Hume Impressions

Hume thinks oneself is just a place holder of perceptions, and that one really is nonexistent. Hume defines perceptions as things and information a person is able to provide itself with. He divides these in two catogries such as “ideas or thoughts” and “impressions”. Ideas are the things you think, versus impressions which are things created by your five senses. Ideas are less clear and accurate than the actual impression of things because impressions you are actually experiencing something. Things like emotions and memory of descriptions, such as the thought of colors or the thought of softness, are considered ideas because you are creating the things only inside of your mind. You can create any thing that you want with these ideas. You

If you don’t have these experiences then you don’t have that specific impression. In relation to the essay Hume believes that we have no good reason to exist due to the fact of caution. If there was no cause of our existence the “self” cannot be the effect. There is no impressions prior to our existence that is always present and does not change, therefore one’s self is none existent. In the second paragraph of “Of Personal Ident” Hume is stating that our impressions of our self is never always present and can’t be proven one hundred percent of the time, therefore one does not exist. Due to the fact that we have impressions that do agree with each other and are contradicting, and they are never consistent oneself does not exist. Ideas are merely references from your impressions with things. For example you can think of the color green due to the prior knowledge of your impression of sight. If you have never seen the color green before you couldn’t imagine it, such as a blind person could never imagine the color green. Therefore “self” has no definite reference we are not able to exist. Also one perceptions are not present when one is sleep, or after death. In order to exist the perception of something must be ongoing and infinite. Due to the fact when you die you are unable to have any type of perceptions you can’t exist. This is stated in the third