The Thoughts Of Hume In Systemic Functional Linguistics [3]

Russell (1961: 635):

There is a section (Book I, part i, sec. vii) 'Of Abstract Ideas', which opens with a paragraph of emphatic agreement with Berkeley's doctrine that 'all general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive significance, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them.'  He contends that, when we have an idea of a man, it has all the particularity that the impression of a man has.  'The mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of degrees of each.'  'Abstract ideas are in themselves individual, however they may become general in their representation.'

Blogger Comments:

Through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the relation between 'particular idea' and 'general idea', in this sense, is the attributive relation between Carrier and Attribute, which construes class membership.  One subtype of this relation is that of instantiation: the token to type relation between instance and class.

Hume's distinction between idea and impression corresponds to the distinction between mental phenomena of cognition vs perception, respectively.