Abstract
The paper claims that Hume’s philosophy contains an ontology, i.e. an abstract exhaustive classification of what there is. It is argued that Hume believes in the existence of a mind-independent world, and that he has a classification of mind-related entities that contains four top genera: perception, faculty, principle and relation. His ontology is meant to be in conformity with his philosophy of language and epistemology, and vice versa. Therefore, crucial to Hume’s ontology of mind-independent entities is his notion of ‘supposing relative ideas’. Entities that are referred to by means of ordinary ideas can be truly classified, whereas entities that are referred to by means of relative ideas can only be hinted at. When Hume’s ontology is highlighted and systematised, his notion ‘the faculty of imagination’ becomes highly problematic. However, the exposition also makes it clear that Hume deserves the honorary title: the first cognitive scientist.
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Notes
Quotations from Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature and the so-called Abstract are taken from Hume (2000a). A quotation from the first book, fourth part, seventh section and third paragraph is referred to as (T 1.4.7.3); a reference to the fourth paragraph of Hume’s Abstract takes the form (T Abs. 4). Quotations from his An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding are taken from Hume (2000b). A reference to the fifth paragraph of section 2 takes the form (EHU 2.5). Such references are always inserted directly in the text.
As R. P. Wolff says: “Hume began the Treatise with the assumption that empirical knowledge could be explained by reference to the contents of the mind alone, and then made the profound discovery that it was the activity of the mind, rather than the nature of its contents, which accounted for all the puzzling features of empirical knowledge” (1968: 99–100).
Using the distinctions in Armstrong (1978a), one can say that Hume is definitely not a predicate nominalist. He does not regard properties as “nothing but a shadow cast upon particulars by predicates” (1978a: 13). Armstrong says that “The ‘British Empiricists’, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, are often taken to be Concept Nominalists. It is not clear to what extent this is so. […] I have the impression that they never got the ontological problem into clear focus” (1978a: 26). In my opinion, Hume can neither be called a concept nominalist; a Humean idea is never a unifier in the sense that in concept nominalism a concept is assumed to unify what falls under it.
My taxonomy differs somewhat from, but is consistent with, the classification in Kemp Smith (2005: 106).
See Kemp Smith (2005: 408–9). In the Treatise Hume writes: “As to those impressions which arise from the senses, their ultimate cause is, in my opinion, perfectly inexplicable by human reason” (T 1.3.5.2). The bottom tri-partition of Taxonomy A is put forward in (T 1.4.2.12).
Beebee, for one, does not talk of faculties, but of the “mechanisms by means of which those entities [that populate the mind] interact with one another” (2006: 5). A notable exception to the deletion of ‘faculty’ is Owen (1999). Also, some of the authors in Radcliffe (2008) use the term ‘faculty’, but the term is not indexed in the book.
The most reasonable interpretation is to my mind to be found in Wolff (1968). He argues that “the various ‘principles’ invoked by Hume do have the characteristics of dispositions and propensities” of the mind (1968: 125).
In his introduction to the Treatise, D. F. Norton writes: “Note that the three relations, resemblance, contiguity, and causation, may be either natural (the result of the involuntary associating quality) or philosophical (the result of a voluntary act of the mind)” (2000: I21, footnote). In my opinion, instead of ‘may be either natural […] or philosophical’, he should have written ‘may appear either as natural […] or as philosophical’. For more details on Hume and relations see also Johansson (2002: Section. 6); Taxonomy D below is taken from this paper.
Hume regards difference not as a relation, but “rather as a negation of relation” (T 1.1.5.10).
Note that the account given is quite consistent with the view (soon to be presented) that Hume thinks there are no relational impressions of sensation.
This is not noted by Strawson. In his exposition of Hume’s views on causality, he seems to take it for granted that there are impressions of contiguity and precedency (1989: 102–3).
For a general exposition of this problem, see (Heil 2009).
Earlier, however, she was not equally straightforward in her claim; see Beebee (2006: 179–80).
In the paper Beebee (2011), Hume’s notion of ‘supposing relative ideas’ is not mentioned at all.
Even Hume himself makes at the end of his Appendix to the Treatise some remarks in this direction. He is even talking about an inconsistency of his, but, as pointed out by Passmore, he is not formulating this inconsistency correctly (1980: 83). Wilbanks, on the other hand, thinks Hume only “feigned” the problem (1968: 166).
The view that there might be one and only one mind seems never to have been considered by Hume. Kant, on the other hand, posits only one single transcendental ego.
Pointed out by Strawson (1989: 130).
In saying so, however, Fodor also wants to defend what he regards as the really true kind of cognitive science; I am by no means making any similar claim about cognitive science. About this issue, see Biro’s review of Fodor in Biro (2005).
Once, however, as noted by Buckle (2007), Hume allows himself to identify the imagination with the brain (T 1.2.5.20). But Buckle goes too far when he maintains: “The empire of the imagination affirmed in Hume’s philosophy is thus, in the terms of its day, the domination of the mental life of human beings by the effects of bodily (material) processes” (2007: 148). I think Hume is not using the term ‘the faculty of imagination’ in “the terms of its day.” Among the Enlightenment philosophers, Hume is quite unique in his scepticism and downgrading of reason; and this gives some of his concepts connotations they do not have when used by the other prominent Enlightenment thinkers.
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Johansson, I. Hume’s Ontology. Int Ontology Metaphysics 13, 87–105 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-012-0095-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-012-0095-9