Hume's Skeptical Crisis: A Textual Study

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Hume’s Skeptical Crisis Z

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Hume’s Skeptical Crisis Z A Textual Study

ROBERT J. FOGELIN

1 2009

1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fogelin, Robert J. Hume’s skeptical crisis : a textual study / Robert J. Fogelin. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-19-538739-1 1. Hume, David, 1711–1776. Skepticism in the treatise of human nature. 2. Skepticism. 3. Knowledge, theory of. I. Title. B1489.F638 2009 128—dc22 2008049463 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For Jane Lincoln Taylor


But what have I here said . . . ?


Preface Z

A few words about the provenance of this work may help explain the form it takes. It concerns the same material that I examined in the first eight chapters of Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1985. The primary intention of that work was to counter the tendency, common at the time, to play down or simply ignore the skeptical themes in Hume’s Treatise in favor of a thoroughgoing naturalistic reading in the style of Norman Kemp Smith. Since the skeptical themes were being played down, to provide a suitable counterweight, I played them up. This work is intended to offer a more balanced account of the relationship between Hume’s naturalism and his skepticism. In 1990 I was given the opportunity to develop the central ideas of that book as a lecturer in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar directed by David Fate Norton and Wade Robison. It consisted of five lectures on book 1, part 4 of the Treatise, the locus of Hume’s deepest skeptical reflections. I wrote careful notes and corrected them in the light of the energetic discussions that greeted these lectures. My intention at the time was to use these notes as the basis for a second edition of Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise. I then became involved in other projects and thought no more of these notes until fifteen years later, when I received an invitation from Livia Guimaraes to give a series of lectures on Hume at the Universidade Federal de Minas Geraise in Brazil. I dug out the

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Preface

NEH notes, reread Hume, and produced an extensive revision of the original NEH lectures. This work is based on those lectures. Much has changed as a result of these multiple revisions. I have corrected what I now take to be misreadings of particular texts. I have given more prominence to the naturalistic themes in the Treatise, in particular, to Hume’s attempts to give a naturalistic account of the emergence of philosophical positions. On the other side, I now lay more stress on the claim that Hume’s pursuit of a science of human nature itself generates a skeptical challenge that calls his naturalistic program into question. Hence the title: Hume’s Skeptical Crisis. Rather than an analysis of Hume’s skepticism of the kind presented in Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature, this work presents a narrative account of how this skeptical crisis arises as Hume’s investigations penetrate more and more deeply into the operations of the human understanding. Over the years a number of books have played an important part in shaping my thinking about Hume’s philosophy, both through agreement and disagreement. These include Thomas Brown’s Cause and Effect (1822), J. A. Passmore’s Hume’s Intentions, Terrence Penelhum’s Hume, Barry Stroud’s Hume, Annette Baier’s Progress of Sentiments, and Don Garrett’s Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy. I also have learned a great deal from an unpublished paper by David Owen titled “Scepticism with regard to reason.” It is available from the departmental website (philosophy.arizona. edu). The editorial comments in the Selby-Bigge and Nidditch editions of the Treatise of Human Nature and the two Enquiries have been of invaluable help, as have the extensive comments in the new David Norton and Mary Norton critical edition of the Treatise and the new Thomas Beauchamp critical edition of the first Enquiry.

Preface

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I owe a special debt to the two scholars who served as readers of the manuscript for Oxford University Press: first for their generous support, second for their editorial comments that at times strengthened my reading of the text, while at other times saved me from embarrassing errors. Beyond this, there are the articles I have read, talks I have attended, comments I have received on papers I presented in various venues, and, not of least importance, conversations that I have had at gatherings around the world with fellow Hume enthusiasts. I cannot name them all, but some who have been particularly useful, often calling texts to my attention either in support or in opposition to views I hold, include: Annette Baier, Lewis White Beck, Simon Blackburn, Janet Broughton, Thompson Clarke, Willis Doney, Julia Driver, Harry Frankfurt, Don Garrett, Livia Guimaraes, Ted Honderich, Christopher Hookway, Gary Mathews, Peter Millican, David Norton, David Owen, Richard Popkin, Geoffrey Sayer-McCord, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, David Stove, Barry Stroud, Meredith Williams, Michael Williams, and Kenneth Winkler. I have surely forgotten some, and to them I apologize. I have received institutional support for this project from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Study Center at Bellagio, The Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities at Bogliasco, the Faculty Research Fund at Dartmouth College, and a generous Emeritus Grant from the Mellon Foundation. I would also like to thank Peter Ohlin and Linda Donnelly of the Oxford University press for their support and editorial help, and, as before, thank Florence Fogelin and Jane Taylor for their patience and skill in dealing with drafts of my work. In gratitude for her help over many years, I have dedicated this work to Jane Taylor.


Contents Z

Texts and Citations

xvii

Introduction: The Interpretive Problem 1

3

Of Knowledge and Probability 11 A Quick Tour of Part 3, Book 1 11 Section 1. Of knowledge 11 Section 2. Of probability; and of the idea of cause and effect 13 Section 3. Why a cause is always necessary 14 Section 4. Of the component parts of our reasonings concerning causes and effects 15 Section 5. Of the impressions of the senses and memory 15 Section 6. Of the inference from the impression to the idea 16 Section 7. Of the nature of the idea, or belief 18 Section 8. Of the causes of belief 19 Section 9. Of the effects of other relations, and other habits 20 Section 10. Of the influence of belief 20 Section 11. Of the probability of chances 21 Section 12. Of the probability of causes 21 Section 13. Of unphilosophical probability 22

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Contents

Section 14. Of the idea of necessary connexion 22 Section 15. Rules by which to judge of causes and effects Section 16. Of the reason of animals 28

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2 Hume on Unphilosophical Probabilities 29 Unphilosophical as Opposed to Philosophical Probabilities Sources of Unphilosophical Probabilities 30 The effect of the remoteness of the event 30 The effect of the remoteness of the observation 31 Reiterative diminution 31 Prejudice based on general rules 35 Conflicts within the Imagination and Skepticism 37

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3 Hume’s Skepticism with Regard to Reason 39 The Turn to Skepticism 39 The Basic Argument 40 Reducing knowledge to probability 41 The regression argument 43 The principle of reiterative diminution 44 Hume’s Response to His Skeptical Argument 48 Peritrope 52 4 Of Skepticism with Regard to the Senses 55 Hume’s Turnabout with Regard to the Senses 55 The Organization of Section 2 57 The Causes of Our Belief in the Existence of Bodies 59 The senses not the source of this belief 60 Reason not the source of this belief 63 The Operations of the Imagination in Forming This Belief 65

Contents

Hume’s informal statement of his position 66 Hume’s systematic statement of his position 69 The Philosopher’s Double-Existence. Theory of Perception The Pyrrhonian Moment 82 A Concluding Note 83

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5 Of the Ancient and Modern Philosophy 85 Reasons for Examining Ancient and Modern Philosophical Systems 85 Of the Ancient Philosophy (Section 3) 85 The false belief in the continued identity of changing objects 87 The fiction of underlying substance, or original first matter 89 The false belief in the simplicity of objects 90 The fiction of a unifying substance 93 The incomprehensibility of the peripatetic system 93 Skeptical implications 94 Of the Modern Philosophy (Section 4) 96 Against the distinction between primary and secondary qualities 97 Another Pyrrhonian moment 99

6 The Soul and the Self 101 Of the Immateriality of the Soul (Section 5) Setting the dialectical stage 101 The soul as substance 102 The problem of local conjunction 104 Soul–body interaction 107 On proofs of immortality 108 Of Personal Identity (Section 6) 109

101

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Contents

Basic criticisms 110 Account of the fiction of personal identity 112 Disputes about identity as merely verbal 116 The reservations in the appendix 117

7 The Conclusion of Book 1

125

A Gloomy Summation of Skeptical Results 125 What Is to Be Done? 130 Being a Philosopher on Skeptical Principles 132

8 Two Openings and Two Closings

139

The Treatise and the Enquiry on Skepticism 139 The Opening of the Treatise 140 The Opening of the Enquiry 140 The Response to Skepticism in the Enquiry 144 The Science of Human Nature in the Enquiry 146 The Role of Skeptical Arguments in the Enquiry 149 Skepticism concerning the senses 149 Skepticism concerning reason 151 Skepticism concerning moral reasoning 152 Pyrrhonism and Mitigated Skepticism 155

Notes

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Works Cited or Mentioned Index 167

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Texts and Citations Z

For the reader’s convenience, all citations to A Treatise of Human Nature and to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding have a double entry. The first is to the editions of these works that have recently been published by Oxford University Press: the David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton critical edition of the Treatise of Human Nature and Tom L. Beauchamp’s critical edition of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. The second entry is to Selby-Bigge/Nidditch editions of the Treatise of Human Nature and David Hume’s Enquiries. Citations to the Treatise contain only page numbers. Citations to the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding are labeled EHU.

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Hume’s Skeptical Crisis Z


Introduction Z The Interpretive Problem

How does Hume’s naturalism—his attempt “to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects”—square with what seem to be his strong skeptical commitments? On the face of it, these two aspects of his philosophy appear to be at odds with one another. For example, in a number of places Hume holds that there are no rational grounds for believing that the regularities that have held in the past will continue to hold in the future; that in turn seems to show that the inductive inferences he employs in pursuit of his science of human nature are themselves baseless. This conflict is so obvious that even philosophically unsophisticated readers often recognize it. Hume, however, does not seem particularly concerned about this apparent conflict between his inductive skepticism and his commitment to a science of human nature. In the Treatise of Human Nature, a skeptical argument is used to reject reason (in a wide sense) as the source of causal inferences, so that he can replace it with the associative operations of the imagination. In the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume celebrates this relocation, telling us that “it is . . . conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary an act of the mind, by some instinct or mechanical tendency” (EHU, 45/55). As we shall see, skeptical doubts are the source of deep disquietudes that emerge in the concluding section of the first book of the Treatise, but his inductive skepticism—though it has troubled many others—seems not to have troubled Hume. 3

4

Introduction

A dramatic way of presenting the tension between Hume’s naturalism and his skepticism is to compare two passages: one from the introduction to the Treatise, the other from the closing section of book 1. Hume launches the Treatise with swagger: ’Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judg’d of by their powers and faculties. Here then is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches, to leave the tedious lingring method, which we have hitherto follow’d, and instead of taking now and then a castle or village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital or center of these sciences, to human nature itself; which being once masters of, we may every where else hope for an easy victory. From this station we may extend our conquests over all those sciences, which more intimately concern human life, and may afterwards proceed at leisure to discover more fully those, which are the objects of pure curiosity. There is no question of importance, whose decision is not compriz’d in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending therefore, to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect propose a compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security. (4/xv)

Introduction

5

In sharp contrast to this brave beginning, in the closing section of book 1 of the Treatise we find the following forlorn skeptical plaint: But what have I here said, that reflections very refin’d and metaphysical have little or no influence upon us? This opinion I can scarce forbear retracting, and condemning from my present feeling and experience. The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron’d with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv’d of the use of every member and faculty. (175/ 268–69) This study is an attempt to answer two questions: First, how did Hume’s pursuit of his “science of man,” so confidently begun at the start of the Treatise, land him in philosophical despair? Second, how does he attempt to extract himself from this melancholy state? It is important not to write off Hume’s expressions of despair as mere histrionics. As Hume comes to see, his pursuit of a science of human nature has led him into a skepticism that subverts the entire enterprise. Furthermore—though this will have to be shown—he finds himself completely incapable of presenting arguments that will refute the skeptical challenges he himself has produced. If he

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Introduction

is going to find a way out of his intellectual impasse, it will have to come from the nonrational side of human nature. At the close of book 1 of the Treatise, Hume suggests that a reliance on common (vulgar) opinions can provide a way out of his difficulties. As we shall see, his suggestions in the Treatise seem tentative and not obviously up to the job he assigns to them. Perhaps reflecting dissatisfaction with his previous treatment of the threat of radical skepticism, Hume returns to this topic in the opening section of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, where he confronts the challenge anew. Then, in the closing section of the Enquiry, he offers a remarkable response to it: When the destructive mechanisms of Pyrrhonism—Hume’s label for radical skepticism— are counterbalanced by the mechanisms that produce common (vulgar) belief, then the mind, as a result of a vector of these two opposing forces, naturally settles into the standpoint of a mitigated and moderate skepticism. This is Hume’s final response to the radical skepticism that seemed to overwhelm him in part 4, book 1 of the Treatise. Countering radical skepticism by replacing it with a more moderate or mitigated skepticism is not, however, cost-free. Hume’s new modesty carries with it a sharp curtailment in the pretensions of his science of human nature. Where Hume previously spoke of producing “a compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security” (4/xv), he now speaks circumspectly of producing “reflections of common life, methodized and corrected” (EHU, 121/162) As this development unfolds, there are four contrasting Humes, or at least four contrasting voices of Hume, inhabiting Hume’s writing. The first is the confident Hume, projector of a complete science of human nature. The second is the melancholy Hume, wracked

Introduction

7

with Pyrrhonian doubts he seems incapable of shaking. Third, we have the chastened Hume, modest in his expectations and reasonably content with his lot. There is also a fourth voice or standpoint found in Hume’s writings, important but easily overlooked. This is the standpoint of the ordinary people engaged in the affairs of daily life: the standpoint of the vulgar. Which standpoint represents the real Hume? As I read the text, all four standpoints are real in representing the way matters strike Hume when operating at a particular level of reflection. At the start of the Treatise, and well into it, Hume is an enthusiast for the new science of human nature he is developing. Hume’s standpoint undergoes a radical skeptical transformation in response to the appalling things his pursuit of the science of human nature reveals to him. This is full-throated skepticism. The third standpoint emerges from Hume’s recognition that radical skepticism cannot be disposed of by employing arguments against it. When matters are placed on an argumentative basis, the Pyrrhonist always wins. For Hume, the slide into radical skepticism can only be countered by yielding in some measure to our vulgar propensity to believe things that are not based on sound arguments and, more deeply, even things that run counter to sound arguments. The textual study that follows is intended to show the basis for the broad claims sketched earlier. It largely takes the form of a narrative. With very few exceptions, I present matters as they actually unfold in the text. Given Hume’s shifts in standpoint, a narrative approach seems virtually forced on us. It will operate at two interrelated levels: one global, the other local. A global interpretation concentrates on major aspects of a philosophical position and indicates how they are interrelated. Dealing with Hume’s writings involves, among other things, keeping track of where Hume is in the dialectical—dare I use the word?—unfolding of his position.

8

Introduction

Local interpretation involves a close reading of texts in an effort to provide a check on the global interpretation, while at the same time enriching its content. Grotesquely bad readings of a text usually arise from violations of the principle of global interpretation— often made in an effort to square a position under examination with contemporary philosophical fashions. Shallow readings usually result from neglecting the details of the text where, as it is said, God—sometimes the Devil—is said to reside. To borrow phrasing from Kant, global interpretation without local interpretation is empty, local interpretation without global interpretation is blind. Because I will be engaged in a close textual study, I will, for the most part, stay within the margins of the text and cite it extensively. I will not be much concerned with the sources of Hume’s ideas and only occasionally compare Hume’s claims with those made by other philosophers. I will make no effort to show that Hume’s writings are relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. I think they are, but it seems patronizing to Hume to insist on this. I will not be much involved with the rich and impressive secondary literature on Hume that has appeared in recent decades. In dealing with the secondary literature, one is again dealing with texts—texts that often refer to other texts and often present interpretive problems of their own. I have not become deeply involved in the secondary literature because I do not see how this can be done in a fair and accurate way without interrupting the flow of the narrative I am presenting. I would, however, suggest three works I find impressive that can be read profitably in conjunction with this work. Barry Stroud’s Hume, among its many virtues, will prove very helpful in filling out my whirlwind account of book 3 of the Treatise that I present in Chapter 1. David Owen’s essay “Scepticism with Regard to Reason” offers a rich and scholarly examination of the subject that

Introduction

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is in some ways similar to mine and in some ways different. Finally, I recommend Don Garrett’s Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy for a treatment of Hume’s skepticism that differs in fundamental ways from my own. In this work I make no claims for originality on particular points. Perhaps there is some novelty in the way I tell the overall story.


Chapter 1 Z Of Knowledge and Probability

The central claim I will attempt to establish in this work is that the skeptical Hume of part 4 of the Treatise emerges naturally out of Hume’s unfettered pursuit of the naturalistic program of part 3. To this end, I will offer a sketch, a précis, or a whirlwind tour of what Hume thinks he has accomplished in part 3. I will cite Hume’s conclusions and exert restraint—though not total restraint—in commenting on the strength of the arguments he presents in their behalf. With this broad sketch in hand, I will then turn to part 4 and examine the skeptical consequences that emerge when Hume applies his naturalistic account of beliefformation to philosophical beliefs themselves. Part 3 is titled “Of knowledge and probability.” One section is dedicated to a discussion of knowledge, the remaining fifteen to probability and related topics.

Z A Quick Tour of Part 3, Book 1 Section 1. Of knowledge At the opening of this section, Hume repeats his list of what he calls philosophical relations that he had originally presented and briefly discussed in part 1, section 5. They are 11

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Hume’s Skeptical Crisis

resemblance, identity, relations of time and place, proportion in quantity or number, degrees in any quality, contrariety, and causation. These relations may be divided into two classes; into such as depend entirely on the ideas, which we compare together, and such as may be chang’d without any change in the ideas. (50/69) He declares that “only four, which depending solely upon ideas, can be the objects of knowledge and certainty. These four are resemblance, contrariety, degrees in any quality, and proportions in quantity or number” (50/70). The four relations that “depend entirely on the ideas, which we compare together,” are the basis for the domain of knowledge; the remaining three (relations of time and place, identity, and causation), which do not have this feature, are the concern of the domain of probability. Hume makes quick work of the domain of knowledge. He says that three of these relations—resemblance, contrariety, and degrees in any quality—are matters of intuition rather than demonstration. Whether they hold or not can be established by merely inspecting the ideas themselves. Arithmetic contains intuitive truths, but contains demonstrative truths as well. This is in virtue of what has come to be known as Hume’s Law (one-to-one correlation), which provides a “precise standard, by which we can judge . . . equality” (51/71). For want of a similarly precise standard, geometry can provide nothing better than what we might call damn-near demonstrative truths. Given its importance for his project as a whole, this discussion of intuitive and demonstrative knowledge is surprisingly brief and underdeveloped. It is striking that Hume expresses no dissatisfaction with it and gives no forewarning of the assault on both intuitive and demonstrative knowledge that awaits the reader in the opening section of book 1, part 4.

Of Knowledge and Probability

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Section 2. Of probability; and of the idea of cause and effect Hume’s treatment of knowledge is almost peremptory; his treatment of probability is elaborate and complex. There are, according to Hume, three kinds of relations that do not generate knowledge, that is, intuitive and demonstrative truths. They are identity, relations of time and place, and causation. Each gets a part of book 1 dedicated to it. Relations of time and place are examined in part 2; causation is examined in part 3; and, setting aside its opening and closing sections, identity is a central topic of part 4.1 I will quickly run through the basic moves concerning causation and probability as they unfold in book 1, part 3 of the Treatise. Section 2 raises a question that will not be answered until section 14: How are we to define the relationship between a cause and an effect? This section initiates the quest for an answer and moves through the following stages: 1. An examination of a particular instance of causation reveals only two relationships: contiguity and priority. 2. But, according to Hume, these two relations by themselves do not provide an adequate account of causation: “Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a complete idea of causation? . . . There is a necessary connexion to be taken into consideration; and that relation is of much greater importance, than any of the other two above mention’d” (55/77). 3. But an inspection of the objects themselves reveals nothing corresponding to the idea of a necessary connection, so again an impasse has been reached.

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4. At this stage of his investigations, Hume seems explicitly committed to the idea that a necessary connection is an essential component of a causal relation, but so far he has been unable to give an adequate account of this idea. In an attempt to find another way of approaching this problem, Hume proposes to beat about in two neighboring fields, asking: First, for what reason we pronounce it necessary, that every thing whose existence has a beginning, shou’d also have a cause? Secondly, why we conclude, that such particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects; and what is the nature of that inference we draw from the one to the other, and of the belief we repose in it? (55/78) As a result of these two expeditions, Hume will reverse himself, and instead of holding that the idea of a necessary connection is an essential component of our idea of a causal relation, he will hold that the idea of a necessary connection is an attendant product of causal reasoning. Section 3. Why a cause is always necessary To state the question more fully, what is the basis for thinking that everything whose existence has a beginning should also have a cause for this beginning? Hume argues that this cannot be justified as either a demonstrative or an intuitive truth for the following reason: As all distinct ideas are separable from each other, and as the ideas of cause and effect are evidently distinct, ’twill be easy for us to conceive any object to be non-existent this


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moment, and existent the next, without conjoining to it the distinct idea of a cause or productive principle. The separation, therefore, of the idea of a cause from that of a beginning of existence, is plainly possible for the imagination; and consequently the actual separation of these objects is so far possible, that it implies no contradiction nor absurdity; and is therefore incapable of being refuted by any reasoning from mere ideas; without which ’tis impossible to demonstrate the necessity of a cause. (56/79) With demonstrative and intuitive reasoning eliminated, it seems that the belief in question must have its basis in experience. But instead of pursuing this topic directly, Hume turns his attention to the second neighboring field and asks “why we conclude, that such particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects.” Section 4. Of the component parts of our reasonings concerning causes and effects Hume argues that causal reasoning must have as its first component some initial experience, for without an origin in an initial experience causal reasoning would be no more than hypothetical. Section 5. Of the impressions of the senses and memory Hume lays out the component parts of his program: Here . . . we have three things to explain, viz. first, The original impression. Secondly, The transition to the idea of the connected cause or effect. Thirdly, The nature and qualities of that idea. (59/84)

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The remainder of the section discusses the difference between memory and imagination, with some qualifications, drawing the distinction in terms of vivacity. Section 6. Of the inference from the impression to the idea This section demands special attention because it contains, in a complex form, a line of reasoning that will later emerge (in the Abstract and the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) as Hume’s skeptical argument concerning induction. Earlier, Hume was stymied in his attempt to discover anything corresponding to a necessary connection between causally related events. All he could find of significance are the relations of priority and contiguity. Now, however, when he turns his attention to the specific assignment of causes and effects, he hits on the further idea that events that are causally connected are constantly conjoined in terms of priority and contiguity. This newly discovered notion of constant conjunction will play a central role in Hume’s first definition of cause, but his initial reaction to it is negative. To tell the truth, this new-discover’d relation of a constant conjunction seems to advance us but very little in our way. For it implies no more than this, that like objects have always been plac’d in like relations of contiguity and succession; and it seems evident, at least at first sight, that by this means we can never discover any new idea, and can only multiply, but not enlarge the objects of our mind. . . . From the mere repetition of any past impression, even to infinity, there never will arise any new original idea, such as that of a necessary connexion; and the number of impressions has in this case no more effect than if we confin’d ourselves to one only. (62/88)


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The expression “at first sight” suggests that Hume is not really committed to the idea that nothing new can emerge from the mere repetition of the same ideas, and, in fact, he will reject it. Hume also drops a hint of even deeper significance for understanding his ultimate position concerning the relationship between necessary connections and causal inferences: “Perhaps ‘twill appear in the end, that the necessary connexion depends on the inference, instead of the inference’s depending on the necessary connexion” (62/88). This is just how things will turn out, but it can only be shown after Hume gives his account of the “transition to the idea of the connected cause or effect,” the second component in the program announced in the previous section. Hume first attempts to show that causal inferences are not the product of our rational faculties. The initial move, and the key move, is this: [If reason produced causal inferences] it wou’d proceed upon that principle, that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same. (62/89) The question now becomes: How can the principle that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same itself be justified? Given the architecture of Hume’s position, there are only two options: In order therefore to clear up this matter, let us consider all the arguments upon which such a proposition may be suppos’d to be founded; and as these must be deriv’d either from knowledge or probability, let us cast our eye on each of these degrees of evidence, and see whether they afford any just conclusion of this nature. (62/89) The first alternative is ruled out by the conceivability argument: There can be no demonstrative arguments to prove, that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those,

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of which we have had experience. We can at least conceive a change in the course of nature; which sufficiently proves, that such a change is not absolutely impossible. To form a clear idea of any thing, is an undeniable argument for its possibility, and is alone a refutation of any pretended demonstration against it. (62/89) The second alternative is eliminated by the argument from circularity: According to this account of things, which is, I think, in every point unquestionable, probability is founded on the presumption of a resemblance betwixt those objects, of which we have had experience, and those, of which we have had none; and therefore ’tis impossible this presumption can arise from probability. (63/90) What we have, then, is a skeptical argument intended to show that there can be no justification of the principle that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same. For Hume, this provides a sufficient basis for saying that causal inferences are not the product of our rational faculties. When the mind, therefore, passes from the idea or impression of one object to the idea or belief of another, it is not determin’d by reason, but by certain principles, which associate together the ideas of these objects, and unite them in the imagination. (64/92) Section 7. Of the nature of the idea, or belief In section 5, Hume lays out a three-part program. The third component concerns “the nature and qualities of that idea” that is the product of a causal inference. For his purposes, it is important to draw a


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distinction between merely entertaining an idea and having a belief. He does so by invoking the notion of vivacity. Beliefs are distinguished from mere ideas in virtue of their superior vivacity. With others, I find Hume’s appeal to vivacity, if taken in any reasonably literal sense, unconvincing, almost unintelligible. I believe that Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota; I can also entertain the idea that Bismarck is the capital of South Dakota. Is the first thought more vivacious (lively, vivid) than the second? Not to me. Degrees of vivacity might better be taken as a metaphor for degree of belief instead of its basis. Hume uses the notion of vivacity in an effort to give a causal account of belief-formation. For Hume, belief-formation is a suitable topic for his science of human nature—indeed, it is a central topic. Beliefs, according to Hume, arise, are strengthened, weakened, augmented, revised, rejected, and so on, all in accordance with causal laws. This is an important idea—more important than his use of vivacity to implement it. In what follows, however, I will simply accede to Hume’s references to vivacity and treat them as placeholders for a causal account of belief-formation. Taken as a metaphor, vivacity is not all that bad. Section 8. Of the causes of belief This section presents what we might call Hume’s theory of vivacity transfer. It is of central importance to Hume’s naturalistic account of operations of the human mind. I wou’d willingly establish it as a general maxim in the science of human nature, that when any impression becomes present to us, it not only transports the mind to such ideas as are related to it, but likewise communicates to them a share of its force and vivacity. (69/98)

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In a causal inference there is a twofold movement: When an event is experienced, the mind immediately envisages another event of the kind constantly conjoined with it. But the triggered idea does not simply pop into one’s mind; it also inherits a portion of the vivacity of the triggering event. In this section, Hume also invokes the notion of custom as an apt way of referring to the manner in which causal inferences are grounded: [From observation] I conclude, that the belief, which attends the present impression, and is produc’d by a number of past impressions and conjunctions; that this belief, I say, arises immediately, without any new operation of the reason or imagination. Of this I can be certain, because I never am conscious of any such operation, and find nothing in the subject, on which it can be founded. Now as we call every thing custom, which proceeds from a past repetition, without any new reasoning or conclusion, we may establish it as a certain truth, that all the belief, which follows upon any present impression, is deriv’d solely from that origin. (71–72/102) Section 9. Of the effects of other relations, and other habits This section examines the lesser influence of the other two principles of association—resemblance and contiguity—in transferring belief. It provides an account of why causal associations are, in general, stronger than the other two modes of association. Section 10. Of the influence of belief This complex and interesting section contains a series of reflections on the following fact:


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Pain and pleasure have two ways of making their appearance in the mind; of which the one has effects very different from the other. They may either appear in impression to the actual feeling and experience, or only in idea, as at present when I mention them. ’Tis evident the influence of these upon our actions is far from being equal. Impressions always actuate the soul, and that in the highest degree; but ’tis not every idea which has the same effect. (81/118) Though it contains important material, most of what Hume says here bears more directly on topics discussed in books 2 and 3 of the Treatise than on our present topic, the character of causal reasoning. Section 11. Of the probability of chances In this section Hume uses the notion of dispersed vivacity to explain a priori probabilities. A crude example: We fully believe that, when cast, a six-sided die will come to rest on one of its six sides—not on an edge. We can say that the vivacity level for this claim is effectively 1. On the assumption that the die is not loaded, there are six equally likely outcomes from casting the die, so the vivacity level for each face of the die coming up on top is 1/6. This is the probability we will naturally assign to the possibility that the die will come up, say, 4. This may not sound particularly plausible, but, as I have suggested elsewhere, the notion of vivacity transfer can be used to underwrite a standard probability calculus (Fogelin 1985, pp. 59–60).2 Section 12. Of the probability of causes An application of the notion of dispersed vivacity is used to explain what we would call statistical probabilities. Very roughly, the distribution of vivacity reflects the relative frequency of the occurrence

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of an event in a given setting. The more often A is followed by B, the greater the vivacity handed over by A to B, thus generating a greater degree of subjective probability that B will follow upon an occurrence of A. Section 13. Of unphilosophical probability Having completed his discussion of the probability of chances and the probability of causes, both of which, Hume tells us, “are receiv’d by philosophers, and allow’d to be reasonable foundations of belief and opinion” (97/143), he turns his attention to other kinds of probability that have not “had the good fortune to obtain the same sanction” (97/143). This section is important for seeing a fundamental feature of Hume’s science of human nature: All beliefs, including the ill-formed, the fiction-ridden, and the just plain nutty, fall under its purview. Hume takes it to be one of the chief strengths of his position that it can explain the sources both of beliefs that are “respectable” and of those that are not. Included in the second category are many beliefs of philosophers—both ancient and modern. This, as we will see, is a central theme of part 4 of book 1. Given the importance of this section to this later part of the Treatise, I will dedicate a separate chapter to it. Section 14. Of the idea of necessary connexion After an eleven-section excursion through neighboring fields, Hume returns to the problem posed in section 2 concerning the status of a necessary connection. His line of march, as I understand it, runs as follows. In section 2 Hume takes it for granted that a necessary connection is an essential component of a causal relation. Presumably it serves to connect the cause with its effect and in that


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way underwrites an inference from one to the other. Having shown (in section 6) that the inference from cause to effect cannot be the product of the operations of our rational faculties, the notion of a necessary connection is no longer burdened with the task of underwriting this inference. Hume is therefore free to treat the idea of a necessary connection as a product of this inference rather than as its basis. This is precisely what he concludes in the opening paragraph of section 14: After a frequent repetition, I find, that upon the appearance of one of the objects, the mind is determin’d by custom to consider its usual attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light upon account of its relation to the first object. ’Tis this impression, then, or determination, which affords me the idea of necessity. (105/156) The text exhibits what has come to be known as a Euthyphro choice: Do we draw inferences from cause to effect because we think they are necessarily connected, or do we think that they are necessarily connected because we draw inferences from one to the other? For what I take to be dialectical reasons, Hume starts out (seemingly) adopting the first option, then ends up adopting the second, more daring, option. In the Treatise, Hume is fond of such reversals. We will encounter other striking instances of it. Having settled the status of the idea of a necessary connection, Hume then expresses his concern that his argument, being so obviously correct, might not be appreciated for its depth and importance. This evidence both in the first principles, and in the deductions, may seduce us unwarily into the conclusion, and make us imagine it contains nothing extraordinary, nor worthy of our curiosity. But tho’ such an inadvertence may facilitate the reception of this reasoning, ‘twill make it be the more easily

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forgot; for which reason I think it proper to give warning, that I have just now examin’d one of the most sublime questions in philosophy. (105/156) Hume therefore allots another thirteen pages to an expansion of his basic argument concerning our idea of a necessary connection. There is some interesting material in these pages, including: Thus as the necessity, which makes two times two equal to four, or three angles of a triangle equal to two right ones, lies only in the act of the understanding, by which we consider and compare these ideas; in like manner the necessity or power, which unites causes and effects, lies in the determination of the mind to pass from the one to the other. (112/166) For Hume, the feeling of necessity that one has in thinking that 2 × 2 = 4 is the same feeling that one has that a heavy object will fall if it is released from a height. By modern standards—perhaps by the standards of Hume’s time—this is a curious notion of necessity, but the text shows unambiguously that he is committed to it. Hume’s additional remarks on necessary connections also contain an important summary passage that confirms the interpretation of the text I have presented: ’Tis now time to collect all the different parts of this reasoning, and by joining them together form an exact definition of the relation of cause and effect, which makes the subject of the present enquiry. This order wou’d not have been excusable, of first examining our inference from the relation before we had explain’d the relation itself, had it been possible to proceed in a different method. But as the nature of the relation depends so much on that of the inference, we have been


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oblig’d to advance in this seemingly preposterous manner, and make use of terms before we were able exactly to define them, or fix their meaning. We shall now correct this fault by giving a precise definition of cause and effect. (114/169) With the idea of a necessary connection now properly put in its place, Hume next proceeds to offer two definitions of cause, one treating causation as a philosophical relation, the other treating it as a natural relation. There may two definitions be given of this relation, which are only different, by their presenting a different view of the same object, and making us consider it either as a philosophical or as a natural relation; either as a comparison of two ideas, or as an association betwixt them. We may define a cause to be “[a]n object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are plac’d in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects that resemble the latter.” If this definition be esteem’d defective, because drawn from objects foreign to the cause, we may substitute this other definition in its place, viz. “[a] cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.” (114/169–70) In case the reader has somehow missed it, Hume adds a paragraph driving home the point that neither definition makes reference to a necessary connection—thus reversing his original claim that a necessary connection is an essential element of a causal relation. If we define a cause to be, an object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are

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plac’d in a like relation of priority and contiguity to those objects, that resemble the latter; we may easily conceive, that there is no absolute nor metaphysical necessity, that every beginning of existence shou’d be attended with such an object. If we define a cause to be, an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it in the imagination, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other; we shall make still less difficulty of assenting to this opinion. (115–16/172) These two definitions are not without difficulties. The second, which treats causation as a natural relation, seems circular in employing the transparently causal term “determines” as part of the definition of a cause. This criticism can be avoided by treating the second definition (so-called) as a causal statement concerning causal belief-formation. There is nothing circular in that. The first definition, where causation is treated as a philosophical relation, faces a more serious challenge. Some, and not merely a few, have taken Hume to be presenting a regularity definition of a causal law. On this reading—I’ll call it the causal law reading—Hume’s first definition is taken to mean: If every event of type B is uniquely paired with an event of type A that is prior to it and contiguous with it, then events of type A cause events of type B. Thomas Reid interpreted Hume in this manner and produced the following counterexample to it: It follows from this definition of cause, that night is the cause of day, and day the cause of night. For no two things have more constantly followed each other since the beginning of the world. (Reid 334)


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In fact, Hume’s first definition is not correctly represented by the causal law reading and does not imply it. Hume’s first definition concerns a singular causal statement of the form “a is the cause of b,” and can be represented as follows: a is the cause of b if and only if a is contiguous and prior to b, and any object resembling a is similarly paired with an object resembling b, and any object resembling b is paired with an object resembling a that is contiguous and prior to it. Hume’s first definition, taken in this, the correct, way, is not subject to Reid’s criticism. The point is this: Predicates used to pick out the cause and to pick out the effect need not fix the appropriate resemblance classes.3 The definition may be subject to other criticisms—in particular, concerning the specification of the proper resemblance classes—but I will not go into this matter here. Section 15. Rules by which to judge of causes and effects Proponents of a naturalistic reading of Hume’s Treatise point to this section as confirmation of their approach. They are right to do so. It opens with the following declaration: According to the precedent doctrine, there are no objects, which by the mere survey, without consulting experience, we can determine to be the causes of any other; and no objects, which we can certainly determine in the same manner not to be the causes. Any thing may produce any thing. . . . Since therefore ’tis possible for all objects to become causes or effects to each other, it may be proper to fix some general rules, by which we may know when they really are so. (116/173)

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He then lays down eight rules that will serve as guides to empirical inquiry, telling his reader that they are of much more use than the elaborate systems put forward by “our scholastic head-pieces and logicians [who] show no such superiority above the mere vulgar in their reason and ability” (117/175). It is hard to see, as naturalistic interpreters point out, why Hume would find it useful to present such a system of rules for empirical inquiry if he harbored serious doubts about the very possibility of such inquiry. Section 16. Of the reason of animals Hume holds that higher animals are capable of reasoning of the same kind employed by human beings. The dog that “avoids fire and precipices, that shuns strangers, and caresses his master,” he tells us, proceeds “from a reasoning, that is not in itself different, nor founded on different principles, from that which appears in human nature” (119/177). He thus claims that his theory can account for both human and animal reasoning and challenges those who reject it to attempt to do likewise: Let any philosopher make a trial, and endeavour to explain that act of the mind, which we call belief, and give an account of the principles, from which it is deriv’d, independent of the influence of custom on the imagination, and let his hypothesis be equally applicable to beasts as to the human species; and after he has done this, I promise to embrace his opinion. (119/178) Passages like this, and many others of the same kind, seem to settle the interpretive dispute in favor of naturalism—unless, that is, we turn pages and enter the skeptical realm of part 4. In fact, as briefly noted, the skepticism that emerges in part 4 is anticipated in part 3 itself, in section 13, under the heading “Of unphilosophical probability.” This is the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter 2 Z Hume on Unphilosophical Probabilities

Z Unphilosophical as Opposed to Philosophical Probabilities In sections 11 and 12 of part 3, Hume examines what he calls the probability of chances and the probability of causes. At the start of section 13, he tells us that both “are receiv’d by philosophers, and allow’d to be reasonable foundations of belief and opinion.” He then continues: “But there are [other kinds of probability], that are deriv’d from the same principles, tho’ they have not had the good fortune to obtain the same sanction” (97/143). Hume dubs these other kinds of probability—those not sanctioned by philosophers—unphilosophical probabilities. In sections 11 and 12, Hume argues that philosophical probabilities are grounded in the operations of the imagination. In section 13, he makes the same claim with respect to unphilosophical probabilities. The upshot is that both philosophical and unphilosophical probabilities spring from the same principles: the operations of the imagination. Furthermore, philosophical probabilities and unphilosophical probabilities can come into conflict with one another, and that, on Hume’s theory, amounts to saying that the imagination can come into conflict with itself. As we shall see, exposing conflicts within the imagination is a central theme of part 4, and their discovery is the primary source of Hume’s skeptical jitters. 29

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Z Sources of Unphilosophical Probabilities Hume examines four sources, or kinds, of unphilosophical probability: the effect of the remoteness of an event, the effect of the remoteness of an observation, reiterative diminution, and prejudice based on general rules. The effect of the remoteness of the event Hume’s discussion of this kind of unphilosophical probability provides his first example of how a clash can arise between the deliverances of philosophical and unphilosophical probabilities. The argument, which we found on any matter of fact we remember, is more or less convincing, according as the fact is recent or remote; and tho’ the difference in these degrees of evidence be not receiv’d by philosophy as solid and legitimate; because in that case an argument must have a different force today, from what it shall have a month hence; yet notwithstanding the opposition of philosophy, ’tis certain, this circumstance has a considerable influence on the understanding, and secretly changes the authority of the same argument, according to the different times, in which it is propos’d to us. (97–98/143) Here Hume speaks of an argument that appeals to events remote in time and claims that, as a matter of fact, the more remote an event is, the less authority it will carry. This psychological fact cannot be explained by appealing to principles of received philosophy, since it runs counter to them. It can, Hume thinks, be explained by the fact that, in general, events remote in time have less impact on the imagination than those that have occurred more recently.

Hume on Unphilosophical Probabilities

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It is worth asking why Hume should be interested in what seems to be an unsound, actually quite stupid, mode of probabilistic reasoning. Part of the answer is that this phenomenon provides an opportunity for him to show off the power of his own position. He thinks that on his principles he can give an explanation of why such a mode of reasoning takes place, whereas other theories cannot. More deeply, in his science of human nature, Hume is attempting to give a causal account of the ways in which human beings actually think and act. Beliefs as they are actually formed will play a central role in this project. Hume’s scientific investigations will be governed by philosophical rules of probabilistic reasoning (see part 3, section 15), but, as he sees, it would be a mistake to suppose that common human belief-formation is equally governed by such rules. The effect of the remoteness of the observation The second kind of unphilosophical probability Hume examines is similar to the first, except that now it is the remoteness of the observation, and not of the event, that diminishes vivacity. “An experiment, that is recent and fresh in the memory,” he tells us, “affects us more than one that is in some measure obliterated” (98/143). Reiterative diminution Because of its close connection with Hume’s skepticism with regard to reason, Hume’s discussion of his third kind of unphilosophical probability is worth careful examination. I add, as a third instance of this kind, that tho’ our reasonings from proofs and from probabilities be considerably different from each other, yet the former species of reasoning often degenerates insensibly into the latter, by nothing but the

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multitude of connected arguments. ’Tis certain, that when an inference is drawn immediately from an object, without any intermediate cause or effect, the conviction is much stronger, and the perswasion more lively, than when the imagination is carry’d thro’ a long chain of connected arguments, however infallible the connexion of each link may be esteem’d. (98/144) The point Hume is making is clear: Long chains of reasoning can lose their force simply in virtue of their length. The reason for this is that “vivacity must gradually decay in proportion to the distance, and must lose somewhat in each transition.” Here various analogies spring to mind: The friction involved in each transition rubs off some of the vivacity’s luster, or, here, as elsewhere, entropy takes its toll. None of these analogies seems adequate. Then again, Hume’s talk about vivacity is not without problems of its own. In any case, the important idea here is that “re-iterated diminutions,” to use Hume’s phrase (99/145), will reduce the doxastic force of a series of inferences in direct proportion to its length. At this point, Hume goes off into a neighboring field to respond to the criticism that the principle of reiterated diminutions, if true, would have the effect of destroying our knowledge of the ancient past. ’Tis evident there is no point of antient history, of which we can have any assurance, but by passing thro’ many millions of causes and effects, and thro’ a chain of arguments of almost an immeasurable length. Before the knowledge of the fact cou’d come to the first historian, it must be convey’d thro’ many mouths; and after it is committed to writing, each new copy is a new object, of which the connexion with the foregoing is known only by experience and observation.


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Perhaps, therefore, it may be concluded from the precedent reasoning, that the evidence of all antient history must now be lost; or at least, will be lost in time, as the chain of causes encreases, and runs on to a greater length. . . . This may be consider’d as an objection to the present system. If belief consisted only in a certain vivacity, convey’d from an original impression, it wou’d decay by the length of the transition, and must at last be utterly extinguish’d: And vice versa, if belief on some occasions be not capable of such an extinction; it must be something different from that vivacity. (98/144–45) Hume’s response to this criticism is quite remarkable. In essence it comes to this: Whether reiterative diminution will destroy our beliefs concerning the ancient past depends on the manner in which we view the sequence of transitions—an idea of central importance in part 4. Looked at in one way, reiterative diminution would indeed have the effect of destroying all beliefs handed down to us from the past: If all the long chain of causes and effects, which connect any past event with any volume of history, were compos’d of parts different from each other, and which ’twere necessary for the mind distinctly to conceive, ’tis impossible we shou’d preserve to the end any belief or evidence. (99/146) That is, if we look at the matter sequentially, we would recognize that each time information about the remote past is transmitted, some vivacity (hence assurance) is lost.1 With a sufficient number of reiterations, belief in the past events would be annihilated. But we do have strong beliefs concerning the remote past. How, on Hume’s theory, is this possible?

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Hume’s answer is that, in fact, and fortunately, we do not view the matter sequentially: Let us consider, that tho’ the links are innumerable, that connect any original fact with the present impression, which is the foundation of belief; yet they are all of the same kind, and depend on the fidelity of printers and copists. One edition passes into another, and that into a third, and so on, till we come to that volume we peruse at present. There is no variation in the steps. After we know one, we know all of them; and after we have made one, we can have no scruple as to the rest. This circumstance alone preserves the evidence of history. (99/146) Then this crucial move: But as most of these proofs [that make up the long chain of inferences] are perfectly resembling, the mind runs easily along them, jumps from one part to another with facility, and forms but a confus’d and general notion of each link. (99/146, emphasis added) What are we to make of Hume’s claim that we have a confused notion of each link in the chain of inferences? For Hume, having a confused notion of these links contrasts with having a distinct notion of them, that is, recognizing them as distinct entities. This may seem a bit shifty in its use of the notion of being distinct, but it is just what Hume says: By this means a long chain of argument, has as little effect in diminishing the original vivacity, as a much shorter wou’d have, if compos’d of parts, which were different from each other, and of which each requir’d a distinct consideration. (99/146)


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It seems, then, that beliefs in remote past events are preserved only because we become fuddled when we think of how they have been handed down to us. This idea that a limitation or weakness in the human intellect can protect us from an unanswerable skeptical challenge will reappear in part 4, section 1. Prejudice based on general rules Hume calls his fourth species of unphilosophical probability “prejudice”: A fourth unphilosophical species of probability is that deriv’d from general rules, which we rashly form to ourselves, and which are the source of what we properly call prejudice. An Irishman cannot have wit, and a Frenchman cannot have solidity; for which reason, tho’ the conversation of the former in any instance be visibly very agreeable, and of the latter very judicious, we have entertain’d such a prejudice against them, that they must be dunces or fops in spite of sense and reason. Human nature is very subject to errors of this kind; and perhaps this nation as much as any other. (99–100/146–47) With respect to prejudice, the general rules that govern our judgment are rashly formed and stand in contrast to those that proceed from “more general and authentic operations of the understanding.” Following the pattern found in his discussion of the first three forms of unphilosophical probability, Hume proceeds to offer an account of why human beings reason in this unreasonable way: Shou’d it be demanded why men form general rules, and allow them to influence their judgment, even contrary to present observation and experience, I shou’d reply, that in my

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opinion it proceeds from those very principles, on which all judgments concerning causes and effects depend. Our judgments concerning cause and effect are deriv’d from habit and experience; and when we have been accustom’d to see one object united to another, our imagination passes from the first to the second, by a natural transition, which precedes reflection, and which cannot be prevented by it. (100/147) The text here is not altogether transparent. It seems that Hume is attributing a double capacity to the imagination. After experiencing a customary union of objects of type A with objects of type B, on the appearance of A we are disposed to infer the forthcoming presence of B, but not only that, we are also disposed to accept a general rule to the effect that As are sure indicators of the associated Bs. Suppose, for example, that Nigel believes that a Frenchman cannot have solidity. He might have absorbed this belief from his cultural heritage, but let us suppose that his belief is based on his own encounters with the French. Having encountered a series of Frenchmen lacking in solidity, his imagination performs two operations. First, on again encountering a Frenchman he will immediately take it for granted that he is dealing with someone lacking solidity. Along with this, under the influence of the imagination, he will also adopt a general rule to the effect that all Frenchmen lack solidity. Now suppose he encounters a Frenchman of unquestionable depth and probity. If he recognizes this, then, from the standpoint of philosophical probability, he should resist automatically assuming that this particular person lacks solidity. Similarly, he should relax his general rule that all Frenchmen lack solidity. However, the grip of the general rule can be tenacious, preventing Nigel from recognizing the depth and probity of the Frenchman before him. General rules, tenaciously held, can blind Nigel to contrary evidence. He may even see the


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Frenchman’s actions as foppish when they are not. All in all, not a bad start for an account of the nature of prejudice.

Z Conflicts within the Imagination and Skepticism It is easy to read this examination of the nature and sources of prejudice as no more than a cautionary tale concerning the dangers of rash generalizations as opposed to the security provided by generalizations that are broader and more authentic. That, however, is not how Hume proceeds. Instead, he treats the conflict between general rules that are grounded in philosophical probabilities and those that are grounded in unphilosophical probabilities as a challenge to his theory: According to my system, all reasonings are nothing but the effects of custom; and custom has no influence, but by enlivening the imagination, and giving us a strong conception of any object. It may, therefore, be concluded, that our judgment and imagination can never be contrary, and that custom cannot operate on the latter faculty after such a manner, as to render it opposite to the former. (101/149) The fact is, however, that general rules derived from unphilosophical probabilities sometimes do clash with those having a philosophically more proper heritage. Thus our general rules are in a manner set in opposition to each other. When an object appears, that resembles any cause in very considerable circumstances, the imagination naturally carries us to a lively conception of the usual effect, tho’ the

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object be different in the most material and most efficacious circumstances from that cause. Here is the first influence of general rules. But when we take a review of this act of the mind, and compare it with the more general and authentic operations of the understanding, we find it to be of an irregular nature, and destructive of all the most establish’d principles of reasoning; which is the cause of our rejecting it. This is a second influence of general rules, and implies the condemnation of the former. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other prevails, according to the disposition and character of the person. The vulgar are commonly guided by the first, and wise men by the second. (101–2/149–50) It seems, then, that the operations of the associative principles of the imagination are not highly discriminate in the beliefs that they entrench. These reflections lead Hume to make his first reference to skepticism in the Treatise: Meanwhile the sceptics may here have the pleasure of observing a new and signal contradiction in our reason, and of seeing all philosophy ready to be subverted by a principle of human nature, and again sav’d by a new direction of the very same principle. The following of general rules is a very unphilosophical species of probability; and yet ’tis only by following them that we can correct this, and all other unphilosophical probabilities. (102/150) This passage is a harbinger of things to come in part 4, where conflicts within the operations of the mind—and the skeptical consequences that flow from them—become a central concern.

Chapter 3 Z Hume’s Skepticism with Regard to Reason

Z The Turn to Skepticism Part 4 of book 1 of the Treatise represents the outer limit of Hume’s critical reflections on the philosophical enterprise. To borrow a phrase from Immanuel Kant, it represents Hume’s attempt to delineate the fate of reason when its demands are pursued in an unrestricted manner. The result, as both Hume and Kant portray it, is intellectual disaster. There is, however, an important difference in the scope of their critiques. Kant’s primary target is the attempt to produce substantive (synthetic) a priori knowledge that reaches beyond the phenomenal world. Roughly speaking, his critique concerns metaphysics as traditionally pursued. Hume’s critique is more radical and more far-reaching, for it calls into question both the understanding and the senses in their modest and natural employments, not just their misemployment in a priori metaphysics. The opening sections (1 and 2) of part 4 taken together yield the sweeping negative conclusion that ’[t]is impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses; and we but expose them farther when we endeavour to justify them in that manner. As the sceptical doubt arises naturally from a profound and intense reflection 39

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on those subjects, it always encreases, the farther we carry our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to it. (144/218) Hume seems to leave no areas protected from radical doubt except, perhaps, immediate subjective reports. I think this result comes as a shock to the reader after the confident development of Hume’s science of human nature in the first three parts of book 1. Earlier, in Hume’s discussion of unphilosophical probabilities, there were some indications that the operations of the imagination can have problematic results, but nothing prepares the reader for the radical change of direction that seems to occur when we pass from part 3 to part 4.

Z The Basic Argument This much is clear from the text: Section 1, part 4, book 1 of the Treatise opens with a skeptical examination of the demonstrative sciences (Hume’s words), that is, of beliefs based on demonstration and intuition. Given his own nomenclature, both intuitive and demonstrative truths are in the domain of knowledge as opposed to the domain of probability. It is also clear that Hume’s skepticism is not limited to the domain of knowledge, but includes the domain of probability as well. The moral that Hume draws from his skeptical reflections is that our intellectual faculties, when allowed to follow their own principles without restraint, are wholly destructive of beliefs based on reasoning. So the scope of Hume’s argument is unrestricted: It is not limited to those beliefs that are the product of demonstrative and intuitive reasoning, though it includes them.

Hume’s Skepticism with Regard to Reason

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It is also clear from the text that Hume’s skepticism concerning demonstrative reasoning is based on probabilistic reasoning. This contrasts with traditional skeptical attacks on demonstrative reasoning that usually point to such things as the circularity of demonstrative proofs, the threat of an infinite regress, the lack of probity, the appearance of paradoxes, and the like. Hume’s challenge is quite different and, to the best of my knowledge, without precedent. In effect, he starts by raising the question: How do we establish the appropriate level of assurance that we should assign to any piece of demonstrative reasoning? That, for Hume, is a matter of assessing the probability of error. Reducing knowledge to probability The first step in Hume’s skeptical argument is an attempt to show that, under the critical eye of proper reasoning, knowledge degenerates into probability. The key move involves what Hume will later refer to as “a reflex act of the mind” (122/182). In all demonstrative sciences the rules are certain and infallible; but when we apply them, our fallible and uncertain faculties are very apt to depart from them, and fall into error. We must, therefore, in every reasoning form a new judgment, as a check or controul on our first judgment or belief; and must enlarge our view to comprehend a kind of history of all the instances, wherein our understanding has deceiv’d us, compar’d with those, wherein its testimony [emphasis added] was just and true. Our reason must be consider’d as a kind of cause, of which truth is the natural effect; but such-a-one as by the irruption of other causes, and by the inconstancy of our mental powers, may frequently be prevented. By this means

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all knowledge degenerates into probability; and this probability is greater or less, according to our experience of the veracity or deceitfulness of our understanding, and according to the simplicity or intricacy of the question. (121/180) Before getting into details of the skeptical argument concerning reason, we should note that Hume presents his argument using the metaphor of “testimony.” Our reason, he tells us, provides us with testimony that is sometimes “just and true”; at other times it “deceives us.” In order to assess the reliability of this testimony, we should shift our attention away from the immediate object of our judgment and examine the reliability of our faculties in dealing with the matter at hand. We should consider the ratio of the testimony that has deceived us relative to the testimony that is just and true. Ideally, the veracity should fully outweigh the deceitfulness, leaving us fully (or at least highly) confident. If not, our level of confidence should be adjusted accordingly. This sounds quite sensible and in line with the discussion in section 12, “Of the probability of causes.”1 Hume may be wrong in saying “knowledge degenerates into probability”—we will look at his arguments for this shortly—but at least he is saying this: Establishing a claim to demonstrative knowledge always involves establishing a prior claim of probability. That is an arresting idea in itself, and not altogether implausible.2 Hume adds another reason for holding that the evaluation of demonstrative reasoning reduces to or is at least dependent on probabilistic reasoning. There is no algebraist nor mathematician so expert in his science, as to place entire confidence in any truth immediately upon his discovery of it, or regard it as any thing but a mere probability. Every time he runs over his proofs, his confidence increases; but still more by the approbation of his


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friends; and is rais’d to its utmost perfection by the universal assent and applauses of the learned world. Now, ’tis evident, that this gradual increase of assurance is nothing but the addition of new probabilities, and is derived from the constant union of causes and effects, according to past experience and observation. (121/180–81) Here it will help to contrast a horizontal with a vertical perspective for evaluating the soundness of a proof. The wise algebraist runs over his proofs a number of times to make sure they are free of error. Similarly, in adding up a long column of figures, it is prudent to check the result a number of times, perhaps adding from top to bottom one time, from bottom to top the next. One can also ask others to check the result—or use a calculator. If the sums consistently come out the same, this increases one’s confidence that the sum is correct. On the horizontal approach, justification, as we might put it, remains on the same level: We check a computation relative to further computations. If a general agreement results, even if counterbalanced by a few disagreements, this can place the correctness of the computation beyond doubt. The regression argument Instead of resting content with a horizontal perspective for the assessment of arguments, Hume insists that the canons of reason demand that arguments be evaluated from a vertical perspective as well: In every judgment, which we can form concerning probability, as well as concerning knowledge, we ought always to correct the first judgment, deriv’d from the nature of the object, by another judgment, deriv’d from the nature of the understanding. (122/181–82)

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Here we are not concerned with finding further confirming evidence, but, instead, we step up a level and reflect on our ability to carry out conformational procedures correctly. As Hume points out, this principle applies not only to the assessment of demonstrative arguments, but also to the assessment of probabilities themselves: As demonstration is subject to the controul of probability, so is probability liable to a new correction by a reflex act of the mind, wherein the nature of our understanding, and our reasoning from the first probability become our objects. (122/182) This claim has two important implications. The first is that an argument that began with demonstrative reasoning as its target is now, as Hume explicitly states, made equally applicable to probabilistic reasoning. Second—and this is crucial to Hume’s argument—the reflex act of judging our own capacities will, of itself, add a new uncertainty into our considerations. Having thus found in every probability, beside the original uncertainty inherent in the subject, a new uncertainty deriv’d from the weakness of that faculty, which judges, and having adjusted these two together, we are oblig’d by our reason to add a new doubt deriv’d from the possibility of error in the estimation we make of the truth and fidelity of our faculties. (122/182) The principle of reiterative diminution Hume’s regression argument yields the traditional skeptical trope of infinite regress, and that, it would seem, would be sufficient to achieve Hume’s skeptical purposes. However, an infinite-regress


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argument is usually intended to show that some claim cannot be justified because the demand for justification keeps repeating itself. Hume’s central focus is on beliefs: how they are formed, how they can be strengthened, and here, how they can be extinguished by the relentless application of what he takes to be a canon of proper reasoning. It is, I think, for this reason that he appeals to the notion of reiterated diminutions—an idea that, as we saw, made its first appearance in his discussion of unphilosophical probabilities. Here is how Hume exploits this principle in the present context: No finite object can subsist under a decrease repeated in infinitum; and even the vastest quantity, which can enter into human imagination, must in this manner be reduc’d to nothing. (122/182) [Thus] all the rules of logic require a continual diminution, and at last a total extinction of belief and evidence. (122/183) In order to show that Hume’s reasoning is not wholly artificial, it will be helpful to consider an example of a situation where human beings would actually engage in such reasoning, at least up to a point. A cognitive psychologist is conducting the following experiment: Computations are flashed fairly briefly on a screen. (We will assume that there is no difficulty in reading them correctly.) Subjects viewing them are asked to record whether the computation is correct or not. If they answer correctly, they are awarded one point; if they answer incorrectly, they lose two points. They can also take a bye and not win or lose any points. A handsome prize is awarded to the subject who accumulates the most points. This game reflects the structure of Hume’s argument reasonably well. The players’ willingness to bet reflects the level of their confidence. There are two factors at work: The chance of being wrong is

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a function of the complexity of the computation presented but also a function of the players’ ability to do arithmetic in their heads. In this situation, the players could, in fact, begin an ascent of the kind that Hume speaks of. Faced with a long division that strikes her as correct, a particular player first thinks she should bet that it is. That is level one. She might, however, recall that she has often lost bets on long divisions that struck her as right. Because of this, her confidence in her original decision is shaken and she now thinks she should take a bye instead. That is level two. But the regress can be pursued a step higher, for here again, she is relying on the testimony of her fallible understanding, which, if she is judicious, should become the subject of “a new correction by a reflex act of the mind, wherein the nature of our understanding, and our reasoning from the first probability become our objects.” And so on indefinitely. What are we to say about Hume’s argument and its counterpart game? They both depend on the endless nesting of confidence assessments inside confidence assessments. The stack of assessments of assessments goes endlessly high and in the process the nesting becomes endlessly complex. That is a bad thing, but does not, in itself, yield the diminution in confidence that Hume insists on. All sorts of patterns might emerge. Suppose that the subjects are told whether their answers are correct immediately after they record each decision. In this setting, another subject may be struck by her uncanny ability to get things right. She therefore sees (and has) no good reason to correct her original first-level decisions and no diminution of assurance takes place. What this shows is that a “reflex act of the mind, wherein the nature of our understanding, and our reasoning from the first probability become our objects” need not, of itself, produce the diminution in confidence required, as Hume puts it, by “all the rules of logic.” Whether such a correction is necessary depends on a contingent matter of fact.3


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So I think that Hume is simply wrong in thinking that the application of the reflex principle automatically introduces a diminution in assurance demanded by the laws of logic or rationality. We might better consider the reflex act of self-examination a useful aid for epistemic (or doxastic) prudence. There are occasions where it is prudent to take into consideration our mental abilities for dealing with a complex or unfamiliar matter. One way to do this is to take the vertical approach and consider how well we have done in the past in dealing with matters of the kind at hand. The reflexive move has, however, a fundamental shortcoming: As we ascend higher and higher in levels of probability assessments of probability assessments, we almost immediately run out of data concerning how well we have performed tasks of this kind. We have no idea, for example, how well we do in making fourth-level assessments since, in all likelihood, we have never attempted to perform one. Isn’t this lack of adequate data enough to yield Hume’s skeptical conclusion? No. What it shows is that the vertical method has a use, but a very limited use, in evaluating one’s own cognitive capacities. This result would carry skeptical consequences only if there were no alternative way of guarding against cognitive errors. What I have called the horizontal method provides an alternative to the vertical method. To repeat an example, if the result that I get in adding up a column of figures coincides with the results that others get, that increases my confidence that my result is correct. Beyond this—and this is important—it also increases my confidence that I am reliable in performing tasks of this particular kind. Doesn’t this ignore the possibility that something everyone agrees on might be wrong? It does ignore this possibility. Relying on this point would, however, subvert Hume’s attempt to show that canons of rationality, pursued without constraint, ultimately destroy all beliefs. Transforming Hume’s skeptical argument into a general

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worry about human fallibility misses the specific point Hume is trying to establish. If I am right, Hume’s skepticism with regard to reason suffers from two serious shortcomings. The first is that he has not shown that making the reflexive move will, in virtue of principles of logic or rationality, diminish levels of assurance. The second is that he has not shown that the vertical approach is the sole and demanded method for establishing the reliability of one’s cognitive faculties. In sum, neither epistemic nor doxastic prudence forces us to adopt the vertical approach, and even if we do, principles of logic or rationality do not, of themselves, yield diminution of assurance.4

Z Hume’s Response to His Skeptical Argument It seems, then, that Hume’s skeptical argument with regard to reason does not work. Hume, however, thought it did, and his response to this skeptical argument is worth examining. The skeptical argument has three central components: 1. The Reflexive Principle 2. An Infinite Regress 3. The Principle of Reiterative Diminution All three principles are, for him, demands of rationality. Intellectually, he embraces them without reservation. Hume also holds that, taken together, these demands of reason lead to the annihilation of both knowledge and probability. Given this, is Hume a skeptic or not? Hume poses this question himself: Shou’d it here be ask’d me, whether I sincerely assent to this argument, which I seem to take such pains to inculcate, and whether I be really one of those sceptics, who hold that all


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is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possessed of any measures of truth and falsehood; I shou’d reply, that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I, nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion. Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity, has determin’d us to judge as well as to breathe and feel. (123/183) Hume asks two questions, not one: “Do I assent to the argument?” and “Am I one of those skeptics who holds that all is uncertain?” He does not answer the first question directly, but instead calls it superfluous. Why is it superfluous? Because he, like everyone else in the world, is incapable—psychologically incapable—of total skepticism or total suspension of belief. But still, does he accept the argument or not? The answer to this question is yes, he does accept it, for he thinks that he has presented an argument that is theoretically irrefutable. What may seem odd is that he accepts an argument that establishes the groundlessness of our believing, yet he cannot cease believing. In Fogelin (1985) I tried to capture these dual aspects of Hume’s position by drawing a distinction between theoretical skepticism and belief or doxastic skepticism. A theoretical skeptic puts forward arguments intended to show that beliefs of a certain kind (perhaps all beliefs) lack adequate warrant. Hume, as I read him, is a radical, if not quite unmitigated, theoretical skeptic.5 The notion of a doxastic skeptic comes closer to the common understanding of a skeptic: The doxastic skeptic suspends judgments concerning various kinds of beliefs or perhaps all beliefs. She may do so on the basis of theoretical skepticism, or she may not. Using this terminology, Hume is a mitigated doxastic skeptic, though, as we shall see, the degree of mitigation varies with context. The upshot of this discussion is that Hume actually has two reasons for thinking that attacks on his skeptical argument will fail: From a theoretical perspective,

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the argument is irrefutable; from the doxastic perspective, there is no one to attack. A further question remains for Hume to answer: But here, perhaps, it may be demanded, how it happens, even upon my hypothesis, that these arguments above-explain’d produce not a total suspense of judgment, and after what manner the mind ever retains a degree of assurance in any subject? (123/184) Of course, most people have never heard of Hume’s argument, but Hume has and so have we. How, on the face of it, can any of us in the know (as it were) sustain any of our beliefs? I answer, that after the first and second decision; as the action of the mind becomes forc’d and unnatural, and the ideas faint and obscure; tho’ the principles of judgment, and the ballancing of opposite causes be the same as at the very beginning; yet their influence on the imagination, and the vigour they add to, or diminish from the thought, is by no means equal. . . . The posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not govern’d in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel. (124/185) I think that this aptly describes what happens in the game introduced above. We can ascend the ladder of reflexive evaluations a few rungs, but soon things go fuzzy, then blank.6 It seems that if we could sustain our commitments to the three principles of rationality, or maintain our stance in the reflective mode, then all our beliefs would be destroyed. Fortunately a nonrational principle—that we enter with difficulty into remote views of things—overrides these rational principles and thereby stays the hand of the principle of reiterated diminutions.


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I think it is important to note that in section 1, Hume exhibits no jitters as a result of his skepticism with regard to reason—that will come later. His purpose in presenting this skeptical argument, he tells us, is to illustrate the correctness of his own account of cause and effect and, more deeply, his account of belief-formation. My intention then in displaying so carefully the arguments of that fantastic sect, is only to make the reader sensible of the truth of my hypothesis, that all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are deriv’d from nothing but custom; and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the cogitative part of our natures. (123/183) In contrast: If belief, therefore, were a simple act of the thought, without any peculiar manner of conception, or the addition of a force and vivacity, it must infallibly destroy itself, and in every case terminate in a total suspense of judgment. (123/184) These passages clearly support a naturalistic reading of the text. Hume has, to his satisfaction, eliminated a rival intellectualist theory by presenting a skeptical argument that refutes it, and, beyond this, has shown, again to his satisfaction, that the intellectualist standards are the source of this skeptical argument. Using his own theory, he has given an explanation to how this skeptical impasse necessarily arises when rational principles are relentlessly pursued, and has further shown how the operations of our nonrational faculties provide the only way of avoiding this disaster. This reading is borne out by the structure of the text itself. Part 3 of book 1 is titled “Of knowledge and probability.” There Hume argues that an adequate account of probability can be derived from the nonrational faculty of the imagination. In the opening section

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of part 4, book 1, Hume argues that, under governance of rational (as opposed to natural) principles, knowledge reduces to probability, and probability, under reiterative diminution, reduces to “nothing.” That, for Hume, is where we wind up if we take reason to be the foundation for the fixation of belief. It is hard to find a stronger basis for a naturalistic reading of the text than this. There is, however, more to come.

Z Peritrope It is important to keep in mind that, for Hume’s purposes, it is essential that the skeptical argument he has propounded be theoretically irrefutable. For this reason he is called upon to defend it. A standard ploy, dating back to antiquity, is to argue that skepticism can be shown to be self-refuting by turning skeptical arguments back upon themselves (peritrope). How, it is asked, can rational arguments be used to undercut rationality itself without thereby undercutting themselves? Hume offers the following response to this challenge. This argument is not just; because the sceptical reasonings . . . wou’d be successively both strong and weak, according to the successive dispositions of the mind. . . . The sceptical and dogmatical reasons are of the same kind, tho’ contrary in their operation and tendency; so that where the latter is strong, it has an enemy of equal force in the former to encounter; and as their forces were at first equal, they still continue so, as long as either of them subsists; nor does one of them lose any force in the contest, without taking as much from its antagonist. ’Tis happy, therefore, that nature breaks


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the force of all sceptical arguments in time, and keeps them from having any considerable influence on the understanding. Were we to trust entirely to their self-destruction, that can never take place, till they have first subverted all conviction, and have totally destroy’d human reason. (125/186–87) This is certainly ingenious, but it is not responsive to a primitive uneasiness. Hume, if his reasoning is correct, has produced an argument using probabilistic considerations that shows that probabilistic reasoning, systematically pursued, will be destructive of all beliefs. Turning the table on this reasoning, we apply it to Hume’s probabilistic reasoning and ask whether it undercuts itself. Hume’s answer—and as far as I can see, his only possible answer—would have to go something like this: “Not to worry, human beings are incapable of pursuing this probabilistic reasoning far enough down (actually up) this path of reiterative evaluations to reach skepticism.” This hardly provides solace, for, thanks to Hume’s argument, we know in advance where the successive applications of probability assessments will lead: to total skepticism. We do not actually have to perform these assessments to see this. It seems then that Hume’s position is dialectically unstable. His skeptical argument has to be sound in order to promote his skepticism with regard to reason. Yet when applied to itself, the argument does seem self-defeating. Hume can explain why this skeptical argument causes no difficulties for the vulgar. They know nothing of it, and if, for some reason, they set out on the path of making higherorder probability assessments, they will quickly tire and give up. The combination of ignorance and weakness of the intellect shields them from danger. The learned—at least those among them who are familiar with Hume’s skeptical argument—have no like protection. If they accept Hume’s argument, as Hume thinks they must, they

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will agree that the successive application of the reflexive method will lead to a total destruction of belief—and they will agree without so much as making a serious try at applying this method. The ignorance and weakness of mind that protects the vulgar provides no protection to the learned, including Hume himself. In his section concerning skepticism with regard to reason, Hume shows no signs of recognizing the precarious character of his own position relative to his own skeptical argument. Hume seems to see himself as standing above the fray while the skeptic and the dogmatist engage in mortal combat that inevitably leads to their mutual destruction. It doesn’t seem to cross his mind that he himself could be swept up in the combat with a similar outcome. Later he will confront this possibility—with dramatic results.

Chapter 4 Z Of Skepticism with Regard to the Senses

Z Hume’s Turnabout with Regard to the Senses The transition from skepticism with regard to reason to skepticism with regard to the senses is made in these words: Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even tho’ he asserts, that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho’ he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless, esteem’d it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence 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. (124/187) Thirty pages later, quite a different voice is heard: Having thus given an account of all the systems both popular and philosophical, with regard to external existences, I cannot forbear giving vent to a certain sentiment, which arises upon 55

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reviewing those systems. I begun this subject with premising, that we ought to have an implicit faith in our senses, and that this wou’d be the conclusion, I shou’d draw from the whole of my reasoning. But to be ingenuous, I feel myself at present of a quite contrary sentiment, and am more inclin’d to repose no faith at all in my senses, or rather imagination [emphasis added], than to place in it such an implicit confidence. (143–44/217) The closing sentence of the second passage represents a fundamental shift in Hume’s attitude concerning the relationship between our rational faculties and the nonrational operations of the imagination. Previously, for the most part, Hume has held that the operations of the imagination dominate the operations of the intellect, so that on those occasions when our intellect leads us into skeptical doubt, the imagination steps in and saves our beliefs. We have seen two instances of this. In part 3 we saw that reason can provide no justification for our causal inferences because it cannot provide a proof that nature is uniform—the principle on which our causal inferences rest. Happily for us, a bountiful nature has implanted in us an instinct that compels us to make these inferences even so. The opening passage of section 2 is written in much the same spirit. The imagination saves the day with respect to skepticism with regard to reason in a different, indeed negative, way. As we saw, it is the inability of the imagination to preserve vivacity that saves us from a total loss of belief. As Hume puts it: “The Attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy” (124/185). This is not nature being bountiful in her gifts, but being prudent in distributing them. We have also examined one case where the mechanisms of the imagination bequeathed to us are themselves the source of a skeptical

Of Skepticism with Regard to the Senses

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crisis. That was in the discussion of prejudice in the section on unphilosophical probability, where Hume tells us: Sceptics may here have the pleasure of . . . seeing all philosophy ready to be subverted by a principle of human nature, and again saved by a new direction of the very same principle. (102/150) The beleaguered tone of this passage is strikingly similar to the one adopted by Hume in the closing paragraphs of section 2. Given their past service in Hume’s science of human nature, the principles of the imagination could be expected to play an important role in the explanation of the formation of our beliefs concerning external objects. In fact they do. Furthermore, I do not think Hume has any serious reservations concerning the correctness of his explanation. What he attempted to accomplish he thought he had accomplished: to give a causal account of the implicit faith that the vulgar repose in our senses, and further to give an account of the mechanism that generates philosophers’ commitment to a so-called double-existence theory of perception. The upshot of this investigation, however, is that Hume finds his own faith in his senses slipping away, and slipping away as a natural consequence of applying his science of human nature to the formation of our perceptual beliefs. The text is, I think, quite straightforward on this matter, something I will try to show in detail.

Z The Organization of Section 2 The organization of section 2 may seem peculiar, for it takes some time before we can see why Hume speaks of skepticism with regard to

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the senses. In the first twenty-plus pages of the section, he attempts to provide a descriptive account of how the vulgar—all of us most of the time—come to believe that the objects of perception have a continued and distinct existence, even when not perceived. Throughout this discussion, Hume largely takes it for granted that the vulgar view is simply false. Earlier in the Treatise Hume remarks, almost in passing, that it is “allow’d by philosophers, and … besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas” (49/67, emphasis added). Hume’s challenge, then, is to give a causal account of the emergence of a deeply engrained and almost universally accepted falsehood. Though a commitment to what is commonly called the way of ideas shapes Hume’s discussion, he does not get around to defending it until near the close of section 2, and there very casually. Here it is in toto: ’Twill first be proper to observe a few of those experiments, which convince us, that our perceptions are not possest of any independent existence. When we press one eye with a finger, we immediately perceive all the objects to become double, and one half of them to be remov’d from their common and natural position. But as we do not attribute a continu’d existence to both these perceptions, and as they are both of the same nature, we clearly perceive, that all our perceptions are dependent on our organs, and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits. This opinion is confirm’d by the seeming encrease and diminution of objects, according to their distance; by the apparent alterations in their figure; by the changes in their colour and other qualities from our sickness and distempers; and by an infinite number of other experiments of the same kind; from all which we learn, that our sensible perceptions are not possest of any distinct or independent existence. (140/210–11)


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Far from being an argument showing that our sensible perceptions are not possessed of any distinct or independent existence, this is little more than a gesture in the direction of an argument. Hume’s casualness in presenting it can be taken as a sign of his complacency in thinking that it will not meet with serious objections.1 I think, however, that there is a good and dialectically subtle reason why Hume proceeds as he does. The presentation of this argument appears precisely at the point where Hume completes his examination of the beliefs of the vulgar and turns his attention to the alternative views of the learned. It is at this point, and not before, that his radical skepticism emerges.

Z The Causes of Our Belief in the Existence of Bodies Hume tells us that “the subject, then, of our present enquiry is concerning . . . the causes which induce us to believe in the existence of body” (125/187–88). This question is transposed into two questions: Why we attribute a continu’d existence to objects, even when they are not present to the senses; and why we suppose them to have an existence distinct from the mind and perception? (125–26/188) Hume holds that continued and distinct existences are “intimately connected,” indeed mutually imply each another. It does seem right that something that continues to exist unobserved must have a distinct existence. But distinctness does not seem to imply continued existence. Perhaps things distinct from the mind pop in and out of existence on their own, but I will ignore this possibility. Having presented these two (interrelated) questions, Hume goes on to make a very strong claim concerning them:

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These are the only questions, that are intelligible on the present subject. For as to the notion of external existence, when taken for something specifically different from our perceptions, we have already shown its absurdity. (126/188) In defense of this claim, Hume refers the reader to a passage earlier in the Treatise: Now since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are deriv’d from something antecedently present to the mind; it follows, that ’tis impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions. . . . The furthest we can go towards a conception of external objects, when suppos’d specifically different from our perceptions, is to form a relative idea of them, without pretending to comprehend the related objects. Generally speaking we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attribute to them different relations, connexions and durations. (49/67–68) Hume’s point, I take it, is this: To have merely a relative notion— perhaps relational notion would be better—of an external object would be to understand it only as the cause of our perception without attributing any other properties to it. The entity would amount to an x that is the cause of a perception, where this x is not characterized in any other way. The senses not the source of this belief Hume is now in a position to raise his basic question. It mimics his previous treatment of causality. Which faculty, he asks, leads us


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to believe in the continued and distinct existence of objects: sense, reason, or imagination (126/188)? The possibility that the senses give us the idea of the continued existence of an unsensed object is eliminated out of hand. For that is a contradiction in terms, and supposes that the senses continue to operate, even after they have ceas’d all manner of operation. (126/188) If continued existence and distinct existence, as Hume suggests, mutually imply each other, then the dismissal of the senses giving us an idea of a distinct existence should be equally brisk. In fact, Hume’s treatment of the topic is more elaborate: That our senses offer not their impressions as the images of something distinct, or independent, and external, is evident; because they convey to us nothing but a single perception, and never give us the least intimation of any thing beyond. A single perception can never produce the idea of a double existence, but by some inference either of the reason or imagination. (126/189) The reference to double existence anticipates Hume’s discussion of a philosophical view commonly called representational realism, examined toward the end of the section. The plain man, according to Hume, entertains no such idea. The point here is that the senses are not capable of generating the illusion of something, so to speak, in back of what is sensed. Since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear. Every thing that enters the mind, being in reality a perception, ’Tis

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impossible any thing shou’d to feeling appear different. This were to suppose, that even where we are most intimately conscious, we might be mistaken. (127/190) After making some cursory remarks about personal identity, Hume turns his attention to what we can call the naive view of external existence, or the “outness” of the things we perceive. In casting my eye towards the window, I perceive a great extent of fields and buildings beyond my chamber. From all this it may be infer’d, that no other faculty is requir’d, beside the senses, to convince us of the external existence of body. (127/190–91) Hume offers three responses to this claim. The first is that, “properly speaking, ’[t]is not our body we perceive, when we regard our limbs and members, but certain impressions, which enter by the senses, [etc.]” (127/191). This claim, however, is something Hume has yet to establish. Hume’s second consideration is genuinely arcane: “Sounds, and tastes, and smells, tho’ commonly regarded by the mind as continu’d independent qualities, appear not to have any existence in extension, and consequently cannot appear to the senses as situated externally to the body” (127/191). Here, Hume refers his reader to his later defense of the claim that something can exist, but exist nowhere, presented in part 4, section 5. In his third consideration Hume tells us that “even our sight informs us not of distance or outness (so to speak) immediately and without a certain reasoning and experience, as is acknowledg’d by the most rational philosophers” (127–28/191). Given the doctrine itself and given the use of the curious Berkelean word “outness,” Hume is almost certainly referring to Berkeley’s problematic New Theory of Vision.2 In what seems to be an exercise in overkill, Hume adds a number of other considerations intended to show that sense cannot be the


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source of our belief in external existents, including a brief discussion of primary, secondary, and what we might call, just to keep the number sequence going, tertiary properties. Showing the inadequacies of these notions does not, however, show the inadequacies of representational realism, even if it does embarrass particular versions of it. I will not go into this here,3 but instead proceed directly to Hume’s summary passage: Thus to resume what I have said concerning the senses; they give us no notion of continu’d existence, because they cannot operate beyond the extent, in which they really operate. They as little produce the opinion of a distinct existence, because they neither can offer it to the mind as represented, nor as original. To offer it as represented, they must present both an object and an image. To make it appear as original, they must convey a falsehood. (128/191–92)

Reason not the source of this belief To his satisfaction, Hume has eliminated the senses as the source of the plain man’s belief in the continued and distinct existence of perceptions. He turns next to reason as a possible source of these beliefs and says: We can attribute a distinct continu’d existence to objects without ever consulting reason, or weighing our opinions by any philosophical principles. And indeed, whatever convincing arguments philosophers may fancy they can produce to establish the belief of objects independent of the mind, ’tis obvious these arguments are known but to very few, and that ’Tis not by them, that children, peasants, and the greatest

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part of mankind are induc’d to attribute objects to some impressions, and deny them to others. (129/193) While true enough, isn’t this irrelevant? Suppose savants could produce an argument showing that the plain man’s belief that objects of perception have a continued and distinct existence is true. Wouldn’t that vindicate the plain man’s belief, even if the proof was wholly unknown to him? Actually, as we shall see, the savants are united in rejecting the view of the vulgar. That, however, is not the main point to stress. Hume’s project is to explain how the vulgar acquire a belief in the external existence of bodies, and he will spend considerable time trying to explain how the imagination accomplishes this feat. It is a plain matter of fact that the vulgar do not arrive at this belief by a process of ratiocination. Hume might have left it at that. Hume, however, does not rest his case on this plain matter of fact but, as is his wont, adds further considerations to his argument. He argues in addition that our belief in the distinct and continued existence of unperceived objects cannot come from reason because the belief is itself unreasonable. For philosophy informs us, that every thing, which appears to the mind, is nothing but a perception, and is interrupted, and dependent on the mind; whereas the vulgar confound perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct continu’d existence to the very things they feel or see. This sentiment, then, as it is entirely unreasonable, must proceed from some other faculty than the understanding. (129/193) Once more, Hume simply invokes the way of ideas as grounds for rejecting the view of the vulgar who confound, Hume says, perceptions and objects.


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Hume completes his rejection of the idea that reason can serve as the basis of the vulgar belief in the continued and distinct existence of perceptions by appealing to his analysis of causal relations: To which we may add, that as long as we take our perceptions and objects to be the same, we can never infer the existence of the one from that of the other, nor form any argument from the relation of cause and effect; which is the only one that can assure us of matter of fact. Even after we distinguish our perceptions from our objects, ’twill appear presently, that we are still incapable of reasoning from the existence of one to that of the other. (129/193) It seems that if we “take our perceptions and objects to be the same,” as the vulgar do, then there is no place for a causal relation to apply, for no object can be the cause of itself. If we distinguish the perceptions from the objects, as the double-existence theorists do, we would then have two things that could enter into causal relations, but, as we shall see, an unanswerable skeptical argument then arises.

Z The Operations of the Imagination in Forming This Belief With both sense and reason eliminated, we are left with the imagination as the source of the belief that the objects we are aware of can enjoy a continued and distinct existence. So that upon the whole our reason neither does, nor is it possible it ever shou’d, upon any supposition, give us an assurance of the continu’d and distinct existence of body. That

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opinion must be entirely owing to the imagination; which must now be the subject of our enquiry. (129/193) Hume’s task is to show how the imagination generates the false belief in the continued distinct existence of perceptions implicitly held by the vulgar. Furthermore, he has to do this without endowing the vulgar with capacities that would allow them to recognize the error involved in their naive beliefs. What follows is an extraordinarily complex explanation of how the imagination can accomplish this. Perhaps recognizing the demands his theory will make on the reader, Hume begins by offering a broad, informal sketch of his position before going into technical details. Hume’s informal statement of his position Hume first argues that the belief in the continued and distinct existence of bodies cannot be based on either involuntariness or on force and violence. (Feelings of pain can be used as counterexamples to both suggestions.) He then considers constancy and coherence in our train of ideas as the basis of our belief in the existence of body. He gives homey examples of each. With respect to constancy, Hume sees before him a desk with books and other objects on it. He closes his eyes for a few moments, opens them again, and finds things just as they were before he closed his eyes. With respect to coherence, he leaves his room where a fire is blazing. Returning sometime later, he finds that the fire has burned down an amount appropriate to the time he has been absent. Hume examines coherence, first comparing it with everyday causal reasoning. [Seated in my study] I hear on a sudden a noise as of a door turning upon its hinges; and a little after see a porter, who


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advances towards me. This gives occasion to many new reflections and reasonings. First, I never have observ’d, that this noise cou’d proceed from any thing but the motion of a door; and therefore conclude, that the present phaenomenon is a contradiction to all past experience, unless the door, which I remember on the other side of the chamber, be still in being. (130–31/196) In this passage, Hume employs what has now come to be known as an inference to the best explanation. The existence of a door (now unperceived) is the most reasonable way of making sense of the sound heard and of the porter’s appearance before him. Hume then adds: There is scarce a moment of my life, wherein there is not a similar instance presented to me, and I have not occasion to suppose the continu’d existence of objects, in order to connect their past and present appearances, and give them such an union with each other, as I have found by experience to be suitable to their particular natures and circumstances. Here then I am naturally led to regard the world, as something real and durable, and as preserving its existence, even when it is no longer present to my perception. (131/197) What are we to make of this passage? Is Hume actually presenting a proof of the existence of the external world? That cannot be right, so we have to assume that the passage is written from the vulgar perspective where we often make inferences to the existence of things that we are not perceiving in order to make sense of things that we are perceiving. Hume is suggesting that a parallel pattern of reasoning takes place when we infer continued existence from coherence. He notes, however, an important difference between the two cases:

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But ’tis evident, that, whenever we infer the continu’d existence of the objects of sense from their coherence, and the frequency of their union, ’tis in order to bestow on the objects a greater regularity than what is observ’d in our mere perceptions. (131/197) That is, taken at face value, our actual experience is interrupted (fragmented, fleeting, etc.), yet imagination somehow contrives to disguise this gappiness. Having shown how the maintenance of coherence can be a factor supporting the vulgar view concerning the status of objects of perception, Hume largely sets it aside in favor of the influence of constancy “of all external bodies; and that we must join the constancy of their appearance to the coherence, in order to give a satisfactory account of that opinion” (132/198–99). Hume’s homey example of the influence of constancy concerned, as we saw, his looking at his desk, closing his eyes for a bit, and upon opening them finding the objects on his desk arranged in the same way as they were before he closed his eyes. The constancy in this experience naturally leads him to believe that the objects he observes after reopening his eyes are the selfsame things that he saw before he closed them. Now speaking of the reappearance of the perception of the sun or ocean, Hume provides a more elaborate sketch of the mechanisms that bring about the belief that we are experiencing the very same thing again, when, in fact, we are not. When we have been accustom’d to observe a constancy in certain impressions, and have found, that the perception of the sun or ocean, for instance, returns upon us after an absence or annihilation with like parts and in a like order, as at its first appearance, we are not apt to regard these interrupted perceptions as different, (which they really are) but on the contrary


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consider them as individually the same, upon account of their resemblance. But as this interruption of their existence is contrary to their perfect identity, and makes us regard the first impression as annihilated, and the second as newly created, we find ourselves somewhat at a loss, and are involv’d in a kind of contradiction. In order to free ourselves from this difficulty, we disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, or rather remove it entirely, by supposing that these interrupted perceptions are connected by a real existence, of which we are insensible. (132–33/199) As Hume makes clear, his broad, informal sketch of his position is of a piece with his earlier accounts of mental phenomena: This supposition, or idea of continu’d existence, acquires a force and vivacity from the memory of these broken impressions, and from that propensity, which they give us to suppose them the same; and according to the precedent reasoning, the very essence of belief consists in the force and vivacity of the conception. (133/199) So far there are no signs of danger. Things change, however, when Hume attempts to go deeper in an effort to justify what he calls his system. Hume’s systematic statement of his position Hume provides a road map for his more difficult systematic elaboration of his position: In order to justify this system, there are four things requisite. First, To explain the principium individuationis, or principle of identity. Secondly, Give a reason, why the resemblance of our

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broken and interrupted perceptions induces us to attribute an identity to them. Thirdly, Account for that propensity, which this illusion gives, to unite these broken appearances by a continu’d existence. Fourthly and lastly, Explain that force and vivacity of conception, which arises from the propensity. (133/199–200) The principle of identity It is clear, though still worth stating, that Hume is concerned with identity over time—a concept that will play a central role in subsequent sections of part 4. This notion of identity over time is different from what we might call the bare self-identity that a single object bears to itself at a particular time. Nor can identity over time be explained in terms of self-identity at a given time. This is what Hume is saying—or at least what I think he is saying—in the following, not altogether transparent, passage: As to the principle of individuation; we may observe, that the view of any one object is not sufficient to convey the idea of identity. For in that proposition, an object is the same with itself, if the idea express’d by the word, object, were no ways distinguish’d from that meant by itself; we really shou’d mean nothing, nor wou’d the proposition contain a predicate and a subject, which however are imply’d in this affirmation. One single object conveys the idea of unity, not that of identity. (133/200) Appealing to a multiplicity of objects will not give us the notion of identity over time either, for a multiplicity of objects can never convey this idea, however resembling they may be suppos’d. The mind always pronounces the one not to be the other, and considers them as forming


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two, three, or any determinate number of objects, whose existences are entirely distinct and independent. (133/200) Hence a dilemma: Since then both number and unity are incompatible with the relation of identity, it must lie in something that is neither of them. But to tell the truth, at first sight this seems utterly impossible. (133/200) Hume attempts to show how the imagination solves—or rather submerges—this dilemma, using time as the vehicle. There is, however, a difficulty with invoking time to deal with the problem of identity. In part 2, section 3, Hume states that “time cannot make its appearance to the mind, either alone or attended with a steady unchangeable object, but is always discovered by some perceivable succession of changeable objects” (28/35). If that is true, then an attribution of duration to an unchanging object is a falsehood—a falsehood, Hume adds, that is “the common opinion of philosophers as well of the vulgar” (29/37). In part 4, section 2, Hume repeats this account of the fictitious temporality of unchanging objects. Specifically citing part 2, section 5, he tells us: I have already observ’d, that time, in a strict sense, implies succession, and that when we apply its idea to any unchangeable object, ’tis only by a fiction of the imagination, by which the unchangeable object is suppos’d to participate of the changes of the co-existent objects, and in particular of that of our perceptions. (133/200–201) Hume attempts to explain this fiction of an unchanging object existing in time by using one of his favorite devices: placing things in different lights, or viewing them from different perspectives.

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For when we consider any two points of this time, we may place them in different lights: We may either survey them at the very same instant; in which case they give us the idea of number, both by themselves and by the object; which must be multiply’d, in order to be conceiv’d at once, as existent in these two different points of time: Or on the other hand, we may trace the succession of time by a like succession of ideas, and conceiving first one moment, along with the object then existent, imagine afterwards a change in the time without any variation or interruption in the object; in which case it gives us the idea of unity. Here then is an idea, which is a medium betwixt unity and number; or more properly speaking, is either of them, according to the view, in which we take it: And this idea we call that of identity. (133–34/201) To see how this works, consider the following changing sequence of six events: JKLMNO Such a sequence involves multiple changes. On Hume’s theory, this gives us the notion of time. Next, consider a sequence that does not involve change: AAAAAA This gives us the notion of unity. Now juxtapose the two: J K L M N O (Number) A A A A A A (Unity) There are, as I read Hume, two ways that we can view this juxtaposition. We can view the second (unchanging) sequence in the


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light of the transition from J to O. Taken that way, the unchanging sequence seems to share the temporality exhibited in the first sequence. On the other hand, we can view the second sequence stepwise in terms of single moments and in that way preserve the unity of the unchanging sequence. The fiction of identity over time is the result of flip-flopping back and forth between these two perspectives. It is worth noting that Hume qualifies his account of the fiction of identity over time in an important way: Here then is an idea, which is a medium betwixt unity and number; or more properly speaking, is either of them, according to the view, in which we take it: And this idea we call that of identity. (134/201, emphasis added) In this passage Hume says something quite remarkable: Speaking properly he is not offering an account of how a fictitious idea of identity emerges; instead, he is offering an account of how the fiction that we have such an idea arises. To put the matter another way, he has not offered an account of how a fictitious complex idea—like that of griffin—is formed. Hume is saying something stronger and more interesting: We think that we have an idea of identity, but are wrong in this. We are conceptually addled.4 Gap filling The second task that Hume sets for himself is to explain “why the resemblance of our broken and interrupted perceptions induces us to attribute an identity to them.” I now proceed to explain the second part of my system, and show why the constancy of our perceptions makes us ascribe

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to them a perfect numerical identity, tho’ there be very long intervals betwixt their appearance, and they have only one of the essential qualities of identity, viz. invariableness. (134/201–2) Hume begins this discussion by reminding his reader that his first concern is to explain how the vulgar, who, unlike philosophers, do not distinguish between perceptions and objects can come to believe in the continued existence of objects when the objects are unperceived. In fact, their experience of what they take to be a single unchanging object may actually have the form: (a) A_ A_A_A_A Yet they ascribe to the object of their perception a career of the following kind: (b) AAAAAAAAA Because of the similarity between these two series, we are inclined to assimilate them, but because of the gaps in (a) we also are inclined to distinguish them. Hume attempts to explain the assimilation by using the notion of the association of dispositions: Nothing is more apt to make us mistake one idea for another, than any relation betwixt them, which associates them together in the imagination, and makes it pass with facility from one to the other. Of all relations, that of resemblance is in this respect the most efficacious; and that because it not only causes an association of ideas, but also of dispositions, and makes us conceive the one idea by an act or operation of the mind, similar to that by which we conceive the other. This circumstance I have observ’d to be of great moment; and we may establish it for a general rule, that whatever ideas place the mind in the


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same disposition or in similar ones, are very apt to be confounded. The mind readily passes from one to the other, and perceives not the change without a strict attention, of which, generally speaking, ’tis wholly incapable. (135/203–4) Hume spends a number of pages elaborating and illustrating the contents of this passage. I will not go into the details of this discussion except to note that Hume’s appeal to dispositions working (as it were) behind the scenes does seem to compromise the assumption, cited earlier, that “all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, [and] must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear” (127/190). Mental dispositions need not be transparent to us. The idea of continued existence In virtue of the association of dispositions, we have a strong tendency to take gappy sequences as non-gappy. At times, however, interruptions are too long to make this possible; despite this, we continue to attribute an identity over time to the entities in the interrupted sequence. This brings Hume to his third task: to “account for that propensity, which this illusion [i.e., the illusion of identity] gives, to unite these broken appearances by a continu’d existence” (133/200). His answer is this: The smooth passage of the imagination along the ideas of the resembling perceptions makes us ascribe to them a perfect identity. The interrupted manner of their appearance makes us consider them as so many resembling, but still distinct beings, which appear after certain intervals. The perplexity arising from this contradiction produces a propension to

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unite these broken appearances by the fiction of a continu’d existence, which is the third part of that hypothesis I propos’d to explain. (136/206) According to Hume: Almost all mankind, and even philosophers themselves, for the greatest part of their lives, take their perceptions to be their only objects, and suppose, that the very being, which is intimately present to the mind, is the real body or material existence. ’Tis also certain, that this very perception or object is suppos’d to have a continu’d uninterrupted being, and neither to be annihilated by our absence, nor to be brought into existence by our presence. (137/206–7) To return to the familiar example, a person looking at his table thinks that it is the very table he is perceiving, not an image or representation of a table. He further thinks that the very thing he perceives continues to exist when he closes his eyes, and does not spring back into existence only on the occasion of his opening his eyes. However deeply engrained this belief may be, as philosophers tell us, it is false. But now a new problem confronts Hume: The point of view of the vulgar seems worse than being simply false; it seems flatly self-contradictory. “It may be doubted,” Hume tells us, “whether we can ever assent to so palpable a contradiction, and suppose a perception to exist without being present to the mind” (137/206, emphasis added). Here is Hume’s quite remarkable response to this deep difficulty: What we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and suppos’d, tho’ falsely, to be endow’d with a perfect simplicity


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and identity. Now as every perception is distinguishable from another, and may be consider’d as separately existent; it evidently follows, that there is no absurdity in separating any particular perception from the mind; that is, in breaking off all its relations, with that connected mass of perceptions, which constitute a thinking being. (137–38/207) Analogically, let apples in a heap stand for perceptions in the mind. Just as there is no contradiction in thinking that an apple can remain in existence when separated from the heap, there is no contradiction in thinking of a perception remaining in existence when separated from the heap of perceptions that constitute a mind. Similarly, just as there is no contradiction involved in putting the apple back in the heap, there is no contradiction in a perception rejoining the heap of perceptions. Is this analogy apt for describing Hume’s position? I think it is. In passing, we can note that Hume might have tried to extract himself from his difficulties with unperceived perceptions by drawing a distinction between believing that a perception can exist unperceived and believing of something that is a perception that it can exist unperceived. The second option best characterizes the beliefs of the vulgar as Hume himself describes them.5 The belief in continued existence The fourth and final part of Hume’s program is to explain why the vulgar “not only feign but believe” (138/208) that an object can continue to exist even when it is no longer perceived. Here Hume invokes his familiar doctrine of vivacity transfer. Not only does the imagination create the fiction of continued and distinct existence, it also transfers vivacity to this fiction, thus giving it the status of a belief.

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Hume concludes his examination of the vulgar view of perception with an elegant summary passage that he believes the intelligent reader will find wholly convincing: ’Tis indeed evident, that as the vulgar suppose their perceptions to be their only objects, and at the same time believe the continu’d existence of matter, we must account for the origin of the belief upon that supposition. Now upon that supposition, ’tis a false opinion that any of our objects, or perceptions, are identically the same after an interruption; and consequently the opinion of their identity can never arise from reason, but must arise from the imagination. The imagination is seduc’d into such an opinion only by means of the resemblance of certain perceptions; since we find they are only our resembling perceptions, which we have a propension to suppose the same. This propension to bestow an identity on our resembling perceptions, produces the fiction of a continu’d existence; since that fiction, as well as the identity, is really false, as is acknowledg’d by all philosophers, and has no other effect than to remedy the interruption of our perceptions, which is the only circumstance that is contrary to their identity. In the last place this propension causes belief by means of the present impressions of the memory; since without the remembrance of former sensations, ’tis plain we never shou’d have any belief of the continu’d existence of body. (139/209–10)

Z The Philosopher’s Double-Existence Theory of Perception Having completed his account of the origins of the vulgar view of perception, Hume turns his attention to the views of philosophers


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on the topic. Philosophers have been led to reject the views of the vulgar because they think there are convincing grounds for holding that “our perceptions are not possest of any independent existence.” Hume then thinks it “proper to observe a few of those experiments, which convince us, that our perceptions are not possest of any independent existence” (140/210). As I noted at the start of this chapter, given the importance of these arguments—or experiments, as Hume calls them—it is surprising how brief and underdeveloped they are. It never seems to cross his mind to view them critically, not to say skeptically. Hume’s leading idea is that adopting the way of ideas first drives philosophers out of the common standpoint, but, under the influence of everyday beliefs that they cannot fully shake, they are naturally led to adopt what Hume calls a double-existence theory of perception. This theory, which has come to be known as representational realism, can come in a variety of forms, but the primitive idea is to draw a distinction between ideas (perceptions, and the like) that are mind-dependent and material objects that exist independently of minds. An idea is said to be true of a material object if it properly represents it. This is merely a prototheory—a mere sketch that demands elaboration and defense—but I will not develop it further because I think it is this prototheory, not simply some specific realization of it, that Hume targets for investigation. Hume holds, in the first place, that this theory seems to provide a way of accommodating our previous natural (though false) belief in the continued and distinct existence of what we perceive with a philosophical commitment to the way of ideas. We might think of it as a vector of these two influences. But, according to Hume, far from making things better, this new, double-existence theory makes them worse. The theory is, he tells us, “only a palliative remedy, [that] contains all the difficulties of the vulgar system, with some

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others, that are peculiar to itself ” (140/211). To establish this, Hume attempts to show that the double-existence theory “has no primary recommendation either to reason or the imagination, but acquires all its influence on the imagination from the former [i.e., the vulgar system]” (140/211). The argument intended to show that the double-existence theory has no primary appeal to reason is a standard skeptical argument that takes Hume only a paragraph to state. The only conclusion we can draw from the existence of one thing to that of another, is by means of the relation of cause and effect, which shows, that there is a connexion betwixt them, and that the existence of one is dependent on that of the other. The idea of this relation is deriv’d from past experience, by which we find, that two beings are constantly conjoin’d together, and are always present at once to the mind. But as no beings are ever present to the mind but perceptions; it follows that we may observe a conjunction or a relation of cause and effect betwixt different perceptions, but can never observe it betwixt perceptions and objects. ’Tis impossible, therefore, that from the existence or any of the qualities of the former, we can ever form any conclusion concerning the existence of the latter, or ever satisfy our reason in this particular. (140–41/212) Hume then sets aside the idea that the double-existence theory could be the direct product of the imagination, because he cannot think of any plausible argument that might be produced along these lines. He is content to leave the matter as a challenge to anyone who would ground the belief in double existence on the operations of imagination to provide a satisfactory account of how it is able to do so.


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Hume’s refutation of the double-existence theory is brief. He spends considerably more time giving a naturalistic account of how the acceptance of the double-existence theory (despite its inherent difficulties) naturally emerges from the predicament in which the philosopher finds himself. In the study, the philosopher adopts the way of ideas, but in the street he returns to the standpoint of the vulgar. However, and this is important, the influence of nature cannot be fully curbed, even in the study: Nay she has sometimes such an influence, that she can stop our progress, even in the midst of our most profound reflections, and keep us from running on with all the consequences of any philosophical opinion. Thus though we clearly perceive the dependence and interruption of our perceptions, we stop short in our career, and never upon that account reject the notion of an independent and continu’d existence. That opinion has taken such deep root in the imagination, that ’tis impossible ever to eradicate it, nor will any strain’d metaphysical conviction of the dependence of our perceptions be sufficient for that purpose. (142/214, emphasis added) This important passage offers a partial explanation of the staying power—the perennial attraction—of variants of representational realism: It has deep roots in the imagination. That, however, is only half the story: This hypothesis . . . of the double existence of perceptions and objects; . . . pleases our reason, in allowing, that our dependent perceptions are interrupted and different; and at the same time is agreeable to the imagination, in attributing a continu’d existence to something else, which we call objects. This philosophical system, therefore, is the monstrous

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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. (142/215) We thus arrive at the deeply paradoxical result that a philosophical position can gain support, indeed robust support, from an irreconcilable conflict within the operations of the human mind itself.

Z The Pyrrhonian Moment This brings us to the second passage cited at the start of this chapter: I begun this subject with premising, that we ought to have an implicit faith in our senses, and that this wou’d be the conclusion, I shou’d draw from the whole of my reasoning. But to be ingenuous, I feel myself at present of a quite contrary sentiment, and am more inclin’d to repose no faith at all in my senses, or rather imagination, than to place in it such an implicit confidence. I cannot conceive how such trivial qualities of the fancy, conducted by such false suppositions, can ever lead to any solid and rational system. . . . What then can we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinions but error and falsehood? And how can we justify to ourselves any belief we repose in them? (143–44/217–18) Hume goes further, and retroactively includes the operations of reason in his gloomy assessment: This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the senses, is a malady which can never be radically cur’d, but must return upon us every moment, however we may chase


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it away, and sometimes may seem entirely free from it. ’Tis impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses; and we but expose them farther when we endeavour to justify them in that manner. As the sceptical doubt arises naturally from a profound and intense reflection on those subjects, it always encreases, the further we carry our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to it. (144/218) It should be clear what is troubling Hume. He recognizes with full force that his account of the operations of the human mind applies to the operations of his own mind—a mind incapable of leading us “to any solid and rational system,” including, it seems, the development of his own “science of man.” It doesn’t help to suggest that Hume’s “science of man” is not intended to be a rational system, but an empirical system instead. Hume is not restricting his claims to the systems of rationalist philosophers. The passage just cited makes it clear that his skeptical worries are a consequence of his own philosophizing and that his own philosophizing falls under their scope. We will revisit this self-referential crisis as it appears in the final section of book 1.

Z A Concluding Note Hume’s readers may, perhaps should, find the development of section 2 perplexing. Hume starts out expressing an implicit faith in the senses. He then proceeds to give an account of how this faith in the senses emerges. His tacit assumption seems to be that this faith is built into us as a gift of a provident nature who “doubtless esteem’d it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to

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our uncertain reasonings and speculations” (125/187). Hume tells an upbeat story along these lines with respect to our causal reasoning. By the end of the section, however, his own reflections have thoroughly shaken this implicit faith. Did he realize where he was going to end up from the start? Who knows, but when he completed the section he understood exactly what had taken place. Why, then, didn’t he revise the section in a way that would bring the opening passages into conformity with the closing passages? The answer— and I think this is important—is that the section reenacts the mental processes that take us from one standpoint to another. Hume is engaged in something like a phenomenology of mind with, however, a downward trajectory.

Chapter 5 Z Of the Ancient and Modern Philosophy

Z Reasons for Examining the Ancient and Modern Philosophical Systems At the close of section 2, Hume tells his readers that he will “examine some general systems both ancient and modern” that have been proposed concerning the external and internal worlds. “This will not,” he tells us, “in the end be found foreign to our present purpose” (144/218). What we will get, in fact, is a further demonstration of how Hume’s “science of man” can be used to give an account of how philosophical systems arise naturally at various stages of philosophical inquiry. We have already seen such an investigation with respect to the double-existence theory of perception. We will now see how Hume’s science of human nature can similarly be used with respect to both ancient and modern (i.e., seventeenth- and eighteenth-century) notions of substance.

Z Of the Ancient Philosophy (Section 3) Reflecting the spirit of his times, Hume’s attitude toward the ancient notion of substance and the concepts related to it is patronizing throughout. 85

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I am perswaded, there might be several useful discoveries made from a criticism of the fictions of the antient philosophy, concerning substances, and substantial forms, and accidents, and occult qualities; which, however unreasonable and capricious, have a very intimate connexion with the principles of human nature. (145/219) Presumably, the study of the unreasonable and capricious employment of our mental faculties will be useful by exhibiting these faculties in a setting where they go haywire. Asking the question “How could presumably intelligent people come to believe such incredible things?” can, in its own way, shed light on the actual—as opposed to the idealized—way that human beings form concepts and acquire beliefs. We saw in the previous chapter how Hume used the fiction involved in ascribing duration to an unchanging object to explain the further fiction of identity over time. The fiction of identity over time was then used to give an account of the vulgar belief in the continued and distinct existence of perceptions despite the existence of interruptions or gaps in experience. In section 3, “Of the antient philosophy,” Hume tells a parallel story concerning identity over time, but this time in the face of change rather than interruption. He also tells an interestingly different story about our belief in the simplicity of objects in the face of their evident complexity. Mirroring the structure of the previous section, the discussion moves at two levels: First, an account is given of the common opinion; then an account is given of a philosophical opinion that naturally evolves in an effort to save as much of the common opinion as possible, even after philosophy discovers its untenability. Hume begins by contrasting the views of the most judicious philosophers with those of the common lot of mankind.

Of the Ancient and Modern Philosophy

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’Tis confest by the most judicious philosophers, that our ideas of bodies are nothing but collections form’d by the mind of the ideas of the several distinct sensible qualities, of which objects are compos’d, and which we find to have a constant union with each other. But however these qualities may in themselves be entirely distinct, ’tis certain we commonly regard the compound, which they form, as ONE thing, and as continuing the SAME under very considerable alterations. The acknowledg’d composition is evidently contrary to this suppos’d simplicity, and the variation to the identity. It may, therefore, be worth while to consider the causes, which make us almost universally fall into such evident contradictions, as well as the means by which we endeavour to conceal them. (145/219)1

The false belief in the continued identity of changing objects Given Hume’s strict understanding of identity, objects that differ in any qualities cannot be the same objects, and for this reason it makes no sense to speak of an object undergoing change. In fact, however, provided that a sufficient degree of similarity is maintained, the mind will treat a sequence of qualitatively differing perceptions in the same way that it treats a sequence of qualitatively unchanging perceptions. By association, it will attribute identity over time not only to unchanging sequence, but also to a slightly changing sequence. The smooth and uninterrupted progress of the thought, being alike in both cases, readily deceives the mind, and makes us

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ascribe an identity to the changeable succession of connected qualities. (145/220) But a shift in perspective can overthrow this: But when we alter our method of considering the succession, and instead of tracing it gradually thro’ the successive points of time, survey at once any two distinct periods of its duration, and compare the different conditions of the successive qualities; in that case the variations, which were insensible when they arose gradually, do now appear of consequence, and seem entirely to destroy the identity. (145/220) Here, as before, Hume invokes the notion of two different ways of viewing a sequence. We can represent the situation with a diagram rather like one used before, this time, however, reflecting gradual change. Column I represents, as a foil, an unchanging object. Column II represents a four-propertied object undergoing gradual change.

I

II

ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD

BCDE CDEF DEFG EFGH FGHI

Here each step in column II preserves three qualities, so, taken stepby-step, a strong degree of resemblance is preserved, and because of this it maintains some degree of resemblance to the unchanging sequence in column I as well. Yet, if we shift our perspective and compare the initial step in column II with its final step, we find ourselves comparing BCDE with FGHI where no similarity


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remains. Admittedly this diagrammatic representation looks artificial, even simpleminded, but it does, I think, capture the essence of what Hume has in mind when he speaks of a contradiction arising from competing perspectives. The fiction of underlying substance, or original first matter The scholastic rule was: When one encounters a contradiction, draw a distinction! The imagination, according to Hume, follows a different rule: When one encounters a contradiction, create a fiction! In order to reconcile which contradictions the imagination is apt to feign something unknown and invisible, which it supposes to continue the same under all these variations; and this unintelligible something it calls a substance, or original and first matter. (146/220) So, despite surface appearance, the imagination posits something that remains constant in sequence II. It is not, however, some other property that has hitherto gone unnoticed. It is something of a wholly different order—as Hume tendentiously puts it, something that is unknown, invisible, and unintelligible. Taken this way, the imagination does not provide us with a fictitious idea of substance or original first matter but, instead, creates the fiction that we have such an idea. As with the notion of identity over time, it is a misunderstanding to think that Hume is speaking of a fiction in the sense that a centaur or a griffin is a fictitious being. The “idea” of substance, unlike the idea of a griffin, is not an idea at all. It is, we might say, an empty placeholder for a solution to a problem masquerading as a solution. If that is right, then Hume’s treatment of substance is of a piece with his previous treatment of the fiction

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involved in attributing duration to an unchanging object. There too we encountered an attribution of a contentless fiction. The false belief in the simplicity of objects Hume’s examination of simplicity also involves a double perspective, but in an interestingly different way. In daily life we treat, say, a peach as a single thing possessing various qualities. The colour, taste, figure, solidity, and other qualities, combin’d in a peach or melon, are conceiv’d to form one thing; and that on account of their close relation, which makes them affect the thought in the same manner, as if perfectly uncompounded. (146/221) I’m not sure, as Hume suggests, that we treat such objects as perfectly uncompounded, since for various practical purposes we do distinguish parts of such objects (peels, pits, and so on). Yet, there is a general cohesiveness in the characteristics of this object that leads us to think of it as a single object. When I push the peach away from me, its colors do not become detached and trail behind. In a remarkable passage, Hume challenges even this level of togetherness. But the mind rests not here. Whenever it views the object in another light, it finds that all these qualities are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other; which view of things [is] destructive of its primary and more natural notions. (146/221) I have broken the passage here to call attention to this notion of “viewing the object in another light.” Hume explains what he means on the next page:


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But philosophers, who abstract from the effects of custom, and compare the ideas of objects, immediately perceive the falsehood of these vulgar sentiments, and discover that there is no known connexion among objects. Every different object appears to them entirely distinct and separate; and they perceive, that ’tis not from a view of the nature and qualities of objects we infer one from another, but only when in several instances we observe them to have been constantly conjoin’d. (147/223) When we adopt this philosophical perspective, we push aside all connections imposed on our perceptions by our associative mechanisms and absorb ourselves in the immediate content of experience. Here we can speak of adopting a phenomenalist stance. From the phenomenalist stance things strike us as “entirely distinct and separate.” They also strike us as “fleeting and perishing” (130/195), or as Hume puts it in the Enquiry, “loose and separate” (EHU 144/74). Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Furthermore, a commitment to the way of ideas can be an immediate product of adopting the phenomenalist stance, for from that perspective, it is “universally allowed by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas” (49/67, emphasis added).2 For Hume, what I am calling the phenomenalist stance is the privileged perspective, the perspective that reveals how things really are when all artificial impositions are suppressed. It is a realm of perceptions (impressions and ideas) and nothing more. It is also a radically fractured and pluralistic world where perceptions are entirely distinct and separate, fleeting and perishing, and loose and separate. Hume could have added, following Berkeley, that these perceptions are “visibly inactive,” for, in effect, Hume holds this too.3 This is

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not the perspective from which the vulgar view the world. Indeed, the two perspectives are radically opposed to one another. For the most part, this is not the perspective of past philosophers either. For Hume, however, any departure from this standpoint will generate falsehoods, fictions, or plain nonsense. The situation now becomes dialectically complex. The previous clashes between viewpoints took place within our common—as opposed to philosophical—understanding. To repeat a previous example, our belief in the identity of an object changing over time arises when the changes preserve a suitable level of resemblance and are viewed sequentially. We are jolted out of this belief when we note the lack of resemblance between an object as it appears to us now and how it appeared to us in the distant past. Two common ways of viewing matters come into conflict: how they seemed living through them, and how they seem looking back. The present case is quite different: Here we have a global clash between frameworks for viewing the world. From the philosophical standpoint, the common standpoint is challenged in toto. This is precisely how Hume proceeds in pursuing his philosophical program. Adopting the standpoint of those he calls the most judicious philosophers, he dismisses as errors the beliefs of the vulgar. He then attempts to provide a naturalistic account of how these errors arise. He next offers an account of how those who operate from within the philosophical standpoint go on to introduce a philosophical fiction—something plain folks know nothing of—in an effort to provide a surrogate for the common beliefs they have demolished, yet still hanker after. For Hume, piling a philosophical fiction on the prior fictions of the vulgar only makes matters worse. Where is Hume himself in all this? He is a member of the philosophical party in rejecting the beliefs of the vulgar. He never, so far as I know, rejects the standpoint of the “most judicious philosophers,”


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even if he does reject the palliatives they offer under the lingering influence of their vulgar upbringing. The fiction of a unifying substance Returning to Hume’s treatment of simplicity, having invoked the philosophical perspective to reject the standpoint of the vulgar, Hume finishes off the philosophical position in the same way he dealt with the philosophical account of the identity of an object changing over time. Here, in full, is the passage interrupted above: Whenever [the mind] views the object in another light, it finds that all these qualities are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other; which view of things being destructive of its primary and more natural notions, obliges the imagination to feign an unknown something, or original substance and matter, as a principle of union or cohesion among these qualities, and as what may give the compound object a title to be call’d one thing, notwithstanding its diversity and composition. (146/221)

The incomprehensibility of the peripatetic system Hume’s summary conclusion is that “the whole [peripatetic] system, therefore, is entirely incomprehensible, and yet is deriv’d from principles as natural as any of those above-explain’d” (147/222). But how can discourse that is entirely incomprehensible be of any service to anyone? Hume’s answer, though ironic, is important: But as nature seems to have observ’d a kind of justice and compensation in every thing, she has not neglected philosophers

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more than the rest of the creation; but has reserv’d them a consolation amidst all their disappointments and afflictions. This consolation principally consists in their invention of the words faculty and occult quality. For it being usual, after the frequent use of terms, which are really significant and intelligible, to omit the idea, which we wou’d express by them, and to preserve only the custom, by which we recal the idea at pleasure; so it naturally happens, that after the frequent use of terms, which are wholly insignificant and unintelligible, we fancy them to be on the same footing with the precedent, and to have a secret meaning, which we might discover by reflection. (147–48/224) Words such as “incomprehensible,” “insignificant,” and “unintelligible” have both a broad and a narrow use. Used broadly, they indicate foolishness or unsupportability. We say, for example, that it is incomprehensible that some people still object to fluoridating drinking water. Taking incomprehensibility this way, Hume’s passage amounts to a broad, abusive condemnation of the peripatetic position. Taken more narrowly, it can indicate that the peripatetic vocabulary lacks meaning or semantic content. Hume, I think, would have no reservations about using this expression in both ways, but I am inclined to take his criticism in the second way, for that squares with the notion I have pressed that the fictions Hume attributes to philosophers are not ideas with a fictitious content but, instead, the fiction that a term is being used with a content. Skeptical implications Before closing the discussion of this section, I wish to return to the question raised above, “What is Hume’s standpoint in this discus-


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sion?” In two places Hume hints at an answer. Both appear in a specific context, but have a more general significance. In considering this subject [occult qualities and related matters], we may observe a gradation of three opinions, that rise above each other, according as the persons, who form them, acquire new degrees of reason and knowledge. These opinions are that of the vulgar, that of a false philosophy, and that of the true; where we shall find upon enquiry, that the true philosophy approaches nearer to the sentiments of the vulgar, than to those of a mistaken knowledge. (147/222–23) The second passage is slightly more forthcoming in introducing the notion of moderate skepticism. By this means [i.e., by employing terms that are wholly insignificant and unintelligible] these philosophers set themselves at ease, and arrive at last, by an illusion, at the same indifference, which the people attain by their stupidity, and true philosophers by their moderate ÿscepticism. (148/224) Hume concludes this section with a sally: There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature, to bestow on external objects the same emotions, which it observes in itself; and to find every where those ideas, which are most present to it. . . . We must pardon children, because of their age; poets, because they profess to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy: But what excuse shall we find to justify our philosophers in so signal a weakness? (148/224–25)

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Z Of the Modern Philosophy (Section 4) Before examining the modern notion of material substance, Hume makes some prefatory remarks that are worth close attention. He opens section 4 with a response to someone who might object to his selectively rough treatment of the ancient philosophers. But here it may be objected, that the imagination, according to my own confession, being the ultimate judge of all systems of philosophy, I am unjust in blaming the antient philosophers, for making use of that faculty, and allowing themselves to be entirely guided by it in their reasonings. In order to justify myself, I must distinguish in the imagination betwixt the principles which are permanent, irresistible, and universal; such as the customary transition from causes to effects, and from effects to causes: And the principles, which are changeable, weak, and irregular; such as those I have just now taken notice of. The former are the foundation of all our thoughts and actions, so that upon their removal human nature must immediately perish and go to ruin. The latter are neither unavoidable to mankind, nor necessary, or so much as useful in the conduct of life; but on the contrary, are observ’d only to take place in weak minds, and being opposite to the other principles of custom and reasoning, may easily be subverted by a due contrast and opposition. For this reason, the former are receiv’d by philosophy, and the latter rejected. (148/225) It is essential to take this paragraph in the specific context in which it appears. Obviously, it is aimed at what Hume takes to be the extravagances of the ancient philosophers—extravagances that would not have occurred if the philosophers had constrained their thought by


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using only principles that are “permanent, irresistible, and universal; such as the customary transition from causes to effects, and from effects to causes: and the principles.” There is, I think, a temptation to think that Hume is saying something much stronger, namely, that principles of the imagination that are permanent, irresistible, and universal will not yield skeptical consequences. That reading of the text will not hold up, for Hume’s skepticism with regard to reason and his skepticism with regard to the senses are products of reasoning governed by just those principles that are permanent, irresistible, and universal. It is this fact that generates Hume’s deep skeptical crisis. Hume’s skeptical attack on the modern conception of material substance has the same status. A second feature of this opening paragraph is that it sets the stage for a rhetorical ploy. After contemptuously dismissing the ancient philosophers’ views on substance and related matters, we might expect Hume to treat the supposedly more enlightened views of modern philosophers more generously. He does not. For Hume, the views of ancient philosophers on these topics are ridiculous; the views of modern philosophers, no better. Against the distinction between primary and secondary qualities Echoing—perhaps “appropriating” is a better word—arguments presented by Berkeley, Hume calls into question the modern notion of material substance by attacking one of its central components: the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. In brief, Hume’s core argument runs as follows: The fundamental principle of that philosophy is the opinion concerning colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold;

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which it asserts to be nothing but impressions in the mind, deriv’d from the operation of external objects, and without any resemblance to the qualities of the objects. (149/225) From which it follows that [u]pon the removal of sounds, colours, heat, cold, and other sensible qualities, from the rank of continu’d independent existences, we are reduc’d merely to what are call’d primary qualities, as the only real ones. (150/227) This, according to Hume, leads to disaster. I believe many objections might be made to this system: But at present I shall confine myself to one, which is in my opinion very decisive. I assert, that instead of explaining the operations of external objects by its means, we utterly annihilate all these objects, and reduce ourselves to the opinions of the most extravagant scepticism concerning them. (150/227–28) Canvassing various possibilities, Hume comes to the conclusion that solidity is a primary feature of material objects. Then, after going through an elaborate argument, he comes to the further conclusion that we cannot attribute solidity to an object possessing no secondary qualities. If that is right, it makes no sense—it is unintelligible—to speak of material objects possessing primary qualities without their also possessing some secondary qualities. We are thus forced to the conclusion that [o]ur modern philosophy, therefore, leaves us no just nor satisfactory idea of solidity; nor consequently of matter. (151/229) Berkeley arrived at the same conclusion more expeditiously.


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I desire any one to reflect and try, whether he can by any abstraction of thought, conceive the extension and motion of a body, without all other sensible qualities. For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an idea of a body extended and moved, but I must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable. (Principles, part 1, section 10) Another Pyrrhonian moment Section 4 ends on a Pyrrhonian note of the same tenor as the conclusion of section 2. Thus there is a direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and our senses; or more properly speaking, betwixt those conclusions we form from cause and effect, and those that perswade us of the continu’d and independent existence of body. When we reason from cause and effect, we conclude, that neither colour, sound, taste, nor smell have a continu’d and independent existence. When we exclude these sensible qualities there remains nothing in the universe, which has such an existence. (152/231) The opening paragraphs of section 4 should be read in the light of this, its closing paragraph, for once again we encounter a reversal. Hume begins by comparing ancient philosophy—which was thoroughly abused in the preceding section—with modern philosophy. Of the former, he tells us that

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the opinions of the antient philosophers, their fictions of substance and accident, and their reasonings concerning substantial forms and occult qualities, are like the spectres in the dark, and are deriv’d from principles, which, however common, are neither universal nor unavoidable in human nature. (149/226) In contrast: The modern philosophy pretends to be entirely free from this defect, and to arise only from the solid, permanent, and consistent principles of the imagination. Upon what grounds this pretension is founded must now be the subject of our enquiry. (149/226) What Hume’s further enquiry yields is the discovery that modern philosophy, relying on principles of the imagination that are permanent, irresistible, and universal, is no more intelligible than the doctrines of the ancients.

Chapter 6 Z The Soul and the Self

Z Of the Immateriality of the Soul (Section 5) This is the second-longest section of part 4 of the Treatise. Only Hume’s “Of skepticism with regard to the senses” is longer. It is irreligious, in places ironic and smart-alecky, sometimes obscure. It also contains material that is, I believe, important for understanding Hume’s problematic and difficult discussion of personal identity that follows it. Setting the dialectical stage Hume begins by telling us that the examination of our internal perceptions will be free of the sorts of contradictions that arose when dealing with external objects. The intellectual world, tho’ involv’d in infinite obscurities, is not perplex’d with any such contradictions, as those we have discover’d in the natural. What is known concerning it, agrees with itself; and what is unknown, we must be contented to leave so. (152/232) Hume lays full blame for the contradictions that do emerge in the examination of the intellectual world at the feet of philosophers. 101

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’Tis true, wou’d we hearken to certain philosophers, they promise to diminish our ignorance; but I am afraid ’tis at the hazard of running us into contradictions, from which the subject is of itself exempted. These philosophers are the curious reasoners concerning the material or immaterial substances, in which they suppose our perceptions to inhere. (152–53/232) The soul as substance Given what Hume has said about our (supposed) idea of substance in sections 3 and 4 of part 4, it should be clear in advance what he is going to say about the dispute between those who treat the soul as an immaterial substance and those who treat it as a material substance. He will dismiss both views as nonsensical. Neither by considering the first origin of ideas, nor by means of a definition are we able to arrive at any satisfactory notion of substance; which seems to me a sufficient reason for abandoning utterly that dispute concerning the materiality and immateriality of the soul, and makes me absolutely condemn even the question itself. (153/234) This passage invokes two objections to any theory that treats the soul as a substance, be it immaterial or material. One concerns the origin of the idea of substance, the other, the definition of substance. His opening move combines them: As every idea is deriv’d from a precedent impression, had we any idea of the substance of our minds, we must also have an impression of it; which is very difficult, if not impossible, to be conceiv’d. For how can an impression represent a substance, otherwise than by resembling it? And how can

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an impression resemble a substance, since, according to this philosophy, it is not a substance, and has none of the peculiar qualities or characteristics of a substance? (153/232–33) After this ingenious move, Hume raises his familiar challenge concerning the supposed origin of an idea. I desire those philosophers, who pretend that we have an idea of the substance of our minds, to point out the impression that produces it, and tell distinctly after what manner that impression operates, and from what object it is deriv’d. Is it an impression of sensation or of reflection? Is it pleasant, or painful, or indifferent? (153/233) The strength of this argument depends on the adequacy of Hume’s theory of the origin of ideas—something that I do not wish to consider here. The argument based on the definition of substance is more interesting and will, I think, have important repercussions for the later discussion of personal identity. Hume imagines someone attempting to evade the demand to point out the impression that gives rise to our idea of substance by offering a definition instead: A substance is something that may exist by itself. To this Hume replies: Shou’d this be said, I shou’d observe, that this definition agrees to every thing, that can possibly be conceiv’d; and never will serve to distinguish substance from accident, or the soul from its perceptions. For thus I reason. Whatever is clearly conceiv’d may exist; and whatever is clearly conceiv’d, after any manner, may exist after the same manner. This is one principle, which has been already acknowledged. Again, every thing, which is different, is distinguishable, and every thing which is distinguishable, is separable by the imagination. This is

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another principle. My conclusion from both is, that since all our perceptions are different from each other, and from every thing else in the universe, they are also distinct and separable, and may be consider’d as separately existent, and may exist separately, and have no need of any thing else to support their existence. They are, therefore, substances, as far as this definition explains a substance. (153/233) Hume’s point here is that under the proposed definition, the concept of a substance carries no explanatory power because it comprehends “every thing that can possibly be conceived,” including perceptions. If we rely on this definition of substance, we get a picture of the mind, not simply as a bundle of perceptions, but—strictly speaking—as a bundle of substances. But what could constitute the unity of such a bundle at one time, or its identity over time? On the traditional view of substance, the members of a collection of substances cannot be unified either through inherence in one another or through causal connections. Is it possible that Hume came to recognize that his ingenious argument against treating the soul as a substance raised a parallel difficulty with his own account of personal identity? I’ll come back to this in the second half of this chapter. The problem of local conjunction Having produced what seems to be a complete argument establishing the unintelligibility of any account of the soul that treats it as a substance, Hume goes on, as is his normal practice, to add further considerations to the topic. They concern the possibility of the local conjunction of the extended entities with nonextended entities. The


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first argument he considers is supposed to favor the immateriality of the soul. Whatever is extended consists of parts; and whatever consists of parts is divisible, if not in reality, at least in the imagination. But ’tis impossible any thing divisible can be conjoin’d to a thought or perception, which is a being altogether inseparable and indivisible. For supposing such a conjunction, wou’d the indivisible thought exist on the left or on the right hand of this extended divisible body? (154/234) Hume continues in this vein, and then concludes: Thought, therefore, and extension are qualities wholly incompatible, and never can incorporate together into one subject. (154/234–35) Hume is so taken with the idea of local conjunction that he enters a five-page digression, considering in general “what objects are, or are not susceptible of a local conjunction” (154/235). There is some interesting material in this digression, including a discussion of the relationship of a fig to its taste. Is the taste coextensive with the fig? If so, does the taste itself have a shape—in particular, the shape of the fig, or at least the shape of its tasty parts? Since assigning a shape to a taste seems absurd, we seem to be forced to say that though the taste exists, it must exist nowhere. Hume then offers an account of how the mechanisms of the imagination lead us (falsely) to locate the taste in the fig itself. After his long discussion of the problem of locally conjoining something that exists, but exists nowhere with that which is extended— the supposed problem for the materialist—Hume notices that the materialist, now referred to as the free-thinker, can run a reverse argument against the immaterialist. This argument depends on the claim that some of our perceptions are themselves extended:

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That table, which just now appears to me, is only a perception, and all its qualities are qualities of a perception. Now the most obvious of all its qualities is extension. . . . And to cut short all disputes, the very idea of extension is copy’d from nothing but an impression, and consequently must perfectly agree to it. To say the idea of extension agrees to any thing, is to say it is extended. (157/239–40) Does this mean that our idea of a table has a certain length—say, five feet? I do not think so, but I must confess that I find this discussion baffling. In any case, for Hume the local conjunction of the extended with the nonextended now raises the problem of local conjunction for the immaterialist as well. The free-thinker may now triumph in his turn; and having found there are impressions and ideas really extended, may ask his antagonists, how they can incorporate a simple and indivisible subject with an extended perception? (157/240) Thus, with respect to the problem of local conjunction, we wind up precisely where Hume wants us to wind up: with a standoff of an absurdity facing an equal (but opposite) absurdity. So far, Hume has been evenhanded in his treatment of materialist and immaterialist conceptions of the soul, but now, showing where his true animus lies, he singles out the immaterialist for an extraordinary ad hominem attack. I assert, that the doctrine of the immateriality, simplicity, and indivisibility of a thinking substance is a true atheism, and will serve to justify all those sentiments, for which Spinoza is so universally infamous. (157/240) Hume claims to see a clear analogy between the doctrine of the immateriality, simplicity, and indivisibility of a thinking substance


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and the materiality, simplicity, and indivisibility of Spinoza’s single, all-encompassing substance. Hume, perhaps tactically, adopts the common view that Spinoza’s system amounts to materialism and hence atheism. He then attempts to show that any arguments that theologians can bring against Spinozism can be transposed into an equally powerful argument against their own doctrine of the immateriality of the soul. I will not go into this. Soul–body interaction Hume offers a further consideration that he thinks also favors materialism. The materialist has been challenged to explain how matter can effect thought. ’Tis absurd to imagine, that motion in a circle, for instance, shou’d be nothing but merely motion in a circle; while motion in another direction, as in an ellipse, shou’d also be a passion or moral reflection: That the shocking of two globular particles shou’d become a sensation of pain, and that the meeting of two triangular ones shou’d afford a pleasure. Now as these different shocks, and variations, and mixtures are the only changes, of which matter is susceptible, and as these never afford us any idea of thought or perception, ’tis concluded to be impossible, that thought can ever be caus’d by matter. (161/246) This passage as stated looks more like a mind–body identity theory than like a causal-interaction theory. Nonetheless, Hume treats it as a matter of causal interaction, sketches his own account of causal relations, and then dismisses the objection to materialism as follows: Now as all objects, which are not contrary, are susceptible of a constant conjunction, and as no real objects are contrary; it

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follows, that for aught we can determine by the mere ideas, any thing may be the cause or effect of any thing; which evidently gives the advantage to the materialists above their antagonists. (163/249–50) Hume does not seem to notice that his account of causality could also help the immaterialists (if they chose to use it) explain the reverse causal operations from mind to body. It is not likely that an immaterialist would feel comfortable accepting Hume’s account of causal relations, but that is a different matter. On proofs of immortality Hume seemingly concludes his discussion in these words: To pronounce, then, the final decision upon the whole; the question concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely unintelligible. (163/250) Hume cannot, however, resist one final sally aimed at religion. He is wonderfully outrageous: There is only one occasion, when philosophy will think it necessary and even honourable to justify herself, and that is, when religion may seem to be in the least offended; whose rights are as dear to her as her own, and are indeed the same. If any one, therefore, should imagine that the foregoing arguments are any ways dangerous to religion, I hope the following apology will remove his apprehensions. (163–64/250) One of the reasons theologians have been attracted to the idea that the soul is a spiritual substance is that this seems to provide the basis for establishing the immortality of the soul. Again appealing


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to his own account of causality, Hume dismisses this suggestion out of hand: There is no foundation for any conclusion a priori, either concerning the operations or duration of any object, of which ’tis possible for the human mind to form a conception. Any object may be imagin’d to become entirely inactive, or to be annihilated in a moment; and ’tis an evident principle, that whatever we can imagine, is possible. Now this is no more true of matter, than of spirit; of an extended compounded substance, than of a simple and unextended. In both cases the metaphysical arguments for the immortality of the soul are equally inconclusive. (164/250) I will let the final sentence of the section speak for itself: If my philosophy, therefore, makes no addition to the arguments for religion, I have at least the satisfaction to think it takes nothing from them, but that every thing remains precisely as before. (164/250–51)

Z Of Personal Identity (Section 6) Though the topic is different, to a large extent Hume’s examination of personal identity is a replay of arguments that he previously employed in his treatment of the immateriality of the soul. He begins by giving a vigorous statement of the position he will attack: There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self;

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that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a further proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv’d from any fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this. (164/251)

Basic criticisms It takes Hume only a few pages to dispose of this position. His first response goes by so quickly that it may be easy to miss. From what impression cou’d this idea be deriv’d? This question ’tis impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity; and yet ’tis a question, which must necessarily be answer’d, if we wou’d have the idea of self pass for clear and intelligible. It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos’d to have a reference. (164/251) It is not entirely clear what Hume has in mind in saying that the self is not any one impression to which our several impressions are “supposed to have a reference,” but the claim seems similar to the definitional move Hume made near the start of his discussion of the immateriality of the soul, where he asked:


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How can an impression resemble a substance, since, according to this philosophy, it is not a substance, and has none of the peculiar qualities or characteristics of a substance? (153/233) Hume then interpolates a straightforward introspective claim: If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro’ the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos’d to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. (164/251) He concludes his criticisms by repeating, almost verbatim, a claim made in the previous section (see 153/233): All these are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may be separately consider’d, and may exist separately, and have no need of any thing to support their existence. (164/252) Hume gives the discussion a vivid Epicurean turn by declaring: Were all my perceptions remov’d by death, and cou’d I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I shou’d be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect nonentity. (165/252) He closes his criticism of the view of the mind sketched at the opening of the section with a striking—actually, strikingly inapt—metaphor: The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine

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that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is compos’d. (165/252) I originally thought that Hume’s theater metaphor is intended to invoke an audience as perceivers of the perceptions in the mind, and then go on to reject it. But as one of the readers for Oxford University Press pointed out, this is not what Hume says. Hume is not here denying the existence of a perceiver of perceptions; he is denying that we have a notion of the place where our perceptions exist. His target is substantival conceptions of the self. Account of the fiction of personal identity Following his standard practice, Hume goes on to give an account of how the fictions of personal identity and personal unity come about. The basic explanation is a further development of the dominant theme of the four previous sections. The imagination has a strong tendency to confound two distinct kinds of sequences: identity over time and the diversity exhibited by “several different objects existing in succession, and connected together by a close relation” (165/253). When we focus on (or are struck by) the close relationships between the diverse objects, we tend to assimilate the two kinds of sequences. When we are struck by the diversity exhibited in the second sort of sequence, we separate them. Our propensity to this mistake [of assimilation] is so great from the resemblance above-mention’d, that we fall into it before we are aware; and tho’ we incessantly correct ourselves by reflection, and return to a more accurate method


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of thinking, yet we cannot long sustain our philosophy, or take off this biass from the imagination. Our last resource is to yield to it, and boldly assert that these different related objects are in effect the same, however interrupted and variable. In order to justify to ourselves this absurdity, we often feign some new and unintelligible principle, that connects the objects together, and prevents their interruption or variation. Thus we feign the continu’d existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove the interruption; and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the variation. (166/254) Hume’s task, then, is to provide an account of how relatedness in a sequence of diverse objects can be transmuted into the fiction of identity over time. Our chief business, then, must be to prove, that all objects, to which we [falsely] ascribe identity, without observing their invariableness and uninterruptedness, are such as consist of a succession of related objects. (167/255) Adopting a tactic employed previously by Locke, Hume sneaks up on the problem of personal identity by examining the notion of identity as it concerns other types of entities, including material objects, artifacts, plants, and animals. I’ll run through this quickly. For Hume, strictly speaking, a mass of matter becomes a new and distinct entity with the loss or addition of a single atom, yet we continue to think of it as the selfsame thing if the matter lost or gained is small or, more precisely, proportionally small. We also have a tendency to think that identity is preserved if the changes are gradual or insensible. Artifacts can undergo total material change and still be thought to remain the same thing in virtue of a common end or

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purpose, for example—not Hume’s example—the axe that has been in the family for three generations, having had eight handles and three heads. We think that animals and vegetables can preserve their identity through total material change in virtue of the “sympathy of [their] parts to their common end, and suppose that they bear to each other, the reciprocal relation of cause and effect in all their actions and operations” (168/257). Hume thinks that his discussion of these various ways in which the fiction of identity gets ascribed to objects undergoing change creates a strong presumption in favor of offering a similar account of personal identity. Here ’tis evident, the same method of reasoning must be continu’d, which has so successfully explain’d the identity of plants, and animals, and ships, and houses, and of all the compounded and changeable productions either of art or nature. The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies. It cannot, therefore, have a different origin, but must proceed from a like operation of the imagination upon like objects. (169/259) Having declared the matter settled, Hume adds more. He recurs to first principles and poses the problem of personal identity in the most fundamental form. “’Tis evident,” he tells us, “that the identity, which we attribute to the human mind, however perfect we may imagine it to be, is not able to run the several different perceptions into one, and make them lose their characters of distinction and difference, which are essential to them” (169/259). Hume’s next argument is of central importance for understanding the deep reservations that he expresses in an appendix concerning his treatment of personal identity. I will set it aside until I turn to that topic.


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Having shown to his satisfaction that personal identity has to be treated as a fiction, Hume is surprisingly brief in his account of how this fiction arises. With others, Locke for example, Hume holds that memory plays a fundamental role in generating the belief in personal identity. Memory, after all, provides the main access to our previous lives—though, with age, CVs can help as well. One difficulty with memory, however, is that it supplies us with only a gappy past. Who can tell me, for instance, what were his thoughts and actions on the first of January 1715, the 11th of March 1719, and the 3d of August 1733? Or will he affirm, because he has entirely forgot the incidents of these days, that the present self is not the same person with the self of that time; and by that means overturn all the most establis’ed notions of personal identity? In this view, therefore, memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity, by showing us the relation of cause and effect among our different perceptions. (171/262) When Hume speaks of “the most established notions of personal identity,” he is, if speaking strictly, referring to the established fiction of personal identity. Hume, however, is not always punctilious in adhering to the strict way of expressing things and often mixes it with expressions drawn from the vulgar perspective. This is true of the following extraordinary passage, where Hume gives a metaphorical account of the origins of the fiction of personal identity: As to causation; we may observe that the true idea of the human mind, is to consider it as a system of different perceptions or different existences, which are link’d together by the relation

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of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other. Our impressions give rise to their correspondent ideas; and these ideas in their turn produce other impressions. One thought chaces another, and draws after it a third, by which it is expell’d in its turn. In this respect, I cannot compare the soul more properly to any thing than to a republic or commonwealth, in which the several members are united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination, and give rise to other persons, who propagate the same republic in the incessant changes of its parts. And as the same individual republic may not only change its members, but also its laws and constitutions; in like manner the same person may vary his character and disposition, as well as his impressions and ideas, without losing his identity. (170/261) Throughout this passage, causation is taken as the vulgar take it, as a connecting link, nexus, productive principle, and so on. We know from part 3 that this is the view of causation that Hume attempted to undermine. In fact, Hume had explicitly rejected it a few pages earlier when he reminded us of what “has been already prov’d at large, that the understanding never observes any real connexion among objects, and that even the union of cause and effect, when strictly examin’d, resolves itself into a customary association of ideas” (169/259–60). He will reject it again in the discussion of personal identity in the appendix. By his own lights, the political metaphor in this passage is bad—as bad as the earlier metaphor of the mind as a theater. Disputes about identity as merely verbal Hume concludes his discussion of personal identity by declaring all disputes concerning identity—not simply disputes concerning personal identity—merely grammatical or verbal.


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All the nice and subtile questions, concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion. But as the relations, and the easiness of the transition may diminish by insensible degrees, we have no just standard, by which we can decide any dispute concerning the time, when they acquire or lose a title to the name of identity. All the disputes concerning the identity of connected objects are merely verbal, except so far as the relation of parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we have already observ’d. (171/262) For Hume, as we have seen, strictly speaking, any alteration in an object from one moment to the next is sufficient to destroy its identity over time. A tree, in losing a single leaf, is no longer the same tree. For that matter, the slightest flutter of a leaf is sufficient to have this effect. Of course, as Hume recognizes, in daily life we (including Hume) do not employ the notion of identity in this strict manner. But once we abandon a strict notion of identity, there is no way, according to Hume, to objectively settle the question whether the object remains the same object under change or not. A difference of opinion here is nothing more than a disagreement on how we will decide to use a word, and hence is purely grammatical, that is, verbal. On the other hand, an attempt to give an account of the mechanisms that give rise to the fiction of identity over time is a substantive matter that Hume, to his present satisfaction, has been able to resolve. The reservations in the appendix As we read the text of section 6, Hume seems much at his ease in disposing of both the vulgar and the learned understandings of

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personal identity, and putting his own account in their place. It should thus come as a surprise when we turn to the appendix and encounter the following passage: I had entertain’d some hopes, that however deficient our theory of the intellectual world might be, it wou’d be free from those contradictions, and absurdities, which seem to attend every explication, that human reason can give of the material world. But upon a more strict review of the section concerning personal identity, I find myself involv’d in such a labyrinth, that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent. (398–9/633) The hopes that Hume refers to were expressed in the opening passage of section 5, “Of the immateriality of the soul.” So once more we have an example of a brave and promising beginning ending in disappointment. As before, Hume gives vent to the skeptical feelings that this reversal calls forth. If this be not a good general reason for scepticism, ’tis at least a sufficient one (if I were not already abundantly suppli’d) for me to entertain a diffidence and modesty in all my decisions. (399/633) Hume’s sardonic “if I were not already abundantly supplied” should be taken at face value. As if things were not bad enough already— recall the strong skeptical conclusions found in sections 1, 2, and 4—his account of personal identity, which he plainly viewed as a triumph, has, under strict review, fallen apart. Hume’s picture of the mind Hume first lays out the original reasons that induced him to deny “the strict and proper identity and simplicity of a self or thinking


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being.” They fall into two categories: those that concern substance and those that concern necessary connections. Hume quickly summarizes his reasons for rejecting the idea that personal identity can be explained by treating the mind as a mental substance. The simplest involves a direct appeal to introspection: When I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive this self without some one or more perceptions; nor can I ever perceive any thing but the perceptions. ‘Tis the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self. (399/634) Another argument turns on the intelligibility of something existing without inhering in a substance. But ’tis intelligible and consistent to say, that objects exist distinct and independent, without any common simple substance or subject of inhesion. This proposition, therefore, can never be absurd with regard to perceptions. (399/634) Then, in a remarkable passage, Hume goes beyond the suggestion that an individual perception satisfies the definition of an individual substance to claim that an individual perception can, by itself, constitute an individual mind: We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduc’d even below the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion. (399/634) Turning next to necessary connections, if perceptions are not unified at a given time and do not preserve identity over time through

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inhesion in a substance, they must, it seems, be grounded through connections among the perceptions themselves. Hume explicitly closes off this option in a passage in section 6 not previously cited: A question naturally arises concerning this relation of identity; whether it be something that really binds our several perceptions together, or only associates their ideas in the imagination? That is, in other words, whether, in pronouncing concerning the identity of a person, we observe some real bond among his perceptions, or only feel one among the ideas we form of them? This question we might easily decide, if we wou’d recollect what has been already prov’d at large, that the understanding never observes any real connexion among objects, and that even the union of cause and effect, when strictly examin’d resolves itself into a customary association of ideas. For from thence it evidently follows, that identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions, and uniting them together; but is merely a quality, which we attribute to them, because of the union of their ideas in the imagination, when we reflect upon them. (169/259–60) In the appendix he puts it this way: If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct existences are ever discoverable by human understanding. (400/635) This claim, of course, reflects the central development of part 3. There Hume begins with the notion that a causal relation contains as an essential element the idea of a necessary connection. As we have seen, in the end, he rejects this notion and treats necessary connectedness as a feeling that is the product of drawing a causal


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inference rather than as a connecting link that validates the inference. As he puts it: “We only feel a connexion or a determination to pass from one object to another” (400/635). That feeling, like any perception, is simply another member of the heap of perceptions. Here, then, is the picture of the mind that has emerged. The mind is a bundle of perceptions with no contents other than perceptions. These perceptions are not related to one another by inhering in a common substance. In fact, strictly speaking, each perception is itself an individual substance. In this respect, the mind is a bundle of substances. Beyond this, each perception may be viewed as an individual mind, so the mind is not simply a bundle of perceptions, it is a bundle of minds. Finally, there can be no real connections among individual perceptions, so no perception can apprehend other perceptions. In Hume’s audience-free theater, nothing exists that can apprehend the bundle, so the bundle of perceptions exhibits no mechanism for bundling. For that matter, it does not seem to contain any mechanism that accounts for the feeling of connectedness of perceptions within the bundle. If this is what Hume’s theory of the human mind comes to, it is not altogether remarkable that he came to have misgivings concerning it. Hume’s declaration of failure Most philosophers seem inclin’d to think, that personal identity arises from consciousness; and consciousness is nothing but a reflected thought or perception. The present philosophy, therefore, has so far a promising aspect. All my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head. (400/635–36)

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It is, I think, important to see that Hume’s concerns go beyond his disappointment with his account of personal identity. What particularly disturbs him is that his difficulties seem to flow directly from two principles central to his philosophical position: In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them (emphasis added), viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou’d be no difficulty in the case. (400/636) Hume cannot be saying that his two principles are inconsistent with each another. They are not. What I think he is saying is that accepting these two principles—principles that he has relied on throughout the Treatise—forecloses the possibility of giving an account of the fiction of personal identity. Why is this? Commentators have made all sorts of suggestions concerning what must be bothering Hume. Some of these suggestions point to difficulties that should have concerned him. It is difficult, however, to find textual evidence supporting these suggestions, because Hume does not point to a specific problem in his treatment of personal identity. Instead, he speaks of being involved in a “labyrinth” (399/633). To get a sense of this labyrinth, we can consider what it would be like to give an account of the fiction of personal identity under the following constraints. The first two concern the two principles Hume finds impossible to renounce: 1. Allow no reference to relations of interdependence among perceptions. Taken in itself, the presence or absence of any


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one perception has no bearing on the presence or absence of any other. 2. Allow no reference to substance as an underlying substrate or as a principle of unity. The third constraint flows from his account of perceptions. 3. Allow no reference, including tacit reference, to a spectator. For Berkeley, the being of a perception is to be perceived and, correlated with this, the being of a mind is to be a perceiver. Hume specifically denies the existence of any such perceiving mind, and, by implication, he must deny that the being of a perception is to be perceived. Reference to perceptions cannot be used as a cover for sneaking in a perceiver. I believe that these are constraints Hume accepts in attempting to offer an account of the fiction of personal identity. I think he came to see that every attempt he made to carry out his program within them failed. But if that is Hume’s problem, why didn’t he say so? Well, I think he pretty much did say so when he described himself as being involved in a labyrinth. He doesn’t say anything more specific than this. One last question: If they are raising profound difficulties, why doesn’t Hume abandon at least one of the constraints that has trapped him in his labyrinth? Doing so would, in fact, entail a wholesale revision of central arguments of the Treatise, including his prized treatment of causation. With respect to the first two constraints, Hume tells us that it is not “in [his] power to renounce either of them.” I think that the third constraint has a similar hold on him. The vulgar seem to reject these constraints, as do many philosophers. Why is Hume seemingly locked into them? The answer,

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I believe, is that Hume’s commitment to these principles flows from his acceptance of what I have called the phenomenalist stance as the proper, fiction-free perspective for developing his science of human nature. Given his commitment to this perspective, Hume finds these constraints forced upon him.

Chapter 7 Z The Conclusion of Book 1

Z A Gloomy Summation of Skeptical Results At the start of the seventh, and concluding, section of part 4, Hume pauses to take stock of where his reflections have led him. Before I launch out into those immense depths of philosophy, which lie before me, I find myself inclin’d to stop a moment in my present station, and to ponder that voyage, which I have undertaken, and which undoubtedly requires the utmost art and industry to be brought to a happy conclusion. . . . My memory of past errors and perplexities, makes me diffident for the future. The wretched condition, weakness, and disorder of the faculties, I must employ in my enquiries, encrease my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amending or correcting these faculties, reduces me almost to despair, and makes me resolve to perish on the barren rock, on which I am at present. (171–72/263–64, emphasis added) I take this passage to be an unfeigned expression of the melancholy generated by a series of disasters unanticipated in the brave opening pages of the Treatise. Others have found it overdone, John Passmore, for example: 125

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The bewilderment that Hume displays at the end of Book I of the Treatise is genuine enough, although, unable to resist the opportunity skepticism offers him for self-dramatization, he lapses into a stagey melodramatic tone. . . . By the time he came to write the Enquires and the Dialogues on Natural Religion, his feelings, his ideas, and his “literary” impulses were under better control. To this he adds: We shall understand his skeptical intentions more clearly if we make these later writings our point of departure, referring back, as the need arises, to the more detailed arguments of the Treatise. (Passmore 1952, p. 133) In this work I have been proceeding in the opposite direction, taking the Treatise as the central text for understanding Hume’s relationship to skepticism. The skeptical intentions (as Passmore calls them) of the Enquiry and the Dialogues on Natural Religion grow naturally out of the skeptical crisis found in the Treatise and cannot be fully understood without recognizing this relationship. In any case, in the passage cited above, Hume reviews the development of his thought from what he calls his present station. He refers to his own past errors and perplexities, but his central concern is the “wretched condition, weakness, and disorder” of the human mental faculties that his pursuit of the science of human nature has laid bare. Hume is quite precise in locating the primary source of his difficulties: his doctrine that all beliefs are (at least ultimately) grounded in the operations of the imagination. For with what confidence can I venture upon . . . bold enterprizes, when beside those numberless infirmities peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human nature?

The Conclusion of Book 1

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Can I be sure, that in leaving all establish’d opinions, I am following truth; and by what criterion shall I distinguish her, even if fortune shou’d at last guide me on her foot-steps? After the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can give no reason why I should assent to it; and feel nothing but a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view, under which they appear to me (emphasis added). . . . Without this quality, by which the mind enlivens some ideas beyond others (which seemingly is so trivial, and so little founded on reason) we cou’d never assent to any argument, nor carry our view beyond those few objects, which are present to our senses. . . . The memory, senses, and understanding are . . . all of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas. (172–73/265) Hume goes on to catalog the various ways in which reliance on the imagination can generate profound difficulties. One is that the imagination in its operations can yield beliefs incompatible with one another. Hume’s first recognition of the imagination’s capacity to come into conflict with itself occurs in section 13 of part 3 (“Of unphilosophical probability”). This, as we saw, is also the first place that Hume explicitly recognizes the skeptical consequences that emerge from the operations of the imagination.1 Hume does not refer to this discussion in section 7, but he does explicitly cite a parallel line of reasoning in the concluding paragraph of section 4 of part 4 (“Of the modern philosophy”). He paraphrases it as follows: No wonder a principle so inconstant and fallacious shou’d lead us into errors, when implicitly follow’d (as it must be) in all its variations. ’Tis this principle, which makes us reason from causes and effects; and ’tis the same principle, which convinces us of the continu’d existence of external objects,

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when absent from the senses. But tho’ these two operations be equally natural and necessary in the human mind, yet in some circumstances they are directly contrary [here Hume refers the reader to section 4 of part 4], nor is it possible for us to reason justly and regularly from causes and effects, and at the same time believe the continu’d existence of matter. (173/265–66) The specific circumstance that Hume refers to in this passage concerns the skeptical consequences that follow from his critique of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. It is worth repeating. There is a direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and our senses; or more properly speaking, betwixt those conclusions we form from cause and effect, and those that perswade us of the continu’d and independent existence of body. When we reason from cause and effect, we conclude, that neither colour, sound, taste, nor smell have a continu’d and independent existence. When we exclude these sensible qualities there remains nothing in the universe, which has such an existence. (152/231) Hume’s first cause for concern, then, is that an implicit reliance on the imagination can yield irreconcilable conflicts generated within the imagination itself. His second concern—and this seems to affect him at least as deeply—is that enquiring into the operations of this faculty has brought to light its arbitrary, weak, and capricious character. When we trace up the human understanding to its first principles, we find it to lead us into such sentiments, as seem to turn into ridicule all our past pains and industry, and to discourage us from future enquiries. (173/266)2


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These difficulties with the products of the imagination suggest that the careful reasoner should abandon all reliance on so weak a faculty. This, however, is not an option open to Hume, for it would leave him with no way of dealing with the skepticism with regard to reason presented in the opening section of part 4. His task there was not to find a way of refuting his skeptical argument concerning reason—correctly or not, he thought it irrefutable. His task was to give an account of the undeniable fact that people continue to believe a great many things even when apprised of this argument. Looking back on this previous discussion, Hume described the situation this way: I have already shown [in section 1 of part 4], that the understanding, when it acts alone, and according to its most general principles, entirely subverts itself, and leaves not the lowest degree of evidence in any proposition, either in philosophy or common life. We save ourselves from this total scepticism only by means of that singular and seemingly trivial property of the fancy, by which we enter with difficulty into remote views of things, and are not able to accompany them with so sensible an impression, as we do those, which are more easy and natural. (174/267–68) If we are suitably struck by the arbitrariness of the nonrational mechanism that saves understanding from destroying itself, we may be tempted to abandon reason altogether and place full reliance on the imagination, obediently accepting whatever it sends our way. That, however, yields a deep dilemma of its own. Shall we, then, establish it for a general maxim, that no refin’d or elaborate reasoning is ever to be receiv’d? Consider well the consequences of such a principle. By this means you cut off

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entirely all science and philosophy: You proceed upon one singular quality of the imagination, and by a parity of reason must embrace all of them: And you expressly contradict yourself; since this maxim must be built on the preceding reasoning, which will be allow’d to be sufficiently refin’d and metaphysical. What party, then, shall we choose among these difficulties? If we embrace this principle, and condemn all refin’d reasoning, we run into the most manifest absurdities. If we reject it in favour of these reasonings, we subvert entirely the human understanding. We have, therefore, no choice left but betwixt a false reason and none at all. (174/268) In this passage Hume reflects on the position that he finds himself in and provides a narrative describing how he got there. “The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason,” Hume tells us, “has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another” (175/268–69). Isn’t this all, as Passmore suggests, a bit overdramatic, overwrought? No. From the perspective that Hume has reached, the crisis is genuine, unavoidable, and destructive of the entire project of developing his science of human nature.

Z What Is to Be Done? Hume needs a way of exiting from his dismal situation, but for him there is no way of thinking his way out of his crisis. “Reason,” he tells us, “is incapable of dispelling these clouds” (175/269). One has to abandon the study and reenter the affairs of daily life. In doing so, he tells us,


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I find myself absolutely and necessarily determin’d to live, and talk, and act like other people in the common affairs of life. But notwithstanding that my natural propensity, and the course of my animal spirits and passions reduce me to this indolent belief in the general maxims of the world, I still feel such remains of my former disposition, that I am ready to throw all my books and papers into the fire, and resolve never more to renounce the pleasures of life for the sake of reasoning and philosophy. For these are my sentiments in that splenetic humour, which governs me at present. I may, nay I must yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my senses and understanding; and in this blind submission I show most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles. (175/269, emphasis added) So Hume, when he returns to daily occupations, yields to the current of nature and blindly submits to the deliverances of sense and understanding—the very faculties he was forced to reject in his study. It is the blindness of the submission—accepting something without having, or even seeking, justificatory grounds—that shows most perfectly his skeptical dispositions and principles. Even if, for the moment at least, this maneuver frees Hume of philosophical melancholy, doesn’t he still stand under the obligation to stop frittering away his time in agreeable company and get back to work in his study? When in agreeable company, he is inclined to say no. [Must I] strive against the current of nature, which leads me to indolence and pleasure; that I must seclude myself, in some measure, from the commerce and society of men, which is so agreeable; and that I must torture my brain with subtilities and sophistries, at the very time that I cannot satisfy

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myself concerning the reasonableness of so painful an application. . . . No: If I must be a fool, as all those who reason or believe any thing certainly are, my follies shall at least be natural and agreeable. (175/269–70)

Z Being a Philosopher on Skeptical Principles Hume finds, however, that he is not fully content with this way out of his difficulties. Despite the trouble it has brought him, Hume finds that he has not completely lost his desire to lead the life of the mind. His ingenious answer is that we should pursue philosophy in the same skeptical manner that, in daily life, we accept the deliverances of understanding, namely, blindly. If we are philosophers, it ought only to be upon sceptical principles, and from an inclination, which we feel to the employing ourselves after that manner. Where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. (176/270) These two sentences, I take it, specify the skeptical principles Hume thinks we should abide by in philosophizing. Skeptics, in this sense, restrict their reflections to matters that naturally attract their attention, and assent to things that they find naturally compelling. Skeptics, in this sense, live in accordance with how things strike them in the situation they are in—and nothing more. With respect to our motive for pursuing philosophy, on this approach, it is the same as our motive for playing backgammon or conversing with merry friends: In appropriate circumstances and carried out in the appropriate way, it can be fun. In Hume’s more dignified language:


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At the time, therefore, that I am tir’d with amusement and company, and have indulg’d a reverie in my chamber, or in a solitary walk by a river-side, I feel my mind all collected within itself. . . . I [then] feel an ambition to arise in me of contributing to the instruction of mankind, and of acquiring a name by my inventions and discoveries. These sentiments spring up naturally in my present disposition; and shou’d I endeavour to banish them, by attaching myself to any other business or diversion, I feel I shou’d be a loser in point of pleasure; and this is the origin of my philosophy. (176/270–71) Here we have Hume’s skeptical grounds for reentering his study, but with his previous skeptical calamity still echoing in his brain, and still chastened, he returns to the philosophical arena diffidently. In what might first seem no more than a passing remark he tells us: There are in England, in particular, many honest gentlemen, who being always employ’d in their domestic affairs, or amusing themselves in common recreations, have carry’d their thoughts very little beyond those objects, which are every day expos’d to their senses. And indeed, of such as these I pretend not to make philosophers, nor do I expect them either to be associates in these researches or auditors of these discoveries. They do well to keep themselves in their present situation; and instead of refining them into philosophers, I wish we cou’d communicate to our founders of systems, a share of this gross earthy mixture, as an ingredient, which they commonly stand much in need of, and which wou’d serve to temper those fiery particles, of which they are compos’d. (177/272)3

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This may seem like a pro forma tip-of-the-hat to England’s honest gentlemen, but, in fact, Hume goes on to give their “earthy” opinions special philosophical entitlement. While a warm imagination is allow’d to enter into philosophy, and hypotheses embrac’d merely for being specious and agreeable, we can never have any steady principles, nor any sentiments, which will suit with common practice and experience. But were these hypotheses once remov’d, we might hope to establish a system or set of opinions, which if not true (for that, perhaps, is too much to be hop’d for) might at least be satisfactory to the human mind, and might stand the test of the most critical examination. (177/272) In this passage, the word “specious” has the meaning of “attractive,” not “falsely attractive.” What Hume seems to be saying is this: When engaged in philosophizing, we should not accept a hypothesis simply because it is attractive and agreeable from within the philosophical perspective. It must meet another criterion—actually two other criteria. The first is that it must “suit with common practice and experience,” and by this I take Hume to mean that the hypotheses cannot clash with common practice and experience. The second criterion is that the hypothesis must stand up under the critical examination of the learned. The first criterion protects us from drowning in skepticism by barring us from deep waters; the second criterion provides intellectual respectability. By the end of book 1, the swagger of Hume’s introduction is gone, and his science of human nature has been transformed into a modest, diffident, and piecemeal activity: For my part, my only hope is, that I may contribute a little to the advancement of knowledge, by giving in some particulars


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a different turn to the speculations of philosophers, and pointing out to them more distinctly those subjects, where alone they can expect assurance and conviction. (177/273) Hume recommends pursuing philosophy in what he calls this careless manner because it is more truly skeptical: The conduct of a man, who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of one, who feeling in himself an inclination to it, is yet so over-whelm’d with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical convictions; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them. (177/273) By “careless,” Hume does not mean “not giving sufficient attention or thought to avoid error.” The expression “free of care” comes closer to Hume’s eighteenth-century use of the term. One pursues a philosophical topic for the intrinsic pleasure it gives. One accepts things and perhaps reports them to others when they strike one as right and lets it go at that. True skeptics, as Hume portrays them, are not barred from engaging in philosophical activity, provided they pursue it with proper modesty and diffidence. In light of this proviso, a further dispensation seems surprising indeed: In expressing the results of their investigations, the true skeptics are not barred from making strong, unqualified epistemic claims. For Hume, employing such language need not be indicative of a dogmatic spirit. We [as skeptics] should yield to that propensity, which inclines us to be positive and certain in particular points, according to the light, in which we survey them in any particular instant.

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… On such an occasion we are apt not only to forget our scepticism, but even our modesty too; and make use of such terms as these, ’tis evident, ’tis certain, ’tis undeniable; which a due deference to the public ought, perhaps, to prevent. I may have fallen into this fault after the example of others; but I here enter a caveat against any objections which may be offer’d on that head; and declare that such expressions were extorted from me by the present view of the object, and imply no dogmatical spirit, nor conceited idea of my own judgment, which are sentiments that I am sensible can become nobody, and a sceptic still less than any other (some emphasis added). (178/273–74) In this passage, the opposite of skepticism is dogmatism, and the point Hume is making is that one can speak like a dogmatist without thereby becoming one. We might think of these natural and spontaneous uses of ’tis evident, ’tis certain, ’tis undeniable as emotive or expressive in character—cousins of “Eureka,” “aha,” “bingo,” “I get it,” and “now I can go on.” In fact, it might be possible to develop an epistemic-sense theory to give an account of epistemic normativity in a way that parallels Hume’s moral-sense account of moral normativity. In a Humean spirit, we could treat the objective certainty that we ascribe, say, to a demonstration as a projection of our subjective certitude regarding it. Hume says something very like this in his claim that the necessity we ascribe to causal relations is the same in kind as that which we find in mathematics (see 112/166). Book 1 of the Treatise closes with the passage just cited. Yet Hume’s situation still seems fragile. His appeal to the “gross earthy mixture” of attitudes and beliefs of “honest gentlemen” bears a heavy burden in protecting Hume from radical skepticism, and it


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is not clear how (or if ) it can bear this burden. It is also unclear how human faculties can be disciplined to stay within the modest bounds that Hume, in his calmer moments, prescribes. Given the seriousness of the skeptical challenges Hume has raised against his own system, his responses to them seem, to borrow one of his own phrases, little more than palliative remedies. All the same, when we turn the page to the beginning of book 2, Of the Passions, we find Hume in fine fettle. As one of the readers for the Press puts it, we find Hume “presenting a long and steady and boring account of the passions, resuming the science of man as though there was never a crisis about it.” I agree that the transition from part 4 of book 1 to the opening part of book 2 is at least as surprising as the transition from part 3 to part 4 in book 1. The sudden appearance of radical skepticism and its sudden disappearance are equally perplexing. What are we to make of this? Perhaps when Hume reined in his ambitions, his good spirits returned and he found that he could again conduct his philosophical studies in a careless (i.e., carefree) manner with the reasonable hope that he could at least “contribute a little to the advancement of knowledge.” The closing remarks of book 1, part 4, section 7 of the Treatise are not, however, Hume’s final words on the relationship between skepticism and the legitimacy of his philosophical enterprise. Hume addresses the problem anew in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and attempts to resolve it in an interestingly different manner. We can look at this next.


Chapter 8 Z Two Openings and Two Closings

Z The Treatise and the Enquiry on Skepticism Hume placed the following “advertisement” in the front matter of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: most of the principles, and reasonings, contained in this volume, were published in a work in three volumes, called A Treatise of Human Nature: A work which the Author had projected before he left College, and which he wrote and published not long after. But not finding it successful, he was sensible of his error in going to the press too early, and he cast the whole anew in the following pieces, where some negligences in his former reasoning and more in the expression, are, he hopes, corrected. . . . Henceforth, the Author desires, that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles. (EHU 1/2) In this work I have willfully disregarded Hume’s injunction by making only passing references to the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and concentrating almost exclusively on Hume’s Treatise. Nor do I propose to examine the Enquiry in detail here. I will, however, spend some time comparing the opening and closing parts of book 1 of the Treatise with the opening and closing 139

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sections of the Enquiry. The relationship is interestingly complex and sheds light, I believe, on how Hume came to see the relationship between his philosophical work and skepticism.

Z The Opening of the Treatise As we have seen, in the introduction to the Treatise Hume presents a prospectus extolling the new “science of man” that he is about to pursue. His claims in its behalf are hardly modest. His ambition is to produce an account of human nature with the scope and power achieved by Newton and others with respect to the physical world. In fact, he claims to outdo Newton by proposing a complete system of the sciences. There is no question of importance, whose decision is not compris’d in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending therefore to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect propose a compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security. (4/xvi) At the end of book 1, Hume came to the disappointing conclusion that he had not fulfilled this systematic project and seemed to despair of the possibility of doing so.

Z The Opening of the Enquiry The first section of the Enquiry is titled “Of the different species of philosophy.” Hume begins by distinguishing two perspectives that

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we can adopt with respect to the study of human nature. One, the popular or easy approach, “considers man chiefly as born for action; and as influenced in his measures by taste and sentiment” (EHU 5/5). The other, abstruse, approach considers “man in the light of a reasonable rather than an active being, and endeavours to form his understanding more than cultivate his manners” (EHU 5/6). The popular approach to human nature, which both entertains and elevates its readers, needs no apology, but why, Hume asks, should anyone engage in abstruse philosophy? This question is motivated, in part at least, by the poor reception the Treatise received. That, however, is not the whole story—and, to my mind, not the most important part of the story. The developments in the Treatise—a work in abstruse philosophy—seem to undercut the possibility of abstruse philosophy, so if Hume is going to salvage any of the “principles and reasonings” of that work, a defense, if only limited defense, of abstruse reasoning is in order. What we get at the start of the Enquiry is a popular essay in defense of engaging in abstruse philosophy. Hume begins by presenting what amounts to a balance sheet of reasons for and against engaging in abstruse philosophy. He first presents the reasons against doing so: 1. Abstruse philosophy seems to have little influence on daily life. Abstruse philosophy, being founded on a turn of mind, which cannot enter into business and action, vanishes when the philosopher leaves the shade, and comes into open day; nor can its principles easily retain any influence over our conduct and behaviour. (EHU 6/7) 2. The enterprise is inherently prone to error. It is easy for a profound philosopher to commit a mistake in his subtile reasonings; and one mistake is the necessary parent

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of another, while he pushes on his consequences, and is not deterred from embracing any conclusion, by its unusual appearance, or its contradiction to popular opinion. (EHU 6/7) 3. The human mind is unsuited for this activity. Man is a reasonable being; and as such, receives from science his proper food and nourishment: But so narrow are the bounds of human understanding, that little satisfaction can be hoped for in this particular, either from the extent or security of his acquisitions. (EHU 7/8) 4. Nature personified warns us that engaging in abstruse philosophizing can, as Hume will testify, make one feel miserable. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries will meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. (EHU 7/9) Hume next turns his attention to the reasons for engaging in abstruse philosophy. 1. With respect to the claimed uselessness of abstruse philosophy, Hume responds that the spirit of accuracy it engenders benefits “every art and profession.” We may observe, in every art or profession, even those which most concern life or action, that a spirit of accuracy, however acquired, carries all of them nearer their perfection, and renders them more subservient to the interests of society. And though a philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of


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philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. (EHU 8/10) 2. In response to Nature’s warning that the pursuit of abstruse philosophy will make one miserable, Hume takes the same line that he took in the Treatise: Sometimes—at least when rightly pursued— examining abstruse questions can bring pleasure. Were there no advantage to be reaped from these studies, beyond the gratification of an innocent curiosity, yet ought not even this to be despised; as being one accession to those few safe and harmless pleasures, which are bestowed on human race. . . . Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needs be delightful and rejoicing. (EHU 8–9/11)1 3. More deeply, a study of our mental faculties, though abstruse, provides us with the only way of freeing ourselves from the delusions of false metaphysics. The only method of freeing learning, at once, from these abstruse questions, is to enquire seriously into the nature of human understanding, and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects. We must submit to this fatigue, in order to live at ease ever after. . . . Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom. (EHU 9–10/12–13, emphasis added)

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We can think of this as the therapeutic (even cathartic) employment of Hume’s science of human nature. On the whole—though the victory is by no means overwhelming—for Hume, the reasons in favor of pursuing abstruse philosophy outweigh the reasons for rejecting it. The task of the Enquiry is to make good on this assessment.

Z The Response to Skepticism in the Enquiry Turning to the concluding section of the Enquiry, we can compare the way Hume attempts to meet the challenge of skepticism there with his response in the closing section of book 1 of the Treatise. In the Enquiry Hume understands skepticism in much the same way that he understood it in the Treatise: The Sceptic . . . provokes the indignation of all divines and graver philosophers; though it is certain, that no man ever met with any such absurd creature, or conversed with a man, who had no opinion or principle concerning any subject, either of action or speculation. This begets a very natural question; What is meant by a sceptic? And how far it is possible to push these philosophical principles of doubt and uncertainty? (EHU 112/149) To understand this passage and others like it, it is important to keep in mind the distinction drawn earlier between two senses of skepticism. In one sense, a person is skeptical concerning a particular matter if he doubts its truth or suspends judgment concerning it. I have labeled this form of skepticism doxastic skepticism. We can also speak of arguments as being skeptical. An argument is skeptical if it calls into question the justification or basis of beliefs


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or systems of beliefs. I have called this theoretical skepticism. The skeptic whom Hume alludes to, who has “no opinion or principle concerning any subject,” is an example of an extreme doxastic skeptic. Hume associates this kind of skepticism—in fact, incorrectly— with Pyrrhonism.2 In the Enquiry, Hume himself draws a distinction between kinds of skepticism along quite different lines: antecedent versus consequent skepticism. Hume associates antecedent skepticism with Descartes: It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties; of whose veracity, say they, we must assure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning, deduced from some original principle, which cannot possibly be fallacious or deceitful. But neither is there any such original principle . . . that [is] self-evident and convincing: Or if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, but by the use of those very faculties, of which we are supposed to be already diffident. The CARTESIAN doubt, therefore, were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject. (EHU 112/150) Hume also speaks of a skepticism that is “consequent to science and enquiry”: There is another species of scepticism, consequent to science and enquiry, when men are supposed to have discovered, either the absolute fallaciousness of their mental faculties, or their unfitness to reach any fixed determination in all those curious subjects of speculation, about which they are commonly employed. (EHU 113/150)

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Though Hume does not explicitly say so, this is the kind of skepticism that emerges in part 4 of book 1 of the Treatise. Notice that consequent skepticism, as I will awkwardly call it, may yield two quite different results: It can reveal the absolute fallaciousness of our mental faculties, or it can show their unfitness for curious subjects of speculation. These options determine Hume’s strategy in the Enquiry for dealing with skepticism. The first result, a specter that haunts the Treatise, must be avoided because it destroys all motives for pursuing philosophical enquiry. The second outcome will be embraced because it fences off just those areas where skeptical disasters occur—or so it is hoped.

Z The Science of Human Nature in the Enquiry In the opening sentence of the Enquiry, Hume speaks of the “science of human nature.” If the science of human nature is taken to be the presentation of detailed associationalist accounts of mental phenomena, then it is striking how little of this activity, central to the Treatise, is found in the Enquiry. In the Treatise Hume has an insatiable lust for producing elaborate associationalist accounts of mental phenomena, often going off on digressions in order to pursue this passion. He almost seems to be saying: “Throw any problem concerning the operations of the human mind my way, and I will take care of it.” Not only is this aspect of the Treatise reduced in the Enquiry, there is a wholesale deletion—“purge” might be a better word—of the most elaborate and important applications of associationalist methods found in the Treatise. Consider section 2, part 4, “Of skepticism with regard to the senses.” The primary task of this section is to accomplish two things: first, to offer an account of how the vulgar come to accept the false belief that objects of perception


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can have a continued and distinct existence when unperceived; and second, to offer an account of how the learned arrive at the unintelligible theory of double existence. In the Treatise, a skeptical argument is aimed at the double-existence theory of perception as one component in a larger project in the science of human nature. In the Enquiry, only the skeptical argument remains (EHU 113–16/150–55), and the accounts of the origins of the vulgar and learned views of perception are simply gone. Sections 3–6 of part 4, with their own elaborate causal accounts of the formation of philosophical beliefs, suffer a worse fate: They are deleted altogether.3 These deletions take with them Hume’s previous discussion of philosophical fictions, that is, the fictions of seeming to refer to something where no referent is picked out. How are we to explain this extraordinary shift in emphasis from the Treatise to the Enquiry? In his autobiographical work, My Own Life, Hume suggests that it may have been the style of the Treatise that accounted for its poor reception: I had always entertained a notion, that my want of success in publishing the Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded more from the manner than the matter, and that I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in going to the press too early. I, therefore, cast the first part of that work anew in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. (Letters 3) When Hume speaks of the manner, not the matter, of the Treatise, he may have had these complex—often hard to follow—associationalist explanations in mind. There is, I think, a better explanation for the removal or severe shortening of these sections: Each contributes to the consequent skepticism that emerges in part 4 of book 1. There we discover that the capacity of the imagination to vivify ideas on the basis of its

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associationalist principles is responsible for a wide range of false beliefs shared almost universally by the vulgar. It is responsible for the empty fictions of philosophers. It is responsible for internal clashes within the understanding, Finally, when the true character of its operations is revealed by the science of human nature, all confidence in them disappears. Through erasure, things become much sunnier in the Enquiry, as, for example, in this famous celebratory passage: Though the powers and forces, by which [the course of nature] is governed, be wholly unknown to us; yet our thoughts and conceptions have still, we find, gone on in the same train with the other works of nature. Custom is that principle, by which this correspondence has been effected; so necessary to the subsistence of our species, and the regulation of our conduct, in every circumstance and occurrence of human life. Had not the presence of an object instantly excited the idea of those objects, commonly conjoined with it, all our knowledge must have been limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and senses. . . . As this operation of the mind, by which we infer like effects from like causes, and vice versa, is so essential to the subsistence of all human creatures, it is not probable, that it could be trusted to the fallacious deductions of our reason, which is slow in its operations; appears not, in any degree, during the first years of infancy; and at best is, in every age and period of human life, extremely liable to error and mistake. It is more conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary an act of the mind, by some instinct or mechanical tendency. . . . (EHU 44–45/54–55) I take this radical shift in the treatment of the imagination from the Treatise to the Enquiry to be the most basic difference between them.


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Z The Role of Skeptical Arguments in the Enquiry In the Enquiry Hume presents a series of skeptical arguments that deal, in turn, with the senses, reason, and what he calls moral reasoning. Skepticism concerning the senses Hume begins his skeptical arguments directed against the senses by dismissing as “trite” some common reasons for impugning the senses: perceptual variability, illusions (bent oars in water, double images), and so on: These sceptical topics, indeed, are only sufficient to prove, that the senses alone are not implicitly to be depended on; but that we must correct their evidence by reason, and by considerations, derived from the nature of the medium, the distance of the object, and the disposition of the organ, in order to render them, within their sphere, the proper criteria of truth and falsehood. (EHU 113/151) Hume actually underestimates the force of these supposedly trite arguments. Their point is this: The appearance of things varies with settings and circumstances, and we have no reasoned grounds for favoring any one of these perspectives over any other. Having brushed aside supposedly trite arguments, Hume replaces them with one he considers both profound and unanswerable. Though perceptual variability of itself does not yield skeptical consequences, its recognition does lead a thoughtful person to adopt the way of ideas:

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It seems . . . evident, that, when men follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images, presented by the senses, to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion, that the one are nothing but representations of the other. . . . But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: But the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: It was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason; and no man, who reflects, ever doubted, that the existences, which we consider, when we say, this house and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the mind, and fleeting copies or representations of other existences, which remain uniform and independent. (EHU 113–14/152) This argument is no better than its counterpart found in the Treatise, and, as before, I will not pause to rehearse the standard criticism that has been brought against it. Given his commitment to the way of ideas, it takes only a short paragraph for Hume to dismiss this representationalist (or doubleexistence) account of perception. It is a question of fact, whether the perceptions of the senses be produced by external objects, resembling them: How shall this question be determined? By experience surely; as all other questions of a like nature. But here experience is, and must be


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entirely silent. The mind has never any thing present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning. (EHU 115/153) On the basis of this argument, Hume draws a conclusion as robust as any found in the Treatise: “This is a topic, therefore, in which the profounder and more philosophical sceptics will always triumph, when they endeavour to introduce an universal doubt into all subjects of human knowledge and enquiry” (EHU 115/153). For good measure, Hume throws in an argument against the modern notion of primary and secondary qualities along the lines he employed in book 1, part 4, section 4 of the Treatise. I will not repeat that argument here, but simply note the strong skeptical conclusion that he draws from it. Bereave matter of all its intelligible qualities, both primary and secondary, you in a manner annihilate it, and leave only a certain unknown, inexplicable something, as the cause of our perceptions; a notion so imperfect, that no sceptic will think it worth while to contend against it. (EHU 116/155) In a footnote, Hume explicitly attributes this argument to Berkeley. Skepticism concerning reason Hume presents a vigorous restatement of skepticism with regard to the senses. The same cannot be said for his presentation of skepticism with regard to reason. The argument in the Treatise is not repeated. Perhaps Hume had second thoughts concerning it. He

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may have found its results too much to contend with. In any case, this argument that deeply troubled him in the Treatise is simply gone. What we get instead is a curious discussion of the paradoxes that seem to arise from the mathematical notion of infinite divisibility. In order to present a skeptical challenge to reason, Hume would have to produce an argument of the following form: Reason commits one to the doctrine of infinite divisibility. The doctrine of infinite divisibility leads to absurdities and contradictions. Therefore, reason commits one to absurdities and contradictions. Hume accepts the second premise but in a footnote seems to reject the first premise: It seems to me not impossible to avoid these absurdities and contradictions, if it be admitted, that there is no such thing as abstract or general ideas, properly speaking. (118n./158n.) Hume goes on to sketch a Berkeleyan critique of infinite divisibility. But if Hume is right in saying that the doctrine of infinite divisibility is avoidable, then the first premise of the above argument is false and no general skepticism with regard to reason is forthcoming. Skepticism concerning moral reasoning Hume turns next to moral reasoning, not in the sense of ethical reasoning, but rather nondemonstrative or probabilistic reasoning concerning matters of fact.4 He tells us that the skeptical objections to reasoning concerning matters of fact are either popular or philosophical. He dismisses the popular objections to moral reason in the same way that he dismissed the popular skeptical arguments directed at the senses:


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The popular objections are derived from the natural weakness of human understanding; the contradictory opinions, which have been entertained in different ages and nations; the variations of our judgment in sickness and health, youth and old age, prosperity and adversity; the perpetual contradiction of each particular man’s opinions and sentiments; with many other topics of that kind. It is needless to insist farther on this head. These objections are but weak. For as, in common life, we reason every moment concerning fact and existence, and cannot possibly subsist, without continually employing this species of argument, any popular objections, derived from thence, must be insufficient to destroy that evidence. The great subverter of pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism, is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life. (EHU 118/158–59) This is the first explicit reference to Pyrrhonism in the Enquiry and is somewhat perplexing. Hume starts out by giving a list of what he calls “popular” skeptical objections to reasoning concerning matters of fact. He seems to identify Pyrrhonists as purveyors of such popular objections. He dismisses these objections as weak. Later, however, Hume insists on the strength of the Pyrrhonists’ arguments: Nothing can be more serviceable, than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the pyrrhonian doubt, and of the impossibility, that any thing, but the strong power of natural instinct, could free us from it. (EHU 121/162) There is also the following remark, directed at Berkeley: That all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in reality, merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer and produce no conviction. (EHU 116n/155n)

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These two passages indicate the senses in which, for Hume, Pyrrhonian arguments can be successively strong and weak. Taken theoretically, they are strong—indeed, unanswerably strong; taken doxastically, that is, with respect to their power to produce and maintain suspension of belief, “their only effect is to cause . . . momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion” (EHU 116n/155n). Hume turns next to what he calls the philosophical arguments concerning moral reasoning. Here in the concluding section of the Enquiry, he offers a brief, elegant, and uncluttered summary of his own skeptical argument concerning the operations of the understanding, presented earlier in section 4 of the Enquiry: Here [the sceptic] seems to have ample matter of triumph; while he justly insists, that all our evidence for any matter of fact, which lies beyond the testimony of sense or memory, is derived entirely from the relation of cause and effect; that we have no other idea of this relation than that of two objects, which have been frequently conjoined together; that we have no argument to convince us, that objects, which have, in our experience, been frequently conjoined, will likewise, in other instances, be conjoined in the same manner. (EHU 118–19/159) Having completed the skeptical argument, Hume then shifts to a discussion of the weakness of human faculties: Nothing leads us to this inference but custom or a certain instinct of our nature; which is indeed difficult to resist, but which, like other instincts, may be fallacious and deceitful. While the sceptic insists upon these topics, he shows his force, or rather, indeed, his own and our weakness; and seems, for the time at least, to destroy all assurance and conviction. (EHU 119/159)


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The claim that the skeptical argument shows the weakness of our, and not just the skeptic’s, mental faculties is reminiscent of claims made in the Treatise. But there is a puzzle here. Hume’s reference to the weakness of our faculties suggests that stronger mental faculties might not face like difficulties. Hume’s skeptical argument is, however, intended to establish that no reasoning can show “that objects, which have, in our experience, been frequently conjoined, will likewise, in other instances, be conjoined in the same manner.” The weakness or strength of our faculties does not bear on this matter. Hume does not seem to be altogether clear about this. To return to a point already made, there is a fundamental difference between the employment of skeptical arguments in the Treatise and Enquiry. In the Treatise, having presented a skeptical argument, Hume goes on to ask questions of the following kind: “How it happens, that even after all we retain a degree of belief, which is sufficient for our purpose, either in philosophy or common life” (124/185). It is the pursuit of such questions that leads Hume into a skeptical crisis. In the Enquiry he largely avoids questions of this kind and thus avoids the consequent skepticism that attempts to answer them can generate.

Z Pyrrhonism and Mitigated Skepticism Rightly or wrongly—I think wrongly—Hume identifies Pyrrhonism with an extreme form of doxastic skepticism, and on this basis produces a number of standard arguments against it: For here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigour. (EHU 119/159)

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And this: And though a pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. (EHU 119/160) This may be comforting, but it provides no answer to the question Hume raised in the opening section of the Enquiry: Given the multitude of dangers involved and the small rewards to be expected, why pursue philosophical inquiry at all? How, that is, can philosophy be pursued in a manner that minimizes its dangers and gives at least some prospect of reasonable reward? Hume’s answer at the close of book 1 of the Treatise is, as we have seen, that we keep ourselves out of trouble by keeping our heads low and doing our philosophizing within the boundaries of gentlemanly constraints. In the Enquiry, Hume makes a more remarkable and systematically more interesting suggestion: We should use Pyrrhonian doubt to police our philosophical efforts. It is in this way that we arrive at what Hume calls a mitigated skepticism. The first form of mitigated skepticism generates modesty and reserve. Hume associates it with the probabilism of ancient academic skepticism. His exact wording is important: There is, indeed, a more mitigated skepticism, or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection. (EHU 120/161)


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Hume really has in mind mutual correction. Human beings, both the learned and the vulgar, have a strong tendency to become dogmatic in their beliefs. Pyrrhonism can serve as a check on this tendency. Pyrrhonism, as Hume understands it, left to itself, destroys all belief. Common sense and reflection, in their turn, can serve to curb Pyrrhonism’s destructive tendencies. We thus reencounter one of the central themes of the Treatise: A durable philosophical position can emerge when competing forces are brought into balance. In this case, the competition between Pyrrhonism on one side and common sense and reflection on the other yields a durable and useful state of mitigated skepticism with respect to the degree of our assent. The second form of mitigated skepticism concerns the scope of our inquires: Another species of mitigated scepticism, which may be of advantage to mankind, and which may be the natural result of the pyrrhonian doubts and scruples, is the limitation of our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding. . . . A correct Judgment . . . confines itself to common life, and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience; leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators, or to the arts of priests and politicians. To bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable, than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the pyrrhonian doubt, and of the impossibility, that any thing, but the strong power of natural instinct, could free us from it. Those who have a propensity to philosophy, will still continue their researches; because they reflect, that, besides the immediate pleasure, attending such an occupation, philosophical

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decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected. (EHU 120–21/162) Hume’s declaration at the start of the Treatise that he would produce a “compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security” (4/xv) is now a distant memory. It is important to recognize that the mitigated skepticism of the Enquiry is not the result of reasoning. Reason, left to itself, provides no response to Pyrrhonian arguments. Mitigated skepticism results from the interaction of two forces: a departure from common instinctive belief, counteracted by the persistence of common instinctive belief. Taken this way, the emergence of mitigated skepticism is like the emergence of other philosophical positions, for example, the double-existence theory of perception involves an equilibrium between competing forces. The double-existence theory, in its various incarnations, has exhibited remarkable durability because, if Hume is right, of the balancing of the persistent forces that generate it. Hume’s mitigated skepticism has a similar status. Whereas the double-existence theory arises from an interplay between the way of ideas and the vulgar view of perception, Hume’s mitigated skepticism is the product of an interaction between Pyrrhonian doubt on one side and the persistence of our common modes of believing on the other. Viewed this way, the emergence of mitigated skepticism is an explicable event in the natural history of philosophy.5

Z Notes

Chapter 1 1. I’m not thinking just of section 6 of part 4, “Of personal identity.” The notion of identity also plays a central role in Hume’s discussion of skepticism with regard to the senses and in his discussion of the metaphysical notion of substance. 2. Hume is particularly proud of his treatment of probability in the Treatise. He brags about it (in a feigned third person) in his anonymously published Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature (408/646–47). 3. I first encountered a defense of Hume against Reid’s criticism along these lines in a work published by the late-eighteenth-century/earlynineteenth-century Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown: That darkness and light mutually produce each other, they [i.e., common people] do not believe: and if they did believe it, their belief, instead of confirming the truth of Mr. Hume’s theory, would prove it to be false; since it would prove the relation of Cause and Effect to be supposed where there is no customary connection. How often, during a long and sleepless night, does the sensation of darkness exist, without being followed by the sensation of light? (Brown 1822, 170ff.).

Donald Davidson adopts a similar line in “Causal Relations” (Davidson 1967).

159

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Notes to Pages 33–42

Chapter 2 1. Notice that Hume does not seem to be talking about the degradation of the content of the information transmitted, but rather its vivacity. Chapter 3 1. It also corresponds to Hume’s treatment of miracles in section 10 of the Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, where, in effect, he uses causal principles to evaluate the trustworthiness of eyewitness testimony. For more on this, see Fogelin (2003). 2. In an attempt to show that intuitive knowledge also degenerates into probability, Hume argues that some probability of error exists in the addition of even very small numbers. Hume does not employ the reflexive move central to this treatment of demonstrative reasoning, but instead engages in two slippery-slope arguments I have labeled [1] and [2]. [1] For ’tis easily possible, by gradually diminishing the numbers, to reduce the longest series of addition to the most simple question, which can be form’d, to an addition of two single numbers; and upon this supposition we shall find it impracticable to show the precise limits of knowledge and of probability, or discover that particular number, at which the one ends and the other begins. But knowledge and probability are of such contrary and disagreeing natures, that they cannot well run insensibly into each other, and that because they will not divide, but must be either entirely present, or entirely absent. [2] Besides, if any single addition were certain, every one wou’d be so, and consequently the whole or total sum; unless the whole can be different from all its parts. I had almost said, that this was certain; but I reflect, that it must reduce itself, as well as every other reasoning, and from knowledge degenerate into probability. (121–22/181)

Neither of these arguments is persuasive. With respect to [1], we can note that, even if it is “impracticable to shew the precise limits of knowledge and of probability,” this does not show there is no precise limit. More simply, even if there is no precise limit, that does not rule


3.

4.

5. 6.

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out the possibility that some simple arithmetic sums fall paradigmatically into the category of intuitive truths. 1 + 1 = 2 can be counted as an intuitive truth even if we cannot specify the precise place where one’s intuitive powers dim. Argument [2] is no better. We can make errors in adding a long column of numbers without at some point mistakenly believing that, say, 2 + 3 = 7. We know that 2 + 3 = 5 but, distracted, write down the wrong number, or read a number incorrectly. Here is a more exotic example. Suppose one of the subjects just happens to be omniscient, something, being omniscient, she, he, or it would know. No diminution of assurance would take place in this case. It is, however, not clear to me whether it makes sense to speak of a being who (or that) just happens to be omniscient. Perhaps omniscient beings must be necessarily omniscient, but I don’t see why. Previously I have argued that Hume’s skeptical argument fails because he has not ruled out the possibility that the series of diminutions may approximate a limit—perhaps a high limit (Fogelin 1985, note 4, p. 174). That criticism, though fair enough, now strikes me as shallow in conceding too much to Hume’s argument. As already noted, Hume seems to exempt reports of subjective states from his skepticism. Hume used quite a different tactic in dealing with the threat of the loss of all belief in the remote past through reiterative diminutions in part 3, section 13. There he says that the imagination avoids this result by forming “a confused and general notion of each link” that disguises the multiplicity of transitions. In both cases, however, the day is saved by what seems to be a defect in our intellectual apparatus.

Chapter 4 1. There are objections aplenty that can be brought against it, but I will not rehearse them here. 2. Incidentally, in the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley deals with the phenomenon of outness—the fact that we seem to perceive

162


things at a distance from ourselves—much more simply by noting that this phenomenon also occurs in dreams (part 1, section 42). 3. I will examine Hume’s treatment of primary and secondary properties in Chapter 5. 4. Hume’s discussion of identity in some ways parallels his earlier discussion of how beliefs concerning the remote past go through multiple transitions without being destroyed by the influence of reiterative diminution. There, as we saw, Hume invoked the notion of a “confused and general notion of each link” as a way of explaining how beliefs in the remote past are preserved. To work, it is essential that this general notion be confused. 5. It is worth noting that this is the first occurrence in Hume’s writings of the notion that the mind is “nothing but a heap, collection, [or, later, a bundle] of perceptions.” In Fogelin (1985) I suggested that this passage provides the key to understanding Hume’s reservations, expressed in his appendix to the Treatise, concerning his treatment of personal identity. I later thought better of this. Now I am again inclined to think that there might be something to the idea. In any case, I will postpone further discussion of Hume’s notion of separating a particular perception from the bundle of perceptions until I examine his discussion of personal identity. Chapter 5 1. There does seem to be an element of historical displacement in this passage. The topic of the section is ancient philosophy, but the views of the “judicious philosophers” that Hume refers to are characteristic of early-modern philosophy. 2. We find a number of similar direct appeals to intuition in Berkeley’s writings: Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose


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the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind. (Principles, part 1, section 6)

3. “All our ideas, sensations, or the things which we perceive, by whatsoever names they may be distinguished, are visibly inactive, there is nothing of power or agency included in them” (Principles, part 1, section 25). Chapter 7 1. See the discussion of this topic in Chapter 2. 2. In book 3, part 2, section 10 of the Treatise, Hume makes a parallel claim concerning the dangers involved in inquiring “too curiously” into the origins of governments. No maxim is more conformable, both to prudence and morals, than to submit quietly to the government, which we find establish’d in the country where we happen to live, without enquiring too curiously into its origin and first establishment. Few governments will bear being examin’d so rigorously. (357/558)

3. I should confess to having some difficulty appreciating Hume’s appeal to eighteenth-century English gentlemen, since my own understanding of them largely comes from the plays of Sir John Vanbrugh and the novels of Henry Fielding. Chapter 8 1. In the Treatise Hume cited this as his sole reason for pursuing philosophy (see 176/271). 2. For Hume, “Pyrrhonism” seems be no more than a code word for radical doxastic skepticism. In fact, Hume’s references to the Pyrrhonists nowhere reveal an informed understanding of their position. This is surprising for someone who was surely a reader of Bayle’s Dictionary. Among other things he could have learned from Bayle is that the Pyrrhonists did not call for the suspension of everyday, non-dogmatically held beliefs. For more on the character of Pyrrhonism, see the first chapter of Fogelin (1993).

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3. So is the discussion of unphilosophical probability in part 3, where, as we saw, the threat of radical skepticism makes its first appearance in the Treatise. 4. The use of “moral” survives in the expression “moral certainty,” which indicates a degree of probability so great as to admit of no reasonable doubt. 5. Because it is one of the most famous passages in Hume’s writings, I should say something about the closing paragraph of the Enquiry. In effect, Hume invents the central argument of Language, Truth, and Logic not quite 200 years before A. J. Ayer produced it. Though he does not employ the exact terminology, Hume’s denunciation of divinity and school metaphysics depends on the distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact introduced in section 4 of the Enquiry. When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (EHU 123/165)

This is too heady and swift. The distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact as drawn in section 4 of the Enquiry is too underdeveloped and too prone to objections to bear so heavy a burden. In anticipating Ayer’s positivism, Hume also buys futures in many of its problems. This is not the place to go into such matters in detail, but it is worth inquiring into the status of Hume’s distinction itself. How should we treat the following passage? All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. (EHU 24/25)

Should it be committed to the flames?

Z Works Cited or Mentioned

Baier, Annette. 1991. Progress of Sentiments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Berkeley, George. 1949. Principles of Human Knowledge. In The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. II. Edited by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons. Brown, Thomas. 1822. Cause and Effect. 3rd ed. Andover, MA: Mark Newman. Davidson, Donald. 1967. Causal Relations. Journal of Philosophy lxiv: 691–703. Fogelin, Robert J. 1985. Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. 1993. Hume’s Skepticism. In The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Edited by D. F. Norton. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2003. A Defense of Hume on Miracles. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Garrett, Don. 1997. Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hume, David. 1932. The Letters of David Hume, Vol. 1. Edited by J. Y. T. Greig. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1975. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch, 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1978. A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd ed. Edited by L. A. SelbyBigge and P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 165

166

Works Cited or Mentioned

———. 2000. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition. Edited by T. L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2007. A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition, Vol. 1. Edited by D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Owen, David. Unpublished. “Scepticism with Regard to Reason.” Available from the departmental Web site (philosophy.arizona.edu) at the University of Arizona. Passmore, John Arthur. 1952. Hume’s Intentions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Penelhum, Terence. 1975. Hume. New York: St. Martin’s. Reid, Thomas. 1969. Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Z Index

abstruse philosophy, reasons for and against engaging in, 141–144 academical philosophy, 156–157 ancient philosophy, 85–87, 94–95, 95–96, 99–100 antecedent skepticism, 145 a priori probabilities, dispersed vivacity and, 21 association, principles of, in transferring belief, 20 association of dispositions, and assimilation, 74–75 association of dispositions, and idea of continued existence, 75–77 associationalist principles, capacity of the imagination to vivify ideas based on, 147–148 Ayer, A. J., 164 n.5 beliefs ability to sustain, 50 causes of, 19–20 in external existence, causes of, 59–65 imagination and formation of, concerning external objects, 57 in object simplicity, 86, 90–93

as products of causal inferences, 18–19 threat of the loss of all, 161 n.6 vulgar, 63–64, 65, 76–77, 92 See also continued and distinct existence: belief in Berkeley, George, 62, 97–99, 123, 153–154, 162–163 n.2 body, existence of, as a given, 55 Brown, Thomas, 159 n.3 Cartesian doubt, 145 causal inferences associative operations of the imagination as source of, 3 feeling of necessary connection as product of, 120–121 grounding of, and notion of custom, 20 ideas and beliefs as products of, 18–19 as not the product of rational faculties, 17–18 reason rejected as source of, 3 relationship between necessary connections and, 17 causal laws, beliefs and, 19 causal reasoning, origins of, 15

167

168

Index

causal relations and idea of necessary connection, 120–121 necessary connection as attendant product of, 13–14 necessary connection as essential component of, 22–23 necessary connection as not an essential element of, 25–26 causation as natural relation, 26 as philosophical relation, 12, 26 and philosophical relations of contiguity and priority, 13–14 vulgar perspective on, 115–116 cause, definition of, 16–17, 25–27 cause, necessity of, 14–15 circularity argument, 18 Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy (Garrett), 9 coherence, as basis of belief in external existence, 66–68 common sense and reflection, as curb to Pyrrhonism’s destructive tendencies, 157 conceivability argument, 17–18 conjunction, constant, in definition of cause, 16–17 conjunction, local, and immateriality of the soul, 104–107 consequent skepticism, 145–146 constancy, as basis of belief in external existence, 66, 68 constant conjunction, in definition of cause, 16–17 contiguity, and transfer of beliefs, 20 continued and distinct existence

belief in, 65–78: gap filling, 73–75; imagination as source of, 65–66; informal statement of Hume’s position, 66–69; reason as not the source of, 63–64; senses as not the source of, 61–62; systematic statement of Hume’s position, 69–70 idea of, 75–77 custom, notion of, 20, 51 Davidson, Donald, 159 n.3 demonstrative knowledge, 12 demonstrative reasoning, 41, 42–43 Descartes, 145 dispositions, association of, 74–77 dogmatism, 136 double-existence theory of perception, 78–82, 147, 150–151, 158 double perspective, in Hume’s examination of simplicity, 90–91 doxastic skepticism, 49, 144–145 earthy opinions of honest gentlemen, 133–134, 136–137 empirical inquiry, rules for, 28 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume) associative operations of the imagination as source of causal inferences, 3 concluding section of, 144–146, 164 n.5 imagination in, compared to Treatise, 148–149 science of human nature in, 146–148

Index shift in emphasis from the Treatise, 147 skeptical arguments: concerning moral reasoning, 152–155; concerning reason, 151–152; concerning the senses, 149–151; in Treatise compared to, 154 on skepticism, 139–140 Euthyphro choice, 23 existence. See continued and distinct existence; double-existence theory of perception; external existence experience, initial, in origins of causal reasoning, 15 external existence, 59–65, 66–68 See also continued and distinct existence external objects, 57, 60 faculties human, weakness of, 154–155 free-thinkers. See materialists gap filling, in operations of the imagination, 73–75 Garrett, Don, 9 governments, examination of origins of, 163 n.2 (chap. 7) horizontal method, in evaluating soundness of proof, 43, 47 human mind. See mind, the human nature, approaches to study of, 140–141 Hume defense of, against Reid’s criticism, 159 n.3

169

exit from his dismal situation, 130–132 expressions of despair, 5–6 expressions of melancholy, 125–126 as mitigated doxastic skeptic, 49 self-referential crisis of, 83 skeptical crisis, source of, 56–57 skeptical doubts as source of deep disquietudes, 3 standpoints of, regarding radical skepticism, 6–7 turn to skepticism by, 39–40 voices of, contrasting, 6–7 Hume’s Law, 12 Hume (Stroud), 8 ideas capacity of the imagination to vivify, 147–148 and definition of substance, 102–103 inferences from impressions and, 16–18 as products of causal inferences, 18–19 See also way of ideas, the identity attribution of, and idea of continued existence, 75–77 disputes about, as merely verbal, 116–117 false belief in continued, of changing objects, 87–89 fiction of, over time, 73, 86, 112–113 Hume’s denial of, 118–121 as it concerns non-human entities, 113–114

170

Index

ideas (continued) and perceptions of constancy, 73–74 principle of, in operations of the imagination, 69, 70–73 self-identity compared to, 70 See also personal identity imagination associative operations of, as source of causal inferences, 3 capacity of, to vivify ideas based on associationalist principles, 147–148 difficulties in implicit reliance on, 126–129 and the fiction of personal identity, 112–113 mechanisms of, as source of Hume’s skeptical crisis, 56–57 as source of belief in continued and distinct existence, 65–66 treatment of, in the Enquiry compared to in the Treatise, 148–149 undiscriminating operations of the associative principles of, 38 immateriality of the soul, 101–102, 104–107 immortality, proofs of, 108–109 impressions, 15–16, 16–18 incomprehensibility, broad and narrow meanings of, 94 inductive skepticism, 3 infinite divisibility, paradoxes arising from notion of, 152 infinite regress, 44–45, 48 intuitive knowledge, 12, 160–161 n.2

Kant, Immanuel, 39 knowledge degeneration of, into probability, 41–42 domain of, 11–12 intuitive, 160–161 n.2 reason, and annihilation of, 48 local conjunction, and immateriality of the soul, 104–107 materialists, and argument against immaterialist, 105 material substance, modern notion of, 97–98 memory, and belief in personal identity, 115 memory, impressions of, 15–16 mind, the as bundle of minds, 121 as bundle of perceptions, 121 Hume’s picture of, 118–121 as mental substance, 119 perceptions, exclusive presence in, 60 reflex acts of, 41, 44, 46, 47–48 theater metaphor and, 111–112 See also imagination miracles, Hume’s treatment of, 160 n.1 mitigated skepticism, 6, 155–158 moderate skepticism, 95 modern philosophy, 85, 96–97, 97–99, 99–100 moral certainty, 164 n.4 moral reasoning, 152–155 naturalism, tension between skepticism and, 4 natural relation, and definition of cause, 25

Index necessary connection as attendant product of causal relation, 13–14 as essential component of causal relation, 22–23 feeling of, as product of causal inference, 120–121 as not an essential element of causal relation, 25–26 as product of inference from cause to effect, 23 New Theory of Vision (Berkeley), 62 objects changing, false belief in continued identity of, 87–89 external, 60 false belief in simplicity of, 86, 90–93 imagination, role in formation of beliefs concerning, 57 solidity as primary feature of, 98 occult qualities, 94, 95 operations of the imagination gap filling, 73–77 grounding of beliefs in, as source of Hume’s difficulties, 126–127 and identity, principle of, 70–73 philosophical and unphilosophical probability and, 29 skeptical consequences that emerge from, 127–128 as source of causal inferences, 3 See also continued and distinct existence: belief in original first matter, 89–90

171

outness, the phenomenon of, 62, 161–162 n.2 Owen, David, 8–9 Passmore, John, 125–126 perception double-existence theory of, 78–82, 147, 150–151, 158 individual, as individual substance, 119 representationalist account of, 78–82, 147, 150–151, 158 perceptions the mind as bundle of, 121 reappearance of, 68–69 visibly inactive, 91–92 perceptual variability, recognition of, and adoption of the way of ideas, 149–150 peripatetic system, incomprehensibility of, 93–94 peritrope, defined, 52 personal identity basic criticisms, 110–112 disputes about, as merely verbal, 116–117 fiction of, 112–116 Hume’s declaration of failure regarding his account of, 121–124 Hume’s examination of, 109–112 Hume’s reservations on, 117–118 memory, and belief in, 115 See also identity phenomenalist stance, 91–92 philosophical and unphilosophical probability, 29, 37–38 See also unphilosophical probability

172

Index

philosophical arguments concerning moral reasoning, 154 philosophical fiction, 92 philosophical inquiry, approaches to pursuit of, 132–137, 156 philosophical opinion, common opinion compared to, 86–87 philosophical positions, durable, 157 philosophical relations, 11–12, 13–14, 25 philosophy abstruse, 141–144 academical, 156–157 ancient, 85–87, 94–95, 95–96, 99–100 modern, 85, 96–97, 97–99, 99–100 prejudice based on general rules, as source of unphilosophical probabilties, 35–37 primary and secondary qualities, distinction between, 97–99, 128, 151 privileged perspective, phenomenalist stance as, 91–92 probabilistic reasoning, 152 probability of causes, 21–22 of chances, 21 degeneration of knowledge into, 41–42 and the idea of cause and effect, 13–14, 57–59, 71 knowledge and, 11 and operations of the imagination, 29 reason, and annihilation of, 48 and vivacity, distribution of, 21–22 See also unphilosophical probability

Pyrrhonian moments, 82–83, 99–100 Pyrrhonism, 6, 153, 154–155, 155–158, 163 n.2 (chap. 8) See also radical skepticism radical doxastic skepticism, 163 n.2 (chap. 8) radical skepticism, 6–7, 59, 137 See also Pyrrhonism rational arguments, used to undercut rationality, 52–53 reason regression argument with regard to, 43–44 rejection of, as basis of vulgar belief, 65 rejection of, as source of causal inferences, 3 skeptical arguments in Enquiry concerning, 151–152 See also skeptical arguments with regard to reason reasoning capacity for, in humans and animals, 28 long chains of, and diminution of vivacity, 32–33 long chains of, and nondiminution of vivacity, 34–35 moral, skeptical arguments concerning, 152–155 and transformation of inferences into general rule, 36–37 in unreasonable ways, 35–36 reflex acts of the mind, 41, 44, 46, 47–48 reflexive principle, as demand of rationality, 48

Index regression argument, and skepticism with regard to reason, 43–44 Reid, Thomas, 26–27, 159 n.3 reiterative diminution, principle of, 31–35, 44–48 relations causal, 13–14, 22–23, 25–26, 108, 120–121 natural, 25 philosophical, 11–12, 13–14, 25 remoteness of the event, effect of, 30–31 remoteness of the observation, effect of, 31 representational realism, staying power of, 81 representationalist account of perception, 78–82, 147, 150–151, 158 resemblance, 12, 20, 27 “Scepticism with Regard to Reason” (Owen), 8–9 science of human nature in the Enquiry, 146–148 transformation of, into modest activity, 134–135 senses, the faith in, 55–57 Hume’s turnabout with regard to, 55–57 implicit faith in, 82 implicit faith shaken, 83–84 as not the source of belief in continued and distinct existence, 61–62 skeptical doubts about, 82–83 of skepticism, distinctions between, 144

173

See also skeptical arguments with regard to the senses sensory impressions, 15–16 sequence of perceptions, the mind’s treatment of, 87–89 simplicity of objects, false belief in, 90–93 skeptical arguments and ability to sustain beliefs, 50 central components of, 48 dialectical instability of, 53–54 purpose of presentation, 51 skeptical arguments in the Enquiry concerning moral reasoning, 152–155 concerning reason, 151–152 concerning the senses, 149–151 differences between Treatise and, 154 skeptical arguments with regard to reason, 39–54 Hume’s response to his own, 48–52 peritrope, 52–54 regression argument, 43–44 reiterative diminution, principle of, 44–48 skeptical arguments with regard to the senses, 55–84 belief in continued existence, 77–78 a concluding note, 83–84 introduction, 59–60 primary task of, 146–147 reason not the source of belief in the existence of bodies, 63–65 the senses not the source of belief in the existence of bodies, 60–63 skeptical principles for philosophizing, 132–137

174

Index

skepticism antecedent, 145 consequent, 145–146 distinctions between senses of, 144 doxastic, 49, 144–145 in the Enquiry, 139–140, 144–146 first reference to, in the Treatise, 38 Hume’s turn to, 39–40 inductive, 3 mitigated, 6, 155–158 moderate, 95 radical, 6–7, 59, 137 (see also Pyrrhonism) results of, a gloomy summation, 125–130 tension between naturalism and, 4 theoretical, 49, 145 and universal doubt, 151 solidity, as primary feature of material objects, 98 soul, the immateriality of, 101–102, 104–107 spiritual substance of, as basis for immortality of the soul, 108–109 as substance, 102–104 soul-body interaction, 107–108 standpoints of Hume regarding radical skepticism, 6–7 Stroud, Barry, 8 substance, notion of, 85–86, 89–90, 102–103, 103–104

time, and the problem of identity, 71 Treatise of Human Nature (Hume) naturalistic reading of, 27, 51–52 opening of, 140 underlying substance, the fiction of, 89–90 unifying substance, the fiction of, 93 unphilosophical probability general rules derived from, 37–38 philosophical probability as opposed to, 29 sources of: prejudice based on general rules, 35–37; remoteness of the event, effect of, 30–31; remoteness of the observation, effect of, 31

testimony, metaphor of, 42 theoretical skepticism, 49, 145

way of ideas, the, 58, 64, 79, 81, 91–92, 149–150

vertical method in evaluating soundness of proof, 43–44, 47 visibly inactive perceptions, 91–92 vivacity distribution of, and probability, 21–22 inability of imagination to preserve, 56 long chains of reasoning: and diminution of, 32–33; and nondiminution of, 34–35 voices of Hume, contrasting, 6–7 vulgar system, 58, 76–77, 78, 79–81

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