Knowledge that, knowledge how, and knowledge by Acquaintance

Descartes makes a distinction among the aboriginal and more general effects and the more occurrence effects which bed be deduced from principles or first causes. The primary effects can be deduced without great difficulty, but there is an infinity of particular effects which can be deducted from the identical first principles, raising the issue of how we are to distinguish betwixt the effects which actu all toldy pull back place and those which might take place but do not. Descartes here says that this can be accomplished by empirical observation and experimentation. Yet, though Descartes agrees that experimentation can reveal much slightly scientific familiarity of the world, the ideal for him remains the deductive method. He recognizes that we cannot do without the cultivation provided by experience, and indeed such knowledge is necessary as a way of gathering the data needed for the deductive method (Copleston 81-83)..

Hume represents the empiricist approach and follows Locke to see all human knowledge as deriving from experience. He sees the contents of the mind as perceptions, implying that they have been observed in some empirical fashion, and he divides these perceptions into impressions and ideas. Impressions derive from the immediate data of experience through the senses, trance the latter, the ideas, are seen by Hume as the copies or faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning. Another way he

contrasts the two is in terms of their vividness, or the layer of power with which they infuse themselves into the mind.

The perceptions which have the most power and show the mind with the most force are called impressions, and these include all our sensations as well as our emotions and passions. Ideas, on the other hand, are the faint images appearing in thinking and reasoning. They are middling like recollections of the earlier, stronger impressions. In a broad sense, Hume is trying to differentiate between the immediate data of experience and the thoughts we have about that data.

However complex this analysis of the different types of ideas and impressions may get, the underlie truth of the approach is that experience is necessary for there to be knowledge. Generally, Hume rejects a priori knowledge entirely, though experience can be indirect and can lead to the creation of what seem to be a priori or innate ideas. Hume considers the meaning of subject and concludes that we can have no idea of the meaning of substance pretermit as a collection of particular qualities. The concept of substance is thus inferred from concrete impressions based on experience, and the
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