by G. J. Mattey
Appendix
Context
The Appendix to the Treatise was added with the publication of Book III in November, 1740. Some parts of the Appendix are inserted into the text, as the author directed. The remaining parts are appended to the end of the book.
Background
The Appendix is a commentary on two doctrines found in the body of the Treatise. The first is that of the nature of belief, which was the topic of Book I, Part III, Sections 7-10. The second concerns the account of personal identity, given in Book I, Part IV, Section 6.
1. The author welcomes the opportunity to correct his errors, as this shows not only how well his understanding works but also “the candour and ingenuity of his temper.” He thinks he has found only one mistake that is “very considerable,” but as well that some of his expressions might induce mistakes by the reader. Here he will point out the mistake [concerning his account of personal identity, beginning in paragraph 10 below]. He will also try to improve his manner of exposition so as to aid the reader in avoiding error, “and ’tis chiefly to remedy this defect, I have subjoin’d the following appendix.”
2. All belief concerning “any matter of fact” is the result of the presence of its cause or its effect. The cause or effect of the matter of fact may be “direct or collateral.” But few have asked about the nature of the belief that arises from the presence of the cause or effect of a matter of fact. The author presents a dilemma which he thinks to be “inevitable.” There are two possible ways in which a belief in a matter of fact might exist: either as a new idea, perhaps of reality or of existence, that is attached to “the simple conception of the object” or as “merely a peculiar feeling or sentiment.” [The mere conception, or idea, of an object is not by itself a belief, and the only objects of the mind that could be added to the conception are ideas (copies of impressions) or secondary impressions, i.e., feelings or sentiments. The addition of a primary impression, a sensation, is not considered here.] Two arguments are given for why the belief is not a new idea. The first is that there is no abstract idea of existence [or of reality] that is distinct from the conception of the object itself. [This claim is defended in Book I, Part II, Section 6.] Since the idea of existence [or reality] is not something separate that can be attached to the idea of the object, its attachment cannot spell the difference between belief of an object and the mere conception of it. The second argument is that if belief were the attachment of a new idea to the conception of an object, we could believe anything, since the mind has the power to attach any idea to any other. “The mind has command over all its ideas, and can separate, unite, mix, and vary them as it pleases” [See Book I, Part I, Sections 3 and 4 for arguments to support this claim]. The author implicitly in the next sentence dismisses the possibility of our complete control over our belief, in which case the conception of the object is not converted into a belief by the addition of a new idea. [Here he anticipates contemporary philosophers who reject “doxastic voluntarism.”] Since the first horn of the dilemma has been rejected, the author accepts the second horn: “We may, therefore, conclude, that belief consists merely in a certain feeling or sentiment; in something that depends not on the will, but must arise from certain determinate causes and principles, of which we are not masters.” Conviction or belief of a matter of fact is a composite of a conception and a feeling—a feeling different from that which accompanies what we merely imagine. To say that we do not believe in a matter of fact (that we are incredulous of it) is just to say that “the arguments for the fact produce not that feeling.” The feeling is the only thing that distinguishes belief based on experience and history from any the conception of “whatever objects were presented by the wildest imagination.” These would “be on an equal footing” otherwise.
3. The author thinks that he has established as “an undoubted truth, that belief is nothing but a peculiar feeling, different from the simple conception. ” It is natural then to ask, “What is the nature of this feeling, or sentiment, and whether it be analogous to any other sentiment of the human mind?” He answers the first question by describing the feeling in terms of the “firmness and solidity” of the conception itself. In comparison with the loose and lazy ideas of the imagination, he conceptions of which we are convinced ”strike us with more force; they are more present to us; the mind has a firmer hold of them, and is more actuated and mov’d by them. It acquiesces in them; and, in a manner, fixes and reposes itself on them.” This description of the nature of the feeling leads to an answer to the second part of the question. Conviction is in fact analogous to another sentiment of the human mind, namely, to impressions which are immediately present to the mind. And if this is so, we may be able to explain its causes rather than take it to be “an original principle of the human mind.” The analogy with impressions might, then allow us to “trace [conviction] to more general principles.”
4. However, the claim that belief is a peculiar feeling does not by itself establish the conclusion that it is the firmness and solidity of the conception of the object. Another possibility is that belief is a feeling distinct from the conception, rather than being a kind of modification of the conception. That is, the author must rule out the possibility that “belief, beside the simple conception, consists in some impression or feeling, distinguishable from the conception.” This “hypothesis” is attacked by the author, who brings forward four considerations that he hopes would be sufficient to “remove” it. The first consideration occupies the remainder of the present paragraph, and it is that the hypothesis of a distinguishable impression “is directly contrary to experience, and our immediate consciousness.” The author begins to defend this claim by describing the process of reasoning. When reasoning, we deal exclusively with ideas, and specifically, the conclusion that we draw is nothing more than an idea. The ideas involved in reasoning may vary with respect to how they feel to us, but they are in the end only ideas. An example is given, in which the author hears the voice of someone he knows coming from the next room. His mind moves from the impression of the voice to the idea of the person as being the other room, which itself is arranged just as he knows it has been. “These ideas take faster hold of my mind, than the ideas of an enchanted castle. They are different to the feeling; but there is no distinct or separate impression attending them.” The next example involves memory, in which there are ideas that have the status of beliefs. Again, it is a matter of “plain experience” that the ideas differ in feeling from those of fantasy but are not accompanied by a separate impression. The author allows that there are some cases in which there is a separate impression accompanying belief, though this is not what makes it a belief. In some cases the mind is racked with doubt, comes upon a new argument, and comes to rest in belief. This transition “from doubt and agitation to tranquillity and repose, conveys a satisfaction and pleasure to the mind.” But in other cases of belief, this separate impression is not to be found. The author gives as an example the view of the legs of a person moving, while the rest of the body is obscured. His thought and imagination lead him to the belief that there is a complete body there. Nothing more than thought and imagination are involved in the production of the belief. “The transition is immediate. The ideas presently strike us. Their customary connexion with the present impression, varies them and modifies them in a certain manner, but produces no act of the mind, distinct from this peculiarity of conception.” The author claims that everyone will experience this process as he has described it. There is no separate impression in such cases.
5. The second consideration appeals to parsimony. Since we do in our experience find that our conceptions are enlivened in the case of belief in a way they are not with fiction, why should we think there is a separate impression, which is not necessary to distinguish belief from mere imagining?
6. The third consideration is that the causes of the enlivening of the conception can be explained, but that there is no explanation of the existence of a separate impression. [The explanation is given in Book I, Part III, Section 8: “when any impression becomes present to us, it not only transports the mind to such ideas as are related to it, but likewise communicates to them a share of its force and vivacity.”] This explanation accounts for the vivacity of belief but nothing more, and certainly not the production of a new impression. “An inference concerning a matter of fact is nothing but the idea of an object, that has been frequently conjoin’d, or is associated with a present impression. This is the whole of it.” The likeness (“analogy”) between the present impression and the idea is required to explain the steadiness of the idea, but there is nothing in it to explain the generation of a new impression.
7. The fourth and final consideration given here is that understanding belief as a firm conception is sufficient to explain the influence of belief on the passions and imagination. [See Book I, Part III, Section 10 regarding the influence of belief on the imagination and Book II, Part III, Section 6 regarding its influence on the passions. Aside from these four considerations, there are “many others, enumerated in the foregoing volumes,” which together constitute sufficient proof, “that belief only modifies the idea or conception; and renders it different to the feeling, without producing any distinct impression.”
8. The author now begins to summarize his findings. He first enunciates the two questions he has been considering, and which he recommends “to the consideration of the philosophers.” The first is whether anything besides the feeling or sentiment distinguishes a mere conception of an object from a belief of it. The second is whether this feeling itself is anything besides “a firmer conception, or a faster hold, that we take of the object.”
9. Given that these questions are settled as the author has argued, that belief is nothing but a feeling which is a firm conception, it remains to describe how “the firmness and strength of conception” is caused. This requires looking at the “analogy, which there is betwixt belief, and other acts of the mind.” The author thinks that this requires no great effort. The liveliness of a present impression is always transferred to related ideas, so that when we have an impression of an object, “the idea of its usual attendant immediately strikes us, as something real and solid. ’Tis felt, rather than conceiv’d, and approaches the impression from which it is deriv’d, in its force and influence.” The author states that he has already proved this and can add no new arguments for it. But he allows that he could have stated his arguments better. So he adds some material to those argument [found in the relevant Sections of the text], as well as adding some further illustrations.
10. The author now turns to a second topic in his “theory of the intellectual world.” He notes that theories of the “material world” all appear to give rise to “contradictions and absurdities.” He hoped that his theory of the mind would be free from such problems, no matter how deficient it might be in other respects. But there is one part of his theory, that concerning personal identity (the topic of Book I, Part IV, Section 6), which seems to be on the same footing with the theories of the material world. He laments that he is “involv“d in such a labyrinth, that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent.” This may be a general reason for skepticism (of which he has enough already), but even if it is not, it is enough to make him proceed with caution in all the conclusions he draws. [There is a problem reconciling two conclusions he had drawn in his account of personal identity.] “I shall propose the arguments on both sides, beginning with those that induc’d me to deny the strict and proper identity and simplicity of a self or thinking being.” [The other conclusion is that despite the lack of real personal identity, there is a fictitious identity that we ascribe to ourselves, due to the activity of the imagination. See paragraphs 11 and following of Book I, Part IV, Section 6.]
11. If the terms ‘self’ and ‘substance’ are to have any meaning, they must be connected to an idea. According to the doctrine set down in Book I, Part I, Section 1, every idea is a copy of an impression. But there is no impression of a simple and identical self or substance, so there is no idea of such a thing. [See Book I, Part IV, Section Section 6, paragraph 2 and Section 5, paragraph 2, respectively.]
12. The author now appeals to another principle he had stated at many points, “Whatever is distinct is distinguishable; and whatever is distinguishable is separable by the thought or imagination.” Because all of our perceptions are distinct, they are all distinguishable and therefore separable in the mind. If they can be conceived separately, they can “exist separately, without any contradiction or absurdity.”
13. The author backs up his claim about the possible separate existence of perceptions with an analogy with material things. Common people believe that a table and a chimney which I perceive exist separately from each other, and there is no contradiction in this view. Philosophers go on to say that the table and chimney themselves are nothing but perceptions, so the perceptions of the table and the chimney exist separately from each other, and there is no contradiction in this view, either. There is no reason not to generalize the possible separate existence of the perceptions making up tables and chairs to all perceptions. [In that case, the perceptions of the self can exist separately.]
14. The author summarizes the argument, “which seems satisfactory,” to this point. Every idea is a copy of a previous perception, so our ideas of material objects are copies of perceptions as well. So, what can be said consistently about material objects, through the ideas we have of them, can be said intelligibly or consistently about the perceptions from which those ideas arose: “no proposition can be intelligible or consistent with regard to objects, which is not so with regard to perceptions.” We can say intelligibly or consistently about material objects that they can exist separately and independently, which is to say that they need not inhere in a simple substance. So, perceptions need not inhere in a simple substance.
15. Perceiving the “self” reflectively requires perceptions and in fact, the perceptions are the only things that can be perceived of the self. The author claims that it follows that the self is nothing more than the composition of the perceptions we have upon reflection.
16. The author backs up his claim with a thought-experiment. First, he allows that the number of perceptions making up a thinking being might be many, few, or even one. He supposes that there is a thinking being with a mind even less extensive than that of an oyster, with a single perception, such as one of thirst or hunger. When we conceive of such a mind, all that we conceive is the single perception, not a notion of a self or a substance. And adding perceptions will not generate such a notion.
17. A second supporting example is that of the annihilation of the mind which some people claims occurs at death. Suppose there is no more self after death. Then there will be no more perceptions: “the one [the perceptions] cannot survive the other [the self].” On the other hand, if there are no more perceptions, e.g., “love and hatred, pain and pleasure, thought and sensation,” there is no more self, because the destruction of the self just is the end of these ideas. The author concludes from this that the perceptions must be the self.
18. Perhaps it will be said that the self is the same as substance. Here, the author notes the possibility that the self might endure even if its substance changes. [This possibility was raised by Locke in his Essay, Book II, Chapter 27, Section 12.] If this is possible, then the self is not identical to substance. On the other hand, if the self and substance are different, what differentiates them? “For my part, I have a notion of neither, when conceiv’d distinct from particular perceptions.”
19. The author notes that philosophers [here meaning Berkeley, as in the Principles of Human Knowledge] have come around to the notion that there is no idea of external substance distinct from the idea of the qualities of external things. “This must pave the way for a like principle with regard to the mind, that we have no notion of it, distinct from the particular perceptions.”
20. This completes the process of “loosening” the perceptions that make up the self from one another [by arguing that there is no conception of a simple and individual self or substance]. In Book I, Part IV, Section 6, beginning at paragraph 11, the author had attempted to explain how these perceptions are connected with one another. He now recognizes that “when I proceed to explain the principle of connexion, which binds them together, and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity; I am sensible, that my account is very defective, and that nothing but the seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings cou’d have induc’d me to receive it.” [That is, unless he had argued convincingly that the perceptions making up the self exist distinctly from one another, he would not have devised an explanation of how we come to combine them into the notion of a single thing.] The problem with the account is that we are unable to discover a connecting principle, but instead, we only feel a determination of the mind to connect the perceptions. “It follows, therefore, that the thought alone finds personal identity, when reflecting on the train of past perceptions, that compose a mind, the ideas of them are felt to be connected together, and naturally introduce each other.” [The account in Book I, Part IV, Section 6 of the connection of perceptions makes causation the connecting principle. The idea of causation, in turn, is said in Book I, Part III, Section 2, paragraph 11, to be based primarily on that of a necessary connection. The idea of a necessary connection, in turn, is described in Book I, Part III, Section 14 as a felt determination of the mind.] The author notes that this account shows some promise, in that it conforms to the contemporary view held by most philosophers that personal identity arises from consciousness. [See Locke’s Book II, Chapter 27, Section 9.] These philosophers think that consciousness itself “is nothing but a reflected thought or perception.” [Here the author seems to have in mind self-consciousness.] The promise vanishes, however, because the author can find no satisfactory way to explain “the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness.” [The author does not state why he can find no satisfactory theory. One possibility is discussed in the notes to Book I, Part IV, Section 6, under “Appendix.”]
21. The author now summarizes his position. There are two principles, which he “cannot render consistent,” yet neither of which he is able to renounce. All distinct perceptions are separate existences, and no principle of connection can be perceived to hold between separate existences. [By “consistent” here, the author may mean something like “components of a satisfactory theory of personal identity.”] There would be no problem if either of the two principles were false. If distinct perceptions were not separate existences, but “inhere in something simple and individual,” then there is no need of an additional connecting principle. And if a satisfactory connecting principle could be discovered, then there would be no problem with the separate existence of perceptions. The author finds the problem too difficult for him to resolve and takes a skeptical attitude, allowing that someone might some day “discover some hypothesis, that might reconcile those contradictions.”
22. Having just described his significant “error,” the author turns to two lesser ones that he discovered upon mature reflection. The first concerns his claim in Book I, Part II, Section 5, paragraph 11 that one way in which we judge distance is by the angles formed by rays of light coming from a body. The author states instead that “’Tis certain, that these angles are not known to the mind, and consequently can never discover the distance.” [The author does not explain why these angles cannot be known to the mind, but one plausible explanation is that there is no impression of them. See Berkeley’s Essay towards a new theory of Vision, which argues against the theory in Descartes’s Optics that we judge of distances by angles.] The second error was the claim that the only difference between two ideas of the same object can be in their degree of force and vivacity. [This claim appears in Book I, Part III, Section 7, paragraph 5.] He now believes “that there are other differences among ideas, which cannot properly be comprehended under these terms.” The more generic term ‘feeling’ should have been used instead to get “nearer the truth.” [The author does not state in what way there may be a difference in feeling which is not a difference of force and vivacity.]