-
A Humean Conundrum
- Hume Studies
- Hume Society
- Volume 31, Number 2, November 2005
- pp. 211-224
- 10.1353/hms.2005.a383286
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Hume's Copy Principle, which accords precedence to impressions over ideas, is restricted to simple perceptions. Yet in all the conceptual analyses Hume conducts by attempting to fit an impression to a (putative) idea, he never checks for simplicity. And this seems to vitiate the analyses: we cannot conclude from the lack of a preceding impression that a putative idea is bogus, unless it is simple. In this paper I criticise several attempts to account for Hume's seemingly cavalier attitude, and offer one of my own.