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807Hume and Contemporary Political PhilosophyThe European Legacy (5): 588-602. 2013.Our goal in this article is first to give a broad outline of some of Hume’s major positions to do with justice, sympathy, the common point of view, criticisms of social contract theory, convention and private property that continue to resonate in contemporary political philosophy. We follow this with an account of Hume’s influence on contemporary philosophy in the conservative, classical liberal, utilitarian, and Rawlsian traditions. We end with some reflections on how contemporary political phi…Read more
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21The Humean Elements of Rawls' Political PhilosophyIn Angela Coventry & Alexander Sager (eds.), Hume and Contemporary Political Philosophy, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 241-265. 2013.David Hume is a constant, but underappreciated presence in John Rawls’ work. This paper attempts to uncover and explicate the core Humean elements in Rawls’ philosophy and advocates for the merits of a more Humean Rawls. Though Rawls’ familiarity with Hume is well known and his commentators frequently mention the importance of Hume’s circumstances of justice, the depth and range of the Humean influence has not been sufficiently understood. Commentators have been too quick to accept Rawls’ own ac…Read more
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33Humean Eyes ('one particular shade of blue')Cogent Arts and Humanities 3 (1). 2016.Why do Humean eyes matter? The subject of David Hume’s eyes and face leads us into some unexpected curiosities connected with events in his life and written works. We outline the scholars’ propensity to describe the face of their favourite philosopher and spread upon it their personal reading of his life and writings. We ask questions about portraits, their resemblance to the original as a standard of beauty. We survey eighteenth-century physiognomy, and the humourous paradox of the “fat philoso…Read more
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59Review: P. J. E. Kail, Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (7). 2008.
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Remaking responsibility: complexity and scattered causes in human agencyProceedings of the 1st International Conference on Philosophy: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow 1. 2013.Contrary to intuitions that human beings are free to think and act with “buck-stopping” freedom, philosophers since Holbach and Hume have argued that universal causation makes free will nonsensical. Contemporary neuroscience has strengthened their case and begun to reveal subtle and counterintuitive mechanisms in the processes of conscious agency. Although some fear that determinism undermines moral responsibility, the opposite is true: free will, if it existed, would undermine coherent systems …Read more
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137Locke, Hume and the Idea of Causal PowerLocke Studies 33 (2): 93-112. 2003.This paper has a modest, but important, aim: to gain a better understanding of the relationship between John Locke's and David Hume's theories of causal power in the operations of external objects. The task is important because it focuses on an issue involving these two philosophers astonishingly not much discussed amongst commentators. (edited)
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73Critical Review of Recent Introductory Works on Hume (review)Hume Studies 36 (2): 217-225. 2010.Simon Blackburn’s How to Read Hume, Robert Fogelin’s Hume’s Skeptical Crisis: A Textual Study and John P. Wright’s Hume’s ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’: An Introduction are all clear and highly readable works directed at audiences of students and other non-specialists. Given that all three of the authors are prominent and distinguished Hume scholars, I suspect these works will be of great interest to Hume specialists as well. This piece first summarizes the aims and methods of each book and next,…Read more
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241Hume on Animals and the Rest of NatureIn John Hadley & Elisa Aaltola (eds.), Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy, Rowman and Littlefield International. 2014.This paper develops a Humean environmental meta-ethic to apply to the animal world and, given some further considerations, to the rest of nature. Our interpretation extends Hume’s account of sympathy, our natural ability to sympathize with the emotions of others, so that we may sympathize not only with human beings but also animals, plants and ecosystems as well. Further, we suggest that Hume has the resources for an account of environmental value that applies to non-human animals, non-sentient …Read more
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49Review: New Essays on David Hume edited by Emilio Mazza and Emanuele Ronchetti (review)Hume Studies 33 (2): 348-351. 2007.
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32Hume's Sceptical Enlightenment (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Review. 2016.Review of Ryu Susato, Hume's Sceptical Enlightenment
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31The Delicate Causalist: Reply to My Critics on "Hume's Theory of Causation: A Quasi-Realist Interpretation"Manuscrito — Revista Internacional de Filosofia 32 (2). 2009.
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179Locke on consciousnessHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 25 (3): 221-242. 2008.Locke’s theory of consciousness is often appropriated as a forerunner of present-day Higher-Order Perception (HOP) theories, but not much is said about it beyond that. We offer an interpretation of Locke’s account of consciousness that portrays it as crucially different from current-day HOP theory, both in detail and in spirit. In this paper, it is argued that there are good historical and philosophical reasons to attribute to Locke the view not that conscious states are accompanied by higher-or…Read more
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15Hume: A Guide for the PerplexedContinuum. 2007.A student guide that covers the full range of Hume's major works and ideas, including detailed examination of his influential contributions to epistemology and metaphysics.
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24Ideas, Evidence, and Method: Hume’s Skepticism and Naturalism Concerning Knowledge and Causation by Graciela De Pierris (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 54 (4): 678-680. 2016.De Pierris offers a reading that unites radical skepticism and normative naturalism as “two equally important and mutually complementary aspects of Hume’s philosophical position”. The “modern theory of ideas” shapes skepticism, and Newtonian methodology is the basis for naturalism. The “modern theory of ideas” holds that evidence for optimal human cognition is grounded in the “immediate acquaintance with ostensive presentations that are or have been given to the mind”. This is the “presentationa…Read more
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13Review: The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy edited by Donald Rutherford (review)The Notre Dame Philosophical Review. 2007.
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69Hume's System of Space and TimeHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 13. 2010.David Hume’s views on topics such as causation, free will, personal identity, scepticism and morals are without doubt all significant contributions to philosophy. However, his account of the origin and nature of our ideas of space and time has never been influential (Rosenberg 1993, 82). In fact, the account of space and time is generally thought to be the least satisfactory part of his empiricist system of philosophy (Kemp Smith, 1941: 287, Noxon 1973, 115 and Flew 1986, 38). The main reason is…Read more
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57David Hume on Morals, Politics, and Society (edited book)Yale University Press. 2019.A key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume was a major influence on thinkers ranging from Kant and Schopenhauer to Einstein and Popper, and his writings continue to be deeply relevant today. With four essays by leading Hume scholars exploring his complex intellectual legacy, this volume presents an overview of Hume’s moral, political, and social philosophy. Editors Angela Coventry and Andrew Valls bring together a selection of writings from Hume’s most important works, with contribut…Read more
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