In a 2004 paper, “Hume’s Missing Shade of Blue Reconsidered from a Newtonian Perspective,” Eric Schliesser argues that Hume’s well-known discussion of the missing shade of blue “reveals considerable ignorance of Newton’s achievement in optics,” and that Hume has failed to assimilate the lessons taught by Newton’s optical experiments. I argue in this paper, contrary to Schliesser, that Hume’s views on color are logically and evidentially independent of Newton’s results. In developing my reading, I will argue that Schliesser accepts an (...) overly broad interpretation of the implications of Newton’s experimental results, and takes inadequate account of Hume’s disciplined methodological restrictions on the kinds of experiential evidence that are to be admitted in building the foundations of his science of human nature. (shrink)

The philosophy of Samuel Clarke is of central importance for an adequate understanding of Hume’s Treatise.2 Despite this, most Hume scholars have either entirely overlooked Clarke’s work, or referred to it in a casual manner that fails to do justice to the significance of the Clarke-Hume relationship. This tendency is particularly apparent in accounts of Hume’s views on space in Treatise I.ii. In this paper, I argue that one of Hume’s principal objectives in his discussion of space is to discredit (...) Clarke’s Newtonian doctrine of absolute space and, more deeply, the ‘argument a priori’ that Clarke constructs around it. On the basis of this interpretation, I argue that Hume’s ‘system’ of space constitutes an important part of his more fundamental ‘atheistic’ or anti- Christian objectives in the Treatise.3. (shrink)

Hume concludes Book II of his Treatise of Human Nature with a section on the passion of curiosity, ‘that love of truth, which was the first source of all our enquiries’. At first sight, this characterisation of curiosity – as the motivating factor in that specifically human activity that is the pursuit of knowledge – may seem unoriginal. However, when Hume speaks of the ‘source of all our enquiries’, he is referring both to the universal human pursuit of knowledge and (...) to his own philosophical project. Seen in this light, his discussion of curiosity takes on a new significance, as it weaves together elements of his systematic account of human nature – notably, his theory of cognition and motivation – with observations about the pursuit of philosophy as well as the progress of the arts and sciences. In the present paper, I offer a reconstruction of Hume’s view on curiosity and its role in cognition and inquiry. (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)

(2013). Hume's Theory of Pity and Malice. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 324-344. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.692664.

In the section of the Treatise titled ‘Of the immateriality of the soul’, Hume adduces an argument to show that nothing can be ‘locally conjoined’ with all of a person’s perceptions. The argument is seldom discussed, and deserves attention, mainly because it can be transformed into an argument against the very existence of a soul. In this paper, I present and closely examine both arguments, Hume’s argument and the one against the existence of the soul. Both, I conclude, are fallacious. (...) In dem Abschnitt des Treatise mit dem Titel ‚Of the immateriality of the soul‘ bringt Hume ein Argument vor, das zeigen soll, dass nichts mit allen Perzeptionen einer Person ‚lokal verknüpft‘ sein kann. Das Argument wird selten diskutiert, verdient aber Aufmerksamkeit, hauptsächlich deshalb, weil es in ein Argument gegen die Existenz der Seele umgewandelt werden kann. In diesem Aufsatz stelle ich beide Argumente – Humes Argument und das gegen die Existenz der Seele – dar und untersuche sie im Detail. Ich gelange zu der Feststellung, dass beide Argumente fehlerhaft sind. (shrink)

Terence Penelhum has written extensively about the role of the idea of the self in Hume's account of the emotional and moral life of persons. Penelhum fails to notice, however, a change that takes place in the way that the idea of the self functions in Hume's account of the passions as that account evolved after the Treatise. This paper charts part of that evolution, and reflects on its significance for Hume's moral psychology.

The correspondence between Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins of 1706–8, while not well known, is a spectacularly good debate between a dualist and a materialist over the possibility of giving a materialist account of consciousness and personal identity. This article puts the Clarke Collins Correspondence in a broader context in which it can be better appreciated, noting that it is really a debate between John Locke and Anthony Collins on one hand, and Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler on the other. (...) Anthony Collins argues on behalf of John Locke's claim that it would be as easy for God to superadd the power of thinking to matter as for him to connect a soul to a body. Locke did not believe that matter could naturally produce thought or consciousness, but it was in God's power to make matter think. To defend Locke's claim Collins must defend the claim that there are emergent properties in the world – properties of a whole that are not possessed by the parts. Collins also defends a materialist version of Locke's account of personal identity against a variety of charges. Because the topics of debate in the correspondence are of such great interest to us, it deserves to be rescued from the neglect into which it fell and from which intellectual historians and philosophers have only recently and partially removed it. (shrink)

This paper attempts to give a complete and coherent account of how Hume’s moral psychology can explain the cultivation of moral character. I argue that the outcome of a fully formed moral character is an agent who strengthens her calm moral sentiments into settled principles of action. I then take up the question of how the process of strengthening moral sentiments might occur, rejecting the possibilities of sympathy, “reflection,” and “resolution” because either they are too weak or else they make (...) the passion violent, preventing the essential calm nature of moral sentiments. I next argue that custom and the non-moral motives of pride and the love of fame play the critical roles in character formation. Custom can be considered as both the process of education, whereby certain impressions are habitually and formally inculcated into us by educators, and the process of experience in society and conversation, whereby we learn to associate pleasure with the virtues and pain with the vices. In both these processes, Hume implicitly appeals to certain non-moral motives, especially pride and the love of fame, in order to launch the effects of custom. (shrink)