Bridger Ehli

Book 1 of the Treatise is a contribution to logic, one which aims to provide an account of the powers and operations of the human understanding. Hume claims that the operations of the understanding are each a mode of conception. But some passages suggest that there is an operation of the understanding distinct from and irreducible to conception: supposition. Hume’s notion of supposition has been taken to provide a vehicle for realism concerning items of which we have no conception. This chapter argues that the Treatise contains an implicit theory of supposition. That theory is less conducive to realist readings of Hume’s metaphysics than has been thought.

I engage with two themes from Lorne Falkenstein’s Consciousness, Time, and Skepticism in Hume's Thought. First, I consider two of Falkenstein's claims concerning Hume’s metaphysics of perceptual experience: that complex sensory impressions are “undivided wholes” and that the existence of such impressions is inconsistent with a principle central to the Treatise’s arguments against the infinite divisibility of extension. Second, I raise questions for Falkenstein’s reading of Humean skepticism, according to which Hume takes skepticism to serve a remedial function. For Falkenstein's Hume, the psychological effect of encounter with radical skeptical arguments is that one ceases to form beliefs that are at odds with the available evidence. I argue that this does not succeed in resolving the apparent tension between Hume’s skepticism and his project of constructing a science of human nature.

In Treatise 1.1.7, Hume offers an account of rational distinctions, which are traditionally understood as distinctions between items that cannot exist separately. Such distinctions are in tension with Hume's separability principle, according to which distinctness, distinguishability, and separability are mutually entailing. I argue that Hume's discussion of rational distinction is a skeptical achievement: it is offered as a diagnosis of an illusion that leads us to suppose that distinctions between inseparable items are possible.

Section 1.4.2 of Hume’s Treatise offers both a constancy-based and coherence-based explanation of the belief in body. Why two explanations of the belief rather than one? Hume says that the mechanism of the coherence-based explanation is “too weak” to support “so vast an edifice” as the belief in body. I argue that this claim stems from his holding that the belief in body is irresistible, such that its denial can be sustained “in words only.” The constancy-based explanation is required in order to explain that property of the belief. This interpretation sheds light on Hume’s engagement with Pyrrhonian skepticism.

We asked our readers to answer the question, in 250 words or fewer, "Of all the articles that have been published in Hume Studies over the past 50 years, which one is most noteworthy to you? Why so?" We realized that what is noteworthy to individual scholars will vary by their research interests and many other factors. Here are the responses we received, ordered by the date of the Hume Studies articles chosen, from earliest to most recent.Saul Traiger, "Impressions, Ideas, and Fictions," Hume Studies 13, no. 2 (1987): 381–99Hume argues that various mental states are "fictions" of the imagination. The ancient philosopher's commitment to material substance is a fiction, as are our ascriptions of diachronic identity... Read More.

In section 1.4.4 of the Treatise, “Of the modern philosophy,” Hume offers a skeptical argument concerning the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The argument in that section is often understood to aim to undermine the modern philosophy’s account of body, according to which bodies lack paradigmatic secondary qualities, by showing that it has “extravagant” skeptical consequences. I argue that Hume does not reject the core commitments of the modern philosophy. His aim in T 1.4.4 is not to undermine any particular account of body but rather to establish the deeply rooted inadequacy of our cognition of external bodies.

Hume’s claim that we project necessity onto objects we take to be causally related has been influential in contemporary discussions of modality, inspiring deflationary accounts of our modal commitments. Hume is commonly understood as holding that modal projection explains our judging that an effect must follow its cause. This misunderstands the role of projection in Hume’s discussions of causation and causal judgement. Projection is a diagnosis of a distinctively philosophical confusion: the commitment to mind-independent necessary connections. In arguing for this, I provide an account of the psychological process that, in Hume’s view, underlies projection. This account resolves problems with Hume’s projectivism identified by his commentators.

In the “Appendix” to the Treatise, Hume claims that he has discovered a “very considerable” mistake in his earlier discussion of the self. Hume's expression of the problem is notoriously opaque, leading to a vast scholarly debate as to exactly what problem he identified in his earlier account of the self. I propose a new solution to this interpretive puzzle. I argue that a tension generated by Hume's conceptual skepticism about real “principles of union” and his account of fictions of the imagination is the defect identified in the “Appendix.”

This paper aims to clarify Locke’s distinction between simple and complex ideas. I argue that Locke accepts what I call the “compositional criterion of simplicity.” According to this criterion, an idea is simple just in case it does not have another idea as a proper part. This criterion is prima facie inconsistent with Locke’s view that there are simple ideas of extension. This objection was presented to Locke by his French translator, Pierre Coste, on behalf of Jean Barbeyrac. Locke responded to Barbeyrac’s objection, but his response, along with a passage from Chapter XV of Book II of the Essay, “Of Duration and Expansion, considered together,” has been taken to show that he did not accept the compositional criterion. I examine these passages and argue that they are not in tension with but rather affirm that criterion.

That Socrates took himself to possess a divine sign is well attested by ancient sources. Both Plato and Xenophon mention Socrates’ daimonion on numerous occasions. What is problematic for contemporary scholars is that Socrates unfailingly obeys the warnings of his sign. Scholars have worried that Socrates seems to ascribe greater epistemic authority to his sign than his own critical reasoning. Moreover, he never so much as questions the authority of his sign to guide his actions, much less its divine nature. Socrates’ unquestioning obedience to his sign thus appears to be in conflict with another of Socrates’ defining characteristics: namely, his relentless rationality. However, Socrates does not seem to recognize such inconsistency. The problem of the daimonion, then, is this: is Socrates’ professed commitment to rationality consistent with his unquestioning deference to his daimonion’s warnings? And if so, how? In this paper, I first discuss several solutions to the problem of the daimonion. I aim to show that none of the accounts of Socrates’ sign that have appeared in the scholarly literature are adequate. I then propose a new account of the daimonion, which, I argue, secures the rationality of Socrates’ obedience to his divine sign.