Hume frequently states that we are ignorant of genuine power. There is a well-known internal difficulty concerning this claim concerning ignorance. According to Hume, we do not have an impression-based idea of genuine power; on the other hand, every noun needs a corresponding idea to be meaningful. Is his claim concerning ignorance, which makes use of the noun ‘power’, meaningless in light of his own criterion of meaningfulness? I focus on two exegetical approaches to this difficulty proposed in the literature (...) of the ‘New Hume Debate’: 1) we may read Hume's own positive definitions of power back into his claim of ignorance to ensure the meaningfulness of ‘power’; and 2) ‘power’ may correspond to a relative idea of genuine power and derive its meaning from this relative idea. I argue against both of these solutions and offer my own solution that is quite close to the text. However, adopting my proposal demands a price: a considerable part of Hume's argumentative undert.. (shrink)

It is argued that we should distinguish between an ‘early Hume’ and a ‘mature Hume’ on causality. In his early period, represented by the Treatise, Hume had not yet adopted Newtonian active principles. In the mature period, however, represented in particular by the First Enquiry, his theory of causation has been transformed by a reception of Newton. This leads Hume to drop the condition of contiguity, which had excluded action-at-a-distance in the Treatise. It also leads him to allow real necessary (...) connexions in nature which are inaccessible to us just as the real cause of gravitation was thought by Newtonians to be unknown. (shrink)

The aim of the present volume is to draw the balance of naturalism's success so far.

In her book Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, Ann Hartle argues that Montaigne’s thought is dialectical in the Hegelian sense. Unlike Hegel’s progressive dialectic, however, Montaigne’s thought is, according to Hartle, circular in that the reconciliation of opposed terms comes not in the form of a newly emergent term, but in a return to the first term, where the meaning of the first is transformed as a result of its dialectical interaction with the second. This analysis motivates Hartle’s claim that (...) Montaigne is not a skeptic at all, let alone a Pyrrhonian skeptic. In this paper, I argue that Hartle’s circular-dialectical interpretation of Montaigne is not only compatible with Pyrrhonism, but is in fact an ideal model for understanding Sextus Empiricus’s skeptical therapy. (shrink)

I argue that the Hume of the Treatise maintains an account of knowledge according to which (i) every instance of knowledge must be an immediately present perception (i.e., an impression or an idea); (ii) an object of this perception must be a token of a knowable relation; (iii) this token knowable relation must have parts of the instance of knowledge as relata (i.e., the same perception that has it as an object); and any perception that satisfies (i)-(iii) is an instance (...) of knowledge. I then apply this account to the case of sense perception. I argue that Hume holds that relations of impressions can be intuited, are knowable, and are necessary. For Hume, these relations constitute sensory knowledge. While Hume is rightly labeled an empiricist for many reasons, a close inspection of his account of knowledge reveals yet another way in which he deserves the label. (shrink)

David Hume has been largely read as a philosopher but not as a scientist. In this article I discuss his work exclusively as a case of science; in particular as a case of early modern science. I compare the combined moral psychology of self-interest and sympathy he argues for with the moral psychology of universal self-interest from Bernard Mandeville, presenting the controversy between the two as a case of theory choice under the normative methodology of the vera causa from the (...) eighteenth century, using inductive support, experimentum crucis and simplicity as criteria. On all three criteria I conclude that Mandeville’s theory of universal self-interest wins the controversy. (shrink)

The examples Hume relies on in _Treatise_ I.iv.2 raise questions about the role of contrariety in experience as it affects belief in the objects of perception.

David Hume’s and later Ludwig Wittgenstein’s views on concepts are generally presented as standing in stark opposition to each other. In a nutshell, Hume’s theory of concepts is taken to be subjectivistic and atomistic, while Wittgenstein is metonymic with a broadly pragmatistic and holistic doctrine that gained much attention during the second half of the 20th century. In this essay, I shall argue, however, that Hume’s theory of concepts is indeed much more akin to the views of Wittgenstein and his (...) epigones than many, including Wittgenstein himself, probably might have suspected. As I try to show, Hume anticipates many themes central to Wittgenstein’s writings on language and meaning, and actually takes initial steps towards both an anti-subjectivistic and anti-atomistic psychology and epistemology. (shrink)

In this thesis, I argue that David Hume’s political philosophy is centrally focused on the prospect of social reform. The conception of justice and politics he develops out of his theories of virtue and moral psychology stresses the pervasive effects of institutions on individuals’ abilities to live decent lives and provides criteria for determining the relative success of such institutions. While Hume’s political philosophy has been interpreted as justifying a society’s status quo, I demonstrate that the principles of merit, need, (...) and equality—commonly considered core principles of social justice—each play a vital role in his view of what constitutes a healthy, stable society. In particular, I contend that Hume’s emphasis on institutions guaranteeing equal protection of basic rights, the role of the common good in the moral justification of political institutions, and the material and social circumstances of equality that make the institution of justice possible, suggest that social reform is a central concern of his theory of justice and politics. (shrink)

In this article, a novel interpretation of one of the problems of Hume scholarship is defended: his view of Metaphysical Realism or the belief in an external world (that there are ontologically and causally perception-independent, absolutely external and continued, i.e. Real entities). According to this interpretation, Hume's attitude in the domain of philosophy should be distinguished from his view in the domain of everyday life: Hume the philosopher suspends his judgement on Realism, whereas Hume the common man firmly believes in (...) the existence of Real entities. The defended reading is thus a sceptical and Realist interpretation of Hume. As such, it belongs to the class of what can be called no-single-Hume interpretations (Richard H. Popkin, Robert J. Fogelin, Donald L. M. Baxter), by contrast to single-Hume readings, which include Realist (naturalist, New Humean) and the traditional Reid-Green interpretation (i.e. Hume believes that there are no Real entities). Hume's distinction between the domains of philosophy and everyday life, which is argued to be epistemological, is employed in order to reconcile his scepticism with his naturalism and constructive science of human nature. The article pays special attention to the too much neglected second profound argument against the senses in Part 1, Section 12 of Hume's first Enquiry and the corresponding argument in Section 4, Part 4, Book 1 of the Treatise. (shrink)

This essay argues that Hume's political and historical thought is well read as skeptical and skeptical in a way that roots it deeply in the Hellenistic traditions of both Pyrrhonian and Academical thought. It deploys skeptical instruments to undermine political rationalism as well as theologically and metaphysically political ideologies. Hume's is politics of opinion and appearance. It labors to oppose faction and enthusiasm and generate suspension, balance, tranquility, and moderation. Because Hume advocate the use of reflectively generated but epistemically and (...) metaphysically suspensive general rules, his political thought is not intrinsically conservative. While it valorizes stability and peace, Humean politics accepts a contested and open-ended political order, one that requires continuous maintenance and revision but does not pretend to any ultimate or final progress or end. (shrink)

Hume is known for his claim that our idea of causation is nothing beyond constant conjunction, and that our idea of necessary connection is nothing beyond a felt determination of the mind. In short, Hume endorses a "thin" conception of causation and necessary connection. In recent years, however, a sizeable number of philosophers have come to view Hume as someone who believes in the existence of thick causal connections - that is, causal connections that allow one to infer a priori (...) the effect from the cause, and vice versa. Hume doesn't wish to deny such connections, said philosopher's claim, he only seeks to demonstrate that we can't know anything about the nature of the thick causal connections that make up the natural world. In this dissertation, I defend the old or traditional interpretation of Hume on causation. I draw attention to the important but neglected role of clear and distinct perception in Hume's thought, arguing that for Hume our impressions are clear and distinct perceptions, whereas our ideas are faint and obscure. Accordingly, Hume's copy principle - the thesis that our ideas are copies of our impressions - is Hume's way of rendering our naturally obscure and confused ideas distinct. One need only discern the impression from which said ideas are copied. In this way, I show that Hume's opinion concerning our idea of thick causation is that it's an obscure and confused idea, and that the only clear and distinct idea we can have of causation is thin causation. Furthermore, since meaning for Hume is a matter of a word's being associated with an idea, Hume thinks that an expression such as "thick causation" is meaningless or confused. In one sense, then, Hume is a positivist, and as such doesn't believe in thick causal connections. (shrink)

Ziel der Arbeit ist zu zeigen, dass sich in der theoretischen Philosophie David Humes Ansätze zu einer therapeutischen Methode finden, wie sie von Ludwig Wittgenstein angewandt und beschrieben wurde. Im ersten Teil wird Wittgensteins Konzeption der Philosophie und ihre Anwendung anhand einer genauen Textexegese dargestellt. Der zweite Teil untersucht primär die Humeschen Überlegungen zu Kausalität und Induktion, seine methodologischen Aussagen sowie seine Perzeptionstheorie und argumentiert für die These, dass Hume ebenfalls, wenn auch mit Einschränkungen, Elemente einer therapeutischen Methode und eine (...) entsprechende Konzeption der Philosophie zugeschrieben werden können. (shrink)

Hume’s account of contrariety in Book I of the Treatise poses several interpretive puzzles. I consider each in turn and offer a novel interpretation of contrariety based on Hume’s discussion of the passions. That Book II and Book I form a complete chain of reasoning suggests that the way in which passions are related is analogous to the way in which ideas are related in the understanding. I argue that Hume identifies three species of empirical contrariety in Book II: contraries, (...) oppositions, and contradictions. All three species help clarify Hume’s remarks concerning contrariety in Book I. I further identify a second genus I call logical contrariety by drawing on Hume’s discussion of fictitious duration and distance. (shrink)

I argue for an interpretation of Hume on which our confused notions of causal necessity find their model in Hume's notion of logical necessity: our minds react in similar ways to constant conjunctions, on the one hand, and genuine cases of inseparability between ideas, on the other, in light of which we mistakenly place relations of necessitation between objects we call cause and effect. I argue that my account provides a more satisfying explanation of the mismatch between the feeling that (...) provides our true idea of necessary connection and the confused notions of necessary connection held by philosophers and the vulgar. (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine Hume’s secular re-definition and re-evaluation of the traditional Christian understanding of pride and humility as part of his project to establish a fully secular account of ethics and to undermine what he thought to be the harmful aspects of religious morality. Christians traditionally have seen humility, understood as receptivity to God, to be crucial for individual and social flourishing, and pride as the root of individual and social disorder. By contrast, Hume, who conceives of pride (...) and humility immanently in terms of our self-appraisals, sees pride as a key virtue that serves as the ultimate source of moral motivation and deems humility a ‘monkish virtue’ (i.e., a vice). Hume, moreover, sees religious appeals to a transcendent moral source to be a threat to individual flourishing in that they encourage the formation of what he calls ‘artificial lives’ (of which the monkish virtues are an expression) as well as a threat to social concord, insofar as they foster unnecessary religious factions, intolerance, and theologically sanctioned violence. In part to combat this, Hume promotes a wholly secular ethic rooted in common life. I uncover the real points of agreement and disagreement that underlie Hume and traditional Christian conceptions of pride and humility in order to articulate what is essentially at issue between these contrasting perspectives and, ultimately, to identify some of what is gained or lost in Hume’s secularization of ethics. I, thus, explore the reasons that Hume rejects Christian morality and seeks to replace it with a secular one. I then assess whether Hume’s secular perspective has sufficient resources for addressing the biased judgments and rivalries that can arise precisely because of what Hume sees as our natural desire for the ‘passion of pride’ (i.e., for a positive sense of ourselves before others). I conclude both that Hume identifies genuine dangers in attempting to go beyond the human and also that there are genuine dangers in Hume’s attempt to close the window to a transcendent moral source. I, therefore, contend that any adequate view of human flourishing must take account of both these dangers. (shrink)

For my part, my only hope is, that I may contribute a little to the advancement of knowledge, by giving in some particulars a different turn to the speculations of philosophers, and pointing out to them more distinctly those subjects, where alone they can expect assurance and conviction.

I argue in this paper that, like the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to negative–dogmatic skepticism in On Certainty turns on the attempt to free us from the demands of traditional philosophy and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking. Rather, it is a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view (i.e., to illumine) the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize (a) what I call the pragmatic–transcendental self–standingness (...) of the everyday and (b) its philosophical–rational groundlessness. The Pyrrhonian illumination of the everyday is therapeutic in that it aims to purify our metadoxastic attitudes of dogmatism. (shrink)

La filosofía de D. Hume ha sido tradicionalmente vinculada con el positivismo y con el subjetivismo moral. Si bien es innegable su explicita influencia en estas escuelas de pensamiento, ello no obsta a la existencia efectiva de relaciones de armonía entre propuestas tradicionalmente opuestas a la filosofía humeana. En el presente trabajo se presentarán sus convergencias con la ética de la ley natural, particularmente la desarrollada por la llamada New Natural LawTheory. Se argumentará el vínculo a partir de la importancia (...) de la vida común, de la experiencia y del rol de la filosofía en el comportamiento humano. (shrink)

This paper provides support for the unorthodox view that Hume’s simple ideas are most fruitfully understood as theoretical posits by showing that adopting this interpretation solves a lingering interpretive difficulty, the missing shade of blue. The missing shade of blue is thought to pose a serious challenge to the legitimacy of Hume’s copy principle. Thinking of Humean simple ideas as theoretical posits reveals a dialectical mismatch between Hume and his envisioned reader that, once understood, makes it clear that the case (...) holds little sway against the copy principle. The solution developed and defended has some significant advantages over extant solutions. (shrink)

Abstract At stake in the dispute between Campbell and Hume is the basis for our acceptance of testimony. Campbell argues that, contrary to Hume, our acceptance of testimony is prior to experience, while Hume continues to maintain that the appropriation through testimony of the experience of others depends ultimately on one's own experience. I argue that Hume's remarks about testimony provide a non-circular account of the process by which the experience of others may become one's own; and I suggest that (...) the view of Campbell and Hume as proponents of two radically opposed positions on the epistemology of testimony represents a considerable over-simplification. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Biography Philosophy.

This essay argues that Humean impressions are triggers of associative processes, which enable us to form stable patterns of thought that co-vary with our experiences of the world. It will thus challenge the importance of the Copy Principle by claiming that it is the regularity with which certain kinds of sensory inputs motivate certain sets of complex ideas that matters for the discrimination of ideas. This reading is conducive to Hume’s account of perception, because it avoids the impoverishment of conceptual (...) resources so typical for empiricist theories of meaning and explains why ideas should be based on impressions, although impressions cannot be known to mirror matters of fact. Dieser Aufsatz argumentiert dafür, dass humesche Eindrücke Auslöser von assoziativen Prozessen sind, welche es uns ermöglichen, stabile Denkmuster zu bilden, die mit unseren Erfahrungen der Welt kovariant sind. Der Aufsatz stellt somit die Wichtigkeit des Kopien-Prinzips in Frage, nämlich dadurch, dass behauptet wird, für die Unterscheidung der Ideen sei die Regelmäßigkeit maßgeblich, mit der gewisse Arten von sensorischen Eingaben gewisse Mengen von komplexen Ideen motivieren. Diese Lesart trägt zu einem Verständnis von Humes Auffassung der Wahrnehmung bei, da sie die Verarmung der begrifflichen Mittel, die für empiristische Theorien der Bedeutung so typisch ist, vermeidet und erklärt, warum Ideen auf Eindrücken basieren sollten, obwohl Eindrücke nicht als Abbildungen von Tatsachen erkannt werden können. (shrink)

This paper examines some connections between Hume’s epistemology in his Treatise of Human Nature and his political economy. I make three claims: First, I argue that it is the development of Hume’s account of the faculty of reason in Book I of the Treatise that leads him to emphasize social science—including political economy—and the humanities over more abstract modes of intellectual inquiry. Second, I argue that Hume’s conception of reason has implications for his methodology in political economy. His perception of (...) human reason leads him to deploy a method of qualified generalization that emphasizes the by-and-large nature of theoretical statements. Third, when it comes to policy matters, the method of qualified generalization in theory cashes out in terms of practical maxims. I suggest that two central maxims in Hume’s political economy derive from his views of the usefulness of economic liberty and the coordinating nature of the status quo. (shrink)

Many hold that Hume was an atheist, that he despised the church, and that he was a devastating critic of religion. One cannot deny, however, the references to ‘true religion’ in his work, his sometimes seemingly favorable references to Deity, his call for religion in ‘every civilized community’, and his sense of ‘natural belief’. The following essay describes a speculative Humean ‘true religion’ and discusses its potential use-value for contemporary philosophy of religion. It begins, anecdotally, with a description of Hume's (...) happiness in France, which I attribute to the fact that Hume was not taken to be an atheist by the French reading public. The main argument is that while Hume was critical of ‘vulgar’ and ‘popular’ religion, his philosophical position did not deny our habit to accept a genuine theism that could, if informed by the calm passions, serve to ‘purify our hearts’ and bond us more closely together. Reconceiving Hume's ‘true religion’ in this way allows his insi.. (shrink)

The idea of the missing shade of blue presents a difficulty for Hume's first principle that ‘all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv'd from simple impressions, which are correspond...

Este artículo revisa el diálogo que Husserl establece con Humemientras reconstruye la génesis de la filosofía. Lo discutiréen dos partes: la primera se refiere a la “verdadera filosofía”y, la segunda, desarrolla una lectura fenomenológica delmétodo experimental de Hume. Intento explicar la evaluaciónambivalente que hace Husserl del proyecto de Hume, yproponer una manera en la que Hume pueda responder a suscríticas. Concluyo, más allá de Husserl, que Hume abrió uncamino promisorio para la fenomenología, que yo llamo una“fenomenología detrascendentalizada”.

David Hume has been largely read as a philosopher but not as a scientist. In this article I discuss his work exclusively as a case of science; in particular as a case of early modern science. I compare the moral psychology of self-interest, sympathy and sentiments of humanity he argues for with the moral psychology of universal self-interest from Bernard Mandeville, presenting the controversy between the two as a case of theory choice.

This essay compares Robert John Russell's work in his recent book Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The Creative Mutual Interaction of Theology and Science (2008) to that of the authors known collectively as "the new atheists." I treat the latter as recent contributors to the modern tradition of scientific naturalism. This tradition makes claims to legitimacy on the basis of its close relations to the natural sciences. The purpose of this essay is to show up the poverty of the naturalist (...) tradition's scientific credentials by contrasting it with Russell's careful account of positive relations between science and Christian theology. (shrink)

The existence of an idea of a missing shade of blue contradicts Hume's first principle that simple ideas all derive from corresponding simple impressions. Hume dismisses the exception to his principle as unimportant. Why does he do so? His later account of distinctions of reason suggests a systematic way of dealing with simple ideas not derived from simple impressions. Why does he not return to the problem of the missing shade, having offered that account? Several suggestions as to Hume's solution (...) of the problem of the missing shade (not all appealing to distinctions of reason) are explored with an eye both to their adequacy as Humean solutions and their value as clues to his dismissal of the problem. Hypotheses concerning the latter perplexity are formulated and discussed as well. Senses in which the missing shade of blue is or may be a red herring are identified. In course, this author names Hume's missing shade marjorie grene. Historians of philosophy will want to adopt this nomenclature. (shrink)

In Treatise 1.4.2, David Hume seeks to explain how we come to believe in the external existence of bodies. He offers a complicated psychological account, where the imagination operates on the raw data of the senses to produce the ‘vulgar’ belief in the continued existence of the very things we sense. On behalf of philosophers, he presents a perceptual relativity argument that purports to show that the vulgar belief is false. I argue that scholars have failed to appreciate Hume's peculiar (...) formulation of the perceptual relativity argument and its relation to his psychological account of the vulgar belief. On my interpretation, in order to account for all the premises that Hume explicitly offers, the argument is best interpreted as beginning with a reductio that opposes the effects of the senses and the imagination in the vulgar belief. Thus Hume can be interpreted as identifying an ‘antinomy’ in the habits of the vulgar mind that produce belief in bodies. (shrink)

Abstract Differing interpretations of the political thought of David Hume have tended to emphasize either conservative, gradualist elements similar to Burke or rationalist aspects similar to Hobbes. The concept of indirect utility as used by Hume reconciles these two approaches. Indirect utility is best illustrated by Hume's conception of justice, in contrast to his conception of benevolence, which yields direct benefits. This understanding of Hume's consequentialism also helps underscore certain egalitarian aspects of Hume's thought.