ABSTRACT
Hume’s theory of ideas and their associative relations figures centrally in the Treatise and in his other philosophical works. In Book 1 of the Treatise, Hume attempts to follow his curiosity to fully examine and attempt to discover the “other qualities” beyond the origin of simple ideas in simple impressions. Hume describes this as the subject of the Treatise. This chapter shows the explanatory role of the theory of ideas and the principles of association in Hume’s accounts of space and time, causation, belief, our conception of the external world, and the self.
