Henry Imler April 24th, 2006

The Scottish philosopher Hume had presented philosophy with a grand problem. Hume had tilled the grounding of the current metaphysics of the day. He had taken the postulates of Descartes and questioned them. He found the evidence for causality in the specific lacking, rendering one unable to point to the exact cause behind any certain event. Like all Empiricists, Hume wanted all philosophical systems to be grounded in immediate experience. He defined the two types of mental concepts, impressions and thoughts and ideas. Thoughts and Ideas are the recalling the memory of situations, and the anticipating future ones. An example of this is thinking about being angry. Impressions on the other hand, are perceptions of the mind that are the most clear. They include our more lively perceptions: when we hear, feel, love, hate, desire and will. An example of this is being angry. The difference is that “impressions are distinguished from ideas when we reflect on any of our sensations or movement. ”

Mental Concepts:”Unsound Argument(Hume review: Impressions and Thoughts and Ideas)”:http://unsoundargument.com/hume/hume-review-impressions-and-thoughts-and-ideas:

1. Impressions
2. Thoughts and ideas

All ideas for Hume are naturally faint and obscure. It is easy to confuse one idea with another, they are not very distinct. However, all impressions are strong and vivid. They are clear and very will defined. It is not easy to fall into error about them. When it comes to ideas we need to inquire: “From what impression does the idea come from? ” If we are not able to find an impression, then it is not meaningful. Hume maintained that our idea of causality could not be drawn back to any direct impression of cause and therefore the idea of causality is rendered meaningless. Our notion of causality is a mere by product of “constant conjunction”, or a habitual attachment.

Another impact of Hume had been on the categorization of ideas. He maintained that there were two divisions of thought, Relation of Ideas and Matters of Fact. Relation of ideas were discoverable by thought alone and as such, were a priori, they did not require the world to be a certain way to be true. Examples of this are math, logic and geometry. They were simply a relation between two thoughts. Take for instance the phrase, “All triangles have three sides.” The idea of triangles having three sides is contained in the word “triangles.” No experience of the world is needed to know that, it is purely definitional. The predicate is contained in the subject. Matters of fact, on the other hand are contingently true, that is they depend on the world existing in a certain way. Because they rely on experience for their validity, they are considered to be a posteriori. Because we do not know all possible experience, the contrary of each matter of fact is possible. The statements, “the sun will not rise tomorrow,” or, “the pot will not boil under high heat,” are possible, although not probable statements. Due to the case that matters of fact rely on experience all matters of fact that go beyond our immediate impressions are known through the “laws” of cause and effect. However, as demonstrated above, according to Hume we have no impression of causation, matters of fact that go beyond our immediate impressions are meaningless.

Divisions of Thought:”Unsound Argument(Hume, Relation of Ideas and Matters of Fact.)”:http://unsoundargument.com/hume/hume-relation-of-ideas-and-matters-of-fact:

1. Relation of Ideas
   • a priori
   • Does not depend on the world for its truth value
   • i.e. Math, Logic, Geometry
2. Matters of Fact
   • a posterori
   • Does depend on the world for its truth value
   • The observed world

In the wake of Hume’s works, Metaphysics, as an objective philosophical discipline, was left in chaos. When applied correctly, Hume striped causality of its power and prestige. Metaphysics, the study of the underlying nature of the world, heavily relies on the idea of causation being intelligible. Hume argued that all meaningful ideas came from the senses and because we could not actually sense the causation of an event, our idea of causality in each specific occasion is unfounded. It was this difficulty that spurred Kant to rethink Metaphysics in general.

Kant tries to establish a set of founding principals on which to rest the foundations of Metaphysics. In doing so, he establishes four types of propositions: a priori, a posteriori, analytic, and synthetic. The first two deal with the origin of the proposition. A priori propositions are known from pure reason, whereas a posteriori propositions are known from experience. The last two types describe the relation of the predicate and the subject of the sentence. Analytic propositions contain in the predicate, knowledge that is known in the subject. Synthetic propositions on the other hand add the idea in the predicate to the subject. There are four possible combinations of the four types of propositions: a priori analytic, a posteriori analytic, a priori synthetic, and a posteriori synthetic. A priori analytic statements and a posteriori synthetic exist; their very definition allows them to necessarily exist.

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