Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature

Revered for his contributions to empiricism, skepticism and ethics, David Hume remains one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy. His first and broadest work, A Treatise of Human Nature , comprises three volumes, concerning the understanding, the passions and morals. He develops a naturalist and empiricist program, illustrating that the mind operates through the association of impressions and ideas. This Companion features essays by leading scholars that evaluate the philosophical content of the arguments in Hume's (...) Treatise while considering their historical context. The authors examine Hume's distinctive views on causation, motivation, free will, moral evaluation and the origins of justice, which continue to influence present-day philosophical debate. This collection will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars exploring Hume, British empiricism and modern philosophy. (shrink)

Revered for his contributions to empiricism, skepticism and ethics, David Hume remains one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy. His first and broadest work, A Treatise of Human Nature, comprises three volumes, concerning the understanding, the passions and morals. He develops a naturalist and empiricist program, illustrating that the mind operates through the association of impressions and ideas. This Companion features essays by leading scholars that evaluate the philosophical content of the arguments in Hume's Treatise (...) while considering their historical context. The authors examine Hume's distinctive views on causation, motivation, free will, moral evaluation and the origins of justice, which continue to influence present-day philosophical debate. This collection will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars exploring Hume, British empiricism and modern philosophy. (shrink)

This dissertation uses analytical tools from narratology and classical rhetoric to explore Hume's practice as a writer in A Treatise of Human Nature, his first published attempt at philosophy. The first chapter will discuss the problem of the failure of Hume's Treatise, and will also discuss some of the work done by previous scholars on Hume's practice as a writer. Chapter two discusses various problems involved with previous scholars' generalizations about eighteenth-century reading public tastes, and it offers Kenneth Burke's idea (...) of a "cultural conversation" as a more manageable way of talking about audience in rhetorical analysis of an historical text. Chapter three first provides reasons for comparing Pope's Essay on Man to Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. It then presents an analysis of the special topics in these two texts as a way of determining whether or not the two texts were speaking in the same cultural conversation. Chapter four uses concepts from narratology to analyze the reader and writer constructs inscribed between the actual reader and the actual writer to illustrate differences between the Essay and the Treatise that the contemporary audience may have found significant. Chapter five concludes this dissertation with a summary of the work done in the previous chapters, along with a restatement of my claim, the Treatise failed because its implied author provides no "space" for the reader to join the narrator in considering the discourse being presented. (shrink)

So considered, Hume is viewed as a naturalist, whose project in the first three parts of the first book of the Treatise is to provide an account of the ...

RESUMO No Livro I, parte IV, do "Tratado da natureza humana", Hume desenvolve aquilo que vamos chamar de lógica da ficção. Não se trata de um simples erro da imaginação enquanto fantasia, mas de uma propensão a criar ideias, entidades e objetos a partir das percepções presentes na mente. O que resulta daí é um sentido rico e novo de ficção que permite a Hume desenvolver uma história natural da filosofia, descrevendo a gênese inevitável de conceitos metafísicos. Partindo de uma (...) inspiração kantiana, iremos abordar esse tema ressaltando as semelhanças e diferenças entre as ficções naturais e a ilusão transcendental. ABSTRACT In Book I, part IV, of the "Treatise of Human Nature", Hume develops what we will call logic of fiction. It is not the case of a mere error of imagination as fancy, but a tendency to feign ideas, entities and objects from the perceptions in the mind. The result is a rich and new sense of fiction that allows Hume to establish a natural history of Philosophy, describing the unavoidable genesis of metaphysical concepts. From a Kantian point of view, we will approach this subject by highlighting the similarities as well as the differences between the natural fictions and the transcendental illusion. (shrink)

" By the end, we can see the cause to which Hume has been true throughout the work.

Despite its central role in his important theories of self and external world, Hume’s account of numerical identity has been neglected or misunderstood. The account is designed as a response to a difficulty concerning identity apparently original with Hume. I argue that the problem is real, crucial, and remains unresolved today. Hume’s response to the difficulty enlists his idiosyncratic, empiricist views on time: time consists of discrete, partless moments, some of which coexist with successions of others. Time is more like (...) a wall of variously sized bricks than like a continuous line. Hume’s arguments that time (and space) are not infinitely divisible have met with literal contempt. I show that his unusual views are motivated and consistent. The topic of identity leads naturally to Hume’s account of personal identity and his later retraction--one of the most widely discussed topics in Hume scholarship. I give a new, straightforward explanation of the retraction, by arguing that Hume’s views on consciousness preclude his prior account of the self as a fiction. I then suggest that Hume’s fundamental problem for personal identity is his general difficulty concerning identity. Discussing Hume’s metaphysics raises perhaps the most central and difficult topic in Hume scholarship--how to reconcile the constructive, theoretical Hume with the skeptical Hume. The prevailing view for the last century has been that Hume’s skepticism is limited, leaving room for his theorizing. I argue, rather, that Hume is an unlimited Pyrrhonian skeptic in relevant respects, and that this interpretation of him best reconciles his two sides. (shrink)

In this volume--the first, focused study of Hume on time and identity--Baxter focuses on Hume’s treatment of the concept of numerical identity, which is central to Hume's famous discussions of the external world and personal identity. Hume raises a long unappreciated, and still unresolved, difficulty with the concept of identity: how to represent something as "a medium betwixt unity and number." Superficial resemblance to Frege’s famous puzzle has kept the difficulty in the shadows. Hume’s way of addressing it makes sense (...) only in the context of his unorthodox theory of time. Baxter shows the defensibility of that theory against past dismissive interpretations, especially of Hume’s stance on infinite divisibility. Later the author shows how the difficulty underlies Hume’s later worries about his theory of personal identity, in a new reading motivated by Hume’s important appeals to consciousness. Baxter casts Hume throughout as an acute metaphysician, and reconciles this side of Hume with his overarching Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

Epistemic naturalism, as I understand it here, is the view that there are cases in which we are justified in holding a belief and cases in which we are not so justified, and that we can distinguish cases of one sort from cases of the other with reference to non-normative facts about the mechanisms that produce our beliefs.1 To those familiar with the literature on this subject, it might seem that the issue of Hume's epistemic naturalism has already been approached (...) from every angle.2 All the same, I think there is an as yet unnoticed and better angle from which to approach the issue, one that brings out the central role of feeling in Hume's account of epistemic justification.3 On my account, Hume characterizes .. (shrink)

In the Introduction to the Treatise Hume very enthusiastically announces his project to provide a secure and solid foundation for the sciences by grounding them on his science of man. And Hume indicates in the Abstract that he carries out this project in the Treatise. But most interpreters do not believe that Hume's project comes to fruition. In this paper, I offer a general reading of what I call Hume's ‘foundational project’ in the Treatise, but I focus especially on Book (...) 1. I argue that in Book 1 much of Hume's logic is put in the service of the other sciences, in particular, mathematics and natural philosophy. I concentrate on Hume's negative thesis that many of the ideas central to the sciences are ideas that we cannot form. For Hume, this negative thesis has implications for the sciences, as many of the texts I discuss make evident. I consider and criticize different proposals for understanding these implications: the Criterion of Meaning and the ‘Inconceivability Principle’. I introduce what I call Hume's ‘No Reason to Believe’ Principle, which I argue captures more adequately the link Hume envisions between his logic, in particular his examination of ideas, and the other sciences. (shrink)

What is the source of normativity in Hume’s account of causal reasoning? In virtue of what are causal beliefs justified for Hume? To answer these questions, the literature appeals, almost invariably, to custom or some feature thereof. I argue, in contrast, that causal beliefs are justified for Hume because they issue from experience. Although he denies experience the title of justifying reason, for Hume experience has normative authority. I offer an interpretation of the source and nature of the normativity of (...) experience in causal reasoning. I argue that the senses and memory have a special, positive status within the mind in virtue of their force and vivacity, which, on my reading, Hume identifies with a sense of presentness and a strong effect on the mind. Hume dignifies the system of memory and the senses with the title of reality because of these features. Causal beliefs are dignified as “realities” because they issue from reality. However, because the imagination can sometimes enhance the force and vivacity of ideas without the help of experience, Hume appeals to coherence and general rules as well. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Hume's theory of the emotions, as presented in his *Treatise of Human Nature*, paying particular attention to what he has to say about the relationships between emotion and thought. I begin by presenting, in some detail, Hume's views about the nature of the emotions, their causes, and their objects. I then consider the bearing of the private language argument on Hume's theory, and try to show that it is not sufficient to reveal the weaknesses in (...) Hume's account of the connections between emotion and thought. Lastly, and most extensively, I attempt to show that Hume's account of these connectiosn is in fact unacceptable, and I argue that his basic mistake is that of construing emotions as sensations. Along the way I sketch in the outlines of what I take to be a more adequate theory of emotion and thought. (shrink)