Impressions and Ideas: Vivacity as Verisimilitude

Impressions and Ideas: Vivacity as Verisimilitude Wayne Waxman Hume's division ofperceptions into ideas and impressions has been a source of considerable controversy. Opinions first diverge on the question ofthe basis ofthe distinction: isit the immediately detectable quahty which Hume usually termed 'force and vivacity' (such that one could, in principle, distinguish impressions from ideas from the first moment of one's conscious life), or is it a feature that presupposes experience, comparison, andjudgement. Although the latter view still finds supporters,1 it conflicts with Hume's express and iterated statements to the contrary,2 and so is tenable only as revisionism, not interpretation. Accordingly, the main focus of debate on this subject is on the nature ofthe quality offorce and vivacity. In this paper, I shall propose and defend a definition of vivacity that, in my view, is most faithful to the spirit and letter ofHume's text, which fits best with the remainder of his philosophy, and best succeeds in resolving the numerous problems that have been raised by critics in connection with this notion. My definition is this: vivacity, and its various cognates (force, firmness, strength, steadiness, etc.) all signify verisimilitude. By this I mean nothing more than what Hume said when he averred that, This variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act ofthe mind, which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination.3 In this passage, Hume's remarks were directed to the distinction between beliefs (vivid ideas) and mere conceptions ("perfect ideas"),4 and so presupposes the distinction between impressions and ideas. Nevertheless, his description seems to me to apply with at least equal force to impressions as to beliefs. Nor should it be overlooked that Hume explicitly equated the vivacity of impressions with beUef: "the beliefor assent, which always attends the ... senses, is nothing but the vivacity ofthose perceptions they present; ... To believe is in this case to feel an immediate impression of the senses" (T 86). Since vivacity constitutes the belief which attends impressions, the difference Volume XLX Number 1 75 WAYNE WAXMAN between impressions and ideas cannotbe fundamentally distinct from that between lively ideas (convictions) and perfect ideas (fictions). Specifically, like believed ideas, it is the vivacity of impressions that renders them more real to us than fictions; and since their vivacity exceeds that ofeven the liveliest idea, impressions may be regarded as the non plus ultra, and so the standard, ofreality among perceptions. Moreover, just as in the case of believed ideas,5 the verisimilitude of impressions is not, as so often is supposed, a quality oftheperceptions themselves but of our consciousness of them: an intentional regarding-as-real which Hume, lacking this vocabulary (or perhaps desiring not to introduce new jargon), could only express by having "recourse to every one's feeling" upon the occasion of "that act ofthe mind, which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination" (T 629, emphasis added).6 Human nature is such that when sensations and reflections "strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness" (T 1, emphasis added), we instinctively regard them as actualpresences, as there. It is this (phenomenological) quality that renders even the dullest impression more "forcible and real" (T 631) than the clearest, most finely delineated, powerfully represented idea. It is this, too, that makes fire we see raging before us even more terrifying than the fire we merely infer from the sight of smoke filling the room. And it also explains what renders the chimeras of the madman so terrifying to him: his disordered nature permits some of his ideas actually to attain the perfect verisimilitude—the degree of presence and reality—which, in normal human beings, only sensations and reflections (passions, emotions, and desires) ever attain; he thus flees the mere thought of, say, a dragon, as if there were a dragon he was...