The Problem of Universals
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Hume, Empiricism - that ideas are copies of impressions
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Empiricism is the doctrine that all our knowledge is gained through sense-experience. Therefore, if there is any knowledge that cannot be accounted for by means of sense-experience, empiricism will be false. Hume, as an example of an empiricist, asserts that all ideas are copies of impressions – by this he means that any concept we find in or before our minds must either be a sense-experience or copied from a sense-experience. He challenges opponents of empiricism to demonstrate such knowledge in the following extract from The Enquiries. "Or, to express myself in philosophical language, all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones. To prove this, the two following arguments will, I hope, be sufficient. First, when we analyse our thoughts or ideas, however compounded 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. The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom. We may prosecute this enquiry to what length we please; where we shall always find, that every idea which we examine is copied from a similar impression. Those who would assert, that this position is not universally true not without exception, have only one, and that an easy method of refuting it; by producing that idea, which, in their opinion, is not derived from this source. It will then be incumbent on us, if we would maintain our doctrine, to produce the impression or lively perception, which corresponds to it. " The importance to empricism of being able to demonstrate that every meaningful idea is derived from experience is also illustrated by this extract from A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic. "For the admission that there were some facts about the world which could be known independently of experience would be incompatible with our fundamental contention that a sentence says nothing unless it is empirically verifiable." However, an earlier reply to the challenge proclaimed by Hume was presented by Plato. He maintained that the knowledge of the meaning of every general term of our language could not be derived from sense-experience. "Let us explore this point. Take, for example, a general term of our language such as the term "red". This word has a meaning, and as such that meaning is grasped by the minds of people who use it. In this context we will use the terms meaning, idea and concept synonymously – to stand for what it is that people grasp when they understand a word." Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is gained through sense-experience. Since the idea of red is knowledge, it must be derived from sense-experience. If empiricism is true, what, then, is the relationship between the idea of red and sense-experiences? Hume makes an explicit suggestion, "Or, to express myself in philosophical language, all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones." In this case the idea of red should be red. This means that it would be a faint after-image in our minds of a red object. This would entail that when we are thinking about red things, then faint images of red things should pass through our minds. A number of difficulties immediately come to mind – what is the image that corresponds to, say, "solubility"? Or, when dealing with more abstract ideas – what is the image that corresponds to the idea of "the law"? Already, these examples suggest that the mind's capacity to grasp meaning extends far and beyond its capacity to retain faint impressions. However, even the colour term red poses problems. For when we have an image of a red thing, then that image must be of a particular shade of red, but the concept of red (the idea of red) encompasses every shade of red. Thus the idea of red embraces a generality that no particular shade could embrace. Similarly, suppose two red objects are laid before me, and I utter the sentence, "Both of these objects are red". Now my judgement embraces both objects. If I have a faint image of a red blob in my head then my judgement will embrace that also. With my mind I have been able to encompass all three objects in a single judgement. So the idea of red embraces all of them; since it embraces all of them, the idea of red cannot be equal to the faint copy of a red object that I might have in my mind at the time I make the judgement. The faint image of a red object seems to be irrelevant to the meaning of red. Wittgenstein makes a similar point in his work, The Blue Book. "Our problem is analogous to the following: If I give someone the order "fetch me a red flower from that meadow, how is he to know what sort of flower to bring, as I have only given him a word? Now the answer one might suggest first is that he went to look for a red flower carrying a red image in his mind, and comparing it with the flowers to see which of them had the colour of the image. Now there is such a way of searching, and it is not at all essential that the image we use should be a mental one. In fact the process may be this: I carry a chart co-ordinating names and coloured squares. When I hear the order "fetch me etc." I draw my finger across the chart from the word "red" to a certain square, and I go and look for a flower which has the same colour as the square. But this is not the only way of searching and it isn't the usual way. We go, look about us, walk up to a flower and pick it, without comparing it to anything. To see that the process of obeying the order can be of this kind, consider the order "imagine a red patch". You are not tempted in this case to think that before obeying you must have imagined a red patch to serve you as a pattern for the red patch which you were ordered to imagine." This seems to demonstrate that ideas (meanings) cannot be copies of impressions. The point that Plato would make, however, is that all meanings embrace a generality that applies to a potentially infinite number of cases, whereas all experiences are experiences of particular, unique objects in space and time. Hence it is not possible to derive the knowledge of meanings from particular sense-experiences. If this is true then every general term of our language has a content that could not be derived from experience; hence empiricism must be false. Naturally, empiricists do not agree to this proposition, and we must explore their replies further.
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Contents of
The Problem of Universals
1 Hume, Empiricism - that ideas are copies of impressions
2 Plato and his argument in The Meno: the doctrine of recollection and the idea of metempsychosis
3 Plato - forms, universals, ideas - the problem of universals
4 Universals and realism
5 Empiricism and nominalism - Hobbes
6 The problem of participation and the infiinte regress in the third man argument
7 Wittgenstein and his attack on universals
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