1 At the opening of the Enquiry, Hume distinguishes two types of philosophy. What does he see as the primary weakness of the more popular, literary type?
Correct. Hume distinguishes between an 'easy and obvious' philosophy that paints virtue in attractive colors and an 'accurate and abstruse' philosophy that investigates the underlying principles of human understanding. The popular type entertains but never digs beneath the surface.
Hume's complaint about the popular, literary type of philosophy is not that it is too logical or too technical, but that it contents itself with surface-level appeals to sentiment without examining the principles that govern thought. Review Section 1 of the Enquiry.
2 Hume's stated ambition in the Enquiry is modeled on Newton's achievement in physics. What exactly does Hume hope to do for the mind that Newton did for bodies?
Correct. Just as Newton reduced the motions of all physical bodies to a few simple laws, Hume hopes to discover a small number of general principles that explain all the operations of the human mind — an ambitious program he calls the 'science of man.'
Hume does not aim to prove the mind's independence, demonstrate that mental events obey physical laws, or establish God's existence. His goal is descriptive: to find the simple principles behind all mental operations, just as Newton found laws behind physical motion. Review Section 1.
3 According to Hume, what is the primary difference between impressions and ideas?
Correct. The distinction between impressions and ideas rests entirely on their degree of force and vivacity. Impressions — sensations, passions, emotions as they first appear — are lively and forceful; ideas are the faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning.
Hume's distinction is not about where perceptions come from, their complexity, or their truth value. It is about intensity: impressions strike the mind with greater force and vivacity than the fainter copies we call ideas. Review the Impressions and Ideas lecture page.
4 Hume's Copy Principle states that every simple idea is a copy of a corresponding simple impression. What is the philosophical significance of this principle?
Correct. The Copy Principle functions as an empiricist test for meaning: if you cannot trace a philosophical concept back to some original impression, the concept is suspect and may be empty. This principle becomes Hume's most powerful critical tool throughout the Enquiry.
The Copy Principle does not prove the external world exists or rank complex ideas above simple ones. Its philosophical significance is as a criterion of meaning — a way to test whether any concept has genuine content by asking what impression it copies. Review the Impressions and Ideas lecture.
5 Hume acknowledges that the imagination can form ideas of things never directly experienced — for example, a golden mountain. How does he account for this without abandoning the Copy Principle?
Correct. The imagination can recombine simple ideas that each copy a real impression — the idea of gold and the idea of a mountain — into the complex idea of a golden mountain. The Copy Principle is preserved because imagination assembles but does not create from nothing.
Hume does not appeal to past lives, grant exceptions to the Copy Principle, or deny that we have the idea. His answer is that complex ideas are built from simple ones, each of which traces back to an impression. The imagination recombines but never invents entirely new content. Review the Impressions and Ideas lecture.
6 Hume identifies three principles by which ideas become associated in the mind. Which of the following correctly identifies all three?
Correct. Hume identifies exactly three principles of association: resemblance (a portrait makes us think of the person), contiguity in time or place (mentioning one room makes us think of adjoining rooms), and cause and effect (thinking of a wound makes us think of the pain that follows).
Contrast, identity, temporal sequence, and emotional association are not among Hume's three principles. The three are resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect — and Hume treats these as the only natural relations connecting ideas in the mind. Review the Impressions and Ideas lecture.
7 When Hume describes the three laws of association, he is careful to say that these are laws governing the way the mind connects ideas — not laws about how the external world works. Why does this distinction matter?
Correct. By describing association as a 'gentle force' that habitually connects ideas, Hume deliberately leaves open whether these mental connections — especially causal ones — correspond to real connections in the world. This sets up his critical investigation of causation in Section 4.
The distinction matters not because Hume is doing psychology instead of philosophy, or because emotions are excluded. It matters because describing how the mind connects ideas is different from showing that those connections track reality — a question Hume takes up when he examines causation. Review the Impressions and Ideas lecture.
8 Hume's Fork divides all objects of human reason into "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact." Which of the following statements is true of relations of ideas?
Correct. Relations of ideas — such as mathematical and logical truths — are knowable by the operation of thought alone, and their denial involves a contradiction. This is one prong of Hume's Fork; the other prong, matters of fact, depends on experience and admits of conceivable contraries.
Relations of ideas are not discovered through observation, nor are their contraries merely unlikely — their contraries are inconceivable. Claims about God, the soul, and the external world fall under matters of fact, the other side of Hume's Fork. Review the Causation and Induction lecture.
9 Hume says that all reasoning about matters of fact is founded on the relation of cause and effect. Why does he then go on to argue that this relation itself cannot be established by reason?
Correct. Hume argues that no amount of pure reasoning can reveal what effect will follow from a given cause, because the effect is an entirely distinct event from the cause. Without prior experience, a person confronting a billiard ball collision for the first time could not deduce the outcome.
Hume's argument is not that the senses are unreliable or that causation is an illusion. His point is more precise: there is no logically necessary connection between any cause and its effect that reason alone could detect. Experience is always required. Review the Causation and Induction lecture.
10 Hume's problem of induction shows that we cannot rationally justify the belief that the future will resemble the past. What makes any attempted justification circular?
Correct. Any attempt to justify induction from experience is circular: 'the future will resemble the past because it always has' already assumes the uniformity of nature — the very principle it is supposed to establish. This is Hume's famous problem of induction.
The circularity is not about deduction being inapplicable or the future being unobservable. It is specifically about using past experience to justify reliance on past experience — which presupposes exactly what needs to be proved. Review the Causation and Induction lecture.