•  14
    Hume on Personal Identity
    In Elizabeth S. Radcliffe (ed.), A Companion to Hume, Blackwell. 2008.
    This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Locke on Personal Identity Hume's Critique of Locke The Belief in Mental Unity Hume's Second Thoughts Some Interpretations Unity in Reflection References.
  •  19
    Reply to My Critics
    Hume Studies 45 (1): 129-141. 2019.
    I owe thanks to Annemarie Butler, Jonathan Cottrell, and Barry Stroud for their thoughtful criticism of my interpretation in Hume's True Scepticism of David Hume's epistemology and philosophy of mind as presented in A Treatise of Human Nature.1 Butler focuses on my account of the mental mechanisms Hume provides for our everyday beliefs about external objects. She also challenges my appeal to what Hume calls "secondary" ideas in my explanation of Humean introspection. Cottrell raises questions ab…Read more
  •  8
    Précis of Hume's True Scepticism
    Hume Studies 45 (1): 95-99. 2019.
    In Hume's True Scepticism, I offer a new interpretation of David Hume's epistemology and philosophy of mind as presented in A Treatise of Human Nature.1 I approach this task by developing what I take to be the first comprehensive2 investigation of Part 4 of Book 1. The arguments Hume offers there have frequently been addressed by the secondary literature in a piecemeal fashion, especially his account of personal identity and of our belief in the external world. But I argue in HTS that they shoul…Read more
  •  49
  •  57
    Hume Studies Referees, 2000-2001
    with Kate Abramson, Karl Ameriks, Elizabeth Ashford, Martin Bell, Simon Blackburn, Martha Bolton, M. A. Box, Vere Chappell, and Rachel Cohan
    Hume Studies 27 (2): 371-372. 2001.
  •  79
    Hume Studies Referees, 2002–2003
    with Kate Abramson, Donald L. M. Baxter, Tom L. Beauchamp, Martin Bell, Richard Bett, John Bricke, Philip Bricker, Justin Broackes, and Stephen Buckle
    Hume Studies 29 (2): 403-404. 2003.
  •  29
    Hume's Reflections on the Identity and Simplicity of Mind 1
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3): 557-578. 2001.
    The article presents a new interpretation of Hume's treatment of personal identity, and his later rejection of it in the “Appendix” to the Treatise. Hume's project, on this interpretation, is to explain beliefs about persons that arise primarily within philosophical projects, not in everyday life. the belief in the identity and simplicity of the mind as a bundle of perceptions is an abstruse belief, not one held by the “vulgar” who rarely turn their minds on themselves so as to think of their pe…Read more
  •  26
    Hume, a Scottish Locke? Comments on Terence Penelhum’s Hume
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 42 (S1): 161-170. 2012.
    Where Terence Penelhum sees a deep continuity between John Locke's theory of ideas and David Hume's theory of perceptions, I argue that the two philosophers disagree over some fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind. While Locke treats ideas as imagistic objects that we recognize as such by a special kind of inner consciousness, Hume thinks that we do not normally recognize the imagistic content of our perceptions, and instead unselfconsciously take ourselves to sense a shared public world.…Read more
  •  4
    The Cambridge Companion to Hume's Treatise (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2014.
    Revered for his contributions to empiricism, skepticism and ethics, David Hume remains one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy. His first and broadest work, A Treatise of Human Nature, comprises three volumes, concerning the understanding, the passions and morals. He develops a naturalist and empiricist program, illustrating that the mind operates through the association of impressions and ideas. This Companion features essays by leading scholars that evaluate the …Read more
  •  44
    Hume’s True Scepticism
    Oxford University Press UK. 2015.
    David Hume is famous as a sceptical philosopher but the nature of his scepticism is difficult to pin down. Hume's True Scepticism provides the first sustained interpretation of Part 4 of Book 1 of Hume's Treatise: his deepest engagement with sceptical arguments, in which he notes that, while reason shows that we ought not to believe the verdicts of reason or the senses, we do so nonetheless. Donald C. Ainslie addresses Hume's theory of representation; his criticisms of Locke, Descartes, and othe…Read more
  •  3
    Self, Sympathy, and Society in Hume's "Treatise of Human Nature"
    Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. 1996.
    David Hume's sentimentalist moral theory, especially as it appears in the Treatise, is often dismissed as a failure. First, his explanation of sympathy, the central principle of the theory, seems to be inconsistent. Second, his assumption that our moral assessments will coincide once the effects of bias are removed seems unsupported. My dissertation shows that these criticisms are unfounded. The Treatise should be read as Hume's attempt to give an explanation of human phenomena, especially moral…Read more
  •  27
    Hume, a Scottish Socrates? (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (1): 133-154. 2003.
  •  29
    AIDS and Sex: Is Warning a Moral Obligation?
    Health Care Analysis 10 (1): 49-66. 2002.
    Common-sense holds that morality requirespeople who know that they are infected with theHuman Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) to disclosethis fact to their sexual partners. But manygay men who are HIV-positive do not disclose,and AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) promotepublic-health policies based on safer sex byall, rather than disclosure by those who knowthat they are infected. The paper shows thatthe common-sense view follows from a minimalsexual morality based on consent. ASOs'seeming rejectio…Read more
  •  2
    Principlism
    In Warren T. Reich (ed.), Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Macmillan. 1982.
  •  2508
    This paper offers an overview of consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century philosophy. Locke introduces the concept of persons as subjects of consciousness who also simultaneously recognize themselves as such subjects. Hume, however, argues that minds are nothing but bundles of perceptions, lacking intrinsic unity at a time or across time. Yet Hume thinks our emotional responses to one another mean that persons in everyday life are defined by their virtues, vices, bodily qualitie…Read more
  •  38
    Generally speaking, there are two ways to oppose another philosopher's view. You can argue against it—for example, by finding counterexamples, showing that it entails various unpalatable or absurd conclusions, or by raising objections to the arguments offered in its support. Or you can offer an alternative account of the issue in question. These two sorts of responses are, of course, complementary, and Hume uses both in his attempt to reveal the errors of traditional approaches to ethics. While …Read more
  •  18
    Questioning Bioethics AIDS, Sexual Ethics, and the Duty to Warn
    Hastings Center Report 29 (5): 26-35. 1999.
    Bioethicists have virtually assumed that Tarasoff generated a duty to warn the sexual partners of an HIV‐positive man that they risked infection. Yet given the views of sex and of AIDS that have evolved in the gay community, in many cases the parallels to Tarasoff do not hold. Bioethicists should at the least attend to the community's views, and indeed should go beyond doing mere “professional ethics” to participate in the moral self‐exploration in which these views are located.
  •  188
    Scepticism About Persons in Book II of Hume's Treatise
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (3): 469-492. 1999.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scepticism About Persons in Book II of Hume’s TreatiseDonald C. AinslieBook ii of Hume’s Treatise—especially its first two Parts on the “indirect passions” of pride, humility, love, and hatred—has mystified many of its interpreters.1 Hume clearly thinks these passions are important: Not only does he devote more space to them than to his treatment of causation, but in the “Abstract” to the Treatise, he tells us that Book II “contains …Read more
  •  59
    Reason and Feeling in Hume's Action Theory and Moral Philosophy (review)
    Hume Studies 25 (1-2): 266-269. 1999.
    Generally speaking, there are two ways to oppose another philosopher's view. You can argue against it—for example, by finding counterexamples, showing that it entails various unpalatable or absurd conclusions, or by raising objections to the arguments offered in its support. Or you can offer an alternative account of the issue in question. These two sorts of responses are, of course, complementary, and Hume uses both in his attempt to reveal the errors of traditional approaches to ethics. While …Read more
  •  228
    Adequate ideas and modest scepticism in Hume's metaphysics of space
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 92 (1): 39-67. 2010.
    In the Treatise of Human Nature , Hume argues that, because we have adequate ideas of the smallest parts of space, we can infer that space itself must conform to our representations of it. The paper examines two challenges to this argument based on Descartes's and Locke's treatments of adequate ideas, ideas that fully capture the objects they represent. The first challenge, posed by Arnauld in his Objections to the Meditations , asks how we can know that an idea is adequate. The second challenge…Read more
  •  112
    Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy. By P. J. E. Kail (review)
    Metaphilosophy 40 (2): 292-296. 2009.
    Peter Kail’s comprehensive, thoughtful, and challenging book focuses on Hume’s use of projectionFthe appeal to mental phenomena to explain manifest features of the worldFin his treatments of external objects, causation, and morality. Almost all interpreters of Hume acknowledge a role for projection, but Kail is the first to unpack the metaphor, and to show the different ways in which projection works in different domains.
  •  160
    Hume’s Reflections on the Identity and Simplicity of Mind
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3): 557-578. 2001.
    The article presents a new interpretation of Hume’s treatment of personal identity, and his later rejection of it in the “Appendix” to the Treatise. Hume’s project, on this interpretation, is to explain beliefs about persons that arise primarily within philosophical projects, not in everyday life. The belief in the identity and simplicity of the mind as a bundle of perceptions is an abstruse belief, not one held by the “vulgar” who rarely turn their minds on themselves so as to think of their pe…Read more
  •  57
    `Watching' medicine: Do bioethicists respect patients' privacy?
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 21 (6): 537-552. 2000.
    Agich has identified `watching' – the formal orinformal observation of the medical setting – as oneof the four main roles of the clinical bioethicist. By an analysis of a case study involving a bioethicsstudent who engaged in watching at an HIV/AIDS clinicas part of his training, I raise questions about theethical justification of watching. I argue that theinvasion of privacy that watching entails makes theactivity unacceptable unless the watcher has receivedprior consent from the patients who a…Read more
  •  110
    Bioethics and the problem of pluralism
    Social Philosophy and Policy 19 (2): 1-28. 2002.
    The state that we inhabit plays a significant role in shaping our lives. For not only do its institutions constrain the kinds of lives we can lead, but it also claims the right to punish us if our choices take us beyond what it deems to be appropriate limits. Political philosophers have traditionally tried to justify the state's power by appealing to their preferred theories of justice, as articulated in complex and wide-ranging moral theories—utilitarianism, Kantianism, and the like. One of Joh…Read more
  •  34
    Freedom and Moral Sentiment (review)
    Philosophical Review 106 (4): 596-599. 1997.
  •  24
    Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume’s Way of Naturalizing Responsibility (review)
    Philosophical Review 106 (4): 596. 1997.
    Among the most serious objections to naturalism in ethics is that it fails to account for human freedom. By investigating morality from a scientific perspective, this objection runs, we lose sight of how we are not merely caused to act by whatever complex of desires happens to be preponderant at a particular moment, of how we are able to determine for ourselves a particular course of action. Moreover, since it is only in virtue of this capacity of self-determination that we can be held responsib…Read more