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Hume and Representation

Introduction

We can think of ourselves in ordinary life as having two quite different ways of conveying information. One is by verbal description and the other is by example. These distinct methods correspond, as we have seen, to two different theses about the mind’s relation to the environment. On each account theorists talk about representations, but the two are of very different kinds. One sort of representation, coming from language as a model,has semantic properties such as reference or aboutness. Theother does not.

In this chapter and the next we will look at the history of the “example” model, instances of which we have been calling “Aristotelian representations,” and some recentcommentary on it. Doing so serves a number of ends. One isthat it shows how very deeply entrenched in contemporary thinking the language-based account has become. Another thing we learn is that the Aristotelian theory appears in a number of different guises and makes substantial contributions to theses of philosophers important in Westerntradition. In addition, Hume gives us a major addition to the theory. Finally, seeing the basic idea of Aristotelian representations showing up over the centuries increases one’s intuitive grasp to the theory’s potential in explaining mindedness.

We will see the recent critical reactions to Aristotle and Aquinas, and we will note briefly that at least a remnant of the Aristotelian theory shows up in Descartes. After considering a very questionable assumption about “intentionality” that can be found in recent exegesis of a range of philosophers of the early modern period, we will focus on the empiricists, and particularly Hume. We will

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examine closely Humean representations, and we will close this chapter by rejecting an alternative interpretation of Hume which sees Hume’s ideas as more Fodorian than Aristotelian.

In the next two sections we will look at examples of statements by historians of philosophy. The point is not toprovide a survey of exegetical opinions; rather, doing this will reveal a very serious problem at the heart of the common idea that philosophers of previous centuries were concerned with the problem of intentionality. That is, sucha thesis lacks a determinate meaning.

As we look at the historical philosophers it is well toremind ourselves that they may well not entertain an inference that our philosophical age has largely adopted enthusiastically. To see the inference, consider someone who says that George W. Bush is the son of George Herbert Walker Bush. The statement certainly has aboutness and satisfaction-conditions. It is true. There are proper names that refer to individuals, and the statement says the individuals are in a particular relationship. We are certainly entitled, let us suppose, to say that the utterer believes George W. Bush is the son of George Herbert Walker Bush. In saying this, are we committed to saying that the utterer has an internal state that has aboutness and is true? Many philosophers would say that they are, and they would also say that any account of the mind has to include this sort of internal state. It is, however, a mistake to take this view uncritically to the historical philosophers.

That it is a mistake is easily see. We just need to remind ourselves that the philosopher may in fact be intending simply to give a causal account of what underlies abilities that make it correct to call one a believer. It is far from obvious that in order to make assertions about the Bushes one needs to have the proposition realized insideof one in some sense. As we might put it, we need not assume that the semantic features of the explanadum get realized in the explanans.

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Modern responses to Aristotle and Aquinas

Much of the discussion of the historical figures that we will look at refers to Brentano’s conception of intentionality. His explanation of intentionality is generally taken to occur in the following famous statement:

Every mental phenomenon is characterized bywhat the Scholastics of the Middle Agescalled the intentional (or mental)inexistence of an object, and what we mightcall, though not wholly unambiguously,reference to a content, direction toward anobject (which is not to be understood here asmeaning a thing), or immanent objectivity.Every mental phenomenon includes something asobject within itself...

(Brentano 1973)

The Scholastic terminology originates with Aquinas, and it refers to the realization in a subject of the Aristotelian representation. Given Brentano is concerned with the Scholastic view and inexistence, the passage has to be aboutAristotelian representations. However, so interpreted, the passage is not completely consistent with other things he said. He also later provided another interpretation (Huemer2009), which appears to allow that an intentional object might be an object external to the mind. So understood, intentionality is not Scholastic, but is rather Fodorian. Brentano is routinely interpreted in terms of the latter. As Tuomo Aho notes:

In present-day elementary expositions, the typical definition of intentionality has been, and still is, ‘directedness to something.’ This formula has become so familiar that it is hardly even noticed how the direction metaphor

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is quite different from the original in-being metaphor. (203)

As we will see, one problem that arises from this lack of clarity is that commentators may well employ the notion of Fodorian intentionality in explicating ancient and medieval thought. Hence, we need to be clear about how we understandcertain phrases. We will take “Fodorian intentionality” to encompass reference to an external object or objects. “Aristotelian intentionality,” like that explicit in Aquinas, will mean that that there is an internal object, such as the realization of a form.

There is no doubt that for Aristotle perception consists at least in part in an organ’s receiving a form, for example, red “corresponding to its proportion.” Since each color is an admixture of black and white for Aristotle,the final phrase refers to the precise proportions had by the color of the object. Christopher Shields (Shields 2007)suggests that for Aristotle in perception the organ becomes isomorphic with the object’s sensible form. Shields takes this to mean literally that the form is realized in the organ; the eye becomes red, for example.

Shields maintains, however, that a better account takesthe isomorphism not literally but intentionally. Though he cites Brentano on intentionality, the implication of understanding isomorphism intentionally is that the organ’s state represents an external object. The change from internal to external object means we have the Fodorian reading of “intentionality,” not the Aristotelian reading. Shields does see both the literal and the Fodorian readings of the passage leave us with problematic theories. What is important for us is that very Twentieth Century conceptions are being read into the ancient text. There is really no evidence that internal forms in Aristotle’s philosophy have Fodorian intentionality.

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That recent discussions of representation have affectedmodern readings of medieval theories seems indicated by remarks such as:

Of course, claiming that a mental representationrepresents because the object represented has intentional existence in the mind does not really lead to a satisfactory account of mental representation, but seems only to introduce a further element requiring explanation ... (Lagerlund 2008; cf. King 2007)

The problem with the view that quotation presents is that while the claim may not yield a satisfactory account ofFodorian representations, that does not mean it fails as an account of Aristotelian representations. Of course, a critical analytic philosopher might insist that nonetheless there are certain features any account of representation must have. It particular, it might be said, there has to bemore ofa connection with the object that is being perceived, for example. The answer to this is that it depends on what kind of account is being given. If one is giving a non-reductive causal account of what is going on inan individual when they perceived, then it is not correct toask that all the logical features of the explanadum are accounted for in the explanans

In contrast, Stump’s more sympathetic account (Stump 2003) interprets Aquinas’s account as appealing to a kind ofstructural isomorphism that one can find in maps and charts.However, her recurring remarks to the effect that the representations “encode information” sound more on the Fodorian side than the Aristotelian one. Still, we saw in Chapter Three that neuroscientists may use the terminology of “encoding” where they clearly do not have a language-based account in mind.

Stump’s account is very far from the accusation of extensive fallacious reasoning that Pasnau levels against Aquinas (Pasnau 1998). Pasnau maintains that Aquinas

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commits the “content fallacy,” which consists in conflating features about the content of a thought with intrinsic features of a thought. For Pasnau, a good example of the content fallacy occurs in an inference from “John is thinking about a red sports car” to “John’s thought is red.”

One warning sign about labeling such an argument as fallacious is that a similar argument about an example or sample is not fallacious at all. “John has an example of a red spots car” appears indeed to imply “John has an example which is red (in part).” Thus, if we are thinking of thoughts as involving something like examples, as indeed we have been, then the argument looks at least less fallacious.

The situation, as Pasnau notes, is complicated with Aquinas in part because an accidental form realized in one’ssensory system is not realized in the same way that it is realized in ordinary objects such as apples. However, once the ontology of modern science casts doubt on forms, theorists using Aristotelian representations may indeed think that thoughts or ideas literally instantiate sensory qualities. For Hume, as we will see, ideas literally have color, size and shape.

Given this, we can read backwards and use Hume to address one of the issues Pasnau raises; namely, Aquinas’s insistence on the fact that the senses are material means the senses cannot cognize universals. Pasnau takes this view as the conclusion of a fallacious inference from the features of sensory ideas to the features of sensory contents. That is, Aquinas seems to be inferring from the individual nature of sensory states to the individual contents of sensory ideas, which Pasnau thinks is fallacious. Hume, however, has an explanation of why the inference is right, and it is plausibly close to what Aquinas had in mind. To perceive a universal is to perceiveit without the individuating features of any one material realization. An idea of a triangle has a shape, for Hume, but if it is genuinely abstract, the shape cannot have all its angles equal. Neither, however, can it have unequal

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angles. Correspondingly, any form realized in our sensory matter will have such “individuating notes.” The sensible species will have, for example, the intentional (in Aristotle’s sense) correlates of size and shape. The resultis that it will be the idea of a instance of a particular triangle, as opposed to a genuinely universal idea of triangle.

Aquinas’s version of the argument explicit in Hume is necessitated by his view of the relation between form and matter. A sensible form involves a form realized in matter,though in the sensory system it is realized in a way different from how it is realized in, say, apple skin. Matter always limits form; it particularizes it. That is why there can be many different red things and many different cats. Creatures lacking matter, such as angels, have each to have different forms. Consequently, any realization of a form which is not restricted, limited and particular cannot be realized in matter. Since these principles are so fundamental to Aquinas’ philosophy, it seems reasonable to think that Pasnau was distracted by the modern terminology and concepts – particularly “content” - from taking the claims about Aristotelian representations literally. The content and the intrinsic features of an Aristotelian representation are not dissociated in the way a word’s inscribed shape and its content are.

Intentionality in Early Modern Philosophy

We might expect that the conception of perception we have been looking at would disappear with a mechanistic viewof material reality, but it in fact it could and did survivethe demise of the ontology of matter and form. Though we have not yet considered Aristotelian representations in higher cognitive functions, a similar picture is given by both Aristotle and Aquinas of cognition. Further, Descartesdiscussion of ideas in the Third Meditation clearly reflectsthat idea that there is an ontological tie between a

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cognizer and what is cognized, though his terminology reflects the Suarezian versions of Aristotelian representations that he was trained on. His notion of objective reality, and his very vexed idea of material falsity, look very close to the problem we have seen many others grapple with; that is, there seems to be a sense is which an Aristotelian representation cannot represent falsely.i

The idea that the early modern philosophers were concerned with intentionality is prevalent among recent historians. One of the chief early advocates, Stephen Nadler (Nadler 1989), of this relatively new reading of early modern theories of ideas maintains:

On [Brentano’s] view, all mental phenomena are intentional, or object-directed. This does not necessarily imply that the object ofthought or consciousness actually exists outside the consciousness. It means simply that there is no act of consciousness which is not directed toward, aiming at, or pointing to something. In other words, everymental act is characterized by directedness toward an object, whether or nor (sic) a corresponding “ordinary” object exists (in space and time). (146.)

According to Nadler, the object of thought may exist outsideof consciousness. In fact, he says, “In many cases, what the mind is directed toward is a real external object” (146). Further, “an act intends this particular object, and

i As far as I am aware, most recent discussions of Descartes

on materially false ideas do not draw on a distinction

comparable to the Aristotelian-Fodorian one. For an

exposition of recent theories, see (Wee 2006).8

not another, because this is the object prescribed by the act’s content” (146).

According to Nadler’s picture, which may have originated with John Yolton, many theorists in the distant past recognized a kind of intentionality as a feature of mental states and explained it by attributing language-like characteristics to internal states. Given how intentionality has been part of the interpretation, we can say that they are held to be concerned with Fodorian intentionality, as opposed to Aristotelian intentionality.

The interpretation of early modern philosophers as concerned with Fodorian intentionality has served another very important purpose that may have led to its entrenchmenttoday. The further purpose was to distinguish between theorists who thought of internal states as standing in between us and our environment and those who did not. As wehave seen, Aquinas said that species were not that which were sensed or cognized; rather they were that by which the world was sensed and cognized. In the later parlance of thenew interpretation, Aquinas would be said to hold that mental states are acts, not objects. They are not objects because they do not provide us the knowledge for formulatingpremises in arguments for the existence of various things inour environment. Rather, we have internal and contentful acts that connect us to our environment.

More generally, the act/object distinction delivers a label for philosophers who seemed to invite a sceptical picture of perceptions by seeing us as receiving images froma world and trying to figure out what the cognitively separate world is really like; they are object-theorists. In contrast, those who think of us as simply able to perceive and know about the world are act-theorists. The result is that commentators can maintain that some Early Modern Philosophers are act theorists whose thought does notinvite an endless search for a solution to skepticism.

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There is, however, a serious exegetical difficulty arising from the resulting dichotomy of act and object theorist. The problem is that historical figures who have and employ a conception of Aristotelian representations become hard to understand. Aquinas, for example, appears infact to be both an act theorist and an object theorist. He counts as the first because he says the realized features are merely means by which we perceive, but he becomes the second since his theory of forms cannot be plausibly interpreted as a theory of content. The forms that get instantiated in us have a lot of non-content work to do in his philosophy; for example, what allows us to cognize the catness before us also has to supply that very catness in the world.

Hume, along with Locke and Berkeley, was also capable of using “represents” in ways not well understood by seeing it to mean a Fodorian “represents.” For example, for Berkeley and Hume, resemblance or coinstantiation is not just sufficient for representing; it is required for the representing that ideas do. Thus, Hume’s argues

As every idea is derived from a precedent impression, had we any idea of the substance of our minds, we must also have an impressionof it, which is very difficult, if not impossible, to be conceived. For how can an impression represent a substance, otherwise than by resembling it? (Treatise, Bk. 1 Pt. 4 Sec. 5 Para. 3/35 p. 232.)

This argument is strongly reminiscent of one Berkeley gives about spirits:

Hence there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit; for all ideas whatever, being passive and inert (vide sect. 25),they cannot represent unto us, by way ofimage or LIKENESS, that which acts. A little attention will make it plain to

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any one, that to have an idea which shall be like that active principle of motion and change of ideas is absolutelyimpossible. (Principles #28)

What is interesting about this is that both were aware that signs can be signs of something without resembling it. In requiring similarity, the representing done by ideas seems to be of a different kind. It is true that for all that has been said so far, it is possible that signs and ideas do the same kind of representing but do it by different means. But to suppose the philosophers thought this would mean that they had missed the very different kinds of success that examples and descriptions can have. Providing one with a sample of a color for one’s walls and giving a description of it have quite profoundly different kinds of cognitive success. Among other things, examples orsamples can carry with them causal properties of other things in a way that descriptions generally do not.

Locke also thinks that ideas as representations may be copies of things. Thus:

Now those ideas [of substances] have in the mind a double reference: 1. Sometimes they are referred to a supposed real essence of each species of things. 2. Sometimes they areonly designed to be pictures and representations in the mind of things that doexist by ideas of those qualities that are discoverable in them. In both which ways, these copies of those originals and archetypes are imperfect and inadequate. Locke: ECHU Bk. 2 Ch. 31 Sec. 6 Para. 2/2 np.378 dp. 506

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Further, the properties mentioned in the first condition - of standing for and being referred to - are additional things the mind can do with representations:

Of our real ideas, some are adequate, and some are inadequate. Those I call adequate, which perfectly represent those archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from; which it intendsthem to stand for, and to which it refers them.Inadequate ideas are such, which are but a partial or incomplete representation of those archetypes to which they are referred.

Locke: ECHU Bk. 2 Ch. 31 Sec. 2 np. 375 dp. 502My stress.

A major point about Fodorian representations is that they stand for things; the mind does not use them to do that.

Those who understand “representation” in terms of Fodorian intentional content typically think that representations can misrepresent; this is one reason why solving the disjunction problem has been so important recently for naturalistic accounts of such content. But, ofcourse, an example of red cannot really misrepresent red, even though one might use an example of one kind of red to misinform someone about another. (For example, one might use a sample of a pale red to mislead someone about the actual color of a dark red coat.) If Hume is thinking of ideas as instantiations of properties, then a change in an idea gives a change in what is represented, rather than a misrepresentation. And as we saw in Chapter One, Hume says:

Our ideas are copied from our impressions, and represent them in all their parts. When you would any way vary the idea of a particular object, you can only encrease or diminish its force and vivacity. If you make any other change on it, it represents a different object or impression. The case is the same as in

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colours. A particular shade of any colour may acquire a new degree of liveliness or brightness without any other variation. But when you produce any other variation, it is no longer the same shade or colour; so that as belief does nothing but vary the manner in which we conceive any object, it can only bestow on our ideas an additional force and vivacity.

(Treatise, Bk. 1 Pt. 3 Sec. 7 Para. 5/8 p. 96; stress mine.)

And here he is following Locke:

Any idea then which we have in our minds, whether conformable or not to the existence of things, or to any idea in the minds of other men, cannot properly for this alone be called false. For these representations, if they have nothing in them but what is really existing in things without, cannot be thought false, being exact representations of some thing: Nor yet, if they have any thing in them differing from the reality of things, can they properly be said to be false representations, or ideas of things they do not represent. (Locke: ECHU PT 2Ch. 32.21)

And Aristotle:

Perception (1) of the special objects of sense is never in error or admits the least possible amount of falsehood. (2) That of the concomitance of the objects concomitant with the sensible qualities comes next: in this case certainly we maybe deceived; for while the perception that there is white before us cannot be

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false, the perception that what is white is this or that may be false.

In sum, there are three clues that “represents” in these philosophers at least sometimes does not mean “Fodorially represents.” One is that the representations involve copying or require similarity; secondly, they are not truth-evaluable; thirdly, ‘referring to items outside the mind” isdone with the representations, not by them.

3. Humean Representations

Hume does tell us that simple ideas copy and so represent their impressions, and there has been a great dealof attention paid to Hume’s copy principle. However, littleattention has been given to the precise nature of the copying and Hume’s descriptions of the way in which ideas manage to represent; (Baxter 2001) is an exception, but Baxter explicitly takes Hume’s use of similarity to ground intentional representations, unlike the central thesis proposed here. Once we look at Hume’s descriptions of the copying, what we quickly see is that representation requiresresemblance and resemblance discussed in the context of representation is always constituted by a coinstantiation.

Ideas are copies of impressions, but the copying is avery restricted and precise sort where the only difference is in strength and vivacity. Ideas that are copies simply reproduce the features of the impressions. A first step in seeing this in Hume is to see that impressions and ideas do have features, and, further, ones we attribute to objects:

For example, early in the Treatise Hume tells us that both an idea and its source may have extension and color:

Suppose that, in the extended object, or composition of coloured points, from which we first received the idea of extension, the points were of a purple colour; it follows,

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that in every repetition of that idea we would not only place the points in the same order with respect to each other, but also bestow on them that precise colour with which alone we are acquainted. (Treatise, Bk. 1 Pt. 2 Sec. 3 Para. 5/17 p. 34.)

Similarly, objects, impressions and ideas can instantiate size:

We may hence discover the error of the common opinion, that the capacity of the mind is limited on both sides, and that it is impossible for the imagination to form an adequate idea of what goes beyond a certain degree of minuteness as well as of greatness. Nothing can be more minute than some ideas which we form in the fancy; and images which appear to the senses; since there are ideas andimages perfectly simple and indivisible. (Treatise, Bk. 1 Pt. 2 Sec. 1 Para. 5/5 p. 28.)

Impressions and objects also have the same sorts of relations:

We have no idea of any quality in an object, which does not agree to, and may not represent a quality in an impression; and that because all our ideas are derived from our impressions.We can never therefore find any repugnance betwixt an extended object [and its substance] unless that repugnance takes place equally betwixt the perception or impression of that extended object [and its substance]. Every ideaof a quality in an object passes through an impression; and therefore every perceivable relation, whether of connexion or repugnance, must be common both to objects and impressions.(Treatise, Bk. 1 Pt. 4 Sec. 5 Para. 21/35 p. 242.)

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Additionally, if we are to have an idea of a feature, we need to have an impression that contains that feature. “All ideas are derived from and represent impressions. We never have any impression that containsany power or efficacy. We never, therefore, have any idea of power “ (T 160).

The resemblance between ideas and impressions is, then, a resemblance of features or, as Hume will put it, circumstances:

The first circumstance that strikes my eye, is the great resemblance betwixt our impressions and ideas in every other particular, except their degree of force and vivacity. The one seems to be, in a manner, the reflection of theother; so that all the perceptions of the mind are double, and appear both as impressions and ideas. When I shut my eyes, and think of my chamber, the ideas I form are exact representations of the impressions I felt; nor is there any circumstance of the one, which is not to be found in the other. In running over my other perceptions, I find still the same resemblance and representation. Ideas and impressions appear always to correspond to eachother. (Treatise, Bk. 1 Pt. 1 Sec. 1 Para. 3/12 p. 2; my stress.)

And it is this exact resemblance, or coinstantiation ofcircumstances, that constitutes representation:

The full examination of this question is the subject of the present treatise; and, therefore, we shall here content ourselves withestablishing one general proposition, That all our simple ideas in their first appearance, are derived from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent.

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(Treatise, Bk. 1 Pt. 1 Sec. 1 Para. 7/12 p. 4.)

This view of the relation between impressions and ideasis no early flourish. We find it in later sections, such as,

All the perceptions of the mind are of two kinds, viz. impressions and ideas, which differfrom each other only in their different degreesof force and vivacity. Our ideas are copied from our impressions, and represent them in alltheir parts. (Treatise, Bk. 1 Pt. 3 Sec. 7 Para. 5/8 p. 96; underlining mine.)

“Co-instantiation” and other similar phrases may seem to signal a realism about universals that is not in Hume. However, Hume himself talks about “circumstances” being found in both an idea and an impression, and of the two being in (almost) every respect the same. We will see him say that every perceivable relation has to be common to objects and impressions. Clearly, Hume has a conception of coinstantiation that he feels does not commit him to realismabout universals, and so he should. A nominalist needs to explain how, for example, two people can correctly be said to have bought the same book, or how two books covers can correctly be said to be of the same color, rather than just forego the use of such expressions.

4. Hume and Content

It is important to see that taking ideas to have the sort of features impressions and objects can have is not to endorse the thesis that all ideas are in some literal sense images. John Yolton rightly questions whether we can have an image of an emotion, which is a paradigm case of a Humeanimpression. It seems at least odd to say that our idea of anger would be an image of anger. However, it can be phenomenologically accurate to say that remembering or imagining an emotion involves getting a faint copy of that

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emotion, one that instantiates at least many of the featuresof the emotion, including some obviously involving our bodies. Hume’s account of sympathy in fact involves the thesis that ideas of emotions just are faint copies of emotions that can be enlivened and become emotions.

Yolton also presents two kinds of arguments for saying that Humean ideas are mental contents, and so quite unlike their impressions. We have seen three reasons for thinking that the representing done by ideas is different from that done by mental contents. In addition, we have seen, and will continue to see, a number of passages in which Hume insists that ideas share features of impressions and objects, such as size. It is difficult to see how mental contents can have sizes. We are also about to encounter another argument for the interpretation of Humean ideas as Aristotelian representations, and that is the readings capacity for illuminating some of Hume’s arguments. Nonetheless, we must consider Yolton’s influential views.

One of Yolton’s arguments contains the claim that Hume applies “logical terms” to ideas, in addition to quantitative ones. Though Yolton does not explain what “logical” and “quantitative” mean in this context, the pointis that logical terms apply because of something like semantic properties, and Hume applies them to ideas. The conclusion is to be that ideas are or have semantic contents, or something like that. Anderson, who is one of Yolton’s targets, tellingly points out that objects also canenter into logical relations, and so Yolton’s argument failson the grounds that Hume is willing to apply logical terms to non-semantical objects. Anderson’s counter-claim is decisive; nothing can be claimed about semantic contents from Hume’s application of logical terms.

A second sort of argument is what we can think of as Yolton’s “argument from specific passages.” Yolton takes a substantive number of passages from Book One of the Treatiseto demonstrate his thesis that ideas are meanings, not things with the same sorts of properties as impressions.

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His reading are, however, more debatable than he appears to think. We can see this from two examples:

(1) Yolton takes the following passage from Hume to contrast an idea of a number with an image of a number:

When you tell me of the thousandth and ten thousandth part of a grain of sand, I have a distinct idea of these numbers and of their different proportions; but the images which I form in my mind to represent the things themselves, are nothing different from each other, nor inferior to that image, by which I represent the grain of sand itself, which is supposed so vastly to exceed them.

Hume: THN Bk. 1 Pt. 2 Sec. 1 Para. 4/5 p. 27

If he is right, then Hume’s contrast is between an idea ofX and an image of X. Yolton would then have a strong argument for saying that Humean ideas are not images with the sorts of properties they have seemed to have. However, Yolton appears to have misunderstood Hume’s contrast, which is between an idea of number and an image of a part of a grain of sand. Ideas of numbers, Hume tells us elsewhere, are generally ideas of decimals (T 23). The contrast is not, then, between ideas and images in general, but rather between an idea of X and an image of Y.

(2) Yolton takes the following passage to say that theidea of “itself” is or has a meaning:

First, as to the principle of individuation, wemay observe, that the view of any one object isnot sufficient to convey the idea of identity. For in that proposition, an object is the same with itself, if the idea expressed by the word object were no ways distinguished from that meantby itself; we really should mean nothing, nor would the proposition contain a predicate and asubject, which, however, are implied in this

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affirmation. One single object conveys the ideaof unity, not that of identity.

Hume: THN Bk. 1 Pt. 4 Sec. 2 Para. 27/57 p. 200

However, the passage is rather about the ideas that words express or mean, and the passage makes perfect sense if Humeis just talking about the ideas that words refer to or call to mind. Over the centuries, many different things have said to provide meanings, including pictures and “use;” hence, while Hume notoriously forges a very close connectionbetween the meaning of words and ideas derived from impressions, nothing commits him to saying that ideas are never images. Consequently, nothing in this passage forces on us the further interpretation that ideas are semantic contents.

Thus the argument that Humean ideas are semantic contents has not been made compellingly. But more importantly, there is another positive reason for taking ideas to have the features that impressions have. This is that the resulting relation between impressions and ideas underlies many of Hume’s other theories, and seeing this illuminates some of his most difficult arguments. Many of Hume’s arguments invoke the principle that since impressionsand ideas realize properties or features, they will have to satisfy the necessary conditions for realizing such features. In particular, as we will see in the case of duration, an idea of F will have to meet the conditions for realizing F in either objects or impressions. Accordingly, if the necessary conditions for realizing a feature cannot be found in ideas, then that feature is literally unrepresentable or, as we shall see, it is at best a fiction, a language-like creation that explains a tendency to claim to have a belief that we cannot find literally intelligible.

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Baxter, D. L. M. 2001. Hume on steadfast objects and time. Hume Studies 27 (1):129-148.

Brentano, Franz Clemens. 1973. Psychology from an empirical standpoint. Translated by A. C. Rancurello, O. Kraus andL. L. McAlister, International library of philosophy and scientific method. London, New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Humanities Press.

Caston, Victor. 1998. Aristotle and the Problem of Intentionality. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (2):249.

Huemer, Wolfgang. Franz Brentano 2009 [cited. Available from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/brentano.

King, Peter. 2007. Rethinking Representation in the Middle Ages: A Vade-Mecum to Mediaeval Theories of Mental Representation. In Representation and objects of thought in medieval philosophy, edited by H. Lagerlund. Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Lagerlund, Henrik. Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy 2008[cited. Available from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/representation-medieval.

Nadler, Steven M. 1989. Arnauld and the Cartesian philosophy of ideas,Studies in intellectual history and the history of philosophy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Pasnau, Robert. 1998. Aquinas and the Content Fallacy. Modern Schoolman: A Quarterly Journal of Philosophy 75 (4):293-314.

Shields, Christopher John. 2007. Aristotle, Routledge philosophers.London; New York: Routledge.

Stump, Eleonore. 2003. Aquinas, Arguments of the philosophers. London; New York: Routledge.

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