ns. These perceptions can by from one of two categories: impressions or ideas. He said that impressions are what gave us the ability to have ideas. Hume also believed that since everyone has different impressions, no one is alike. This is also contrary to what Descartes claimed. Hume said that there are three different ways perceptions can be classified: resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. Resemblance is like when a picture makes you think of the original scene. Contiguity is when a dog is mentioned, it makes you think of other dogs, and cause and effect is when you think of a wound, and you associate it with the pain and bleeding that follows. Hume also believed that causation was the method that humans used to reason, to go beyond just impressions and memories. Since causation is developed through experience, it is evident that Hume fits the mold of the empiricist. Hume said that this reason developed from experience could be separated into two areas. One is relations of ideas, or things such as mathematics and logic, which can be considered certain because it just relates ideas to one another. Hume says, Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought (Hume 71). The other one is matters of fact, or reasoning gained from perceptions. It is based on the idea of cause and effect; if we see something happen after something enough times, we call it the effect and the former the cause. However, Hume is quick to point out that the conclusions we draw from our perceptions are not necessarily true. He says, The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible (Hume 71). He makes the example that we cannot be sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, even though it has every other day of our life. Because of this claim, he believed that obtaining real knowledge was impossible. Both Descartes and Hume made excellent arguments for their beliefs, and both schools of philosophy became ...
