Principle 1: There are No Innate A Priori Ideas
Table of Contents
How do simple ideas and impressions exist?
Which of the impressions and ideas are causes and effects?
I establish a general proposition: our simple ideas, in their first appearance, come from simple impressions.
- These impressions match those ideas.
- Those ideas exactly represent those impressions.
In other words:
- every simple impression has a correspondent idea
- every simple idea has a correspondent impression
This is the constant conjunction of resembling perceptions.
This means that:
- our correspondent impressions and ideas are connected
- the existence of the one influences the other.
This constant conjunction can never arise from chance.
It clearly shows a dependence of:
- the impressions on the ideas, or
- the ideas on the impressions.
Simple impressions always precede their correspondent ideas.
Thinking of a thing does not lead to that thing existing in reality.
But we get ideas from things in reality.
The constant conjunction of our resembling perceptions shows that impressions cause ideas.
Exception and Limitation of the General Maxim
If the senses are faulty, as when one is born blind or deaf, the impressions and their correspondent ideas are lost.
Their smallest traces never appear in the mind.
This is true where the senses are:
- entirely destroyed, and
- never used.
We cannot create an idea of a pineapple’s taste without tasting it.
This shows that it is not absolutely impossible for ideas to go before their impressions.
Principle 1: There are No Innate A Priori Ideas
This is my first principle in the science of human nature.
This question on the sequence of our impressions or ideas is the same as the question whether:
- there are any innate ideas [ a priori ], or
- all ideas are derived from sensation and reflection. [ a posteriori ]
To prove that the ideas of space and colour are not innate, philosophers only show that ideas are conveyed by our senses.
To prove that the ideas of passion and desire are not innate, they say that we already have an experience of these emotions in ourselves.
These arguments only prove that ideas are preceded by other more lively perceptions:
- from which they are derived, and
- which they represent.