Dept de Filsofia

Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Prof. Adrian Cussins
David Hume
2017630filosofa(C - Componente
de formacin Disciplinar)
version Mayo, 2015

David Hume




Esto curso es un estudio de la filosofa del filosofo escocs David Hume (1711 1779). Vamos
concentrar en su epistemologa, metafisica y filosofa de la mente en Book I del A Treatise of
Human Nature (1739). Quiero distinguir el naturalismo de Hume desde el racionalismo de
Descartes y el empiricismo de Locke y Berkeley. Que es para un animal homo sapiens ser

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una persona? Si nuestra filosofa no puede depender en una teologa ni una facultad de
racionalidad auto-evidente, pero solamente en las capacidades naturales de un animal, como
podemos fundamentar la posibilidad de la creencia razonable, o nuestro entendimiento de los
objetos del mundo externo, de las relaciones causales, de la identidad personal, de la
moralidad, y del dios? Cual es la relacin entre la experiencia y el pensamiento? Cual es el
rol de la conciencia en la cognicin? Podemos dar sentido a la idea de experiencia no-
conciente? Se puede entender las creencias, preferencias, aun los valores, de un subjeto en
terminos de los habitos y costumbres? Es posible tomar control de los procesos de
formacin de habitos? Que capacidad sera involucrado en tomar control de los habitos?
Vamos usar unos libros secondarios recientes como Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian
Reading of Book I of the Treatise, Henry Allison (Oxford University Press, 2008), y Annette
Baier A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Humes Treatise y Hume Variations, Jerry
Fodor (Oxford University Press, 2003)

David Hume: Intro (Semana 1)

Para empezar leer antes de la primera clase :

-

Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature, (ed Nidditch), Oxford University Press

1,1,1 1,1,7; 1,3,4 (primer paragrafo) y 1,3,5

Hume "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", Sections 1 - 3: "Of the Different
Species of Philosophy", Of the Origin of Ideas y Of the Association of Ideas.

[Estos textos son disponibles tambin en espaol]

Stroud "Hume", capitulo 1 "The Study of Human Nature" y capitulo 2

David Hume: Ideas and Impressions (Topic 1)

(Only the reading marked with asterisks is required)

*Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature 1,1,11,1,7; 1,3,4 (first paragraph) and 1,3,5 (including
the appended paragraph to be found in the appendix).
*Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 2-3
*Stroud Hume (The Arguments of the Philosophers), chapter 2

*Kemp-Smith The Philosophy of David Hume pp.105-109, and chapters 10 & 11 *Pears
Humes System, chs 1 & 2

2

Ayer Hume pp. 25-34

Geach Mental Acts sections 5-10

Bennett Locke, Berkeley, Hume chapter 9

Some Questions for you to think about:

(1) All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I
shall call impressions and ideas ... Are all the contents of mind perceptions? (Including
thoughts, feelings, imaginings, memories, passions, sentiments, sensory experiences?) What does
this suggest about Humes view of the mind? (eg: that all the contents of mind are constituents of
consciousness, thus exhausted by what is available to introspection which may be treated as a
kind of internal perception)?

(2) Hume uses the scale of force and vivacity to distinguish ideas and impressions. Would a scale
of abstractness, or a scale of temporal distance from the time of their first appearance in the mind
establish the same distinction? Does Hume allow memory impressions? Should we treat vivacity
as an intrinsic property of a perception (as brightness is an intrinsic property of a photograph) or
as a characterisation of an act of mind, the act by which the mind has, or conceives, the
perception?

(3) By ideas I mean the faint images of these [impressions] in thinking and reasoning; such as
for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only, those which
arise from the sight and the touch ... What perceptions other than those which arise from sight
and touch are there? If they do not arise from sight or touch why take them to be faint images? Is
the transition from sensory experience to thinking and reasoning best described in terms of a
transition from impressions to faint images of impressions?

(4) What is a simple impression?

(5) That all our simple ideas in their first appearance are derived from simple impressions,
which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent. How are ideas derived from
impressions? Is Hume a proper target for Geachs attack on abstractionism? Is the attack
successful? What other account might Hume give of how ideas are derived from impressions?
What is it for an idea to correspond to an impression? And to represent it? Is Humes theory an
example of the empiricist doctrine that all thought and understanding is derived from, and to be
analysed in terms of, the elements of experience (both sensory and internal?)

Topic 2: A Priori Reasoning:

The Distinction between Matters of Fact and Relations of Ideas

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* Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature 1,1,5; 1,3,1; 1,3,2 (first 3 paragraphs) and 1,3,3-4 An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 4, part 1

*Kemp-Smith: The Philosophy of David Hume, pp. 6271, 99-102 and chapter 15

*Stroudpp.46-50 (Discussion of a simple argument of Humes which uses the notions of

demonstrative reasoning, distinct ideas and contradiction. Stroud also summarises a counter-
example to Humes inference from conceivability to possibility. Do you think the counter-
example succeeds?)

*Ayer: Language, Truth and Logic, preface and chapter 4. (in packet)
Smithurst: Hume on Existence and Possibility, Aristotelian Society Proceedings, 1980-1, pp.
23-30 only

Quinton: The a priori and the analytic in Philosophical Logic (ed Strawson) OUP 1967

Flew: Humes Philosophy of Belief, chapter 3

Some Questions for you to think about:

(1) What are Humes seven kinds of philosophical relation? Which of the seven

relations give rise to propositions whose truth value is a matter of fact, and which to proposiitons
which are true or false in virtue of relations between ideas?

(2) Express clearly the distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas. Be clear about
the different roles played in the theory by distinctness of ideas, by conceivability, by
contradiction and possibility, certainty and self-evidence.

(3) Try to distinguish in Humes account three separate concerns: the epistemological concern of
how we come to know or believe that a proposition is truth (a priori v a posteriori); the semantic
concern of whether it is only the meanings of words which make a proposition true, or whether it
is the way world is also (analytic v synthetic); and the metaphysical concern of whether a
proposition might not have been true (necessary v contingent)

(4) Consider first the two ways of coming to know and believe that a proposition is true: these
two ways give rise to two sorts of justification that we may give for our acceptance of a
proposition:

(i) The a priori: By Reason, the mere comparison of ideas, what is discoverable merely from
the ideas of two objects or by abstract reasoning and reflexion or intuition. For example, the
comparison of the idea of a triangle and the idea of a closed, three-sided figure, or the
comparison of the ideas of two shades of red. This way of coming to know or believe is
appropriate to propositions whose truth value is a matter of (merely) the relations between ideas.
It gives rise to knowledge in the strict sense.

(ii) The a posteriori: By experience and feeling: propositions where the relations between the
component ideas can be changed without any change in the ideas, cannot be known by Reason or

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the mere comparison of ideas, for their truth value is a matter of fact. We come to feel their
truth as a consequence of our experience and constitution. It gives rise to belief rather than
knowledge in the strict sense.

Consider, next, the semantic distinction between two ways in which propositions may be made
true: see the first page of the Preface to the First Edition of Ayers Language, Truth and Logic.

Consider, thirdly, the distinction between two kinds of truth that a proposition may have:
necessary or contingent. Is showing something to be conceivable a good way of showing
something to be possible?

Hume appears to hold that a proposition is a priori if and only if it is analytic if and only if it is
necessary. He calls such propositions relations of ideas. (Does Hume really believe this?)
Likewise, he appears to hold that a proposition is a posteriori if and only if it is synthetic if and
only if it is contingent. He calls such propositions matters of fact. (Does Hume really believe
this?) Do you agree with these equivalence claims?

In developing your account, apply it to a wide range of propositions. Some examples: Grass is
green; London is pretty; 2+2=4; All bachelors are unmarried; Nothing is red and green all over;
Every proposition is either true or false; Either it is raining or it is not raining; Triangles are
closed, three-sided figures; George Bush is President; whatever begins to exist must have a cause
of existence; water is wet; Hitler is evil; God is good; The Eiffel Tower could not stand upended
on a pin.

(5) How does Hume draw the distinction between perception and reasoning? To hate, to love, to
think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive. What, then, is left to reason? (Or, are
some forms of reasoning really ways of perceiving?) Of the propositions formed by the seven
kinds of philosophical relation, which do we determine as true or false by means of perception,
and which by means of reasoning?

(6) What is the distinction between the Natural relations and the Philosophical relations? (See
also pages 13, 14 and 170 of the Treatise).

The Philosophy of David Hume: Topic 3

Induction, Belief and Memory

* Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 4, 5 [and 9 on Animals] A Treatise

of Human Nature 1,3,5 1,3,8 and 1,3,9 (first seven

paragraphs), 1,3,12 and Appendix pp. 623-627

The Problem of Memory:

* Pears Humes System, ch. 3

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The Problem of Belief:

*Stroud: Hume, pp. 5077

* Pears: Humes System, ch. 4

Smithurst: "Hume on Existence and Possibility", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,

1980-81, pp 17-23, only

Flew: Hume's Philosophy of Belief, chapter 4

The Problem of Induction:

*Kemp-Smith:The Philosophy of David Hume, pp. 6268, and the Letter to John Stewart (1754),
pp. 412413

*Russell: The Problems of Philosophy, chapter 6

Strawson: Introduction to Logical Theory, chapter 9 (concentrate on part 2) Goodman: Fact,
Fiction and Forecast, chapter 3

Beachamp and Rosenberg: Hume and the Problem of Causation, pp. 3667

To think about: What is the problem of Induction? What is the problem of Belief? What is the
problem of Memory? What are Hume's solutions to these problems? Are they successful?

Be careful that you concentrate on the problems of induction, memory and belief, and not on the
problem of causation (next topic). The philosophical analysis of causation involves consideration
of the components of a causal relation (contiguity, succession and constant conjunction) and
analysis of the concept of necessary connection. The Humean problem of induction, by contrast,
is something like this: on what basis is founded the transition from an impression which is
present in memory or sense perception, to an idea of an object or state of affairs which is not
currently presented in experience. On what basis do we make the transition from what is
currently available in experience to what is not currently available in experience, whether that be
an object or event which is in the future, or in the past (but for which we have no memory), or in
the present, but out of the range of our senses. We normally take ourselves to form rational
inferences about the future, for example, but what is the reasoning on which these inferences
depend? Is it justifiable? Is it really reasoning?

Ask yourself: Is Hume's worry just whether we can have certain knowledge (of the kind
obtainable from proof or direct intuition) that the sun will rise tomorrow, or is it a worry about
the basis of probable knowledge of the sun's rising? If the latter, do you think that Hume denies
the possibility of any knowledge of what is beyond our experience? Can there be knowledge
which is not founded on the faculty of Reason? Reflect on the following passage from Kemp-
Smith: (p.66)

When Hume points out that we do not know that the sun will rise tomorrow, he is not, as he is
careful to insist, intending to say that he has doubts as to its rising; he is drawing attention to the
grounds of our assurance, as being in the nature of belief, and as having, therefore, a

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fundamentally different character from the assurance that is possible in regard to relations
holding between ideas.

Do you agree? What does Hume take to be the character of our assurance in matters of fact?
Why couldn't we have knowledge of what is not available currently in experience in the same
way as we have knowledge of parts of mathematics?

Hume's puzzle, then, may be seen to fall into two parts:

(1) What determines the transition from an impression to an idea of an

object or event which is unperceived?

(2) What makes such an idea a belief, rather than merely a conception?

Only if both these questions are answered will we obtain a Humean understanding of what it is to
come to believe in states of affairs which are not accessible (now) to experience in perception, or
in memory.

Does Hume agree with Locke and Berkeley that assurance ought always to rest on direct
insight, or failing direct insight, on evidence?

The Philosophy of David Hume: Topic 4 Causation

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 7

A Treatise of Human Nature 1,3,2 (from the third paragraph to the end); and 1,3,14-16
An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature

Hume, pp. 42-46; and pp. 77-95

*Stroud:
*Kemp-Smith, chapters 16 & 17

*Pears: Humes System, chs. 5-7

Beauchamp and Rosenberg Hume and the Problem of Causation (OUP 1981), pp. 3-36

Russell, On the Notion of Cause in Russells Mysticism and Logic (Allen & Unwin, 1963)

Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, sections 54-55 and 64-67 Warnock in Pears (ed) David
Hume

Questions
(1) What are the constituent perceptions in the idea of causation? Is necessary connection
required as a constituent? Why? What is the impression source for the idea of necessary
connection?

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(2) What are Humes two definitions of causation? Are they compatible? How might they be
reconciled?

(3) Could a unique sequence of events be causal? Would Hume allow that it could?

(4) Necessity is based on the inference, not vice-versa. Make sure you understand what this
means. Do you agree with it?