Abstract

Hume warns his readers that his view on necessity will not be understood by his critics. As he sees it, his view is paradoxical: Necessity is "nothing but an internal impression of the mind, or a determination to carry our thought from one object to another". Recent critics find it difficult to accept Hume's view and have done their best to interpret it in their way. My paper is a critical investigation of the attempts by Pears, Baier and Stoud to "rescue" Hume from his own folly.