How impressions become ideas—and how that shapes what we know. This section distills the Humean turn in Cushman’s history, showing how perception, memory, and imagination knit together into a theory of knowledge.
Readers will follow the argument from impressions to ideas, the three laws of association, and the debate over matters of fact, resemblance, and causation. The excerpt clarifies how a sensationalist view explains thought, belief, and the limits of certainty, with eye toward the wider landscape of early modern philosophy.
- How impressions generate ideas and the role of feelings in mental life
- Three laws of association: resemblance, contiguity, and causation
- The distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas
- Why mathematics is treated as a demonstrative science in this view
Ideal for readers interested in the roots of empirical philosophy and the Enlightenment era.