In this paper, I argue that Hume's solution to a problem that contemporary metaphysicians call “the problem of universals” would be rather trope-theoretical than some other type of nominalism. The basic idea in different trope theories is that particular properties, i.e., tropes are postulated to account for the fact that there are particular beings resembling each other. I show that Hume's simple sensible perceptions are tropes: simple qualities. Accordingly, their similarities are explained by these tropes themselves and their resemblance. Reading (...) Hume as a trope nominalist sheds light on his account of general ideas, perceptions, relations and nominalism. (shrink)

I consider a class of argument implying that Hume's position on general representation is irredeemably circular in that it presupposes what it is meant to explain. Arguments of this sort (the most famous being Sellars' "myth of the given") threaten to undermine any empiricist account of general representation by showing how they depend on the naïve assumption that the relevant resemblances required for the sorting of experience into concepts for use in reasoning are simply given in experience itself. My aim (...) is to salvage Hume's account from this objection. To that end, I argue first for a "Goodmanesque" interpretation of Humean resemblance, and second for an alternative reading of Hume's account of general ideas offered at T 1.1.7 that avoids falling into "the given" trap. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 2, November 2000, pp. 279-289 Explaining General Ideas JANET BROUGHTON Hume declared himself a scientist of man; his aim was to identify the principles according to which our impressions give rise to our thoughts, beliefs, passions and actions. He took it that there are things about these products of experience that need to be explained, and as a scientist of man he aimed to (...) provide the needed explanation by finding principles that govern the operations of the mind. In what follows I want to consider Hume's account of general ideas, and I want especially to raise the question what it is about them that he wants to explain. In order to see what Hume thinks he should explain about our general ideas, we need first to see what sort of explanatory resources he thinks are available. In the introduction to the Treatise, he proposes to undertake a study of human nature, a study of the particular kind that he calls science of man. He is going to study the human mind using "careful and exact experiments"1 gleaned up from a "cautious observation of human life" as it appears in the "common course of the world" (T xix). The outcome will be the discovery of "principles," and Hume aims to render them "as universal as possible," "explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest causes" (T xvii). By itself this sounds awfully bland. How does it differ from the generalizations any of us might make about human mental life? On one common understanding of Hume, the answer is that he is studying objects we don't ordinarily talk about, using a method of observation we don't ordinarily use. He is studying what Locke called "ideas": the items of which a person is immeJanet Broughton is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-2390, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 280 Janet Broughton diately aware, and which depend on that awareness for their existence. He is studying them by using his power of introspection, the power by which a person may become immediately aware of his own ideas. I have argued elsewhere2 that Hume's term, 'perception,' isn't meant to refer to Lockean ideas but to people's states of mind as we ordinarily understand them: dateable episodes of consciousness of a great many types, including episodes of seeing, touching, smelling, tasting and hearing objects in the world around us. Nor, I have argued, does Hume's "cautious observation of human life" (T xix) invariably or even usually take the form of introspection. Rather, the scientist of man attends to a range of the features of perceptions that we notice from time to time in ordinary life. What distinguishes the activities of the scientist of man from those of the ordinary observer of human mental life is that the scientist of man attends mainly just to this range of features, and reflects upon them in a sustained and systematic way. The features to which he gives his attention are, I believe, these: force and vivacity; content compounded from simple elements; and the kinds of sequences or patterns in which perceptions with such-and-such content having such-and-such force and vivacity occur. Of these three features, the most puzzling by far, I think, is content; I will be exploring aspects of content as I attempt to identify what it is about general ideas that the scientist of man wants to understand. To put it crudely, we must see what Hume thinks impressions already contain if we want to see what it is about general ideas he wants to explain. In the first part of Book I of the Treatise, Hume sets out the basic distinctions and principles upon which he will draw: the distinctions between impressions and ideas, between simple and complex perceptions, between impressions of sensation and those of reflection, and between ideas of memory and of imagination; and the principles that our simple ideas are derived from resembling simple impressions, and that our ideas are associated via relations of resemblance, contiguity and causation. After clarifying the notion of relations, Hume concludes part i by... (shrink)

Hume discusses the distinction of reason to explain how we distinguish things inseparable, and so identical, e.g., the color and figure of a white globe. He says we note the respect in which the globe is similar to a white cube and dissimilar to a black sphere, and the respect in which it is dissimilar to the first and similar to the second. Unfortunately, Hume takes these differing respects of resemblance to be identical with the white globe itself. Contradiction results, (...) undermining his theory of abstraction. The way out is apparently to admit an intrinsic complexity in even simple things. (shrink)

It is widely believed that Hume often wrote carelessly and contradicted himself, and that no unified, sound philosophy emerges from his writings. Don Garrett demonstrates that such criticisms of Hume are without basis. Offering fresh and trenchant solutions to longstanding problems in Hume studies, Garrett's penetrating analysis also makes clear the continuing relevance of Hume's philosophy.

Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole were philosophers and theologians associated with Port-Royal Abbey, a centre of the Catholic Jansenist movement in seventeenth-century France. Their enormously influential Logic or the Art of Thinking, which went through five editions in their lifetimes, treats topics in logic, language, theory of knowledge and metaphysics, and also articulates the response of 'heretical' Jansenist Catholicism to orthodox Catholic and Protestant views on grace, free will and the sacraments. In attempting to combine the categorical theory of the (...) proposition with a Cartesian account of knowledge, their Logic represents the classical view of judgment which inspired the modern transformation in logic and semantic theory by Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and recent philosophers. This edition presents a new translation of the text, together with a historical introduction and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

: Descartes' conceptual distinction (or distinctio rationis) is commonly understood to be a distinction created by the mind's activity without a foundation in re. This paper challenges this understanding partially based on a letter to an unknown correspondent in which Descartes claims not to admit distinctions without a foundation. He goes on to claim that his conceptual distinction is not a distinctio rationis ratiocinantis (i.e. a distinction of reasoning reason) but is something like a formal distinction or, more precisely, a (...) distinctio ! rationis ratiocinatae (i.e. a distinction of reasoned reason). This remark is then explored through Descartes' other writings and his scholastic intellectual heritage. I conclude that Descartes' conceptual distinction just is a formal distinction understood as a distinctio rationis ratiocinatae as expressed in the works of Scotus, Suarez and Eustachius, and so it has a foundation in re in very much the same way as a formal distinction. (shrink)

William James criticizes Hume for failing to adhere to the strictly empiricist method when he postulates discrete constituents of experience—which Hume calls perceptions—thereby making our experience a train of disconnected pieces. James argues that the discontinuity of experience in Hume results in part from his failure to recognize the immediate presence of relations in experience.1 Emphasizing a continuity and unity of experience, James thus differentiates his empiricism from Hume's as being radical in the sense that it recognizes relations as 'real' (...) parts of experience just as are things that are experienced to be so related.2 This raises a question concerning the experiential status of relations in Hume: is .. (shrink)

This paper concerns Hume’s treatment of the distinction of reason in the Treatise, I.i.7. Many scholars have claimed that there is a tension between his account of the distinction of reason and his commitment to his so-called separability principle. I explain why Hume’s account of the distinction of reason is fully consistent with the principle, and show how other discussions, both critical of and sympathetic to Hume, fail to appreciate the radicalness of his position. I evaluate Hume’s bold position and (...) compare it to earlier positions (Aquinas) and current positions (Donald Davidson). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Some Reflections on Hume on Existence Stanley Tweyman In this paper, I focus on two claims which Hume makes with regard to existence. The first, which appears in a single paragraph inA Treatise ofHumanNature 1.2.6,1 is that existence cannotbe distinguishedfrom what we believe exists by a "distinction ofreason." The second appears in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion when Cleanthes criticizes Demea's a priori argument. Much of Cleanthes' criticism of (...) Demea's argument is developed from the Humean claim that, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent."2 My efforts are directed to showing that, although Hume takes very little space developing each of these points, certain difficulties attend each claim—difficulties which Hume either does not (in the case of the first) or cannot (in the case of the second) address when the claim itself is being made. Distinctions ofReason and the Thought ofExistence Among the distinctions which Hume introduces very early in the Treatise is that between simple and complex perceptions. Simple perceptions are those which admit of no distinction or separation, whereas those which are complex can be distinguished into the simple perceptions of which they are composed through the power that the imagination possesses ofproducing a separation wherever it perceives a difference. A simple perception, therefore, is a perceptual primitive that is not reducible into parts, that is, into the other more basic perceptions. Hume argues that although simple perceptions are not amenable to further distinctions in terms of parts, they are still susceptible to distinctions ofreason. As examples ofthis distinction,he speaks of "figure and the body figur'd; motion and the body movM" (T 24). The actual example employed in his discussion (T 25) is the distinction between the colour and figure in a globe of white marble. Hume points out that when presented with a globe ofwhite marble, the colour is inseparable and indistinguishable from the form or figure. However, ifwe also observe aglobe ofblack marble and a cube ofwhite marble, and compare them with the globe of white marble, we will be able to distinguish the colour and figure of the latter through the resemblances it has with the other two objects. That is, the colour of the globe resembles the colour of the cube, and the figure of the globe Volume XVIII Number 2 137 STANLEY TWEYMAN resembles the figure of the black marble. The awareness of these resemblances Hume refers to as "akind ofreflection" or "comparison," and that to which we are attending—in this case the colour of the figure—he refers to as an "aspect" (T 25). Thus, although simple perceptions lack parts, they do possess aspects—aspects which are discovered through finding resemblances between the perception in question and others: "we consider the figure and colour together, since they are in effect the same and undistinguishable; but still view them in different aspects, according to the resemblances, of which they are susceptible" (T 25). The factthatHume offers a separate name for the operation under discussion makes it appear as though it is a separate operation ofthe mind not yet covered in his discussion. However, this is not the case. Distinctions ofreason are made through comparing an idea with other ideas in order to determine certain resemblances between them. But all comparisons between ideas are regarded by Hume as attempts to establish philosophical relations between them: "The word Relation is... used... for that particular circumstance, in which, even upon the arbitrary union of two ideas in the fancy, we may think proper to compare them" (T 13). The text reveals that by the expression "that particularcircumstance"in the precedingquotation Hume isreferring to some resemblance or other which enables the two ideas to be compared: "resemblance:... is a relation, without which no philosophical relation can exist; since no objects will admit of comparison, but what have some degree ofresemblance" (T 14). What follows from this discussion is that distinctions of reason are nothing but the determination ofphilosophical relationsbetween a certain idea and others. Since philosophical relations exist between complex ideas, and since all distinctions ofreason are nothing but the establishment of philosophical relations, it follows that distinctions of reason can occur... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:424 CAN HUME'S USE OF A SIMPLE/COMPLEX DISTINCTION BE MADE CONSISTENT? There is little doubt that Hume equivocates on the distinction between simple and complex impressions and ideas. Sometimes he identifies properties such as colors and shapes as simples. This is what he does, in fact, when he first introduces the distinction: Simple perceptions or impressions and ideas are such as admit of no distinction nor separation. The complex (...) are the contrary to these, and may be distinguished into parts. Tho' a particular colour, taste, and smell are qualities all united together in this apple, 'tis easy to perceive they are not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each other. Later, however, Hume speaks of simples not as qualities (or, of course, as substances) but as objects, i.e., things with properties: it is not red and round that are the simples but the red, round spot. He says, for example: Before I leave this subject I shall employ the same principles to explain that distinction of reason, which is so much talk'd of, and is so little understood, in the schools. Of this kind is the distinction betwixt figure and the body figur'd; motion and the body mov'd. The difficulty of explaining this distinction arises from the principle above explain'd, that all ideas, which are different, are separable. For it follows from thence, that if the figure be different from the body, their ideas must be separable as well as distinguishable; if they be not different, their ideas can neither be separable nor distinguishable (T 2425 ). 425 A genuine inconsistency with regard to the simple/complex distinction would have far reaching implications for Hume's system. Even the question concerning his understanding of necessity may be affected. It has been argued, for example, that what Hume believes separates the philosophical relations that are necessary from those that are not is that the former are internal relations. The suggestion is that the doctrine of internal relations, which is inextricably tied to a specific characterization of a simple/complex distinction, provides the essential contrast Hume needs for his ultimate denial that the causal relation is necessary. The consequences are compounded if we also take Robinson to be right in his attempt to reconcile Hume's 'conflicting' statements about causation in terms of the distinction between the natural and philosophical relations. While it is pointless to deny the ambiguity just set out (and, of course, one must remain constantly watchful to determine how Hume is employing the simple/complex distinction in a particular case), I believe a reconciliation of the two positions is still possible and that there is no genuine contradiction in Hume's system over this issue. The principle shift occurs between the distinction presented in logical terms and its presentation in psychological terms. In the latter instance what Hume seems to be worried about is Platonism: a metaphysics that countenances the existence of unexemplif ied qualities. This is most evident in the passage above where Hume, in effect, makes the following argument: if it were the case that (1) what is distinguishable in thought is separable in reality; and (2) figure and body are 426 distinguishable in thought; then it would follow that (3) figure and body are separable in reality. However, (3), i.e., Platonism, is false. But then so must be (2). Hume never deviates from this conclusion and its implications for his model of thought throughout the Treatise. It is this argument, for example, which became the basis for Hume's accusation against Locke's theory of abstraction and the foundation of his own view. So far Hume has it that neither thought nor experience present us with colors and shapes in isolation. This is his psychological point. Yet that need not be seen as conclusive with regard to what is to count as a logical simple. Building on his notion of a distinction of reason, Hume says: Thus when a globe of white marble is presented, we receive only the impression of a white colour dispos 'd in a certain form, nor are we able to separate and distinguish the colour from the form. But observing afterwards... (shrink)

William James criticizes Hume for failing to adhere to the strictly empiricist method when he postulates discrete constituents of experience — which Hume calls perceptions — thereby making our experience a train of disconnected pieces. James argues that the discontinuity of experience in Hume results in part from his failure to recognize the immediate presence of relations in experience. Emphasizing a continuity and unity of experience, James thus differentiates his empiricism from Hume's as being radical in the sense that it (...) recognizes relations as ‘real’ parts of experience just as are things that are experienced to be so related. This raises a question concerning the experiential status of relations in Hume: is James correct in accusing Hume of failing to notice the experiential reality of relations? Does Hume deny the experiential reality of relations entirely? Or does Hume downplay the experiential reality of relations and come to take them merely as products of the imagination, hence not ‘real,’ for certain theoretical reasons? (shrink)

Many of the central theses of Hume's philosophy – his rejection of real relations, universals, abstract objects and necessary causal relations – had precedents in the later medieval nominalist tradition. Hume and his medieval predecessors developed complex semantic theories to show both how ontologies are apt to become inflated and how, if we understand carefully the processes by which meaning is generated, we can achieve greater ontological parsimony. Tracing a trajectory from those medieval traditions to Hume reveals Hume to be (...) more radical, particularly in his rejection of abstraction and abstract ideas. Hume's denial of general, abstract ideas is consistent with his philosophical principles but fails to appreciate the more sophisticated nominalist approaches to abstraction, the result of which is a theoretically impoverished account of our capacity for generalization. (shrink)