Hume: Epistemology

This paper argues that Hume’s central concern in T 1.4.7 is to find a way to rely upon his cognitive faculties in spite of what he has learned about them in the preceding sections of part 4. The trouble is that having identified the understanding with "the general and more establish'd properties of the imagination" (T 1.4.7.6; SBN 267), Hume finds that these properties cannot function apart from other "seemingly trivial" ones, which calls into question the trustworthiness of his cognitive (...) faculties. I claim that Hume justifies this reliance by appealing to what Don Garrett has termed the "title principle," which enables him to practice "true scepticism" by being diffident of his philosophical doubts as well as of his philosophical conviction" (T 1.4.7.14; SBN 273). (shrink)

El pensamiento de P. F. Strawson ofrece un difícil equilibrio entre una tendencia naturalista no reduccionista y una trascendental post-kantiana. Este escrito reconsidera un argumento de la estrategia strawsoniana que fue utilizado por Barry Stroud en su famosa crítica a los argumentos trascendentales de los años 60. La reflexión sobre el fin y el alcance de este tipo de argumentos no sólo intenta mostrar la compatibilidad de ambos aspectos en el pensamiento de Strawson, sino iluminar el carácter de necesidad de (...) las proposiciones metafísicas. (shrink)

The causal theory, by J. Locke.--Phenomenalism, by G. Berkeley.--Skepticism, by D. Hume.--Traditional rationalism, by G. W. Leibniz.--Critical rationalism, by I. Kant.--Empiricism, by C. I. Lewis.--The quest for certainty, by R. Descartes.--Knowing and believing, by H. A. Prichard.--The right to be sure, by A. J. Ayer.

John W. Danfor's position in David Hume and the Politics of Reason is refreshing and insightful but may be disturbing to those holding a more traditional view of Hume. The approach taken is highly accessible to those outside of the narrower circle of Humean scholarship; as well it is challenging to those who specialize in Hume's philosophy. I find that I am in general agreement with the overall thrust of Danford's work, which puts Hume's epistemological interests in the context of (...) his political and ethical ones. Hume is cast in a conservative light, as reviving ancient philosophical attitudes to counter the brashness and thoughtlessness of the modern revolutionary thought of Descartes and Hobbes and the traditions following them. (shrink)

At the end of part 3 of Book 1 of his Treatise,1 Hume had given a touchstone by which to judge any account of the human mind, namely that, where other animals appear to display the same cognitive operation that we do, our account applies as well to them as to us.2 He tests his own account of causal inference this way and finds that it comes through with flying colors, since the effects of experience of constant conjunctions on animal (...) minds is just as he has claimed it to be on ours. Some of their actions, such as nest building and sitting on their eggs till they hatch, are "extraordinary instances of sagacity", but on other matters, they, like us, learn from experience, so that the older one. (shrink)

What is the relationship between the Irish modernist writings of James Joyce and the Scottish empirical philosophy of David Hume? Here I discuss Joyce’s conception of Hume as a philosopher and explore the presence of Hume’s work in Joyce’s final masterpiece, Finnegans Wake. How then did Joyce conceive of Hume’s thought, and to what extent did he engage with it? Well, in his lecture “Realism and Idealism in English Literature,” given at Trieste in 1912, Joyce denounces the interest in the (...) sanity of artistic and philosophical geniuses, before offering the following comments. (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)

Hume argues that there are steadfast objects - objects not themselves successions at all, yet which co-exist with successions. Given Hume's account of moments as abstractions from temporal simples, there being steadfast objects entails there being single moments that co-exist with successions of moments. Thus time is more like a wall of variously sized bricks than like a line. I formalize the assumptions behind this surprising view, in order to make sense of it and in order to show that it (...) is consistent. I note also that this view justifies the common-sense assumptions that time flows and is unlike space. (shrink)

The articles in this special issue of the yearbook Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy all concern, in one way or another, Hume’s epistemology and metaphysics. -/- There are discussions of our knowledge of causal powers, the extent to which conceivability is a guide to modality, and testimony; there are also discussions of our ideas of space and time, the role in Hume’s thought of the psychological mechanism of ‘completing the union’, the role of impressions, and Hume’s argument against the (...) claim that our perceptions are ‘locally conjoined’ with any entity (namely, a soul). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop a new theory of particularity. In so doing it redefines the concepts 'perception' and 'judgment'. The redefinition occurs once perception is understood as recognition. The move to recognition entails the centrality of repetition. Recognition, it is argued, is a form of repetition. Allowing for repetition necessitates changing the way the relationship between universals and particulars is understood. This is developed via an engagement with Hume and Plato. The article concludes with the outline (...) for a rethinking of the metaphysics of particularity. (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)

We can understand epistemic naturalism as 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 them. By my lights, Hume is an epistemic naturalist of this sort, and I propose in this paper a novel and detailed account of his epistemic naturalism. (...) On my account, which I call the determinacy account, Hume characterizes epistemic justification in terms of the mind’s feeling determined by the relation of cause and effect to move from one impression to an idea. I find a statement of this account, which Hume applies initially to what he calls the second system of realities, in Treatise 1.3.9. After rejecting other accounts of Hume’s epistemic naturalism, I show how the determinacy account handles the cases Hume considers later in Treatise 1.3. (shrink)

Hume appeals to different kinds of certainties and necessities in the Treatise. He contrasts the certainty that arises from intuition and demonstrative reasoning with the certainty that arises from causal reasoning. He denies that the causal maxim is absolutely or metaphysically necessary, but he nonetheless takes the causal maxim and ‘proofs’ to be necessary. The focus of this paper is the certainty and necessity involved in Hume’s concept of knowledge. I defend the view that intuitive certainty, in particular, is certainty (...) of the invariability or necessity of relations between ideas. Against David Owen and Helen Beebee, I argue that the certainty involved in intuition depends on the activity of the mind. I argue, further, that understanding this activity helps us understand more clearly one of Hume’s most important theses, namely that experience is the source of a distinct kind of certainty and of necessity. (shrink)

Covering an important theme in Humean studies, this book focuses on Hume's hugely influential attempt in book three of his _Treatise of Human Nature _to derive the conclusion that morality is a matter of feeling, not reason, from its link with action. Claiming that Hume's argument contains a fundamental contradiction that has gone unnoticed in modern debate, this fascinating volume contains a refreshing combination of historical-scholarly work and contemporary analysis that seeks to expose this contradiction and therefore provide a significant (...) contribution to current scholarship in the area. Sophie Botros begins by pointing out that a contradiction concerning whether reason can influence action, or is wholly powerless, occurs in the intermediary premiss. She then moves on to draw out the consequences for recent meta-ethics of the failure to acknowledge this contradiction. Finally, highlighting the root of the argument's power in an article of naturalistic dogma, she suggests how it may be possible to restore to our moral concepts their traditional and integral link with both truth and motivation. A significant and thought-provoking addition to this popular field of study, _Hume, Reason and Morality_ is undoubtedly an important resource for moral philosophers interested in meta-ethics and practical reason, as well as Humean scholars. (shrink)

In both the _Treatise and the first _Enquiry, Hume offers an argument from analogy comparing how humans and animals make causal inferences. Yet in these and other texts, he suggests that there are certain differences between human and animal reasoning. This paper discusses Hume's argument from analogy, and examines how Hume can argue for differences in human and animal reasoning without having to attribute to either a special capacity that the other lacks. Hume's empiricism and his claims about sympathy also (...) give him good reason to hold that in animals just as in humans, reason is a virtue. (shrink)

In "Of Personal Identity,", Hume attempts to explain how one arrives at the fiction of a substantial self which retains its numerical identity through time. In "Of Scepticism with Regard to the Senses," Hume offers a similar explanation of the origin of another fiction - that of objects which enjoy a continued and distinct existence. In this paper, I will argue that his pair of parallel explanations does not jointly account for the pair of fictions to be explained.

In Treatise 1.4.2, David Hume seeks to explain how we come to believe in the external existence of bodies. He offers a complicated psychological account, where the imagination operates on the raw data of the senses to produce the ‘vulgar’ belief in the continued existence of the very things we sense. On behalf of philosophers, he presents a perceptual relativity argument that purports to show that the vulgar belief is false. I argue that scholars have failed to appreciate Hume's peculiar (...) formulation of the perceptual relativity argument and its relation to his psychological account of the vulgar belief. On my interpretation, in order to account for all the premises that Hume explicitly offers, the argument is best interpreted as beginning with a reductio that opposes the effects of the senses and the imagination in the vulgar belief. Thus Hume can be interpreted as identifying an ‘antinomy’ in the habits of the vulgar mind that produce belief in bodies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In Treatise 1.4.4, on behalf of modern philosophers, Hume described a causal argument that shows that our impressions of secondary qualities do not resemble qualities of objects themselves. However, in their respective arguments, Hume’s philosophical predecessors did not argue causally, but appealed to contrary qualities. I argue that Hume’s presentation was not simply a “gratuitous” stylistic difference, but an important correction of his predecessors in light of his own philosophical discoveries. RÉSUMÉ : Dans le Traité 1.4.4, Hume a présenté (...) au nom des philosophes modernes un argument causal qui démontre que nos impressions des qualités secondaires ne ressemblent pas aux qualités des objets eux-mêmes. Les prédécesseurs de Hume n’ont pourtant pas employé d’argument causal, mais l’argument des qualités contraires. Je soutiens que la présentation qu’en a fait Hume n’est pas simplement à mettre au compte d’une différence stylistique «gratuite» mais est une correction importante dans la foulée de ses propres découvertes philosophiques. (shrink)

No Tratado, Hume procura investigar as causas da crença nos objetos exteriores, admitindo ser impossível provar se os mesmos existem ou náo. Sua análise consistirá na investigaçáo da origem da inteligibilidade das noções de continuidade e distinçáo dos objetos sensíveis, em última instância, a crença do senso comum na continuidade e distinçáo das próprias percepções. Este texto pretende mostrar como essa discussáo humeana é um diálogo direto com a filosofia berkeleyana, a defesa humeana da crença na matéria implicando inicialmente uma (...) certa aceitaçáo da filosofia de Berkeley, para, na seqüência, representar uma dissensáo direta com o seu princípio fundamental: ser é ser percebido . Tais colocações têm, entre outras, a finalidade de argumentar que Berkeley exerce um papel central na filosofia humeana, nesse caso como seu interlocutor direto, e que a compreensáo desse papel é parte obrigatória de um melhor esclarecimento do problema da objetividade em Hume. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;This study of David Hume suggests that the unity of his thought is to be found more in an attitude of mind than in a precise body of epistemological statements. His 'mitigated scepticism' was the original combination of an experimental approach with a searching mind and a rather disenchanted attitude towards the attainment of perfection in knowledge and in the practical world. But my thesis addresses these questions only implicitly. The general (...) picture of the Humean approach to things political and philosophical is depicted against the background of a close examination of two other themes: Hume's development towards a more 'popular' philosophy and the philosophical import of his moral and political theory. The first subject is studied through an analysis of the formal qualities of Hume's philosophical writings; the second, through a discussion of Hume's position on the origin of justice and government and one's obligation to them. The conclusion that my thesis tentatively advances is that both in metaphysics and politics Hume's approach is based upon the attainment of a state of equilibrium between theoretical and practical considerations, and between sceptical and naturalistic tendencies. Hume's desire for balance can only be understood within the intellectual context of eighteenth century thought. This is the reason for the considerable attention that the thesis devotes to the reconstruction of the historical setting within which Hume's thought developed. However, when correctly interpreted, Hume's ideas clearly have a contribution to make to an understanding of a world which is very different from his own. (shrink)