PHILOS 25B Lecture Notes - Lecture 36: Direct And Indirect Realism
Document Summary
Recap: hume says that all ideas are ultimately copies of impressions (we will call this the copy. Principle): this will be very important for hume"s negative project, in his critique of metaphysics. Our idea of cause: beliefs about cause and effect are not rationally justified, there is also a further problem: There is something fishy about the idea of causation itself. E. g. a rock is said to make a window break. What is wrong with this: ideas are ultimately copies of impressions. We only have impressions of successions of events. A occurs and then b occurs: berkeley thought you could get the idea of causal power by examining your own will and the idea that results from it. I can will that i have some idea, and then that idea appears in my mind. But hume thinks this too is wrong. We only experience our will and then an idea occurring in our mind.
