Qualities and Simple Ideas: Hume and his Debt to Berkeley

Abstract

In early modern empiricist theories of ideas, there is a tight theoretical linkage between qualities and simple ideas. In Locke's theory, knowledge of the qualities of objects is based on the simple ideas they cause. In Berkeley, there is a tendency to reduce qualities to a kind of simple idea, namely, the minimum sensibile. This chapter argues that Hume extends Berkeley's version of the theory by developing the insight that simple ideas are not experienced as simple. According to Hume, experience ultimately consists only of simple ideas, but the simplicity of the ideas is not directly experienced. This means that the simplicity of simple ideas is a theoretical posit. The chapter argues that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is pragmatic rather than metaphysical.

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