This thesis investigates Hume’s philosophy of external existence in relation to, and within the context of, his philosophy of scepticism. In his two main works on metaphysics – A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40) and the first Enquiry (first ed. 1748) – Hume encounters a predicament pertaining to the unreflective, ‘vulgar’ attribution of external existence to mental perceptions and the ‘philosophical’ distinction between perceptions and objects. I argue that we should understand this predicament as follows: the vulgar opinion is our (...) natural and default belief for Hume, but causal reasoning reveals it to be false, and the philosophical alternative is a confabulation that we cannot permanently believe and is devoid of justification. Hume uses the fact that we cannot have a satisfactory account of belief in external existence as a sceptical consideration to motivate his wider philosophical scepticism. Hume’s response to his predicament about external existence is found in the context of his confrontation with other sceptical worries (Treatise 1.4.7 and Enquiry 12), in which Hume also reflects generally on the nature and implications of scepticism. I argue that we should characterise Hume’s position as residually sceptical. This means that, while Hume accepts the unanswerability of some sceptical problems, he denies that it is possible to eradicate all belief as a result (and denies that it is practically useful to even try) and instead uses sceptical problems as a motivation to adopt a moderately sceptical position. While we inevitably return to entertaining the vulgar belief, there is no solution to the sceptical predicament; Hume does not endorse the vulgar belief, or the philosophical system, or indeed any alternative system of the external world that might extinguish the predicament. Sceptical doubt, for Hume, does not derail intellectual pursuits, but rather modifies our attitudes in those very pursuits. (shrink)

The dissertation concerns on the theory of perception of David Hume. The problem of perception is the problem about the object of perception. According to Jerome Valberg, the problem of perception is an antinomy. For Hume the problem is a dilemma between two theories, direct realism and representative realism. For direct realism, the object of perception is a mind-indipendent object; for representative realism, the object of perception is a mind-dependent object or an internal one. In the chapter I, I have (...) focused on the positions of Descartes and John Locke. In the chapter II, I have presented the conception of Hume through three different arguments: the argument from illusion, the argument from secondary qualities and the argument from hallucination. Then, I have exposed the Humean objections to the proofs of external world and the theory about belief in an unperceived existence. Hume’s position is the following: the object of perception is an internal object and the representative realism is unverifiable, but not false. It follows, then, that for Hume direct realism is false. In the chapter III, I have compared the theory of Hume with contemporary direct realism, namely, with intentionalism of John Searle and Micheal Huemer, with externalism of Tyler Burge and disjunctivism by Michael Martin. I have argued that Hume’s theory is more consistent than intentionalism of Searle and Huemer and it can’t be objected by externalism and disjunctivism. (shrink)