Term Papers on Hume And Descartes On The Theory Of Ideas

Term Paper Title	Hume And Descartes On The Theory Of Ideas
# of Words	578
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.31

Hume and Descartes on The Theory of Ideas

     David Hume and Rene Descartes are philosophers with opposing views about
the origination of ideas.  Descartes believed there were three types of ideas
which are, innate, adventitious and those from imagination.  He stated since he
exists and his idea of what a perfect being is, such as God, then God exists.
Hume, on the other had, believed ideas came only from one thing, impressions.
Both theories have their strengths and weaknesses but I like Hume's theory
better than Descartes.
     Descartes believed imagination could not help humans.  Descartes'
definition of ideas was, only things which exist in the mind and represent other
things are called ideas. His argument was the nature of the ideas which make up
the mind could gain an idea about God, but instead, humans could think about God
by other means.  A major strength of Descartes was his idea of objective reality,
which is one's perception of reality.  If something accurately represents
something, then it is objective reality, according to him.  I believe this is a
strength of his because of his convincing argument,  "If the objective reality
of any one of my ideas is found to be so great that I am certain that the same
reality was not in me…therefore I myself cannot be the cause of the idea, then
it  necessarily follows that I am not alone in the world, but that something
else, which is the cause of this idea, also exists" (75).  Descartes weakness is
his idea of innate ideas.  It is not necessarily correct to say people have a
mind the minute they are born, instead they have gained it after being living
for some time.  Descartes position on innate ideas is open to criticism; innate
ideas should be predicted not thought of.  There is no certainty that the nature
in which the idea is explained shou...

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