Belief and Introspective Knowledge in Treatise 1.3.7

In Treatise 1.3.7 Hume offers two distinct arguments for the view that the difference between believing a matter of fact and simply conceiving of it consists in a difference in the manner of conception.1 For convenience, I will call the two arguments in Treatise 1.3.7 the “No-new-idea Argument” and the “Argument from Disagreement.” Both arguments have an eliminative structure: Hume argues against other possible accounts of belief and concludes that the only hypothesis left standing is the view that the difference between believing and conceiving is a difference in the manner of conception. He goes on to argue that since belief is a manner of conception, this manner of conception must be a function of the force and ..