From Object to Understanding: Hobbes on Imagination, Memory and the Human Mind

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher who lived through the English Civil War and wrote Leviathan in 1651. Although the book is famous for its political philosophy and his argument about the need for social order and authority, I found something unexpectedly fascinating in the opening chapters: Hobbes first tries to explain how the human mind receives and processes the outside world.An object exists outside us. It affects our sensory organs — our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin — and produces a sensation. We do not simply take the external object into our mind; we experience the effect or appearance produced by that object through our senses.Then Hobbes asks what happens when the object disappears.If we look at something and then close our eyes, some image of it may remain. Hobbes calls this imagination, describing it as a kind of fading continuation of sensation. He uses the example of the sun and stars: the brightness of the sun can obscure the stars, but when the sun disappears, their light becomes visible again.This becomes even more interesting when Hobbes talks about sleep. When we are asleep, the external object may no longer be in front of our senses, yet images continue to appear in the mind. We dream. For Hobbes, dreams are connected with imagination — images arising from previous sensations and experiences.Then comes memory.An experience does not necessarily disappear completely when the object disappears. Its image can remain and later be recalled. We can remember a person’s face, a place, a smell, a sound or an event even when none of those things is physically present.So I began to see Hobbes’s argument as a chain:Object → sensation → image → imagination → memory → experience.But experience does not simply remain in the past. It influences how we understand the present and anticipate the future.A child touches fire and feels pain. The experience becomes memory. The next time the child sees fire, the previous experience influences the decision not to touch it.So another chain develops:Experience → memory → expectation → judgement → decision → action.This is what I find particularly interesting about Hobbes. He is not merely explaining how we see, hear or imagine things. He is trying to build an explanation of human behaviour from the most basic level.The outside world affects our senses.Our senses produce sensations.Sensations leave images.Images become imagination.Experiences become memories.Memories accumulate into experience.Experience influences our expectations.Expectations influence our judgement and decisions.And our decisions produce actions.Then Hobbes takes this individual human being and asks what happens when millions of such individuals interact with each other. From there, the discussion moves towards desire, fear, competition, conflict, cooperation, society and eventually political authority.So, although Leviathan is famous as a book about the state, Hobbes begins much earlier.He begins with a simple but profound question:How does something outside us become something inside us — and how does what becomes inside us eventually determine what we do?