remember we talked about an apple in connection with Locke. The direct experience of an apple is an example of a complex impression.”
“Sorry to interrupt, but is this terribly important?”
“Important? How can you ask? Even though philosophers may have been preoccupied with a number of pseudoproblems, you mustn’t give up now over the construction of an argument. Hume would probably agree with Descartes that it is essential to construct a thought process right from the ground.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Hume’s point is that we sometimes form complex ideas for which there is no corresponding object in the physical world. We’ve already talked about angels. Previously we referred to crocophants. Another example is Pegasus, a winged horse. In all these cases we have to admit that the mind has done a good job of cutting out and pasting together all on its own. Each element was once sensed, and entered the theater of the mind in the form of a real ‘impression.’ Nothing is ever actually invented by the mind. The mind puts things together and constructs false ‘ideas.’ “
“Yes, I see. That is important.”
“All right, then. Hume wanted to investigate every single idea to see whether it was compounded in a way that does not correspond to reality. He asked: From which impression does this idea originate? First of all he had to find out which ‘single ideas’ went into the making of a complex idea. This would provide him with a critical method by which to analyze our ideas, and thus enable him to tidy up our thoughts and notions.”
“Do you have an example or two?”
“In Hume’s day, there were a lot of people who had very clear ideas of ‘heaven’ or the ‘New Jerusalem.’ You remember how Descartes indicated that ‘clear and distinct’ ideas in themselves could be a guarantee that they corresponded to something that really existed?”
“I said I was not especially forgetful.”
“We soon realize that our idea of ‘heaven’ is compounded of a great many elements. Heaven is made up of ‘pearly gates,”streets of gold,”angels’ by the score and so on and so forth. And still we have not broken everything down into single elements, for pearly gates, streets of gold, and angels are all complex ideas in themselves. Only when we recognize that our idea of heaven consists of single notions such as ‘pearl,”gate,”street,”gold,”white- robed figure,’ and ‘wings’ can we ask ourselves if we ever really had any such ‘simple impressions.’ “
“We did. But we cut out and pasted all these ‘simple impressions’ into one idea.”
“That’s just what we did. Because if there is something we humans do when we visualize, it’s use scissors and paste. But Hume emphasizes that all the elements we put together in our ideas must at some time have entered the mind in the form of ‘simple impressions.’ A person who has never seen gold will never be able to visualize streets of gold.”
“He was very clever. What about Descartes having a clear and distinct idea of God?”
“Hume had an answer to that too. Let’s say we imagine God as an infinitely ‘intelligent, wise, and good being.’ We have thus a ‘complex idea’ that consists of something infinitely intelligent, something infinitely wise, and something infinitely good. If we had never known intelligence, wisdom, and goodness, we would never have such an idea of God. Our idea of God might also be that he is a ‘severe but just Father’—that is to say, a concept made up of ‘severity’,’justice,’ and ‘father.’ Many critics of religion since Hume have claimed that such ideas of God can be associated with how we experienced our own father when we were little. It was said that the idea of a father led to the idea of a ‘heavenly father.’ “
“Maybe that’s true, but I have never accepted that God had to be a man. Sometimes my mother calls God ‘Godiva,’ just to even things up.”
“Anyway, Hume opposed all thoughts and ideas that could not be traced back to corresponding sense perceptions. He said he wanted to ‘dismiss all this meaningless nonsense which long has dominated metaphysical thought and brought it into disrepute.’
“But even in everyday life we use complex ideas without stopping to wonder whether they are valid. For example, take the question of T—or the ego. This was the very basis of Descartes’s philosophy. It was the one clear and distinct perception that the whole of his philosophy was built on.”
“I hope Hume didn’t try to deny that I am me. He’d be talking off the top of his head.”
“Sophie, if there is one thing I want this course to teach you, it’s not to jump to conclusions.”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“No, why don’t you use Hume’s method and analyze what you perceive as your ‘ego.’ “
“First I’d have to figure out whether the ego is a single or a complex idea.”
“And what conclusion do you come to?”
“I really have to admit that I feel quite complex. I’m very volatile, for instance. And I have trouble making up my mind about things. And I can both like and dislike the same people.”
“In other words, the ‘ego concept’ is a ‘complex idea.’ “
“Okay. So now I guess I must figure out if I have had a corresponding ‘complex impression’ of my own ego. And I guess I have. I always had, actually.”
“Does that worry you?”
“I’m very changeable. I’m not the same today as I was when I was four years old. My temperament and how I see myself alter from one minute to the next. I can suddenly feel like I am a ‘new person.’ “
“So the feeling of having an unalterable ego is a false perception. The perception of the ego is in reality a long chain of simple impressions that you have never experienced simultaneously. It is ‘nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement,’ as Hume expressed it. The mind is ‘a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.’ Hume pointed out that we have no underlying ‘personal identity’ beneath or behind these perceptions and feelings which come and go. It is just like the images on a movie screen. They change so rapidly we do not register that the film is made up of single pictures. In reality the pictures are not connected. The film is a collection of instants.”
“I think I give in.”
“Does that mean you give up the idea of having an unalterable ego?”
“I guess it does.”
“A moment ago you believed the opposite. I should add that Hume’s analysis of the human mind and his rejection of the unalterable ego was put forward almost 2,500 years earlier on the other side of the world.”
“Who by?”
“By Buddha. It’s almost uncanny how similarly the two formulate their ideas. Buddha saw life as an unbroken succession of mental and physical processes which keep people in a continual state of change. The infant is not the same as the adult; I am not the same today as I was yesterday. There is nothing of which I can say ‘this is mine,’ said Buddha, and nothing of which I can say ‘this is me.’ There is thus no T or unalterable ego.”
“Yes, that was typically Hume.”
“In continuation of the idea of an unalterable ego, many rationalists had taken it for granted that man had an eternal soul.”
“Is that a false perception too?”
“According to Hume and Buddha, yes. Do you know what Buddha said to his followers just before he died?”
“No, how could I?”
“ ‘Decay is inherent in all compound things. Work out your own salvation with diligence.’ Hume could have said the same thing. Or Democritus, for that matter. We know at all events that Hume rejected any attempt to prove the immortality of the soul or the existence of God. That does not mean that he ruled out either one, but to prove religious faith by human reason was rationalistic claptrap, he thought. Hume was not a Christian, neither was he a confirmed atheist. He was what we call an agnostic.”
“What’s that?”
“An agnostic is someone who holds that the existence of God or a god can neither be proved nor disproved. When Hume was dying a friend asked him if he believed in life after death. He is said to have answered:
“It is also possible that a knob of coal placed upon the fire will not burn.”
“I see.”
“The answer was typical of his unconditional open-mindedness. He only accepted what he had perceived
