Particulars are Real

David Hume (1711-1776)

Metaphysics

Hume, is a nominalist regarding universals. Meaning he  argues that all of our ideas are ideas of particular entities, qualities, or relations (p339) Nominalist, such as Hume, contend that there is nothing universal in the world other than the language we use to describe the world (p339)

Particulars are Real

• So, Hume is attempting to confirm Berkeley's notion of the nature of general ideas. Just to remind you, Berkeley's view is: "that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals which are similar to them." (p340)

• Hume poses two arguments refuting the view that abstract ideas have no particular degree of quality or quantity:
1. By proving that it is utterly impossible to conceive ant quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of its degrees (p340)
2. And, by showing that though the capacity of the mind cannot be infinite, yet we can at once form a motion of all possible degrees of quality and quantity. Might be imperfect, but it will serve its function. (p340)

• The first proposition, that the mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of degrees of each; Hume, will prove this proposition by the three following arguments:
1. Objects are different and distinguishable, and these objects that are distinguishable are separable by the thought and imagination. Ideas are consequently conjoined with each other in the conception.
2. The mind in its real existence has no particular degree nor proportion. No impression can become present to the mind, without being determined in its degrees both of quantity and quality. All ideas are derived from impressions. Impressions and ideas differ only in their strength and vivacity.
3. Abstract ideas are in themselves individual, however they may become general in their representation. The image in the mind is only that of a particular object, though the application of it in our reasoning is the same, as if it were universal.

• When we find a resembles among several objects that often occur to us, we apply the same name to all of them, regardless of the various differences we might observe.

• After we have acquired a habit of this kind, when we hear the name of one of these objects, it brings the idea of these objects up in our mind and the imagination conceives it with all its particular circumstances and proportions.

• The word raises up an individual idea, along with a certain custom; and that custom produces any other individual one, for we may have occasion.

• CUSTOM + HABIT (p. 342)

• It is certain that we form the idea of individuals, whenever we use any general terms; that we seldom or never exhaust these individuals; and that those, which remain, are only represented by means of that habit, by which we recall them, whenever any present occasion requires it.

• A particular becomes general by being annexed, or conjoined,  to a general term; that is to a term which from a customary conjunction has a relation to many other particular ideas.

Philosophy 1-Reading Notes

Classical Philosophical Questions, Robert J. Mulvaney, 13th Edition