November 29: David Hume is bitchy

Hume. The toga is not slimming.

This will be brief because it's David Hume and, as noted, I don't cotton to philosophy. But, in all honesty, Hume doesn't seem to care too much for it either:

All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas;...

On the contrary, all impressions, that is, all sensations, either outward or inward, are strong and vivid: the limits between them are more exactly determined; nor is it easy to fall into any error or mistake with regard to them.

I don't know if Hume thinks philosophy is better than a sharp stick in the eye, but the sharp stick is certainly easier to comprehend.

This will also be brief because the reading is brief and makes a simple point, which I will express in an equation:

Thoughts = experiences + additives

Where "additives" means our fooling around with experiences, like making a mountain out of gold. Or a molehill. Or making God out of a molehill, which Hume suggests we do:

First, when we analyze our thoughts or ideas, however compounded or sublime, we always find that they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment. Even those ideas, which, at first view, seem the most wide of this origin, are found, upon a nearer scrutiny, to be derived from it. The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.

Clever Hume, to make God appear small and made up without literally saying that, since he would have been tarred and/or feathered had he done so.

Oh, and here's Hume being bitchy:

I must own it to be my opinion, that LOCKE was betrayed into this question by the schoolmen, who, making use of undefined terms, draw out their disputes to a tedious length, without ever touching the point in question. A like ambiguity and circumlocution seem to run through that philosopher’s reasonings on this as well as most other subjects.

Meow! Add a pair of thick, black-framed glasses and Hume could be a fashion editor.