Discuss the associative principles of contiguity, resemblance, and cause and effect as Hume used them.
David Hume was a philosopher, economist, historian and essayist, who proposed the highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism and naturalism. He was skeptical about the religious beliefs and argued that religion is both irrational and impractical. He explained the importance of relation between science and the human nature. He wanted to reform moral philosophy using Newtonian methods, and was impressed of Newtonian works on natural philosophy.
Hume observed that there are similarities in the associations of all humans and he considered it as one of his greatest achievements. He was dependent on the principles of association like Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke and Berkeley. Hume claims that there are three types of laws of association, which are as follows:
i. Law of contiguity: It states that when one think about an object, he recalls other objects that are experienced previously at the same time and same place. Example includes remembering the giver, while seeing a gift.
ii. Law of resemblance: It states that one’s thoughts run from one idea to other ideas. Example would include thinking about the object experienced earlier, while seeing a picture of it.
iii. Law of cause and effect: It states that when we see or think of an outcome, we care more likely to expect the event preceding that outcome. Example includes thinking of a wound, which would make us think of the pain caused by it.
Apart from these three laws, he also emphasized in his book “Treatise” that two unconnected ideas can make us think of the third idea, which runs by the principle of those two ideas. He also mentioned that if the ideas were combined only through imagination, then they would be unconnected and loose. Thus, he proposed the above mentioned laws to hold the perceptions and ideas.