we put into action with words or actions. I do not understand how these can help people to gain knowledge of truth, but I do see how they can help with everyday thinking and communication. Again, truth is something that is never reached.

The God Problem

[IV. x. 8.] "Something from eternity. There is no truth more evident, than that something must be from eternity. I never yet heard of anyone so unreasonable, or that could suppose so manifest a contradiction, as a time, wherein there was perfectly nothing.

While reading chapter 4 of this book I found this section of passage 8 quite interesting. It caused me to sit back and actually take in and think about what he had said. He says that he has not heard of anyone so illogical that could cause such a huge conflict when there was perfectly nothing. I am kind of confused by the last part (there was perfectly nothing), but I think that it is amazing to think that there is someone or something out there that means so much to so many on earth, yet we don't even know who it is who where it is or how it is. How is it that someone/something created everything from nothing?

LOCKE BOOK 2 CHAPTER X SECTION 14

"Method-- These I think are the first faculitites and operations of the mind which it makes use of in understanding; and though they are excercised about all its ideas in general, yet the instances I have hitherto given have been chiefly in simple ideas; and I have subjoined the explication of these faculitites of the mind to that of simple ideas, before i come to what I have to say concerning comples onex, for these folling reason:"

He then goes on and on about reasons about complex ideas and how simple ideas are more clear and precise and distinct then complex ones. He also talks about how operations of the mind are received from sensations and derived from reflection.

BOOK 2 CHAPTER IV SECTION 12

"For if we may conclude that God hath done for men all that men shall judge is best for them, because it is suitable to his goodness so to do, it will prove not only that God has imprinted on the minds of men an idea of himself, but that he hath plainly stamped there, in fair characters, all that men ought to know or believe of him, all that they ought to do in obedience to his will; and that he hath given them a will and affections conformable to it"

In this section Locke discusses that everyone has an idea of God that is naturally imprinted by God himself. I do not agree with Locke on this and I am also confused by this because Locke believes that the idea of God is not innate but then how does God imprint himself on us. I think that we learn about God through others and I do believe God is not innate because of this. But I do not think that God imprinte dhimself on us. That just doesn't make sense to me.

LOCKE: BOOK 2 CHAPTER XII Of Complex Ideas

In this book Locke discusses how complex ideas are made. There are 3 ways complex ideas are formed in the mind:
1) Combining simeple ideas into one compund ideas
complex ideas, such as beauty, gratitude, a man, and army, are made up of simple ideas but the mind considers them one thing and they are signified by one name.
2) Bringing 2 ideas, either simple or complex, and views them at one time without bringing the two together
3) Abstraction - separating ideas from all other ideas that have to do with reality

Locke also discusses how complex ideas are either modes, substances, or relations.
Modes are made up of different parts and depend on substances. There are 2 types of modes. There are simple modes which are different combinations of the smae idea without mixing them together. The other type is called mixed modes. These are compounded of simple ideas of several kinds put together to make one idea.

Ideas of substances are combos of simple ideas and represent distinct particular things. There are 2 types of ideas of substances. The first is single substances existing separately. For example, a man or a sheep. The second one is putting the substances together. For example, an army of men or flock of sheep.

Relations are just the comparison of idea to another.

All of these things come together to make complex ideas. Complex ideas are things that are very vague but you have different ideas that go with these things.

LOCKE: BOOK 2 CHAPTER XIX Of the Modes of Thinking

In this chapter Locke discusses how ideas come about and how we as human beings think. He says that thinking is the first thing that occurs in our mind. Locke also discusses different things that we do in our minds such as dreaming sensations and perceptions and much more. He says that:
Sensations are the actual entrance of ideas through our sense. I do not really understand why sensations are entrance of ideas. he kind of confused me with this. But I think its kind of like when you see something that interest you he brings idea in your head??

Rememberance is when an idea recurs in your mind.

Recollection is an idea sought after by the mind and with pain and endeavour it is found. Isn't recollection the same as remembering something? I guess it is when you remember something painful that has happened to you.

Contemplation is an idea that is held in your mind under long attentive consideration. I agree with this because when you comtemplate something you are trying to understand it so you think about it for a while.

These terms are used to describe how our mind works. Locke believes that his purpose is to show what ideas are and how ideas come to the mind and he showed this through these times.