Hume: Perception

I argue that the Hume of the Treatise maintains an account of knowledge according to which (i) every instance of knowledge must be an immediately present perception (i.e., an impression or an idea); (ii) an object of this perception must be a token of a knowable relation; (iii) this token knowable relation must have parts of the instance of knowledge as relata (i.e., the same perception that has it as an object); and any perception that satisfies (i)-(iii) is an instance (...) of knowledge. I then apply this account to the case of sense perception. I argue that Hume holds that relations of impressions can be intuited, are knowable, and are necessary. For Hume, these relations constitute sensory knowledge. While Hume is rightly labeled an empiricist for many reasons, a close inspection of his account of knowledge reveals yet another way in which he deserves the label. (shrink)

Hume appeals to a mysterious mental process to explain how to world appears to possess features that are not present in sense perceptions, namely causal, moral, and aesthetic properties. He famously writes that the mind spreads itself onto the external world, and that we stain or gild natural objects with our sentiments. Projectivism is founded on these texts but it assumes a reading of Hume’s language as merely metaphorical. This assumption, however, conflicts sharply with the important explanatory role that “spreading” (...) and “staining” are supposed to play, which, ironically, is the very appeal of Hume’s texts to projectivists. In this paper, I first consider the difficulties readers of Hume have encountered in their attempts to ascertain nature of the key psychological process. I then identify in Hume’s texts novel theoretical resources that allow Hume to produce a satisfying answer to the question of process, that is, an account of the precise nature of the key process. I offer this explanation assuming what I take to be Hume’s austere conception of the elements involved in the process: sense impressions and “internal impressions” lacking intrinsic intentionality. On my reading, the spreading process explains the gap between the meager input and the rich, novel output: causal, moral and aesthetic judgments. (shrink)

The study of perception and the role of the senses have recently risen to prominence in philosophy and are now a major area of study and research. However, the philosophical history of the senses remains a relatively neglected subject. Moving beyond the current philosophical canon, this outstanding collection offers a wide-ranging and diverse philosophical exploration of the senses, from the classical period to the present day. Written by a team of international contributors, it is divided into six parts: -/- Perception (...) from Non-Western Perspectives Perception in the Ancient Period Perception in the Medieval Latin/Arabic Period Perception in the Early Modern Period Perception in the Post-Kantian Period Perception in the Contemporary Period. The volume challenges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. -/- Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Hume is an experimental philosopher who attempts to understand why we think, feel, and act as we do. But how should we evaluate the adequacy of his proposals? This chapter examines Hume’s account from the perspective of interdisciplinary work in cognitive science.

Este trabajo se divide en dos partes relacionadas pero independientes. La primera es un estudio de las percepciones y la subjetividad en el pensamiento de Hume. Del estudio mencionado se extraen elementos para una ontología de la imaginación, en particular la idea de intermitencia ontológica que se deriva del primer libro del Tratado de la naturaleza humana. En la segunda parte se estudia la epistemología de las virtudes de Ernest Sosa y se introduce el concepto de imaginación, así como la (...) idea de intermitencia extraída del pensamiento de Hume. A partir de lo anterior se pondera el valor epistémico de la imaginación y se postula la noción de paradigma de verdad. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se propone una interpretación del pensamiento de Hume para la comprensión de temas y problemas filosóficos que Hume, en su tiempo, no tuvo en consideración, pero que el día de hoy son relevantes. En primer lugar, se analiza el principio de semejanza y se postula la tesis de la unidad de las percepciones a partir de dicho principio. En segundo lugar, mediante un razonamiento analógico se trata de aplicar la doctrina de las percepciones en Hume para (...) la comprensión y fundamentación filosófica de los derechos humanos, en especial en lo tocante al principio de igualdad y simpatía entre seres humanos. Finalmente, se considera una concepción contemporánea de semejanza que nos permite replantear el problema y reafirmar la importancia de la imaginación y la fantasía en la comprensión y fundamentación de los derechos humanos. (shrink)

David Hume fancied himself the Newton of the mind, aiming to reinvent the study of human mental life in the same way that Newton had revolutionized physics. And it was his view that the novel account of belief he proposed in his Treatise of Human Nature was one of that work’s central philosophical contributions. From the earliest responses to the Treatise forward, however, there was deep pessimism about the prospects for his account. It is easy to understand the source of (...) this pessimism: The constraints he employed in theorizing stem from his Newtonian ambitions. Constraints such as his copy principle and his decision to rely only on variations in “force and vivacity” for differentiating types of mental states severely limit his available explanatory resources. However, it is one thing to regard an account as untenable, and quite another to understand where it fails. In this paper, I focus on one long-standing objection to Hume’s account — the objection that Hume cannot offer an account of negative belief or denial — as presented by Hume’s contemporary Thomas Reid, as well as more recently by Barry Stroud, and defend Hume from this objection. I argue that Hume both should and does endorse an account of negative belief based in relations of contrariety between contents, rather than between mental activities, and survey the different options available to Hume for spelling out an account of contrary contents. (shrink)

In this article, a novel interpretation of one of the problems of Hume scholarship is defended: his view of Metaphysical Realism or the belief in an external world (that there are ontologically and causally perception-independent, absolutely external and continued, i.e. Real entities). According to this interpretation, Hume's attitude in the domain of philosophy should be distinguished from his view in the domain of everyday life: Hume the philosopher suspends his judgement on Realism, whereas Hume the common man firmly believes in (...) the existence of Real entities. The defended reading is thus a sceptical and Realist interpretation of Hume. As such, it belongs to the class of what can be called no-single-Hume interpretations (Richard H. Popkin, Robert J. Fogelin, Donald L. M. Baxter), by contrast to single-Hume readings, which include Realist (naturalist, New Humean) and the traditional Reid-Green interpretation (i.e. Hume believes that there are no Real entities). Hume's distinction between the domains of philosophy and everyday life, which is argued to be epistemological, is employed in order to reconcile his scepticism with his naturalism and constructive science of human nature. The article pays special attention to the too much neglected second profound argument against the senses in Part 1, Section 12 of Hume's first Enquiry and the corresponding argument in Section 4, Part 4, Book 1 of the Treatise. (shrink)

In this paper, I resolve a potential contradiction between two of Hume’s central tenets: that complex perceptions consist of simple perceptions and that distinct things are separable. The former implies that a complex perception is not separable from its constituent simple perceptions, as a change in its constituents destroys its identity. The latter entails that the complex perception is separable from these simple perceptions, since it is distinct from them. This is a contradiction. I resolve it by appealing to a (...) third kind of distinction in addition to the two kinds Hume mentions: real distinctions and distinctions of reason. This third distinction is a partial distinction. I argue that just as the separability principle does not apply to distinctions of reason, neither does it apply to perceptions that are only partially distinct from other perceptions. Hence, the apparent contradiction is resolved. (shrink)

In this paper, I will reconstruct Hume's argument for the ontological (in the sense of rigid existential) independence of simple properties in A Treatise of Human Nature , Book 1 (1739). According to my reconstruction, the main premises of the argument are the real distinctness of every perception of a simple property, Hume's Separability Principle and his Conceivability Principle. In my view, Hume grounds the real distinctness of every perception of a simple property in his atomistic theory of sense perception (...) and his Copy Principle. I will also show why Hume's argument should be seen as relevant nowadays. David Lewis and his followers in metaphysics continue Hume's line of thinking in this respect, which is opposed by power ontologists (Brian Ellis, Stephen Mumford), for example. (shrink)

In Book One of the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume seems to acknowledge the existence of both internal and external worlds, in which perceptions, objects, and bodies, exist. In particular, Hume seems directly to affirm the existence of extra-mental bodies, when he says at the beginning of the section "Of scepticism with regard to the senses," "We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in theexistence of body? but 'tis in vain to ask, whether there be body or (...) not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings" (T 1.4.2.1; SBN 187).1 Furthermore, he thinks that the existence of body must be taken for granted because it is "an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our .. (shrink)

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)

In a recent article on Reid’s theory of single and double vision, James Van Cleve considers an argument against direct realism presented by Hume. Hume argues for the mind-dependent nature of the objects of our perception from the phenomenon of double vision. Reid does not address this particular argument, but Van Cleve considers possible answers Reid might have given to Hume. He finds fault with all these answers. Against Van Cleve, I argue that both appearances in double vision could be (...) considered visible figures of the object, and show how this solution might preserve Reid’s direct realism. However, this solution is not compatible with the single appearance of an object predicted by Reid’s theory of single and double vision. This consequence will appear evident once we consider the critique of Reid’s theory of single and double vision formulated by William Charles Wells (1757-1817). Wells argues that Reid’s theory is either incomplete or incompatible with other claims made by Reid. It is incomplete since it fails to specify the unique direction in which we the object in single vision; if it not incomplete and is compatible with the law of monocular direction given by Reid, then it is incompatible with Reid’s claim that we do not perceive immediately distance by sight. (shrink)

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.

In part 1 of Enquiry 12, Hume presents a skeptical argument against belief in external existence. The argument involves a perceptual relativity argument that seems to conclude straightaway the double existence of objects and perceptions, where objects cause and resemble perceptions. In Treatise 1.4.2, Hume claimed that the belief in double existence arises from imaginative invention, not reasoning about perceptual relativity. I dissolve this tension by distinguishing the effects of natural instinct and showing that some ofthese effects supplement the Enquiry’s (...) perceptual relativity argument. The Enquiry’s skeptical argument thus reveals the fundamental involvement of natural instinct in any belief in external existence. (shrink)

Why does Hume think that the “distinct existence” of sensible objects implies their “continu’d existence”? Does Hume have any reason for thinking that objects have an intermittent existence, other than that they lack a “distinct” existence? Why does Hume think that the inference from the “coherence” of our impressions to the continued existence of objects is “at bottom” considerably different from causal reasoning? The answers proposed are, respectively, that perceptually delimited objects would for Hume be causally dependent on being perceived; (...) that Hume’s collapse of the object/perception distinction leads him to the view that objects have as “gappy” an existence as our perceptions of them, and that cases of coherence falsify the generalizations that would need to hold for inferences from coherence to qualify as causal reasoning. (shrink)

The main problem of this study is David Hume’s (1711-76) view on Metaphysical Realism (there are mind-independent, external, and continuous entities). This specific problem is part of two more general questions in Hume scholarship: his attitude to scepticism and the relation between naturalism and skepticism in his thinking. A novel interpretation of these problems is defended in this work. The chief thesis is that Hume is both a sceptic and a Metaphysical Realist. His philosophical attitude is to suspend his judgment (...) on Metaphysical Realism, whereas as a common man he firmly believes in the existence of mind-independent, external, and continuous entities. Therefore Hume does not have any one position; accordingly, a form of “no one Hume” interpretation (Richard Popkin, Robert J. Fogelin, Donald L.M. Baxter) is argued for in the book. The key point in this distinction is the temporal difference between Hume’s philosophical and everyday views. It is introduced in order to avoid attributing a conscious contradiction to him (a problem which has not attracted enough attention in the literature). The method of the work is modelled on Peter Millican’s work on Hume and induction. The approach to the main problem is to study the two “profound” arguments against the senses that Hume presents in the Section 12 of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748). These arguments are first reconstructed in detail resulting in Millican-type diagrams of them and then Hume’s endorsement of them is established on the basis of the diagrams. The first profound argument concludes that Metaphysical Realism and thus any Realistic theory of perception is unjustified as well as the existence of God and the soul. The second argument goes further having first conceptual conclusion: the very notions of Real entitity, material substance, and bodies are completely out of the reach of the faculty of understanding. Therefore they ought to be rejected according to Hume. This is a consequence of the consistent use of the Humean faculty of reason: idea-analysis and inductive inference. The second profound argument thus concludes that believing in Metaphysical Realism is inconsistent with the rational attitude that is to refrain from this belief. Hence, if we attributed both of them to Hume, we would end up with a great philosopher who embraces a manifest contradiction. The study is finished by arguing that this sceptical and Metaphysically Realistic interpretation concurs well with (1) Hume’s professed Academical philosophy and (2) project of the science of human nature. (1) According to Hume, Academical philosophy is in the first place diffidence, modesty, and uncertainty including suspension on certain issues. Secondly, it is restriction of the range of topics for which experience can provide a standard of truth. This kind of empiricist epistemological realism is coherent with the sceptical attitude on Metaphysical Realism because the latter does not rule out inter-subjective consensus on what we experience. (2) Suspension of judgment on Metaphysical Realism coheres with the mind-dependency of the objects of Hume’s science of human nature: the understanding, passions, morals, aesthetics, politics, and the human culture in all of its manifestations. Although the study takes the first Enquiry to be Hume’s authorised word on the understanding, his juvenile work A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) is argued to support this “no one Hume” interpretation. Hume’s other works are also discussed when needed. (shrink)

After a discourse about the literature on visual acuity before Hume, I discuss how the “size” of visual objects is defi ned and determined. I shall thenpresent circumstantial, but commanding, evidence for the infl uence of James Jurin’s Essay upon Distinct and Indistinct Vision on Hume’s thought. This workcontains well-supported findings incompatible with claims made in T 1.2, “Of the ideas of space and time,” and elsewhere. Specifically, the prominentprinciple of the Treatise, “[w]hat consists of parts is distinguishable into them, (...) and what is distinguishable is separable” (T 1.2.1.3; SBN 27) is shown to befalse. A powerful principle, it is a premise to the most important arguments of the Treatise, but is shunned in the Enquiry and later writings because, I believe,Hume had read Jurin. (shrink)

David Hume gibt mit seiner Theorie personaler Identität Rätsel auf. Rätselhaft ist sie vor allem deshalb, weil er sich selbst in einem Appendix der Inkonsistenz bezichtigt, jedoch weder einen konkreten Grund dafür angibt, noch eine angemessen Lösung anbietet. Im Folgenden wird dargelegt, daß Humes Theorie personaler Identität für sich betrachtet keinen Grund für derlei Selbstbezichtigungen liefert. Tatsächliche Schwierigkeiten ergeben sich hingegen unter Berücksichtigung von Humes Wahrnehmungstheorie, in deren Zentrum der Begriff der Perzeption steht. Sowohl unseren Glauben an die eigene Identität (...) als auch unseren Glauben an materielle Wahrnehmungsobjekte erklärt Hume nämlich mittels desselben psychologischen Mechanismus. In beiden Fällen handelt es sich jedoch um ganz unterschiedliche Phänomene, die nicht auf dieselben Bedingungen zurückgeführt werden können. Gemäß dieser Interpretation ist eine Lösung des Problems für Hume unmöglich, weil sie zwangsläufig mit einer Revision seines Perzeptionsbegriffs, einer seiner zentralsten Kategorien, verbunden wäre. (shrink)

This paper investigates Hume's theory of the perception of spatial magnitude or size as developed in the _Treatise<D>, as well as its relation to his concepts of space and geometry. The central focus of the discussion is Hume's espousal of the 'composite' hypothesis, which holds that perceptions of spatial magnitude are composed of indivisible sensible points, such that the total magnitude of a visible figure is a derived by-product of its component parts. Overall, it will be argued that a straightforward (...) reading of this hypothesis fails to do full justice to the complexity of Hume's theory of spatial perception and geometry, and that a more adequate treatment must also admit an important role for the more direct process of spatial magnitude perception which he dubs 'intuition'. (shrink)

In A Treatise of Human Nature Hume wrote a long section titled “Of skepticism with regard to the senses.” The discussion examines two key features of our beliefs about the objects making up the external world: 1. They continue to exist, even when unperceived. 2. They are distinct from the mind and its perceptions. The upshot of the discussion is a graceful sort of intellectual despair:I cannot conceive how such trivial qualities of the fancy, conducted by such false suppositions, can (...) ever lead to any solid and rational system... ’Tis a gross illusion to suppose, that our resembling perceptions are numerically the same; and ’tis this illusion, which leads us into the opinion, that these perceptions are uninterrupted, and are still existent, even when they are not present to the senses. This is the case with our popular system. And as to our philosophical one, ’tis liable to the same difficulties; and is over-and-above loaded with this absurdity, that it at once denies and establishes the vulgar supposition. (Treatise, 217-8)These notes examine the argument of this section of the Treatise in detail. The upshot is that Hume’s despair is founded on an error. The notes finish by drawing some lessons about the epistemology of our common-sense world view. (shrink)

This essay is on the nature and roles of sense impressions and objects in Hume’s account of perception in the Treatise of Human Nature. I start by considering how Hume introduces sense impressions at the beginning of the Treatise and show that, although he explains the distinction between impressions and ideas on the basis of their different strength and liveliness, the crucial difference between them is in fact that ideas are copies of impressions, while impressions do not, in turn, copy (...) anything. They are what ideas represent, the objects of our thought. But if impressions are non-representative, how can Hume talk about ‘objects’ at all — in fact, what are Humean ‘objects’? This problem is the subject of the present discussion. (shrink)

This article shows that Hegel’s analysis of ‘Perception’ (PhdG, ch. 2) is a critique of Hume’s analysis, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the senses’ (Treatise, I.iv §2). To extend his concept-empiricism to handle the non-logical concept of the identity of a perceptible thing, Hume must appeal to several psychological ‘propensities’ to generate, in effect, a priori concepts; he must confront a ‘contradiction’ in the concept of the identity of a perceptible thing; and he must regard this concept as a ‘fiction’. (...) Hegel reexamines Hume’s account to show that the concept of the identity of a perceptible thing is non-logical and cannot be defined in accord with concept-empiricism. This important point supports Hegel’s concept-pragmatism. This point is also important in connection with the quite general problem of how we bring various sensations together into the perception of any one object. (English translation by the author of „Vom Skeptizismus in Bezug auf die Sinne oder das Ding und die Täuschung“.). (shrink)

Hume begins ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses,’ Section 2 of the Treatise, Book I, Part iv with the claim that it is otiose to ask whether or not there are bodies since belief in their existence is unavoidable. The appropriate question is rather ‘What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body?’. For Hume, belief is lively conception. Hence, he is also undertaking to answer the logically prior question: What causes induce us to form the concept (...) of body? Hume wants to explain the ordinary notion of, and belief in, external objects as part of his science of human nature. (shrink)

Throughout this paper my objective will be to establish and clarify Hume's original intentions in his discussion of causation in Book I of the Treatise. I will show that Hume's views on ontology, presented in Part IV of that book, shed light on his views on causation as presented in Part III. Further, I will argue that Hume's views on ontology account for the original motivation behind his two definitions of 2 cause. This relationship between Hume's ontology and his account (...) of causation explains something which has baffled Hume scholars for some time,- namely, why does Hume's discussion of causation in I, iii, 14 have such a paradoxical air about it? I will show that Hume's views on causation have a paradoxical air about them because they rest on an ontology of "double existence" - an ontology which Hume describes as the monstrous offspring of two principles, which are contrary to each other, which are both at once embrac'd by the mind, and which are unable mutually to destroy each other (T 215) My interpretation will centre on the following two claims: (i) When Hume wrote Section 14, Of the idea of necessary connexion, he was primarily concerned to attack the view that the origin of our idea of necessity was to be discovered in the operations of matter or bodies. Of the suggested sources from which our idea of necessity could be thought to originate this is the source which, initially, interested Hume the most. It is, therefore, of great importance that we interpret Hume's remarks in light of this fact. (ii) Hume offers the first definition of cause as an account of causation as it exists in the material world independent of our thought and reasoning.He offers the second definition as an account of causation as we find it in our perceptions. It will also be argued, in this context, that necessity constitutes "an essential part" of both of Hume's two definitions of cause. (shrink)

Reid's response to hume has traditionally been taken as begging all of hume's questions. One can, However, Find in reid an argument against hume's phenomenalistic skepticism. Reid's appeal to common sense is an attempt to call attention to the fact that we experience objects as external to us, Not as bundles of impressions. Still, Our access to these objects does arise out of sensations, Which are mental contents. Extending berkeley's idea of the "language of nature" reid suggests that language and (...) signification present apt theoretical models for explaining perception. Using this model, One can provide an answer to the argument from illusion. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to study the different roles of inner experience and the inner sense in Empiricism, especially from argumentative and methodological perspectives. The research studies the philosophies of the three classical Empiricists, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, as well as that of Thomas Reid, Hume’s contemporary and the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, who embraces the experiential methodology of the Empiricists while criticizing many of their epistemological presumptions. The study shows that Empiricism, supposedly a (...) methodology for studying the external world, paradoxically becomes a discussion focusing on inner experience and states of consciousness. Special attention in this research is given to methodological discussions in Empiricism pertaining to the roles and status of the inner sense, and to actual arguments which rely on inner experience. In this, the research portrays types of relations that exists between epistemology, methodology and argumentation, as different aspects of theory and praxis in philosophy. As a study of philosophical argumentation, the research presents a typology of informal arguments that rely on inner experience. In general, this study is a broad discussion of British Empiricism from the perspective of inner experience as a vital epistemological and methodological consideration. The epistemological discussion focuses on issues such as differentiating between inner and outer experience, the phenomenological classification of experience in general, and the distinction between consciousness and reflection. This study also touches on a number of meta-philosophical questions: the relation between theory and praxis in philosophy; does philosophy produce knowledge; and whether philosophers have special argumentative tools. These questions are discussed throughout the particular chapters, and the aim of this research is to provide partial answers to them. (shrink)