ABSTRACT
David Hume begins the Treatise by drawing a distinction between impressions and ideas. He wrote: All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which call Impressions and Ideas. The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into thought or consciousness. In ‘Of Relations’ is Hume distinguishes between two senses of the term ‘relation’. In one sense, a relation is ‘that particular circumstance, in which, even upon arbitrary union of two ideas in the fancy, we may think proper to compare them’. In the other sense, a relation is ‘that quality, by which together in the imagination, one naturally introduces the other’. Hume’s discussion of abstract ideas is a critical discussion of the common account of abstraction and linguistic meaning. Abstract ideas are determinate in quantity and quality.
