Hume's Blue Patch and the Mind's Creativity

Abstract

ed the rule governing the move from tone 1 to tone 2, tone 2 to tone 3, and have applied this rule to tone i to generate tonej without in fact having an idea of tone j in advance? (The fact that he cannot articulate this rule is irrelevant; this is often the case with regard to situations of how.) Conversely, failure to produce the tone would not necessarily indicate that the man in question does not have the idea of tone j-he may simply lack the degree of control over his vocal chords necessary to create that sound.32 Once more, Hume's example looks to be irrelevant on logical grounds-the subject may have the idea in question prior to the impression, but there is no way of either his or our knowing that he does. This objection is of course similar to the private language argument which is directed against contemporary Humean phenomenalistic empiricists.33 It thus appears that if the above argument is correct, Hume need not have supplied even this one contradictory example to his general principle, since the case in question cannot be tested and hence counts neither for nor against the principle. Colorado State University. 3'This argument was suggested to me by Linda M. Rollin. 32But see B. Croce, Aesthetic (New York, 1964) for an interesting alternative view. 33The argument is primarily due to Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.62 on Fri, 14 Jul 2017 17:38:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms