David Hume is widely recognized as providing the most influential statement of the “compatibilist” position in the free will debate — the view that freedom and moral responsibility can be reconciled with (causal) determinism. The arguments that Hume advances on this subject are found primarily in the sections titled “Of liberty and necessity”, as first presented in A Treatise of Human Nature (2.3.1-2) and, later, in a slightly amended form, in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (sec. 8). Although there is (...) considerable overlap in content between these two statements of Hume's position, there are also some significant differences. This includes, for example, some substantial additions in the Enquiry discussion as it relates to problems of religion, such as predestination and divine foreknowledge. While these differences are certainly significant they should not be exaggerated. Hume's basic strategy and compatibilist commitments in both works remain the same in their essentials.. (shrink)

David Hume has traditionally been assumed to be a soft determinist or compatibilist, at least in the ‘reconciling project’ that he presents in Section 8 of the first Enquiry, entitled ‘Of liberty and necessity.’ Indeed, in encyclopedias and textbooks of Philosophy he is standardly taken to be one of the paradigm compatibilists, rivalled in significance only by Hobbes within the tradition passed down through Locke, Mill, Schlick and Ayer to recent writers such as Dennett and Frankfurt. Many Hume scholars also (...) concur in viewing him as a determinist, for example Norman Kemp Smith, Barry Stroud, A. J. Ayer, Paul Russell Don Garrett, Terence Penelhum, George Botterill, John Bricke, and John Wright. My main purpose in this paper will be to provide the evidence to substantiate this traditional interpretation, which has hitherto been widely assumed rather than defended. In the absence of such a defence, the consensus has been left open to challenge, most notably in a recent paper and a subsequent book by James Harris, who boldly claims that Hume ‘does not subscribe to determinism of any kind, whether Hobbesian or merely nomological.’. (shrink)

The traditional reading of Hume is that he is a regularity theorist about causation and a compatibilist on the issue of human freedom and moral responsibility. I argue that these readings are mutually exclusive---i.e. endorsement of the one entails the rejection of the other---as they diverge on a fundamental premise, namely, the truth of causal determinism. Relatively recent "New Hume" scholarship has claimed that he is a causal realist---i.e. that he believes in the objective existence of necessary connections or causal (...) powers. I argue against this "new" reading and offer analysis in support of one type of the traditional regularity strain. The main claim I wish to establish is that the misguided compatibilist attribution derives from the illegitimate bifurcation of Hume's necessity and liberty arguments on the part of commentators on both sides of the dispute, a bifurcation which distorts and invariably undermines Hume's 'reconciling project'. In other words, Hume's redefinition of the terms of the free will debate rules out the standard compatibilist reading, as Hume is not presupposing, or even concerned with, the truth of determinism; rather, he is concerned with the psychology of our subjective experience of necessity, i.e. with how and why necessity proves essential to human experience or to human nature. Specifically, I argue that Hume's treatment of necessity may be best understood as pointing to pragmatic considerations: his ultimate concerns are the ways in which our experience of necessity serve us in the way of prediction, predictability, and/or the ability to predict natural events, including human actions and choices. This line of thought is especially clear in Section 7 'Of Liberty and Necessity' of An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, while the psycho-subjective aspect constitutes the focus of Hume's discussion of necessary connections in the Treatise. What is clear from a survey of each of these texts is that Hume's treatment of necessity is not to be confused with a compatibilist's causal determinist account of the same. (shrink)

In this article I suggest that section VIII of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding could be read as a contribution to the foundational issues of a characteristic 18th-century enterprise, namely the ‘science of man’. More specifically, it can be read as a summary of his attempt to place this science on an experimental footing, with an awareness of the lessons he has drawn in the previous sections of the Enquiry. This interpretation fits with an overall reading of the work as (...) responding to the epistemological problems that arise in the context of then-contemporary ways of knowledge production. As I argue, this section is relevant for the methodology of a science of human nature. The main problems it addresses are the following. What kind of knowledge can we hope for about human beings, and how should we pursue it? What are the meaningful questions that can be asked, and what is beyond the reach of this kind of inquiry? Answering these questions sets the scope and limits of this science. (shrink)

Hume has traditionally been understood as an inductive sceptic with positivist tendencies, reducing causation to regular succession and anticipating the modern distinctions between analytic and synthetic, deduction and induction. The dominant fashion in recent Hume scholarship is to reject all this, replacing the ‘Old Hume’ with various New alternatives. Here I aim to counter four of these revisionist readings, presenting instead a broadly traditional interpretation but with important nuances, based especially on Hume’s later works. He asked that we should treat (...) these— notably the first Enquiry—as his authoritative philosophical statements, and with good reason. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHume was not a philosopher famed for what are sometimes called ‘ontological commitments'. Nevertheless, few contemporary scholars doubt that Hume was an atheist, and the present essay tenders the view that Hume was favourably disposed to the 'vital materialism' of post-Newtonian natural philosophers in England, Scotland and France. Both internalist arguments, collating passages from a range of Hume's works, and externalist arguments, reviewing the likely sources of his knowledge of ancient materialism and his association with his materialistic contemporaries are employed.