The Description for this book, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician, will be forthcoming.

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This set comprises the two volumes of texts and editorial material, which are also available for purchase separately. -/- David Hume (1711 - 1776) is one of the greatest of philosophers. Today he probably ranks highest of all British philosophers in terms of influence and philosophical standing. His philosophical work ranges across morals, the mind, metaphysics, epistemology, religion, and (...) aesthetics; he had broad interests not only in philosophy as it is now conceived but in history, politics, economics, religion, and the arts. He was a master of English prose. -/- The Clarendon Hume Edition will include all of his works except his History of England and minor historical writings. It is the only thorough critical edition, and will provide a far more extensive scholarly treatment than any previous editions. This edition (which has been in preparation since the 1970s) offers authoritative annotation, bibliographical information, and indexes, and draws upon the major advances in textual scholarship that have been made since the publication of earlier editions - advances both in the understanding of editorial principle and practice and in knowledge of the history of Hume's own texts. (shrink)

Demonstrates there are two separate (albeit remarkably similar) versions of the philosopher's engraved bookplate. Presents arguments as to which is the earlier. Speculates that the later version was produced for Hume's favorite nephew and the inheritor of his library, David Hume the Younger.

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. The first volume contains the critical text of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature , followed by the shortin which Hume set out the key arguments of the larger work; the volume concludes with A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh , Hume's later defence of the Treatise.

Hume’s Science of Human Nature is an investigation of the philosophical commitments underlying Hume's methodology in pursuing what he calls ‘the science of human nature’. It argues that Hume understands scientific explanation as aiming at explaining the inductively-established universal regularities discovered in experience via an appeal to the nature of the substance underlying manifest phenomena. For years, scholars have taken Hume to employ a deliberately shallow and demonstrably untenable notion of scientific explanation. By contrast, Hume’s Science of Human Nature sets (...) out to update our understanding of Hume’s methodology by using a more sophisticated picture of science as a model. (shrink)

Hume: General Philosophy makes available the most significant essays published on the work of David Hume. It brings together an extensive array of often difficult to obtain essays in a convenient and accessible format for researchers, teachers and student alike. Featuring a full-length introduction form the editor, it is an indispensable international reference work.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:110 DAVID HUME'S INVISIBLE HAND IN THE WEALTH OF NATIONS THE PUBLIC CHOICE OF MORAL INFORMATION Introduction The thesis I shall defend is that there are systematic aspects of Adam Smith's economics which make little sense when read in isolation from a literature in which David Hume provides the signal contributions. Consequently, parts of Hume's own work are stripped of meaning, isolated as they are from later (...) developments. The puzzles about Smith's analysis which I find illuminated by Hume's are the following: 1. Why does Smith both defend the importance of economic growth for the material of well-being of the working class and claim that property originates as spoil, impoverishing the working class? After all, in the classical system the existence of property is one requisite for economic growth. 2. Why does Smith exalt the assumption of self-interested behavior in private activity but claim that irrationality dominates the political process? 3. Why does Smith deny the importance of benevolence in Wealth of Nations and insist on the importance of morality Sentiment morality in Theory of Moral its?3 The three questions have a common feature: they are related to the question of how public goods are provided. The particular public good in question is the institution of private property. As with all true I am obligated to the Center for Study of Public Choice for generous support of my research. Suzanne Levy gets the credit for the extent to which this approaches English. I have benefited from acute comments from Charles Rowley and Charles Griswold. The errors and obscurities which remain are solely my responsibility. Ill public goods, society considered as a whole benefits from having such an institution, but each individual considered separately can gain by anti-social behavior.4 Public goods provide a considerable difficulty for any social institution; neither competition in the market nor government requests that individuals reveal how much they wish to be taxed are certain to be efficient. There are aspects of the classical economic analysis which stress the importance of moral information as a partial solution to the public goods problem. By "moral information" I only require that the theory is employed as a guide and that if an individual acts contrary to the theory, this choice is not cited as "falsifying" the theory. Rather, something is said to be "wrong" or "wicked" about the choice.6 Much of modern economic analysis assumes that individuals have perfect information; this postulate rules out any significant role for moral information in the provision of the public goods. To avoid assuming away such a role for morality, we will drop the perfect information assumption and then examine if we can make sense of the classics' attack on the public goods problem. Of course, the specification that individuals see their own interests very poorly is consistent with Smith's general approach. The technique employed below is to look at the issue which Hume and Smith addressed as a problem in modern economics. The key difficulty is to determine under what conditions moral information could guide individuals with very imperfect perceptions to maximize their utility. In particular, suppose we find that moral guidance tells an individual how efficiently to produce. Is this morality self-enforcing or are resources required to persuade people to act in accord with these teachings? If resources are required, we will not pay much attention to just how this persuasion 112 is provided, e.g., whether we tell people that theft is "evil" or whether we hang a few thieves. General production theory tells us we probably will do both, but this is a separate issue. The argument to be advanced is that moral information has self-enforcement properties in private activities but these properties are missing in public activities. In this account, then, real resources will be required for implementing the morality. This consideration in turn raises an interesting issue. If the government expends these resources, what reason is there to believe that they will be provided to serve the public interest and not the interest of the government? Is it possible that the government can prosper by keeping people ignorant or by giving them advice... (shrink)

This book was written with three aims in mind. The first was to provide a reasonably concise account of Hume's social and political thought that might help students coming to it for the first time. The second aim was to say something about the relationship between philosophy and politics, with explicit attention to Hume, but implicit reference to a general issue. The third is to offer an integrated account of Hume's thought. The book accounts for the varying interpretation of the (...) conservative and liberalist traditions by arguing that the distinction between liberalism and conservatism had little application in mid-18th-century Britain. Hume's ideology contained elements that we should now identify as conservative and liberal respectively, and so by selective emphasis it is possible to make him seem a thoroughbred conservative or liberal according to choice. These two problems the relationship between Hume's philosophy and his politics, and the ideological character of his thought are pursued through the first and second parts of the book respectively. (shrink)

In this compelling analysis David Pears examines the foundations of Hume's theory of the mind as presented in the first book of the Treatise. Past studies have tended to take one of two extreme views: that Hume relies exclusively on a theory of meaning, or that he relies exclusively on a theory of truth and evidence. Steering a middle course between these positions, Pears argues that Hume's theory of ideas serves both functions. He examines in detail its application to (...) three difficult problems: causation, personal identity, and sense perception. Hume's solutions, Pears argues, are not theories that can be given a place in standard classification of philosophical theories, but rather depend upon a subtle form of naturalism not altogether unlike Wittgenstein's naturalism. A clearly written and argued study, Hume's System will be of special interest to students and scholars of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This work is primarily concerned with Hume's arguments concerning the respective roles of reason and passion in moral decisions. Thus, the major part of the work deals with section I of Part I of Book III of the Treatise, where Hume argues that moral distinctions are not derived from reason. But in discussing this section, I have had to take into account most ofthe other sections of Book III, and some important ones from Book II of the Treatise and the (...) Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Omissions, however, are noticeable. While I have gone into great detail on Parts I and II ofthe Treatise of Morals, I have omitted any discussion of Part III. I have not discussed everything Hume has to say on ethics, or even everything in Book III of the Treatise. I have placed certain limits on myself in writing this work. I attempt to point out only what is central to Hume's ethics, and this I believe to be the first section of Book III, and to show how certain assumptions and conclusions of this section underlie the rest of Hume's considerations on ethics. Thus, I have tried to show that Hume's discussion of the artificial virtues necessarily follows from the assump tions and conclusions of section I. But I leave it to the reader, in his further study of Hume, to apply my points to other sections of Hume that I have not discussed. (shrink)

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This second volume contains their historical account of how the Treatise was written and published; an explanation of how they have established the text; an extensive set of annotations which illuminate Hume's texts; and a comprehensive bibliography and index.

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. The first volume contains the critical text of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, followed by the shortand concluding with A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh.

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This volume contains their account of how the Treatise was written and published; an explanation of how they established the text; an extensive set of annotations; and a detailed bibliography and index.

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This set comprises the two volumes of texts and editorial material, which are also available for purchase separately.

This book explores Hume's account of reason and its role in human understanding, seen in the context of other notable accounts by philosophers of the early modern period. David Owen offers new interpretations of many of Hume's most famous arguments about induction, belief, scepticism, the passions, and moral distinctions.

David Lewis claims that a simple sort of anti-Humeanism-that the rational agent desires something to the extent he believes it to be good-can be given a decision-theoretic formulation, which Lewis calls 'Desire as Belief' (DAB). Given the (widely held) assumption that Jeffrey conditionalising is a rationally permissible way to change one's mind in the face of new evidence, Lewis proves that DAB leads to absurdity. Thus, according to Lewis, the simple form of anti-Humeanism stands refuted. In this paper we (...) investigate whether Lewis's case against DAB can be strengthened by examining how it fares under rival versions of decision theory, including other conceptions of rational ways to change one's mind. We argue that the anti-Humean may escape Lewis's argument either by adopting a version of causal decision theory, or by claiming that the refutation only applies to hyper-idealised rational agents, or by denying that the decision-theoretic framework has the expressive capacity to formulate anti-Humeanism. (shrink)

This book aims to discuss probability and David Hume's inductive scepticism. For the sceptical view which he took of inductive inference, Hume only ever gave one argument. That argument is the sole subject-matter of this book. The book is divided into three parts. Part one presents some remarks on probability. Part two identifies Hume's argument for inductive scepticism. Finally, the third part evaluates Hume's argument for inductive scepticism. Hume's argument that induction must be either deductively valid or circular because (...) based on experience neglects the possibility that it is an argument of non-deductive logic (logical probability, in the sense of Keynes). (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide (...) variety of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

Natural law theory founds moral judgments on what, given the nature of human beings and ever-present circumstances, enables people to live together in thriving communities. The cognitive features of moral judgments--the claims of literal truth for these judgments about these matters and the readiness to have the judgments stand or fall with the evidence for those claims come front and centre with this characterization of natural law theory. Both what is good for human beings and what it is right and (...) wrong for them to do are matters of fact implied by what is required for their thriving; and so it is reasonable to hold that natural law theory is a variety of moral realism. So, if Hume is not a moral realist, he is not a natural law theorist. But I shall argue that Hume is not a moral realis; and this is what I shall undertake to do, in the course of establishing that he is a natural law theorist, indeed, a human nature natural law theorist. (shrink)

Kant’s Inferentialism draws on a wide range of sources to present a reading of Kant’s theory of mental representation as a direct response to the challenges issued by Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature. Kant rejects the conclusions that Hume draws on the grounds that these are predicated on Hume’s theory of mental representation, which Kant refutes by presenting objections to Hume’s treatment of representations of complex states of affairs and the nature of judgment. In its place, Kant combines (...) an account of concepts as rules of inference with a detailed account of perception and of the self as the locus of conceptual norms to form a complete theory of human experience as an essentially rule-governed enterprise aimed at producing a representation of the world as a system of objects necessarily connected to one another via causal laws. This interpretation of the historical dialectic enriches our understanding of both Hume and Kant and brings to bear Kant’s insights into mental representation on contemporary debates in philosophy of mind. Kant’s version of inferentialism is both resistant to objections to contemporary accounts that cast these as forms of linguistic idealism, and serves as a remedy to misplaced Humean scientism about representation. (shrink)

David Hume's sympathetic principle applies to physical equals. In his account, we sympathize with those like us. By contrast, Adam Smith's sympathetic principle induces equality. We consider Hume's “other rational species” problem to see whether Smith's wider sympathetic principle would alter Hume's conclusion that “superior” beings will enslave “inferior” beings. We show that Smith introduces the notion of “generosity,” which functions as if it were Hume's justice even when there is no possibility of contract.

Shepherd’s argument against Hume’s thesis that an object can begin its existence uncaused has received short shrift in the secondary literature. I argue that the key to understanding that argument’s success is understanding its dialectical context. Shepherd sees the dialectical situation as follows. Hume presents an argument against Locke and Clarke the conclusion of which is that an object can come into existence uncaused. An essential premise of that argument is Hume’s theory of mental representation. Hume’s theory of mental representation, (...) however, is itself implausible and unsupported. Therefore, one need not accept this premise or this conclusion. Thus, Shepherd proceeds to her discussion of the relation of cause and effect free to help herself to the thesis that every beginning of existence must have a cause. Additionally, she elsewhere pays down the debt she incurs in that argument by presenting her own alternative theory of mental representation, which is both plausible in its own right, and can account for the error that she takes Hume to make. (shrink)

Hume’s celebrated argument concerning miracles, and an 18th century criticism of it put forward by Richard Price, is here interpreted in terms of the modern controversy over the base-rate fallacy. When considering to what degree we should trust a witness, should we or should we not take into account the prior probability of the event reported? The reliability of the witness (’Pr’(says e/e)) is distinguished from the credibility of the testimony (’Pr’(e/says e)), and it is argued that Hume, as a (...) good proto-Bayesian, argued that the credibility of the testimony should be calculated in terms of both the reliability of the witness and the prior probability of the event reported. (shrink)

Hume's moral theory, I shall here argue, is explicitly and in fundamental ways a common sense theory. It is widely accepted, of course, that Hume found moral distinctions to rest on sentiment, and that he found in the principle of sympathy the means by which individual sentiments come to be experienced by others. What has not received adequate attention is Hume's concern to refute moral skepticism and his explicit reliance on appeals to “common sense,” nor,so far as I know, has (...) anyone suggested how these several features coalesce in an outlook which is appropriately designated a common sense theory. To support my claim I shall first show that Hume is not, as is widely supposed, what we would term a “subjectivist” in morals, and that in fact he means to establish, in at least two important senses of the term, the “objectivity”of morals. (shrink)

Political theory contains two views of social care for people with intellectual disabilities. The favor view treats disability services as an undeserved gratuity, while the entitlement view sees them as a deserved right. This paper argues that David Hume is one philosophical source of the favor view; he bases political membership on a threshold level of mental capacity and shuts out anyone who falls below. Hume’s account, which excludes people with intellectual disabilities from justice owing to their lack of (...) power, but includes them in charity, is morally deficient. The shortcomings of Hume’s theory underscore the necessity of having a view of justice which ensures that people with intellectual disabilities are not marginalized. In defending the entitlement view, I integrate philosophical analysis and concrete examples of policy issues. (shrink)

In 1974 R W Connon discovered a copy of "Treatise" III bearing Hume's autograph alterations. I argue ("contra" connon and nidditch) that Hume's corrections are of no philosophical significance. I also comment on Hume's relationship with Hutcheson.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:164. HUME'S MISTAKE — ANOTHER GUESS Richard Price's first biographer reports that David Hume once "candidly acknowledged that on one point Mr. Price had succeeded in convincing him that his arguments were inconclusive; but it does not appear that Mr. Hume, in consequence of this conviction, made any alteration in the subsequent edition of his Essays." It has 2 been suggested that Hume's avowed mistake is to be (...) found in his 'Of Miracles', a section of An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding which is severely criticized in the 3 fourth of Price's Four Dissertations. This suggestion receives some support from Hume's generous response to Price's criticism: I own to you, that the Light in which you have put this Controversy, is new and plausible and ingenious, and perhaps solid. But I must have some more time to weigh it, before I can pronounce this Judgment with Satisfaction to myself. My present Occupations shall not deprive me of the Leizure requisite for that Purpose; as no Object can possibly have equal Importance. However, there is no evidence that after studying Price's arguments Hume came to regard them as "solid" and his own as inconclusive or mistaken. The fact that Hume never revised his essay on miracles in order to accommodate Price's criticisms seems good evidence that that work does not contain Hume's mistake. Most fortunately there is another plausible candidate. In A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals Price criticized several of Hume's philosophical conclusions and arguments, including the central argument of A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I Part IV Section I ('Of scepticism with regard to reason'). This very complicated argument is a novel application of John Craig's "celebrated argument against the Christian Religion." Price summarizes and then criticizes Hume's argument as follows: 165. In every judgment we can form, besides the uncertainty attending the original consideration of the subject itself; there is another derived from the consideration of the fallibility of our faculties, and the past instances in which we have been mistaken; to which must be added a third uncertainty, derived from the possibility of error in this estimation we make of the fidelity of our faculties; and to this a fourth of the same kind, and so on in infinitum; till at last the first evidence, by a constant diminution of it, must be reduced to nothing. See Mr. Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Vol. I. p. 315, & c. As much of this strange reasoning as is not above my comprehension, proves just the reverse of what was intended by it. For let it be acknowledged, that the consideration of the fallibility of our understandings, and the instances in which they have deceived us, necessarily diminishes our assurance of the rectitude of our sentiments ; the subsequent reflection on the uncertainty attending this judgment which we make of our faculties, diminishes not, but contributes to restore to its first strength, our original assurance; because the more precarious a judgment or probability unfavourable to another appears, the less must be its effect in weakening it. Hume's argument has been described as "one of the worst arguments ever to impose itself on a man of genius." Moreover, Hume himself may have become dissatisfied with it, 166. for it appears to be the only major argument of Treatise I_ which he did not recast in some form in his post-Treatise 0 writings. If Price's criticism is telling, then Hume probably would have readily acknowledged that his juvenile argument in 'Of scepticism with regard to reason' was mistaken. David Raynor Mount Allison University 1.William Morgan, Memoirs of the Life of The Rev. Richard Price, D.D., F. R. S. (London, 1815) 16f. 2.Bernard Peach, "Hume's Mistake", Journal of the History of Ideas XLI (1980), 331-334. See also Price-Priestly Newsletter, No. 2 (1978), 76-81. 3.Four Dissertations. (London, 1767). For a brief account of Price's Bayesian critique of Hume's views on miracles see Bernard Peach, "Miracles, Methodology, and Metaphysical Rationalism", International Journal for Philosophy of Religion IX (1978), 69-74. 4.Hume to Price, 18 March 1767: New Letters of David... (shrink)

In A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume claims that causes must temporally precede their effects. However, his main argument for this claim has long puzzled commentators. Indeed, most commentators have dismissed this argument as confused, but beyond this dismissal, the argument has provoked relatively little critical attention. My aim in this paper is to rectify this situation. In what follows, I (i) clarify the argument’s interpretive challenges, (ii) critique two existing interpretations of it, and (iii) offer my own (...) improved interpretation. More generally, I hope to throw new light on this puzzling aspect of Hume’s philosophy. (shrink)

Hume's account of belief has been much reviled, especially considered as an account of what it is to assent to or judge a proposition to be true. In fact, given that he thinks that thoughts about existence can be composed of a single idea, and that relations are just complex ideas, it might be wondered whether he has an account of judgment at all. Nonetheless, Hume was extremely proud of his account of belief, discussing it at length in the Abstract, (...) and developing it in the Appendix. Furthermore, he claimed several times that his account was new. It was not just a new answer to an old question, but an answer to a new question as well. Why did Hume think he was raising, and answering, a new question? Is his answer really so appalling? Why did he define belief in terms of a relationship with a present impression? In this paper, I propose answers to these questions. The answers emerge by contrasting Hume with Locke. Locke thought that belief was a pale imitation of knowledge, and that the assent we give to propositions is constituted in the very same act as forming those propositions. Hume saw the problems such a theory faced concerning existential beliefs. By ceasing to treat existence as a predicate, Hume was confronted with the issue of what it was to judge something to be true, or to assent to something. This issue had to be solved independently of the question of what it was to conceive something, or understand the content of a proposition. Hume thought this problem was new. He should be looked at, not as giving a bad answer to an important question, but rather as being the first in the early modern period to recognize that there was an important question here to be answered. (shrink)

David Johnson seeks to overthrow one of the widely accepted tenets of Anglo-American philosophy—that of the success of the Humean case against the rational credibility of reports of miracles. In a manner unattempted in any other single work, he meticulously examines all the main variants of Humean reasoning on the topic of miracles: Hume's own argument and its reconstructions by John Stuart Mill, J. L. Mackie, Antony Flew, Jordan Howard Sobel, and others. Hume's view, set forth in his essay (...) "Of Miracles," has been widely thought to be correct. Johnson reviews Hume's thesis with clarity and elegance and considers the arguments of some of the most prominent defenders of Hume's case against miracles. According to Johnson, the Humean argument on this topic is entirely without merit, its purported cogency being simply a philosophical myth. (shrink)