Explain and Critically Discuss Hume’s Distinction Between Impressions and Ideas

“We may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity.” (Inquiry 1975, p18) These are the words of Hume, who maintains that all our perceptions can be categorized as either impressions or ideas and that there are a number of ways by which we can distinguish between them. He believes that not only do they differ in the way in which we feel them, but that impressions can be innate, while ideas cannot. He also states that we can distinguish between them mostly according to the level of force or vivacity that they display.

Such a theory has been disputed mostly because critics do not believe that the main difference between impressions and ideas can be found in their different degrees of vivacity. Other criticisms have focused on Hume’s imagist theory of thinking. This essay will explain Hume’s theory and examine its criticisms in order to discover how plausible a theory it is.

According to Hume, the mind is furnished with materials that consist of perceptions. In the Treatise, he determines a perception to be “whatever can be present in the mind, whether we employ our senses, or are actuated with passion, or exercise our thought and reflection,” (Treatise 1978, p647) which he subsequently divided into impressions and ideas. Impressions are established through sensation and emotion, while ideas are faint images of the impressions. An example of an impression would the sensation of heat and a burning pain if you put your hand in a flame. The idea is that the flame/fire is hot.

Hume implies that the distinction between the two corresponds to the distinction between feeling and thinking. In other words, impressions result both from direct sense experience (including pain, passions and emotions) and from remembered or imagined experience. By contrast, ideas in their first appearance are derived from impressions, which correspond to them and which they exactly represent. This is known as the copy principle, which is explained by Hume when he writes: “all perceptions of the mind are double, and appear both as impressions and ideas.” (Treatise 1978)

Hume also claims that there are no innate ideas. By comparison, he states that all impressions are innate. In Inquiry, he takes the term “innate” to mean what is original or not copied from a previous perception. However, this seems untrue in the case of impressions resulting from sense experience. Surely an impression of a fire is not innate? The impression that fire burns is a reaction to putting one’s hand in a flame. Hume does not appear to respond to this criticism, other than to state that he is predominantly concerned with passions that are inherent in human nature, such as self-love.