NationStates Jolt Archive

What are peoples views on Humes distinction of Impressions and Ideas? Has anyone ever tried to reinforce the theory by explaining the meaning of vivacity relative to this theory?
I like to think he makes some good points but im sure there are instances where an idea has no corresponding impression and there are times when an idea can be far more vivacious than any corresponding idea, say a dream of getting shot when you've never suffered worse than cuts and bruises in reality.
Also, Id like to propose that a unicorn is an idea without an impression. For although the unicorn is made up from the impressions of a horse and a horned animal, the union of these things is a totally unique idea. So although the variable aspects of the base impressions must have been experienced, the complete unicorn is an idea without corresponding impression.
Please, mock at will.

Some thoughts that came up, when I thought of Hume...they probably don't particularly answer your question, though. It's just a ramble!

I actually had a near-death experience in a dream...I have never come close to death in waking, but what occurred in the dream was exactly what people describe an NDE as being like in emotion and the experience itself. Waking, though, was very frightening, though--I woke abruptly in a cold sweat, and it came with a terrible emotional shock. I'd never known peace and joy like that before, and to be taken out of it...after having let down SO much of my guard, was shocking. I still wonder just how I could dream at that intensity without something going wrong with my body--it was enough to make me wonder if perhaps I stopped breathing in my sleep.

But the point that the dream raises...even if I was not physically dying, I have seen now that a level of emotional response is possible that I have never known before in life. Dream emotions, at least for me, on rare occasions will go beyond what I know in the waking world. I think, unlike Hume (and much more like Descartes) that it's only our own consciousness whose existence we can guarantee, that only thought and emotion are things we can be certain of. That something can trigger such an emotion--even if perhaps nothing went wrong with my body at the time--suggests to me that even if the particular stimulus at that time was not "real", that something real, sometime, may be able to trigger that feeling again. Perhaps real death? I don't know. But it is a possibility that's come to mind. I certainly would not kill myself to find out, though...that would be stupid!!!

I disagree with Hume that it's only the sensory that we can count on--to do so devalues every emotion and every thought we might have, for even the thoughts it would have taken Hume to originate his theory are ethereal. Why should he believe in their validity? Or, therefore, the validity of his ideas?