The issue of time-awareness presents a critical challenge for empiricism: if temporal properties are not directly perceived, how do we become aware of them? A unique empiricist account of time-awareness suggested by Hume's comments on time in the Treatise avoids the problems characteristic of other empiricist accounts. Hume's theory, however, has some counter-intuitive consequences. The failure of empiricists to come up with a defensible theory of time-awareness lends prima facie support to a non-empiricist theory of ideas.

ABSTRACT: In this article I argue that Hume's empiricism allows for time to exist as a real distinct impression of succession, not, as many claim, merely as a nominal abstract idea. In the first part of this article I show how for Hume it is succession and not duration that constitutes time, and, further, that only duration is fictional. In the second part, I show that according to the way Hume describes the functions of the memory and imagination, it is (...) possible to explain how we are able to perceive a distinct impression of succession.RÉSUMÉ: Dans cet article, je soutiens, à l'encontre de plusieurs, que l'empirisme de Hume conçoit le temps comme une impression réelle et distincte de succession, voire, une idée nominale et abstraite. Je montre en premier lieu que Hume définit le temps, non en termes de durée, mais de succession, et que cette notion de durée est fictive. À partir de la description de Hume des fonctions de la mémoire et de l'imagination, je montre en second lieu qu'il est possible d'expliquer comment nous sommes capables d'une impression distincte de succession. (shrink)

Recent work on Hume's Theory of Perception has shown that Hume takes the appearance of impressions to vary according to the ideas under which they are subsumed. In this paper, I argue that the vulgar position in the section where he discusses the Inference from Constancy is characterised by an ideal primordial state of mind where impressions are directly encountered without being subsumed under any idea. In particular, impressions which are not subsumed under the idea of a perception do not (...) appear to the mind as impressions. Read in this light, Hume's Inference from Constancy is immune to the difficulties which have commonly been raised against it. (shrink)