Meu objetivo neste artigo é destacar algumas das ideias centrais defendidas por Hume e, a fim de caracterizar a natureza de sua filosofia, contrapor duas interpretações frequentes de sua obra: a interpretação cética e interpretação naturalista. A fim de apontar as principais razões que estão por trás dessas duas interpretações que tentam apreender a natureza da filosofia de Hume, procuro abordar inicialmente alguns dos princípios centrais da teoria humeana e, em seguida, especialmente sua análise das inferências causais. No final, argumento (...) que o ceticismo e o naturalismo de Hume não são incompatíveis. Ao contrário, devem ser entendidos como duas faces de uma mesma filosofia. (shrink)

This paper rereads David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as dramatising a distinctive, naturalistic account of toleration. I have two purposes in mind: first, to complete and ground Hume's fragmentary explicit discussion of toleration; second, to unearth a potentially attractive alternative to more recent, Rawlsian approaches to toleration. To make my case, I connect Dialogues and the problem of toleration to the wider themes of naturalism, scepticism and their relation in Hume's thought, before developing a new interpretation of Dialogues part (...) 12 as political drama. Finally, I develop the Humean theory of toleration I have discovered by comparison between Rawls's and Hume's strategies for justification of a tolerant political regime. (shrink)

One of the first difficulties in interpreting Hume’s epistemological writings concerns precisely the meaning of the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’. In this article it is shown, initially, how, from a humean point of view, the traditional epistemic criterion to define ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’ appears very restrictive. Hume’s theory of causal belief is then briefly reviewed in the light of epistemological naturalism of the Michael J. Costa and Louis E. Loeb. Finally, it is submitted that the examination of all these topics (...) lends support to the Hume’s naturalistic theory of justification of beliefs. (shrink)

Ethical naturalists such as Philippa Foot, John McDowell or Sabina Lovibond have critically distinguished their version of naturalism from the version ascribed to David Hume. This article defends H...

In this paper, I hope to i. briefly explain Nyaya dualist ontology and identify the implications involved in accepting this view, ii. provide a comparison of Nyaya dualism to Cartesian dualism, and iii. provide an analysis of Nyaya dualism vis-à-vis some contemporary non-dualist theories of mind, in an attempt to gauge the viability of Nyaya Dualism as a theory of mind. I will briefly identify the context and history of this school in Indian Philosophy and will attempt to describe how (...) this paper approaches and interprets Nyaya thinking. (shrink)

Na seção 1.4.1 Do ceticismo quanto à razão do Tratado da Natureza Humana, David Hume apresenta o argumento cético, conhecido pelos intérpretes como o “argumento da diminuição”, que pode ser divido em duas partes: 1) dado o caráter falível de nossas operações cognitivas, todo o “conhecimento degenera em probabilidade”; e 2) dada a incerteza e a dúvida que comumente acompanham os nossos raciocínios probabilísticos, todo raciocínio é, no fim das contas, reduzido a nada e, consequentemente, somos levados à “extinção total (...) da crença e da evidência”. Apontaremos, em primeiro lugar, que o argumento cético contra a razão baseia-se no argumento cartesiano do “deus enganador” e, em segundo, que Hume rejeita que podemos endossar seriamente a “extinção total da crença e da evidência”. O que nos leva a propor a seguinte questão: em que consiste, para Hume, o status dos argumentos céticos? Responder tal pergunta implica em esclarecer outros dois problemas, pois, se não podemos atingir o “ceticismo total”, podemos, então, confiar em nossa faculdade de raciocínio? Se sim, sob quais condições podemos? Vê-se, afinal, que a solução de Hume consiste claramente em conferir limites à nossa faculdade de raciocínio, a fim de evitar sua autodestruição. (shrink)

The history of Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth century is written by migrant philosophers attempting to use the Scottish tradition as the foundation for philosophy in their new homelands. In the accounts of John Clark Murray , James McCosh and Henry Laurie , different evaluations are made of the continuing relevance of the Scottish Common Sense School, but all are committed Christians for whom David Hume cannot be part of a Scottish tradition. As a result, none of these accounts gives (...) any suggestion of there having been a ‘Scottish Enlightenment’. That concept was only made possible by the radical reinterpretation of Hume by Norman Kemp Smith, which linked his philosophy to Hutcheson and dismissed his opposition to Reid. The subsequent emergence of ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’ eclipsed nineteenth-century Scottish ‘idealism’, shaped by Edward Caird, which Murray, Laurie and Kemp Smith had regarded as the foundation of their own philosophies. (shrink)