Hume's phenomenalism threatens to reduce my first person awareness of my physical engagement (push and pull) to a collection of atomistic sensations (for example, pushing would be reduced to the sensation of many pressure points). Perhaps the best way to show the absurdity of this claim is to reflect on the very experience of conveying or receiving via written or spoken words, Hume's phenomenalist account. The experience of communicating is more than the sum of its parts, atomistically considered: otherwise, it would not involve any communicative activity. To consider this sort of experience atomistically (as Hume would have us do) would be to reduce it to a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
To apply a Humean analysis to the communication of Humean ideas would be to reduce those words to a kind of silence.
On the other hand, just as the communicative activity is greater than the sum of its parts, atomistically conceived, so too is the self more than the sum of impressions...etc.
To apply a Humean analysis to the communication of Humean ideas would be to reduce those words to a kind of silence.
On the other hand, just as the communicative activity is greater than the sum of its parts, atomistically conceived, so too is the self more than the sum of impressions...etc.
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