Hume’s Associationism: Ideas, Causality, and the Self
Hume: Associationism and Ideas
Regarding simple ideas, all originate from copies of our simple impressions. These impressions, combined with current perceptions, form mental representations. This principle establishes a criterion for validity.
Complex ideas can be copies of complex impressions or the result of combining simple impressions through imagination. The imagination combines simple impressions to form complex ideas, sometimes following laws and regularities, where one idea leads to another. For example: water = sea. This is the law of association of ideas:
- Contiguity in space and time: An idea reminds us of another when there is proximity.
- Resemblance: Our minds associate similar ideas.
- Cause and effect: We expect certain events to follow others.
Relationship Between Ideas and Matters of Fact
All knowledge can be classified into two types of judgments:
- Relations of ideas: Relationships between concepts and ideas derived from reasoning. These are always valid. Example: No women are men.
- Matters of fact: Relationships between facts that must be verified through observation. These are contingent and provable; their negation is possible. Example: Maria plays football.
The Problem of Causality
The cause-and-effect relationship refers to how we connect events in the world. Hume examines the legitimacy of this connection using the empiricist principle. He questions whether there is a corresponding impression for this idea or belief. For example, there is a causal relationship between fire and warming water. Hume observes a connection between these two phenomena, but not a necessary one. He argues that we only see one fact followed by another.
Ultimately, Hume suggests that the idea of a necessary connection is a product of our imagination. A phenomenon followed by another becomes a habitual expectation.
Critique of the Idea of Substance
Hume also questions the idea of the self as a subject of perceptions. While impressions and ideas change under shifting perceptions, the self is perceived as identical and stable, the core of our personality. Hume argues that the self is a construct of the imagination.
Nietzsche: Will to Power
Nietzsche believed that creating new values requires the will to power. Life is a restless energy that creates new forms of life and destroys others. This will to power attracts those who desire to oppose equality. The more creative life is, the more it imposes hierarchy and inequality. Nietzsche opposed the identification of equality with justice.
Nihilism and the Superman
Nihilism: A state where individuals lack goals to pursue and fight for, becoming like vegetables. This transforms into the assertion of new values, such as the Superman, who embraces the death of God and becomes a god on earth.
The Death of God
This term expresses the death of immutable truths and ideas, signifying the end of all that gives life meaning and reliance on a beyond.
Nietzsche believed that all values are based on the belief in a sense of the world outside this world.