Angela M. Coventry

The Historical Dictionary of Hume's Philosophy is the only Hume dictionary in existence. The book provides a substantial account of David Hume's life and the times in which he lived, and it provides an overview of his philosophical doctrines. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over a hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries covering key terms, as well as brief discussions of Hume's major works and of some of his most important predecessors, contemporaries, and successors.

Despite the widely recognized importance of Hume's theory of causation, there is no agreement amongst commentators about the upshot of that theory. Causal realists interpret Hume as believing that causal statements are true or false due to the existence in the universe of a power linking causes to effects, while causal anti-realists read him as denying that the existence of powers makes causal statements true or false, and as holding instead either that causal statements can be reduced to statements about regularities in nature or that causal statements express feelings and cannot be genuine propositions, susceptible of truth or falsity. There appears to be considerable textual evidence for, and also against, each interpretation. The explanation for this contradictory appearance, I argue, is that Hume maintains a position that is intermediate between realism and anti-realism. On my interpretation, Hume indeed traces the impression of power between causes and effects to a feeling in the mind and denies that our causal discourse implicates the existence of powers in nature. At the same time, however, he recognizes causal judgments as genuine propositions that are not equivalent to statements of regularities. Hence, anti-realist interpretations are right to emphasize that Hume rejects an account of causation in terms of powers, but wrong to suppose that this leads him either to reductionism or emotivism. Causal realist interpretations are right to suppose that Hume attributes a non-reductionistic truth-value to causal statements, but wrong to think that the truth or falsity of these statements results from correspondence with powers. The intermediate position attributed to Hume is a version of quasi-realism about causation. It is sometimes argued that quasi-realism collapses into a version of either realism or anti-realism, but I outline a topic-independent conception of quasi-realism that allows it to stand as a consistent third alternative.

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 of justice. Moreover, deterministic views of human choice clarify the conditions in which we ought to protect people from themselves, for example when they cannot give informed consent to medical procedures. Some of the most unresolved questions in this domain are just now emerging; they include robot ethics and the responsibilities of groups. We propose a philosophical and scientific research program to apply complex systems science to these problems.

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 account of Hume as a largely negative influence superseded by justice as fairness’s formidable alternative to utilitarianism. This is a mistake, as Hume remains a powerful and positive historical influence in Rawls’ political philosophy. Moreover, recognition of Hume’s influence provides cogent ways of responding to some of Rawls’ most prominent critics. Rawls’ early essays and his lectures on the history of moral and political philosophy provide valuable material for understanding how Rawls saw the relation of his own work to that of his predecessors. Through an analysis of Rawls’ texts with emphasis on his early papers and lectures we seek to clarify his understanding of Hume and show how it impacts his work. In what follows, we show Hume’s influence on Rawls’ understanding of the circumstances of justice, the site of justice, the priority of the right, sympathy, the judicious spectator, and his methodology and approach to the problem of stability based on congruence between the good and the right. This illuminates Hume’s influence on contemporary political philosophy and provides a more balanced picture of the historical foundation of Rawls’ political philosophy. We end with some positive remarks on the benefits of embracing Rawls’ Humean side.

Vivacity, the “liveliness” of perceptions, is central to Hume’s epistemology. Hume equated belief with vivid ideas. Vivacity is a conscious quality so believable ideas are felt to be lively. Hume’s empiricism revolves around a phenomenological, inner epistemology. Through copying, Hume bases vivacity in impressions. Sensory vivacity also concerns liveliness or patterns of change. Through learnt skillful use, it tracks change specific to intentional sense-perceptual experience, Hume’s “coherent and constant” complex impressions. Copying, in turn, communicates the conscious skill of vivacity to ideas where it becomes an indicator of believable ideas. Hume’s copying concerns then the causation of conscious skills required for the identification of empirically warranted structures. Copying allows Hume to combine a radically externalist empiricism with a portable phenomenological inner epistemology.