David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Understanding | The Shade of Blue Example | Core Concepts
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- čas přidán 15. 11. 2019
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This is a video in my new Core Concepts series -- designed to provide students and lifelong learners a brief discussion focused on one main concept from a classic philosophical text and thinker.
This Core Concept video focuses on David Hume's work, the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and discusses the exception he makes to his general rule that ideas must come in some way from experience, the famous "missing shade of blue" example.
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Man I just hit the JACKPOT by discovering your incredible youtube channel.
Thanks!
I think there might be a pretty good real-world example in linguistics - the International Phonetic Alphabet is organized in a chart according to where in the mouth a given sound is made (e.g. dental, glottal, etc.), and how that sound is made (e.g. fricative, plosive, etc.). The table has quite a few empty spaces, some are empty because no language that they've checked uses those sounds, and some are empty because human beings cannot produce those sounds, so it might be an interesting exercise to try to imagine some of those sounds, or even to try to make the sounds that are possible to make for humans and see if they sound like we imagined
I really like these videos - thank you for making them!
Glad you enjoy the videos.
If I had been David Hume, and had noticed this missing shade case, I most certainly would have altered my general maxim! It seems clear that we’re grasping this shade of blue through the intellect, or something other than perception. Why does he feel confident moving forward, especially given that you can replicate equivalent exceptions with the other senses, like taste, sound, etc.?
It's a rare exception. Read the text, as I always say
Yeaaaah!
I feel like this example is less about understanding an exception and more about creating a bulwark against a priori sources of human knowledge.
Hume grounds the example in sensational experiences. The man has good eyesight and has seen every single shade of blue except for one. Once that is established, the man sees every shade of blue laid out before him in a gradient. From this, Hume believes the man has enough information to imagine the missing shade of blue. Why is that?
The most important detail, I think, is that these colors are laid out in some order of lightest to darkest or vice versa. If the shades of blue are in some order, then the man is gaining experience of the gradation of the color blue. He can also see this gradation's process (how much the shades change as the gradient progresses) as he gazes at the shades. So the man now has two experiences with which he can construct this missing shade in his imagination. The first being the gradation of the shades of blue, and the second being the shades of blue themselves. By combining these two ideas of gradation of blue and the shades of blue, Hume gives the man the ability to imagine something which he has never experienced before.
In short: Being able to imagine the shade of blue is still grounded in Hume's idea of the imagination needing material from experience to construct things. Laying out the shades of blue in order and giving the man prior experience with shades themselves allows the man to construct the missing shade. Thus, there is is no need to rely upon the a priori to give the man the ability to imagine something which he has never directly experienced and still accurate to the empirical world.
I guess anyone can feel anything they like
It is often describes as a problem, but I don't see it. Where exactly is the problem?
Whether or not a person can imagine a shade of blue they've never encountered. You can call it a problem, a question, or whatever you like. You don't want to get stuck on terminology here
@@GregoryBSadler
Thank you for your quick response! I need to address this so-called problem in an essay. Thus far, the sole discernible issue I can identify is the argument's lack of semantic coherence, as it relies on preexisting ideas regarding the shades of blue and their resulting combination, ultimately failing to offer anything genuinely innovative. Am I at least on the right path? :) And great video!!!
@@ellasimon7760 Every argument relies on something. And arguments don't need to be or offer something innovative. Good luck with your project
I dont think he would be able to imagine that shade of blue. Only the shade of blue closest to that shade whoch he had experienced. He may be able to imagine seeing those colors overlaping.
Imagine if we had a checker pattern. Imagine it had these 2 shades of blue. Now imagine this checker patter dividing so that the image is the same size but the idnovidual squares are smaller and more numerous. Eventually you would be able to come close to what this shade would look like, but never close enough to actually imagine it
Hume thinks one would
Can the idea of God be one of those exceptions? Or we have nothing to “support” it?
Is God like a color in between other colors we've experienced?
Not even close, but then where did we get that ideia? Can we say that it’s the conjunction of multiple simple ideias? Is it a complex ideia?
@@franciscobalau7224 That's an entirely separate question then
you repeatedly ascribe 'interesting' to this enquiry, rather like a promissory note
Well, it is interesting.