The External World and Our Knowledge of It: Hume's Critical Realism, an Exposition and a Defence 9781442688070

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on References
Introduction
1. Abstract Ideas and Other Linguistic Rules in Hume
2. The Waning of Scientia
3. Geometry as Scientia and as Applied Science: Hume’s Empiricist Account of Geometry
4. Hume’s Defence of Empirical Science
5. Hume on Testimony and Its Epistemological Problems
6. Knowledge
7. Naturalism and Scepticism
8. Hume’s Critical Realism
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

T H E E X T E R N A L W O RL D A N D O U R K N O W L E D G E O F I T: HU ME’S CRIT IC AL REAL ISM, A N E XP O SIT IO N A N D A DE FE N C E

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FRED WILSON

The External World and Our Knowledge of It Hume’s Critical Realism, an Exposition and a Defence

U N I V E R S I T Y O F TO R O N T O P R E S S Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9764-4 Toronto Studies in Philosophy Editors: Donald Ainslie and Amy Mullin

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Wilson, Fred, 1937– The external world and our knowledge of it : Hume’s critical realism : an exposition and a defence / Fred Wilson. (Toronto studies in philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9764-4 1. Hume, David, 1711–1776. 2. Perception (Philosophy). 3. Knowledge, Theory of. 4. Critical realism. I. Title. II. Series. B1498.W45 2008

192

C2007-905822-1

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

to the memory of Páll Árdal

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Contents

Acknowledgments

xi

Note on References

xiii

Introduction

3

1 Abstract Ideas and Other Linguistic Rules in Hume 21 A. Language and Hume’s Moral Theory 23 B. Introspective Psychology, Associationism, and Introspective Analysis 47 C. How Thought Becomes General: Abstract Ideas, Images, Learning, and Rules of Language 69 D. The ‘New Hume’ versus the ‘Old’ 88 Appendix: Hume and Cognitive Psychology 115 2 The Waning of Scientia 131 A. The Aristotelian Framework 132 B. Perception 138 I. The Problem of Perception 140 II. The Aristotelian Solution to the Problem of Perception III. Unsolved Problems 145 IV. What Next? 145 C. Montaigne 147 D. Descartes (i): The External World 151 E. Descartes (ii): Perception 158 F. Abstract Ideas Re-evaluated 163 G. Knowledge Re-evaluated 173

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viii Contents

H. Berkeley (i): Antirepresentationalism 178 I. Berkeley (ii): Realism 181 Note: Why, Given Berkeley’s Realism, Are Some Appearances Said to Be Real When Others Are Not? 198 J. Berkeley (iii): Idealism 204 K. Whither Minds? 212 L. Truth 241 3 Geometry as Scientia and as Applied Science: Hume’s Empiricist Account of Geometry 254 A. Extension and Its Idea 257 B. Infinite Divisibility 265 C. Our Idea of Infinity 269 D. Real Extension out of Extensionless Points 272 E. Ideal Equality, Ideal Figures: Scientia Criticized 283 4 Hume’s Defence of Empirical Science 306 A. Hume against Rationalism 307 B. Hume’s Defence of Scientific Inference 315 Note: Hume’s ‘Rules by Which to Judge of Causes and Effects’ 319 C. Science versus Superstition 321 D. Science as Cognitive Virtue 326 5 Hume on Testimony and Its Epistemological Problems 332 A. Testimony in Hume: Some Epistemological Problems 333 B. A Wrong Model of Empiricism 336 C. Autonomous Thinkers 340 D. Social Context: Language and Testimony 345 E. Testing Testimony 350 F. The Responsible Knower 360 6 Knowledge 367 A. After Scientia: What Knowledge Becomes and Problems with It 375 I. Knowledge as Justified True Belief 375 II. Coherence and Justification 378 III. Objective versus Subjective 381 IV. Knowledge by Accident 383 B. Reliablism and Externalism 384

Contents ix

C. D. E. F.

Coherentism 392 Experience and Justification (i): Radical Contingency 400 Experience and Justification (ii): Reasonable Acceptance 414 Experience and Justification (iii): Perception 436

7 Naturalism and Scepticism 447 A. Defending Common Sense 447 B. The Role of a Principle of Acquaintance in Ontology 455 I. Hume and PA 464 II. Moore and PA 472 III. Reid and PA 489 C. The Role of a Principle of Acquaintance in Epistemology 498 I. Logical Atomism 499 II. Truth Again: First Person and Third Person 510 D. Scepticism and Naturalism 518 E. The Dream Problem, Again 524 8 Hume’s Critical Realism 536 A. Once Again: The Charge of Scepticism 538 B. Realism New and Critical 542 C. Hume’s New Realism: The System of the Vulgar; or, Hume’s Berkeleyan Realism 546 D. Continuity, Continuants, and Identity 562 I. Continuing Existence and Continuants 564 II. Filling Perceptual Gaps and Continuants 566 III. More on Identity 571 IV. An Analogous Case: The Missing Shade of Blue 575 V. Several Concluding Non-sceptical Remarks 578 E. Hume’s Causal Inference to Critical Realism 579 F. The System of the Vulgar as False, Inevitable, and Reasonable 590 G. The World of the Philosophers 598 H. A Tentative First Conclusion 608 I. Hume’s Doubts 615 J. The Resolution of Hume’s Doubts 622 K. The Reasonableness of the System of the Philosophers 627 L. Four Objections 633 I. Inferring Unperceived Causes 633 II. Cleanthes 663 III. Lending a Hand to Hylas 673

x Contents

IV. The Enquiry Version 680 M. Conclusion. David Hume: Critical Realist 688 Notes

693

Bibliography Index

787

771

Acknowledgments

I have benefited from discussions with the following people. There were, importantly, the anonymous readers at the University of Toronto Press, whose insightful commentaries led to both improvements in the argument and the elimination of various errors. Len Husband of the editorial staff at the press was always supportive. I should also mention Páll Árdal and John Davis, both of whom, while they were still with us, were continually encouraging in my project. Their comments were always helpful. Don Livingston made useful comments on earlier versions of some of this material. Tom Lennon, too, was always helpful, as were his colleagues at the University of Western Ontario, Bob Muehlman and Lorne Falkenstein. There were several interchanges with Alan and David Hausman that were important. Some of my ideas on Hume’s critical realism were presented to Herb Hochberg’s seminar at the University of Texas; his students were stimulating, and Herb’s remarks, both on that occasion and subsequently, were as always penetrating. At Toronto, some remarks by Brandon Watson were significant. My students in epistemology I always found stimulating; I learned a lot from them. I should mention in particular my student Katharine O’Reilly-Fleming, who read long portions of the text and who made many corrections and helpful comments; her enthusiasm was useful when things began to drag. My family was always supportive – my wife Linda (whose patience with my sitting at the computer was often tried) and my daughters Carolyn and Stephanie (who cheered when appropriate). Stephanie

xii

Acknowledgments

and her partner Ian Edmonds could always be counted on to help with the computer, which acted up on a number of occasions.

Material from the following essays has been used in the present study. Editors and publishers are thanked for permission to use this material ‘Hume’s Defence of Science.‘ Dialogue 25 (1986): 611–28. ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with regard to the Senses?‘ Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (1989): 49–73. ‘Was Hume a Subjectivist?‘ Philosophy Research Archives, 14 (1989): 247– 82. ‘Hume’s Fictional Continuant.‘ History of Philosophy Quarterly 6 (1989): 171–88. ‘Hume’s Critical Realism: A Reply to Livingston.‘ Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (1991): 291–6. ‘Association, Ideas, and Images in Hume,‘ in P. Cummins and G. Zoeller, eds., Minds, Ideas, and Objects (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing, 1992), 255–74. ‘Perceptual Ideality and the Ground of Inference: Comments on Ferreira’s Defence.‘ Bradley Studies 1 (1995): 139–52 ‘On the Hausmans’ “New Approach to Berkeley’s Ideal Reality”,‘ in R. Muehlmann, ed., Berkeley’s Metaphysics: Structural, Interpretative, and Critical Essays (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 67–87. ‘Árdal’s Contribution to Philosophy,‘ in P. Árdal, Passions, Promises, and Punishment (Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press, 1998), 7–40. ‘The Aboutness of Thought,‘ in T.M. Lennon, ed., Cartesian Views: Papers Presented to Richard A. Watson (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 151–64.

Note on References

References to Hume are to the following editions: David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. with an intro. by Norman Kemp Smith, 2nd ed., with suppl. (London: T. Nelson, 1947) References to the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding are by page in parentheses, preceded by an ‘E.‘ References to the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals are by page in parentheses, preceded by ‘EM.’ References to the Treatise are in parentheses: if the number is otherwise unidentified, then it refers to that page of the Treatise. References to the Dialogues are by page in parentheses, preceded by ‘D.’ The standard text for Hume’s Treatise, until 2000, was Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1888), rev. P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). SelbyBigge made some errors, but by the standards of that century the edition was quite good. Nidditch made a number of corrections in 1978, but the format and pagination was retained. In 2000, D.F. and M.J. Norton published their superior edition: Treatise of Human Nature, ed. D.F. Norton and M.J. Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

xiv Note on References

Until 2000, all scholarly references were to the Selby-Bigge or, more recently, to the Selby-Bigge–Nidditch (SBN) edition. Reference to this edition cannot be avoided, if one is to connect with the literature before 2000. But clearly there ought to be connection made to the Norton and Norton edition. The editors of this edition have numbered the paragraphs so that reference can be made to Book, Part, section and paragraph. A number of authors still refer to the SBN edition (by page number); others refer to both the SBN and the Norton and Norton editions. The journal Hume Studies requires both, but I find that practice distracting. It is bad enough to get a parenthetical reference at the end of a quotation that looks like this: (T 1.4.5.9; SBN 235): but to come across something like this: (T 1.4.2.44–6 and 1.4.4.3–5; SBN 210–11 and 226–7) is too distracting for the reader’s eye: one loses the point being made as one forces one’s attention to move through the parenthetical references to their end, where the thought picks up again. I have decided therefore to stick with SBN references – not because I don’t like the work of Norton and Norton but simply to make it easier for me (and, I hope, the reader) to follow the thought. For similar reasons I have given Selby-Bigge page references to the Enquiries, rather than the newer and better edition of Tom Beauchamp. Fortunately, David Norton and Mary Norton have published a set of parallel references for both versions of both the Treatise and the Enquiries: D. Norton and M. Norton, ‘Guides to Parallel and Page References in Oxford University Press Editions of Hume,‘ Hume Studies 28 (2002): 319–330. They are to be thanked for this effort. Those who wish to find the reference to the newer editions from the SBN references in the present study can simply refer to this guide.

T H E E X T E R N A L W O RL D A N D O U R K N O W L E D G E O F I T: HU ME’S CRIT IC AL REAL ISM, A N E XP O SIT IO N A N D A DE FE N C E

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Introduction

Hume is a sceptic. He uses reason to attack reason, and finds that reasoning wanting: there are no good reasons at all for any of our beliefs. That, at least, is the standard picture of Hume.1 Nor is it entirely wrong: about entities, such as God or objective necessary connections, that lie beyond the world of ordinary experience, Hume is indeed a sceptic. More strongly, he is an Academic sceptic. He knows that he does not know: he knows this because discourse that goes beyond the limits of our ordinary world is strictly speaking meaningless. But about the ordinary world, he cannot really be said to be a sceptic. The upshot of the attack on reason is, if taken seriously (which it most often is not) a melancholy despair – a despair from which one is rescued not by reason but by friends coming by and inducing you to come and make merry and enjoy the company of others. The reasonable person takes this point seriously. Such a one quite reasonably rejects the concept of reason that leads to scepticism and despair and melancholy, and looks for another guide to getting on in the world in which we find ourselves moving and living and pleasantly socializing. The reasonable person redefines reason so as to give him- or herself a reasonable concept. Hume is reasonable in just this way: if reason is the capacity to grasp the reasons for things, then what he does is give an account of the reasons for things that rejects the long, traditional account of reasons defended by both the rationalists and the Aristotelians.2 On this new concept of reason, our judgments about that world are all fallible. But this is not scepticism, at least not scepticism in any reasonable sense of that term – though it is a reason that does not come up to the standard of incorrigibility and infallibility of the rationalists and the Aristotelians. We all know the examples given by philosophers, of

4 External World and Our Knowledge of It

dreams and of square towers that look round in the distance: these establish the fallibility of our ordinary uses of the reason that gets us around the world where we find ourselves. But we do have precisely that same reason to help us correct these errors. As Hume put it in the first Enquiry: ‘These sceptical topics, indeed, are only sufficient to prove, that the senses alone are not implicitly to be depended on; but that we must correct their evidence by reason, and by considerations, derived from the nature of the medium, the distance of the object, and the disposition of the organ, in order to render them, within their sphere, the proper criteria of truth and falsehood’ (E 124). ‘Within their sphere, [they, the senses, constitute] the proper criteria of truth and falsehood’: hardly the remark of a sceptic. But after so remarking, Hume goes on to note that there are ‘more profound’ arguments against reason. These are the arguments of the philosophers for the scientific picture of the world. There are our ordinary beliefs about the independence of the objects that we perceive in daily life – the tables, chairs, square towers, and so on, that are there in the world in which we find ourselves. But the new science has called this world into question. The real objects, those independent of the mind, are in fact, according to this view, quite unlike the objects of sense. As for the sensible appearances of things, these are dependent for their existence upon the state of our sense organs. There is, then, a gap between the world in which we all naturally believe, on the one hand, and the world to which philosophical – scientific – reasoning leads us, on the other. Reason – Hume’s reasonable concept of reason – seems after all to undermine itself: Do you follow the instincts and propensities of nature, may they say, in assenting to the veracity of sense? But these lead you to believe, that the very perception or sensible image is the external object. Do you disclaim this principle, in order to embrace a more rational opinion, that the perceptions are only representations of something external? You here depart from your natural propensities and more obvious sentiments; and yet are not able to satisfy your reason, which can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove, that the perceptions are connected with any external objects. (E 126)

The solution that Hume proposes in the Enquiry is that, since we have to live with the difficulty, we should learn to live with the difficulty. As for the sceptical conclusion, that has no power to lead us to reject as

Introduction 5

unjustified all our beliefs in the world as we ordinarily know it. Nor can we abandon reason, which helps us correct the errors of sense: ‘[For the sceptical position about reason] no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigour. We need only ask such a sceptic, What his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer ... a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society’ (E 132). Such is Hume’s discussion in the Enquiry. However, the discussion of these points in the earlier Treatise of Human Nature is much more complicated. It is dealt with, mainly, in two sections: ‘Scepticism with regard to the Senses’ (Section 2) and the ‘Conclusion’ (Section 7) of Book I of the Treatise. What I wish to argue is that, in this more extended discussion of the Treatise, Hume proposes a sort of way out of this difficulty, which is left more problematic in the Enquiry.3 To be sure, he does not quell all the doubts of the sceptic. But he does show how we can bring together the worlds of the ‘vulgar’ – the world of ordinary experience – and the world of the ‘philosopher’ – the scientific picture of the world and of our place in it.4 (But we shall not ignore the account of the Enquiry: after examining the argument of the Treatise in detail, we shall take up the argument of the Enquiry and show that the pattern is of a piece with that of the Treatise.) In fact, I propose to argue, Hume in the Treatise systematically defends a version of that philosophical/metaphysical position once known as ‘critical realism.’ Hume is not a sceptic; he is a critical realist, but one who recognizes the fallibility of human judgment. This will be a central focus of the argument that follows. But we shall also argue that Hume’s claims are entirely reasonable. I propose not only to expound but also to defend his position: that is the point of the subtitle: Hume’s Critical Realism: An Exposition and a Defence. The argument will travel a long way. The exposition part requires the development of a contrast between Hume’s views and the views of the rationalist tradition of Aristotle and Descartes. The defence requires one to show that Hume’s work carries within it the tools to reply to critics such as Quinton, Chisholm, and Dennett. Too often in the literature, one finds something like the following. Descartes began the subjectivist revolution in early modern thought; it finds its culmination in Hume’s (supposed) scepticism. Reid was perhaps the first, but certainly not the last, to set things out in this way. But

6 External World and Our Knowledge of It

if the argument that follows is correct, then there is a radical difference between what is going on with Descartes and what is going on with Hume that this version of the history completely misses: the two ontologies and the two epistemologies are very different, and so are their scepticisms. Descartes is on the side of Aristotle and Plato and in that sense looks back towards the past. Hume is critical of them all: it is he and not Descartes who makes the radical break with the past (with, no doubt, the help of Locke and Berkeley). The exposition part of the task we set for ourselves in the title of this book requires careful analysis of these differences, thus, the journey we will be taking through these other figures (a ramble, some will call it). Our ramble begins with Plato. We shall be taking this philosopher as our starting point partly because there is a sense in which I agree with Whitehead that all subsequent philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, and furthermore (this present work offers as an addition to Whitehead’s remark), that it is a series of footnotes to the natural philosophy that Socrates lays out in the Phaedo. Be that as it may, the metaphor that Plato gave us of the divided line, with knowledge and forms at the top and opinion and sensible experience at the bottom, provides one with a useful expository device for locating moves along the line that leads from Aristotle through Descartes to Hume. I have already dealt with some of these issues in greater detail and with different emphases in The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought. But in this latter work not too much time is spent on the problems of perception; whereas in the present study considerable time is spent showing how accounts of perception fit into the rationalist premises of Aristotle and Descartes. The attempt is made to bring out as clearly as possible the contrast between Descartes and Aristotle, on the one side, and Hume, on the other. In this way one can show that problems that arise for the former tradition do not arise for Hume, and that criticisms of the former tradition simply do not touch Hume’s philosophy. As for the inclusion of Chisholm, Dennett, and so on, the present study also aims at a defence of Hume. Dennett, for example, has argued that the empiricists do not provide an adequate account of thought and language. The attempt will be made in the present book to show that there are in Hume resources enough that one can tease out of them a defence of his metaphysics/epistemology against these criticisms. The point does deserve emphasis: there is considerable reference to epistemological discussions of the twentieth century; these are offered as part

Introduction 7

an the attempt to give not only an exposition but also a defence of Hume’s critical realism. I should perhaps also mention that I will not hesitate to refer to discussions beyond the recent (Dennett, etc.) and the early modern (the rationalists); thus, in chapter 7 there will be a discussion of the controversy between John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century about unimaginability as the criterion of truth. This, I hope, will help readers understand something that is important to the defence of Hume. In other words, I will not hesitate to refer to nonHumean discussions from scattered points in the history of philosophy if I think such an analysis will help in the exposition and defence of Hume. Nor is it just the illumination of Hume that I hope to achieve; I also hope to give some credit to historical antecedents that have, unfortunately, disappeared into the past. In both the exposition and defence of Hume, I propose to take things to a deeper level than one usually finds; in particular, I propose to read more attentively than often happens. In this context one might mention Dicker’s short study of Hume, Hume’s Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Introduction, as not untypical of some of the limitations of many studies.5 Dicker’s book presents a standard Hume (standard since Reid) and for that matter, a standard Descartes (standard since Reid), wherein those prior to Hume were committed to a ‘way of ideas’ that involved a crude form of representationalism that Hume worked out to its sceptical conclusion – and dead end – only for philosophy to be rescued by Reid, or rather, Dicker suggests, by Chisholm. I have had my say about the standard view of Descartes in The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought – a view that is repeated, more briefly and with different emphases, in the present study. It is not the standard account of Descartes’s ontology. The problem is not some fancied ‘way of ideas’ but rather the substance metaphysics with its objective necessary connections. Descartes fathomed the problems that arise with such an ontology, but it was Hume who eventually rescued us from this old but really impossible tradition. Unfortunately, with substances went God and a self that could be saved for heaven or hellfire, and so we – Scots Presbyterians, anyway – had to be rescued by a return to something like a substance metaphysics. Dicker misses all this. But no wonder: he is not a careful reader. His discussion of Hume ends with the Treatise, Book I, Part iv, Section 2, and thus ignores the fact that Hume does not conclude his own discussion for five more sections. This further material is ignored, even though Hume himself at the end of Section 2 warns

8 External World and Our Knowledge of It

the reader that there is more to come before the issues can be settled, that in fact things will not end until the ‘Conclusion’ found in I, iv, 7; and even though at one point in his discussion in Section 2 Hume provides a footnote referring the reader to further discussion in Section 6. As for Dicker’s discussion of Hume on causation extending over several chapters, he manages to miss important points while getting lost in irrelevant issues (e.g., are causes objects or events? What might Hume have said about that issue? – probably that it doesn’t really matter for what he [Hume] is about). He fails to see that for the rationalists the demonstration required to establish a causal connection is not (merely) a matter of logic – logic as we know it, that is, truth functional logic with its apparatus of truth tables and so on. It requires a realm of forms or essences or whatnot to provide the a priori premises. Hume’s appeal to a Principle of Acquaintance challenges this realm of forms or essences. The result is that causal inference can no longer be regarded as infallible, but now if one does not aspire to the standard of infallibility one will not see the result as a falling into scepticism. The result is also, however, a consequence of the logical atomism that enables Stroud, for example, to say that it is logically possible that every judgment is wrong and that we therefore don’t know very much. As I have elsewhere argued, it was Coleridge, and, following him, Green – who saw that the deep objection to a Humean world is that it lacks connections.6 This challenge involves challenging the truth functional logic of Hume (and Russell) – and then providing a logic in which the rule of addition does not hold (as Bradley and Bosanquet were later to so carefully argue). To go through all that in the present study would require more space than is available. But Dicker sees none of it, and in particular misses the fact that if you follow Stroud you cannot rescue knowledge, not even with Chisholm on your side. Here is the structure of the argument of the present study. Chapter 1 develops Hume’s account of abstract ideas and of language. Chapter 2 shows how Hume’s views on perception grew out of those of his predecessors. Chapter 3 examines Hume’s account of geometry – where he applies his account of abstract ideas to reply to the arguments of those, like Descartes, who argue that geometry provides an example of substantive a priori knowledge. Chapter 4, on Hume’s defence of science, also introduces two concepts appeal to which will be made more strongly in chapters 6 and 7 on knowledge and chapter 8 on Hume’s critical realism. One is the idea of inductive inference, which

Introduction 9

we must as human beings undertake; this must appears as a central concern of chapters 6 and 7. The other point of course is the defence of science, which reappears in chapter 8, where it is argued that the inference to a cause of our perceptual experiences that itself cannot be perceived is a causal/scientific inference; since science is rationally justified (chapter 4) and is based on rationally justified perceptual knowledge (chapters 6 and 7), the inference to Critical Realism (the ‘system of the philosophers’ of Treatise, I, iv, 2), based on an empiricist rather than a rationalist–Aristotelian notion of reason (chapter 2) – this inference (chapter 8), too, is reasonable and justified. Finally, chapter 5 deals with Hume on testimony. In this context is introduced the concept of the responsible knower. The context here is relatively unproblematic. This concept, introduced and defended in a way that is relatively free of problems, is taken up and developed in the more problematic context of perceptual knowledge in chapter 6. In greater detail, the argument of the present study goes like this. In chapter 1, we shall examine Hume on the rules of language and of logic, showing how his account of these rules as normative follows his account of the rules of justice as normative. In particular, it is argued that Hume’s account of abstract ideas, of how we think in general terms, depends on his view of language. In this chapter we apply these results concerning our ideas and language to the specific case of the causal connection. It is argued that talk of an objective necessary connection is, strictly speaking, meaningless: whatever entities there are in the world, and whatever are the objects that appear in the world of the philosophers, objective necessary causal connections are not among them. It is argued in particular that the ‘new Hume’ reading of our philosopher, as a defender of objective necessary connections which however we do not know, is a reading that cannot be substantiated. An appendix to chapter 1 examines the idea that there are connections between Hume’s views of thought are close to that which is now described as cognitive science. In chapter 2, we begin the task of expounding Hume’s views on perception. To see clearly what these are, they are placed in the context of what his predecessors were arguing. We shall therefore look at the metaphysics and epistemology that preceded Hume – the substance metaphysics of Aristotle and Descartes, with the rationalist twist of Descartes. It was against this metaphysics and accompanying epistemology that Hume and his immediate predecessors, Locke and Berke-

10

External World and Our Knowledge of It

ley, were reacting. On this earlier view, ordinary things are substances, and these substances can be known infallibly. The critique of these positions began with Descartes – who, however, did not abandon the basic framework. The challenge to the framework came with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Indeed, with the criticism of the notion of abstract ideas, Berkeley and Hume argued that the entire discourse of substances was basically unintelligible. The real world is not a set of substances lying behind a veil of appearances; the real world just is those appearances – the real world just is the world as we experience it. It is these developments that are dealt with in chapter 2. The demise of the substance philosophy forces a whole reorientation of our view of the world. Gone is the idea of knowledge as scientia, as infallible certainty. Gone is the idea that our knowledge of the so-called external world requires us to go beyond the appearances of things into a deeper reality: there is no deeper reality. The same is true of mind: gone is the substantialist account of the knower. The knower, like the known, turns out to be a bundle – an ordered bundle – of perceptions. This requires a rethinking of the relation between the knower and the known, and in particular the relation – the strange relation – of intentionality, the ‘aboutness’ of thought. It is suggested that Hume’s account of language that we have delineated in chapter 1 is important for the rethinking of this notion. The traditional account of knowledge as scientia found its strongest support in geometry. From Plato to Descartes, the argument was that one could account for the truths of geometry only by recognizing that there are concepts, those of ideal geometrical objects, that cannot be derived from ordinary sensible experience. Berkeley, who first elaborated the attack on such ideal objects – that is, on ‘abstract ideas’ – did not go on to offer an alternative account of geometry. Hume did, and in spite of its puzzling aspects his account deserves our attention. It is this that is discussed in chapter 3. Chapter four moves on to look at Hume’s defence of science, what he calls the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ against both the sceptics and the superstitious. It is here that we shall begin to flesh out Hume’s defence of common sense. There are three important points. First, Hume invokes in defence of the principle of inductive inference the rule that we must make such inferences and that this provides a justification for relying on that principle. But second, both science and superstition rely on that principle. To separate science from superstition, Hume argues that the former is able, where the latter is not, to satisfy the passion of curiosity, our interest (or anyway, the interest of

Introduction 11

some) in the truth. Third, Hume in effect relies on the idea that the inductive method and the method of science are reasonable, that is, are principles acceptable to the reasonable person. Hume’s basic concept of ‘reason’ is that of the reasonable person. Because the Cartesian standard is unattainable by us – indeed, impossible given the way the world is and our capacity to know it – the reasonable person rejects that standard and settles for what can be attained, namely, fallible knowledge. In particular, the reasonable knower relies on empirical evidence that he or she has available and on this basis takes responsibility for his or her knowledge claims. Chapter 5 looks at Hume’s account of testimony, defending it against some recent criticisms. Some other aspects of Hume’s defence of common sense now become apparent. Again it is brought out, even more explicitly, that a fundamental notion in Hume’s account of the justification of our knowledge claims is that of the reasonable knower, the knower who takes to the task of coming to know in a responsible manner. In chapters 4 and 5, themes from chapter 1 about the nature of rules will reappear to help illuminate Hume’s account of the aspects of knowledge discussed in these chapters. Chapters 6 and 7 deal in detail with Hume’s account of perceptual knowledge, looking at it from the perspective of a number of other, more recent attempts to specify an empiricist account of knowledge. Hume’s notion of knowledge comes after scientia and replaces the latter: it is the notion that knowledge is justified true belief. This concept has lately given rise to many discussions. We shall deal with a number of these more recent discussions from the standpoint of Hume. It is here that we shall be starting our defence of Hume’s views, of his critical realism. Among the accounts of knowledge we shall consider at are coherence theories and reliablist theories; as well, we shall look at the externalist–internalist debate. Throughout, the issue will be this: What can Hume or a Humean say about these theories and issues? Themes from chapter 1 about language again recur as we deal with issues relating to the intentionality of thought and the relation of the knower to the known. Throughout this discussion it will turn out that here, too, we find Hume relying on the notion of the reasonable person – that is, the person who is reasonable in his or her cognitive practices. And again, the justification of our knowledge claims, for Hume or the Humean, turns on the notion of a responsible and reasonable knower – a theme we pick up from our discussion of testimony in chapter 5. As we shall see, Hume precedes Reid and Moore in offering a defence of the common-

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External World and Our Knowledge of It

sense view of the world: accepting such a picture of the world is what the reasonable person does. Central to this picture of the world and the place of mind in it is the idea of the self, of the knower. More specifically, what is central is the notion of the self or knower as an ordered bundle of perceptions – that is, the notion of a knower that emerges after the downfall of substance philosophies, as discussed in chapter 2. Explored, too, are some of the things that must be said about the notion of possibility in an empiricist or Humean world; this is relevant to the exploration of the notion that in a world where thought is always fallible, there is always the possibility that we are wrong. (It is here that I build on a discussion of the controversy between John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century about unimaginability as the criterion of truth.) Finally, in chapter 8, we take up the exposition of Hume’s critical realism, both as a rationally justified account of the world and as involving a (harmless) sort of scepticism. It turns out that the scientific picture of the world – what Hume calls the ‘system of the philosophers’ – and of our knowledge of it is one that is acceptable to the person as a reasonable and responsible knower. Hume also provides a reasonable fit between this picture of the world and the world that we grasp in our ordinary sensible and perceptual experience, what Hume calls the ‘system of the vulgar.’ Hume’s defence of empirical knowledge and of our commonsense picture of the world, explored in chapter 7, takes its place within a broader context that leads to the scientific picture of the world. It is argued that the standard interpretation of Hume as a sceptic involves a serious misreading, or at least an ungenerous reading, of the Humean texts. In general it is concluded that Hume is not, after all, a sceptic with regard to the senses, and that his view of the world and of our knowledge of it is one that is acceptable to the reasonable person and to the responsible knower. The view attributed to Hume is close to that of Russell in the Analysis of Matter as well as to that of Sellars père. It is argued that causal reasoning can be extended beyond the world of sense experience, provided we allow Hume the use of abstract relative ideas. Then we can, to use the language of Russell, form definite descriptions to refer to objects with which we are not acquainted. The present study aims to deal with Hume as a critical realist. Our discussion will revolve, one way or another, around Book I, Part iv, Section 2 of the Treatise, which deals with our knowledge of the external world.

Introduction

13

This is a rather narrow focus. It will pay, I think, if before we begin we briefly locate this discussion in the context of Hume’s broader concerns. We are arguing that Hume is not a sceptic with regard to our knowledge of the external world. This no doubt seems odd to many: it is hardly the traditional view of Hume. Yet a careful reading of Hume’s overall argument will, I think, dispel this sense of oddity; for a careful reading of Hume’s overall intentions makes it clear that while he is a sceptic with regard to certain targets (e.g., the entities of the superstitious), it is not his intention to call into question our knowledge of the external world and the picture of that world which empirical science gives us. It is clear that Hume himself sees this account of the world and of human nature as part of a broader defence of reason, on the one hand, and of the critique of religion by reason, on the other. This is the ultimate aim of his inquiries. Having a sense of this aim is more than useful in guiding the reader in his or her reading of Humean texts. Hume in fact himself makes explicit the telos of his study in the closing lines of the first Enquiry. It will pay to look at that passage and reflect on it here, right at the beginning. Doing so will provide us with an ongoing sense of where Hume’s argument is going to take us. In fact, in this passage at the end of his argument, Hume makes it perfectly clear that his aim is not a general scepticism. Neither is it a scepticism from which he is saved not by reason but by nature. What he makes clear at the end is that he has a rather different target. He makes clear that the target of his sceptical attacks is Christianity and the religious world view, on the one hand, and the supposed defences of religion by reason, on the other. The target of his sceptical attacks is Christianity and the religious world view, the works of those who would make theology queen of the sciences. But our ordinary view of the world and the scientific world view that grows out of it escape unscathed. This, surely, is the point he wishes his reader to take away from the rhetoric with which he closes the first Enquiry. Recall this famous passage: ‘When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity of school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion’ (E 165). The clear message: he is separating religion and school metaphysics on the one hand from commonsense and science on the other: the

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upshot of his argument, we are meant clearly to infer, is that the former is, from the standpoint of reason, worthless, and that the latter alone is of value. The sense that this separation is important, this division of things to be studied into the irrational and the rational, guides the present essay. The aim of this work is to show how commonsense and the scientific world view escape, as it were, Hume’s sceptical arguments. A sense of that telos will lead us in our reading of Hume’s arguments. We shall try to read those arguments as aiming, on the one hand, to defend science and the scientific world view as rational and as not succumbing to some general sceptical attack, and aiming, on the other hand, to use the tools of the sceptic to undermine religion and superstition. Our study grants Hume’s attack on religion but aims to show how the sceptical arguments that achieve that end leave commonsense and science unscathed – its books escape the flames, they retain their utility for the ordinary reasonable person. This rhetoric that Hume here uses about the books being consigned to the flames is an explicit reference to the supposed burning of the library of Alexandria on its capture by the Caliph Omar. It has been said that Omar, when questioned about the library, said (in Gibbon’s words, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 51): ‘If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.’ And so they were consigned to the fires that heated the baths of Alexandria, where their sheer volume is supposed to have kept the baths hot for six months. Gibbon has earlier described a previous destruction of part of the library by a Christian mob under the direction of Patriarch Theophilus as he went about implementing the order of the Emperor Theodosius to close the temples of the pagans. This part of the library was in the Serapeum, and when the statue of Serapis (supposedly the work of the sculptor Bryaxis) was destroyed, the books were burned as well. This was ‘the mischievous bigotry of Christians who studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry’ (Gibbon, ch. 28). On this earlier loss, Gibbon comments that ‘the compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idiolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages; and either the zeal or the avarice of the archbishop might have been satiated with the rich spoils which were the reward of his victory.’ It was Theophilus’ successor Cyril, later St Cyril, who brought about the torture and death of Hypatia, again by a Christian mob (ch. 47). If the library still contained books at the time of Omar,

Introduction

15

then they were most likely books of theology. Gibbon comments (ch. 51), that ‘if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths’ – Gibbon is duly sceptical of the whole story as a later concoction of Christians – then ‘a philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the welfare of mankind.’ The reference that Hume makes in the Enquiry is in itself important, it seems to me, but more important yet, I have also suggested, is the attitude that it indicates about books of theology. Hume is hardly distant from Gibbon; he, perhaps, is the philosopher who is smiling at Gibbon’s judgment about the good that theological controversy has done for humankind. In this context, there is another Humean passage in the Enquiries that is relevant. This one comes at the end of the second Enquiry. Here, in the free-standing essay ‘A Dialogue’ (EM 324ff.), Hume mentions Diogenes and Pascal: diogenes is the most celebrated model of extravagant philosophy. Let us seek a parallel to him in modern times. We shall not disgrace any philosophic name by a comparison with the dominics or loyolas, or any canonized monk or friar. Let us compare him to pascal, a man of parts and genius as well as diogenes himself; and perhaps too, a man of virtue, had he allowed his virtuous inclinations to have exerted and displayed themselves. (EM 342)

Hume continues: The foundation of diogenes’s conduct was an endeavour to render himself an independent being as much as possible, and to confine all his wants and desires and pleasures within himself and his own mind: The aim of pascal was to keep a perpetual sense of his dependence before his eyes, and never to forget his numberless wants and infirmities. The ancient supported himself by magnanimity, ostentation, pride, and the idea of his own superiority above his fellow-creatures. The modern made constant profession of humility and abasement, of the contempt and hatred of himself; and endeavoured to attain these supposed virtues, as far as they are attainable. The austerities of the greek were in order to inure himself to hardships, and prevent his ever suffering: Those of the frenchman were embraced merely for their own sake, and in order to suffer as much as possible. The philosopher indulged himself in the most beastly pleasures,

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External World and Our Knowledge of It even in public: The saint refused himself the most innocent, even in private. The former thought it his duty to love his friends, and to rail at them, and reprove them, and scold them: The latter endeavoured to be absolutely indifferent towards his nearest relations, and to love and speak well of his enemies. The great object of diogenes’s wit was every kind of superstition, that is every kind of religion known in his time. The mortality of the soul was his standard principle; and even his sentiments of a divine providence seem to have been licentious. The most ridiculous superstitions directed pascal’s faith and practice; and an extreme contempt of this life, in comparison of the future, was the chief foundation of his conduct.

The contrast is between the errors of philosophy and those of religion. And as Hume put it in the Treatise: ‘The Cynics are an extraordinary instance of philosophers, who, from reasonings purely philosophical, ran into as great extravagances of conduct as any monk or dervise that ever was in the world. Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous’ (272). Diogenes is, of course, the Cynic to whom Hume is referring. One may presume that the errors in religion are those of Pascal. This connection between the Treatise and the Enquiries is often missed.7 The point is deeper than just a connection between Hume’s two works, however. Commentators often studiously avoid, it seems to me, the Humean attack on religion. One cannot, of course, avoid the essay on miracles or the essay on God’s particular providence. But the overall attack is missed. Part of missing that point is missing the point about Pascal. It is important, it seems to me, to recognize that Hume is arguing for the socially pernicious nature of Pascal’s belief. The errors in religion, the errors that one finds in Pascal, are dangerous. It is not just that the ‘Dialogue’ concluding the second Enquiry deals with the relativity of ethical codes – which it does. But that is not all that it does. It is also an argument that some ethical codes – those of superstition – do not satisfy the principle of utility, nor do they fit in with the natural sympathetic tendencies of humankind. It is the credulity and superstition of Pascal that creates the belief in miracles. The alleged miracles of Port Royal are mentioned in the essay on miracles. This connection, too, is often missed. It ought not to be missed: the connection should be made between the close of the ‘Dialogue’ and the essay on miracles. And both should be connected to Hume’s judgment that religion – superstition and enthusiasm – is dangerous.

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Gibbon knew whereof Hume was speaking: after all, he had described ‘the triumph of barbarism and religion’ (Decline, ch. 71). He made much the same sort of contrast that Hume made: ‘The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her natural purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings’ (Decline, ch. 15). Gibbon later refers to Hume’s essay on miracles and in particular to the discussion of the Port Royal miracle of the thorn and the pricking of Pascal’s niece, comparing Hume to Voltaire and suggesting that the former is the better critic of religion than the latter: ‘Voltaire ... strives to invalidate the fact, but Hume ... with more skill and success, seizes the battery and turns the cannon against his enemies’ (Decline, ch. 61). Hume would agree with Gibbon on the ‘melancholy duty’ imposed on the historian. After all, he himself was an historian. Hume had described the Puritans in much the same way that Gibbon described the early Christians. For them, enthusiasm produced selfdelusion, which in turn produced the rationalizations that masked the knavery of self-love: ‘This indeed seems the key to most of the celebrated characters of that age. Equally full of fraud and ardour, these pious patriots talked perpetually of seeking the Lord, yet still pursued their own purposes; and have left a memorable lesson to posterity, how delusive, that principle is by which they were animated.’8 It is primarily in ages of barbarism that one finds people accepting the claims of miracles, Hume argues in his essay. So does Gibbon. Who would disagree? Who could take seriously Augustine’s catalogue of miracles of his own time, listed so tediously in his account of the City of God (Bk XXII, ch. 8)? Hume and, following him, Gibbon argue that the evidence for miracles is surprisingly weak even when well attested, as in the case of the Port Royal thorn. The argument for Christianity based on claims of miracles disappears. Hume and Gibbon are continuing the Reformation critique of miracles. The Reformers attacked the claims of Catholic miracles; for the Reformers, the only miracles for which there was reasonable evidence were the miracles at the time of the Fathers. But this is a difficult line to take. The same holds for the Jesuits. For them, the Port Royal miracles were a matter of ardour at least, if not fraud; certainly, the evidence that there were miracles was, as Voltaire argued, following the Jesuits, entirely absent if not fraudulent. But the regular miracles of

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the Church were acceptable, for Catholics and Reformers alike – though of course they often enough differed in the miracles they allowed. The problem that is there for both the Jesuits and the Reformers is that if you are sceptical about some miracles then you are likely to become sceptical about the rest: if the Jansenist miracles go, then so do the Jesuit miracles and the rest of those accepted by the Church; if the Catholic miracles go, then so do those that the Reformers take to testify to the truth of the Christian religion. It is in the essay on miracles that Hume makes his sustained attack on Christianity. The argument depends in the end on the account of reason – the account of a reasonable reason – for which Hume is arguing, even as he also argues on its basis that argument from miracles is simply unsound. It is often recognized that Hume argues that reason – that is, pure reason – cannot provide a justification of any causal inference, nor the inferences to the existence of bodies. The former is a matter of custom rather than reason – that is, pure reason. It does not follow that reason cannot provide reasons justifying one causal inference over another. Nor does it mean that one cannot have good reasons for believing – as we all inevitably do – in the existence of body and even in the existence of those bodies of which the new science talks. It depends on what one might reasonably refer to as reason. If reason is the capacity to grasp causes, then, if causation be a matter of regularity, as Hume’s first definition of ‘cause’ requires, then what other than custom could grasp those causes and what other than custom ought to be referred to as ‘reason’? Thus, having disposed of reason as providing knowledge of (‘ultimate’) causes (causes as necessary connections), but retaining as reasonable a set of ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (Treatise I, iii, 15), Hume enters, in the section that immediately follows, into a discussion of the reason of animals, a sort of reason that they share with us albeit to a lesser degree – reason in a sense of ‘reason’ that is other than the one that has just been rejected – but a reason in which conforming one’s thought to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ is a case of reason and, in fact, is reason at its best. That Hume redefines the concept of reason to a more reasonable concept than that provided by the rationalists and the Aristotelians is something that any adequate reading must recognize. This is important because it allows us to characterize Hume as a philosopher who is more than a sceptic. He is a philosopher who does allow that inductive inferences are a matter of reason, and who does allow that some inductive inferences are

Introduction

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more reasonable than others, and who even allows that it is reasonable to infer from our impressions the existence of body. It is precisely this recognition that there is a reasonable sense of ‘reason’ that enables him to draw the distinction between, on the one hand, theology, which reason (this reasonable sense of ‘reason’) condemns as useless, worthy of the flames, and, on the other hand, common sense and its extension, science, which reason judges useful, and worth saving – worth saving from the ravages of the fires of scepticism. In the Treatise, Hume provides a set of rules by which to judge of causes and effects. These rules define when it is reasonable to adopt towards a regularity (‘cause’ by Hume’s first definition of that concept) the attitude mentioned in the second definition of ‘cause.’ In the first Enquiry these rules are given in a rather different and more diffuse form, in a long footnote in the section dealing with the ‘Reason of Animals’ and just before the essay on ‘Miracles.’ The point of giving these rules in this context in the first Enquiry is to make clear that uniform experience of humankind justifies the inference to the principle that for every event there is a cause – that is, a naturalistic cause. An unusual and apparently miraculous event – for example, six days of darkness in the year 1600 or, perhaps, the effect of a thorn at Port Royal – in short, an example of an unusual event contrary to our expectations formed from nature yet to which there is strong testimonial evidence – on the basis of the causal principle such an event calls for the search for a naturalistic cause. That is, it does not call for the attribution of the event to the actions of a non-naturalistic deity. Hume clearly means for the reader to use these rules in his or her considerations concerning miracles. At least, that is what the reasonable person would do: use reasonable rules to provide reasoned judgments about the causes of unusual events. It is, I shall be arguing, reason in this reasonable sense of ‘reason’ that Hume uses to defend his critical realism: the reason which is critical of religion is just that reason which defends the scientific picture of the world. So it is evident, given the usual reading of Hume as a sceptical critic of reason, that in our exposition and defence of Hume’s critical realism we shall have to enter into an exposition and defence of the Humean concept of reason. In one respect that is the central argument of this essay. But our interest goes beyond that argument. We are interested more specifically in Hume’s theory of the external world – his critical realism. It is this theory for which we propose to give an exposition and a defence. It is our

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aim to defend this theory and to show that it is not an irrational and irresponsible ‘scepticism with regard to the senses,’ but rather a reasoned and reasonable account of the external world and our knowledge of it. The moral of our present reflections on Hume’s rhetoric about the burning or not burning of the books is that Hume sees his arguments as critical or sceptical of religion, on the one side, and as a defence of science, on the other. As we proceed, our central argument in defence of Hume as a critical realist, our reading of the texts, and our understandings of Hume’s arguments, ought to be and therefore will be guided by our knowledge of this telos of those arguments – by the idea that the scientific world view is located as fully reasonable, and by the idea that the sceptical arguments and the concept of ‘reason’ behind those arguments are directed not at this world view but rather at the worlds of theology and metaphysics. The Humean rhetoric implies that with regard to the scientific world view and the rules of the scientific method, Hume is not a sceptic. That notion will be our guide.

1 Abstract Ideas and Other Linguistic Rules in Hume

Language plays a central role in Hume’s philosophy of human nature and of human thought. As one would therefore expect, he gives a careful account of the conventions that define language. Specifically, he locates these conventions of language in the same context as those of justice: after describing the origins of justice, based on shared human interests, he tells us that ‘In like manner are languages gradually establish’d by human conventions without any promise’ (Treatise, 490). His locating of language in his account of morality implies that the general features of his account of the artificial virtues of morality apply equally to his account of the syntactical and semantical rules of language.1 If we are to set ourselves right with regard to Hume’s views on ideas and on epistemology, then we need to understand the conventional and normative nature of linguistic rules as well as the extension of these to normative rules in epistemology. At least so we shall argue. In Part A of this chapter we shall look at the role of language in Hume’s moral theory, and in particular in his account of promising. With that in the background we shall go on to attempt to obtain a broader view of Hume’s views on language. As we shall see, they are in fact, as we have just claimed, closely related to his views on moral principles. Syntactical and semantical rules garner their normative force from the same mechanism of sympathy through which moral rules acquire their force as normative. In order to become clear on these things we shall first have to look at the basic structure of Hume’s psychology. This, as is well known, was a version of associationism.2 We shall have to explore the logical structure of this theory of learning, and in particular we shall have to explore the method of introspective analysis. This latter is often neglected, to

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the detriment of a fair reading of Hume: too often its neglect leads to a picture of Hume as a ‘mere’ psychological atomist. This picture, as we shall see, is decidedly misleading. A much more adequate view of Hume’s account of ideas will emerge from our discussion. Now, in the Treatise Hume repeatedly uses the language of cognition when discussing ideas. Thus, in discussing causal inferences generally, he appeals to the logical properties of ideas: ‘We may draw inferences from the coherence of our perceptions, whether they be true or false; whether they represent nature justly, or be mere illusions of the senses’ (84). Again, we are said to ‘assent’ to ideas (94ff), another cognitive act, characterizing belief. The Treatise is stuffed with the language of eighteenth-century logics such as Crousaz or the Port Royal Logic, as for example when Hume speaks of the ‘simple conception of any thing’ (94), an act that is contrasted with the acts of uniting, separating, mingling, and confounding of our ideas which are cited later (94). Again, it is the mind that conceives and comprehends or understands (161, 162); this understanding is preceded by acts of conception or having ideas (164, 168). All of these Hume refers to as ‘actions of the mind’ (177); they are functions of the ‘intellectual faculties of the mind’ (138). This cognitive aspect of Hume’s account of ideas has been emphasized by such commentators as John Yolton.3 But at the same time, we also have the standard account of Hume’s views in which ideas are simply images and therefore lack cognitive functions. There is no doubt that there are both these strands in Hume. The usual response is that Hume was inconsistently trying to have the best of both worlds, in which ideas are simply images but at the same time also are intentional entities playing a cognitive role. The whole thing is treated as another example of Hume’s confused way of thinking. What we shall argue is that the two sides of Hume’s account of ideas can be reconciled if we explore carefully the research methods of associationist psychology, and in particular the method of introspective analysis. Once this is understood, I shall suggest, we will be able to see that Hume can, in principle at least, have it both ways, quite consistently. To be sure, he cannot be fully exonerated – as shall become clear, he himself did not fully understand the method of introspective psychology – and as a consequence his statements are never fully clear of confusion. But the point is that, if I am correct, then we can at least understand how the confusion arose. In Part B we take up the nature of the introspective psychology that Hume is developing and use this to reconcile the notion that ideas can

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be both images and cognitive. We shall use the same scientific theory of mind to make sense of certain other views that Hume has about ideas, in particular the question of the nature of confused ideas. In this connection we shall also criticize an alternative account of Hume’s psychology given by John Wright, one that emphasizes Hume’s allusions to physiology rather than introspection. In Part C we shall go on to show how Hume’s theory makes a radical break with the entire philosophical tradition on the relation between thought and language. In Part D we shall use these results to examine the issue of the ‘new Hume’ – does Hume really allow that there are objective necessary connections? In an Appendix to this chapter we shall look briefly at the claim that Hume is better viewed as a ‘cognitive scientist’ than as an associationist in psychology. A. Language and Hume’s Moral Theory The utilitarian aspects of Hume’s account of morality are well known. The virtues are settled patterns of action and behaviour that are productive of good consequences, good either for the actor or for others. As Hume says, ‘every quality of the mind, which is useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others, communicates a pleasure to the spectator, engages his esteem, and is admitted under the honourable denomination of virtue or merit’ (EM, section IX, Part I, p. 276). There are on the one hand the natural virtues, which we would have even in a situation of non-scarcity, and on the other hand the artificial virtues of justice and property, or promising and contract, or allegiance (as well as the artificial virtues of chastity and modesty). The artificial virtues depend on the formation of social conventions, general conformity to which serves the interests of all in situations of general scarcity, or, more generally, of a common need. The conventions of justice or property provide a social order for the distribution of scarce material goods, giving one the right to keep and to use goods that one possesses, and imposing on others the obligation to respect that right; and, correspondingly, giving others the rights to their goods, and imposing upon oneself the obligation to leave them free to keep and to use their goods. Hume’s account of the roots of these conventions of property provide the model for his accounts of the roots of the other conventions: those of promising and contract, and those of allegiance, as well as other norms. For Hume, there are no metaphysical roots to virtue: virtue is what

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we commend as virtuous and what we commend as virtues are those settled patterns of action that benefit oneself or others. There is no metaphysical human essence that defines human virtue. Nonetheless, for Hume virtue is indeed rooted in human nature, except that it is rooted in the empirical features of what humans are and what they might become. And what humans are, though they may become more than this, are material beings with material needs. Community exists, not because it is part of the human essence that we are communal or political beings, but because we are on the one hand animal and on the other hand rational. We come to recognize that communal order – law, if you wish – is the price we must pay in order to satisfy our material needs in this world of scarce resources. Unless there are established ways to divide scarce resources peacefully, no one can be sure of satisfying any of his or her needs. It is only a general sense of common interest; which sense all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces to regulate their conduct by certain rules. I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regularity of his conduct. (490)

What moves us into the cooperative behaviour that is defining of being in a society are prudential considerations shared by members of the society. These prudential considerations concern the sharing of scarce goods to satisfy our material needs. These prudential considerations lead each and therefore all to conform to standards of cooperative behaviour. These standards are reasonably called conventions, but they cannot be understood as being of the nature of a social contract since they do not originate in any sort of promise. When this common sense of interest is mutually express’d, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be call’d a convention or agreement betwixt us, tho’ without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are perform’d upon the supposition, that something is performed on the other part. (490)

But of course we must go beyond the rules of property. Unless we also had conventions that establish ways to transfer what is possessed

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but unwanted for what is wanted but possessed by another, we could hardly raise ourselves above the level of mere subsistence. Unless there are established ways to help enforce conformity to these established ways of interacting, the strength of human self-love will call into question whether we should continue with these ways of dividing scarce resources and of exchanging them with others. We have here, of course, beyond the conventions of property those of contract or promising and those of allegiance. Satisfying our material needs as human beings requires conformity to these conventions. The laws of property, contract, and allegiance exist in order to achieve order. Order is necessary for the satisfaction of our needs: it is the instrument. But its use is not without cost: law requires that we not do things we want to do and that we not seize goods that we might, at the moment, want. So order is a good that is to be purchased. What we gain is long-term security and the greater certainty that in the longer run we will continue to obtain the material goods we need. The order secured by conformity to the conventions of law is thus an instrumental good that achieves long-term gain at the expense of short-term loss: but the gain is far greater than the loss. The deal is worth it. The order involves the coordination of action among individuals. Specifically, the order consists in it being the case that for every person, if that person is in a situation X, then that person does Y. Insofar as each of us desires peace through order, each of us desires that this generalization be true. We therefore so act to ensure that it is true: each one of us trains or habituates both oneself and at the same time others so that one’s own and their behaviour conforms to this rule, that is, so that this generalization does turn out – on the whole, at least – to be true. This conformity is a habit that exists in each person: it is inculcated in that person both by him- or herself and by all others. Each of us has an interest in the rule being true, that is, an interest in conformity to the convention being universal. This is, of course, not a native interest; it is rather an artificial interest or passion, an interest that arises from our awareness that this general conformity is the means to our long-run happiness. Thus, insofar as there is a natural justification or motive to justice, it is interest. Thus, the justice that binds people into a community has its roots not in a moral essence of humankind but in the material, the animal, interests of each individual. We turn now to the account of morality – and, as we shall see, Hume’s account of linguistic convention.

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Here is the well-known and standard picture of what Hume the moral theorist is up to: considerations of utility justify certain social conventions; these conventions form a sort of social contract; conformity to the standards of this social contract constitutes the artificial virtues. Páll Árdal has drawn attention to the way in which Hume’s account of promising has been taken up by the Oxford philosopher John Austin in his account of ‘I promise’ as a performative utterance. What is important about ‘I promise’ is not simply the syntax but also the pragmatics of the expression. On Austin’s account it is the performance, the saying, of ‘I promise’ that is central: that performance creates on the side of the speaker the committed intention to do what was promised and, on the side of the person spoken to, the firm expectation that what was promised will be done. Hume puts the point about the relevant speech acts this way: ‘They [promises] are the conventions of men which create a new motive when experience has taught us that human affairs would be conducted much more for mutual advantage were there certain symbols or signs instituted by which we might give each other security of our conduct in any particular incident. After these signs are instituted whoever uses them is immediately bound by his interest to execute his engagements and must never expect to be trusted any more if he refuse to perform what he promised’ (Treatise, III, ii, 5, p. 521). The speech act creates the committed intention and the firm expectation in the promisor and promisee respectively. And that is to say that the speech act causes the committed intention and the firm expectation to come into existence. But this causal pattern is a consequence of learning: we have been so habituated that this is how such speech acts affect us. Because this pattern is learned, it is conventional rather than natural; and because it is useful, it is artificial, a consequence of the artifice of reasonable persons. And note that both promisor and promisee have been so habituated. It is because of this fact – that they are both affected in certain ways by the speech act – that their behaviour comes to be coordinated by that act. For Austin the point about speech acts was rather simple. For Hume, too, the point is one about speech acts, about the conventions of language conformity that bring it about that certain speech acts create committed intentions and firm expectations. But for Hume it is more complicated than it is for Austin. For Hume recognizes that there can be other signs besides the speech act of saying ‘I promise’ that create the intention and the expectation. Hume does not dwell on the subtleties;

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he hurries on to other points. Árdal, however, has followed up this Humean point in his discussion of promising, to show that Austin is neither as original as some have supposed nor as subtle as one needs to be in order to give a full picture of the conventions that are involved in promising. There is another, often unnoticed, aspect of promising that Árdal brings out, one that sheds more light on Hume’s argument. Many before Hume had argued that we are obliged to obey the laws because we have promised so to do in return for the guarantee that these laws will be enforced by the chief magistrate. We promise to conform in return for the good of being ensured that others will be required to keep their similar promises to obey the law. As a promise is supposed to be a bond or security already in use and attended with a moral obligation it is to be considered as the original sanction of government and as the source of the first obligation to obedience. This reasoning appears so natural that it has become the foundation of our fashionable system of politics and is in a manner the creed of a party amongst us who pride themselves with reason on the soundness of their philosophy and their liberty of thought. (Treatise, III, ii, 8, p. 541) I say first that a promise is not intelligible naturally nor antecedent to human conventions. (Ibid., III, ii, 5, p. 516)

But there is a further point that is directed against the specific claim that law and order derives its authority from promising. Those who hold that social authority derives from promising assume that one makes the promise in order to obtain a return. But this cannot be, because promising, unlike contracting, does not involve the expectation of a return. To be sure, the conventions of promising yield a benefit in which everyone shares provided that there is general conformity to the conventions. The same holds for contracting. But while there are such general benefits that derive from keeping our promises, when we promise we do not expect that the promisee will pay directly for what has been promised. In the case of contract, however, the contract is made in the expectation that the contractee will provide a return to the contractor. In the case of a promise, what is promised is a gift; in the case of a contract, there is a trade: ‘When a man says he promises any thing, he in effect expresses a resolution of performing it; and along with that, by making use of this form of words, subjects himself to the penalty of

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never being trusted again in case of failure’ (Ibid., III, ii, 5, p. 521). Thus, in promising, one imposes an obligation on oneself alone; in contracting, in contrast, there is an obligation imposed on both parties. Now, the relations that are defined by the conventions of property and allegiance impose obligations on both parties. In the case of property, the conventions impose on each party the obligation to respect the property of the other. In the case of allegiance, the conventions impose the duty of obedience on the subject and the duty of conforming to the constitution on the chief magistrate. Since there are obligations on both parties in the case of the conventions of property and allegiance, it follows that these conventions cannot derive their authority from promising, which imposes an obligation on one party only. Árdal has directed our attention to this distinction between promising and contract and has argued for its importance.4 In arguing for the importance of the distinction, he is drawing from a point that is there already in Hume. In fact, it is a distinction that, while absent from the Common Law of England, is present in Scots law.5 Thus, Lord Stair, in his Institutions, the work definitory of Scots law, contrasted a promise to a contract. The former is ‘that which is simple and pure, and hath not implied as a condition the acceptance of another.’6 Contracts, in contrast to promises, require, as Árdal has indicated, the acceptance by another. But both are, in the appropriate contexts, binding both morally and in law. We can see where we want to run with this: The key point that Hume makes against any argument that the authority of the laws of property and allegiance arise from some sort of (social) contract is that promising, which is at the core of the practice of making contracts, presupposes the existence of conventions and therefore cannot account for the authority of those conventions: promising presupposes linguistic conventions, it therefore cannot explain those conventions. As Hume explains: It [the rule for property] arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it ... This experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct; and it is only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. In like manner are lan-

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guages gradually established by human conventions, without any promise. In like manner do gold and silver become the common measures of exchange, and are esteemed sufficient payment for what is of a hundred times their value. (490; emphasis added)

What Hume argues with regard to the rule of justice or property, that it is a convention but one that does not arise by way of a promise or a decision, applies equally, he is here emphasizing, to the rules of language.7 Hence, if we understand meaning – linguistic meaning – as determined by rules with normative force, then those rules cannot be explained in terms of an intentional act, a speech act, that determines that meaning. Some may be so explained, but in the end the conventions derive from elsewhere. So Hume argues. This argument is clear: we have examined it already. The idea is to show that the conventions of language acquire the force they have through their being instituted by a volition or act of will: words have the meanings they have through a sort of social contract created by the determination – a volition – to use words in a certain way. But a volition can confer meaning only if certain conventions obtain – the conventions of naming, for example. So linguistic meaning cannot be accounted for in terms of determinations to use words in certain ways.8 There are two more general morals that we need to draw: The first and more specific of these morals has to do with whether Hume is a subjectivist, as is so often claimed. This is important for the present essay, since its claim that Hume is a critical realist involves the denial that Hume is a subjectivist. So we are building already in this discussion of meaning and of rules of language the case we need in order to establish and defend Hume’s critical realism. Now, to repeat, it is often said that Hume is a subjectivist, in the sense that for him our acquaintance with the world consists of acquaintance with impressions and ideas, all of which are subjective entities. The claim is made often enough that it must have some basis in the text. Or, it should be said, in the text of Book I of the Treatise. But we have just seen that Hume argues in Book III that the conventions of language arise in a social context: they are artificial norms that arise to ensure the satisfaction of human needs common to those in a social community. Our ideas achieve meaning not through their being baptized but through social conventions that develop in human communities. But to say that meaning arises in a social context is to imply that meaning is

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not wholly subjective. One must take this point found in Book III about meaning back to Book I and apply it to the discussion of meaning that one finds there. It follows that the linguistic meaning discussed in Book I presupposes a social context. In other words, there must be an important sense in which the philosophy that Hume presents in Book I of the Treatise cannot be subjectivist. The second and more general moral to be drawn from our discussion of language rules has to do with the way in which one might best read Hume. The point, just made, that one should use the text of Book III to argue that the Hume of Book I is not a subjectivist, is, it seems to me, obvious once one treats Books I and III of the Treatise as a single work, in which the discussions of language and of linguistic meaning in both books are intended to present a common view of language. The crucial move here consists in putting together these two books: one reads Book III in the light of Book I and Book I in the light of Book III. This move, which brings the two books together as parts of a single work, has become fairly common.9 The hermeneutics is simple, but only so long as one approaches Books I and III, not as separate treatises, but rather as two parts of a single work. That people are now reading the Treatise as a single work, where Book III must be read in the light of Book I and Book I read in the light of Book III, depends on there being some general recognition that there is a Book II which links the extremes into a unified work. It was Árdal’s achievement in Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, to effect the rediscovery as it were of Book II and to restore to the Treatise a unity that it had lost. This makes Árdal’s work central not only to the reading of Hume that is developed in the present essay but also central to any reading of the Treatise that hopes to make a legitimate claim to our serious attention. Hume studies must be grateful. But more must be said about Hume’s account of our moral rules, the rules of property, contract, and allegiance, specifically – keeping in mind that Hume intends his account of the rules of property to apply, given suitable changes, to the rules – that is, to syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and epistemic norms and to our moral and aesthetic norms. These norms or conventions are artificial, justified by considerations of prudence: general conformity to these norms will yield a better life, one that better secures the material means necessary to survival (and reproduction). In other words, what we have of the moral theory is that the norms are prudential: we have Hume as a utilitarian and a contractar-

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ian. This is a common view of what Hume is up to, and that this exhausts his moral theory. And indeed it is not wrong – but it is satisfactory only up to a point. Hume is indeed a utilitarian and a contractarian, but that is not all, there are other features to Hume’s moral theory. Hume the utilitarian and contractarian is close to Hobbes and to Locke, to this extent anyway, that conformity to the moral rules we have for property and so forth are based on prudential considerations. But Hume is not Hobbes, nor is he Locke: certainly, this standard view of Hume as a sort of sophisticated Hobbesian or Lockean does not give a full picture of Hume’s moral theory. We need to recognize these other features of Hume’s account of moral principles if we are to do justice not only to his moral theory here but also to his parallel views on the conventions of language. The standard picture highlights the fact that people are moved by self-interest in things material: they do need to eat, they do need housing, and so on. It is this motive that leads them into social relationships: acting in conformity with those relationships, they can better satisfy those needs. These relationships are purely conventional, and their basis, the justification of our acting in conformity with them, lies in the prudential concerns of self-interest. If this is taken, if only by implication, to be the whole of Hume’s moral and political theory, then it takes the Humean vision of human being to be that of rational calculators moved solely by material or economic self-interest. This, to make the point again, is to locate Hume in the tradition of Hobbes and Locke, for whom that is indeed an accurate vision of human being. The difficulty is that this is not the whole of Hume’s vision. In fact, Hume is responding to criticisms of Hobbes and Locke, and he tries to incorporate into his position on morals, politics, and the vision of human being the substance of those criticisms. Here again one must note the significance of Book II of the Treatise. While, to be sure, the relevant material does appear in Book III of the Treatise, which is where one finds the discussion of moral norms, it is also the case that, if one is to understand this discussion, it is necessary to refer back to material in and themes from Book II. Since Book II has tended to be ignored, so have been the corresponding parts of Book III. The result has been the crippled view of Hume as a mere utilitarian, or mere contractarian. Árdal’s recovery of Book II has forced scholars to draw a more complete, more accurate picture of Hume. The relevant point about human being was made long ago by Aristotle, who insisted that society is not there simply for the convenience of

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its members – society is not simply a set of conventions designed to make survival easier, not just a set of norms justified by prudential considerations. To be sure, it is that. The point is, it is not just that. Rather, society is, besides that, a moral community. It is clear that a state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and selfsufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence there arise in cities family connexions, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which draw men together. But these are created by friendship, for to choose to live together is friendship. The end of the state is the good life, and these are the means towards it. And the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and honourable life. (Politics, Bk III, 1280b25–1281a2)

To say that society is in this way a moral community is to say that there is more to it than self-interest. Which means in turn that it is not correct to ascribe to human beings only motives of self-interest. There must be, besides that, moral motives. Hobbes had argued that the norms of civil society – the norms of property, of contract or promising, and of allegiance to the chief magistrate – are purely prudential. The standard view, deriving from Aristotle, was that these norms are rooted in a human essence or form; they are part of human nature. The point is metaphysical: any individual with this essence or form aims, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, at the ends determined by the essence, where this essence or form is a metaphysical reality not given in ordinary sense experience of the things of the world but presented rather in a sort of rational intuition.10 And since the essence or form determines how we necessarily aim, it determines what we ought to do. The essences are not only descriptive but also normative: the values required by civil society are built into our very being and into the ontological structure of the universe. All things have a built-in teleology determined by their essence or form, but human beings have a further capacity, that of becoming aware of or conscious of essences: we are rational creatures and are able to become aware of these reasons for things. Among the essences of which we can become aware

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are our own; this is an awareness of our necessarily determined ultimate ends. About these, we as rational beings do not deliberate; but we can deliberate about means to these ends. Among the ultimate ends, sanctified by the ontological structure of the universe, are the norms of civil society: simple self-awareness will tell us that much. This had been the background in Richard Hooker. But Hobbes invoked what is in effect the empiricist principle, that if something is not given in sense experience or explained in terms that are, then that thing does not exist, it is not to be part of one’s ontology. This eliminates the essences or forms of things from the furniture of the universe. But in doing that there is also an elimination of the human essence or form, and of course our awareness of such things. That is, there is the elimination of both the moral structure of the universe, including the norms of civil society, and that part of human nature that aims us towards those things as ultimate ends. The result is an account of human beings in which they simply are not fit for civil society, nor do they have any moral sense. All action is prudential, towards ends that have no intrinsic moral value. This includes the rules of civil society: we conform ourselves to their dictates and the dictates of the sovereign because in so doing we will jointly rescue ourselves from the worse fate of the state of nature, of the ‘war of all against all.’ Civil society is justified by the fact that it is useful, not because it is intrinsically good, justified by the moral structure of the universe. Such was Hobbes’s vision of human being. That vision immediately drew criticisms from those with, as they saw it, a vision of human beings as beings which are more than animals.11 The relativity of the rules of the social order, according to Hobbes, was clear. And so Bishop John Bramhall, in The Catching of the Leviathan, argued that Hobbes got himself in effect into a contradiction in arguing that propositions about what is right and wrong may be ‘true’ in one society and ‘false’ in another. He prayed to God to save us from such times as would entertain such a doctrine: ‘Into what times are we fallen? When the immutable laws of God and Nature are made to depend upon the mutable laws of mortal men: just as if one should go about to control the sun by the authority of the clock.’12 The problem, in Bramhall’s view, was Hobbes’s inaccurate account of human nature: for Bramhall, Hobbes ‘could not have villified ... human nature more than he doth.’13 George Lawson argued similarly that Hobbes ‘makes all men brutes, nay wild and ravenous beasts, and birds of prey, until they have made themselves into slaves unto some absolute sovereign, and such they must be, either beasts by the law of nature, or slaves

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by the law of a civil state.’14 Lawson to the contrary accepted the older metaphysical view of human being and human nature, that it includes an inclination towards civil government: the quarrels that we find in civil society are due not to nature but to its corruption.15 Again, William Lucy argued that Hobbes, by fixating on the worst characteristics of human beings rather than on their best, in effect turned each person into ‘an incarnate devil, acting on those things which we abominate.’16 There are, to be sure, moral monsters, just as there are physical monsters; but one ought not to base generalizations on the worst cases. The overwhelming majority of people can be friends, one to another, just as Adam and Eve were friends (p. 38) and just as persons marooned on an island would be companions (p. 48), in each case drawn together by their ‘common interest ... in humanity’ (p. 148), following principles imprinted in the hearts of human beings by God independently of, and prior to, the activities of any sovereign (pp. 148, 158). Another critic, Lowde, attacked the Hobbesian concept of human nature, accusing Hobbes of mistaking the antisocial parts of human nature for the whole; he suggested that Hobbes was like a troublesome fly, ‘always busy about the sores of human nature.’ The problem lay with Hobbes himself; his introspective analysis made his own case a model for all: ‘Because the bloodshot eye of one man’s mind represents all things in red colours; therefore [for Hobbes] must cruelty [appear to] be the ... universal dictate of nature.’17 Here is another response, that of John Donne: And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out, The sun is lost, and th’earth, and no man's wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world’s spent, When in the planets and the firmament They seek so many new; they see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. ’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, All just supply, and all relation; Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a phoenix, and that then can be None of that kind, of which he is, but he. This is the world’s condition now, and now

Abstract Ideas and Other Linguistic Rules in Hume She that should all parts to reunion bow, She that had all magnetic force alone, To draw, and fasten sund’red parts in one; She whom wise nature had invented then When she observ’d that every sort of men Did in their voyage in this world's sea stray, And needed a new compass for their way; She that was best and first original Of all fair copies, and the general Steward to fate ...18

Or look at Ulysses’ speech from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: Degree being vizarded, Th’ unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order; And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthron’d and spher’d Amidst the other, whose med’cinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents, what mutiny, What raging of the sea, shaking of earth, Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate, The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak’d, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string,

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External World and Our Knowledge of It And hark what discord follows! Each thing melts In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe; Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead; Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong – Between whose endless jar justice resides – Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. (1.3.75–124)

‘Degree being vizarded’ – ‘all coherence gone’ – that is, when the necessary ontological structure goes, so does the natural social order, so indeed does all justice and virtue – it is the Hobbesian world in which it is might that makes right: ‘Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong – / Between whose endless jar justice resides – / Should lose their names, and so should justice too.’ In a world where it was assumed there was in the ontological structure of the universe an objective moral order that existing social relations reflected and were justified by – in a world with this assumption, how could the Hobbesian vision of human being be seen as anything but a threat to order? Far from providing a justification for a moral order, its presumption that there is no a priori moral order, no human essence ordained by the deity to determine what ought to be, – this presumption undermines and cannot but undermine the very possibility of a stable society – that is, a society in which one receives a fair share of scarce but necessary resources and holds those goods with reasonable security. Hume’s response to Hobbes and to the critics of Hobbes was to attempt to find in the empirical nature of humankind some feature that could do, psychologically at least, the task that was done in the older scheme by our capacity to grasp the moral order of things and of human relations. He argues, with Hobbes, that the norms of civil society are based on considerations of self-interest. But there is, besides selflove, another natural tendency in human beings, and that is the psycho-

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logical mechanism of sympathy, which moves people in such a way that these norms, as benefiting the common good with which we sympathize, acquire moral as well as prudential force: ‘The whole scheme ... of law and justice is advantageous to the society; and it was with a view to this advantage that men, by their voluntary conventions, established it. After it is once established by these conventions, it is naturally attended with a strong sentiment of morals, which can proceed from nothing but our sympathy with the interests of society. We need no other explication of that esteem which attends such of the natural virtues as have a tendency to the public good’ (Treatise, III, iii, 1, p. 579). The moral force of the norms of civil society therefore is rooted in something like a moral sense. This was Hume’s gesture to the moral intuitionists, though they could rightly object that this gesture, this offer of a relatively attractive aspect to humankind, hardly gave them the ontological foundations of value that their metaphysics of morals was designed to provide. But that is another story. It was precisely the attempt to ground morality in matters of ordinary fact about human beings that was the basis of major criticisms of Hobbes and Locke. Many of these criticisms were formulated by the philosophical followers of Newton such as Samuel Clarke and Richard Bentley. These philosophers were all concerned to show that the new science of Boyle, Newton, and Locke was not only compatible with, but actually provided substantial support for, both natural religion and Christianity. Bentley and Clarke each gave a set of Boyle lectures. Bentley was concerned to defend Newton’s physics and ontology by showing that systematically pursuing its implications led one directly to a belief in God; Clarke was concerned to establish the existence of God in the more or less traditional sense. But both were also concerned to establish the reality of moral distinctions. Thus Bentley, in an important sermon preached before King George I, argued that ‘our Creator has implanted in mankind such appetites and inclinations, such natural wants and exigencies, that they lead him spontaneously to the love of society and friendship, to the desire of government and community’ (Sermon, p. 267). Humankind thus has not only the natural impulses that incline us to the accumulation of material things, but also natural impulses to virtue: virtue is not something learned pragmatically and justified prudentially, but is a priori, built into the structure of human nature. And acting on these impulses to virtue is the highest good; conforming to these impulses in our

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nature provides us with the highest pleasures: ‘The sweetness and felicity of life consists in duly exerting and employing those sociable passions of the soul, those natural inclinations to charity and compassion’ (ibid., p. 269). Hobbes and Locke must therefore be wrong in their vision of humankind and of the motives that lead people to act. Clarke similarly proposed to refute the claim that ‘there is no ... real Difference [between Good and Evil] originally, necessarily, and absolutely in the Nature of Things’ (Discourse, p. 6). The grounds of objective duty are the objective relations of things established in God’s intellect: The ... necessary and eternal different Relations, that different Things bear one to another, and the ... consequent Fitness or Unfitness of the Applications of different things or different Relations one to another ... ought ... constantly to determine the Wills of all ... rational Beings, to govern all Their Actions by the same Rules, for the Good of the Publick, in their respective Stations. (p. 3)

For Clarke these moral relations are self-evident in the way that the truths of arithmetic and geometry are self-evident: These things are so notoriously plain and self-evident, that nothing but the extremest stupidity of Mind, corruption of Manners, or perverseness of Spirit can possibly make any man entertain the least doubt concerning them. For a Man endued with Reason, to deny the Truth of these Things, is the very same thing, ... as if a Man that understands Geometry or Aritmetick, should deny the most obvious and known Proportions of Line or Numbers, and perversely content that the Whole is not equal to all its parts. (p. 6)

Similarly, Shaftesbury argued that Locke had been an even greater disaster for a reasonable view of human being than had Hobbes. As he put it in one of his letters, Locke was more effective and therefore more dangerous than Hobbes, for Mr Hobbes’s character and base slavish principles of government took off the poison of his philosophy. ’Twas Mr Locke that struck at all fundamentals, threw all order and virtue out of the world, and made the very ideas of these (which are the same as those of God) unnatural, and without foundation in our minds.19

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In fact, those who do good only through fear do not in fact do good: if through hope merely of reward, or fear of punishment, the creature be incited to do the good he hates, or restrained from doing the ill to which he is not otherwise in the least degree averse, there is ... no virtue or goodness whatsoever. The creature, notwithstanding his good conduct, is intrinsically of as little worth as if he acted in his natural way, when under no dread or terror of any sort.20

Certainly, they are not the sort of persons with which we should like to associate ourselves in a social community, ‘for those who have no better a Reason for being honest than the Fear of a Gibbet or a jail; I shou’d not, I confess, much covet their Company, or Acquaintance.’21 Shaftesbury argues that if ‘generation be natural, if natural affection and care and nurture of the offspring be natural, things standing as they do with man, and the creature being of the form and constitution he now is, “it follows that society must also be natural to him.”’22 However, if society is natural to human beings, then they must also have those ‘notions and principles of fair, just and honest’ that make this possible.23 They are in fact universal, so far as we can tell, and we can therefore reasonably conclude, Shaftesbury argues, that they are instinctive, a part of a human being’s ‘natural moral sense,’24 or natural ‘sense of right and wrong.’25 They are part of ‘our constitution and make’ and are as ‘natural to us as natural affection itself.’26 The point was simply stated by another preacher, William Claggett, in his sermon Of the Humanity and Charity of Christians,27 in which he argued that ‘Nature it self has given me a sense of the Miseries of others, which had been a trouble without any advantage, if she had not thereby shewn me the way to ease my self, by relieving them.’28 Claggett suggested that it is this capacity for sympathy that distinguishes humans from all other creatures: ‘To Man only of all Creatures under Heaven, God has given this quality, to be affected with the Grief and with the Joy of those of his own kind; and to feel the Evils which others feel, that we may be universally disposed to help and relieve one another.’29 As a final example of the common criticism of Hobbes and Locke, let us note the scientist and philosopher–theologian Isaac Barrow, who protested that Hobbes’s doctrine was a ‘monstrous paradox, crossing the common sense of men, which in this loose and vain world hath lately got such vogue that all men naturally are enemies one to

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another.’30 In fact, we are obliged to act benevolently precisely because, contrary to Locke, such acts are rooted innately in our human nature: ‘We are indispensably obliged to these duties, because the best of our natural inclinations prompt us to the performance of them, especially those of pity and benignity, which are manifestly discernible in all, but most powerful and best natures; and which, questionless, by the same most wise and good Author of our beings were implanted therein both as monitors to direct, and as spurs to incite us to the performance of our duty.’31 Now, the point is that these philosophers are following lines that, as we have suggested, were laid down already in a tradition going back to Aristotle and Plato. On this view there is an eternal human essence, which is also, in the Christian version of this metaphysics, an idea in the mind of God. This essence not only defines what human being is but also what, ideally, it ought to be. It not only explains what human beings are, as their formal cause, but also as the final cause defines what they ought to be. On the account deriving from Aristotle, it is part of this essence that human beings are social beings, concerned not only with their own well-being but also with justice and the well-being of others. The essence thus defines human virtue and vice, and these include the social virtues and social vices. Contrary to Hobbes and Locke there are indeed moral motives in human beings, motives that aim at the good, at the human ideal or essence. These motives are judged by reason to be right or wrong, and they are true or false in the sense that they aim or fail to aim at the achievement of the human good or essence. Now, Hume is concerned to establish, in agreement with these thinkers, and against Hobbes and Locke, that human beings are moral beings, that there are moral sentiments that move us to action over and above the motives of self-interest that form the foundation of civil society. Árdal explored the nature of moral evaluation according to Hume in his Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, and modified and extended these views in ‘Another Look at Hume’s Account of Moral Evaluation.’32 He makes clear how Hume rejects the objectivism of thinkers such as Bentley and Clarke. This relativist account of moral evaluation is explicit in, for example, the following remark that Hume makes in Book III of the ‘Treatise,’ in the context of his discussion of promises: ‘All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action, or quality of mind, pleases us after a certain manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it’ (517; see also 245–6).

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Bentley and Clarke appealed to a concept of reason that could grasp the real essences of things as formal and final causes of things. Hume has already rejected this concept of reason in Book I of the Treatise. This is in effect the core of Hume’s famous scepticism about objective necessary connections33: we do not know the real essences or forms of things, the objective necessary connections among entities. Understanding things does not consist in grasping such eternal essences, but rather in subsuming things under matter-of-fact regularities. Reason, that is, Humean reason, thus does not grasp an objective eternal standard by means of which to judge the truth and falsity of our moral evaluations: in this sense, there is no foundation in the essences of things for standards of evaluation. Reason thus yields no ‘ought’: in Humean terms, ‘is’ does not imply ‘ought.’ It does not follow that there is no foundation in human nature for morality, nor that we are unable to understand our moral evaluations. It is just that there is no objective standard. Árdal has made the point quite correctly and very nicely: for thinkers such as Bentley and Clarke, reason is conformity to the nature of things ... Moral action can be described as action in conformity with nature, reason or truth. The eternal laws of reason are exemplified in God’s creation, although values are not created by God. Hume’s conception of nature is different, in that, according to him, nature has no value as such, nor can we presuppose that it exemplifies any sort of rational order. He is trying to make intelligible to us the emergence of value in a universe which has no value as such. Value arises within the world from the fact that occurrences within nature arouse emotions in sentient creatures and provoke reactions from them. Good and evil both arise within nature and one is no more closely connected with truth than the other. For the rationalists conformity with truth and goodness become equivalent. Hume would say that their account begs the question for it fails to show why conformity with truth is good. 34

Values, that is, moral evaluations, arise within nature. There are regularities that connect these emotional states with others as their genetic antecedents. Humean understanding consists in subsuming facts under matter-of-fact regularities. We can therefore, on the Humean philosophy, come to understand the roots of morality in human nature – except it is not nature taken to be a metaphysical essence but rather nature as simply the facts of this world as they are given to us in ordinary sense and inner experience. Other thinkers had located the pas-

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sions as part of human nature without an objective basis to be grasped by reason. For thinkers such as Descartes and Clarke the passions functioned as signs to enable us to cope with existence in the natural world; thus, fear was a sign of danger, and the rational person acted on that sign to avoid the threat. But the passions, although useful, were neither true nor false as defined by a metaphysical human essence. Hume extends this fairly standard account of the passions to the moral sentiments. We judge actions and dispositions to be morally good just in case they are productive of happiness or pleasure, either in oneself or in others. And just as fear is a sign of danger, so moral approbation is a sign of utility. Just as fear is neither true nor false, so moral approbation is neither true nor false. Árdal made explicit this link between the passions and moral evaluations in Hume’s philosophy when he insisted that any full account of Hume’s philosophy must include the treatment of the passions in Book II of the Treatise. Central to Hume’s naturalistic account of both the passions in general and moral evaluations in particular is his notion that sympathy is an innate part of human being. Sympathy works like this. We have all seen infants who are new walkers. These infants take a tremendous pleasure in their achievement. Whoever looks with even a little attention at these children recognizes the pleasure they are taking in their success; and more, who so attends to that success feels the same pleasure in that success. Or a child falls in the water and feels fear at the danger of drowning, a fear expressed in his or her struggles. Someone who witnesses this will respond to the child’s struggles by experiencing the same fear that the child experiences, the fear of the danger of the situation into which the child has fallen. The witness will, like the child, act on that fear and move to rescue the child from the danger. In both these examples, the observer comes, through a more or less automatic mechanism, to feel the same passion with the same object as is felt by the person observed. This mechanism is sympathy. In Book II of the Treatise, Hume appeals to this mechanism to account for certain fundamental features of our passions. He further appeals to processes of association to explain how our sympathetic responses come to have different objects than those which first evoked those responses. Sympathy is undoubtedly a part of ordinary human nature, and equally undoubtedly processes of substitution, generalization, and sublimation do occur. Whether the latter can be derived from the former solely by processes of association is more doubtful. Árdal at any rate, in

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his Passion and Value in Hume’s ‘Treatise,’ argues that Hume’s account is too mechanical. He may well be correct. At the same time, however, and to repeat, processes of substitution, generalization, and sublimation do in fact occur, and it is this fact, and not the attempt at an associationist explanation sketch, that is crucial for Hume’s linking of the passions and moral evaluations to the mechanism of sympathy. Árdal both qualifies and develops the Humean thesis of the importance of sympathy for human being in his essay ‘Of Sympathetic Imagination.’35 This mechanism is in fact central to Hume’s moral theory. For it is this mechanism that, Hume argues, transforms the prudential conventions of justice, promising, and allegiance into moral rules, moral standards that define the moral community of human being. The moral rules of civil society – the argument works in the same way for rules of language – could not possibly be innate; their objects are too varied to suppose that there is any innate mechanism in human being that brings about our conformity to those rules. Nor could they be based in some general human benevolence, for our sense of benevolence extends only as far as the limits of our family or small tribal group. What enables groups to live together in situations of scarcity is the artifice of the conventions of justice, promising, and allegiance. Prudential reason seeking to secure our own self-interest extends the limits of civil society in a way that our innate but limited benevolence cannot do. These conventions create new motives. Thus, promising, for example, creates new motives in both the promisor and promisee – a new commitment in the former and a new expectation in the latter. These new motives, new interests, move people to ensure that what was promised is in fact done: ‘[Promises] are the conventions of men, which create a new motive, when experience has taught us that human affairs would be conducted much more for mutual advantage, were there certain symbols or signs instituted, by which we might give each other security of our conduct in any particular incident. After these signs are instituted, whoever uses them is immediately bound by his interest to execute his engagements, and must never expect to be trusted any more if he refuse to perform what he promised’ (Treatise, III, ii, 5, p. 521; emphasis added). If a promise is not kept, then the promisor feels the frustration of his or her unfulfilled expectation. Our sympathy responds to this; we feel the same unease. We thus come to respond to injustice even where it does not affect us directly. Through a process of generalization this unease, this disapprobation, comes to be directed at any violation of the

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rules of promising, or, more generally, of rules of civil society. It comes even to be directed at any violation of these rules that we commit or might be tempted to commit. Its object thus becomes that each and all conform to the conventions of civil society; its object becomes the general good of all the members of civil society: But though, in our own actions, we may frequently lose sight of that interest which we have in maintaining order, and may follow a lesser and more present interest, we never fail to observe the prejudice we receive, either mediately or immediately, from the injustice of others; as not being in that case either blinded by passion, or biassed by any contrary temptation. Nay, when the injustice is so distant from us as no way to affect our interest, it still displeases us; because we consider it as prejudicial to human society, and pernicious to every one that approaches the person guilty of it. We partake of their uneasiness by sympathy; and as every thing which gives uneasiness in human actions, upon the general survey, is called Vice, and whatever produces satisfaction, in the same manner, is denominated Virtue, this is the reason why the sense of moral good and evil follows upon justice and injustice. And though this sense, in the present case, be derived only from contemplating the actions of others, yet we fail not to extend it even to our own actions. The general rule reaches beyond those instances from which it arose; while, at the same time, we naturally sympathize with others in the sentiments they entertain of us. Thus self-interest is the original motive to the establishment of justice: but a sympathy with public interest is the source of the moral approbation, which attends that virtue. (Ibid., III, ii, 5, p. 498)

The moral sentiments in this way come to enforce the social conventions, which have their original basis in the material needs of humankind. They transform a contractual union into a moral community. Bishop Butler had argued that God’s concern is for the well-being of humanity and that those actions are right which tend to maximize that well-being. In principle, prudential reason should enable us to see this. But in fact our prudential reason is limited. We therefore often cannot by calculating discover what is right. But God has located within us a further faculty, that of conscience, by which He gives us direct insight into the sorts of action that are, given our essences, conducive to human well-being. Butler adopts the position of Clarke with regard to the basis of human morality in the eternal essences of things. But he locates this within a carefully delineated phenomenology of moral experience. In

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particular, he insists on the role of conscience as a faculty of moral intuition. On his account, then, the deliverances of conscience are insight into the metaphysical essences of things, but they are also signs, given to us by the creator, of what is in our own and the community’s longrun interest. In the latter respect the deliverances of conscience function as do the passions on such accounts as those of Descartes, as signs for securing our human well-being. Hume takes up this sort of position but exorcises the role of metaphysical essences. The deliverances of conscience, that is, our moral sentiments, are in fact simply signs for the well-being of each and all, including ourselves. But it is not because God has created us in just this way; as Hume argues, it is wrong to suppose that we could have innate capacities directed at the very complex and diverse ends defined by the conventions of civil society. Rather, the source of our moral sentiments lies in the ordinary human capacity for responding sympathetically to our fellow human beings and the equally natural and human tendency to generalize these sentiments from some to all. In this way, as Árdal puts it in ‘Another Look at Hume’s Account of Moral Evaluation,’ ‘Hume sought to explain ‘judgments’ of virtue and vice as a natural development from our basic emotional nature.’36 The explanation is one that accords with the Humean concept of human understanding, that concept in which to understand is to subsume under matter-of-fact regularities (of which more in chapters 2 and 3). What is crucial to this explanation is the mechanism of sympathy. But Hume introduces this mechanism and its vicissitudes in Book II of the Treatise, that book which deals with the passions. Unless we are prepared to look seriously at Book II, we are liable to overlook the mechanism that is crucial for understanding how a community of rational calculators becomes a moral community. It is a major virtue of Árdal’s Passion and Value in Hume’s ‘Treatise’ that it forces us to look at the role played by sympathy in the passions and to extend this to the account of moral evaluation in Book III in the discussion of the rules of civil society. It forces us to see exactly how Hume can agree with the criticism of Hobbes and Locke mounted by Bentley and Clarke and Shaftesbury and many others – that human beings are moral beings, not just rational calculators – while also rejecting the moral objectivism that was supposed to be essential to any reply to Hobbes and Locke. The same considerations apply to the conventions of language. So at least Hume argues, as we have seen.

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There are the regularities of language use. These regularities or patterns are conventional – they are the result of human art, though as we have seen they are not the result of deliberate acts of conferring meaning. Prudence requires such conventions just as prudence requires the conventions of property. But they – both sorts of convention – are not mere regularities backed by considerations of prudence: they have normative force – the force of moral obligation in the case of the conventions of property, the force of semantic requirements in the case of the conventions of language. This normative force is not prudential. Hume is clear: the moral force that motivates the conventions of property derives rather from the operation of the mechanism of sympathy. Hume makes quite clear that he intends the same for the conventions of language: they acquire the normative force of semantic rules through the general operation in humankind of this mechanism of sympathy. We can, I hope, see where things are going. The standard view of the rules for language, or at least the one that arises from the rationalist tradition, is that language is conventional but built upon a sort of social contract, a shared agreement to use words in a certain way. On this standard view, the meaning of a word derives from a decision to use the word in a certain way. Hume argues against this, with special reference to the case of promising. The argument is that just as promising presupposes rather than accounts for the rules of language, so in general, acts which succeed in conferring meaning on a term – and there are some of those (e.g., the naming of a newly discovered element) – presuppose rather than account for meaning. And in particular, the act of conferring meaning presupposes conventions. So such acts cannot account for the institution of the conventions of language. The claim, then, that linguistic meaning derives from acts which confer meaning, that the intention to use words in a certain way by itself creates meaning, cannot stand: Hume shows directly that this will not do. The major point that Hume makes against the argument that the authority of the laws of property and allegiance derives from their being rooted in a form of social contract or promise is that promising presupposes the existence of conventions and therefore cannot account for the authority of those conventions: promising presupposes linguistic conventions, it therefore cannot explain those conventions. The same argument applies to the claim that the normative force of linguistic rules derives from acts that by agreement confer meaning. If we under-

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stand meaning – linguistic meaning – as determined by rules with normative force, then those rules cannot be explained in terms of an intentional act, a speech act, that determines that meaning. This argument is clear. The idea is to explain the conventions of language acquiring the force they have through their being instituted by a volition or act of will: words have the meanings they have through a sort of social contract created by the determination – a volition – to use words in a certain way. But this won’t do: (to emphasize the point once again) linguistic meaning does not derive from a mere set of volitions or determinations to use words in a certain way. B. Introspective Psychology, Associationism, and Introspective Analysis We can apply, it has been our claim, what Hume says about moral conventions to his account of the conventions of language. But, as I have suggested, to become fully clear on these things, we must first become clear about the introspectionist psychology that Hume uses. The basic distinction of introspective psychology is that which Hume draws between impressions and ideas (Treatise, 1).37 The former enter the mind with ‘the most force and liveliness’; the latter are ‘faint images’ of the former (1). Impressions include both sensations, on the one hand, and our passions and emotions, on the other (1); the latter are impressions of reflection (7). Sensations are produced in us by unknown causes (7), and ‘are such as without any antecedent perception arise in the soul, from the constitution of the body, from the animal spirits, or from the application of objects to the external organs’ (275). Our passions and emotions, in contrast, are caused by these original impressions or by the ideas of such impressions (275). So when an impression strikes the senses and causes us to feel, for example, pleasure, the idea of the latter remains, and in turn causes a new impression of desire or hope; or, if the impression was of pain then we have produced an aversion or a fear (8). Both impressions and ideas divide into simple, which ‘admit of no distinction nor separation’ (2), and complex, which ‘may be distinguished into parts’ (2). Complex ideas often correspond to complex impressions, for example, my idea of Paris is the idea of a city which I have seen, but, equally, complex ideas can be created by the mind out of simple ideas, even when there is nothing that corresponds to that complex, for example, the idea of a New Jerusalem, which no one has seen (3). Simple ideas, in

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contrast, always have a corresponding simple impression: ‘After the most accurate examination, of which I am capable, I venture to affirm, that the rule here holds without any exception, ... that every simple idea has a simple impression, which resembles it; and every simple impression a correspondent idea’ (3). Note how Hume is here treating this – what has been called his first principle but also the copy principle – as a scientific hypothesis, a matter-offact generalization in the science of psychology that is to be tested against experience.38 This first principle, that there is no simple idea without a corresponding impression, has other roles in Hume’s philosophy, but among those which it has is that of a psychological hypothesis in the context of the psychology, that is, the science of human nature, that Hume is developing.39 Now, ideas, that is, images, appear in our minds in regular patterns; these patterns are known as associations. These associations bring together ideas which are separable, and which, indeed, are often separated by the imagination. Since the imagination can separate these ideas, Hume speaks of a tendency for these ideas to be united, and of a ‘force’ (10) of an ‘attractive’ sort (12) which binds ideas together but which is sufficiently ‘gentle’ (10) that the imagination does have the ability to exert a contrary force and separate the ideas that the binding force tends to associate each with the other. Were ideas entirely loose and unconnected, chance alone wou’d join them; and ’tis impossible the same simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones (as they commonly do) without some bond of union among them, some associating quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another. This uniting principle among ideas is not to be consider’d as an inseparable connexion; for that has already been excluded from the imagination: nor yet are we to conclude, that without it the mind cannot join two ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty: but we are only to regard it as gentle force, which commonly prevails.’ (10)

In speaking of associations, Hume is speaking of regularities – ‘Whenever an impression of an A or an idea of an A enters the mind, the it is accompanied by the idea of a B’ – but these regularities are conditioned – ‘Whenever conditions C obtain, then whenever an idea of an A enters the mind, then it is accompanied by the idea of a B.’ What Hume is saying in the passage just quoted is that when the mind has a will to – that is, as later psychologists were to put it, when it is in a certain set – then

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it will arrange its simple ideas in patterns of its own choosing; while, if it is not in that set, then the patterns to which its ideas conform are not imposed by the mind itself. The talk of a ‘force’ here is intended to suggest that an association has a certain strength: an association of ideas has a capacity to resist the separation by the mind of its components. On the other hand, the force is not insuperable, the parts can be separated; that is why it is a ‘gentle’ force. Now, as we all know, Hume will propose to analyse causation in terms of regularities; there is no reason to suppose that when he here talks of ‘forces’ he intends anything that cannot be unpacked in terms of the language of regularities. At this point in the Treatise, however, Hume has not yet introduced that analysis, and so may as yet speak with the vulgar, using our ordinary language of causation. And in any case, Hume would claim, scientific reasoning about matters of empirical fact can, even if some uses of the ordinary language cannot, be unpacked in terms of his analysis of causation as involving, so far as objective content is concerned, nothing more than regularities.40 In fact, the metaphor of an attractive force with a gentle strength is obvious enough – certainly clear enough for Hume’s purposes. It in fact marks a set of research problems for the psychologists that would come after Hume. The assumption is that there are laws which govern the appearance of ideas in our minds. Hume, like later psychologists, makes this deterministic assumption. For Hume, of course, it is simply a special application of the more general deterministic principle which he states as the fourth of the rules by which to judge of causes (173–4). This means, in particular, that we can infer, in accordance with Hume’s other rules by which to judge of causes, that there are conditions C which determine when the patterns exemplified by our ideas are imposed by our will and when they are not. We know that these conditions exist, without knowing specifically what these conditions are. Then, motivated by curiosity, or the love of truth,41 the task is to undertake research to discover these; this research is guided by the rules by which to judge of causes and effects.42 Such research was in fact pursued by later psychologists. John Stuart Mill was, for example, concerned to clarify the conditions under which the mind separated what was associated;43 and other psychologists were concerned to define the notion of the strength of an association, and the causal conditions under which associations with different strengths occur.44 For Hume’s purposes, however, it sufficed to leave the situation in a state of imperfect knowledge of the laws involved.45 Hume is concerned, on the one hand, to combat the Aristotelians, and, on the other, to outline the

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empirical science of human nature that he is proposing as the new foundation for our understanding of human knowledge. To give an outline does not require that he stop to fill in all the details. Indeed, if he were to stop to fill all the gaps, the outline itself would likely never be completed. For his purposes, then, it suffices to make the relevant point, using the metaphors of the causal language of the vulgar, and then move on to the next point. Others coming later would do the science and remove the ignorance to which the metaphors point, fill those gaps in our knowledge. For Hume’s purposes, more essential than eliminating the metaphor of a ‘gentle force’ is indicating on what depend those patterns among our ideas which do not depend directly on our will. What Hume suggests is that our ideas stand in the same relations as the impressions, which are their causal antecedents: ‘The qualities, from which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner convey’d from one idea to another, are three, viz. resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause and effect’ (11). The basic notion is that if impression of sort A stands in relation R to impression of sort B, and we several times experience such impressions standing in R to one another, then the idea of a B will come to be regularly associated with the idea of an A and in fact the idea of an A will stand in R to the idea of a B. Repeated experience of things in one of these relations brings about an association of ideas. Thus, if we have an impression of an A and an impression of a B and this A resembles this B, and we several times experience impressions resembling each other as this A resembles this B, then when an idea of, say, an image of an A appears in the mind that appearance will have associated with it the appearance of an idea of a B; in fact, the idea of a B that is associated with the idea of an A will resemble that latter just as the impression of a B that causes the idea of a B resembles the impression of an A that causes the idea of an A. Association based on resemblance provides Hume with the theory necessary to provide, as we shall see, a non-traditional account of ‘abstract ideas.’ Similarly, if several simple impressions regularly appear as co-present with one another, then the ideas derived from these simple impressions also regularly appear as co-present in the mind. It is this which gives rise to our ideas of substance. Finally, if one sort of impression is regularly followed in experience by one of another sort, then the idea of the former is regularly followed in the mind by an idea of the latter. In fact, we know, Hume will propose in Part iii of Book I of the Treatise to reduce the case of association due to cause and effect to

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association due to contiguity. (Later psychologists would also attempt to reduce association by resemblance to association by contiguity, but this latter reduction remained controversial, unlike that of cause and effect, which most psychologists were prepared to accept.46) There are two kinds of association, that in which the ideas are successive, as in the case of causation, and that in which the ideas are simultaneous, as in the case of our ideas of substance. Since all ideas derive from impressions, this holds in particular for that of substances. This means that our idea of a substance must derive from an impression of sense or be obtained by reflection. But impressions of reflection are our passions and emotions, which are not impressions of substances. Our idea of substance must therefore derive from impressions of sense: ‘We have therefore no idea of substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we either talk or reason concerning it’ (16). The idea of a substance is thus a collection of particular qualities ‘united by the imagination’ and ‘supposed to be closely and inseparably connected by the relations of contiguity and causation’ (16). And so our idea of gold consists of the ideas of yellow, weight, malleableness, fusibility, and so forth. Where we have a complex idea, whether generated by successive or by synchronous association, there the mind can distinguish the parts of the complex, or, as it was also said, can analyse the complex idea into its parts. Upon this view, the analysis of an idea consists of distinguishing its parts, that is, the simple ideas that compose it. One has, first, a description of the idea as a whole; thus, we have the idea of gold. Such a description we may call the phenomenological description, to follow a later way of talking.47 We then redescribe the idea by listing its distinguishable parts; thus, we have, in the case of gold, the parts which are the ideas of a yellow colour, weight, and so forth. Such a description we may call the analytical description. Two points are clear. One: There is a set of rules such that, from the analytical description one can infer the phenomenological description and conversely. This is implied in the part/whole model that clearly lies behind the simple/complex distinction. While these ‘rules,’ on the one hand, evidently have a normative aspect to the extent that the model incorporates, as it obviously does, the notion of a definition, on the other hand, for the purposes of empirical psychology, these ‘rules’ must be understood as matter-of-fact regularities. Introspective analysis aims to discover a complete set of unanalysable parts or ‘elements’ and a set of ‘rules’

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such that the latter uniquely determine a mental event on the basis of its elements. Two: Given the learning theory that simple ideas have resembling impressions as their causal antecedents, and that the relations among the antecedent impressions are replicated in the relations among ideas, then what appears in the analytical description is not only a list of the parts but also a description of the genetic antecedents of the complex idea. Introspective analysis, in uncovering the ‘elements’ out of which a mental event is composed, also, and thereby, yields a causal account of the origins in our impressions of that phenomenon. The program of introspective psychology thus characterized has a theory of learning, namely, associationism, which guides research, as well as a method, that of introspective analysis. The theory asserts that there are mental phenomena for which there are parts. These parts are the genetic antecedents of the phenomenon analysed. These phenomena are wholes that are produced by the genetic antecedents, or parts, coming to be associated with one another. This is Hume’s psychology. There are two part/whole models that are at work. One is the model of definition. This is the model that is at work in his discussion, at which we above looked, of the complex idea of a substance. The other model is spatial. This is at work in Hume’s discussion of space, where he suggests that extensions can be analysed into sets of coloured parts (32–4). But a further point must be made. The program of introspective psychology demands neither of these models. For introspective psychology, parts are by definition what analysis discovers. There is no reason a priori to suppose that the analytical parts are either logical parts or spatial parts, though, of course, neither is this excluded. The logical parts of a concept are wholly in that concept, as unmarried and male are in the concept of bachelor. The logical parts of a concept are wholly in the concept because they define that concept. Similarly, the spatial parts are wholly in the spatial entity of which whey are parts, as the squares on a chessboard are wholly in that space defined by the boundary of the board. But the analytical parts need not be wholly present in the phenomenon that is analysed. The analytical parts are discovered upon analysis; for them so to be discovered, it is not necessary that they be wholly present in the phenomenon prior to analysis; all that is necessary is that they be present in the phenomenon dispositionally. It follows that the phenomenon can be a simple whole, without actual parts, but rather parts that are only dispositionally present to be discovered by, or, perhaps better, to be recovered by,

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analysis. Since the analytical parts are the genetic antecedents, what has happened in such cases is that a process of association working on the parts that analysis has recovered has produced a mental phenomenon, which, as a simple whole, is distinct from those parts, and which has properties not present in those genetic antecedents. We can put the same point in a slightly different way. If D1 is the phenomenological description and D2 is the analytical description, then the logical or definitional model, and the spatial model, too, applies to the relations between D1 and D2. Hume tends to think of this relation as either definitional or spatial, but so long as he does this, he cannot have the whole D1 greater than the sum of the parts D2. But once we give up the logical model for conceptualizing the D1–D2 relation, then we are free to recognize that an idea need not be like its parts, that is, that an idea as a cognitive entity that carries intentionality need not be an image. Once free of the constraints of the definitional model, we can hold that an imageless thought can be analysable into images and can be derived by association – or, more generally, learning – from the impressions from which those images derive. This point was recognized explicitly only late in the history of introspective psychology, by John Stuart Mill, when he emphasized that the ‘parts’ which analysis recovers are not real or ‘integrant’ parts but only ‘metaphysical’ parts.48 But others, including Hume, were at least dimly aware of the point. Thus, at one place Hume tells us that ‘many of our ideas are so obscure, that ’tis almost impossible even for the mind, which forms them, to tell exactly their nature and composition’ (33). Here Hume is evidently thinking of the idea as a mental phenomenon that does not explicitly contain as real parts those simple ideas or images which are derived from sense impressions and which, through association, produce that phenomenon; and the idea has, moreover, properties that distinguish it as a simple whole from those ‘parts’ that produced it. On the one hand, if one takes an idea to be a mental phenomenon, and parts to be analytical parts, then an idea can be a simple whole, distinct from its parts, and certainly not merely the sum of its parts. On the other hand, if one takes an idea to be a concept, and parts to be definitional parts – where, following both Locke and Aristotle, concepts are to be defined by a conjunction of terms, as man is rational and animal or bachelor is male and unmarried – then an idea will be a complex whole, not distinct from, but merely the sum or conjunction of its parts. This distinction was to be made clearly by Horne Tooke in his Diversions of Purley, when he insisted that, while the psychologist may

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analyse ideas, one does not define ideas; rather, what one defines are words.49 In Hume, however, the two are never kept clearly separate. The consequence is the confusion that is so often evident in his psychology. For on the one hand, there will be a tendency to treat a mental phenomenon as a simple whole, distinct from its parts, and, on the other hand, a contrary tendency to treat the same phenomenon as a complex whole, not distinct from but exhausted by and merely the sum of its parts. Thus, although officially for Hume an idea is an image, we now see that it will perhaps not consistently be treated as such. An idea as a mental phenomenon will be analysable into images, that is, sensory contents, which are in turn derived from impressions. Moreover, the idea as a mental phenomenon will be the product of an association of those images which introspective analysis recovers. But it itself can be a simple whole, with qualities not present in the images that analysis yields. However, because of the murkiness in Hume’s thought about the nature of psychological analysis, we are liable to find him sometimes treating ideas as non-imagistic simple wholes and at other times treating them as nothing more than images. We in fact find this in Hume’s analysis of belief. What, Hume asks, is the difference between incredulity and belief (95)? He considers the case of a ‘proposition you advance’ to which you do assent but another person ‘does not assent’ (95). The difference is not a matter of having ‘conceiv’d the object’ (95) in different ways; the principle that accounts for the difference ‘plainly makes no addition to our precedent ideas’ (96). Rather, the principle ‘can only change the manner of our conceiving them’ (96; Hume’s italics). In the Appendix that appeared in Volume II of the original Treatise and that added corrections, changes, and comments to the previously published Book I, Hume speaks of this difference as a difference in ‘feeling’ (631, 636). Notice, first, that a belief is an idea which has an additional property. This additional property falls into the quality category of feeling; it is the feeling of assent. Notice, second, that an idea is characterized as a conceiving which has a certain object; my idea of Paris is a mental phenomenon that has, however, a non-mental entity, namely Paris, as its object. As Hume puts it elsewhere in the Treatise, ‘to form the idea of an object, and to form an idea simply is the same thing’ (20). This feature of thought has been referred to, following Brentano, as its ‘intentionality.’50 Now, whatever intentionality is – we shall have more to say about it later51 – it is not to be cashed out as the resemblance of an image to an impression;52 other-

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wise, since resemblance is symmetrical, the impression would have the idea as its objects as equally as the idea has the impression as its objects: my idea of Paris is about Paris; Paris does not have my mental state as its (intentional) object. R.J. Butler has, quite correctly, emphasized this point, that Hume recognizes the intentionality of thought.53 The point is that intentionality is a property of ideas and that mere images do not share this property. Ideas, in other words, are distinct from images. Yet equally, according to Hume, ideas are to be analysed into images. ‘Our ideas,’ he says, ‘are copy’d from our impressions, and represent them in all their parts’; and ‘an opinion, therefore, or belief may be most accurately defin’d, a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression’ (96). Ideas are now images, and the relations in which they stand to impressions are not those of intentionality but of resemblance and causation. What distinguishes a belief now is not a certain quality of feeling but rather its liveliness, or ‘degree of force and vivacity’ (97). An idea acquires the degree of force that makes it a belief by virtue of its causal relation to, or association with, our impressions. ‘Reason can never satisfy us that the existence of any one object does ever imply that of another.’ That is, reason alone can never establish one matter of fact on the basis of knowledge of an independent, or separable, fact; hence, ‘when we pass from the impression of one [object] to the idea or belief of another, we are not determin’d by reason but by custom or principle of association’ (97). This force Hume characterizes in terms appropriate to images; such ideas are ‘more strong, firm and varied, than the loose reveries of a castle-builder’ (97). At the same time, this force is also a causal quality; the ideas of poetry and fictions have their own ‘vigour of conception,’ and as a consequence the force they have ‘causes the idea to feel very different from the eternal establish’d persuasions founded on memory or custom’ (631–2). Although Hume speaks of a belief as an image and indeed as nothing more than an image of a special sort, we now see how a more just reading can be given, one which takes into account his other notion that ideas are somehow distinct from images, and distinct from the images that are their causes. A belief, on Hume’s account, is a non-imagistic idea to which a certain quality of feeling is attached. This idea is the product of an association of images derived from sense impressions. Introspective analysis of the non-imagistic idea recovers this complex image, which is its genetic antecedent. This complex image has a certain quality of vividness that the antecedent impression has caused it to

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have. This quality of vividness has the causal effect of evoking the attitude of assent that attaches to the non-imagistic idea and that transforms the latter from a mere conceiving into a belief. It is worth noting that Hume allows that the attitude of assent which is evoked is a function of the antecedent impression, but may also be a function of the mind’s own causal interference, through the influence of general rules that we have learned: ‘Reflection on general rules keeps us from augmenting our belief upon every encrease of the force and vivacity of our ideas ... ’Tis thus the understanding corrects the appearances of the senses’ (96). Although the mind cannot avoid assenting to ideas, it can nonetheless control the degree to which it assents by so disciplining itself that assent is proportioned to what is by the general ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ determined to be reasonable.54 Once the blurs involved in the notion of introspective analysis are removed, then it is clear that Hume’s account of belief is consistent and even has a certain plausibility. It of course presupposes in its details the associationist account of learning. But this theory, too, is not implausible, at least as an initial stab at a scientific approach to the process of learning.55 For our purposes perhaps what is most important is the separation of the rules of definition, and, more generally, the rules of logic, from the ‘rules’ that describe the linkage of ideas to the elements into which they are analysed – that is, the distinction that Tooke was getting at when he insisted that it is words, not ideas, that are defined. What this means, of course, is that the logical analysis of concepts is not the same as the psychological analysis of ideas; the former is an inquiry into their logic, while the latter is an inquiry into how we acquired the capacity to use them. What this distinction does is go part way at least towards justifying the device used by many interpreters of Hume in this century of treating questions of logic by means of the notion of an empiricist’s language, in the sense of the logical positivists. This, to be sure, is not the whole story of the relation between thought and language, as we shall see when we come to look more closely at Hume’s doctrine of abstract ideas; but it is a good part of the story. To make the separation does require one, however, to be clear – clearer, indeed, than Hume himself was – on the nature of introspective psychology. There are, unfortunately, a number of commentators who have not been as clear as required, and as a consequence have directed unfair criticisms at Hume’s account of belief. Thus, Passmore notes that Hume tends to think of impressions, or sensory impressions at least, as

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perceptions of the objective realm. But impressions are merely the same as ideas only more forceful or vivid. In that case vivid images of the imagination ought to count, as they surely cannot, as perceptions of the objective realm. But they cannot be so counted, not only because they are not such perceptions but also because, as Hume says, ‘every one of himself will readily perceive the difference betwixt feelings [impressions] and thinking [ideas]’ (1). Passmore suggests that all this is simple confusion on Hume’s part.56 In this he is followed by Bennett.57 Bennett also puts the supposed muddle in another way. On the one hand, Hume holds that thinking consists in having ideas; but, Bennett argues, quite correctly, if an idea as an image is in effect nothing more than a ‘faint impression’ then he should not hold that having ideas is eo ipso thinking: not every imaging is a case of thinking. On the other hand, Hume calls ideas the ‘faint images of [impressions] in thinking and reasoning’ (1), which implies that any having of ideas is to count as thinking. So Hume has to distinguish thinking from the sensory processes of having impressions and images if he is to do justice to human thought, as indeed Hume himself sees when he insists that we can all ‘readily perceive the difference betwixt feeling and thinking.’ But at the same time, since every case of thinking is one of having images, Hume cannot draw this distinction.58 But to dismiss it as all muddle, as Passmore and Bennett both do, is to go too far, and it is certainly not to be fair. Every philosopher ought to be given a fair reading, and if we do find that he or she is muddled or confused we have some obligation to search for a way to explain how he or she fell into that confusion and how it does, after all, involve a certain amount of sense. This latter is what we have attempted to do. What gets Hume into his problem is his failure to keep clear the distinction between the phenomenological description of a mental phenomenon and the analytical description. Passmore and Bennett point out that this gets Hume into trouble. But once the distinction is clearly grasped, one understands how Hume got into this problem, and also that there is in this confusion nothing that seriously challenges the central empiricist thrust of his philosophy. Passmore and Bennett are insisting that belief and thought are to be identified by their phenomenological qualities. That is fair enough; Hume would not disagree. They then infer from this that they cannot be accounted for in terms of images; they simply dismiss the analytical descriptions as false. But this amounts to holding that no process of analysis could ever reveal the genetic antecedents of our ideas and beliefs. That is, it amounts to arguing that since belief and thought are

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simple there can be no scientific account that locates their causal origins in simpler sensory processes. It is to argue, in effect, that the learning theory of associationist psychology is in principle just wrong. Hume gets into his muddle, in other words, by attempting to construct a scientific human psychology. He has his insights but gets into trouble by trying to put science into where it doesn’t belong. This is not the first time that this view has infected philosophy; one finds it also in Kames and Reid, where it is tied, quite properly, to a defence of innatism.59 But it is also a view that one must reject once one has a clear view of the nature of introspective psychology. Passmore and Bennett have not taken the trouble to try to understand the science of psychology that Hume was attempting to found. If Passmore and Bennett in effect criticize Hume for putting too much science into his philosophy, it is also true that he has been criticized for not being scientific enough. This charge – as unjustified as we have seen the other to have been – has been made by John Wright60 when he compares Hume and Malebranche to the favour of the latter. In his account of certain natural beliefs, Malebranche makes use of the notion of association. Hume was in fact undoubtedly influenced by this, though Malebranche, like Locke, limits the role of association to cases where belief is non-rational, whereas for Hume the account is extended to cover rational as well as non-rational belief structures. Malebranche noted that people are often caused to have ‘very lively and sensible images’ before their minds.61 These lively or forceful images do not make people ‘believe that they [actually] see absent objects before their eyes,’ but they bring people close to that; the explanation, or rather, ‘explanation,’ that Malebranche offers is psychophysiological: ‘To the degree which the [brain-] traces become larger and deeper, the mind also judges that the object becomes greater and more important, that it approaches nearer and nearer us, and finally that it is capable of affecting and harming us.’62 Elsewhere Malebranche had emphasized the role of repetition in creating stronger beliefs, again like Hume: ‘We imagine things more strongly to the degree that these [brain-] traces are deeper and better engraved, and the animal spirits pass there more often and with greater violence ... When the spirits have passed that way several times, they enter with greater facility.’63 Thus, although repeated experience creates stronger belief for Malebranche as for Hume, the former relates it as the latter does not to the speculative physiology of Descartes. Indeed, Descartes had made much the same point in his Treatise on Man: animal spirits, he tells us, ‘trace

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figures [in a certain part of the brain] which correspond to those of the objects; not, however, as easily nor as perfectly as the first blow on the gland ... but little by little, more and more according as their action is stronger or lasts longer or is repeated many times.’64 Hume eschews this speculative physiology, relying instead only on laws of association that relate observable items of sorts that we actually have experienced. Hume describes his new theory as follows: ‘When any impression becomes present to us, it not only transports the mind to such ideas as are related to it, but likewise communicates to them a share of its force and vivacity’ (98). This is a simple empirical law: ‘When the mind is once inliven’d by a present impression, it proceeds to form a more lively idea of the related objects, by a natural transition from the one to the other’ (99). Wright remarks that ‘it is likely that Hume expects his reader to understand this “natural transition” of the animal spirits to the related idea according to the fluid dynamic model of the brain’ of Malebranche.65 Now, Hume no doubt expects his reader to have some sort of acquaintance with such theories if only through the popularization they received in Britain in Chamber’s Cyclopaedia, a work the significance of which Wright carefully notes,66 quoting from the entry on ‘Imagination’ as a typical example of its allusions to Malebranchian speculations: imagination is ‘a power or faculty of the Soul, by which it conceives, and forms Ideas of Things, by means of certain Traces and Impressions that had been before made in the Fibres of the Brain by Sensation.’ Part of what is involved here is the insistence that the faculties and powers that are being discussed are not Aristotelian powers, but are analysable in the way that Hume, too, insists on, as concepts that, on the one hand are defined according to the schema ‘if S then R,’ and that, on the other hand appear in statements of law, ‘Whenever C, then if S then R,’ which relate the disposition to certain other facts C that provide it with a ground or basis in empirical reality. The physiology on which Chambers insists was largely speculation, and its role could not really be taken to be explanatory. For without evidence of its truth, it cannot be accepted as explanatory by post-Newtonian thinkers – ‘hypotheses non fingo’ – even though it might as a tentative hypothesis provide suggestions for further research. The role of such hypotheses is more rhetorical than explanatory, a way of insisting that powers, contrary to the Aristotelians, are grounded in empirical facts. It was Hume’s insight to recog-

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nize that on the whole such speculative physiology was unnecessary, since the history of repetition, to which Malebranche referred, itself provided an empirical ground for the dispositions.67 This makes the basic laws historical, in the sense that the future (R) is determined not by the present stimulus alone (S) but also by the past history, what has previously happened over a period of time to the organism, for example, the number of repetitions of a certain sort of experience. The laws of association that form the axioms of Hume’s learning theory are in this sense historical.68 It is this which gives, as Livingston has emphasized, a historical dimension to Hume’s thought that goes beyond a mere interest in history.69 Hume has no need to secure his anti-Aristotelian account of dispositions – and, more specifically, of mind – by means of a speculative physiology that, unlike the confirmed laws of association, is mere hypothesis, and that therefore cannot provide scientifically acceptable explanations. So, Wright notwithstanding, while Hume no doubt thought that his readers would be reminded of the Malebranchian speculative physiology, he does not ‘expect’ his readers to add these speculations as a matter of course to the explanations of learning that he gives, since those explanations, based on the confirmed laws of association, are acceptable where Malebranche’s, as mere hypotheses, are not. Hume’s explanations do not need to be, nor does he expect them to be, supplemented by speculative psychophysiology. In noting the influence of Malebranche on Hume, Wright tends to identify the two, neglecting the way in which Hume’s empiricism requires him to reject the notion of Descartes and Malebranche that the construction of speculative hypotheses, whether of the heavens (cf. ‘vortices’) or of physiology, can satisfy our cognitive interests in causal explanations. It is true that Hume is not above using Cartesian notions as metaphors in a literary way. Thus, later on, in Part iii of Book I of the Treatise, Hume writes that ‘the vividness of the first conception diffuses itself along the relations, and is convey’d, as by so many pipes or canals, to every idea that has any communication with the primary one’ (122; italics added). Wright comments that ‘the excitation caused by an impression gets transferred in a purely physical way to the ideas of related objects,’ 70 totally ignoring the “as by,” which serves to indicate that Hume is not offering a physiological explanation but merely a metaphor or analogy that will help his readers grasp the structure – which he is trying to describe – of the causal relations among various mental phenomena. What explains this, Hume insists, are the relations of resemblance and contiguity, working to create associations (107); it is these which ex-

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plain the ‘force and vigour’ of our conceptions in belief (107). Hume has earlier spoken of this force and vigour as arising ‘according as the spirits are more or less elevated,’ and of impressions transferring this force to the ideas, which thereby become beliefs as involving those impressions giving ‘a new direction to the spirits’ (98–9). But again, there is no reason to suppose that Hume intends this to be anything more than mere metaphor and literary allusion, introduced to help his readers grasp what he is trying to say rather than hinting at a more substantial explanation – one that Hume is simply disinclined to supply. For, as we just said, Hume later (107) states the same explanation without the allusions to physiology. Indeed, at one point Wright himself suggests that the notions of Cartesian psychophysiology constitute nothing but a metaphor for Hume.71 But if that is so, then Hume is not appealing to these mechanisms as explanatory. Wright cannot have it both ways. This is not to say that Hume never introduces physiological hypotheses for explanatory purposes. But he does so only where appropriate. In a passage of which Wright makes much but perhaps not enough,72 Hume explicitly introduces physiological hypotheses, but at the same time explicitly rejects their general use. What Hume is concerned to do is explain how confused ideas can arise (60–1). This happens when resembling ideas are mistaken for one another: ‘We may establish it as a general maxim in the science of human nature, that wherever there is a close relation betwixt two ideas, the mind is very apt to mistake them, and in all its discourses and reasonings use the one for the other’ (60). This sort of confusion does not, of course, always happen, but it often does, and Hume is going to propose a possible explanation, which, however, he cautions us, may turn out to be ‘chimerical’ (60). The suggestion will refer to physiological hypotheses, but he first explains why he has not introduced psychophysiological speculations of the Malebranchian sort right from the beginning and throughout: When I receiv’d the relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causation, as principles of union among ideas, without examining into their causes, ’twas more in prosecution of my first maxim, that we must in the end rest contented with experience, than for want of something specious and plausible, which I might have display’d on that subject. ’Twould have been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the brain, and have shewn, why upon our conception of any idea, the animal spirits run into all the contiguous traces, and rouze up the other ideas, that are related to it. (60)

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Hume thus rejects psychophysiological speculations as offering explanations that can genuinely satisfy our cognitive interests in laws and explanations by laws. Wright tells us that ‘this [the psychophysiological] part of his [Hume’s] account may not be entirely explicit, yet it is essential for a clear understanding of the kind of causal explanation which Hume thinks he is providing when he turns to the faculty which he calls imagination.’73 But in the first place, Hume himself clearly thinks that such psychophysiology is in general quite unnecessary for understanding his views. Moreover, second, what Hume offers by way of explanation are deductive-nomological explanations based on laws (regularities) confirmed by experience. These are in themselves adequate, albeit imperfect, or gappy; but there is in general no reason to think that the imperfections are to be removed by a turn to physiology rather than an empirical exploration of the conditions under which learning occurs. But in any case, third, even if physiology must ultimately be introduced, the talk of ‘spirits,’ ‘canals,’ and so forth, was in Hume’s day almost wholly speculative, and could not offer hypotheses sufficiently confirmed to be scientifically acceptable as explanations; a turn to physiology could not, therefore, as Hume saw, add anything worthwhile to the explanations which he proposed. Wright is just wrong when he suggests that the psychophysiology is implicit throughout Hume’s psychological explanations and that we cannot understand Hume without understanding the Cartesian speculations, an understanding to be derived not from Hume himself but from his Malebranchian sources. Hume ironically notes that ‘I have neglected any advantage, which I might have drawn from this topic [the imaginary dissection of the brain] in explaining the relations of ideas’ (60); but he then goes on to indicate that ‘I must here have recourse to it, in order to account for the mistakes that arise from these relations [i.e., resemblance, etc.]’ (60). There is, then, something special about this context that justifies introducing physiological hypotheses. We must try to see what it is. Here is the physiological hypothesis that Hume offers: As the mind is endow’d with a power of exciting any idea it pleases; whenever it dispatches the spirits into that region of the brain, in which the idea is plac’d; these spirits always excite the idea, when they run precisely into the proper traces, and rummage that cell, which belongs to the idea. But as their motion is seldom direct, and naturally turns a little to the one side or the other; for this reason the animal spirits, falling into the con-

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tiguous traces, present other related ideas in lieu of that, which the mind desir’d at first to survey. This change we are not always sensible of; but continuing still the same train of thought, make use of the related idea, which is presented to us, and employ it in our reasoning, as if it were the same with what we demanded. (60–1)

‘This,’ Hume continues, ‘is the cause of many mistakes and sophisms in philosophy’ (61) – including that confusion of the two ideas of cause that gives rise to the mistaken notion that there are objective necessary connections. What we should note is that confusions only sometimes occur; it also occurs sometimes that we have clear thinking in philosophy. We thus have A (setting a train of thought in motion) sometimes followed by B (clearly distinguished ideas) and sometimes followed by C (confused ideas). This sort of uncertainty is what, as Hume elsewhere indicates, the vulgar would attribute to chance (132). But philosophers, guided by the principle that every event has a cause, which is Hume’s fourth ‘rule by which to judge of causes,’ will infer from the contrariety of effects that there is a contrariety of causes (132). The factor A cannot be the sole cause; the causal principle implies that there is another factor, one not yet observed but ‘hid, by reason of [its] minuteness’ (132). This factor, the hypothesizing of which is justified in the context by the causal principle, is, Hume suggests, phsyiological; and, he also suggests, the best guess as to its nature is given by the speculative psychophysiology of the sort found in Malebranche.74 We thus see that the hypothesizing of physiological causes is sometimes justified by Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes.’ Wright fails to note this special context; and as a consequence, and contrary to Hume’s own intentions, he wrongly thinks that all of Hume’s explanations must be supplemented by Malebranchian psychophysiology. Among the ideas where one sometimes or even regularly replaces the other owing to their resemblance are our two ideas of cause. This is illegitimate but ‘natural’ (60) – though, of course, such false reasonings are natural only in the way that diseases are natural (122). Hume proposes two definitions of cause. The first is this: a cause is ‘an object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are plac’d in a like relation of priority and contiguity to those objects, that resemble the other’ (172). This is cause as constant conjunction. It represents the objective content of a causal judgment. But Hume has asked a further question: ‘What is our idea of

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necessity, when we say that two objects are necessarily connected together’ (155). He has asked this question because the definition of causation as something objective does not distinguish causal laws from ‘mere’ accidental generalities. Laws have a necessity that accidental generalities lack. Objectively there is no difference: objectively causation just is regularity. But there is a difference. So Hume must find how the distinction is drawn. Hence, his question. He summarizes the upshot of his discussion in a second definition of cause: ‘an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it in the imagination, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other’ (172). We shall have more – much more – to say about these definitions. For present purposes, it suffices to note that there are two definitions, and that Hume has arrived at them through a careful examination of our ordinary causal reasoning.75 In undertaking this examination, Hume considers those mental events that are called judgments. In judgments one has an idea and, further, assents to this idea. We are considering judgments which have this phenomenological description: (1)

judgment that A’s cause B’s.

It is the idea by virtue of which the judgment refers to or is about or intends its object. The objective content of this judgment is, Hume has argued, simply that (2)

all A are B.

Hence, the idea to which assent is given in the judgment (1) is (3)

the idea that all A are B

where Hume takes this in the way traditional in logic from Aristotle to his own day as involving the uniting of two ideas (96n):76 (4)

the idea of a B united to the idea of an A.

But the judgment (1) does not consist simply in assenting to the complex idea (4). Otherwise there would be no distinction between causal

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judgments and judgments that accidental generalities are true. What further is involved is that, when the idea of A is before the mind, then habit or custom constrains the mind to also have before it the idea of B. This habit is felt as a ‘determination’ of the mind (166). The idea of necessity is not derived from the objects judged about; this Hume establishes, as we know, by arguing that our impressions of these objects contain no impression of a necessary connection. But neither can a habit as such, that is, a propensity, yield an impression from which our idea of necessity is derived. The impression from which our idea of necessity is derived is thus the feeling that the mind is constrained by the habit of inferring B’s from A’s, or, what amounts to the same, the habit that when the idea of an A is before the mind one assents to the union of the idea of a B with the idea of an A: ‘Necessity is nothing but the determination of the mind to pass from causes to effects and from effects to causes’ (166). Thus, the complex mental state, (1) judgment that A’s cause B’s, can be analysed into three components, namely, the complex idea (4), the idea of a B united to the idea of an A, together with (5)

both the feeling of assent that is attached to this idea and the feeling of being constrained to assent to the union of the idea of a B with the idea of an A.

If, as we have suggested he does, Hume thinks of this as a psychological analysis as well as a logical analysis, then the mental state of which (1) is the phenomenological description must be understood as a simple unity in which the subjective feeling of constrained assent is fused with the idea of the objective content. These aspects are not separable parts in the judgment; they are parts only in the sense of being recoverable by introspective analysis. It is thus not merely human perversity but the very laws of mental chemistry77 by which judgments are produced from impressions that accounts for the fact that, as Hume says, the mind ‘spreads’ itself on external objects: ‘The mind has a great propensity to spread itself on external objects, and to conjoin with them any internal impressions, which they occasion, and which always make their ap-

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pearance at the same time that these objects discover themselves to the senses’ (167). Hume does tend to conceive analysis upon the model that Locke used, that of logical analysis, in which analysis breaks something into real parts which conjunctively define it. But at the same time, he also tends to think of these parts as, to use his own term, ‘spreading’ one onto the other so as to form a unity that is more than a mere conjunction. When such fusion occurs, it is evident that the parts which analysis yields cannot be real parts. Hume is thus moving away from a notion of analysis as yielding real parts to one which yields, in J.S. Mill’s terminology, metaphysical parts. The tendency to assent to the idea that all A’s are B’s is a habit that is acquired through a process of association. If we regularly experience an A being followed by a B, then this observed constant conjunction causes the habit to form of assenting to the union of an idea of a B with an idea of an A when the latter is before the mind. But this observed constant conjunction, by creating the determination of the mind, thereby also introduces the feeling of constraint, which also becomes associated with the union of ideas: ‘After a frequent repetition, I find, that upon the appearance of one of the objects, the mind is determin’d by custom to consider its usual attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light upon account of its relation to the first object. ’Tis this impression, then, or determination, which affords me the idea of necessity’ (156). Thus, the ideas in which the judgment that A’s cause B’s is analysed are causally derived from the antecedent impressions that produced both the habit that associates them regularly in the judgment and the feeling of determination that also comes to be associated with them in the causal judgment. In accordance, then, with what the notion of introspective analysis requires, as analysis proceeds we are led to metaphysical parts which reveal the genetic antecedents of the judgment. But, if the analytical parts are not literally there as separable parts within the mental event which is the judgment, analysis can nonetheless recover them and thereby distinguish, on the one hand, the objective content, which consists only of the regularity, and, on the other hand, the subjective feeling, which provides the only clear idea of causal necessity that we have. Reflection upon our causal judgments does reveal that there are no objective necessary connections. So the question remains, if these aspects can be distinguished, why do thinkers not regularly do so? Why do they persist in describing the world as if it contained objective necessary connections?

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To distinguish things is to judge them as different, that is, to apply different ideas to them. Now, we have two ideas of cause. The first idea is that of causation as regularity; the second idea is that of a causal regularity, that is, a regularity to which the mind is so constrained to assent that it uses the regularity to go beyond known facts so as to make predictions and support the assertion of contrary-to-fact conditionals. Thus, on the first idea of causation, the idea that A’s cause B’s is (3), the idea that all A’s are B’s or, what is the same, (4), the union of the idea of a B with that of an A. The causal judgment described by (1), the judgment that A causes B, has the idea (3), the first idea of cause, as one of its parts. The first idea of cause is an ingredient in the judgment (3), but that idea applies to the regularity itself, not to the judgment; in fact, it is the judgment (3) which applies that idea to the objective regularity to determine that regularity as causal. The second idea of cause is that of constrained assent to a regularity. Because the judgment (1) contains the feelings (5) of assent and (6) of constraint, it is a causal judgment. The second idea of cause is not an ingredient in it. The judgment is not one in which the second idea is a part; rather, the judgment is an instance to which the second idea applies. But, since both ideas of causation involve the idea of a regularity, they resemble each other, and ideas that resemble one another are liable, Hume holds, to replace one another in our thoughts. Hence, when we proceed with our introspective analysis of the causal judgment (1), and recover the idea (3) of a regularity, the mind will in fact regularly, but unconsciously, substitute the second idea of cause for that, the first idea of cause. The mind will substitute for the idea of a regularity the idea of a causal judgment. The mind will thus mistakenly come to believe that in its analysis of causal judgments, it recovers not just the idea of a regularity but the idea of a regularity that is necessary; that is, it will come to believe that a causal judgment includes not only the idea of regularity but the idea of a regularity that is necessary. More strongly, it is not merely a matter of one idea substituting for another. Since the two ideas of cause resemble each other, and since resemblance is one of the relations that brings about an association, the

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two ideas will in fact be associated together. The result will be in the first instance a complex idea that is the conjunction of the two ideas of causation. But then in the second instance the mental chemistry will produce out of this complex a unity that is the fusion of the two ideas. This fusion of ideas will, of course, be the confused idea of causation as an objective necessary connection. And it is this confused idea that the careless, undisciplined, and natural mind will tend to recover when it analyses judgments of causation. Thus, not only will the element of necessity, that is, the feeling of constrained assent, be fused with the idea of a regularity in causal judgments themselves, but when the mind analyses these judgments the natural – though confused – upshot will be a failure to separate the two aspects. The natural tendencies of the mind will lead the mind to disguise from itself its own confusions. Recall now the Cartesian program: we are to analyse our ideas to discover those which are clear and distinct, and these latter alone we are to assent to. What Hume shows is how problematic this program is: given the psychology of association, what the mind takes to be a part clearly recoverable by analysis will often in fact be a confused idea. An analysis of the idea of God reveals, according to Malebranche, that it contains the idea of an activity that constitutes a necessary tie between cause and effect. If Hume is correct, then there is no clear idea of an objective necessary connection nor is there, therefore, any clear idea of this sort of activity. However, again if Hume is correct, then we equally should not be surprised that Malebranche discovers in his analysis the idea of an objective necessary connection. Now, although relations give rise to associations, which associations to which they give rise can be controlled by ‘general rules.’ That is, the mind can discipline itself to conform its habits or associations to certain patterns rather than others. In particular, the mind can so discipline itself that certain associations which occur naturally do not occur: they occur naturally because they are based on resemblance, but we ought so to discipline ourselves that those associations do not occur because they lead to confused thought and confused ideas. The relevant discipline consists in systematically relating our ideas to the impressions that are their causes to discover which among the former unconfusedly describe the latter. In terms that can be justified by Tooke’s clarification of introspective psychology, what this amounts to is the insistence that all our concepts be explicitly defined on the basis of terms that refer directly to observable individuals, properties, and relations:

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’Tis easy to see, why philosophers are so fond of this notion of some spiritual and refin’d perceptions; since by that means they cover many of their absurdities, and may refuse to submit to the decisions of clear ideas, by appealing to such as are obscure and uncertain. But to destroy this artifice, we need but reflect on that principle so oft insisted on, that all our ideas are copy’d from our impressions. For from thence we may immediately conclude, that since all impressions are clear and precise, the ideas, which are copy’d from them, must be of the same nature, and can never, but from our fault, contain any thing so dark and intricate ... If [an idea is] obscure, ’tis our business to remedy that defect, as much as possible, by keeping the idea steady and precise; and till we have done so, ’tis in vain to pretend to reasoning and philosophy. (72–3)

We can attain clarity of thought not, as the Cartesians suggest, by turning away from external reality to the contemplation of our ideas but only by turning towards that reality which impresses itself upon us and firmly and unambiguously tying our ideas (or language) to that reality which is presented in sense experience. C. How Thought Becomes General: Abstract Ideas, Images, Learning, and Rules of Language Hume’s naturalism takes its most radical turn in his account of thought. For here he totally reverses the traditional picture of what it is to be human. The philosophers who preceded Hume had all in one way or another given a picture of being human and of human rationality in which the latter was beyond and outside the human being’s social existence and its historical development.78 This view of man is clearly exemplified in Plato. Thus, in Socrates’ discussion in the Meno what he seeks is a definition of ‘virtue.’ And this search is, for Socrates, analogous to the search for the truth of the slave boy’s geometrical proposition: as the slave boy searches for the truth of a geometrical proposition, so Socrates searches for the truth with respect to the definition of ‘virtue.’ In each case the search terminates in the same sort of thing, to wit, the knowledge of a form (eidos). As the recollection of a form provides a non-conventional answer to the slave boy’s quest, so the recollection of a form will provide a non-conventional answer to Socrates’ quest. The form of virtue thus tells us nonconventionally what is the real definition of ‘virtue,’ what is its true meaning. For Socrates, then, meaning is natural rather than conventional. More-

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over, this natural meaning is grasped through recollection, which is a form of knowledge. This knowledge, once acquired, or, rather, made conscious, is incorrigible – ‘tied down,’ as Socrates says. Not only truth but the very intelligibility of all our discourse derives from the forms; and genuine understanding requires the mind to penetrate beyond the conventions of language to that source of intelligibility which, once grasped, guarantees its own unchanging solidity and incorrigibility.79 But of course, this intelligibility is insight into the very being of things. For, as the Phaedo puts it, ‘if there is anything beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than that it shares in that Beautiful’ (100c), and, more generally, as the speakers agree, ‘each of the Forms existed, and ... other things acquired their name by having a share in them’ (102b). The relation between the sign ‘F’ and an object a to which it applies is that of naming; it is conventional. But that convention may or may not be correct. It is correct just in case that it signifies the form F and a shares in that form. Thus, a’s being, what a is correctly said to be, is constituted by its participation in the forms. It is evident that, when the mind penetrates beyond linguistic conventions to the forms that constitute the standards of true meaning, the mind has thereby penetrated to that which constitutes the being of things. The forms are thus at once the ground of the being of things and the source of all intelligibility of discourse about those things. This Platonic tradition has itself a long history, and so, too, do its variations. The Aristotelian variations are one case. Aristotelian natures are forms made inseparable from the things of which they are the ground of being. At the same time the forms, qua abstracted from things, are those by which the mind knows and thinks about things; they, in other words, are also the source of all intelligibility of discourse about the things of which they are the ground of being.80 Yet another variation of Platonism is the position of Locke, whose ‘conceptualism’ is, in one important way of looking at it, Platonism with the forms fallen into the mind. For Locke, objects known by sense are objectively similar or dissimilar in certain respects. This is a major difference between Locke and Plato. For the latter, things are similar by virtue of their participation in the forms, which are timeless entities separate from the things that participate in them and unlike those things are not knowable by sense but only by recollection. For Locke, in contrast, similarities are in things81 and not separate from them – this is what his, and the common, anti-Platonism amounts to82 – and, moreover, these similarities, and also the dissimilarities, are

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given in sense experience. They are there in things, for example, as parts that the mind can abstract through separation to form its abstract ideas.83 These abstract ideas the mind forms by separating various aspects of the objects known by sense from those objects and uniting them into a single complex idea.84 The abstract ideas the mind constructs in this way do not ground the being of things as the forms or Ideas of Plato do. Nonetheless, they do serve some of the functions that Platonic forms serve, and in particular, they function as real meanings to distinguish correct from incorrect conventional applications of words to things. It is through those abstract ideas which the mind forms for itself that words become general. Of course, a general term like ‘red’ or ‘man’ is or is not true of several things depending on their objective similarities and dissimilarities. But we think of those similarities only by means of our ideas; and therefore we identify objects as similar only through our ideas. Objects are therefore similar in themselves but are said to be similar – have the same general term applied to them – only insofar as that term’s signification of reality corresponds to the abstract idea we have formed of that similarity which makes the application of the general terms true. As Locke says, words are used by men to ‘stand ... for the reality of things.’85 But this conventional connection86 in which we apply the same term to several things may be correct or incorrect; it is correct just in case the usage in which the words collect objects into classes corresponds to the way in which one’s ideas collect objects into classes. In this sense, the correct objective signification of words is determined by one’s ideas; words ought to express our ideas. Or, as Locke puts it, while men do in fact often ‘suppose their words to stand [not only for ideas but] also for the reality of things,’ nonetheless, ‘it is a perverting the use of words, and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever we make them stand for any thing, but those ideas we have in our own minds.’87 Locke does not hold that the objective being of things is grounded in our abstract ideas; nonetheless, what things can correctly be said to be is grounded in our abstract ideas. Thus, although Locke is a conceptualist where Plato is a realist, the two agree that the intelligibility of all discourse derives from non-linguistic entities, and that genuine understanding requires the mind to grasp these prelinguistic and non-conventional sources of true meaning. The same doctrine as Locke’s – that words express ideas – can be found in the Cartesian tradition, in, for example, the Port Royal Logic, the Art of Thinking by Arnauld and Nicole.88 On the view of Arnauld

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and Nicole, philosophers and logicians are concerned to discover through the analysis of ideas real definitions of things in terms of their essential attributes.89 Words, according to the Port Royal Logic, succeed in signifying only if they ‘excite an idea connected with that sound in our mind’;90 similarly, the Port Royal Grammar91 defines words as distinct and articulate sounds used to signify thoughts.92 In contrast to the philosophers, it is the task of grammarians, who study words, to list the ideas which men (and women) have agreed to connect with certain words, that is, sounds; and to give, not real definitions of essences, but the nominal and arbitrary definitions of names.93 According to the Logic, ‘we can express nothing by our words, when we understand what we say, without having an idea of the thing which we signify by our words,’94 and ‘we are not able to express our thoughts to each other, unless they are accompanied with outward signs.’95 The popular Des tropes ou des diférens sens by César Chesneau,96 which Hume quite possibly knew,97 follows the tradition in taking words to express our ideas,98 and in holding that we obtain the abstract ideas expressed by general terms by separating these ideas from concrete particulars.99 It is relations among ideas that lie behind the rhetorical figures,100 that is, those linguistic devices such as metaphor in which a word signifies an idea that is not its proper sense.101 Other thinkers were to complicate the picture somewhat, edging it towards a more realistic view of language. Thus, fifty years after the Port Royal Logic, Crousaz was to point out in his own Logic that ‘most words, used by Men, express their Sentiments and Passions rather than their Ideas.’102 Still, ideas do not disappear: behind language we find non-language, behind convention the non-conventional realm of ideas. According to all these thinkers, people introduce language for a social purpose, the purpose of communication. As Locke put it: ‘The comfort and advantage of society not being to be had without communication of thoughts, it was necessary that man [and woman] should find some external sensible signs, whereof those invisible ideas, which his [or her] thoughts are made up for, might be known to others.’103 If this purpose is to be achieved, settled and shared conventions are required: ‘This is so necessary in the use of language, that in this respect the knowing and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned, use the words they speak (with any meaning) all alike.’104 For some, the conventions of language are nothing more than another example of God’s benevolence. According to Frain du Tremblay, Traité des langues, language is a set of sounds used together in proper unities to signify things and to communicate.105

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The model, however, is the perfect and purely intelligible language by which angels speak to men.106 If language has a conventional side, it also has a natural side, that is, rules that were formed without the prudence and counsel of men (and women). Indeed, it is the natural rules with which language began, and conventions subsequently emerged from these. Though the original language – that of Adam – was natural and perfect,107 it is now a matter of institution108 and therefore can be improved by men of science and the arts.109 It is the imagination of philosophers that language grew out of gestures and primitive sounds;110 rather, Adam was given his language by God, and in this divinely given language things and sentiments were joined naturally to words,111 though the linguistic signs that God established were arbitrary in themselves.112 Given the role of God, it is, contrary to Plato, no mystery how purely spiritual and intelligible ideas are coupled to corporeal and sensible sounds.113 In fact, all theories of the origin of language other than God are unreasonable.114 This of course assumes that our ideas of God and of His Will are more pellucid than many since Hume would be prepared to admit. But for Frain du Tremblay the clarity of our insight into God’s activities is a commonplace that is assumed without question. In this, naturally, du Tremblay is not alone. Thus it is also assumed by another whom Hume might have read,115 B. Lamy in his De l’art de parler.116 Lamy distinguishes good usage versus bad, which we distinguish by means of rules that we learn through experience, reason and analogy.117 Analogy, too, is the source of new rules, since tropes such as metaphor are needed to take language beyond the relative impoverishment of its given set of words.118 But though languages grow, they all derive their basic structures from the God-given language of Adam;119 the stories of the Greeks that language originates naturally from human needs are all false, mere fables.120 But this Greek idea was pursued by others who rejected the notion that the explanation of language was an immediate appeal to divine teleology. Thus, for example, Pufendorf121 was to develop the notion that language is conventional in the context of a Lockean social contract account of conventions. Duties, for Pufendorf, are absolute or conventional;122 the former derive directly from natural law,123 while the latter ‘presuppose an express or tacit agreement.’124 It is a general and absolute duty of natural law that one keep these agreements;125 men enter into these agreements when advantage makes it reasonable to do so.126 There are three basic compacts on which all others are conditional: ‘The rest presuppose either some human institution, based upon a universal

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convention, and introduced among men, or else upon some particular form of government. Of such institutions we observe in particular three: language, ownership and value, and human government.’127 It is the first of these that concerns us here. That the use of language be not in vain, if each were to call a thing by any name he pleased, there must be among the users of the same language a tacit convention, to designate a certain thing by a certain word and no other. For unless there has been agreement upon a uniform application of words, it is impossible to gather from another’s speech the thoughts of his mind. Therefore by virtue of that compact every man is bound in common speech to employ words according as the established usage of that language prescribes.128

The conventions of language are not just descriptions of the use of words; they are also binding, in the sense of being rules that have imperatival and, indeed, moral force: the patterns are not just patterns but are also semantical rules. In this sense Pufendorf is correct: in this respect, he goes beyond Locke in attempting to locate a source for that obligation. But Pufendorf’s account of the source of that obligation, namely, in a prior compact, if only a compact that is tacit and therefore only logically prior, is an account that clearly presupposes that there is thought that is prior to linguistic convention. For, if Pufendorf is correct, there must be a sort of thought, prior to language, in which reason can move, can recognize the utility of the linguistic conventions and of the compact to enforce those conventions, and can tacitly agree to such a compact by conforming one’s language to those conventions and thereupon enjoy the goods that such conformity generates. Thus, for Pufendorf as for Plato and as for Locke, thought precedes language, and, indeed, all social conventions, all social institutions. Rationality is prior to (all human) discourse, man the rational animal prior to man the political animal. As we shall now see, Hume reverses this: for him, man’s social being is prior to his rationality.129 Hume followed Locke and Pufendorf in holding that language is conventional, and that these conventions have a non-theological origin: languages, Hume says, are ‘gradually establish’d by human conventions’ (490). Hume was likely influenced by Pufendorf’s account of promising, as Jones points out.130 Certainly there are on the one hand similarities, but on the other hand there is a remarkable difference, which Jones, intent on finding Hume’s roots in the past, fails to notice,

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and it is precisely the point that marks Hume’s break with the tradition. For Pufendorf, the tacit compact, or promise, precedes the conventions of language; for Hume, in contrast, promising presupposes rather than accounts for linguistic convention: ‘There are conventions of men, which create a new motive, when experience has taught us, that human affairs wou’d be conducted much more for mutual advantage, where there certain symbols or signs instituted, by which we might give each other security of our conduct in any particular incident’ (522). Note: there is, Hume argues, a new motive. Indeed, for Hume, as we have seen, it is the convention, not the thought that it expresses, that gives meaning to the words, ‘I promise’: ‘When a man says he promises any thing, he in effect expresses a resolution of performing it; and along with that, by making use of this form of words, subjects himself to the penalty of never being trusted again in case of failure. A resolution is the natural act of the mind, which promises express: But were there no more than a resolution in the case, promises wou’d declare only our former motives, and wou’d not create any new motive or obligation’ (521–2). It is the conventions surrounding the use of ‘I promise’ which guarantee that when one says ‘I promise’ he or she creates the new obligation, the felt obligation, what he (Hume) calls the ‘new motive.’ In this sense, Hume is arguing, promising presupposes rather than explains conventions. Hume generalizes this notion that he introduces with respect to promising, that the words take their meaning from the conventions for their use and not the mental states that they express. Tradition had it, from Plato to Locke, that thought proceeds by means of abstract ideas, and that the general terms in which thought expresses itself acquire their meaning through their connection to abstract ideas. Hume agrees with the tradition that thought proceeds by means of abstract ideas. Where he disagrees concerns the nature of abstract ideas. These he understands in a way that is radically different from that of the tradition. For the tradition, ideas precede language, even for Locke the socalled conceptualist, but for Hume an abstract idea simply is the capacity to use in the conventional way the general term that is said to express the idea. As Jones points out: ‘insistence on effective communication as a bond of society, and on the conventional nature of language were two of the most important views which Hume adopted from the French writers he studied.’131 For both Hume and the French writers it is indeed true that learned conformity to convention is a condition of social being. A person cut off from all others would be ‘incapable’ of ‘social discourse and

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conversation’;132 men (i.e., persons) indeed ‘cannot live without society’ (402). Nor would Locke and Pufendorf disagree. But the French writers like Lamy and Frain du Tremblay hold that beyond the instituted conventions of language are natural rules delivered by God, and ideas that precede language but which, given the incarnate nature of man, must be put into words if they are to be communicated. Locke and Pufendorf agree. Hume, as Jones fails to notice, breaks with this tradition when he asserts that there is no meaning apart from conventions, no abstract ideas apart from the use of words. Since rational thought involves the uniting and separating of abstract ideas, it follows that there can be no rationality that is prior to discourse, prior to the conventions of language. In this sense, in contrast to the whole tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Locke and Pufendorf, what Hume is arguing is that, since rational thought presupposes the conventions of language, and since conventions are acquired in a social context, man the social animal is prior to man the rational animal. For Hume, there is indeed more to man, that is, human being, than meets the eye; that more, however, is not a metaphysical essence or nature, or some mysterious power of reason to penetrate to a world beyond sense, but simply – habit. The traditional doctrine was that we obtain abstract ideas by separating these properties from the concrete things, or more concrete things, that they are in. We obtain the idea of red by separating the property red from some red thing; we obtain the idea of colour by separating it from the idea of red; we obtain the idea of triangle by separating it from a concrete triangle and the idea of plane figure by separating it from the idea of triangle. Specific ideas are obtained by separating them from concrete things, and generic ideas by separating them from the specific. Now, Berkeley argued,133 quite correctly, that this doctrine must be rejected if one holds two other theses: first, the anti-Platonist thesis that properties cannot exist apart from concrete things; and second, the thesis about what is thinkable, that if something is possible in thought then it is possible in reality. (Call this latter the ‘thinkability thesis.’) For, if abstract properties can be separated from concrete things in thought, then by the thinkability thesis it is possible for these properties to exist in reality apart from concrete things, contrary to the anti-Platonist thesis that they cannot. Weinberg134 has thoroughly documented that Berkeley’s opponents, from Aristotle to Descartes and Locke, had held this inconsistent triad of doctrines. Hume accepts this argument as conclusive. Given the thinkability thesis (18–19), and the anti-Platonist thesis that there can be no generic quality apart from its specific instances, nor

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specific properties apart from individual things (19–20), it follows that insofar as abstract ideas are ideas, they are images like all other ideas: ‘Abstract ideas are therefore in themselves individual, however they may become general in their representation’ (20). This is in effect where Berkeley stops, with, as Meinong has pointed out,135 this essentially negative thesis, with no explanation of how ideas can become, as Hume says, ‘general in their representation.’ It was Hume who went on to the positive task of providing an account, alternative to that of the tradition, of how words become general.136 Except that Hume in effect reverses the tradition, arguing that ideas become general in their representation by becoming associated with words that, conventionally, have a general use.137 Hume explains the use of abstract terms such as ‘red’ or ‘animal’ as follows. There are among objects a variety of objective resemblances and similarities. Red things resemble in a certain way; so do animals. It is such a ‘resemblance among several objects’ that grounds the use of a general term; we ‘apply the same name to all of them ... whatever differences may appear among them’ (20). A habit is established in which the term is associated with the members of the set of resembling objects, so when the word appears before the mind there also appears before the mind an image of some one or another of the resembling objects (20–1). In any given use of the term, only one image is present. But the other images are present dispositionally: ‘They are not really and in fact present to the mind, but only in power’ (20; italics added). The meaning of the general terms is, contrary to the tradition, not given by the particular idea or image that appears in consciousness on any particular use of the term. The meaning of the term is, rather, given by the habit or custom by which the term is applied to all the members of the set of resembling objects, and it is associated with mental imagery of the appropriate sort, which appears when the term is used. The meaning of a term does not change by having different images called up on different occasions so long as those images may be attached without confusion to words having different meanings: ‘Thus the idea of an equilateral triangle of an inch perpendicular may serve us in talking of a figure, of a rectilineal figure, of a regular figure, of a triangle, and of an equilateral triangle’ (21). The sort of explanation in terms of learning that Hume can offer is clear enough. The term as used by others in our presence is regularly joined in experience with objects of a certain sort, that is, of a certain resemblance class. When the term occurs, an object of the relevant sort

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is also present; conversely, when such an object is present, the term occurs. The relevant contiguity produces an association linking the term to objects of the relevant sort, and to images (ideas) of such objects. An object of the relevant sort thus comes to evoke the term, or, at least, an image of the term. Conversely, the occurrence of the term or an image (idea) of the term will evoke an image of such an object. At the same time, each such object will produce an image (idea) of itself; these will all resemble one another and will therefore by that relation all be associated with one another into a single complex idea. And furthermore, since each image will be associated with the word, so will this complex idea.138 Given the mental chemistry described by the laws of introspective psychology, the resembling images (ideas) that are associated together will fuse into a single unified mental event, that is qualitatively different from the ideas that produced it. It will not itself be an image. It is rather an imageless thought, an intentional entity rather than simply a sensory content, that is, rather than a simple sensory content like the images from which it arises through a process of association.139 Such an imageless thought is not a Lockean abstract idea that constitutes, as for Locke, the meaning of the general term, an idea that can be formed independently of language, that exists in a way prior to all discourse, where words refer to or mean only these ideas, and where all discourse is invented for the sole purpose of expressing these ideas. Rather, the imageless thought that I am suggesting Hume is talking about, when he slides from ideas as images to ideas as intentional, is that which is present in the mind of one who knows the meaning of the general term and is not present in the mind of one who does not know the meaning of the term; but it is not what the general term signifies – to the contrary, the general term signifies or means the things to which it applies truly – and it is certainly not there prior to all discourse – again to the contrary, it is the product of the associative process through which we learned the use of the word. The process that produces this imageless thought is one in which ideas (images) are associated via the relation of resemblance. The idea, the imageless thought, that is produced via association will have all these resembling ideas (images) as parts – not, to be sure, real parts, but analytical parts which are there only dispositionally, to be recovered if at all only by analysis. Hume recognizes clearly that these analytical parts are there in the idea they produce only dispositionally: the parts of the abstract idea are present, as he says, ‘only in power’ (20). Yet his failure to understand clearly the nature of introspective analysis

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means that he never completely abandons the logical model for analysis that one finds in Locke. As a consequence, he does not recognize the abstract idea which the association of resembling ideas (images) produces as a unity qualitatively distinct from its parts. At the same time, when we apply a term, or are disposed to apply a term to things, then there is present to us a distinct state of consciousness which that disposition, exercised or unexercised, expresses.140 Something is there; it is not a complex of all the parts; yet it is not a qualitatively distinct whole either; so to put something there, Hume as it were substitutes one of the parts for the whole. And so for Hume, an abstract idea is always a particular image with which a general term has become associated. A clearer understanding of introspective psychology such as was achieved by Tooke and by John Stuart Mill would have saved Hume from countless charges of having a too crudely imagistic model for thought. However, a similar clearer understanding by the critic would have equally saved us from those charges, by showing them that there can be found in Hume’s psychology something better than a crude imagism.141 Livingston has raised a deeper issue. He wonders142 why it is that Hume characterizes the abstract idea as an image, given that Hume maintains that the meaning of a general term is given by the custom or habit of its being applied to the members of a resemblance class. Why, he asks, does Hume think that ‘imagery is required’?143 To this, the answer is that Hume does not think that it is required. What the theory requires, if one must so speak, is that the habit of applying the general term to objects is acquired through the experience of such objects in connection with the term also being used in that context. Livingston suggests that a blind man could apply the term ‘red’ correctly, and therefore know its meaning, provided that he had learned how to use certain instruments that would enable him to identify red objects;144 the instruments would, say, in the presence of light of the appropriate wave-length emit a certain specific sound. He then argues that Hume introduces images to account for the obvious fact that there is a difference between the blind man and the sighted in their respective capacities to use the word ‘red’: the latter unlike the former has images that accompany its use.145 There is no doubt that there is this difference. But more fundamental is the difference in the pattern of acquisition. For the blind man, the habit can be acquired only after the prior acquisition of a pattern of inference based on previously acquired knowledge of the relevant instruments; for the sighted man, the habit can be acquired through visual experience of

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entities of the relevant resemblance class. The imagery is not required in order to have the habit of applying the term correctly. But it is there in the sighted man, produced by the same visual experience that also produced the habit of applying the term to objects in the resemblance class. It is not so much imagery that the blind man lacks that differentiates him from the sighted, but the fact that he does not, where the sighted man does, have visual sensory experiences of the objects to which he applies the term, nor, in particular, does he have visual experiences of those objects in respect of the appropriate way in which they resemble one another, for example, in respect of being red. Livingston has rightly located meaning as a matter of custom or habit in Hume, but has failed to locate this view in the context of Hume’s associationist theory of learning: with the latter it is easy to account for the difference between the blind man and the sighted, even when both apply a general term such as ‘red’ correctly to the same things. Livingston has the virtue of recognizing that for Hume, meaning is indeed a matter of custom or habit. Others simply treat Hume as a member of the older tradition (which includes Locke), which locates the meaning of a word in the idea which it expresses. Thus, when he reads Hume, Flew turns to Locke (Book III of Locke’s Essay was ‘Of Words’). ‘Hume,’ we are told, ‘is and always must be the supreme authority on Hume. Yet, precisely because Hume was not so much interested [in problems of language], it is Locke’s statement which provides the sharper assumptions Hume inherited.’146 Bennett also reads Hume in a Lockean framework: ‘Hume’s view of meaning is essentially Locke’s: to understand a word is to associate it with a kind of “idea,” and “ideas” are quasi-sensory states.’147 Interestingly, Bennett neither explores Hume’s own account of abstract ideas, nor explores Hume’s conventionalist account of the meaning of ‘I promise.’ It is hard to read a philosopher correctly if one does not read him. In fact, it is evident that the account of the meaning of general terms given in Book I of the Treatise, and mentioned briefly in the Enquiry,148 which treats meaning as nothing more than a habit created by association, must be supplemented by the account of conventions that appears in Book III of the Treatise. Meaning is not merely habit; it is also convention, and, as Pufendorf insisted, this convention is also a rule with moral or at least normative semantic force; and, moreover, these are conventions and habits and rules that can be modified and changed through deliberate decisions and the conscious efforts of the language user and, perhaps, his linguistic community.

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For Hume, as for his predecessors, we think in ideas. In particular, most thought involves abstract ideas. Thus, when we think about something, we have an abstract idea before our mind; when we make general judgments about things, we have a union or a separation of abstract ideas before the mind; when we recognize or identify something as being of a certain sort (= being a member of a certain resemblance class), we apply an abstract idea to it. But for Hume, unlike the tradition, to have an abstract idea before the mind is to have before the mind, in accordance with habit, (a token of) a general term: to have an abstract idea just is to use a general term. According to Hume’s psychology, the abstract idea – that is, the habit of use of a general term – is acquired through a process of association: the habit of use of a general term is acquired through the experience of that term being applied to members of a resemblance class of objects. The habit in thought is assumed to be regular: to recognize an object as of a certain sort is for the general term to be evoked in its presence. But the connection in experience that is supposed to produce that habit is far from regular: red objects often appear without their being called (by the term) ‘red.’ Assuming that the habit in thought is perfect, there are two issues: How come there is no corresponding regularity in experience? And how can the imperfect regularity in experience produce the perfect regularity in thought? The first question has to do with the connection between thought and behaviour: How is it that the application of the term ‘red’ in thought in the recognition of something as red does not produce the (overt) behaviour of calling the thing ‘red’? The answer has to do with the transitions from language to action (word–world transitions). The application of the word ‘red’ in thought is not always accompanied by the actual application of the term as a piece of overt behaviour, but it is accompanied by the tendency for it so to be applied. This, of course, is a law that relates mental states to dispositions to behave, but it is a generalization that we may indeed safely law-assert.149 It is, to be sure, imperfect, because we are unable (yet) to specify in detail the total set of conditions in which the disposition or tendency to verbal behaviour is actualized. Some of these conditions are purely environmental; sometimes something in the environment simply automatically elicits the overt use of language. Very often, however, what determines whether the disposition will be actualized is the will. One applies the word in thought, and wanting to communicate this observation or perceptual belief, the will brings about a bodily action the effect of which

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will be to satisfy that desire; this bodily action is the speech act of overtly applying the term so as to communicate one’s belief to someone else. But very often also, with no purpose to be served, the will does not produce speech acts that overtly express the thoughts we are having. Obviously the story can be elaborated to include the complexities that enter into our desires to communicate and to account for the contingencies of the communication process itself. But, since the main point is obvious enough, there is little to be gained in our undertaking here the armchair psychology that would be involved in elaborating these details.150 This main point is that on the whole, language exit (word–world) transitions from thought to speech acts are effected by the will moved by the desire to communicate. Given this, it is clear why the perfect habits of use of a term in thought do not find expression in corresponding perfect habits in overt behaviour (speech acts): each use of a term in thought is indeed accompanied by a disposition or tendency to an overt use of the term, but since we are not always moved to actualize the disposition, it often remains simply a tendency, an unactualized tendency, and the regularity in the overt use of the term in speech acts remains correspondingly irregular. But then, if the pattern of use of a term in overt behaviour is – as it normally is – irregular, then how can experience of that irregularity by a language learner bring about the less irregular use of the term in thought? It is here that we must recognize that the habits for the use of terms are conventions, and that both others and ourselves have an interest in conforming our behaviour to these conventions. This interest is our interest in successful communication. We can successfully communicate only if our language conforms to the conventions of the language used by others in the community in which we find ourselves. Others in that community have an interest in our being able to communicate successfully, some (e.g., parents), more than others, and those with such an interest will endeavour so to educate us that our language conforms to the conventions of the community. And we ourselves have an interest in being able to communicate, and so through a feedback process will endeavour to bring our language use into conformity with the linguistic habits of the community. Thus, the formation of the habits for the use of words is achieved not by mere association alone, but also through education and self-control. This is not to say that we here have exceptions to the associationist learning theory which Hume defends, but only that the historical conditions under which language learning occurs include more than the mere ex-

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perience of a term in contiguity to objects of a resemblance class; this imperfect regularity is supplemented by further conditions deliberately contrived by others and by ourselves by which we acquire, in thought, habits of linguistic use more perfect than those we experience. It is our deep and common human interest in or need for communication which creates, first, a general interest in there being some conventions or other of language, and, second, a general interest within a given community in conformity to the linguistic conventions of that community. This is, of course, parallel to the case of the general interest in the conventions of property that is generated by our deep and human interest in, and need for, social peace. This general interest in our artificial passion for the conventions of language is, like the corresponding interest in the conventions of property, acquired initially in the narrow context of the family, where people are first made fit for society, and then in the broader social contexts of the community. What then happens, of course, once there is a general interest in conformity to the conventions of language, is that the mechanism of sympathy enters to moralize these conventions as rules which have the binding force of obligations.151 It is these rules that Pufendorf recognized when he connected language to the need to communicate. But where Pufendorf located their binding force in a social contract that was prior to language, Hume in contrast accounts for their binding force through the natural psychological processes involving association, the need for communication, and the mechanism of sympathy. We noted before that the interest in communication lies behind language exit transitions. We now see that in a more general way, the same interest, as a basic human need, lies behind all our linguistic conventions. In his discussion of abstract ideas, Hume elaborates on one portion of this set of conventions, namely, that portion which covers language entry (world–word) transitions. Here we have the habits of use in which words are applied to things, either as individuals or as members of a resemblance class of things. These conventions are governed by rules such as ‘Pierre’ means Pierre and ‘red’ means red

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These rules presuppose, of course, that those whose thought and behaviour they govern have already the idea of Pierre and the idea of red, as the occurrence of the words on the right hand side indicates. These rules, often called designation rules, do not create the habits of usage that they govern; rather, in motivating conformity to the patterns, they render obligatory and thereby serve to maintain and strengthen those habits of usage.152 One should add, however, that these rules, in motivating other persons to bring about general conformity to the patterns they oblige, also bring it about that others so educate me that I too come to acquire the habits of conforming to those patterns, – that is, to those habits which are subsequently maintained by those rules which I myself have come, through the mechanism of sympathy, to internalize as obligatory. There are further conventions, of course. Besides the world–word transitions that govern meaning, there are world–word transitions that govern the assent, on the basis of experience, to basic observation sentences, for example, If ‘F’ designates F and ‘a’ designates a, then the habit of assenting to ‘a is F’ should be caused by, and only by, the experiencing in context C of a being F. The context C needs to be spelled out so as to mention the conditions under which perception is, if not always, then almost always, veridical. It has also to be qualified so as to include information acquired on the basis of the testimony of legitimate authority. And so on. But again the notion is clear enough.153 Next there are intralinguistic (word–word) transitions. These include the rules of syntax narrowly conceived, for example, the rules of formation for conjunctions and disjunctions, or for universally and existentially quantified sentences. They include the rules of definition by which some expressions abbreviate others. They should also include the rules of so-called ‘contextual definitions,’ for example, of definite descriptions, though Hume, like all thinkers before Russell, did not recognize these as such, nor did he accurately understand their logic. The intralinguistic rules also include the rules of semantics, which give truth conditions for sentences. Then they also include the rules of evidence – for example, the norms of deductive logic for maintaining consistency in belief, and the norms that Hume calls the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ for assenting to generalizations which make

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assertions that go beyond the data one has acquired through observation. In particular, the rules of evidence include one’s ethics of belief. Finally, we should note various conventions governing language exit (word–world) transitions. There are, for example, conventions that one speak the truth: Assert ‘p’ in a context where the hearer desires information only if one has evidence that ‘p’ is true. One should make as strong an assertion as one’s evidence allows: If ‘p’ and ‘q’ can both be asserted on the basis of data that one has, and ‘p’ entails ‘q’ but not conversely, then, in a context where the hearer desires information, assert ‘p.’ We should also note the point that Árdal made clear, the special nature of the rules for the use of such expressions as ‘I promise,’ which do not report but which, by virtue of those conventions, create new passions and feelings of obligation. Finally, we should note the conventions by which thought, that is, belief, is transformed, in the context of a relevant motive, into actions that are produced by the will as initiating means to achieve the desired end. All of these conventions can be altered through deliberate choice in order to satisfy interests that we have. Some changes in syntax and semantics occur slowly and unconsciously, but others are deliberate. Poets regularly make syntactical innovations in order to achieve new effects. Semantic rules are changed quite regularly. If one has a cognitive interest in matter-of-fact truth, then that will lead one to discipline one’s thought to conform to the rules by which to judge of causes and effects, and to Hume’s (rather than the Cartesian) ethics of belief. Or so Hume argues. What the need to communicate generates is the general interest that there be conventions of language. The fact that one is born into a linguistic community gives the accepted rules of that community an advantage at the gate over possible alternatives; but since we learn them so early, they become so deeply ingrained that one can only think of modifying them piecemeal, never of their total replacement. Neither political constitutions, as Livingston has argued,154 nor our ethics of belief, nor even the logical syntax of language, can be evaluated from an a priori perspective and the possibility of revolutionary change contemplated. At least, they ought not to be so evaluated: for, if Hume is cor-

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rect, there is no Plato’s heaven where we can find either an ideal republic, or an objective necessary causal tie, or any other sort of object for our transcendental Reason to grasp. The crucial move consists in construing thought as something essentially linguistic. Hume saw this himself when he wrote in his correspondence that ‘in much of our own thinking, there will be found some species of association. ’Tis certain we always think in language, viz. in that which is most familiar to us; and ’tis but too frequent to substitute words instead of ideas.’155 Jones has remarked on this that ‘unfortunately, the view that we think in language is left unsupported; unless he means by it that the expression of thought requires language, Hume did not mention any such view in his earlier philosophical work, and it may reflect his reading subsequent to it.’156 But of course Hume did support the view that thought is language: the argument is constituted by his doctrine of abstract ideas on the one hand and by his account of linguistic conventions on the other. Perhaps because these occur respectively in Books I and III of the Treatise, Jones has failed to make the connection. Jones locates Hume’s views on language in the context of French thinkers such as Lamy, du Tremblay, and du Marsais, who held that linguistic conventions serve human needs.157 As we saw, however, these thinkers were of a piece with the old tradition, also found in Locke and Pufendorf, in which language derives its signification from its expressing thoughts that are both nonlinguistic and prelinguistic. Always eager to locate Hume within a set of precursors, Jones misses the break that Hume made with the precursors when he carried out the radical innovation that thought does not precede but is language; instead, Jones attributes to Hume the view of the old tradition with which he broke, that the role of language is merely that of the expressing of thought, and that language acquires its signification through the expressing of thoughts, that is, thoughts which must be prior to the language that merely expresses them and does not constitute them. Jones in fact attributes to Hume the position of Descartes and Locke, that we clarify speech by turning to the thoughts or ideas which lie behind it and give it its signification: ‘No matter how many problems Hume leaves unexplored, his own position is moderately clear: talking is distinct from thinking, and most talk expresses thought; when confused by talk, we have to struggle to identify the thought behind it, and in the rarefied regions of philosophy we often find that such thought is itself confused or incoherent.’158 Now of course, thought is different from talking – that is, from overt

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verbal behaviour or, if you wish, speech acts. Hume agrees: for a thought to be expressed in overt behaviour, an act of volition is, often at least, required. It does not follow, however, that since thought is not talk (i.e., speech acts), therefore it is not linguistic. Also, it is true that when we are attempting to communicate with others, and we are presented by another with a speech act the meaning of which is unclear to us, then the first step in attempting to understand that event consists in attempting to identify its immediate causes, that is, the belief and the desire or intention that triggered the volition that produced the speech act. For Hume, however, there is a second step that is required if we are to grasp the signification of language: we must trace out the conventional or habitual links it has to entities in the world that is given to us in sense experience: ‘’Tis impossible to reason justly, without understanding perfectly the idea concerning which we reason; and ’tis impossible perfectly to understand any idea, without tracing it up to its origin, and examining that primary impression, from which it arises’ (74–5). What this means is that whereas the Cartesian program, endorsed on this point by Locke, requires one to turn inward to discover the signification of language, Hume requires one instead to turn outward, to the world that language, through its syntactical and semantical conventions, tries to describe. For Hume we must examine not the fit of our language to our ideas but the fit of our language to the world. Jones refers to the passage just quoted,159 but he fails to recognize its significance. As a consequence he ignores the second step that Hume prescribes for grasping the signification of what is said, that is, for the tracing out of the habitual or conventional ties of semantics that link terms to what they designate; instead Jones attributes to Hume the Cartesian and Lockean view that to grasp the sense of what a person says it suffices to turn to the ‘thought behind it.’ But when Jones locates Hume in this tradition in which the meaning of language derives from thought that is non-linguistic and prelinguistic, he simply fails to recognize that in Hume the transition from the other-world of Plato and Aristotle and Descartes to naturalism is finally complete. Now, while there are no doubt many problems with this general picture of language that Hume develops, there is nonetheless much to be said for it.160 There are five major points. One. Thought is essentially linguistic, in the sense that an abstract idea of a thought is inseparable from the disposition to apply a general term or to assert a proposition or sentence. Two. The linguistic conventions that make thought possible are learned, and three, this learning takes place through both deliberate

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teaching and through processes involving feedback and self-adjustment. Four. Again through learning we internalize rules that function to maintain our habits of speech and thought in conformity to certain patterns. But five, we can in the light of our interests modify our habits of speech and thought to conform to patterns that better serve our interests. While there is a certain amount of common sense to these claims, they are all, perhaps especially the first, subject to dispute. For our purposes what is important, first, is Hume’s thorough-going naturalistic account of thought, where he makes a radical break with the whole philosophical tradition that preceded him. And second, whatever be the detailed defects and imperfections in his psychology, none of them shows the impossibility of the program that Hume proposed, of an empirical science of human being. Or, in short, whatever are the defects in Hume's psychology, they do not challenge his program of founding the sciences on the new science of human nature. At the same time, contrary to many critics, one cannot as it were shoot down Hume’s philosophy by attacking his psychology: Hume’s psychology is sufficiently articulate to incorporate what is essential to his moral and political philosophy and to his ethics of belief, that education and self-control through feedback have important roles to play in learning. For our future purposes, two things are worth emphasizing. The first is the public nature of thought and language, its roots in public norms. This includes our general concepts – no abstract ideas here, no ideas apart from our life in the world of everyday experience – and includes also the norms that determine the justification, the epistemic justification, of our beliefs – our epistemic norms are no more a priori than are the norms which shape the political or social order. The other point we shall need to keep in mind is that at its best, Hume’s account of mind includes mental acts, which carry intentionality and which are distinct from images: the attempted reduction of imageless thoughts to images is part of a research program in the science of psychology and is not essential to Hume’s account of belief and thought. D. The ‘New Hume’ versus the Old161 Thus far we have assumed a version of what has become the standard reading of Hume on causation. More specifically, we have assumed

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that, details aside, Hume adopts and defends the thesis that objectively, causation is matter-of-empirical-fact regularity. There are, however, those who have challenged this reading.162 These commentators defend a reading that has come to be known as the ‘new Hume.’ This new Hume is not one who rejects objective necessary connections. To the contrary, this Hume supposes that there are objective necessary connections in the world. However, this Hume is a sceptic about these necessary connections: it is suggested that he argues, plausibly, that we cannot know them. In Wright’s terms, Hume is a ‘sceptical realist.’163 On the standard view, the idea of an objective necessary connection is a confused idea, one that mixes the objective relation and the subjective relation, that is, the relations described in Hume’s two definitions of ‘cause.’ The way out of the confusion is to separate clearly those two ideas. We have examined in detail the role of rules of language in Hume’s account of ideas. The way out of the confusion is through rational reflection on these rules, and through laying down these rules in a way that clearly separates the ideas. The relevant rules are there in the two definitions of ‘cause.’ The notion of an objective necessary connection arises from a failure to achieve, or to maintain (and, given the normal workings of the human mind, it is difficult to maintain), the clarity embodied in these two definitions: it is a natural thing to confuse them and to give ourselves the illusion of an objective necessary connection. We normally cannot avoid thinking in terms of such an idea, that is, in terms of the confused idea; but reflective thought will clarify things, and we shall recognize that this idea with which we ordinarily think is a confused idea. In everyday life, little if any harm is done when our minds run in this way. This is not so, however, when it comes to doing philosophy. The confused idea, taken erroneously to be coherent, is the source of rationalist and Aristotelian metaphysics, on the one hand, and, on the other, the sort of radical scepticism that is parasitic on such metaphysics. The defenders of the ‘new Hume’ suggest that there is a different explanation of our ordinary or everyday idea – that is, our ordinary treatment of causation as objective necessity. On this ‘new’ reading of Hume, the notion of causation is not really an idea. It is granted that the only ideas that we have are those of the two definitions, and that we therefore cannot think of causation as objective necessity if we also hold that all thought proceeds in terms of ideas. But on this view, we do think of it: we have a notion (of sorts) which is not an idea – that is, an idea derived from sense experience – and certainly not a confused idea.

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We shall say more of this in a moment. But for now we should look at the structure of the argument for this interpretation that gives us the ‘new Hume.’ It is in fact simple. It is argued that only by reading Hume in this way can we make sense of the Humean texts – with special reference made to those places where Hume speaks of ‘hidden’ causes and of similar things, powers, for example. To deal with the ‘new’ Hume, then, we shall have to look in detail at the relevant texts. We shall have to return to a discussion of aspects of these issues in later chapters. But it is best that we face up to them here, at the beginning, where we have laid the necessary groundwork in terms of Hume’s theory of ideas and the role of rules of language in any account of Hume’s treatment of our ideas – and more specifically, of our ideas of the ‘external’ world and, of course, of the causal connections in it. The position held by the proponents of the ‘new Hume’ is philosophically very odd: this is clear from the start. Here are entities, the objective necessary connections, that we can never know. Since we can never know them, they play no role in our ordinary causal judgments: the world we live in, and in which we think, and which we reason about, goes on as if they did not exist – and one is immediately inclined to ask, ‘Who needs these things?’ Furthermore, even if they exist, we can never know these useless entities, because we have no impression of them. With no impression, there are no ideas – ‘all our ideas derive from impressions’ – and therefore (one would assume) without ideas they cannot be thought. So they are not only useless but also quite unthinkable. And if they cannot be thought, then we cannot even think or say that they do not exist, statements about them are just meaningless. Talk about objective necessary connections would seem to be meaningless nonsense. Not to worry, we are told. Hume, it is said, has a second way of cognizing the world: we may have no idea of what it is we are saying exist, but nonetheless we can suppose that these entities exist. So we are told. The trouble with this line of defence in the story of the new Hume is that supposing is a cognitive attitude, an attitude that, like assenting or denying, characterizes certain mental states. As such, it attaches as it were to an idea. One assents to a proposition (= a joining of ideas), and similarly one supposes a proposition. Supposing is not a way of knowing or thinking different from ideas; to the contrary, insofar as it is a thinking about things, it is a way of thinking by means of ideas. Moreover, and in any case, Hume clearly holds that there is no thinking about things save by way of ideas. Thus, he tells us in another

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context that ‘now, ’tis certain we have an idea of extension; for otherwise why do we talk and reason concerning it?’ (32). This implication is clear: if we have no idea of something, then we can neither talk nor reason about it. Therefore, since we have no ideas of objective necessary connections or unanalysable powers, we cannot ‘talk and reason’ concerning them. True, Hume does often speak of causal ‘connections.’ Often when he does this, it is a matter of speaking with the vulgar. But where necessary, he is sure to let the reader know that he is talking, not of connections in the ordinary sense (which is compatible with a regularity view of causation), nor of necessary connections (which is also compatible with his regularity view), but rather of the objective necessary connections defended by his rationalist and Aristotelian opponents. Often enough, the defenders of the ‘new’ Hume blur the ordinary and the metaphysical senses of (objective necessary) connection. In order to deal adequately with this reading of Hume, we need what we have been discussing, that is, a good account of Hume on ideas and more specifically on abstract ideas. This we have supplied. Let us see, then, what can be said about the case for the ‘new Hume.’ Begin with that point at which epistemology and ontology coincide – specifically, with the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance. The empiricist admits entities into his or her ontology provided that they conform to this Principle of Acquaintance, which says: admit no entity unless one is acquainted with it. What we must recognize about the basic entities of the world is that they are in themselves wholly, or logically, or ontologically, self-contained. Acquaintance with them is thus mere acquaintance. Acquaintance with a quality or a relation or an area is thus not knowledge about. To be sure, we are acquainted with facts, with the bundles that are ordinary things. This provides us with knowledge about the entities in the facts that are thus presented. But mere acquaintance with the basic entities is dumb. James made the point in his usual telling way: ‘I know the color blue when I see it, and the flavor of a pear when I taste it; I know an inch when I move my finger through it; a second of time, when I feel it pass; an effort of attention when I make it; a difference between two things when I notice it; but about the inner nature of these facts or what makes them what they are, I can say nothing at all.’164 But there are philosophers – Aristotelians and rationalists – who argue that our experience of sensible things is not in this way dumb. The point can be made in a simple way. It is argued that in order to

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know what the quality red is we must also know that it is not the quality green, and, more strongly, that red’s qualifying something is incompatible with green’s qualifying that thing. Thus, in knowing red one also knows that (I)

Whatever is red is not green = (x)[ red (x) Š ~green (x)].

So on this view, when we know red in itself, we also know something about red, namely, that being red is incompatible with being green. (I) describes (part of) the being of red, and so is part of the meaning of ‘red’: it is a metaphysical necessity. Acquaintance, then, always is, or involves, knowledge about: it is not dumb. Perhaps more important than (I) historically is the exclusion (x)[ extended (x) Š ~thought (x)] where extension and thought exclude each other. The same point applies. The pattern goes back to Aristotle. His metaphysical scheme is designed to provide a way of explaining sensible events. On his view, an ordinary thing is a substance. A substance has qualities present in it. Sensible events are the being in a substance of a sensible quality. Change consists in one quality ceasing to be in a substance followed by the coming to be in that substance of a different and incompatible sensible quality. A substance is an individual – more particularly, an individual that endures through change. On the metaphysics of explanation that Aristotle proposes, every substance, that is, every ordinary object, has a nature. This nature is metaphysically necessary to the being of the object; it defines what it is in its essence. This nature is a power, an active disposition, that moves the object in certain defined ways.165 Thus, for example, it is the nature of a stone to gravitate. To be grave is an active power. In exercising this power, the object moves itself.166 This power is such that if the object is unsupported then it moves towards the centre of the universe. More generally, let ‘N’ be the nature, ‘F’ the occasion of its exercise, and ‘G’ the end of its exercise. Then we have

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(x)[Fx Š (Nx { Gx)].

We explain the behaviour of an object by appeal to its nature. This nature is active: the model is that of human volition. Thus, for Aristotle, all objects are active in the sense in which human beings are active, though some (e.g., human beings or dogs or even oysters) are more active than others (e.g., stones). To say that they are more active is to say that they have more powers, more complex natures. Since the powers are active, modelled as they are on human activities, they are powers the exercise of which is towards an end. The prescientific explanations of Aristotle and his successors such as Ptolemy are thus purposive; every explanation is a teleological explanation. In the case of stones, the purpose or end which the stone’s activity is aimed at achieving is being at the centre of the universe. The activity is as it were constant. But it is not always exercised. The stone is constantly striving to be at the centre of the universe. But sometimes it is prevented from moving towards that end. Thus, if I hold the stone up at the top of the tower, I am preventing it from moving towards the centre of the universe. That tendency I feel as the weight of the stone. If the impediment is removed, if the stone becomes unsupported, then the tendency will manifest itself in the properties of the stone, it will in fact change places as it moves itself systematically towards the centre of the universe. In an Aristotelian world, the patterns among sensible appearances that derive from the underlying natures of things are not universal: they are gappy. The nature, that is, the ‘N’ of (D), is not given to us in sense experience. Rather, Aristotle argued, it is given to us in a rational intuition. For Aristotle, reason is what grasps the reasons for things, and the reasons for things behaving as they do are their natures. Reason, then, for Aristotle, provides us with special insight into the metaphysical structure of the world. This notion of ‘reason’ is very different from that of the empiricists, according to whom reason aims to discover genuine matter-of-fact regularities, universal and exceptionless patterns of behaviour. Reason, on this empiricist alternative, does not aim at insight into metaphysical structures but is a human instrument that restricts itself to the world of sense experience, endeavouring to discover exceptionless patterns of behaviour of objects.167 In (D), the ‘F’ and ‘G’ are features of the object known in sense experience. Since (D) relates the nature N to these features of sense experience, where N is not given in sense experience, it follows that (D) is not

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itself an empirical truth, that is, it is not something the truth of which can be discovered in sense experience. We discover its truth not by observation but by reason, that is, the reason which grasps the natures or reasons of things. A statement such as (D), which relates a nature to the empirically observable occasion and end of its exercise, is metaphysically necessary. As for understanding the natures of things, this is done, according to Aristotle, by giving a real definition of the nature. The nature is a species, and the species is defined by giving its genus and specific difference. Thus, in the case of human beings, the nature is ‘humanity’ and the real definition is given by ‘rational animal,’ where ‘animal’ is the genus and ‘rational’ is the specific difference. The real definition is exhibited in a syllogism: All M are P All S are M All S are P ‘S’ and ‘P’ are the subject and predicate of the conclusion, and ‘M’ is the middle term that joins them in the premises. When the syllogism exhibits a real definition, ‘S’ is the species, ‘P’ is the genus, and ‘M’ is the specific difference. Thus, the real definition human is rational animal is exhibited in the syllogism All rational are animal All human are rational All human are animal In the case of stones we would have All centre-loving objects are material All stones are centre-loving objects All stones are material Syllogism is thus not only a form of argument but also a logical structure that exhibits the metaphysical structure of the world. It reveals the complex structure of the active dispositions or nature of an object. It

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reveals, in the genus, those dispositions which the nature shares with other objects, and, in the specific difference, it reveals those dispositions which distinguish it from other sorts or species of object. Thus, for Aristotle and his successors, understanding the natures of things consists in grasping the ways in which they are similar to and differ from other sorts of things. Explanation consists in grasping similarities and differences among things.168 The Aristotelian idea is that the structure of things is given in nonempirical judgments of necessary connection. The seventeenth-century English Aristotelian John Sergeant argued, in his Method to Science,169 that science, understood in empiricist fashion, as based in sensation, cannot achieve a genuine unity, and therefore leaves things unexplained. Matter of Fact shows evidently, that this Method [that of experiment], alone, and Unassisted by Principles, is utterly Incompetent or Unable to beget Science. For, what one Universal conclusion in Natural Philosophy, (in knowing which kind of Truths Science consists) has been demonstrated by Experiments. [It is] merely Historical, and Narrative of Particular Observations; from which to deduce Universal Conclusions is against plain Logick, and Common Sense. (n.p., d4)

Genuine science, in contrast, requires the grasp of objective necessities that tie things together into wholes. In order genuinely to understand things, this objective structure must be grasped: ’Tis Connexion of Terms which I onely esteem as Proper to advance Science. Where I find not such Connexion, and the Discourse grounded on Self-evident Principles, or (which is the same) on the metaphysical Verity of the Subject, which engages the Nature of the Thing, I neither expect Science can be gain’d, nor Method to Science Estalbish’d. (ibid.)

In fact, Sergeant argues that judgment ultimately refers to a reality implicitly mentioned in the copula. Sergeant argued that ‘there is but one onely Notion that is perfectly Absolute, viz. that of Existence, and all the rest are in some manner or other, Respective’ (p. 15). We begin with the notion of being or existence and subdivide it according to species and difference, as Porphyry showed. Differences are successively added to genera to create ever more inferior species. The species most

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inferior to the supreme genus are individual things: ‘Every individual Man is but One Ens or thing; since he descends Lineally from that Common Head by intrinsecal Differences of more or less, which constitute him truly One in that Line; that is, one Ens, or one Thing’ (p. 32). At the other end of the scale, the supreme genus is that of being, which admits of no definition in terms of genus and difference: ‘The Notion of is, or Actual Being, is impossible to admit any Explication’ (p. 120). But if being is the supreme genus, it is also that which contains within itself as the source the being of all inferiors. If it is the supreme genus, it is also the most determinate being, the most ‘fixed.’ As the source of all being, of all reality, being is that which links its own determinations into determinate wholes. The Notion of is is the Determinate of its own Nature, and so most Fixt of it's self; and, therefore, most proper to fix the Judgment. (p. 120)

Being ‘fixes’ judgments by providing the linkage represented by the copula: The meaning of the word is which is the Copula, is this, that those Words are Fundamentally Connected in the same Thing and Identify’d with it Materially; however those Notions themselves by Formally different, provided they be not Incompossible ... As when we say a Stone is Hard the Truth of that Proposition consists in this, that the Nature of hard is found in that Thing or Suppositum call’d a Stone, and is in part Identify’d with it; however the Notions of Stone and Hard be Formally Distinct. Or, (which is the same) it is as much as to say, that that Thing which is Stone is the same thing that is Hard. (p. 119)

Thus, ‘this Proposition Self-Existence is Self-existence is, of it self, most Supremely Self-Evident’ (p. 133). This proposition, which is the same as the propositions that ‘what is is’ and ‘existence is existence,’ contains within itself all other predications: ‘not only the Notion of the Copula, but of the Subject and Predicate too, is Existence’ (p. 134). Being, of course, is God Himself. As Sergeant puts it, ‘God himself has expressed his own Supreme Essence by this Identical Proposition, Ego Sum qui Sum’ (p. 145). Our primary awareness is an awareness of being: ‘The Notion of Existence is imprinted in the Soul before any other in priority of

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Nature’ (p. 15). But this being of which one is aware is the being that constitutes the objective order of things. Thus, the connection between things is, on the one hand, an act of judgment and, on the other hand, an objective connection in things: There being ... a Real Relation between those Notions which are the Subject and Predicate, the latter being really in the understanding and That which is said of the Former, and the Former that of which ’tis said; and Relation being necessarily compleated and actually such, but the Act of a Comparing Power; it follows, that every Judgment is a Referring or Comparing one of those Notions to the other, and (by mens of the Copula) of both of them to the same Stock of Being on which they are engrafted, or the same Ends; where they are Entatatively Connected (or the same Materially) before they are Seen or Judg’d to be so by our understanding. (p. 121)

Thus, Sergeant. Locke, in Essay concerning Human Understanding,170 argued against Sergeant’s account of knowledge. The necessary connections that Sergeant supposed were there are in fact simply not to be seen. It is evident, Locke says, that we do not know the necessary connections required for an Aristotelian understanding of why parts of things cohere (Bk. IV, Ch. iii, section 26, pp. 526ff). But even if we knew why the parts cohere, we still would not know everything necessary for a grasp of the notion of the thing in Sergeant’s sense. For the notion must account for all the causal activities of the substance of which it is the notion, insofar as these activities are not merely occasional. Now, the regular activities of external substances include the production of the ideas of the secondary qualities, that is, the production of the simple ideas red, sweet, and so on. For these activities to be knowable scientifically, in Sergeant’s Aristotelian sense, regularities revealed by sense about such activities must be demonstrable by syllogisms grounded in notions. But for that to be possible, there must be necessary connections between red, sweet, and so forth, and the notions or natures of the substances that cause these qualities to appear. These necessary connections must be both ontological, in the entities themselves, and epistemological, giving us, when in the mind, scientific knowledge of those entities. But, Locke argues, we grasp no such connections: ’Tis evident that the bulk, figure, and motion of several Bodies about us, produce in us several Sensations, as of Colours, Sounds, Tastes, Smells,

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Properties are perceived to be just as they are, in themselves; to know them as they are, we need not know any of the relations in which they stand to other entities: The immediate perception of the agreement or disagreement of identity being founded in the mind's having distinct ideas ... affords us as many self-evident propositions, as we have distinct ideas. Every one that has any knowledge at all, has as the foundation of it, various and distinct ideas: And it is the first act of the mind (without which it can never be capable of any knowledge) to know every one of its ideas by itself, and distinguish it from others. Every one finds in himself, that he knows the ideas he has; that he knows also, when any one is in his understanding, and what it is; and that when more than one are there, he knows them distinctly and unconfusedly one from another (IV, viii, 2).

Locke’s appeal to an empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance is clear.171 The conclusion that Locke draws is that the account of knowledge and of syllogism that Sergeant developed is not sound: we cannot erect the edifice of knowledge on the proposition that ‘what is, is’: All purely identical propositions ... obviously, and at first blush, appear to contain no instruction in them. For when we affirm the said term of itself, whether it be barely verbal, or whether it contains any clear and real idea, it shows us nothing but what we must certainly know before, whether such a proposition be either made by or proposed to us. Indeed that most general one, ‘what is, is,’ may serve sometimes to show a man the absurdity he is guilty of, when by circumlocution, or equivocal terms, he would, in particular instances, deny the same thing of itself; because nobody will so openly bid defiance to common sense, as to affirm visible and direct contradictions in plain words; or if he does, a man is excused if he breaks off any farther discourse with him. But yet, I think, I may say, that neither

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that received maxim, nor any other identical proposition teaches us any thing: And though in such kind of propositions, this great and magnified maxim, boasted to be the foundation of demonstration, may be and often is made use of to confirm them; yet all it proves amounts to no more than this, that the same word may with great certainty be affirmed of itself, without any doubt of the truth of any such proposition; and let me add also, without any real knowledge. (IV, vii, 4)

So much the worse for the sort of reason that Sergeant defends: the world in which we live is simply not one in which there are any of the objective necessities that that account of reason supposes are there.172 Hume develops Locke’s argument to its reasonable conclusion: no properties are necessarily connected. There are no powers the exercise of which constitutes objective necessary connections among things. As we put it above, if ‘N’ is the nature, ‘F’ the occasion of its exercise, and ‘G’ the end of its exercise, then we have (D) (x)[Fx Š (Nx { Gx)] as a necessary truth. Since (D) is a necessary truth, if we know a is N and A is F then we can infer without further ado that a is G. The a priori nature of (D) precludes the need for any observation of regularity. As Hume puts it: ‘Were the power or energy of any cause discoverable by the mind, we could foresee the effect, even without experience; and might, at first, pronounce with certainty concerning it, by the mere dint of thought and reasoning.’173 But in fact, Hume argues, ‘[t]he distinction, which we often make betwixt a power and the exercise of it, is ... without foundation’ (171). There is no distinction between N and F Š G: there is no such N to be distinguished, no substantive a priori principle (D) to be known.

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But of course we do use the language of dispositions and powers. Hume provides an account of this way of speaking. He makes the point in his discussion of human psychology in Book II of the Treatise, but refers back to his discussion in Book I. ‘It has been observ’d,’ he says, ‘in treating of the understanding, that the distinction, which we sometimes make betwixt a power and the exercise of it, is entirely frivolous’; and he goes on to explain what this means: ‘Neither man nor any other being ought ever to be thought possest of any ability, unless it be exerted and put in action.’ He now goes on to explain that this fits ill with our ordinary discourse of powers and dispositions: ‘Tho’ this be strictly true in a just and philosophical way of thinking, ’tis certain it is not the philosophy of our passions; but that many things operate upon them by means of the idea and supposition of power, independent of its actual exercise’ (311–12). But this can be explained: ‘Power has always a reference to its exercise, either actual or probable, and that we consider a person as endow’d with any ability when we find from past experience, that ’tis probable, or at least possible he may exert it’ (313). Hume’s suggestion is that ‘F Š G’ represents a power just in case there is a regularity in which it appears,174 which in the case of the passions means a regularity about the person a to the effect that for any time, Fa Š Ga and, more generally, a regularity to the effect that (x)[Px Š (Fx Š Gx)] where ‘P’ represents some categorical property. Thus, for example, in our discussion of Wright’s appeal to physiology, we allowed, albeit speculatively, that this P might be a physiological basis, or, more plausibly, as Hume argues, this P might be the conditions of learning through which the disposition was acquired.175 What it isn’t is an unanalysable active power. Hume argues, using the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance, that there is no power N because we have no impression of such a power providing a connection – an objective necessary connection – between things: ‘All ideas are deriv’d from, and represent impressions. We never have any impression, that contains any power or efficacy. We never therefore have any idea of power’ (161). ‘All ideas are derived from impressions’: this describes the causal relations between impressions

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and ideas. It also states what ought to be the case: ‘All our ideas are, and ought only to be, derived from impressions.’ ‘Ought only to be’ because we can, as we have seen, keep our ideas clear only if we can trace them unambiguously back to those impressions from which they are in fact derived. When we search out the impressions from which our idea of cause derives, till I meet with such-a-one [an objective necessary connection or active power], which I despair of, I cannot forbear concluding, that since we can never distinctly conceive how any particular power can possibly reside in any particular object, we deceive ourselves in imaging we can form any such general idea. (162)

There is of course a way of speaking that does imply that causation involves an objective necessary connection or active power. But such discourse is in fact meaningless, or else the terms involved are misused: When we speak of a necessary connexion betwixt objects, and suppose that this connexion depends upon an efficacy or energy, with which any of these objects are endow’d; in all these expressions, so apply’d, we really have no distinct meaning, and make use only of common words, without any clear and determinate ideas.

However, ’tis more probable, that these expressions do here lose their true meaning by being wrong apply’d, than that they never have any meaning. (162)

Discourse of objective necessary connections is either meaningless or confused. In either case, it can represent nothing in the world. Objective necessary connections are a figment of philosophers’ imaginations. And if this figment represents nothing, then there is nothing to represent. This is sometimes represented by those defending the ‘new’ Hume as an epistemological point, about our knowledge of any objective necessary connections, or rather our lack thereof; and this epistemological point is then contrasted with an ontological claim to the effect that objective necessary connections really do exist. The argument implies, of course, that something can exist even though we don’t know it and perhaps even if we have never had in our experience anything of the

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kind. So the ‘new Humeans’ conclude that Hume’s argument that we have no idea of any objective necessary connection is compatible with his also claiming that there are objective necessary connections, that these really do exist.176 That he does hold to the ontological thesis is then supported by citing various texts. The appeal is made to texts such as the following: ‘When we talk of gravity, we mean certain effects, without ever comprehending the active power [in this case, gravity].’177 This, of course, is inconclusive. It does not express the notion that the powers are something other than physical mechanisms. Hume does allow the legitimacy of the notion of a power; we have seen that he makes this clear. It is just that these powers cannot be unanlysable active powers. So Hume can quite appropriately declare gravity a power without reckoning it the sort of power that is supposed to provide objective necessary connections. Texts such as this simply cannot decide the issue in favour of the ‘new Hume.’ But the argument that something can exist even though we have never had in our experience anything of the kind cannot, for the empiricist, be allowed to stand: for it is contrary to empiricist principles to introduce entities that do not pass the test established by the Principle of Acquaintance. For the empiricist, committed as he or she is to a Principle of Acquaintance, that we do not know it (or anything like it) is the basic ground for excluding it from one’s ontology. And it is not that it just doesn’t exist, but the discourse about it, lacking reference, is meaningless – a point we have seen Hume himself make with respect to objective necessary connections. Contrary to the ‘new Humeans,’ it is not just that one does not know any objective necessary connections. To the contrary, since we do not know them, nor anything like them, since the discourse about such things is meaningless, Hume knows that objective necessary connections do not exist: the very idea of such a connection is simply confused. With the academic sceptic, Hume knows that he does not know, but what he knows is that there is nothing there of the required sort there to be known. Hume is not a mere sceptic, he is an Academic sceptic: he knows that there are no objective necessary connections, and knows that he does not know. They don’t exist because we have had no impression of them or of anything like them: the Principle of Acquaintance excludes them from one’s ontology.178 There are of course parts of the world that are not given to us in ordinary experience. Parts too small to see or too far away to be seen. But these objects are like objects with which we are acquainted. Little grains of sand are like big grains of sand, little mites too small to see are like

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mites big enough to be seen. Recall Berkeley’s dictum: ‘An idea can be like nothing but an idea.’179 For an empiricist, unknown things can exist so long as they are like things with which we are acquainted – where by ‘like’ is meant that they are of a common species or genus. The point is that things of that species or genus must have been presented, so that the kind satisfies the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance. Objective necessary connections fail this test: they are not of any genus or species with which we are acquainted. The microscope reveals a mysterious world that lies beyond our (unaided) senses, but a microscope will never reveal an objective necessary connection: such entities are mysterious because they are unlike anything we do know, because, in other words, they purport to be of a kind of which we know absolutely nothing. Hume comments on what he calls (at this point in his discussion) ‘external objects’ (68). The passage is worth quoting in full: ‘The furthest we can go towards a conception of external objects, when suppos’d specifically different from our perceptions, is to form a relative idea of them, without pretending to comprehend the related objects. Generally speaking we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attribute to them different relations, connexions and durations’ (68).180 ‘Generally speaking’: this is what we ordinarily do. ‘Them’: these are ‘different’: it is external objects and our perceptions that are different. Here, as he explains later (Treatise, I, iv, 2), he is talking with the vulgar, and makes it clear that he is speaking of things according to this view of the world and our place in it. So, of the entities given in sense experience ‘I shall call [them] indifferently object or perception, according as it shall seem best to suit my purpose, understanding by both of them, what any common man means by a hat, or shoe, or stone, or any other impression, convey’d to him by his senses’ (202). So one can have the impression of a hat: this is important because it means that Hume is not (yet) defending (if he ever defends) a version of subjectivist phenomenalism.181 What he has in mind seems to be the fact that, as we ordinarily express these things, the hat is the cause of the impression (or perception) of the hat. ‘Generally speaking,’ then, speaking with the vulgar, it is the hat as an external object that is the cause of my perception of the hat. The hat and the perception of it resemble each other – they are the same colour, share an appropriate shape, and so on. ‘Generally speaking,’ we do not suppose the causes of our perceptions are specifically different from the perceptions we have of these ‘external objects.’ The object and the per-

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ception are causally related; they are spatially disparate; they definitely exist for different lengths of time. But we can also think of an external object as specifically different from the perception of it. That means, for example, we can conceive of the perception as coloured but its cause as not coloured. But we must conceive it, that cause, as having some quality or other, that it is like the perception of it: we must suppose at the least that it is qualified. So it is now being supposed as different specifically from the perception of it. When we think of the external object in this way we do not comprehend it, that is, comprehend it fully, as it is in all its specificity. The idea we have of an object like this is, it is clear, an abstract idea (in Hume’s sense of abstract idea). We certainly are not acquainted with these objects. For if we were, then we would be aware of them in all their specificity, and so would comprehend them. But, Hume tells us, we suppose them to exist. We do this by means of ‘relative ideas.’ The notion of a relative idea was common in the eighteenth century. It appears in Locke, for one (Essay, Bk. II, Ch. xxv). To say that Caius is white is not to implicate another substance, but to say that Caius is a husband is to implicate another. Relations are understood as pairs of properties: husband and wife, father and child – and cause and effect. Now, we know or have good reason to believe that every event has a cause. That is, for every event there is another event that is related to it as cause to effect. But my perception, that is, my perceiving, is an event. Therefore, there is another event that is related to my perception as cause to effect. I thus form a relative idea of the cause of my perception. I do not comprehend this cause – that is, comprehend it in all its specificity. I am certainly not acquainted with this object that is the cause. Otherwise, I would comprehend it. But I do have a good reason to hypothesize that it exists. This good reason is provided by the causal principle that for every event, including perforce that event which is my perception, there is another event that is its cause.182 This principle makes it reasonable to suppose that such a cause does exist, an entity that has some specific properties though we know not what those properties are – that is, what specifically they are, though of course we do know them as falling under a genus. Thus, for example, it is reasonable to suppose that there are certain physiological causes of my perceptions. These causes are mysterious – we don’t know specifically what they are – but for all that we have

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good reason to suppose that they exist. Certainly, discourse about such causes is not meaningless. It in fact has the logical form of Russellian definite descriptions: the entity that causes my perception of such and such. Or, more fully, we must refer to both the entity in question and also to the relevant quality that causes my perception: the entity such that it exhibits the quality that is sufficient for my perception of such and such. Such definite descriptions, based on abstract or generic relative ideas, enable us to refer to entities and to properties of those entities, neither of which we are acquainted with. But of course, those entities with which we are not acquainted are of kinds with which we are acquainted – recall Berkeley’s comment that ‘only an idea can be like an idea’; we cannot form a relative (an intelligible relative) idea of an entity – like an objective necessary connection – that is not itself or not of a sort or kind that is presented to us in experience.183 Hume thus allows us to refer to causes that we do not comprehend. He makes the same point elsewhere. Thus, for example, he tells us that there may well be ‘hidden’ causes of the events that we experience; we can indeed refer to these, and even call them ‘powers,’ but this is a harmless way of speaking so long as we understand that we are making no reference to objective necessary connections or unanalysable powers: causation, even among ‘hidden’ causes, remains, objectively, regularity: ‘I am, indeed, ready to allow, that there may be several qualities, both in material and immaterial objects, with which we are utterly unacquainted; and if we please to call these power or efficacy, it will be of little consequence to the world’ (168). But remarks like these give no support to those who defend the ‘new’ Hume. These ‘powers’ are powers only in the sense in which Hume allows that it is intelligible to speak of powers, namely, in terms of regularities. These are clearly not powers in the Aristotelian sense, that is, unanalysable active dispositions on the model of (D) above. For our present purposes, what needs to be noted is that Hume allows discourse about these hidden objects to be intelligible, even where we cannot comprehend these entities in all their specificity. The point is, we do have ideas of these secret objects – abstract generic and

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relative ideas, we grant, but still ideas that derive from impressions and are therefore intelligible. In contrast, discourse about objective necessary connections is meaningless. Unknown causes that we have reason to suppose exist are of a kind, however generic is that kind, that is given to us in sensible experience and that is therefore admissible into one’s ontology by the Principle of Acquaintance. But objective necessary connections are not given to us in sensible experience; we have no impression of them. Nor therefore do we have from experience any idea of that kind. They are, therefore, not admissible into one’s ontology. Indeed, because we have no impression of entities of this sort we have no idea of such an entity. They therefore cannot even be thought – save in thought that is confused, or, in Hume’s terms, save in ideas or discourse that is ‘wrongly applied.’ In contrast, the unknown physiological causes of our perceptions, to take but one example, can be thought. So can quarks. To be sure, these objects cannot be comprehended in their full specificity, but they can nonetheless be thought. For we can form abstract ideas (in Hume’s sense) of the kinds of which we suppose these objects are instances. We think of them by means of our ideas, our abstract ideas that are both generic and relative. And the causal principle justifies our forming the hypothesis that the objects thought of in this way really do exist – that is, it justifies our supposing that such objects exist. This makes it clear that Hume ought not to be read as making ‘supposing’ a way of knowing things beyond the role of ideas, or as a way of knowing or being aware of things or entities that is contrary to the having of ideas. The ‘new’ Humean notion that ‘supposing’ is a way of knowing distinct from knowing by way of ideas thus does not stand. Some make the same appeal to this distinction, between knowing by way of ideas and knowing by way of ‘supposing,’ by referring to still other Humean texts. Thus Wright, for one, citing this Humean text – ‘Since we may suppose, but never can conceive a specific difference betwixt an object and an impression; any conclusion we form concerning the connexion and repugnance of impressions, will not be known certainly to be applicable to objects’ (90) – concludes that ‘it is clear then that at least in his discussion of external existence, Hume argues that we are not limited in our beliefs about objects to what is based on our legitimate impression-derived ideas.’184 This conclusion derives from the distinction Hume here makes between ‘supposing’ and ‘conceiving.’ Now, Hume refers to a specific quality of an object. This quality is

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not conceivable; that is, we have no idea of that quality derived directly from an experience of that quality. But, Wright fails to note, we can still have an idea of it, namely, an abstract generic idea. In fact, we can form a definite description of that unknown quality: the quality sufficient for someone’s perception of such and such. We can then suppose that there is an event that exemplifies this property, where this supposition is justified by the causal principle of determinism, and justifiably assert that this event so qualified is sufficient for my perception of such and such. The point is that one can so suppose. In this, Wright is correct. But in so supposing, one has a cognitive attitude towards a proposition that is a complex of ideas – to be sure, abstract relative ideas so we do not comprehend (fully) what we are talking about, but still an attitude towards a proposition as a complex of ideas. So we may finally conclude, once again, contrary to Wright, that supposing is not a way of cognizing the world in situations in which there are no ideas present. He has therefore not located a way of perceiving that allows him access to objective necessary connections not given in the sense impressions from which our ideas derive. Strawson makes an argument similar to that of Wright. Hume gives various descriptions of the causal tie, the objective necessary connection, that is held by the Aristotelians and rationalists to be there in things. For example, Hume tells us that nature has (fortunately) ‘implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects: though we are ignorant of those powers and forces, on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends’ (E 55). The description is ‘force on which the regular course of objects totally depends’. We can refer to the causal power using this description. It is by such descriptions that we can with language ‘pick out’ the causal connection;185 these words can, Strawson holds, be supposed to ‘reach out referentially beyond our experience.’186 But surely this is wrong. Look at the notion of ‘force’ that appears in the descriptive phrase. Either it refers to something that is like what we experience – for example, it may be our system of nerves that control our bodily mechanisms (Hume uses this example [cf. E 55]). But such an entity, while unobserved, is like the entities with which we are acquainted in ordinary experience, and causation is regularity for these things as much as for hats and tables. Or

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this notion of ‘force’ does purport to refer to an objective causal connection. But this is an entity that is not like anything that we have experienced, and so in this case the notion is empirically meaningless: it refers to nothing. It is evident that the descriptive phrases that Hume uses and to which Strawson directs our attention do not after all enable one to refer to the mysterious objective necessary connections.187 Thus, active powers, as in our (D), disappear from the empiricist’s ontology. The argument is by appeal to the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance. The concept of a power as an unanalysable entity is thereby eliminated as a source of causal necessity. The concept of a power or disposition is rethought and analysed in terms of regularity. But of course, that analysis is reasonable only if the regularities to which the appeal is made are causal, not accidental regularities. But this merely shifts the issue. Given the elimination of unanalysable powers, one cannot argue that causal regularities are those rooted in the exercise of such powers. In fact, we do draw a distinction between those regularities which are causal and those which are (‘merely’) accidental: the causal regularities are somehow necessary in a way that accidental generalities are not. That necessity is not grounded in unanalysable powers: Where, then, is it rooted? All are agreed that there are regularities exhibited in the behaviour of objects, such as hats, that are given to sense experience. The causal regularities are those rooted in the unanalysable powers in things. Hume has argued that the necessity of the connection between cause and effect is not something objective. Objectively, then, all there is to causation is regularity. This analysis leads to the definition, which we have already noted, that Hume gives for the concept of cause, insofar as it is an idea of something objective: a cause is ‘an object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are plac’d in a like relation of priority and contiguity to those objects, that resemble the other’ (172). Hume has asked a further question, however: ‘What is our idea of necessity, when we say that two objects are necessarily connected together’ (155). He has asked this question because the definition of causation understood objectively does not distinguish causal laws from ‘mere’ accidental generalities. Laws have a necessity that accidental generalities lack. Objectively there is no difference: objectively, causation just is regularity. But there is a difference, for which some account is demanded. So Hume must find how the distinction is drawn. Hence, his question. He summarizes the upshot of his discussion in a second definition of

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cause: a cause is ‘an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it in the imagination, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other ...’ (172). From the first definition we have the generalization – ‘that constant conjunction, on which the relation of cause and effect totally depends’ (173) – alone determining the causal relation. On this account the generalization would be (*)

all F are G.

The objective truth of this generalization establishes a causal connection between two events, one an F-event, the other a G-event: this is an F; so, this is a G or this is a G because this is an F. The second definition deals with the same generalization but on the side of the mind. It tells us what we do inferentially with the generalization. There are two things that the mind is constrained to do. The first is this: ‘the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other.’ The mind makes the inference: All F are G This is an F So, this is a G Here the minor premise expresses merely the idea of an F: the F is simply conceived or thought of. The generalization is such that, when the mind thus entertains the idea of an F, it is constrained to also entertain the idea of a G. It is this latter idea that is expressed by the conclusion. Since there is no commitment to there actually being an F, or to this being an F, the inference would best be expressed in the subjunctive: If this were an F, then it would be a G. The second thing that the mind is constrained to do is this: ‘The impression of the one [determines the mind] to form a more lively idea of the

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other.’ The mind makes the same sort of inference. But in this case the minor premise is known to be true – its truth is impressed upon us. And when we affirm the truth that this is an F, we are determined to expect that this is a G: knowing that this is an F, we predict that it will be a G. The inference would be best expressed as since this is an F, it is (it will turn out to be) a G. In other words, Hume is telling us in the second definition what the mind does with generalizations that are said to be causally necessary: on the one hand, we use such generalizations to support the assertion of subjunctive conditionals, and on the other hand, we use them to predict. We do neither of these things with generalizations that are merely accidental. It may be true that ‘all the coins in my pocket are copper,’ but we are prepared neither to assert that if this coin (which is a dime) were in my pocket then it would be copper, nor to predict that this coin here (which is a dime), when it comes to be in my pocket, will be copper. The argument of the Enquiry is of a piece with that of the Treatise. Hume points out the importance to our common life of the causal relation: Surely, if there be any relation among objects, which it imports to us to know perfectly, it is that of cause and effect. On this are founded all our reasonings concerning matter of fact or existence. By means of it alone we attain any assurance concerning objects, which are removed from the present testimony of our memory and senses. The only immediate utility of all sciences, is to teach us, how to control and regulate future events by their causes. Our thoughts and enquiries are, therefore, every moment, employed about this relation ... (E, p. 76)

But in our experience of the world, we do not experience objective necessary connections. Our idea of such a connection is ‘imperfect’ and, indeed, non-existent: Yet so imperfect are the ideas which we form concerning it, that it is impossible to give any just definition of cause, except what is drawn from something extraneous and foreign to it. (E, p. 76)

Hume is here arguing that there are no objective necessary connections;

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objectively there is only regularity. And so he again offers the definition of cause as regularity: Similar objects are always conjoined with similar. Of this we have experience. Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second. (E, p. 76)

Here Hume makes a supplementary remark that does add something to the account of the Treatise: ‘Or, in other words, where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.’ It is not quite ‘in other words,’ but the point is clear. Like the first definition of the Treatise , the first definition of the Enquiry considers causation to be embodied in regularities of the sort (*)

all F are G.

The comment added in the Enquiry indicates that the regularity that Hume has in mind also has the form (+)

all not-F are not-G.

But, by the rule of contraposition, (+) is logically equivalent to (++)

all G are F.

Putting (+*) and (++) together, we see that what Hume is saying is that causal relations, strictu sensu, have the form (+++) all and only F are G. that is, for any x, x is F if and only x is G = (x)[Fx { Gx] (*) asserts that a cause is a sufficient condition; (+) = (++) asserts that a cause is a necessary condition; together, as (+++), they assert that a cause is a condition that is both necessary and sufficient. Hume in the Enquiry now proposes his second definition:

112 External World and Our Knowledge of It The appearance of a cause always conveys the mind, by a customary transition, to the idea of the effect. Of this also we have experience. We may, therefore, suitably to this experience, form another definition of cause; and call it, an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other.

This much we can do with regard to the definition of causation. But it implies that causation is regularity, not connection: But though both these definitions be drawn from circumstances foreign to the cause, we cannot remedy this inconvenience, or attain any more perfect definition, which may point out that circumstance in the cause, which gives it a connexion with its effect.

In fact, we have no idea of what such a connection might be: it cannot be thought. We have no idea of this connexion; nor even any distinct notion what it is we desire to know, when we endeavour at a conception of it ... We may consider the relation of cause and effect in either of these two lights; but beyond these, we have no idea of it. (E, p. 76)

Hume gives an example to illustrate his point: We say, for instance, that the vibration of this string is the cause of this particular sound. But what do we mean by that affirmation? We either mean, that this vibration is followed by this sound, and that all similar vibrations have been followed by similar sounds: Or, that this vibration is followed by this sound, and that upon the appearance of one, the mind anticipates the senses, and forms immediately an idea of the other.

The exploration of the world by the new science thus does not seek causes in any sense beyond regularity. Certainly, it does not seek beyond regularities for unanalysable powers of the sort represented by (D). Hume makes the same point about dispositions as he makes in the Treatise: like causes, they are to be understood in terms of regularity: According to these explications and definitions, the idea of power is relative as much as that of cause; and both have a reference to an effect, or

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some other event constantly conjoined with the former. When we consider the unknown circumstance of an object, by which the degree or quantity of its effect is fixed and determined, we call that its power.

A power is not to be distinguished from its exercise: ‘accordingly,’ Hume argues, ‘it is allowed by all philosophers, that the effect is the measure of the power.’ The defenders of the ‘new’ Hume can argue that, in his commentary about his two definitions, he does not explicitly exclude the existence of objective necessary connections. Perhaps. Yet it is clear that Hume does argue that there are no unanalysable powers: we have no idea of such a power, and therefore a power is identical with its exercise – it does not exist as something distinguishable from its exercise: it is not just unknown, it does not exist. Similarly, we must conclude, I think, that Hume holds not only that we have no idea of an objective necessary connection but also that such connections do not exist. Indeed, it is clear that he holds that they do not exist precisely because we have no idea of them: entities with which we are not acquainted are excluded from the empiricist’s ontology: As to the frequent use of the words, Force, Power, Energy, &c. which every where occur in common conversation, as well as in philosophy; that is no proof, that we are acquainted, in any instance, with the connecting principle between cause and effect, or can account ultimately for the production of one thing by another. These words, as commonly used, have very loose meanings annexed to them; and their ideas are very uncertain and confused.

The confusion arises from our mistaking the subjective necessity of the second definition for the regularity of the first definition: No animal can put external bodies in motion without the sentiment of a nisus or endeavour; and every animal has a sentiment or feeling from the stroke or blow of an external object, that is in motion. These sensations, which are merely animal, and from which we can a priori draw no inference, we are apt to transfer to inanimate objects, and to suppose, that they have some such feelings, whenever they transfer or receive motion. With regard to energies, which are exerted, without our annexing to them any idea of communicated motion, we consider only the constant experienced conjunction of the events; and as we feel a customary connexion between

114 External World and Our Knowledge of It the ideas, we transfer that feeling to the objects; as nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation, which they occasion. (E, p. 77)

But we have already seen how this confusion goes, and is perfectly natural to human thought. A final point about objective necessary connections: If the truth of the generalization (*) all F are G is guaranteed through the activity of a causal power N as in (D), then (*) is necessary and of course supports predictions and the assertion of subjunctive conditionals: there is an objective grounding for these things. But in the world of the empiricist – in Hume’s world – there are no active powers N nor principles (D) to support the assertion of generalizations like (*). The mark of causal necessity now lies in how the mind is prepared to use the generalization inferentially. The use is the mark of necessity, not the necessity the mark of the use. Were the necessity objectively there, in the world, then that necessity would justify the use of the generalization to predict and to support the assertion of subjunctive conditionals. Where, as in Hume’s world – which is our world – where there is no objective necessity, then we cannot have that sort of justification for using the generalization to predict and to support subjunctive conditionals. We cannot have that sort of justification. But it does not follow that we can have no justification. Some commentators infer from the fact that there are no objective necessary connections that therefore such uses of generalizations to predict and to support subjunctive conditionals are always, in Hume’s world, unjustified. That is, they infer that in Hume’s world all that we can reasonably have is a general scepticism about causes: every generalization is a mere accidental generalization. This does not follow, however. For some other sort of justification could also be available in the world of a Humean. Indeed, so we shall argue (in chapter 4): in the world of a Humean there are circumstances in which it is reasonable to treat a generalization as causal or necessary, and conditions under which that is not reasonable. A general scepticism about the reasonableness of causal inference does not follow from the denial that there are objective necessary connections.

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It is perhaps worth noting that the ‘new’ Hume does not solve this problem, the ‘problem of induction.’ Objective necessary connections would solve the problem. But first they need to exist. This condition in fact is fulfilled if Hume is the ‘new’ Hume. There is a second condition, however: the objective necessary connection in things must be known. This condition is not fulfilled, the ‘new’ Hume argues: that is why Hume is not just a realist but, in Wright’s characterization, a sceptical realist. However, since we never know these objective necessary connections, they play no role in our ordinary causal judgments: the world for us goes on as if they did not exist – so, who needs these things? The position characterized as the ‘new’ Hume thus makes no sense ontologically – assuming an empiricist framework – nor does it make sense epistemologically – here it is indistinguishable from scepticism. We may conclude that we need not accept the reading of Hume that is provided by those who defend the ‘new’ Hume. But having critically disposed of the ‘new’ Hume, we find ourselves back into a discussion of Hume’s supposed scepticism. To deal with this issue, we shall locate Hume’s views in the philosophical context that lies behind his arguments. Specifically, we shall highlight his position by contrasting it to the positions of the rationalists and the Aristotelians. This we do in the next chapter.

Appendix: Hume and Cognitive Psychology Don Garrett has made it a point to locate Hume’s work in the context of recent work that has come to be known as ‘cognitive science.’188 He is not the first to claim this as a virtue for a past philosopher: Brook has done the same for Kant.189 But Hume (and Kant) knew nothing of this. What Hume would have identified as important about the psychology he developed would have been his associationism. It will pay to look at recent work in the certainly fashionable area called ‘cognitive science’ and locate Hume and associationism, more accurately than I think Garrett does, relative to this newer tradition. Cognitive scientists define themselves and their research against something they call ‘behaviourism.’ Thus, we are told that experimental psychology began with Wilhelm Wundt in the nineteenth century. But, according to Paul Thagard, in an article on ‘Cognitive Science,’ ‘within a few decades ... experimental psychology became dominated by behaviorism, a view that virtually denied the existence of mind.

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According to behaviorists such as John B. Watson, psychology should restrict itself to examining the relation between observable stimuli and observable behaviorial responses.’190 The history as here reported is, however, decidedly misleading.191 Watson certainly wrote the classical essays ‘Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It’192 and ‘Image and Affection in Psychology.’193 It is also true that Wundt had begun the use of experiment in psychology. It is also true that Wundt’s psychology was introspectionist. But psychology as a scientific enterprise had begun much earlier, with David Hartley’s Observations on Man (1749)194 and of course Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1738–9), both of which developed associationism as a scientific theory – specifically, as a theory of learning. Clearly psychology was scientific and associationist long before it became experimental.195 This earlier psychology was of course introspectionist, and it was this introspectionist psychology against which Watson was arguing. But it is misleading to say that after Watson, minds disappeared from psychology. For, first, only slowly did psychologists identify themselves with behaviourism. But gradually they did, and in this Thagard is correct. By the 1950s behaviourism had, as Bergmann once said, ‘conquered itself to death’: so complete was its triumph, if you wish, that no one felt the need to be anything else – everyone was a behaviourist, whether they knew it or not. Everyone still is: this includes those who do cognitive science – that is, cognitive science as part of science is like all psychology nowadays behaviourist in its orientation. One must of course distinguish metaphysical behaviourism from methodological behaviourism: the former denies the existence of minds, the latter does not. The behaviourism that became the standard practice in psychology was and is methodological behaviourism. Methodological behaviourism: this proposes that psychology studies human behaviour; it aims to discover laws that explain this behaviour – laws or regularities under which that behaviour can be subsumed; and it proposes that the only sorts of variables to which one need refer in such laws are behavioural, environmental, and physiological – that is, variables that are objective in the sense that they are publically observable: methodological behaviourism aims to develop an objective science of man – if I may be permitted an old way of speaking, but in any case, an objective science of human behaviour. Metaphysical behaviourism denies the existence of minds. As Broad once said, this is an example of a philosophy that is just silly:196 it is patently obvious that minds exist and that they aren’t material. We are

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all aware of our mental states through our own inner awareness, and aware of them as different from brain states or bodily states,197 and that is all that needs to be said, or that can be said.198 Methodological behaviourism does not deny the existence of minds. It just doesn’t say anything about them: it simply studies behaviour as part of an objective science of human behaviour. Methodological behaviourism, when it aims at an objective science of human behaviour, gives it to be understood that in principle, at least, the laws of such a science can give a complete science of human behaviour: such behaviour can be explained completely by laws that refer only to objective entities, that is, the behavioural, environmental, and physiological variables – no reference need be made to any other sort of variable, and in particular not to mental events, that is, events which are private and not public. Methodological behaviourism does not deny the existence of inner or private mental events. Nor does it deny that such events, when they occur, often make a difference to human behaviour. Thus, when I will my arm to go up (a mental event, which is private and not objective), then my arm goes up (behaviour, which is a public event). All that the methodological behaviourist claims is that wherever we explain behaviour mentalistically, there is an alternative explanation that is objective. Generally, psychologists simply take this for granted. The required non-mentalistic alternative to the mentalistic explanation is always available provided that one assumes a sort of parallelism between mental states and brain states.199 This was seen clearly by Hartley,200 and was developed and defended in detail in the nineteenth century.201 It is in fact pretty evident that something of that sort is true: if there were not such a parallelism, our inferences to other minds would forever be insecure.202 And Hume clearly assumes a correlation of mental states with bodily states: he evidently takes for granted the parallelism that is explicit in Hartley.203 Now, it is true that Watson in his essay ‘Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It’ does defend a behaviouristic approach to psychology by affirming metaphysical behaviourism. But it is clear that he was simply being carried away by enthusiasm in his efforts to find arguments to support his behaviouristic approach – that is, methodological behaviourism. But he gives things away in his essay ‘Image and Affection,’ where he asserts, for example, that there are no affective mental states but that they can be identified with certain bodily events. But he can’t have it both ways, affirming that there aren’t any, while also saying that

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they do exist but can be identified with something else.204 Certainly, those who followed Watson did so as methodological behaviourists, not as metaphysical behaviourists.205 So, when Thagard in his article ‘Cognitive Science’ states that behaviourists in psychology ‘virtually denied the existence of mind,’ he is misleading indeed. Watson did, but even he did not do so consistently, and certainly the overwhelming majority of behaviourists did not: they simply went about their business as methodological behaviourists. It is also misleading to say, as Thagard also does, that Watson held – and following him, those psychologists who identified themselves as behaviourists also held – that ‘psychology should restrict itself to examining the relation between observable stimuli and observable behavioral responses.’ This suggests, for example, that these psychologists, Watson included, ignored the relevance of physiological variables, which are neither stimuli nor behaviour. A simple reading of Watson, and of later psychologists, will show that this is not so. It is true that Watson tended to emphasize events in the peripheral parts of the nervous system – the gonads, for example, for the emotions, or the larynx for thinking and reasoning – at the expense of the central nervous system. This was no doubt partly ideological: these processes would be easier to investigate the nearer they were to the periphery, so that is where he tended to locate them. It was also true that that would make them easier to manipulate, the better to mould people into better persons through conditioning and behavioural nurturing: in other words, locating things at the periphery better fit his ideology of social progressivism.206 But at the same time, he also was clear that where exactly the identification was to be was an empirical matter, to be settled by empirical means. While Watson is clear, contrary to Thagard, on the relevance of physiological variables, it is true that he, and after him the methodological behaviourists, did emphasize environmental and behavioural variables. The reason was clear: those were the variables which then could easily be manipulated: that is where they could in fact devise and carry out experiments, so that is where they worked! It may be easier now to explore brain states – these things can now, for example, be scanned – so that is where the new focus will be. This sort of thing is to be expected; nothing much follows from it: research interests shift in time, and that is that. If that is what the ‘cognitive revolution’ in psychology amounts to, then so be it. But contrary to what many suggest, including Thagard, this does not amount to a rejection of (methodological) behaviourism.

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Thagard also argues that for the behaviourists, ‘talk of consciousness and mental representations was banished from respectable scientific discussion.’ This too is misleading and certainly false to the facts. To be sure, Watson and a few others were metaphysical behaviourists. For them, there was no consciousness of which one could talk – though they often betrayed themselves by actually talking about it. What must be emphasized was that in the 1930s the behaviourist E.C. Tolman showed how behaviourists could indeed use the language we ordinarily use to speak of conscious states.207 Why should psychologists deprive themselves of this language as a useful tool in the exploration of human behaviour? All that was important was that one – that is, the psychologist as a methodological behaviourist – had ultimately to cash out such language in the objective language of science. Actually, Watson had already recognized this point when he allowed in his original paper ‘Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It’ that it was often necessary to use what he called the ‘abridged’ method. For Wundt, the introspecting psychologist was a highly trained observer. To be sure, they observed their own mental states, but for all that they were observers. An ordinary undergraduate might be trainable, but was as yet untrained. The experiment required careful description of various mental states, mainly sensory states. These states had to be analysed into their constituent parts. This meant that the states had to be described first in a phenomenological language and then in the more restricted vocabulary of the analytical language. The required capacity to attend to parts and the required capacity to use the language of the analytical vocabulary are acquired only after long periods of training: undergraduates don’t (yet) have those capacities. Consider a person who is given a certain stimulus. This consists of two colour samples. The task is given verbally: the subject is to respond appropriately just in case the two examples are identical or are not identical. The person on being given the stimulus says, ‘The samples are just noticeably different in colour.’ For the traditional introspective psychologist, this person is an observer, and what he or she says is a report on a mental event, a sensory event, that has been presented. For the methodological behaviourist, that person is the subject of an experiment. The psychologist is the observer for whom the person is the subject of the experiment. The psychologist as observer might record, ‘The subject identified the colours as just noticeably different.’ In this case, in effect, the psy-

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chologist is letting the verbal response of the subject define (that is, define operationally, as one used to say) the behavioural characteristic of identifying as just noticeably different. Or, the psychologist might record, ‘The subject said “The samples are just noticeably different.”’ What is recorded here is a piece of (verbal) behaviour. In this experiment, the person who is the subject requires no particular training: he or she could be an undergraduate. All that is required is that this subject share a language with the experimenter. The point is that the person in question is a subject, and not a trained observer, as was the case with introspectionist experiments; here the psychologist is the observer. This is what methodological behaviourism is about, and how it is distinguished from the introspectionist work that preceded it. In this sense cognitive scientists are all methodological behaviourists – whether they know it or not. Thus, consider what Thagard tells us – that for ‘cognitive psychologists today,’ ‘their primary method is experimentation with human participants’: ‘People, usually undergraduates satisfying course requirements, are brought into the laboratory so that different kinds of thinking can be studied under controlled conditions. For example, psychologists have experimentally examined the kinds of mistakes people make in deductive reasoning.’ This clearly is being done within the framework of methodological behaviourism. In fact, Watson himself would have allowed such experimentation as part of psychology – as part of psychology ‘as the behaviorist views it.’ He called it the ‘abridged behavior method’: replying to the charge that this is to retreat into introspectionist psychology, he retorts that ‘there is no need of going to extremes even on the platform I suggest.’208 He adds the note, I should prefer to look upon this abbreviated method, where the human subject is told in words, for example, to equate two stimuli; or to state in words whether a given stimulus is present or absent, etc., as the language method in behavior. It in no way changes the status of experimentation. The method becomes possible merely by virtue of the fact that in the particular case the experimenter and his animal have systems of abbreviations or shorthand behavior signs (language), any one of which may stand for a habit belonging to both the experimenter and his subject.209

There are further points that the cognitive psychologists share with Watson.

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Thus, for the experiments of the classical introspectionists, the point was to analyse a given mental phenomenon into its parts. The mental phenomenon was first described in phenomenological terms and then described in the much more restricted analytical vocabulary. The analytical vocabulary had to be such that one could invariably infer the phenomenological description from the analytical description. Here, the one who did the describing was an observer. But one can also look upon this observer as a subject, and take his or her responses to be pieces of verbal behaviour. So understood, what the classical introspectionists were striving to obtain were certain correlations between two sets of verbal behaviour taken as responses to stimuli. In other words, understood from the perspective of methodological behaviourism, the experiments of the classical introspectionists aimed to discover certain special R–R laws. Now, there is nothing wrong with R–R laws and nothing wrong with searching for them. Thus, for example, establishing a correlation between the results of different kinds of intelligence tests is a matter of establishing certain R–R laws. It is just that, if one is thinking in terms of causation, then R–R correlations do not take us very far. One wants to know at least what is the stimulus that evokes the response. That is, if one is thinking in terms of causation, then one wants not just R–R correlations but S–R correlations. Cognitive psychologists, just like Watson, aim for causal laws: like him, they reject the idea of the introspectionist experimenters, that psychology is to be limited to the discovery of R–R laws. Both Watson and the cognitive psychologists share the aim of having psychology a causal science like, say, physics or chemistry. Of course, the cognitive psychologists eschew the notion that they are S–R theorists. They – the cognitive psychologists – want to talk about what comes between the S and the R. But this is another notion they share with Watson. For Watson did allow that the inner workings of the organism intervened between the S and the R: besides environment, that is, the S, and behaviour, the R, there is also the physiology. It is not just S–R but S–O–R, where O = organism, that is, physiology.210 Watson did think, however, that these inner workings occurred largely on the periphery of the nervous system, and in any case weren’t terribly important in that they for the most part did not affect what the response would be to a given stimulus. On both these latter points, the cognitive psychologists disagree: the inner states can often make a great deal of difference, and the most important inner events are those which occur in the central nervous system, in the brain. But these are relatively

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minor disagreements and can be settled by further experimentation: no big thing can be made of differences such as these, not, at least, when one compares them to the large area of agreement. It is not just brains, however, that the cognitive psychologists study, though they do construct models of how brains might compute various things in various ways. Thus, Thagard tells us that among the things that cognitive psychologists have studied experimentally is ‘the speed of people thinking with mental images.’ And mental images are mental, not brain states. Consider a person who is being experimented with, who says, ‘I now have a mental image of my mother.’ For the classical introspectionists, this person is an observer and what is said is a report on certain data. But if the person is the subject of the experiment and the psychologist performing the experiment is the observer, then that psychologist might record, ‘The subject had a mental image of his [or her] mother.’ Details aside, that is, in effect, to take the verbal statement to operationally define what it is for the subject to have a mental image (of a certain sort). Or the psychologist might record, ‘The subject said, “I have a mental image of my mother.”’ In that case, what is recorded is the datum that there has occurred as a piece of behaviour a certain form of words, a saying of a certain sort. There is another way of taking the saying. That is, one may take it commonsensically, as we ordinarily would take it, as saying something about the mental state of the subject, that it was a conscious state which had among its contents an image of the subject’s mother. Even the methodological behaviourist might so take it. Except that this behaviourist would keep in mind that, since he or she is aiming at an objective science of human behaviour which is causally complete, the reference to the mental event as a cause of behaviour will eventually have to be replaced by a reference to the brain state which is parallel to the mental state – that is, when the science of the brain has progressed far enough that we can know what precisely is the brain state that is parallel to the mental state. In other words, there is no reason why the methodological behaviourist needs to worry about the cognitive psychologist’s talk about images, and mental representations, and what not. Nor need we look upon the cognitive psychologist as doing anything different in principle from what a methodological behaviourist might do – in spite of what expositions of cognitive psychology like that of Thagard might say.

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Cognitive psychologists often speak of the mind as involving or using mental ‘representations.’ Commentators on Hume such as Garrett who take developments in cognitive science to be a good thing (which on the whole they are) talk of Hume as a philosopher (or as a psychologist) whose work anticipated that of the present-day cognitive psychologists, and they therefore translate Hume’s language into that of these latter. So we find much talk of mental ‘representations’ in Hume. But what exactly is a ‘representation’? One definition, as good as any other, that of the ‘University of Alberta Dictionary of Cognitive Science,’ tells us that a representation, in general, does two basic jobs: Firstly, a representation is directed towards (stands for, points out, indicates, refers to, denotes, represents) some object or state of affairs. Secondly, the representation says something about that object or state of affairs. For instance, at the moment you are looking at a computer screen. Some part of you (generally taken to be a neurological part) represents the computer in front of you. The computer itself is what is called the object of this representation, the thing it is directed towards. But you don’t just represent the computer simpliciter, you represent it as having certain properties, such as being at a certain place, being turned on, running a web browser, displaying the U of A Cog Sci Dictionary entry on Representation, and so on. These properties you represent the object as having, are what is called the content of the representation.211

The phrase ‘directed toward’ makes it clear that ‘representations’ are mental in the sense of being intentional entities: they are thoughts. And what these thoughts or ‘representations’ intend are states of affairs, that is, complexes in which an object is presented to one as having certain characteristics, both non-relational and relational – the latter implying of course that the state of affairs might contain several objects characterized jointly as standing in certain relations to one another, for example, spatial relations that locate an object ‘at a certain place’ (as the dictionary entry notes), which is to say, locate it at a place relative to other objects at other places. So representations are thoughts that intend various states of affairs. These are concepts all familiar enough to philosophers – there is nothing strange or puzzling about representations (beyond [a] the usual puzzlements about the nature of intentionality, for which talk of ‘representations’ is of no help at all; and [b] the puzzle why it is thought that to speak of ‘representations’ adds any clarity to our usual talk of thoughts and ideas).212 As Garrett makes clear, following Yolton, and as we have argued

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above, Humean ‘ideas’ may often be thought of as ‘representations’ in this sense, that is, as thoughts, as intentional entities. These are those cases, and there are many, in which Hume uses ‘ideas’ in the context of the language of cognition. But Hume also uses the term ‘idea’ in another way – to refer to mental images, which in themselves are non-intentional entities. They do represent things, but the representation is of a non-intentional sort. Hume, while not entirely clear on these things, does hold that there is a connection between ideas as images and ideas as intentional or cognitive entities. This is provided by the associationist theory of learning: ideas as intentional entities have ideas as images as their genetic antecedents. Through a process of association, ides as images become associated together and by a sort of chemical process fuse to become a different sort of entity, namely, of course, the ideas as intentional entities. Hume as a cognitive psychologist explored ideas as intentional entities. But Hume was more than a cognitive psychologist. He also had a theory of learning. It was through his theory of learning that he attempted to explain scientifically, or at least to give explanation sketches of, the origins of the cognitive processes that he, as a cognitive psychologist, was attempting to explore. Watson also had a theory of learning. His was classical conditioning – which was in fact associationism understood behaviouristically. Later behaviourists attempted to integrate this into a more complex theory of learning that included reinforcement. Watson had shunned reinforcement theories of learning: they seemed to suffer from the teleology that he was determined – rightly – to exclude from a psychology that even pretended to be scientific. But it was soon realized that one could have reinforcement without reviving some sort of Aristotelian or Hegelian teleology. C.L. Hull in the 1940s and K.W. Spence in the 1950s developed and extended learning theory within the framework of methodological behaviourism. These learning theories can reasonably be seen as developing out of the sort of associationism that Hume defended. The cognitive psychologists developed their views by reacting to what they saw as behaviourism, or at least (as in Thagard) a caricature of behaviourism that was thought to deny the existence of the higher mental processes, the cognitive processes. With the rejection of what they saw as behaviourism went the rejection of learning theories. Cognitive science is distinguished from earlier attempts to form a science of the mind – or what amounts to the same, of human behaviour – by an absence of any serious theory of learning.213 This indicates the difficulty of characterizing Hume in terms of cog-

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nitive science: it tends to ignore those aspects of Hume which do not have their counterparts in more recent cognitive science. This means in particular that so to treat Hume ignores what cognitive science tends to ignore – namely, a theory of learning; in other words, it tends to ignore Hume’s associationism, or at the least play down its significance. As we have argued, this is to do a grave injustice to Hume’s philosophy. A Humean account of human being will locate the cognitive aspects of this being within a theory describing how those aspects are learned and acquired. Hume’s own associationist learning theory may be elementary, even crude in many respects. His account of our cognitive capacities may also be elementary at times. And his bringing of the two together may be sketchy indeed. But the parts are there, and as Hume saw and argued, they are all necessary for any adequate account of human being. Any reading of Hume that omits any of this material is inadequate both philosophically and as an interpretation of Hume. There is one irony that is perhaps worth noting. As Thagard notes in his article ‘Cognitive Science,’ cognitive science aims to be experimental. One sort of experiment, he notes, concerns ‘the speed of people thinking with mental images.’ Such an experiment would ask two people to solve a problem, one relying on imagery for help, and one relying on no such help. Depending on the sort of problem, solving it with the help of imagery will be faster. But how much faster? Here the times required for the solution are measured and compared. Note that there are two responses and that it is these two responses that are being compared: what the experiment aims to discover are certain R–R correlations. In other words, these cognitive scientists aim to discover R–R laws, that is – and this is the irony – laws of the same general sort that the classical introspective experimenters such as Wundt aimed to discover. As we have said, there is nothing wrong with such laws. But science does have as its explanatory ideal something more than this.214 This something more is of course the details of the causal processes leading up to the different R’s. It is precisely this that the methodological behaviourists were insisting on when they said that they aimed at causal laws, an aim they expressed as the search for stimulus–response or S–R laws. Thus, in some at least of their experiments, the cognitive scientists have cognitive aims that fall short of those had by the methodological behaviourists. In that sense, in spite of their claims about the narrowness of the behaviourists, the behaviourists were and are far more scientific in their cognitive aims, far more conscious of the need to search for causal process laws, than the cognitive scientists. This is the irony.

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One might add that it is the learning theories that the behaviourists incorporate into their psychology that will – it is hoped, at least – provide the details of the causal processes these psychologists aim to discover. And it is the acceptance of a learning theory that seems to distinguish the older methodological behaviourists, and also Watson and Hume, from those who characterize themselves as cognitive psychologists (but who are also really methodological behaviourists, whatever they say). There is one other aspect to the current interest in cognitive science on the part of those who attempt the history of philosophy that deserves to be mentioned. This is the notion that cognitive science allows for an active subject, whereas in associationism and in classical behaviourist learning theories the subject is entirely passive, prodded by the environment and responding to it but never acting spontaneously on its own.215 This is sometimes taken to be an advantage for Kant, for whom the mind is active, over Hume, for whom the mind, so far as there is one, is (supposed to be) passive.216 As for spontaneity, this is central already to Leibniz’s philosophy. Leibniz traced it (not incorrectly) back to Aristotle and made it central to his metaphysical analysis of human being: he was committed to the claim that spontaneity is a necessary condition for freedom. The oftcited definition of freedom from the Theodicy217 is typical: I have shown that freedom, according to the definition required in the schools of theology, consists in intelligence, which involves a clear knowledge of the object of deliberation, in spontaneity, whereby we determine, and in contingency, that is, in the exclusion of logical or metaphysical necessity. Intelligence is, as it were, the soul of freedom, and the rest is as its body and foundation. The free substance is self-determining and that according to the motive of good perceived by the understanding, which inclines it without compelling it: and all the conditions of freedom are comprised in these few words. (§288)

And shortly thereafter he affirms the standard doctrine of spontaneity in this way: The spontaneity of our actions can therefore no longer be questioned; and Aristotle has defined it well, saying that an action is spontaneous when its source is in him who acts ... Thus it is that our actions and our wills

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depend entirely upon us. It is true that our actions and our wills depend entirely upon us. (§301)

Clearly, Leibniz thinks there is something about his account which guarantees that we act with spontaneity. What is it? The answer can be discerned from a variety of texts, of which the following are typical: True spontaneity is common to us and all simple substances, and ... in intelligent or free substance this becomes a mastery over its actions. That cannot be better explained than by the System of Pre-established Harmony, which I indeed propounded some years ago. There I pointed out that by nature every simple substance has perception, and that its individuality consists in the perpetual law which brings about the sequence of perceptions that are assigned to it, springing naturally from one another.... Whence it follows that the soul has in itself a perfect spontaneity, so that it depends only upon God and itself in its action. (§291)

This is not the place to go on an extended discussion of Leibniz, but we have enough now to get the basic idea of spontaneity: in spontaneous action the person acts and this action is self-caused by the person (where the person is usually assumed, with Leibniz, to be a substance). And it is assumed that Humean persons and Humean selves are not active in this sense – there is no spontaneity to what they do; insofar as there are persons, what they do is done through them and not by them. Nor is Hume the only guilty one. So is anyone who adopts the S–R formula to describe the laws they seek to find. For such a law mentions the environment, the S, and it is this S which alone evokes the response R: the subject is passive in determining the action R, it is the environment which acts, and the subject merely responds, determined wholly by the environment S. The subject only exists as a sort of black box through which the work of the S flows to bring about the R. So Hume and the behaviourists both deny spontaneity to human behaviour. This would hold for both moral behaviour and for cognitive behaviour.218 Clearly not a good thing. Kant and the cognitive scientists are good guys (it is supposed) because they affirm such spontaneity. And Hume and the behaviourists are bad guys since they construct a picture of human being in which the person is always and merely passive, never active. Suppose that I have trained an animal, or even a person, to discrimi-

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nate colours and also to discriminate shapes. I then on some occasion present the subject with two samples, one red and round, the other green and square. I expect the subject on this occasion to discriminate the objects with respect to colours; instead, he or she or it discriminates by shape. Or suppose the subject is trained to identify things as the same or just noticeably different with respect to colour, and also to identify things as the same or just noticeably different with respect to shape. And on some occasion I present this subject with two red circles. I expect the subject to note that they are just noticeably different with respect to colour, but instead he or she or it notes with regard to their shapes that they are both circles but that one is just noticeably larger than the other. Question: Why, in each case, was the shape dimension selected rather than the colour dimension? Answer: In each case, it was the will of the subject, acting spontaneously, that the one dimension was selected over the other. Further question: Would a psychologist approaching the subject as a scientist accept this answer as explaining this selection? Answer: He or she wouldn’t (so one hopes – otherwise he or she would not be thinking like a scientist). Another situation: A watch, it sometimes works when wound and sometimes doesn’t. Question: Why does it sometimes not work when it is wound? Answer: It is just a matter of chance. Further question: Would an artisan, approaching the watch as a scientist, accept this answer as an explanation of the behaviour of the watch? Answer: He or she wouldn’t. Here is the reason: As Hume says, ‘it is frequently found that one observation is contrary to another, and that causes and effects follow not in the same order, of which we have had experience.’ In such circumstances, we do not give up the search for causes, but it is the case that ‘we are obliged to vary our reasoning on account of this uncertainty, and take into consideration the contrariety of events.’ He gives an example, the example we just used, of a wound watch sometimes working and sometimes not working. ‘A peasant can give no better reason for the stopping of any clock or watch than to say, that commonly it does not go right.’ But the philosopher, like the watchmaker, does not settle for this: he or she searches for a cause. ‘The vulgar, who take things according to their first appearance, attribute the uncertainty of events to such an uncertainty in the causes, as makes them often fail of their usual influence, though they meet with no obstacle nor impedi-

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ment in their operation.’ But if we reflect on things, then our experience of the world tells us that contrary effects have contrary causes: ‘An artizan easily perceives that the same force in the spring or pendulum has always the same influence on the wheels; but fails of its usual effect, perhaps by reason of a grain of dust, which puts a stop to the whole movement’ (133). Now look at the cases in which colour discriminations are contrasted to shape discriminations. In these cases, as with the watch, we have a contrariety of effects. No psychologist who pretended to be scientific, whether it be Hume, or a behaviourist, or a cognitive scientist, would do other than the artisan would do with the wound watch that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t: there are contrary effects, so he or she would search for contrary causes. In fact, for guidance in this research he or she would rely on Rule 6 of Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’: ‘The difference in the effects of two resembling objects must proceed from that particular in which they differ’ (175). The reason why is clear: ‘For as like causes always produce like effects, when in any instance we find our expectation to be disappointed, we must conclude that this irregularity proceeds from some difference in the causes.’ The peasant or, more generally, the vulgar might attribute the contrariety of effects – the shape discrimination rather than the colour discrimination – to chance. That is not an explanation acceptable to the scientist. Nor is an appeal to the spontaneity of the subject acceptable as an explanation. Now, it may of course be true that what causes the watch not to work might well be something inside the watch, something small and tiny and not readily seen by the observer, though it might well be seen by the artisan, the watchmaker, using a jeweller’s glass: ‘Philosophers [that is, scientists rather than the vulgar] observing that almost in every part of nature there is contained a vast variety of springs and principles, which are hid, by reason of their minuteness or remoteness, find that it is at least possible the contrariety of events may not proceed from any contingency in the cause, but from the secret operation of contrary causes.’ In fact, scientists have taken this possibility to be a correct generalization about generalizations: through the discovery of causes, this principle has been confirmed in experience: ‘This possibility [that the contrary effects have contrary causes] is converted into certainty by further observation, when they remark, that upon an exact scrutiny, a contrariety of effects always betrays a contrariety of causes, and proceeds from their mutual hinderance and opposition’ (133).

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What this means in the case of the psychologist’s subject is that the behaviour is to be explained not by a law of the simplistic R = f(S) but of the form R = f(S, O) where ‘O’ represents what is inside the subject, something in the nervous system of the subject. The relevant internal state may be hard to find. But neither Hume nor Watson nor the methodological behaviourist need deny the possibility. Nor of course does the cognitive scientist deny the possibility: in fact, as Thagard points out, it is a concern for these as it were inner workings of the mind that distinguishes the cognitive scientist from earlier generations of scientific psychologists, those supposedly misled by Watson and infected by behaviourism. Except, of course, as we have seen, that while earlier generations of psychologists had not devised means to find out about those inner workings, they did not deny their existence, nor their relevance, nor the long-run need for a complete causal account of human behaviour to locate these relevant variables. Certainly, a concern for these inner workings of our cognitive processes does not mark off cognitive scientists from Hume, nor from Watson, nor from the methodological behaviourists. Even more certainly, it does not mean that cognitive scientists affirm somehow the spontaneity of the human being or the human mind as something the reality of which is supposed to be denied by Hume and Watson and the behaviourists. For Aristotle and Leibniz and Kant, of course, the spontaneity of the human subject took its meaning from the substantialist ontology of the self that these philosophers unquestioningly accepted. But spontaneity in this sense is no more part of what science affirms (not even cognitive science) than is that thing called chance to which the vulgar appeal to explain – that is, ‘explain’ – why the wound watch sometimes works and sometimes does not. Like Hume and Watson and the behaviourists, what the cognitive scientists are after are scientific, that is, causal, explanations of human behaviour. And explanations in terms of chance or in terms of spontaneity are not scientific. Kant was not a good guy.

2 The Waning of Scientia

In order to become clear on what Hume is about in his account of the external world and our knowledge of it, it is helpful to see what is in the background and what he is opposing. We shall therefore look at the older, substantialist ontology, and its account of knowledge as scientia, knowledge as incorrigible or infallible judgment and as involving the abstract forms or natures of things construed as substances. We shall try to trace the background to Hume and the positions against which his views were formed and against which he was contending. We shall emerge from a world of substances and essences or forms into the world of the empiricist – Hume’s world. We shall go from the world of Aristotle to the world of Descartes, moved there, as it were, by Montaigne. And we shall go from Descartes’s world to Hume’s, moved there, as it were, by Berkeley. We shall go from a world where objective necessary connections are ubiquitous to a world where there are none. We shall go from a world the knowledge of which is incorrigible and is obtained by going outside of it into a world of transcendent forms or essences to a world where knowledge is fallible and is obtained by sense experience and inner awareness alone. We shall go from a world where the self is a simple substance to a world where it is bundle of impressions – though to be sure, an ordered or structured bundle. We shall go from a world where the aboutness of thought is secured by the mind becoming identical with what is known to a world in which the aboutness of thought is rooted in the aboutness of language. We shall go from a world in which the rational animal is prior to the political animal to a world in which the political animal is prior to the rational animal. But this last at least should not surprise us: that is the upshot of the argument we just completed in chapter 1.

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The point of this discussion is no doubt clear. Hume’s positions in ontology and epistemology are formulated against this background, and it is against these earlier positions that his argument is directed. We can be clear on neither his position nor his arguments unless we situate them relative to the scientia that preceded him. Hume will turn out to be a sceptic only from the standpoint of scientia. He will in fact turn out to be a rather better thinker and his philosophy will turn out to be deeper than is usually allowed. We shall see along the way that his philosophy, rightly understood, has within the resources to reply to a variety of more recent critics, for example, D. Dennett. A. The Aristotelian Framework1 Let us begin where the substance tradition begins, with Socrates, in the Phaedo.2 In this dialogue, Socrates proposes an explanation scheme, which he contrasts to a scheme that has been proposed by Anaxagoras, or (more generally) the ‘physicists.’3 This scheme aims to provide an explanation why Socrates is about to drink the hemlock rather than escape prison and go to Thebes, as has been suggested by Crito and his other friends. So far as our apparent observation by sense is concerned, we are aware of certain events: Socrates in prison, Socrates about to drink the hemlock. But there is no apparent connection between these events, no apparent reason why the one should be followed by the other rather than some alternative. To explain the connection would be to show that there is a genuine or real unity here, a reason why the one must follow the other. To understand is to discover a unifying principle that provides a necessary tie among the events that are, so far as sense is concerned, apparently disconnected or separate. Socrates emphasizes that any explanation scheme must account for why he, Socrates, is about to drink the hemlock. The patterns proposed by the physicists do not do this – they speak only of flesh and bones; but if that was all there was to Socrates, if all that he was was the sort of thing that could be known by sense, then there would be no accounting for why the event of sitting in prison is followed by the event of drinking the hemlock. Socrates establishes during the course of the discussion that there are forms outside the realm of sense experience. The argument is this. In sense experience we are presented with various instances of equality. These equals are all inexactly equal. Now, in order to judge that some-

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thing is inexactly equal, that is, not exactly equal, it is necessary to know what exactly equal is – just as, in the case of colour, in order to judge that something is not red, it is necessary to know what red is; or, more generally, in order to judge that something is not-X, it is necessary to know what X is. We therefore have the concept of exact equality. But we cannot have acquired knowledge of what this is from sense experience; by hypothesis, all we experience are cases of inexact equality. This knowledge is therefore prior – logically prior – to sense experience; it is, as one says, a priori.4 Just as we have the form of exact equality, so we have other forms. There is exact or perfect triangle, exact or perfect circle, and, of course, the form of perfect virtue. It is the latter that is crucial for Socrates’ project. Socrates is going to drink the hemlock because it is the right or just thing to do. He is aiming in his life to imitate the form of virtue. It is the fact that he is aiming for the best that provides the unity of his life. It is this which ties the apparently separable events into a unified whole, in which one part requires or necessitates the other. Socrates thus provides an explanation scheme that enables one to understand the apparently separable events of the world of sense experience in terms of a underlying unity. The scheme involves three sorts of entity. The first sort is the events of sense experience. The second sort is the forms. Events of the first sort imitate or participate in the entities of the second sort; it is this participation in the forms that determines the identity of the things of sense experience, what they are, or, more accurately, what sorts of things they are. The third sort is the soul. The soul is an active entity. The events of sense experience occur in or as aspects of the soul; they are those aspects that it presents as its outward appearances. The soul, as an active entity, aims at the best in the sense that it aims to imitate in its outward appearances the form of human virtue. The soul brings it about that one event succeeds another event in accordance with the pattern. That pattern is the pattern of the form that it, the soul, is striving to imitate. That striving to attain that pattern connects the events that are, so far as sense is concerned, separable. The striving after the form constitutes the unity that explains the apparent diversity of things. On Anaxagoras’ account of being, the parts that form the sequence of events remain unconnected, and therefore unexplained; philosophers like Anaxagoras ‘do not believe that the truly good and “binding” binds and holds them together’ (99c4). The truly good, that is, the form, provides through the striving of the soul that is

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Socrates a link, a necessary connection, that implies that the sequence of observable events could not have been otherwise. It follows immediately from this scheme that the soul must itself be a unity. If it were not, then in order explain the activity of the soul it would be necessary to locate another entity to account for the unity of the soul’s activity. This further entity, upon Socrates’ scheme, would be a soul. But if souls lacked unity, then this soul too would require a further soul to explain its activity. And this soul would require a further soul. And so on. The regress is vicious: nothing would ever get explained. Thus, if the scheme is to work, then the soul that provides unity must itself be a unity. This basic explanation scheme was to dominate philosophy for centuries. Aristotle made two alterations in the scheme, without, however, making any significant changes. Specifically, the scheme of explaining the diversity of the world of sense by unifying remains, as well as the notion that what unifies this diversity is an active entity striving to present outward appearances that imitate the form or standard that lies outside the realm of sense. First off, Aristotle extends the scheme from the simple case of Socrates’ own actions to all things. There is the world of sense experience. The events of this world are separate and diverse. To understand them, one must unify them. One does this in terms of active entities of which those events are outward appearances. These entities Aristotle refers to as ‘substances.’ Sensible events occur in substances. Substances are individuals. They are active. They endure through change. The activity of the substances explains the changes that occur in the outward appearances that we know by sense: this activity provides the unity that enables us to understand those appearances. Second, where Plato has the forms separate from the soul, Aristotle makes them inseparable from the substances. If a soul is separate from the form it is striving to imitate, then that connection is one that we must try to understand. Why does Socrates strive after human virtue rather than doggie virtue? What explains that? On Socrates’ scheme, the unity must be provided by a soul striving after a form. So one requires a second form to explain the striving after the first. One thus has a third man as it were: these are Socrates the man, the form of human virtue after which he is striving, and the form that explains the striving after the first form. But the soul is also separate from the second form. So in order to explain the striving after the second form, we need yet a third form. But it too is separate from the soul. The regress is obvious.

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Moreover, it too is vicious: so long as the form is always separate from the soul, there is no genuine unity and nothing is ever explained. The scheme therefore requires that the form after which the soul or substance is striving be inseparable from the soul or substance. Aristotle’s second alteration to Socrates’ scheme is therefore really a correction, a modification made in order to meet the problem raised by the third-man argument. On this modification, Socrates is a substance and is inseparable from his form or nature or essence: Socrates is a substance with the form humanity, and apart from his form or nature humanity, Socrates would cease to be. The basic ontology required by the explanation scheme therefore takes it that it is changes in observable properties that are to be explained. These properties are explained by substances. There are three points about these substances. First, they are active. Second, they have forms; the forms define what the substances truly are, what they are essentially. Third, the observable characteristics are in substances; that is how the substances are. The activity of the substances unites the observable characteristics that occur in the substances. The forms determine the direction which that activity takes. As for knowledge of things: One has in the first place the separable events of the world of sense experience. The events are present in substances. These substances have forms or natures. One is aware in sense experience of these events, and of patterns in these events. But the patterns have in themselves no genuine unity; the patterns are as it were loose, with no genuine connection. Understanding a pattern in the world of sense consists in coming to know the form or nature of the substance the activity of which provides the unity, the reason for the world being as it appears to be. This form or nature is not itself given in sense experience. To know it one must go beyond sense experience, to the realm of reason – that is, to the realm of the reasons of things or the reasons why things appear as they do. One is aware in sense of a red patch. This patch is bulgy and, let us say, apple-shaped. One expects that if one walked about a bit, then the patch would be succeeded in a series by other, similarly shaped patches with similar colours. There is pattern and coherence in what is given in sense. In order to know, however, what sort of thing that it is of which these are the appearances one must grasp the form of the substance the activities of which account for and unify the pattern, making it into the pattern of an apple. We may contrast sense awareness with our percep-

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tual knowledge of things. Perceptual judgments that yield knowledge of things, that yield the sort of awareness of the world that goes beyond the diversity of sense to genuine realities, consist of grasping the forms or natures of the things perceived. Plato, in the Republic, provided his successors with the metaphor of the divided line. There is an upper segment and a lower segment. The division is both ontological and epistemological. The upper segment represents rational knowledge. The objects of rational knowledge are the forms. These forms provide the reasons for things being as they are. The lower segment represents opinion. The objects of opinion are the entities in the world of sense experience. The problem, as it were, with the objects of opinion is that they change, or, if they do not, there is no guarantee in the separability of things that the world will, so to speak, hang together in the way in which it seems to sense to be hanging together. The outward appearances that the apple presents to the world go beyond any immediate impression that presents itself in sense to an observer. The judgments of sense that we make about them thus go beyond the presently given. But what is presently given is not connected in itself to the other appearances. Given the separability of the things of sense, there is no guarantee that when we judge by sense about the things of the world, those judgments are true. Opinion is fallible. Knowledge, in contrast, what is represented in the upper segment of the divided line, is infallible: knowledge is incorrigible. Plato makes the point tellingly in the Meno. There he is discussing moral judgments. The point he makes is that a moral judgment, like a statue of Daedalus, ‘if ... untethered ... is not worth much: it gives you the slip like a runaway slave. But a tethered specimen is very valuable’ (97e1–3). And he contrasts knowledge with opinion: ‘True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man’s mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reasons ... Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable. That is why knowledge is something more valuable than right opinion. What distinguishes the one from the other is the tether’ (97e3–98a6). What distinguishes knowledge from opinion is certainty, the certainty that one does not err. To doubt is to allow the possibility that one’s judgment might be erroneous; it is to allow the possibility of change. But knowledge is unchanging. So knowledge is certain; when we know, then the certainty is such as to exclude all possibility of doubt.

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Knowledge of this sort cannot be derived from sense experience. The world of which sense makes us aware is a world of changing appearances. As Socrates puts it in the Phaedo, ‘the many beautiful particulars, be they men, horses, clothes, or other such things, or the many other equal particulars, and all those with the same name as those others [the forms of the Beautiful itself and the Equal itself] ... never in any way remain the same as themselves or in relation to each other’ (78d6–e4). Sense may therefore yield opinion, and perhaps even true opinion, but it can never yield judgments that have the sort of certainty – the cognitively and practically desirable sort of certainty – that is characteristic of knowledge. That is reserved for the knowledge we have of Forms, the rational intuition of forms, or – as it is called in the Phaedo and the Meno, in recognition of its a priori nature – the ‘recollection’ of the forms. For the forms are unchanging and immutable. As Socrates asks in the Phaedo: Are they [the forms] ever the same and in the same state, or do they vary from one time to another; can the Equal itself, the Beautiful itself, each thing in itself, the real, ever be affected by any change whatever? Or does each of them that really is, being simple by itself, remain the same and never in any way tolerate any change whatever?

The reply is expected: It must remain the same, said Cebes, and in the same state, Socrates. (78d1–5)

When we let ourselves be turned away from the forms or natures of things, there is no stability in our judgments: When the soul makes use of the body to investigate something, be it through hearing or seeing or some other sense – for to investigate something through the senses is to do it through the body – it is dragged by the body to the things that are never the same, and the soul itself strays and is confused and dizzy, as if it were drunk.’ (79c1–5)

Thus, reason’s grasp of the forms yields knowledge where the senses’ grasp of our ordinary world does not: the objects of the former are entities that are simple and unchanging, the objects of the latter are changing patterns of separable parts.

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We acquire knowledge, then, when we grasp the forms in a species of rational intuition. This knowledge is absolutely certain; by virtue of the entities that it is about it is such as to exclude all possibility of doubt. Knowledge of the forms is in this sense ‘tied down’ or ‘tethered’ and can therefore provide the stability that mere opinion, even if true, cannot. But how do we grasp the forms? Aristotle gave a clear answer to this question. To have an intuition of a form is for that form to be in the mind – literally in the mind: in knowing the form the mind becomes identical with the form. Already in Aristotle’s time it was an old dictum to say that like knows like (De Anima, 427a27), but in Aristotle this dictum takes on a fairly specific content. For Aristotle, the likeness amounts to an identity: in knowledge the mind is identical with its object (429a16, 429b20, 431a1). As he says: ‘Actual knowledge is identical with its object’ (430a21). Since the object of knowledge is the form or nature, it follows that in knowledge the form that is in the thing known is also in the mind that knows it (431b30). Elsewhere Aristotle tells us that in a way, knowledge and opinion have the same object, but in another way, the two differ fundamentally: ‘Knowledge is the apprehension of, e.g. the attribute “animal” as incapable of being otherwise, opinion the apprehension of ”animal” as capable of being otherwise – e.g. the apprehension that animal is an element in the essential nature of man is knowledge; the apprehension of animal as predicable of man but not as an element in man’s essential nature is opinion: man is the subject in both judgments, but the mode of inherence is different’ (Post An, 89a33–38). Sense, therefore, can yield only opinion; knowledge is reserved for the intellect, which grasps the form of the object known (De Anima, 429a15). Thus, in knowledge, the object of knowledge is at once simple and wholly present to – indeed, contained in – the knowing mind. In opinion, the possibility of error arises because its object is not wholly present to the perceiver. But in knowledge the object is wholly present. There is therefore no possibility of error: unlike opinion, knowledge is incorrigible. B. Perception To summarize: According to the standard Aristotelian account of knowing, the essence or form of the substance known is literally in the mind of the knower: like knows like, and the mind knows its object

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through becoming identical with that object.5 Ontologically, the form being in the mind is understood in this way, that the form or essence of the thing known is in the mind as properties are in the mind; in Cartesian terms: this is the form as idea, this is its material reality. But it is also the essence of the thing known as that essence is in the substance known; in Cartesian terms, this is the objective reality of the idea. By virtue of the idea in the mind having this objective reality, the idea is about or represents or, in Brentano’s terminology, “intends” the object which is before the mind.6 There are problems, however. First, how can the idea come to be in the mind? Aristotle gave the answer that the mind goes through a process of abstraction the product of which is the presence of the form or essence as a property of the mind. But Descartes argues to the contrary, taking a piece of wax as an example. The form of the wax involves an infinite number of variations in shape as the wax melts and flows from one shape to another, whereas what is presented in sense experience is only finite. We cannot, therefore, obtain the idea of the form of wax by abstraction from sensible impressions. He concludes that our ideas of forms or essences are all innate. But this is then subject to Locke’s sceptical critique of innate ideas. But second, how can a form or essence be in the mind, as a property of the mind, when it is precisely that feature of the substance of which it is the form that accounts for the properties of that substance? If the form of a oak tree causes that substance to grow like an oak, then why does the same form in the mind not cause the mind to become an oak tree? So there are problems from the standard account of ‘ideas’ being ‘in the mind.’ This account derives from Aristotle but is shared by Descartes. At the same time, however, it solves some problems very nicely. Consider Descartes’s cogito: in the cogito Descartes becomes aware of his thinking. Previously (as recorded in the first Meditation) he had been perceiving things, and it is on those things that his attention is directed. But in the cogito he becomes aware of those perceivings. These perceivings are not merely in his consciousness: they have now as it were grabbed his conscious attention. It is not the tree being perceived that is the object of attention, but the perceiving of the tree. To be sure, this object of attention, this object of our inner awareness, is fleeting, compared to the tree, but for all that, it is there and is the object of our experience. It, the perceiving, is there.

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There is a problem here. The Aristotelian account of perception solves this problem nicely. But it is a problem faced by any ontology that attempts to deal adequately with the facts of perception. So let us state the problem in general terms and then see how the Aristotelians solve it. I. The Problem of Perception When we perceive an object, we are conscious in experience of a sense impression. But that is a sense impression of only part of the object perceived: not all of the object, as a thing located in space and threedimensional and enduring through time, is given in sense experience – there is the future, the past, the other side, the inside, and what it would be like if certain other events were to occur. Present to consciousness is the sense impression but also the judgment that locates what is sensed, the impression, as an object in space that causes the presence of the consciousness of a sensible object. The perceptual judgment consists in an essence or form as a property of the mind; it as it were connects the mind not only to the sense impression but also to the larger object of which the sensible object is a part and that is the cause of our awareness of that sensible impression. It intends the whole of the perceptual object, not just the part that is given in sensory awareness. As H.H. Price once put it, there is on the one hand, ‘primary recognition’ of the sensible object as qualified in certain ways and as related to other sensible objects in certain ways; and, on the other hand, ‘secondary recognition,’ which is a recognition of an object that has qualities not given in sense, not present to consciousness.7 In fact, it is necessary to distinguish a number of features of the perceptual situation. There is, first, the sensible object – the coloured patch, or what have you. This is wholly present in consciousness. It is in fact there, alongside or otherwise related to other sensible objects that are also wholly present in the conscious state. There is, second, the perceptual object – a three-dimensional object, located in space – the tree or the apple, or, for that matter, Macbeth’s dagger; and of this perceptual object, the sensible object is a quality. The sensible object, which qualifies the perceptual object and in that sense is a part of the perceptual object, is the way in which the perceptual object sensibly appears to us. But this sensible quality, this sensible appearance, is but one such part. The perceptual object has, for example, an opposite side sensibly qualified in certain ways, but which is not given in sense, and it has a past and a future that are not given in sense.

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It has sensible parts – that is, is qualified sensibly in certain ways – where these other ways in which it is qualified, these other ways in which it appears, are not given to us in the immediacy of our conscious state. Where the sensible object is wholly present in consciousness, the perceptual object is not: it has parts, qualities of itself, and a structure, which are not wholly present in consciousness. When the sensible object is present in consciousness, there is no denying its existence. But this certainty of existence is not there in the case of perceptual objects: it is always possible that the perceptual object does not exist – as in the case of Macbeth’s dagger. This is possible because the perceptual object has parts that are not wholly present to consciousness. Then, third, there is the perceiving of the perceptual object: besides the sensible object one is aware also of the perceptual object. So, there is, on the one side, the oak tree, the perceptual object. The sensible object qualifies this perceptual object. And there is, on the other side, our awareness of the oak tree, that is, more exactly, our awareness of the oak tree as before us in space and as qualified by the sensible object. Not only is there an oak tree, and not only are we aware of a sensible object, but we are also aware perceptually of the oak tree as qualified by that sensible object. Finally, fourth, there is, or there often is, also present in our conscious state a perceptual judgment to the effect that here is an object located in space and qualified by the sensible appearances which are also present in our conscious state. We are presented, let us say, with an oak tree: this is what is before us. Then, there is our awareness of the oak tree – our awareness of the perceptual object. This is Price’s ‘primary recognition.’ And then, we are now noting, there is the judgment in which we make articulate to ourselves in inner speech of some sort that Lo! Here is an oak tree. This inner speech is perhaps English, if that be our native tongue, or some other language or ideolect. This is Price ’s ‘secondary recognition.’ When there is secondary recognition, we are not only aware of the perceptual object – in this case the oak tree – but articulate that awareness in language – either our own ideolect or some shared language. We can often ignore the difference between the perceptual awareness of the perceptual object and the perceptual awareness that articulates the former in language. But also often enough we will find that we cannot ignore this distinction. The context should make it clear which of these cases is the topic of discussion at any particular point. As for now, the distinction is not important: what we need to note is

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that whichever case it is with which we are dealing, both involve a distinction between the perceptual object on the one hand and the awareness of that perceptual object on the other. It is this act-object distinction which is common to both secondary and primary recognition that we must examine, and it is to this that we now turn. So, we have the perceptual object and the awareness of it. It is necessary to make clear some aspects of this relation or connection. That there is something present in consciousness which, as it were, connects the mind to the perceptual object is clear. The tree that I perceive is itself not wholly present to my current conscious state; as a tree it has the side the properties of which I sense, but there are other parts, the other side and what is inside, which have other properties which I do not sense – in other words, the tree I perceive has many properties which are sensible but which I do not sense, properties which are not part of my present conscious state – and moreover as a tree it has a past and a future which by the nature of the case are also not part of my conscious states that is here present now. Indeed, if I am misperceiving, then there is no tree there – think of Macbeth’s dagger. But, even though the perceptual object is not wholly there, or even if it is not there at all, I am nonetheless wholly certain that what is perceived is a tree: I am certain that what is perceived is a tree and not, for example, a fence post. What enables me to say that ‘That is a tree’ and to say with certainty that ‘I perceive that that is a tree’ is the presence in consciousness of a property, a property that intends the tree as an object that causes my mental state to be one that is properly expressed by saying ‘That is a tree’ as well as one that is properly described with certainty by saying ‘I am perceiving that that is a tree.’8 This is secondary recognition, to again use Price’s distinction. There is also primary recognition: I tend to respond behaviourally to a tree and not to a shrub or a fence post, and even if the tree is not there, even if I am misperceiving, I am still disposed to respond as if there were a tree present: it is a dagger that concerns Macbeth. There is a cause present in consciousness that is connected to that disposition to behave; this present cause is the perceiving that has the property of being a perceiving of a tree.9 In the case of primary recognition, the cause present in consciousness is connected to a disposition to behave in certain ways and not others. That is true also in the case of secondary recognition: there is present in consciousness a disposition to behave in certain ways, except here they are dispositions to behave in more specific ways, namely, in terms of language, speech acts.

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Russell once argued that there is no need to allow such properties – call them ‘contents’ – into one’s ontology. Consider the case of secondary recognition – the case of primary recognition is much the same. What Russell argued was that while we must individuate acts of awareness in terms of what those awarenesses are of, this can be done by a simple move in the logic of relations. Let ‘aMp’ represent that there is a state of mind a which stands in the intentional relation M to p. Let ‘p!’ represent the sentence I utter to express in words that of which I am aware. Thus, I utter ‘p!’ when I am aware of the state of affairs that p. Then ‘M’ serves as a relational sign, and awareness of p can be distinguished from awareness of q by the two complex properties ‘xMp’ and ‘xMq,’ with no need to have the non-relational properties characterizing the state of mind. Russell argues that ‘from the fact that the complex ‘my awareness of A’ is different from the complex ‘my awareness of B,’ it does not follow that when I am aware of A I have some intrinsic quality which I do not have when I am aware of B but not of A. There is therefore no reason for assuming a difference in the subject corresponding to the difference between two presented objects.’10 But, to the contrary, if ‘a’ or ‘x’ denotes my present conscious state, then there is in that state a characteristic that is the present cause of my tendency to utter the text of the awareness, namely, ‘p!,’ that is, a characteristic the presence of which explains my exclaiming or tending to exclaim ‘p!’ If Russell’s way of doing things were the case, then the cause that prompts me so to exclaim is not something in my conscious state but something external to my consciousness though related to it. In fact, it is something that may not exist, since I often have awarenesses that are of non-existent states, – for example, when I have an illusion or when I dream. Since a non-existent state of affairs certainly could not be a cause that prompts me to exclaim ‘p!,’ it follows that there must be something that is the cause, something present in the conscious state. Contrary to Russell, then, one must ‘assume’ that states of awareness that have different texts are characterized by properties – what we called ‘contents’ – that prompt one to assert the text. Indeed, the presence in consciousness of such contents constitutes the certain knowledge that I have of that which my thoughts are about. Finally, we should note, as Price also emphasizes, that the capacity for perceptual recognition is acquired; it is something learned. And like induction, such recognition, be it primary or secondary, involves a judgment that goes beyond what is sensibly present. There may, to be sure, be innate capacities at work, as Descartes held and Locke denied,

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and there is in fact no doubt, whether it is secondary representation or primary, that some of the learning is due to innate structures. It is just that the innate structures play a greater role in the case of primary recognition, whereas in the case of secondary recognition learning plays a greater role. Recognition, then, whether primary or secondary, is like inductive inference in the sense of involving judgments that go beyond what is given to one in sense and inner awareness (and in memory). But unlike induction – or more accurately, inductive inference, which involves the passage of thought from premises to conclusion – primary recognition does not involve, so far as consciousness is concerned, an inference. In that sense, it is an immediate judgment with no internal complexity. To be sure, the object of the judgment is complex; but the judgment itself is a whole that is an immediate unity. It is this judgment as a given unity or whole that disposes me to behave in ways appropriate to the object perceived, the object of the judgment. This judgement, the cause present in consciousness that disposes one to behave in certain ways rather than others, disposes one in particular to express one’s judgment by uttering or asserting a sentence describing the complex state of affairs perceived. In general, secondary recognition is like primary, in being like inductive inference, going beyond the immediately presented facts. It is also sometimes like primary recognition in being itself immediate and nonreflective. But other instances are not so immediate; rather, they involve conscious reflection and inference. The problem of perception for the ontologist is to account for these facts about our perception of ordinary objects. What we can say is that these points about our perceptual awareness of objects were captured nicely by the Aristotelians: ideas as forms in the mind did solve this problem. Let us see. II. The Aristotelian Solution to the Problem of Perception As we have seen, in the Aristotelian account of perception, there is, on the one hand, a property present in the mind which, on the other hand, is the very same as the form or essence in the thing known: that which produces the structure of the object known, its form or essence, is one with the concept or idea in the mind of that structure. The idea in the mind is not judged about but is, rather, that by which or through which the perceptual object is recognized. And so, suppose that the tree is the

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object known: this object known is what the mind means or intends. For one who perceives this tree, there is or are present in his or her consciousness a mental act or acts which make the object of perception known to that consciousness. Moreover, that form or essence in the mind, like the form or essence in the thing perceived, is simple: to be sure, the characteristics of the substance that we observe in sense experience are complex, but the form or essence that accounts for their presence is simple and unanalysable.11 All this fits well with the facts of perception. III. Unsolved Problems So, there are strengths to the Aristotelian account of perception. Nonetheless, as indeed we have noted, there are at the same time unsolved problems. These all concern, one way or another, the central notions in this account of perception, the notions of a form or essence and of such a form or essence coming to exist as a property of the mind. These problems, we shall argue, cannot in fact be solved. These problems therefore exclude the Aristotelian solution: they are fatal to it. The simple fact of the matter is that the notion of a form or essence in the Aristotelian sense violates the empiricist Principle of Acquaintance (PA). It is this which is fatal to the Aristotelian account of perception. On the one hand, the Aristotelian account or perception purports to fit the facts as they are experienced. On the other hand, it introduces entities – forms or natures or essences – that are not given in experience. The latter is inconsistent with the former. In other words, once one accepts the empiricist principle PA as central to one’s ontological deliberations, and uses it to delineate the range of entities to be admitted into one’s ontology, then the Aristotelian account of anything, in particular the Aristotelian account of perception – which is also the rationalist account – is excluded. IV. What Next? The demise of the Aristotelian/rationalist account of perception immediately creates the need, however, for an alternative account, one that fits within the empiricist framework established by PA. There is the fact, known by our inner awareness, of perception, and within that fact the simple property through which the perceptual object is made present to consciousness. Properties like this provide, using Russell’s terminology, the ‘contents’ of the perceiving situation.

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Such a property, that is, the property that constitutes the content of a perceptual situation, presents the perceptual object by virtue of the connection it effects between the conscious state and that object. So there are two problems. The first of these problems is this: What, more precisely, is the nature of these properties? How do they fit into the empiricist account of minds and their objects? For example, how causally do they fit into the empiricist picture of mind? And the second issue is this: The properties that present perceptual objects to consciousness mean or intend those objects. So, how does it come to be that the property present in the mind that represents the structure of the perceptual object actually does represent that structure of parts that are not presented? How can a simple property mean or intend this complex entity? How does one analyse the intentionality of these properties? And how does this fit in knowledge claims? These problems, which confront any empiricist account of perception, must be faced. For after all, what we have proposed is an exposition of Hume’s critical realism, but one that is also a defence of that realism. Both the exposition and the defence that we are developing involve contrasting Hume’s views with those of his predecessors, and also with those who have come after. In other words, our project is also that of showing that Hume’s claims, suitably understood, can be justified as rational or reasonable in the context of eighteenth-century thought but also in the context of more recent epistemological discussions. Thus, for example, we shall have to show that there are in Hume’s philosophy resources to provide a reasonable account of reason and of intentionality, an account that fits into the thought of Hume, not simply as historical facts more or less interesting, more or less boring, but that also fits into more recent accounts of intentionality and of other features of thought and perception and reason that have become salient. What we shall be arguing, of course, is that Hume’s philosophy contains resources which, if carefully developed, permit that philosophy to defend itself against more recent critics. This is an integral part of our attempt to give, besides our exposition, also a defence of Hume’s critical realism. What we must trace is the way in which these resources developed as there emerged an empiricist response to Cartesian rationalism, a development of which Hume’s philosophy, his critical realism, is the culmination. Now, even as Descartes was devising his response to the sceptical cri-

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sis in early modern philosophy, so there was also emerging what was to become the empiricist response. Hume can best be seen as arising from this context.12 As it turns out, it is Montaigne – or at least, Montaigne’s scepticism – that is in the background to both Cartesian rationalism and the empiricist response. C. Montaigne It was Montaigne who provided in the early modern period the challenge to Aristotelian metaphysics.13 He did so by challenging its epistemology. It was his argument that we can never achieve knowledge of the sort that that metaphysics asserts can be had.14 In effect, what he argued was that all the human mind can achieve is the second best, opinion – that is, what is available, to go back to Plato, on the lower segment of the divided line. The metaphysics of knowledge that he confronted was this. There is on the one hand the knowing mind. There is on the other hand the object perceived. Both of these are substances. The knowing mind is aware in sense of the sensible appearances of the object known. These sensible appearances come in patterns. But there is no necessity to these patterns; they are merely patterns, in themselves providing no reasons why one part is followed by another part. That reason, why things change over time the way they do, is provided by the nature or form in the substance of which they are the appearances. To have knowledge of the substance perceived, the knowing mind must grasp that form. Aristotle describes the process in this way: ‘States of knowledge are ... developed from sense perception. It is like a rout in battle stopped by first one man making a stand and then another, until the original formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted to be capable of this process.’ The rout is, of course, the flux of sensory experience. We determine that the rout has been stopped when we recognize that a certain structured formation has been achieved. The recognition of this structure is the intuition of the form. When one of a number of logically indiscriminable particulars has made a stand, the earliest universal is present in the soul: for though the act of sense perception is of the particular, its content is universal – is man, for example, not the man Callias. A fresh stand is made among these rudi-

148 External World and Our Knowledge of It mentary universals, and the process does not cease until the indivisible concepts, the true universals are established: e.g. such and such a species of animal is a step towards the genus animal, which by the same process is a step towards a further generalization. (Post. An., 100a9–b4)

When the knowing mind knows the substance perceived, that form is present in the mind. When it is present in the mind, one grasps the necessity that is objectively there in the world, the ontological reason why the world of appearances is structured as it is. But from the point of view of the knowing mind there is in fact a real problem. We have a perceptual judgment, that this is an oak tree, for example. This judgment is present in the mind of the knower. It is in fact (according to Aristotle) a property of that mind. The mind is conscious of the judgment: the judgment is present in the mind as a property of it. That is its being. For it, consciousness and being amount to the same, its esse is percipi. The judgment consists of the nature or form or essence of the object known, in this case, the nature of the oak tree. But ... is the form that lies behind the objects given in sense the form that is present in the mind? The traditional doctrine deriving from Aristotle has it that the two are identical. But how do we know that the form of the substance really is identical with the one in the mind. Perhaps they are not. So, is the object perceived actually as one perceives it? This is a problem raised by Montaigne. The mind of the knower guarantees the existence of the judgment but it does not guarantee the existence of the object of the judgment. For that, something else is needed, something that is present in the mind of the knower. We need, in other words, a criterion of knowledge, that is, a property of the judging such that its presence in the knowing guarantees the existence of the object as it is judged to be. Montaigne’s problem is fairly simple: If X is a proposed criterion of knowledge, how does the knower know that it is a criterion? More specifically, let J be the judgment that X is a criterion of knowledge. Then what guarantees that J is true? Do we know that J is true because J satisfies X? If that is so, then the case that X is a criterion is circular, and we have not succeeded in justifying the proposal that X is a criterion. But if we do not rely upon X, then J must satisfy some other criterion Y. But then how does the knower know that Y is a criterion? Either because Y is satisfied, in which case the justification is again circular, and therefore unsuccessful, or because Y satisfies some other criterion Z. If the justification is not to be circular, then there is an infinite regress of attempted

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criteria. And the regress is vicious because we never arrive at something that justifies our claim to knowledge. Montaigne thus concludes with scepticism: if we do know, we never know that we know. The conclusion at which Montaigne arrives is that ‘human reason goes astray everywhere, but especially when she concerns herself with matters divine.’15 The problem with the senses, as with reason, is that there is no criterion and therefore no knowledge: ‘But supposing, nevertheless, that anyone did wish to judge from appearances, he cannot do so from all of them, since (as we know from experience) they all mutually impede each other because of contradictions and discrepancies. Will he select only some appearances to control the others? But the first one selected will have to be tested for truth against another one selected, and that one against a third: the end will therefore never be reached.’16 This scepticism is the conclusion of the ‘Apology for Raimond Sebond.’ Montaigne came to mitigate this scepticism, however. The purely sceptical rejection of reason is moderated by a suggestion that there are contextual standards, conformity to which we discover through experience does lead to our satisfying our human need to know. Thus, in ‘On Physiognomy’ Montaigne points out that ‘it requires some skill to distinguish the gentle from the silly, the stern from the rugged, the malicious from the sad, the scornful from the melancholy, and between other such closely related qualities. There is a beauty that is not only haughty but sour; there is another that is gentle but insipid too.’17 Here is what Montaigne says: ‘It requires some skill.’ These words clearly do imply that it can be done, though perhaps only with difficulty, and certainly not infallibly. In fact, Montaigne quite clearly has asserted already in the essay that it can be done because it has been done: ‘It grieves me that Socrates, who was a perfect pattern of all great qualities, should, as reports say, have had so ugly a face and body, so out of keeping with the beauty of his soul.’18 The ugly physiognomy is but first appearance, and we do have the skill to go beyond first appearances to discover the truth: Socrates has a beautiful soul. We can go beyond the first appearance of ugliness and discover the true beauty of Socrates. We do have the tool, however imperfect it is, to grasp the truth: As nature has provided us with feet for walking, so she has given us wisdom to guide us through life; a wisdom less subtle, robust, and spectacular than that of the philosopher’s invention, but correspondingly easy and sal-

150 External World and Our Knowledge of It utary, which actually performs very well what the other only promises, for anyone lucky enough to know how to use it plainly and properly, that is to say naturally.19

This tool is experience. There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge. We try every means that may lead us to it, When reason fails us, we make use of experience, Per varios usus artem experientia fecit: exemplo monstrante viam.[*] which is a feebler and less worthy means. But truth is so great a thing that we ought not despise any medium that will conduct us to it.20

Montaigne’s picture is this. We have a certain cognitive goal: discovery of the truth. This is at the least a pragmatic interest: we must have some definite access to the truth about the world, others, and ourselves if we are to get on with the task of living. Philosophers have proposed reason as the means to satisfy that cognitive interest; the case that the sceptic makes establishes that this tool is useless. Montaigne therefore suggests that we turn to a tool that is available to us, and which, while not perfect, and while certainly not as exciting as the reason of the philosophers, has nonetheless shown itself in experience to be a tool that does work and upon which we can reasonably rely. This tool, with which nature has provided us, is experience itself. Give up, therefore, the standard of reason; grant, therefore, that relative to that standard, one will invariably be ignorant; and grant, too, that relative to the realms philosophers aim to penetrate, one might as well simply give up being curious. And settle for something that we find does in fact work reasonably well: experience: ‘The more simply one entrusts oneself to nature, the more wisely one does so. Oh, how soft and pleasant and healthful a pillow, whereon to rest a prudent head, is ignorance and lack of curiosity!’21 But why should we refashion our epistemology in this way? Why should we adopt these epistemic standards rather than those of the traditional concept of reason? Because, answers Montaigne, we can in this

* ‘By various experiments, experience has led to art, example showing the way.’ Manilius, I, 59.

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way live a better life. ‘I bid my soul,’ he tells us, ‘look upon pain and pleasure with the same level gaze ... and with the same firmness, but to greet the one cheerfully, the other austerely, and, in so far as it can, to try as hard to cut short the one as to prolong the other.’22 We adapt our norms to this end: ‘Of philosophical opinions I embrace for preference those that are most substantial, that is to say most human, and most natural to us.’23 Thus, according to Montaigne, when we discover on the basis of sceptical arguments that the traditional doctrine of reason and of infallible knowledge (scientia) is open to doubt, perhaps indeed bankrupt, then the proper thing to do is not to give up the search for truth but rather to refashion our epistemology. Specifically, we should make the starting point of thought not reason or intuition but experience. And why should we do this? because we have discovered – through experience – that we can discover truth, and satisfy, if not all our cognitive interests, then at least those which are relevant to getting on with living as decent and happy a life as we can. We choose our cognitive goals and cognitive standards on the basis of experience as those which best fit with our being able to achieve as reasonably happy a life as we can. D. Descartes (i): The External World Descartes proposed to reply to Montaigne. He proposed that we can, after all, attain the infallible knowledge that Montaigne argued was beyond us. There is the case of things divine, and the case of what philosophers call the ‘external world.’ It is the latter which is our main concern, and we shall deal with that first. But we can’t avoid the former, too. For Descartes argues that we can know nothing if we do not know God. He does begin his exploration, however, with the case of the external world, which is where we shall also begin. With regard to knowledge of what is called the ‘external world’: This is the world of those objects Moore once described as ‘being met with in space’ – but it also includes things like shadows, and rainbows, and rapturous tunes: it is the world of everyday ordinary sensible experience, or, in still other words, the world that Hume described as the ‘system of the vulgar.’ With regard to this world and our perception of it, there are two cases to be considered. One is perception; the other is the external world. Descartes raises doubts about both. He points out that in dreams he has been deceived. That is, in his

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dreams he has had perceptions that proved to be false; he has often dreamed; he has dreamed, for example (or at least some of us have so dreamed), that there is a June bug before him on his desk when in fact there was no June bug anywhere to be found nearby, and he has (or some of us have) dreamed that he was clothed when in fact he was nude in bed. He therefore needs some criterion to separate perceptual awarenesses into those which are true and those which are false. But he is confident that the laws of material things, the self-evident truths of mathematics and physics, hold whether he is dreaming or awake. These laws are determined by the form or essence of the substance that is the cause of the sense impressions that I experience in sense awareness. In the case of material things, this essence is, Descartes argues, extension. It would seem that with regard to these propositions that are self-evidently true, the propositions that command our assent, we have attained truth: self-evidence would seem to be the criterion of truth that we are seeking. However, this is in fact not enough: more must be done if we are to reckon ourselves justified in accepting as true propositions that are selfevident. To be sure, in the end, self-evidence is the criterion of truth, but more must be done if we are to be in a position, a cognitive position, in which we are justified in accepting self-evidence as the criterion of truth. For in spite of these propositions being self-evident, it remains the case that with regard to this substance, of which they purport to provide the essential truth, that this substance could, in spite of that apparent essence, cause it to appear to be other than it is in its essence. There could be a powerful being who could cause a substance that is essentially not extended to appear as if its essence were extension. If we take the essence as the standard of truth, of what the thing really is metaphysically, then Descartes’s thought is that it may be that there is a powerful being that can prevent a substance from appearing as it really is and that can present sensible appearances which imply that it is something other than what it truly is. Maybe this substance before me is a substance whose essence is other than extension but the powerful genius is causing it to appear as if it were an extended substance. This powerful genius is of course evil – cognitively evil – because it is preventing me from discovering the truth about my ideas: I am a thing that aims to know, but the evil genius prevents me from knowing, it causes me to have false ideas of the things that are the causes of my thinking about the material world and the causes of my perceptual experiences.24 Descartes proposed to reply to Montaigne: his (Descartes’s) cognitive

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aim was infallible knowledge of the traditional sort, the kind that Plato placed in the top segment of the divided line. He made it his first rule in the search after knowledge not to accept any judgment that fell short of the Platonic standard of incorrigibility: ‘The first [rule] was never to accept anything as true if I did not have evident knowledge of its truth: that is, carefully to avoid precipitate conclusions and preconceptions, and to include nothing more in my judgements than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and so distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it.’25 Now, indubitability is a characteristic of some at least of our judgments. But does the presence of this characteristic thus guarantee truth? In Montaigne’s terms, is indubitability a criterion of truth? This is Montaigne’s challenge. But if this is to be the rule of truth, if indeed self-evidence is the criterion of truth, then the evil genius must be exorcised. There are two cases: one of these is the self-evident knowledge of forms or essences, and the other is our perceptual knowledge of things in the world. As it turns out, these have to be treated somewhat differently, though they both do involve the notion of inevitability. The demand to justify the proposal that indubitability is the criterion of truth means that Descartes is unable to grant as the starting point of his quest for knowledge that judgments that satisfy his rule are true. This has the effect, of course, that until he can defend indubitability as a criterion against Montaigne’s objection, he can accept no judgment about the world as true. He cannot, for example, accept that it is an oak tree before him, even though he is perceiving that such is there. Nor can he accept the judgment that he is now sitting, clothed, before his desk. Nor, indeed, can he accept any such judgment. For these are matters of perceptual judgment, and he has not yet found the criterion that Montaigne has challenged him to find. But action is based on belief, and if we accept no perceptual judgments, then we cannot act. Descartes cannot get up to get breakfast, nor can he even write down his thoughts. Nature, however, intervenes, and he does get up and he does write. In fact, he makes this the rule of life to be followed as he undertakes the search for a criterion that will enable him to decide which judgments are rationally acceptable: Now, before starting to rebuild your house, it is not enough simply to pull it down, to make provision for materials and architects (or else train yourself in architecture), and to have carefully drawn up the plans; you must also provide yourself with some other place where you can live comfort-

154 External World and Our Knowledge of It ably while building is in progress. Likewise, lest I should remain indecisive in my actions while reason obliged me to be so in my judgements, and in order to live as happily as I could during this time, I formed for myself a provisional moral code.

This first of these maxims for getting on with life in the absence of any criterion on which to base our judgments is in effect Montaigne’s rule to ‘rely on experience’ – that is, to rely on the laws and customs of my country, holding constantly to the religion in which by God’s grace I had been instructed from my childhood, and governing myself in all other matters according to the most moderate and least extreme opinions – the opinions commonly accepted in practice by the most sensible of those with whom I should have to live.26

Montaigne’s reasoning shows that one ought to be sceptical with regard to claims that one has somehow achieved knowledge in the Platonic sense, incorrigible knowledge of objective necessities – that is, the knowledge that is represented by the upper segment of the divided line. His attitude, then, is to get on with the task of living: such knowledge is unavailable, so let us simply rely upon experience as our guide as we go about our business. Descartes’s response is different. Getting on with the task of life is appropriate, but there is a deeper task, that of finding incorrigible knowledge. The former only does for the interval; achieving the latter is the real goal that remains. In the meantime, Descartes can in fact locate many judgments that are so clear and distinct in themselves that they present themselves as self-evident, and which in that clarity and distinctness command our assent. These pose the problems – or problem, since they all amount to much the same problem – that Descartes faces with regard to our perception of the ‘external world.’ The basic problem is this. We do in fact fall into error. It follows that we are really not relying on the criterion to form our judgments. In fact, nature often moves us to judge in ways that later turn out to be false: our getting on in the ordinary world demands such judgments, we could not exist in the world of ordinary experience unless we made and acted upon such judgments. Even though those fallible opinions are indeed fallible, our existence as embodied creatures demands that we make them. In order to attain knowledge, however, in order to attain infallible scientia, we must undertake to forgo such judgments, and to

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clear our minds of those judgments at which we have arrived by unreliable methods. To forgo such judgments we must, temporarily at least, until nature calls us out, retire from the world that makes demands on us. In order to clear our minds of all the precipitate opinions that we have formed, we must examine and reject them. This is Descartes’s method of doubt. In this exercise, undertaken in the confines of our philosophic study, we reject all judgments that fail to meet the standard of infallibility; we clean them, as it were, out of our consciousness. Only when our consciousness has so been cleared shall we be in position to recognize judgments that meet the criterion of infallibility. Now, it is possible, Descartes suggests, to conceive that our perceptual judgments are all false.27 And it is certainly true that the mere fact that we have such judgments does not guarantee, infallibly, that they are true. The fact that some such judgments are false, the fact that sometimes we err, clearly establishes this point. There are, for example, the judgments that we make in dreams. There are also the judgments that we make when we look at things in the distance, where, for example, the tower that looks round from a distance turns out to be square when viewed up close. Or, more to the heart of the new science, the sun that we perceive is seen as a sensory impression which is given as a round yellow disc and is apparently from a source not so very far away; yet contrary to that perception of it, the real cause of that impression is an object that is very large but very far away. Any perceptual judgment, then, must, according to the method of doubt, be rejected, as we undertake the search for infallible knowledge. Once that is done, once we denude ourselves of all perceptual judgments the truth of which is not guaranteed, we do discover some judgments that are so clear and distinct that we find it impossible to doubt them. Such is the case with the judgment that a triangle is different from a circle, for example, or that a triangle has three sides, or that the mind is distinct from body, or that extended objects conform to the law of inertia, or that every event has a cause. These clear and evident judgments permit one – Descartes, at least – to draw a variety of conclusions. For example, from the fact that one has a perceptual judgment that an oak tree is present or from the fact that one not only perceives him- or herself to be writing at a desk but is actually moving his or her body, apparently, so to be writing, he can infer indubitably, by means of the causal principle, that in each case there is a substance that is the cause of that judgment. In each case, the object perceived is perceived as an extended substance; that is its nature or essence or form. To have

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this nature or form or essence means that such objects will of necessity conform in their appearances to certain patterns, to those patterns determined by that form. For Descartes, in the face of Montaigne’s sceptical arguments, the challenge is to secure or tether our perceptual judgments. In fact, as we have seen, this really divides into two problems. The first problem is this: Is there a substance that lies behind the sensible appearances? Are they really the appearances of a substance? Or are they just appearances? The second problem is this: Given that there is a substance that lies behind the appearances, is the nature that is in the mind of the knower the nature of the substance known? To answer these questions, Descartes must show that indubitability does in fact secure tethering, that is, he must show that indubitability is in fact the criterion of knowledge that Montaigne argued we could not find. As Descartes analyses these problems, he can solve them provided that he can find an idea that in itself guarantees its own existence as a substance. This idea existing in the mind must be such that in itself it guarantees that without the mind it exists as a substance. If there is such an idea, then this idea as it were tethers itself: guaranteeing its own existence, it renders itself as an idea in the mind incorrigible. Now, Descartes undertakes to exclude by his rule all propositions where he can find the least reason to doubt. He examines beliefs about the corporeal world and discovers that they can all be doubted. Either they are like the beliefs which I have in dreams that have turned out to be false or they are the self-evident truths of mathematics and physics. But the latter, in spite of their self-evidence, are subject to the tentative doubt made possible by the hypothesis that he is being deceived by a powerful but evil genius. But he then realizes that if he is being deceived then he is at least thinking. And if he is thinking, then there is at least that property present to consciousness, to wit, the property of thinking. And if there is a property, then, if that property exists, there is a substance in which it is present: ‘I think, therefore I am’ (cogito, ergo sum). I cannot doubt the fact that my thinking exists, nor, therefore, that there is a thinking substance. Indeed, it is possible to think that no material things exist, while nonetheless conceiving that I alone exist. In that sense, extension or corporeity appears inseparable from me: it is inseparable from the content of my thought of myself that I am a thinking thing or substance (sum res cogitans). It is sometimes argued that the cogito is a basic and self-evident truth from which Descartes infers (by self-evident steps) the rest of his justi-

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fication of his criterion.28 This line of interpretation is taken more from Descartes’s Discourse on Method than it is from his later Meditations on First Philosophy. But in the Discourse there is no appeal to an evil genius to attack even those propositions which appear to be self-evident. But with this hypothesis of the evil genius, there is no reason to suppose that he or she (that is, the evil genius) cannot call into question even the apparently impervious cogito. And Descartes himself makes it clear that even the cogito is subject to the sorts of doubt that are raised by the hypothesis of the evil genius. Every time that this idea of the supreme power of a God, as previously conceived, occurs to me, I am constrained to admit that it is easy for him, if he wishes it, to bring it about that I am wrong even in those matters which I believe I perceive with the mind’s eye with the greatest possible clarity. And on the other hand, every time I turn to the things I think I conceive very clearly, I am so convinced by them that I am spontaneously led to proclaim: ‘Let him deceive me who can; he will never be able to bring it about that I am nothing while I think I am something, or, it being true that I now am, that it will some day be true that I have never been, or that two and three joined together make more or less than five, of similar things in which I recognize a manifest contradiction and which I see clearly could not be otherwise than as I conceive them.’29

Descartes clearly includes the cogito alongside mathematics as a truth that can be called into question by the hypothesis of the evil genius. However, if I am a thinking thing, a reasoning being, then I aim to know the reasons for things. But I doubt, and clearly do not know much at all, if anything. One is, therefore, an imperfect being. What Descartes recognizes is that if he is being deceived, then what he is, a non-knower, is in conflict with what he seems to be in his essence, what he truly aims to be, a knower, a thing that grasps the reasons of things. But he lacks himself the power to guarantee his own existence as a knower; the very fact that he is doubting shows this to be so. What he needs to find is an idea that does not lack the power to guarantee its own truth, that exists as it essentially, by its form, aims to be. However, he does have such an idea. For in order to judge that something is a being that is not perfect, then one has to have the idea of a being that is perfect.30 Descartes therefore and thereby discovers within himself the idea of a perfect being. But further, he discovers that within himself that he lacks the capacity to create such an idea. He is therefore a finite being: he lacks certain powers.

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But again, to judge that he is a finite being he must therefore and thereby have the idea of an infinite being, one that lacks no perfection. Moreover, if I exist, then, since I exist as a finite or contingent thing, then my existence must be sustained by an infinite being:31 I exist, therefore God exists. Or rather, if I exist, then God exists. But I do not yet know that I do truly exist. Therefore the existence of God remains but a hypothesis. However, forms or essences provide the reasons for things. It is their activities that provide the necessary connections among the properties of things. Ideas, as forms, are therefore active powers. The point is that this holds equally of the idea of an infinite being: this idea of an infinite and perfect being is, like all forms, one that is an active power. The point is that it is infinite in the power that it exercises. It can therefore guarantee it is as it truly aims to be. But the idea in the mind simply is that form. It is therefore an idea that guarantees its own truth. Descartes thus has an idea whose truth he incorrigibly knows.32 This is one idea, but it is an idea that does get Descartes out of the circle of his own mind: through this idea which is present in his own consciousness, he is conscious of an entity that guarantees its own existence external to the mind of the knower. However, this does not yet solve the problem of establishing that indubitability is a criterion of truth. For this has to do with ideas other than the idea of an infinitely perfect being. But we are on the way to solving the problem. The infinite being has all perfections; it lacks no properties. In particular, it has the property of being the creator of finite beings. Among those beings that it creates are those that aim to know. Since it creates them as knowers, it will not as it were allow them to fall short of this aim: it will not allow these knowers to be deceived, or at least to be deceived in ways that cannot be uncovered and corrected. So: if the finite substance has an idea which, when it is present, is so clear and distinct as to be indubitable, so clear and distinct that it commands our assent, then the finite substance will be actually in a case of knowing: it is not being deceived. Descartes has therefore justified indubitability as a criterion of truth: in discovering God as the infinite perfect being he has found the answer to Montaigne. E. Descartes (ii): Perception We still have not yet solved all the problems: we have not yet got the

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oak tree. The perception of the oak tree is the perception of an object that is extended and located at a distance in space. That is the idea that is present in our mind as part of the perceiving. It is the idea of an extended entity, and this idea insofar as it is a geometrical proposition, is indubitable, meeting the criterion of truth. But the perceiving is the perceiving of an object that is not just extended three-dimensionally and at a distance from one; it is a perceiving of an object that is the cause of my awareness of it. And in the perceiving, the sense impression is located as a part of or aspect of the cause. Specifically, it is the perceiving of an object that is coloured and that has a certain texture; it even has a characteristic smell. These latter characteristics, however, form no part of the idea that we have of the substance as an extended, spatial entity. Locke was later to make this point explicitly. Locke, in his Essay concerning Human Understanding,33 argued that there are no necessary connections between the extended properties of a tree on the one hand and the colours of the tree on the other. The necessary connections that the Aristotelians supposed were there are in fact simply not to be seen. It is evident, Locke says, that we do not know the necessary connections required for an Aristotelian understanding of why parts of things cohere (IV, iii, 26, pp. 526ff). But even if we knew why the parts cohere, we still would not know everything necessary for a grasp of the real essence or form of the thing. For the real essence must account for all the causal activities of the substance of which it is the essence, insofar as these activities are not merely occasional. Now, the regular activities of external substances include the production of the simple properties such as red, sweet, and so on. For these activities to be knowable scientifically, in the Aristotelian sense, regularities revealed by sense about such activities must be demonstrable by necessary connections grounded in the forms of things. But for that to be possible, there must be necessary connections between red, sweet, and so on and the real essences or forms of the substances that cause these qualities to appear. These necessary connections must be both ontological, in the entities themselves, and epistemological, giving us, when in the mind, scientific knowledge of those entities. But, Locke argues, we grasp no such connections: ’Tis evident that the bulk, figure, and motion of several Bodies about us, produce in us several Sensations, as of Colours, Sounds, Tastes, Smells, Pleasure and Pain, etc. These mechanical Affections of Bodies, having no

160 External World and Our Knowledge of It affinity at all with those Ideas, they produce in us, (there being no conceivable connexion between any impulse of any sort of Body, and any perception of a Colour, or Smell, which we find in our Minds) we can have no distinct knowledge of such Operations beyond our Experience; and can reason no otherwise about them, than as effects produced by the appointment of an infinitely Wise Agent, which perfectly surpasses our Comprehensions. (IV, iii, 28, pp. 558–9; see also IV, vi, 10, pp. 384–5)

Properties are perceived to be just as they are, in themselves; to know them as they are, we need not know any of the relations in which they stand to other entities. The immediate perception of the agreement or disagreement of identity being founded in the mind’s having distinct ideas ... affords us as many self-evident propositions, as we have distinct ideas. Every one that has any knowledge at all, has as the foundation of it, various and distinct ideas: And it is the first act of the mind (without which it can never be capable of any knowledge) to know every one of its ideas by itself, and distinguish it from others. Every one finds in himself, that he knows the ideas he has; that he knows also, when any one is in his understanding, and what it is; and that when more than one are there, he knows them distinctly and unconfusedly one from another. (IV, viii, 2)

Locke’s appeal to an empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance (PA) is clear.34 Descartes faces this problem. There are no necessary connections with regard to the oak tree that we perceive between the colour on the one hand and the extended properties on the other: the two are separable. We have knowledge (scientia) of the thing as extended, but with regard to its colour our judgment is only a matter of opinion. The former is tethered, as it must be for judgments falling in the top part of the divided line, but the latter is not tethered, as is the case with judgments falling in the lower part of the divided line. Nonetheless, when we perceive the oak tree, we perceive it not only as extended, with a certain shape and at a distance from us, but also as coloured and with a certain texture and smell. The latter – that it has a colour and texture and smell – is in fact an indubitable belief, one that, try as we might, we cannot avoid having. The connection that we affirm is, to be sure, not indubitable by virtue of a perceived necessity. But there is a psychological necessity: ontologically or logically separable though

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the characteristics are in thought, nonetheless in practice we cannot separate them. We have a natural and unavoidable belief that the colour in our perception of the oak tree really is as it is caused by the oak tree to appear, namely as a property of the tree, just as its extendedness and shape, which are also presented to us in the perception, not only appear to be but in these cases really are properties of the tree. At this point Descartes again appeals to the veraciousness of God, the fact that He is no deceiver: ‘Since [God] has ... given me ... a very great inclination to believe that these ideas [sense impressions such as colour] come from corporeal objects, I do not see how we could clear God of the charge of deceit if these ideas did not in fact come from some other source or were produced by other causes than corporeal objects. Therefore, we must conclude that corporeal objects exist.’35 Just as God does not deceive us with regard to the oak tree as an extended substance, so he does not deceive us with regard to the oak tree and its coloured sensible appearance: our natural judgment to the effect that the tree is the cause of those sensible appearances is inescapable, and He would not allow such a judgment to be wrong. Descartes has thus solved, to his own satisfaction at least, the two problems that followed upon Montaigne’s critique of the traditional account of knowledge. These were the two problems: First, is there a substance that lies behind the sensible appearances? Are they really the appearances of a substance? Or are they just appearances? And second: Given that there is a substance that lies behind the appearances, is the nature that is in the mind of the knower the nature of the substance known? To answer these questions, Descartes must show that indubitability does in fact secure tethering – that is, that it in fact is the criterion of knowledge that Montaigne argued we could not find. But all is not quite correct. The problem is with the perceptual judgments that the impressions of the oak tree as an extended, three-dimensional object are indeed tethered: they follow upon the fact that the object perceived is in its essence an extended object. But this is not so for the colours. To be sure, the properties such as colour and feel are tied psychologically to the oak true as an extended object, but there is no necessity to this, no ontological tie: the properties of these impressions cannot be inferred deductively from the known essence of the oak tree as an object that is part of extended material substance. It was Simon Foucher who raised this as a problem for Descartes’s solution to the problem of perception.36 He argued that Descartes had either proved too little or proved too much. Descartes argued that our

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natural belief that our sensations have causes and that these causes are extended three-dimensional objects is a true belief because, on the one hand, it is natural, unavoidable, and, on the other hand, God is no deceiver and would therefore not let us have an unavoidable belief that is false. But, Foucher critically argued, we have an equally natural belief that the objects that we perceive are coloured: we have a natural belief that our sensations of colour are caused by an extended object, but we also have a natural belief that those causes really are coloured, that just as they have properties as extended objects so they have in the same way the colours that they impress upon us in our sensory experience. Now suppose that Descartes has proved that natural beliefs are true. In that case the colour really is a property of the tree, for that is how it is perceived. In that case there ought to be a necessary connection between that property and the extendedness of the tree. But there is no perceived necessary connection. Moreover, since the colour is perceived as being the colour of the tree, where it is not so attached, it follows that the belief is false. If Descartes’s argument that some of our natural beliefs are true is successful, then the same argument will establish that all of those beliefs are true. But some of them are not: in spite of our natural belief to the contrary, colours are not properties of the objects of which they appear to be properties. Descartes has therefore proven too much: one of our natural and unavoidable beliefs is false, and the conclusion is that God is after all a deceiver. Or Descartes has proven too little. To the extent that he has not proven that colour really is a property of the tree as the extendedness is a property, he has not established that our natural belief to that effect is true. He has therefore not proven that natural beliefs have to be true: contrary to his argument, then, unavoidability is no guarantee of truth. But in that case he has not established that the natural or unavoidable belief that our sensations have extended things as causes is a true belief. So Descartes has proven too little and the conclusion is, again, that God is a deceiver. Pierre Bayle summarized Foucher’s argument in his famous Remark B to the article ‘Pyrrho’ in his Dictionary Historical and Critical.37 It appears as part of a conversation between two abbots about the dangers of Pyrrhonism and scepticism to the Christian religion. One of the abbots digresses to show how the case of the ancient Pyrrhonists is well supported by the arguments of the new philosophers, the Cartesians. The only proof [against the sceptics] that they [the modern philosophers,

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i.e., the Cartesians] can give me for it [the real existence of a corporeal world] is, that God would deceive me, if he imprinted in my soul the ideas I have of body, if there were no bodies, but that proof is very weak; it proves too much. Ever since the beginning of the world all men, except perhaps one in two hundred million, do firmly believe that bodies are coloured, and yet it is a mistake. I ask, whether God deceives men with respect to those colours? If he deceives them in that respect, what hinders but he may deceive them with respect to extension. This latter illusion will not be less innocent, nor less confident, than the former, with the most perfect being. If he does not deceive them, with respect to colours, it is without doubt, because he forces them not to say, those colours exist out of my soul, but only it appears to me there are some colours there. The same may be said with respect to extension. God does not force you to say, that it does exist, but only to judge that you feel it, and that it appears to you to exist. A Cartesian can as readily suspend his judgment about the existence of extension, as a peasant affirm that the sun shines, that the snow is white, &c. And therefore if we are mistaken in affirming the excellence of extension, God will not be the cause of it, since you acknowledge that he is not the cause of that peasant’s error.

We have then, present in consciousness, the perceptual judgment that this is an oak tree. But we have no grounds to say that this judgment is true. The appeal to God that Descartes thought could solve our problem fails. Such judgments are not knowledge, they are not tethered. We are left with opinion. But Descartes has resolved to reject as false those judgments which are not tethered. He must rely upon opinion to get on in the world, there is no knowledge, but his cognitive aims require him to reject all those judgments of opinion. He is therefore incapable of action: he can do nothing. Or rather, all that he can do is what Montaigne did: rely on experience, that is, fallible experience that yields only opinion. But, of course, if he does that, he in effect gives up the cognitive norm that he will rely only on tethered, infallible judgments. Or if he does not, then he imposes upon himself a standard that is impossible for him in his practical affairs to attain: he will in that case place himself in the impossible position of posing to himself standards that he cannot attain, he will be a bifurcated self. F. Abstract Ideas Re-evaluated We have perceivings. The tradition deriving from Aristotle interprets

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these in terms of the categories of the substance ontology. Descartes is among these. Descartes held that ontologically, the causes of our perceptual awarenesses are material substances. These substances are known by way of the form or essence of that substance being in the mind of the knower. But this ontological project failed: in spite of the heroic attempt by Descartes, it turned out that we have no grounds for accepting that any of our perceptions are knowledge. If what we have as our cognitive end is incorrigible knowledge, knowledge that is tethered, then perception is never knowledge. This conclusion turns on premises that are embedded centrally in the substance metaphysics. Berkeley and Hume attacked this picture of the world and our experience of it. They did this by attacking the doctrine that our ideas are in fact the forms or essences of things. In that way they argued in particular that we therefore cannot know in any way the substance that purports to be the cause of our perceptual awareness of material things. It follows that substances violate the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance (PA). They ought, therefore, to be excluded from one’s ontology. And with them goes the whole apparatus that interprets our perceivings, the ways in which we know the world in which we live. On the substance scheme, none of those perceivings is worth anything in making us acquainted with the way in which the world is. Berkeley and Hume eliminate substances and essences, the whole ontological scheme. The result is that one is free of that way of thinking and free to reinterpret perception in a way that comports with the clear fact that it is through perception that we are acquainted with the world in which we live and play and grow and think – and sit at our desks and meditate. It was Berkeley who initiated this critique of the substance tradition. He did so by attacking the doctrine of abstract ideas, the doctrine of forms or essences through which the substantial structure of the world was supposed to become known to us. Berkeley presents this critique of abstract ideas in the Introduction to his Principles of Human Knowledge. Hume, as we shall see, in his Treatise of Human Nature follows Berkeley in the case that is made against abstract ideas. But it is also true that their doctrines of what ideas actually are are in many respects fairly traditional. We think in terms of ideas. In particular, our capacity to think generally, and to use general terms, is a matter of having abstract ideas. In this, Berkeley and Hume follow the views of their predecessors such as Locke, Descartes, and the Port Royal logi-

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cians. Berkeley and Hume also adopt the principle that what is conceivable is possible. Again, they follow the same tradition of Locke, Descartes, and the Port Royal logicians. Each sketches an alternative account of how thought becomes abstract, Hume in greater detail than Berkeley. Where Hume differs from his predecessors Locke, Descartes, and the Port Royal logicians does not lie in his view that thought is in general a matter of having and using abstract ideas; rather, the difference is in his account of what precisely an abstract idea is. For Hume’s predecessors, one forms an abstract idea by separation. Thus, for Locke, forming ideas by abstraction consists in ‘separating them from all other Ideas that accompany them in their real existence’ (Essay, II, xii, 1). This sort of separation is the mechanism by which ‘the Mind makes the particular Ideas, received from particular Objects, to become general’ (II, xi, 9). The Port Royal logicians make the same point: abstraction occurs with respect to ‘choses ... composées’ when one ‘les considérant par parties, et comme par les diverses faces qu’elles peuvent recevoir.’ In abstraction what is thus known is considered separately from the whole; either one considers ‘les parties séparément’ in the case of ‘parties intégrantes,’ or one ‘peut séparer les choses en divers modes,’ or, finally, ‘quand une même chose ayant divers attributs, on pense à l’un sans penser à l’autre’ (Arnauld and Nicole, Port Royal Logic, I, v).38 The former occurs when, for example, we separate in thought the parts of the body. This is the simplest form of abstraction. Berkeley has no problems with this notion: ‘I will not deny I can abstract, if that may properly be called abstraction, which extends only to the conceiving separately such objects, as it possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder’ (Principles, section 5).39 Neither does Hume have problems with this notion; it is the basis of his – and Berkeley’s – view that ideas are either simple or complex and that some of the complex ideas are a result of our combining simple parts in ways that are not found in reality, as, for example, in our idea of the New Jerusalem (Treatise, I, i, 1, pp. 2–3). It is the other two sorts of abstraction that are more problematic. Consider the first of these. We begin with simple ideas of sensation, for example, white (Essay, II, iii, 1). One forms the abstract idea of white by separating the property white from the other qualities with which it is conjoined in the white particulars – for example, snow or milk (II, xxi, 73) – that are given in sense experience. The resulting idea is distinct from other ideas, for example, blue or heat (II, xii, 1). The example given by Nicole and Arnauld is that of the geometers, who explore the

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idea of three-dimensional space by considering first length alone, then area, and finally volumes or solids (which is the same, for these Cartesians, as ‘corps,’ body) (Port Royal Logic, I, v). This is one form of separation. By this means one forms abstract ideas of species. But whatever is red is coloured. Here we have not only the abstract idea of a species but also an abstract idea of a genus. The method of forming the abstract ideas of genera is rather different. The mind, ‘so to make other yet more general Ideas, that may comprehend different sorts [species] ... leaves out those Qualities that distinguish them’ (III, vi, 32). That is, one forms the abstract idea of a genus from the ideas of several qualities by separating the genus from the species. Thus, one forms the idea of being coloured by separating the property of being coloured from such properties as white, red, and so on, which are, of course, themselves abstract ideas. One forms the abstract idea of an equilateral triangle by separating this property from the particular equilateral triangles. Que si je passe plus avant, et que ne m’arrêtant plus à cette égalité de lignes, je considère seulment que c’est une figure terminée par trois lignes droites, je me formerai une idée qui peut représenter toutes sortes des triangles. Si ensuite, ne m’arrêtant point au nombre des lignes, je considère seulement que c’est une surface plate, bornée par des lignes droites, l’idée que je me formerai pourra représenter toutes les figures rectilignes, et ainsi je puis monter de degré en degré jusqu’à l’extension. (Port Royal Logic, I, v)

Thus, one forms the abstract idea of extension, or of being extended, by separating the property of extension from the property of triangle or circle or some other figure, that is, from these abstract ideas. These abstract general or universal ideas signify many particulars by signifying properties in those particulars. But these properties do not exist independently of those particulars. These ideas do not therefore represent or signify things that can exist as such, independently of particulars: ‘General and Universal ... belong not to the real existence of Things ... their general Nature being nothing but the Capacity they are put into by the Understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars’ (Essay, III, iii, 11). Or again, Quoique toutes les choses qui existent soient singulières, néanmoins, par le moyen des abstractions que nous venons d’expliquer, nous ne laissons pas d’avoir tous plusieurs sorts d’idées, don’t les unes ne nous représentent qu’une seule chose, ... et les autres en peuvent également représenter

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plusieurs, comme lorsque quelqu’un conçoit un triangle sans y considérer autre chose, sinon que c’est une figure à trois lignes et à trois angles; l’idée qu’il en a formée peut lui servir à concevoir tous les autres triangles. (Port Royal Logic, I, vi)

In general, one forms the abstract idea of a specific property by separating that specific property from the concrete particulars presented to one; and one forms generic abstract ideas by separating the generic property from the specific. This view is challenged by Hume, using an argument first deployed by Berkeley in his Principles (Introduction, sections 8–10). The three propositions (a) (necessarily) whatever exists is particular, (b) whatever is possible in thought is possible in reality, (c) abstract ideas are formed by separating specific and generic properties from existing particulars,40 are inconsistent. As Hume puts it, ’tis a principle generally receiv’d in philosophy, that every thing in nature is individual, and that ’tis utterly absurd to suppose a triangle really existent, which has no precise proportion of sides and angles. If this therefore be absurd in fact and reality, it must also be absurd in idea; since nothing of which we can form a clear and distinct idea is absurd and impossible. (Treatise, I, i, vii, pp. 19–20)

Berkeley and Hume conclude: so much the worse for the traditional doctrine of abstract ideas. Again as Hume puts it, Now as ’tis impossible to form an idea of an object, that is possest of quantity and quality, and yet is possest of no precise degree of either; it follows, that there is an equal impossibility of forming an idea, that is not limited or confin’d in both these particulars. Abstract ideas are therefore in themselves individual, however they may be general in their representation. (Ibid., p. 20)

Berkeley leaves it at that. But this leaves him without any account of how words come to be general, since the tradition understood this in terms of words being associated with abstract ideas. Hume goes be-

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yond Berkeley in attempting to provide a positive account of how words come to be general, that is, in effect, a radically revised account of abstract ideas, one that is not subject to the criticism that demolishes the traditional doctrine. In particular, Hume allows that we do in fact have ideas – clearly, abstract ideas – of such things as existence: There is no impression nor idea of any kind, of which we have any consciousness or memory, that is not conceiv’d as existent; and ’tis evident, that from this consciousness the most perfect idea and assurance of being is deriv’d. (Ibid., I, i, 6, p. 66)

In holding this position, Hume was following Locke, who also had that existence is an idea that is suggested to the understanding, by every object without, and every idea within. (Essay, II, vii, 7)

Before Locke there was Descartes, who held that existence is contained in the idea or concept of every single thing, since we cannot conceive of any thing except as existing. (Replies, p. 117)41

But Hume, unlike Locke and the Cartesians, does not hold that we form this idea of existence by separation. Rather, he proposes a different thesis concerning the formation of abstract ideas, an alternative account that does not face the difficulties that he and Berkeley raised against the doctrine of abstraction by separation. The problem to be solved is how an idea, that is, an image, that is particular can become abstract, or, in Locke’s terms, how can it acquire ‘the Capacity ... of signifying or representing many particulars’ (Essay, III, iii, 11). It cannot signify them by their all being present to the mind when the particular idea that represents them all is present, since ‘the capacity of the mind be not infinite’ (Treatise, p. 18). Hume’s solution, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, turns on arguing that the ideas and impressions that an abstract idea signifies ‘are not really and in fact present to the mind, but only in power’ (20). This capacity is one that is acquired or learned through a process of association. Thus, Hume’s positive account of abstract ideas depends on his associationist psychology.42 Just as our notion of causation is understood in terms of association based on the relation of contiguity, so abstract ideas are

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understood in terms of association based on the relation of resemblance.43 Ideas (images) and impressions that resemble one another in a certain respect – say in being red or in being coloured or in being extended – will through the mechanisms of association become so associated in thought that any one of them can introduce another member of the set. At the same time, a word (that is, a sound or mark) comes to be associated with ideas and impressions insofar as they are associated with one another via some resemblance relation. Thus, ‘red’ (the sound, the mark) comes to be associated with all members of the resemblance class of red impressions and ideas, ‘coloured’ comes to be associated with all members of the resemblance class of coloured impressions and ideas, and so on. When we encounter an impression or contemplate an idea (image) which is a member of the some resemblance class, that idea or impression introduces the word – the general term – that refers indifferently to each and every member of the resemblance class. When we have a resemblance among several objects, that often occur to us, we apply the same name to all of them, whatever differences we may observe in the degrees of quantity and quality, and whatever other differences may appear among them. After we have acquired a custom of this kind, the hearing of that name revives the idea of one of these objects, and makes the imagination conceive it with all its particular circumstances and proportions. But as the same word is suppos’d to have been frequently applied to other individuals, that are different in many respects from that idea, which is immediately present to the mind; the word not being able to revive the idea of all these individuals, only touches the soul, if I may be allow’d so to speak, and revives that custom, which we have acquir’d by surveying them. They are not really and in fact present to the mind, but only in power; nor do we draw them all out distinctly in the imagination, but keep ourselves in a readiness to survey any of them, as we may be prompted by a present design or necessity. The word raises up an individual idea, along with a certain custom; and that custom produces any other individual one, for which we may have occasion. (20–1)

The mechanisms of association provide the explanation of how a word becomes general. The abstract idea just is the members of the resemblance class qua habitually associated with one another, or, more accurately, the associated resemblance class insofar as the general term has become associated with it. The parts of the idea, those impressions and ideas that fall under it, are the members of that class – though to be

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sure when the idea is before the mind, instancing a use of the general term, those parts are present not actually but only potentially or dispositionally, ready to be recovered through association as the occasion permits or requires. When one judges that, say, whatever is extended is coloured, then one will have before the mind two abstract ideas, one the idea of being extended and the other the idea of being coloured; and, as in the tradition, these will be joined in making the affirmative universal judgment. Since these abstract ideas as such are habits or dispositions, they are of course as such not present to consciousness; rather, what is before the mind are particular ideas that are parts of the two abstract ideas, that is, particulars that have, through associations based on resemblance, come to be connected in thought with the use of general terms. Thus, it will be two particular ideas that are joined in the judgment, one a particular idea associated with the general term ‘coloured’ and the other a particular idea associated with the general term ‘extension.’ Or, even more likely, it will be one particular idea that is before the mind. For a particular idea that is in the resemblance class of coloured objects will also be a particular that is in the resemblance class of extended objects. That means that both abstract ideas can be represented in consciousness by one and the same particular idea, with that idea associated with the two general terms. The judgment that whatever is extended is coloured will not consist of a compound idea, made up of two particular ideas, but will, rather, consist of a single idea without distinct parts, this single idea representing in consciousness the two abstract ideas of being coloured and being extended. Hume explicitly recognizes this last point when he argues that the traditional division of mental acts into conception, judgment, and reasoning is mistaken. Conception is supposed to consist in the survey of one or more ideas, judgment in the joining or separating of two ideas, and reasoning in the joining or separating of ideas by means of intermediary ideas. Hume points out: For first, ’tis far from being true, that in every judgement, which we form, we unite two different ideas; since in that proposition, God is, or indeed any other which regards existence, the idea of existence is no distinct idea, which we unite with that of the object, and which is capable of forming a compound idea by the union. Secondly, As we can thus form a proposition, which contains only one idea, so we may exert our reason without employing more than two ideas, and without having recourse to a third to

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serve as a medium betwixt them. We infer a cause immediately from its effect; and this inference is not only a true species of reasoning, but the strongest of all others, and more convincing than when we interpose another idea to connect the two extremes. (Treatise, I, iii, 7, p. 96n1)

The point about inference and reasoning is of course but a restatement of the standard Lockean critique of the Aristotelian idea that all scientific inference is syllogistic.44 But for present purposes what is important is Hume’s claim that we can similarly have a proposition or judgment ‘which contains only one idea.’ The example that Hume uses is instructive, too. This example is God is. Here we have the idea of God; since God is a particular, this must be a particular idea. In the proposition God is we join this particular idea to the abstract idea of existence. That abstract idea will be represented in consciousness by a particular idea. This particular idea will not be another, distinct particular idea that we attempt to join to the idea of God. It will, rather, be the same idea of God. That is, the judgment that God exists will appear in consciousness as a single rather than a compound idea.45 So much for Descartes’s so-called ontological argument for God’s existence.46 This departure from the traditional doctrine about the nature of judgment does not reflect a rejection of the traditional doctrine that judgment consists in joining and separating abstract ideas, but rather is a consequence of Hume’s rethinking of the nature of abstract ideas, and his construal of them as associational habits represented indifferently in consciousness by any member of a resemblance class of ideas.47 It is, perhaps, worth noting that our previous discussion (in chapter 1) concerning the genetic origins of ideas is not irrelevant. We have just argued that an abstract idea is an association based on the relation of resemblance. There is a word such that each member of a resemblance class has associated with it that word. The association goes something like this. Idea a resembles idea b; b has associated with itself word c, which therefore refers to or denotes b. (This simplifies things considerably.) Idea a is somehow called up and appears. By virtue of R, idea a calls up idea b. Idea b calls up word c, which therefore applies to b. But, by virtue of the association of a with b, c comes to be associated with a also. In this way it comes to be associated with all members of the resemblance class. It thus refers to or denotes any item in this class, and any member of the class of things that stand in the resemblance relation R to item a are referred to or denoted by the term c. Thus c be-

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comes a general term that refers to or denotes all entities that stand in resemblance relation R to one another. The usage of the word c will be kept steady by rules of language, semantic rules carrying normative force. It is the function of these rules to keep the usage of c consistent and unambiguous, ensuring (so far as this is possible) that it applies to objects standing to one another in the relation R and not in a closely, or even distantly, resembling relation, say R*. As we saw in chapter 1, rules are important: for Hume, normal discourse is unthinkable without them. Another point is relevant. We have expounded the account of abstract ideas in terms of simple ideas. But the ideas involved might well be complex. For example, we might have the idea of a house. Here, a would be, say, Adam’s house, or, rather, our idea of Adam’s house. Then b is Boynton’s house. And, as before, a and b stand in a resemblance relation to each other (and to other ideas also), in this case the relation of being, say, house-like, and not, say, firehouse-like or barn-like. The point is that the idea of a house will be a complex idea. It will have parts – the ideas of bricks and mortar and electrical wiring and stairs and handrails and so on. These parts will, however, be there as integrant parts, not as metaphysical parts – the idea of which they are the parts will not have those parts there, present in it, as it appears before consciousness, but will be there dispositionally, ready to be recovered upon introspective reflection. The idea of the house will be itself phenomenologically simple, the product of a fusion as it were of the simpler ideas that are its (integrant) parts and therefore its genetic antecedents. In short, the resemblance class of ideas that forms the abstract idea may consist of simple ideas, each of which is a fusion of simpler ideas that are its integrant parts. Here is another place, then, where our discussion of chapter 1 is relevant, and important – important at least in this respect, that it yields a model of the process for the formation of abstract ideas that is more plausible than the simple or, perhaps, simplistic model that takes all parts to be, in Mill’s terminology, metaphysical parts. Hume thus has, we see again, the resources in his philosophy and in his psychological theory for dealing with complex situations: if you work on and with him in these respects he can often escape simple-minded criticisms.48 In the end, of course, it may be that the defence is still inadequate. But it deserves a run for its money, and that means making it as defensible as possible using the resources that Hume has made available but has not himself explicitly deployed.

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G. Knowledge Re-evaluated With the demise of abstract ideas in the sense of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, knowledge as scientia is no longer possible: we can no longer propose such knowledge as our cognitive goal. The whole concept of knowledge, and of reason, must be rethought. This is the major consequence of the empiricist critique of and rejection of abstract ideas in the traditional sense. For Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, we are able to achieve the sort of knowledge that appears in the upper portion of the divided line only when we become aware of the forms or essences of things that lie beyond the world with which we are confronted in our ordinary sensory experience. But now those entities have been eliminated, and ipso facto our knowledge of them. Thus, with the attack on abstract ideas we eliminate the possibility of infallible knowledge, of judgments that are firmly tethered: now, with the absence of forms or, what is the same, of abstract ideas, then, from the traditional standpoint, there is no knowledge, only opinion. The point may be put in another way, one more appropriate to a philosophy or ontology in which, based on an appeal to the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance, scientia has no place: in such a world the distinction between knowledge and opinion disappears; in such a world the search for infallible judgments turns out to be an impossible cognitive goal, one beyond our human capacity to attain, and, therefore, not one that a reasonable person will strive to achieve. In other words, as we move from a world in which scientia is possible to a world where it is no longer a reasonable cognitive goal, the game of coming to know is completely transformed. No longer will one undertake Descartes’s task. No longer will the epistemologist aim at infallible knowledge. No longer will opinion turn out to be ‘mere’ opinion. No longer will it inevitably be ‘second best’ – there is no ‘best’ that lies beyond opinion and that serves to judge all opinion as inevitably inadequate. Whatever sort of judgment is now seen to be adequate, and worthy of the honorific title ‘knowledge,’ is what previously had been classed as second best and ‘mere’ opinion. As for Descartes’s method of doubt, it is now seen to be simply foolish. The truth is that all is merely opinion. There is no infallible knowledge that could possibly be the goal of a successful application of the method of doubt. Nor could it (the method doubt) really be followed – nature will not let us follow it to the end that it implies, namely, the absence of all judgment. Hume puts the point this way:

174 External World and Our Knowledge of It There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Descartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgment. It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties; of whose veracity, say they, we must assure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning, deduced from some original principle, which cannot possibly be fallacious or deceitful. But neither is there any such original principle, which has a prerogative above others, that are self-evident and convincing: Or if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, but by the use of those very faculties, of which we are supposed to be already diffident.

He concludes that the Cartesian doubt, therefore, were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject. (E 149)

Under the impact of the ontological critique of abstract ideas, of forms and essences, the old search for knowledge simply cannot get off the ground, it makes nonsense of us as human beings, requiring us to do the impossible – that is, to set ourselves as rational beings against ourselves as natural beings. No reasonable person would now undertake the old program. But what will take its place? How, now, do we discover which judgments will best satisfy our cognitive aims? What, indeed, ought those cognitive aims to be? Hume provides an answer to that question. We ought, as reasonable beings, to be concerned with matter-of-fact truth:49 there alone we can come to some reasonable settling of issues about the nature of the world – the rest is illusion, and illusion fraught with danger. Attempts to go beyond the empirical are rooted more in superstition than in a concern for the truth. Hume tells us that I make bold to recommend philosophy, and shall not scruple to give it the preference to superstition of every kind or denomination. For as superstition arises naturally and easily from the popular opinions of mankind, it seizes more strongly on the mind, and is often able to disturb us in the conduct of our lives and actions. Philosophy, on the contrary, if just, can

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present us only with mild and moderate sentiments; and if false and extravagant, its opinions are merely the objects of a cold and general speculation, and seldom go so far as to interrupt the course of our natural propensities ... Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. (271–2)

We ought, as reasonable beings, to be concerned with matter-of-(empirical)-fact truth because, to repeat, there alone we can come to some reasonable settling of issues: While a warm imagination is allowed to enter into philosophy, and hypotheses embraced merely for being specious and agreeable, we can never have any steady principles, nor any sentiments, which will suit with common practice and experience. But were these hypotheses once removed, we might hope to establish a system or set of opinions, which if not true (for that, perhaps, is too much to be hoped for), might at least be satisfactory to the human mind, and might stand the test of the most critical examination. (Ibid.)

Our cognitive end is, or ought to be, believing the true and disbelieving the false, so far as concerns matters of fact. Thus, it would seem to be that, with regard to any proposition p, I ought to believe p if and only if it is true. But that, of course, is itself an inhuman end: no one with a finite mind, as ours are, can grasp every truth. Nor are many truths worth grasping. Who cares how many drops of rain fell on this or that square metre of ground two hours ago in the midst of the storm? What difference could it make? What relevance is it to anything that might concern us? There is lots of stuff that is boring, useless, or irrelevant to any of our concerns. Our aim, as reasonable beings, cannot be to believe all truths, but only to try to attain the truth in those things that matter to one. These include things in which I may be simply curious, but they also include things that might be useful to others, satisfying their curiosity or even making available to them things of a material sort that can make their lives better: At the time, therefore, that I am tired with amusement and company, and have indulged a reverie in my chamber, or in a solitary walk by a river side, I feel my mind all collected within itself, and am naturally inclined to carry my view into all those subjects, about which I have met with so many disputes in the course of my reading and conversation. I cannot for-

176 External World and Our Knowledge of It bear having a curiosity to be acquainted with the principles of moral good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of those several passions and inclinations which actuate and govern me. I am uneasy to think I approve of one object, and disapprove of another; call one thing beautiful, and another deformed; decide concerning truth and falsehood, reason and folly, without knowing upon what principles I proceed. I am concerned for the condition of the learned world, which lies under such a deplorable ignorance in all these particulars. I feel an ambition to arise in me of contributing to the instruction of mankind, and of acquiring a name by my inventions and discoveries. These sentiments spring up naturally in my present disposition; and should I endeavour to banish them, by attaching myself to any other business or diversion, I feel I should be a loser in point of pleasure; and this is the origin of my philosophy. (270)

Relative to this end of coming to true beliefs in things that matter to us, we have certain cognitive norms to which we ought to comply. Specifically, we have a duty to make ourselves such that we conform to the norms of evidence. As Locke put it: He that believes, without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies but neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due his maker, who would have him use those discerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and error. He that does not this to the best of his power, however he sometimes lights on truth, is in the right but by chance, and I know not whether the luckiness of the accident will excuse the irregularity of his proceeding. This at least is certain, that he must be accountable for whatever mistakes he runs into; whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given him, and seeks sincerely to discover the truth, by those helps and abilities he has, may have this satisfaction to doing his duty as a rational creature, that though he should miss the truth, he will not miss the reward of it. But he governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves, according as reason directs him. (Essay, Bk. IV, Ch. 17, section 24)

Reason directs us, of course, to rely upon evidence and evidence alone to determine which beliefs we hold. The rational person, one who conforms to the norms that determine his or her cognitive duty, does not rely on soothsayers or gazers into crystal balls or supermarket tab-

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loids or the motivated announcements of corporate CEOs or the entrails of geese. Reason consists in conforming our intellects to such norms as we discover are conducive to true belief, and these are the rules of the scientific method, or as Hume calls them, the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ Moreover, in applying ourselves in conformity to these rules, it is important for us to recognize our own fallibility, the limitations that we face even with the firm intention to use our cognitive abilities as best we can. Hume makes the important point that the conduct of a man who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of one who, feeling in himself an inclination to it, is yet so overwhelmed with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical convictions; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction which offers itself, upon account of either of them. (272)

He elaborates on this point elsewhere: It must ... be confessed, that this species of scepticism [scepticism antecedent to inquiry], when more moderate [than the radical method of doubt of Descartes], may be understood in a very reasonable sense, and is a necessary preparative to the study of philosophy, by preserving a proper impartiality in our judgments, and weaning our mind from all those prejudices, which we may have imbibed from education or rash opinion. To begin with clear and self-evident principles, to advance by timorous and sure steps, to review frequently our conclusions, and examine accurately all their consequences; though by these means we shall make both a slow and a short progress in our systems; are the only methods, by which we can ever hope to reach truth, and attain a proper stability and certainty in our determinations. (E 150)

Reason, then, becomes something very different for those who reject the Platonic–Aristotelian–rationalist notion that there are forms or essences or abstract ideas that can yield knowledge in the sense of scientia, infallible knowledge. We are now in the realm where there is only opinion, and the task becomes that of forming and settling on cognitive norms that will let us determine as best we can, relative to the end of believing truly, what we ought as reasonable beings to believe (and disbelieve).

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Of these norms, more later. H. Berkeley (i): Antirepresentationalism Descartes’s proof of the existence of external causes of the sensible appearances of things, the proof that goes by way of God and his trustworthiness, likely convinced no person other than Descartes himself. For most, Descartes ended up in scepticism: Foucher’s critique was effective. Hume put the point equally effectively: ‘To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit. If his veracity were at all concerned in this matter, our senses would be entirely infallible; because it is not possible that he can ever deceive. Not to mention, that, if the external world be once called in question, we shall be at a loss to find arguments, by which we may prove the existence of that Being or any of his attributes’ (E, p. 69). It was Berkeley who first saw the way around the problem. It is not plausible to hold that in order to be certain about whether or not we are sitting in a chair, we must first prove the existence of God. In fact, if the need for such a proof is all that keeps us from scepticism about ordinary things, then sceptics we will inevitably be. Berkeley eliminated abstract ideas. Or, rather, he established that they are illusions. That means that the solution to the problem of perception proposed by the Aristotelians goes nowhere. It too is an illusion. It means, too, that the Cartesian solution also goes nowhere. Worse, we end up in scepticism. For upon the Cartesian scheme, we have the perceptual experience of, say, our favourite oak tree analysed in such a way that it can never be known to be true. We have the sense impression on the one hand; this is given to us in our sensory experience. Then, on the other hand, there is perceptual judgment which locates this as, say, part of the tree that causes us to have that experience. But, given Berkeley’s argument about abstract ideas, it follows that we have no idea of the cause. And since it cannot be thought, it cannot be known. The perceptual experience that locates the sense impression as caused by a material object is illusory. Nor can we discover that cause. We do have sense impressions, but the ideas that we can form are all like those sense impressions – as Berkeley says, ‘An idea can be like nothing but an idea’ (Principles, ¶8) – and so we cannot know the object that must be there if our perceptual judgment not be illusory, if, that is,

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there really is a substantial world beyond the world of sense impressions. Those sense impressions form a veil that hangs as it were between our consciousness on the one hand and the real object on the other, the cause of those sense impressions. Those sense impressions are images that derive from their causes, the real objects of our perception, but in the absence of ideas of those real objects, we are unable to know whether those images are correct or incorrect – perhaps after all there is some sort of evil genius who deceives us in these things, perhaps after all, for all we know, there are no real objects that cause our sense impressions. This position, in which sense impressions purport to represent real objects that in themselves cannot be known, where we are unable to pierce beyond our sense experience to the reality that supposedly causes it, is philosophically untenable: scepticism is the only conclusion that follows from the notion that reality is beyond our experience, beyond to the extent that we cannot even think it. The sort of scepticism that Berkeley has in mind is the sort discussed by the two abbots in Remark B to the article ‘Pyrrho’ in Bayle’s Dictionary. Since the development of the new Cartesian philosophy, the abbot tells us, none among the good Philosophers doubt now but the Sceptics are in the right to maintain, that the qualities of bodies which strike your senses are only mere appearances. Every one of us may say, I feel heat before a fire, but not I know that fire is such as it appears to me. Such was the style of the ancient Pyrrhonists. But now the new Philosophy speaks more positively: heat, smell, colours, &c, are not in the objects of our senses; they are only some modifications of my soul; I know that bodies are not such as they appear to me. They were willing to except extension and motion, but they could not do it; for if the objects of our senses appear to us coloured, not, cold, smelling, tho’ they are not so, why should they not appear extended and figured, at rest, and in motion, though they had no such thing, Nay, the objects of my senses cannot be the cause of my sensations: I might therefore feel cold and heat, see colours, figures, extension, and motion, tho’ there was not one body in the world.

Berkeley aims to eliminate this sort of scepticism:50 the full title of his Principles is A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Wherein the chief causes of error and difficulty in the Sciences, with the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are Inquired into. Repeatedly, Berkeley indicates his intention to eliminate scepticism and to

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understand those lines of thought that have led people into various sorts of ‘uncouth paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies ... till at length, having wander’d through many intricate mazes, we find ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn scepticism’ (Principles, Introduction, ¶1). As he goes on to indicate, it was his intention to uncover the sources of the absurdities and scepticism that have entered philosophy, and to eliminate those causes and thereby the absurdities and scepticism (ibid., ¶¶4–5) The fault lies in the ontology that would make sensible appearances true or false depending on some unknowable but supposedly real thing: ‘So long as we attribute a real existence to unthinking things, distinct from their being perceived, it is not only impossible to know with evidence the nature of any real unthinking thing, but even that it exists.’ (Principles, ¶88) Berkeley argues, quite correctly, that this radical scepticism is rooted in the distinction between things, on the one hand, as the reality behind what is given to us in sense experience, and, on the other hand, those sensible impressions, as ‘mere’ impressions, ‘mere’ appearances, in themselves not fully real and certainly not the objects that cause our experience of those impressions: All this scepticism follows, from our supposing a difference between things and ideas [sense impressions], and that the former have a subsistence without the mind [beyond experience], or unperceived [unperceivable]. It were easy to dilate on the subject, and show how the arguments urged by sceptics in all ages, depend on this superstition of external objects. So long as we attribute a real existence to unthinking things, distinct from their being perceived, it is not only impossible for us to know with evidence the nature of any real unthinking being, but even that it exists. Hence, it is, that we see philosophers distrust their senses and doubt of the existence of heaven and earth, of every thing they see or feel, even of their own bodies. (Ibid., ¶¶87–8)

How, then, to overcome the radical scepticism into which we have fallen? The solution is to eliminate the objects that are external to and ontologically different from the sense impressions given in experience. Indeed, in doing that we eliminate objects that cannot even, without illusion, be thought. It is only reasonable, surely, to admit into our ontology things which can be experienced and be thought about. The

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appeal to the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance is clear. Thus, Berkeley tells us about the ‘signification’ of the phrase ‘material substance,’ that ‘I am convinced there is no distinct meaning annexed to them’ (ibid., ¶17). Or again: Either we must know it [material substance] by sense or by reason. As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will: but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. This the materialists themselves acknowledge. It remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense. But what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend, there is any necessary connection betwixt them and our ideas? (Ibid., ¶18)

What Berkeley has done is evident. On the one hand, he accepts the sceptic’s thesis that all that we encounter in experience are sensible impressions. On the other hand, he accepts the thesis of the vulgar that these sensible appearances are in fact what are real. This overthrows the sceptic’s scepticism, which is a consequence of the assumption that there is a reality beyond the world of experience, while affirming a commonsense realism: the world lies in clarity before us, it is as we perceive it to be.51 I. Berkeley (ii): Realism Berkeley’s move to avoid scepticism requires a fundamental revision in ontology. Previously, an ordinary thing was conceived in terms of the substance metaphysics. There were, on the one hand, the sensible appearances. There were, on the other hand, the substances of which these sensible appearances were the expression. The appearances are said to be present in the substance whose essence or form they express; they are predicated on that substance. Now, however, after the rejection of abstract ideas and any ontology of forms or essences, there are no substances, there are only appearances. Or rather, the ‘appearances’ are no longer appearances, they are no longer the appearances of transcendent things that are the ultimate reality,

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they are themselves what is ultimately real, it is they and they alone that provide the standard of truth. It bears emphasis – with the elimination of the transcendent material substances, the sensible entities that are presented to consciousness are the ultimate reality: they are not ‘mere’ appearances, they are truly the reality in which we live and play. In the old metaphysics of substances, a statement of individual fact such as a is f represents the state of affairs that the substance a has present in it the property f: the ‘is’ of predication stands for the relation between a substance and the appearance that it presents to the world and that is present in it. But now, upon the disappearance of substances, the ‘is’ of predication cannot represent the relation of property to substance. Berkeley offers an alternative account. He has already made it clear that ordinary things are not substances with properties inhering in them but are collections of qualities: As to what philosophers say of subject and mode, that seems very groundless and unintelligible. For instance, in this proposition, a die is hard, extended and square, they will have it that the word die denotes a subject of substance, distinct from the hardness, extension and figure, which are predicated of it, and in which they exist. This I cannot comprehend: to me a die seems to be nothing distinct from those things which are termed its modes or accidents. And to say a die is hard, extended and square, is not to attribute those qualities to a subject distinct from and supporting them, but only an explication of the meaning of the word die. (Principles, ¶49)

As he also says, it is ‘combinations of sensible qualities, which [in common discourse] are called things’ (ibid., ¶38). Indeed, already in the first paragraph of the Principles Berkeley tells his reader that thus, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. Other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things. (Ibid., ¶1)

The point is that predication is now to be understood in terms of whole and part. The subject term of

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a is f denotes a whole of which f is a part, and the ‘is’ represents that the property f is indeed part of the whole denoted by ‘a.’ Berkeley is the first to propose this alternative to the traditional substance–accident account; his attack on the substance tradition forces him to rethink the traditional account of predication and to devise his alternative whole– part account.52 An ordinary thing, then, is simply the whole of its appearances. Or rather, there are the appearances and an ordinary thing is no more puzzling than a rainbow or a shadow, nor the latter any more puzzling than the former: each is a pattern of sensible appearances. Consider one of the traditional puzzling cases, the straight stick that appears bent in water. If the stick is in fact straight, it is a puzzle what to do with the bent shape that appears to us once the stick is put in water. The puzzle disappears if the appearances of things are all taken as basic, equally basic. Sometimes we are given in our visual perception a straight shape, sometimes a bent shape. The latter is presented when the stick is placed in water. The two appearances are equally real. Indeed, given the laws of refraction, the bent shape is exactly how we can expect sticks to appear when in water. Science is the study of patterns, the patterns of the ways in which the appearances of things sort themselves into groups. We single out the straight shape as of central concern, ‘the’ shape of the stick, because that visual shape coincides with the shape of the stick that is given to us in tactile experience, the shape that is the outer boundary of where we cannot penetrate tactually any further, a shape that we observe visually when we observe our hand moving about the stick when we experience it tactually. However, as Berkeley says, ... in strict truth the ideas of sight, when we apprehend by them distance and things placed at a distance, do not suggest or mark out to us things actually existing at a distance, but only admonish us what ideas of touch will be imprinted in our minds at such and such distances of time, and in consequence of such or such actions. (Ibid., ¶44)

It is the sensations we have tactually that define what is the ‘real’ object. James made the point this way: The tactile properties are those most intimately connected with our weal or woe. A dagger hurts us only when in contact with our skin, a poison

184 External World and Our Knowledge of It only when we take it into our mouths, and we can only use an object for our advantage when we have it under our muscular control. It is as tangibles, then, that things concern us the most; and the other senses, so far as their practical use goes, do but warn us what tangible things to expect. They are but organs of anticipatory touch.53

There are many appearances that exist but are not presented to me. I see an apple, one side of which is red – the side that I see – and the other side of which is green. I have a red impression, not one that is green, though I know that the green is there, on the other side, unseen, unexperienced. We have already made these points about perception. What we have here in perception is what Price referred to as ‘primary recognition’: what I see is an apple, some features of which are presented to me in sense experience, but much of which is not given in sense experience. I see the apple but it is the redness alone that is presented in sense. Then, to use our other example, there is the straight stick that appears bent when in water. In this case, there are the tactile appearances of, as one says, ‘the stick,’ which are there even when it is being observed only visually – otherwise ‘it’ would not be a stick. Or, there is the die about which Berkeley speaks: it presents to me its side that is numbered ‘3,’ it has another five sides that are not presented to me and these I know to exist without my perceiving them – otherwise it would not be a die. Berkeley did not pursue in detail the analysis of ordinary things into patterns of sensible appearances. It was later philosophers who undertook this task, philosophers such as Bertrand Russell.54 Russell points out that at any moment one is experiencing the world from a given perspective, from an established point of view determined by the location of one’s body; one as it were looks out on the world from within this body. The assemblage of all one’s present objects of sense experience is a ‘perspective.’ My own perspective is not now shared with any other person, but if I move and another takes my place, then that perspective, or parts of it anyway, may become the other person’s perspective; certainly, he or she is seeing the world from the place where I saw it, and will experience in sense many of the aspects of things that I experienced. And there are many points of view, many perspectives that no one experiences. These points of view are correlated with one another in complicated ways. But there is a continuity, and many of the laws of variation are clear. When one views a circular coin, one has present in one’s sense experience an ellipse. This ellipse is part of a whole family the members of which can be systematically described by the laws of

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projective geometry. In fact, there are series of series, one from my perspective, one from your perspective, and one for each of the many other perspectives. These series all converge on what we call the coin itself, that point where tactually one cannot proceed. Note, too, that while no one shares my perspective at this moment, there might well be facts within it that are parts of the perspective of another. For example, if we both view the same coin, we will experience that coin from different angles, and the ellipse that I experience will not be the same as the ellipse that is given to you in your sense experience. Yet the shape of the head on the coin will be given to me and to you, to both of us, as within the ellipse. In this way, there are certain facts that are indeed shared, though our perspectives, when taken as wholes, are different.55 This, then, is the view of the world at which Berkeley arrived in his argument against representationalism. The point of this account of the ontology of ordinary things is to preserve us from the radical scepticism that is inevitably parasitic on that representationalism. It is the identification of appearances with reality that eliminates the radical doubt that representationalism generates. This problem, the one raised by the radical scepticism that arises because of the substance philosophy that insists on distinguishing appearances from some sort of mysterious reality that lies behind those appearances, disappears. It is important to see that the account of the world as constituted by appearances is one that is arrived at in order to secure the possibility of forming reasonable opinions about matter-of-(empirical)-fact truth, about the way the world is. It has regularly been suggested, with regard to the view that one arrives at the account of things as constituted out of their appearances, that this is adopted in order to somehow secure certainty. This is not wrong: this is the aim – how can one form reasonably certain opinions about the way the world is? But the analysis is not arrived at as a way of seeking a foundation for empirical knowledge. To be sure, the analysis does imply that there is a starting point for our knowledge of ordinary things. Ordinary things are patterns of sense impressions, not all of which are present to one’s consciousness at any given moment. There is, then, a sort of inference from what is present to what is not present. As Price indicated, these inferences are automatic, but learned, responses to the way the world is presented to us in our sensible experience of it. The inference is of this sort: from something being A we infer that there is something nearby which is B. It is evident that this, when reconstructed rationally, is an inference that is parallel in formal structure to the inductive inferences of science.

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This sort of inference was understood by Locke. He distinguishes sensation from perception, or, as he puts it, the ideas of sensation from the perception of an object. How we identify the experience of the former as caused by the latter is something learned, an inference that proceeds as a matter of habit. a habit that has been acquired through a regular experience of the associated items: We are further to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgment, without our taking notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe, of any uniform colour, v.g. gold, alabaster, or jet; it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind, is of a flat circle variously shadowed, with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies; the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes; so that from that which is truly variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure, it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour; when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane variously coloured, as is evident in painting. (Essay, Bk. II, Ch. ix, section 8)

It is perhaps misleading for Locke to suggest that the bit of habitual inference one finds in perception ‘alters’ the sense impressions ‘into their causes.’ There is, in the first place, the world of sensible particulars, most of them unsensed. Objectively these occur in certain patterns. Among these patterns are those which define the collections that are the ordinary things of the world. Among the processes that govern the changes in the sensible world are those that determine the conditions under which one experiences certain sense impressions. One responds to these sense impressions with a perceptual inference. This inference, this perceptual judgment, is of or about this patterned set of sensible particulars. It is not so much that the perceptual judgment ‘alters’ the impression but rather that the judgment locates the sense impression as part of the set of impressions that constitute the thing perceived. The point is that the thing perceived is not the construction as it were of the perceiving mind, nor that the impression is altered. It is, to repeat, the same impression but now located as being among a larger set that makes up the object perceived.

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The ‘inferences’ that are contained in our perceptual judgments correspond to the form or essence said to be in mind when a perceptual judgment occurs according to the Aristotelian-rationalist accounts of perception. The form or essence disappears with the demise of abstract ideas, but the fact remains that besides sensation there is a perceptual judgment that locates the sensed appearance as the appearance of some ordinary object. It is this aspect of the perceptual situation that one accounts for with the introduction of the learned inference habits to which Locke directed our attention. It is, of course, better to speak of a perceptual ‘judgment’ than simply a ‘habit.’ The former way of speaking allows the perceiving to be phenomenologically simple, as indeed it is, whereas the latter suggests a complexity. In terms of the logic of the situation, the perceptual judgment is indeed an inference; that is the logical form which it takes when expressed fully in language – when expressed in the text, as we previously put it. But that judgment does not appear in consciousness with the psychological complexity conveyed by the term ‘inference’; the learned or inferential aspect of the judgment is carried unconsciously and more or less automatically, and the judgment itself appears in consciousness as a directly identified simple. At the same time, one can argue – as the classical psychologists did – that the perceptual judgment, which is phenomenologically simple, can be introspectively analysed into the complexity that appears in the genetic antecedents that created the habit. The perceptual judgment goes beyond what is presented in sensation and implies the existence of unsensed sensible objects; for this reason, it is fallible in just the way that inductive inferences are fallible. That means that it can be doubted in a way that mere – or ‘mere’ – sensation cannot. The object that is sensed is given to one, that is, wholly given in a way that the perceptual object is not. This point is not simply an epistemological one; it is rather a way to argue for an ontological point by way of looking at our experience of objects. It is not simply a way of finding a ‘secure’ starting point for justifying our empirical beliefs; it is rather a way to establish that those beliefs are about patterns of sensible appearances. Russell once made this point by raising the issue of what can be doubted in the beliefs derived from our perceptual judgments. He points to the certainty of many of our ordinary perceptual judgments, for example, the judgment that one is now sitting at a desk writing out philosophical arguments. ‘All this,’ Russell argues, ‘seems to be so evident as to be hardly worth stating, except in answer to a man who

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doubts whether I know anything. Yet all this may be reasonably doubted, and all of it requires much careful discussion before we can state it in a form that is wholly true.’56 Russell then proceeds to test our beliefs by a sort of method of doubt: if what the belief implies about the sensible world can be doubted in the sense that we do not find what the belief asserts to be there, present in the sensory experience on which the perceptual belief is based, then we are to conclude that what is dubitable is about parts of a pattern of sensible objects, most of which, including the dubitable ones, are not given at that moment in sensory experience. The aim is not to find a secure or indubitable basis for our inferences about things, but rather to discover the nature of the patterns that define the complex objects that we perceive. This use of a ‘method of doubt’ is very different from that of Descartes. The latter had the aim of dismissing all beliefs, all judgments, until we arrive at some that are indubitable, so clear and distinct as to exclude all possibility of doubt. Descartes takes for granted the ontological structure of any object the existence of which will be determined by his use of his method of doubt: such an object will be understood in terms of the substance-accident analysis. Descartes’s question is this: Which substances exist? This is very different from the question Russell asks – the much deeper question: What is the correct ontological analysis of the objects of our perceptual experience? Descartes’s question deals with how to find certainty within an assumed ontological framework; Russell’s question deals with what the ontological framework is that will be accepted by the reasonable person. Russell’s aim, like Berkeley’s, is to find an ontology that will exclude the sort of radical scepticism that is parasitic upon representationalism; in contrast, Descartes’s aim is to eliminate scepticism about substances in order to find a set of judgments about such substances that are infallible, tethered. Descartes does not recognize that the scepticism he hopes to eliminate lies in the very structure of the substance ontology that he takes for granted. Berkeley and Russell do not take such an ontology for granted, and wish instead to take the appearances of things to be in themselves real and to find the structures of these real things that combine them into the wholes that are the things we judge to be there in our perceptual experience of the world. It is important to make this point because its being ignored has often led to misapprehensions about what Berkeley and (even more so) Russell are trying to do. To repeat, their point is ontological, not epistemological, though to be sure, the ontological analysis is undertaken in

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order to make an epistemological point: these philosophers (Berkeley and Russell – and Hume) wish to locate an ontological analysis of the things we perceive that will eliminate the scepticism consequent upon the assumption of the substance–accident ontology. If we are to defend Hume, we need to make this point clear and to comment on some at least of those who do not understand. Thus, to take one example, Quinton so misconstrues Russell’s project.57 He wishes to argue that the ontology that Russell, following Berkeley, had developed, an ontology in which ordinary things are construed as patterns of sensible appearances, is mistaken. He wishes to argue that the Berkeleyan view, what he calls ‘phenomenalism,’ is false. He proposes that we are as directly acquainted with ordinary objects as we are with the sensible appearances of those objects, and he concludes that therefore the former are not ‘mere’ patterns of the latter. He does not say that he is advancing a sort of substance ontology, but he does deny that the position he wishes to defend is a form of representationalism: to the contrary, he holds, there is no veil of appearances that come between us and ordinary objects, making the latter beyond our cognitive capacities. Quinton attacks the very notion that one can speak of the appearances of things as entities – as ‘sense data.’ It is wrong, he argues, to infer that, since things appear in certain ways, there are entities that have the properties presented by those appearances. A statement such as (1)

this desk appears to be brown

about ordinary objects of perception does not imply that there is on the one hand the desk and on the other hand something else referred to as a sense impression or sense datum, where this sense datum is experienced as brown. To the contrary, a statement such as (1) is simply a guarded way of making the same assertion as (2)

this desk is brown

which attributes a colour not to a sense impression but to an ordinary object. (1) expresses the same judgment as (2), but gives it to be understood that one is less than fully certain about its truth.58 Now, what needs to be noted is that Russell or Berkeley can grant this point. The argument that they offer for sensible appearances turns on the simple point that when we perceive in normal circumstances that

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the desk is brown we are presented with an expanse, an area if you wish, that is coloured brown. In this sense, what we experience is a patch that is brown: there is an impression, there in what we experience, that is brown. What we do when we use (2) to express our perceptual judgment is locate that brown patch as part of a pattern of similar impressions, actual and possible, as part of a patterned whole that we describe as a brown desk. (2) describes the object of our perceptual judgment. It is open to the Berkeleyan to hold that one can make such an assertion in a way that indicates the certainty of one’s judgment, using (2), or in a guarded way, using (1). Nothing about Quinton’s account of the relation between (1) and (2) implies something inconsistent with the Berkeleyan analysis of ordinary things as collections of sensible appearances. Quinton has another argument against the Berkeleyan analysis. We are told that it is wrong to hold, as the Berkeleyan does, that in perceptual judgments we locate as part of an ordinary object an impression given to us in sensible experience, because in such perceptual judgments we not only are not attending to the sensory core, the impression, but are often hard put to give an accurate description of that core: we are much more certain about the perceptual judgment than we are about the sensory core of that judgment.59 Thus, we are told that ‘experience cannot be the sole object of acquaintance since it is not the case that in every perceptual situation we are aware of it.’60 But again, why should the Berkeleyan not grant this? In fact, Russell makes much the same point during his discussion of the analysis of ordinary things into patterns of sensible impressions: ‘The painter wants to know what things seem to be; the practical man and the philosopher want to know what they are; but the philosopher’s wish is stronger than the practical man’s, and is more troubled by knowledge as to the difficulties in answering this question.’61 Only rarely do we attend to the sensory impression; usually it is the object of perception to which we are attending. But none of that implies that the object of perception is not a patterned set of the ways in which it appears in and out of sensible experience. Nor does it imply that in perception what we are doing is undertaking a mental activity in or through which we locate in such a pattern the sensible impression that we are experiencing. In general, of course, we are not doing any such thing; rather, since ‘doing’ suggests an activity of ‘locating,’ one should better express the occurrence of the perceptual act in a way that does not suggest that there is some sort of ‘constructing’ of the object that is

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going on.62 What occurs is an event that is a perceiving, and this perceiving is ‘of’ an object ‘this,’ it is more specifically a perceiving that this is a brown tree, where this tree sensibly appears to be brown, where the object, the ‘this,’ is a patterned complex of sensible appearances, where the pattern is that of a tree situated in space a certain distance from me, and where the brown patch is one of the appearances in the complex. Quinton thinks that all this about only rarely attending to the sensible impressions, rather than to the perceptual object, is relevant to refuting the Berkeleyan analysis because he construes the latter as based on an epistemological argument. The idea seems to be that, since we don’t attend to these sensible impressions, these impressions cannot provide a foundation for our knowledge of perceptual objects. So he concludes that since there is no inference involved, the perceptual object cannot be a complex of appearances of which the sense impression is a part. But, to repeat, the latter does not follow. Quinton misunderstands the concern of these philosophers: their motivation is ontological, not epistemological. Or, more exactly, their motivation is to find an ontology that does not have unacceptable consequences – for example, scepticism – for epistemology. Certainly, their concern is not to find some sort of ‘foundation’ for empirical knowledge. Quinton misunderstands this. Thus, we find him presenting in this way the case that he conceives his opponents to be making: as he puts it, ‘while no knowledge of material objects is direct, all or only knowledge of [sensible] experience is direct. In more linguistic terms, while no statements about objects are basic, all or only statements about experience are basic.’ Here, Quinton is telling us that he means by ‘basic’ that a piece of knowledge is basic only if it can expressed in a direct statement, one that is not justified indirectly by some inference from other judgments but directly: it is a statement of something non-inferentially known. There is, then, as Quinton sees things, an argument for judgments about sensible appearances being basic: ‘Beliefs about objects are never certain, beliefs about experience are always certain, and ... for any uncertain belief to be even probable something else must be certain.’ From this it follows that material object statements must be inferable from premises about the more basic judgments about sense impressions. And since material object statements are thus evidentially dependent on statements about appearances, the former must, in their logic, be statements about complex patterns of sensible impressions. But the premises of this argument are, he proposes, all false, and he therefore

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concludes that there are no grounds for accepting the Berkeleyan analysis of ordinary objects.63 Quinton argues that it is false that beliefs about ordinary objects are never certain: for we quite often do have beliefs about material objects that are as certain as anything. But the same is true of many inductive inferences. That the sun will rise tomorrow is based on inductive inference, but it is as certain as any judgment we will make. Similarly, many perceptual beliefs are as certain as any judgment might be – for example, the judgment that I am now sitting at a desk composing an essay on knowledge. Why should a Berkeleyan not agree with this? Just because a perceptual judgment has the logical form of an inductive inference, it simply does not follow that it is not certain. Quinton also argues, as we have seen, that beliefs about experience – that is, about sense impressions – are often uncertain. But as we have also seen, there is no reason why a Berkeleyan ought not to agree with this also. After all, as we have suggested, more often than not it is to the perceptual object that we are attending, not the impression we have in our sense experience. Finally, Quinton argues that there can be judgments which are uncertain but which are not based on inferences from prior judgments that are in themselves certain. Again, why should the Berkeleyan have to disagree? To be sure, inductive inferences are, logically speaking, uncertain: as Price made clear, our perceptual judgments make ampliative assertions that go beyond the instances that could have formed their evidential basis. In this sense, every perceptual judgment goes beyond the instances on the basis of which we learned to make such judgments. But, taking these things phenomenologically, perceptual judgments are not inferences; nor, in terms of the psychology of the case, can they be construed as being the upshot of inferences, of a conscious movement from premises to conclusion. But perceptual judgments made in full daylight are more certain than perceptual judgments made at twilight. Among the things that we have learned is that the latter sort of judgment must be made more guardedly than the former. And as was made clear with the example of statements (1) and (2), the more guarded statement will be made using the language of appearances. As we emphasized with (1) and (2), however, one cannot conclude from this, as Quinton attempts to do, that the ontology is not Berkeleyan. By taking the argument for a Berkeleyan ontology to be based on an inference to what must be epistemologically basic in a chain of infer-

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ences, Quinton provides himself with an easy target. If he is correct in his analysis of the Berkeleyan case, then his position is quite indisputable: if he is correct, then it is indeed true that for the Berkeleyan no case has been made. But the Berkeleyan argument is quite different. To be sure, Russell does base his case on something like the Cartesian method of doubt. But this is not the Cartesian method of doubt, which has as its aim the clearing away of those idols which lead us into error, and prevent us from discovering or uncovering the true and infallible foundations of all knowledge. Russell instead uses the method to lead us to those features of the world in which we live that are not the result of an acquired capacity to recognize those features as falling under a pattern that points to other features of the world that are not presented to one in one’s sense experience. There is nothing incompatible between a Berkeleyan ontology, on the one hand, and, on the other, there being perceptual judgments that are cognitively more securely based than the corresponding awareness of the sense impression that that judgment locates as an aspect of a material object, located in space. Chisholm has advanced a similar though stronger argument for the same conclusion as Quinton, that perceptual object statements about material objects cannot be arrived at by inference from statements about sense impressions. Chisholm considers the possibility of inferring statements about material objects from statements about sense impressions. He draws the conclusion that perceptual judgments about material objects must be as inferentially basic as judgments about sense impressions. He indicates that ‘it is very difficult to think of any proposition about the “external world” which is probable – more probable than not – in relation to any set of propositions about the way in which one is appeared to [in sense]’: ‘That is to say, it is very difficult to think of a set of statements of this sort: one of them is a synthetic statement, attributing some property to a material thing; the others are statements of the form, “I am appeared to [in sense] in such and such a way” ... and, finally, the statement about the material thing is probable – more probable than not – in relation to the statements about appearing.’64 Chisholm defines ‘empiricism’ to mean that the only basic statements are those which describe our sense impressions, how we are ‘appeared’ to in sense. He is suggesting that if empiricism in his sense is true, and that if there are no material object judgments which are confirmed by statements about our sense impressions, then we can never

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make judgments about material objects that are even the least bit probable. His argument thus aims at justifying the conclusion that, if empiricism in his sense is true, then it will never be reasonable to accept any material object judgment: scepticism about material objects is the only thing that the empiricist can conclude. He suggests that Hume subscribes to empiricism in his (Chisholm’s) sense, and that he draws this sceptical conclusion when he asserts that ‘’tis in vain to ask, whether there be body or not’ (187). This is perhaps not fair to Hume; after all, there are a variety of reasons, some good, some bad, why he might hold that it is vain and unreasonable to ask whether there be body. But let us for now allow Chisholm his reading of Hume. We shall deal with that issue in due course. In any case, Chisholm himself aims to avoid scepticism about material objects, and therefore holds that perceptual object judgments ought to be taken to be as equally basic in the line of epistemological justification as judgments about sense impressions.65 Now, Berkeley and Hume might well accept that perceptual object judgments are as certain as judgments about sense impressions, and that they might therefore be taken as equally secure epistemologically. In that sense, they might well agree with Chisholm. But Chisholm takes his argument to establish that perceptual objects cannot be understood ontologically as patterns of (sensed and unsensed) sense impressions; he takes it to establish that Berkeley’s realistic ontology is in error: besides sense impressions and patterned collections of sense impressions, there are also unanalysable material objects. This raises the ghost of the representationalism that Berkeley set out to slay. Chisholm escapes that scepticism only by insisting that we have in our perceptual judgments a secure awareness that takes us beyond the world of sense experience to a world of material objects unrelated to the objects of sense experience. Berkeley had already criticized this position as requiring us to have concepts not derived from sense: the Berkeley–Hume attack on abstract ideas as the vehicles that are supposed to enable us to judge about material objects construed as unrelated to what we know by way of sense experience is equally an attack on the concepts or whatever that are unrelated to sense but are, according to Chisholm’s account of the world, the vehicles by which we non-sensibly experience things such as chairs and tables, rainbows and shadows, oysters and oak trees. But the issue before us now is whether Chisholm’s argument establishes that material objects could not be patterns of sense impressions. The argument is that a material object statement is compatible with any sense judgment that we make, and that the latter cannot therefore sup-

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port the former. That being so, the former could not be judgments about patterns of sense impressions. However, as Firth has argued against Chisholm, it is simply not true that judgments about sense impressions never count as confirming or disconfirming hypotheses about the nature of the material thing that they are taken to be of. Firth considers the case where he perceives something moving in the shaded underbrush of his garden. It seems to him that what he is seeing is a cat. But he is not sure. So he examines more carefully how he is struck by that thing; he examines more carefully the impression of it that he is given in sense. Upon examining that impression, he decides that it is not really a cat after all, it is a dog, of about the same size as a cat. And what about Macbeth’s dagger? Is this a dagger, which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: – I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? (Macbeth, 2.1.33–9)

A dagger is a pattern of sensible appearances, visual to be sure, as in Macbeth’s experience, but tangible also. Macbeth is suggesting a test for his perceptual judgment. If that judgment is true, then it is saying of things that they fit a pattern and that this pattern includes both visible and tangible sense data, appearances. If the tangible ones are not there, then the pattern does not hold. The sensible appearances provide the test of whether the pattern is there. So Chisholm is wrong to say that one never relies on an examination of one’s impressions to help one decide among alternative hypotheses about the sort of thing that impression is an impression of. And if this is the logical relation in some cases, then it is the same logical relation in other cases, cases where I never do rely upon a careful examination of my sense impressions to determine the kind of material object to which I attribute those impressions. Just because I am not doubting what sort of material object I am perceiving, it does not follow that that perceptual judgment does not stand in the logical relation to the sense impression of a hypothesis about the pattern into which that impression fits.

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That is, from the fact that the judgment is somehow evidentially certain, it does not follow that that judgment is not about what is ontologically analysed into a pattern of sensed and unsensed sense impressions.66 We may conclude, then, that Chisholm has not provided grounds for rejecting a Berkeleyan ontology of perceptual things as patterns of sensed and unsensed sense impressions. Chisholm wrongly infers that a Berkeleyan ontology is mistaken and that we need to return to a sort of representationalism; he is wrong about this because he rightly notices that some perceptual object judgments are more certain than judgments about our sense impressions. But in fact, there is nothing incompatible between a Berkeleyan ontology, on the one hand, and, on the other, there being perceptual judgments that are cognitively more securely based than the corresponding awareness of the sense impression which that judgment locates as an aspect of a material object, located in space. Not that all such perceptual judgments are satisfactory. When William James was discussing some of these issues, he made it clear that we often distinguish those sense impressions which are real from those which are not. James makes the important point that anything that evokes our attention is, in that sense, real, real at least ‘to us’: ‘Any relation to our mind at all, in the absence of a stronger relation, suffices to make an object real.’67 But it is sensible objects that are basic: ‘Sensible objects are ... our realities or the tests of our realities. Conceived objects must show sensible effects or else be disbelieved.’68 This at least is the world of ‘practical realities.’ Among these ‘sensible effects,’ those which impose themselves on us, those which we are compelled as it were to experience, are the most real: ‘coerciveness over attention,’ as James puts it.69 Berkeley had already made the same point. The unavoidability of certain sensations – or, as Berkeley expresses it for certain ideas of sense, the fact that certain sensations impose themselves on us – is the criterion we use to pick them out as real. And among these, the real, or the ‘more real,’ are those which cohere with others in regular ways. These regularities among: the impressions we experience are learned: The ideas of sense are more strong, lively, and distinct than those of the imagination; they have likewise a steadiness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as are those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or series ... Now the set of rules or estab-

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lished methods ... are called laws of nature and these we learn by experience, which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such and such other ideas, in the ordinary course of things. (Principles, ¶30)

In fact, Descartes made the same point about coherence, already in the Meditations. Among our unavoidable perceptual beliefs are those which occur in dreams. And as they impose themselves upon us, coerce our attention, they are for that moment at least present to us as real. But these perceptions that we have in our dreams do not cohere according to the laws of nature that he has discovered through his investigation and justification of his a priori ideas of the essences of things. As he comes to the end of his philosophical meditations, he concludes that, having established the veracity of God, I should reject all the doubts of these last few days as exaggerated and ridiculous, particularly that very general uncertainty about sleep, which I could not distinguish from waking life. For now I find in them a very notable difference, in that our memory can never bind and join our dreams together one with another and all with the course of our lives, as it habitually joins together what happens to us when we are awake. And so, in effect, if someone suddenly appeared to me when I was awake and afterward disappeared in the same way, as do the images I see in my sleep, so that I could not determine where he came from or where he went, it would not be without reason that I would consider it a ghost or a phantom produced in my brain and similar to those produced when I sleep, rather than truly a man.70

In the end, the criterion Descartes uses to solve the dream problem, and that which Berkeley uses, amount to the same. Both rely upon coherence established by the laws of nature. Where they disagree is on how those laws are known. Descartes has them known a priori. Berkeley eliminates that option with his attack on abstract ideas, and concludes that our knowledge of these patterns must be learned through our experience of the world. In one sense, all sense impressions are real: that is Berkeley’s main point. After all, when one is presented with a coloured expanse, say, what should one say about it save that ‘there it is’? It is there, before one, in the world, being experienced, demanding that its presence be acknowledged. But in our perceptual judgments, this particular sense impression that we sense is located as part of a material object. Some of

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those judgments, for example, those of dreams, or Macbeth’s dagger, are false: there is no such material object of which the impression could be a part. That impression exists, but it is not correctly located when it is taken as being of some material object or other, and is certainly not part of the object that in our perceptual judgment we take to be there. These sense impressions which are not to be correctly located as being the appearances of a material object can be characterized as ‘wild.’ As Russell once put it: ‘There may be what might be called ‘wild’ particulars, not having the usual relations by which the classification [into material objects] is effected; perhaps dreams and hallucinations are composed of particulars which are ‘wild’ in this sense.’71 There are also such things as afterimages. These are located among the particulars that form one’s current perspective. Thus, an afterimage might appear to be on the wall to the left of the door. These images, too, are real, and might also be referred as ‘wild.’ Certainly, while they are in space, in the sense of standing in spatial relations, they are nonetheless not to be met with in space:72 they are presented visually but do not connect to any tactual sensations that I might have. Note: Why, Given Berkeley’s Realism, Are Some Appearances Said to Be Real Where Others Are Not? This issue deserves a little elaboration. Consider a coin. It has many appearances – elliptical from this position, a different ellipse from another position, circular from still another. But of course, the Queen’s head is always within the boundary formed by the shape. There is similar variation in appearances with Berkeley’s die. Now, as Berkeley’s realism has it, these appearances are all real: the world is as it appears to be. But among the appearances of the coin, we do pick out the circular shape, its appearance from one specific position, as ‘the real shape’ of the coin. Similarly, Berkeley’s die is cube-shaped, each side a square – the sides may appear rhomboid, and those appearances are all real, but its shape as a cube is its ‘real shape.’ The question arises, why, among all the apparent shapes, all of which are as appearances real, do we single out one of these shapes as the ‘real’ shape? Why do we pick out from among all the real shapes one that is ‘really real’? We say: ‘The coin is round, it just appears elliptical, it’s the angle from which you view it.’ We say, of what is presented to us: ‘This is a coin, which is round, and this is how it appears.’ What evokes the judgment is the appearance, and in the judgment we iden-

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tify this appearance as the appearance of a coin, and, indeed, of a round coin. In the judgment we locate what is given to us as part of that pattern of appearances that constitute the coin; the appearance that evokes the judgment is located in the judgment as part of the lawfully ordered and structured set of appearances, all which jointly and as appropriately ordered form the reality that is the coin. But the pattern is not just that of a coin, it is of a coin that is round. Clearly, to say that it is round is to speak of a pattern of appearances, where, in this pattern, certain appearances are singled out and assigned a privileged place. We are asking this question: Why are certain among the appearances given a privileged place and taken to be the way the coin ‘truly’ or ‘really’ is? What can a Berkeleyan realist say about this? Berkeley gives one answer, an answer that we have already noted. He suggests that we give priority to tactile appearances. And this we do: that is how we navigate about the world, avoiding collisions and grasping things we want and want to use. The visual shapes serve as signs, Berkeley argues, for tactile shapes. The tactile shape is singled out as the one that is ‘real’ and the visual shape that coincides with the tactile shape is the one that we take as ‘real’ or ‘really real’ – the remaining visual shapes, while indeed real as with all appearances – ‘mere’ appearances, as one says – are appearances that are real but not ‘really real.’ He puts it in the Principles this way: our ideas of sight (i.e., our visual sense impressions) are ‘marks and prognosticators’ of our ideas of touch (tactile sense impressions) (¶35). He is even more clear in his New Theory of Vision, which preceded and laid the groundwork for the Principles. There (¶61) he argues that ‘observable connections of sight and touch’ enable us to ‘regulate our actions by sight.’ Visually, what is an inch and what is a foot vary from the position from which they are seen. Indeed, from certain positions an inch and a foot appear the same. But there is for all that a common measure on which we are all agreed: this is the inch or the foot given in tangible extension: An inch and a foot, from different distances, shall both exhibit the same visible magnitude, and yet at the same time you shall say, that one seems several times greater than the other. From all which it is manifest, that the judgments we make of the magnitude of objects by sight, are altogether in reference to their tangible extension. (Ibid., ¶61)

In fact, we pay little attention to the visible appearances; it is the tangible that we take to give the real measure:

200 External World and Our Knowledge of It Whenever we say an object is great or small, of this or that determinate measure, I say, it must be meant of the tangible, and not the visible extension, which, though immediately perceived, is nevertheless little taken notice of. (Ibid.)

This is for practical purposes. It is when we bump into objects or brush against them or otherwise come into contact with them by touch that they as it were enter into our practical life. For this is when they cause us pleasure or pain. ‘We regard the objects that environ us,’ Berkeley tells us, ‘in proportion as they are adapted to benefit or injure our own bodies, and thereby produce in our minds the sensations of pleasure or pain’ (ibid., ¶59). This leads us to identify the tangible aspects of things as what are important and what are therefore to be taken as somehow more real than the visible aspects of things: Bodies operating on our organs by an immediate application, and the hurt or advantage arising therefrom depending altogether on the tangible, and not at all on the visible, qualities of any object; this is a plain reason why those should be regarded by us much more than these. (Ibid.)

Visible impressions are but signs for things tangible, where this connection is itself a matter of empirical regularity that must be learned through experience. [Visible impressions enable persons – and animals] ... to foresee (from the experience they have had, what tangible ideas are connected with such and such visible ideas) the damage or benefit which is like to ensue, upon the application of their own bodies to this or that body which is at a distance. (Ibid.)

It is these facts that lead us denote the tangible aspects as ‘real’ and the visible aspects as mere ‘appearances’: Hence it is, that when we look at an object, the tangible figure and extension thereof are principally attended to; whilst there is small heed taken of the visible figure and magnitude, which, though more immediately perceived, do less concern us, and are not fitted to produce any alteration in our bodies. (Ibid.)

Berkeley’s argument makes all appearances of a thing equally real. As he puts it in the Principles (¶33), ‘those ideas imprinted on the senses

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are called real things’ – that is, the ideas (impressions) of sense whether they be visible or tangible. These are, as it were, forced upon us. There are ideas or images that are caused by our imagination; the latter are ‘images of things, which they copy’ and are ‘less regular, vivid and constant,’ whereas the ideas of sense are ‘allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be more strong, orderly and coherent than the creatures of the mind.’ But they all are, as Berkeley speaks, ‘ideas’; in themselves they all are equally real (ibid.). The point made in the New Theory is that among the impressions of sense that are forced upon us, among the visible and tangible sensations, some of these sensible appearances are taken to define what is taken to be the real – the really real – property of the thing. Berkeley singles these out in two ways. First, there is a contrast between visible and tactile extension in that the former varies considerably with the position of the observer, whereas the latter does not. Second, the tangible are where we encounter a world that affects us in a way that moves us. This is not true, directly at least, of the impressions that are visible. The tangible impressions, however, excite directly feelings of pleasure and pain. Visible impressions do not do this except by being signs of tangible impressions that do so affect us. William James makes much the same point. He notes that whatever we encounter in our experience of the world is something real: ‘Any relation to our mind at all, in the absence of a stronger relation, suffices to make an object real’ (Principles of Psychology, II, 298). In terms appropriate to Berkeley’s realism, percipi is esse: if it is given in experience, then it is real. But some of these relations are more ‘intimate’ than others, and these are the ones ‘which give reality’ to some only of those objects which we encounter in our experience of the world and which are in that sense all equally real. There are several ‘qualities which it [an ‘object of sensation’ or sensible impression given in experience] must possess’ if it is to be counted as real, that is, really real. Among these, James lists the following: (1) Coerciveness over attention, or the mere power to possess consciousness ...

This is the ‘vividness’ of which Berkeley tells us, of those sensible entities that are ‘impressed’ upon us. James then adds, as Berkeley does, (2) Liveliness, or sensible pungency, especially in the way of exciting pleasure or pain;

202 External World and Our Knowledge of It (3) Stimulating effect upon the will, i.e., capacity to arouse active impulses, the more instinctive the better. (Ibid., II, 300)

These facts lead us to settled rules by which we denominate some presented appearances as more real than others. We get at reality, the ‘really real’ among the realities given to us in experience, through our tangible experience of the world rather than through our visual experience. There is, in effect, an established convention that the tactile appearances of a thing are those which are to be counted as ‘really real.’ But as Berkeley also makes clear, this is not the end of the story. There is also sense variability. Visual appearances of inches and feet vary according to the position one is in. Inches and feet in our tangible experience do not so vary. It is this invariance that leads us to denominate them as giving the ‘real’ qualities of things. All presented aspects of a thing are real, including the varying visual lengths – the world is as it appears to be, this is Berkeleyan realism; but when we say something is two inches long, the relevant appearances are tangible. We should also note that this invariability is not only within the experience of one person, but occurs among different persons. Return to our coin. Suppose that there are several persons looking at it. They are all having visual impressions of it. These impression are equally vivid, equally coercive of the attention of those in whose experience they occur. But the visual appearances do vary from person to person as they look at the coin. However, if they reach out and feel it, they each experience it as a tangible circle: each has this sort of appearance, there is no variation here. Here there is agreement in what is given to us. We can therefore agree that the coin is, let us say, one inch across and circular in shape: visually, it varies in our several experiencings of the world, but in this we agree. And so we have the settled convention that the coin is circular; among all the appearances of the coin, visual and tangible, it is the tangible appearances that are taken as the properties that we, in our discourse about the world, take as the defining properties of the coin. Language is, of course, public. Conventions such as these are essential if we are to carry on our daily business in the world and with one another. Invariance of reference is central: we must share more or less the same abstract idea of a coin if we are to communicate about coins. And invariance of appearance is important if we are to locate exactly for others and for ourselves what it is that we are talking about. Moreover, it is appearance as it fits into our lives as active beings that is important. Those qualities we pick out as defining the things are those

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which are conducive immediately to pleasure or pain and which, through that connection, sway the will. But the point about agreement is more general. Consider a piece of paper. In normal light or daylight the colour that it appears to have is white; under a red lamp it appears red. That white appearance and that red appearance are equally real. Yet when we characterize the piece of paper, it is white that is predicated of it: that paper is white, we say, even when we are viewing it under red light: that paper appears red but its colour is white. There is, in other words, a settled convention that a thing has the colour it appears to have when viewed in normal daylight. The convention could be that the colour to be predicated of an object is that which it appears to have when under a red light. But that is not the convention we have; rather, the convention we use makes daylight the standard, not the red lamp. What is important for language and communication is that there be such a settled convention; less important is what specifically that convention might be. As long as we come to agree on something, it will do for the purposes of language, and it does not matter exactly which among a set of possible alternatives it might be. Hume made this point clearly. He noted the point first with respect to our moral sense. We all of us vary in the feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation that we have with regard to persons and their actions: ‘When any quality or character has a tendency to the good of mankind, we are pleased with it, and approve of it, because it presents the lively idea of pleasure; which idea affects us by sympathy, and is itself a kind of pleasure. But as this sympathy is very variable, it may be thought that our sentiments of morals must admit of all the same variations’ (Treatise, Bk. III, Part iii, section 1, p. 582). He notes that ‘we sympathize more with persons contiguous to us, than with persons remote from us; with our acquaintance, than with strangers; with our countrymen, than with foreigners.’ However, ‘notwithstanding this variation of our sympathy, we give the same approbation to the same moral qualities in China as in England. They appear equally virtuous, and recommend themselves equally to the esteem of a judicious spectator.’ Our feelings of sympathy, and therefore our feelings of approbation and disapprobation, vary, yet there is no variation in our moral estimation of the person or action. It is not from sympathy, or not from sympathy alone, that we make our moral judgments; and it is not from our feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation alone. Where these feelings vary from person to person and from con-

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text to context and, for a given person, from time to time, there is nonetheless agreement in our moral judgments. ‘In general,’ Hume tells us, ‘all sentiments of blame or praise are variable, according to our situation of nearness or remoteness with regard to the person blamed or praised, and according to the present disposition of our mind. But these variations we regard not in our general decisions, but still apply the terms expressive of our liking or dislike, in the same manner as if we remained in one point of view.’ We learn from our experience of the world how to adjust our judgments or, at least, our language to take account of our special point of view: Experience soon teaches us this method of correcting our sentiments, or at least of correcting our language, where the sentiments are more stubborn and inalterable. Our servant, if diligent and faithful, may excite stronger sentiments of love and kindness than Marcus Brutus, as represented in history; but we say not, upon that account, that the former character is more laudable than the latter. We know that, were we to approach equally near to that renowned patriot, he would command a much higher degree of affection and admiration. (Ibid., 582)

There is a settled convention in our moral discourse that requires us to fit our language and therefore our judgments to a common point of view, and we learn to make those adjustments. Hume argues that what here happens with our moral sense is standard: the same adjustments are made with regard to our other senses, those which yield our cognitive contact with the world. And this of course is the point we want to make here: ‘Such corrections are common with regard to all the senses; and indeed it were impossible we could ever make use of language, or communicate our sentiments to one another, did we not correct the momentary appearances of things, and overlook our present situation’ (ibid., 582, italics added). J. Berkeley (iii): Idealism There is here a problem for Berkeley that he does not really confront. That is the problem of our knowledge of mental substance the existence of which he insists upon. On what grounds are we to affirm its existence? Material substance is dismissed on the grounds that we are not acquainted with it. Here Berkeley is deploying the empiricist’s Principle

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of Acquaintance. One must ask, however, not just about material or corporeal substance but also about our inner awareness of things, our inner awareness of our own mental states. If we dismiss material substance on the basis of the fact that it is not given in sense experience, then, equally, if we are not acquainted in inner awareness with mental or spiritual substance, then the latter, too, must be excluded from our ontology. And Berkeley does allow that we are not so acquainted. To be sure, Berkeley does allow that, although we are not presented with mental substance in our inner consciousness, nonetheless we have a ‘notion’ of spiritual substances, but then he leaves that thought unexplored: we are never told what a notion is, nor therefore how it is that we are supposed to know mental substance. Upon the empiricist Principle of Acquaintance, then, mental substance cannot be admitted into one’s ontology. It was Hume who made this step, the final step away from the traditional substance ontology and its concomitant theory of knowledge. He argued, cogently, that the impressions which go to make up one’s experience are all logically separable: ‘All these [our particular perceptions] are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may exist separately, and have no need of anything to support their existence’ (252). The traditional idea, still there in Berkeley, is that sensible qualities require a substance for their support. But taken in themselves, sensible qualities require no such support: they are presented in bundles or collections, wholes, and that is how they are. As for the supposed substance, that can be dismissed on grounds that it is not being presented in acquaintance: ‘For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure’ (ibid.). The mind, like ordinary objects, is a collection: a mind, such as myself, is ‘nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions’ (ibid.). To be sure, the mind is a unity, though there be no simple entity, one and identical with itself, that exists unchanged through the whole series of perceptions that form myself. The unity comes not from identity of substance, but from other relations. There is in the first place, of course, the reference to the conscious that is Berkeley’s main point. After all, when one is presented with a coloured expanse, say, what should one say about it save that ‘there it is’: it is there, before one, in the world, being experienced, demanding that its presence be acknowledged. For it to be perceived is for it to exist. This is the core of Berkeley’s realism: ‘I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that

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we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things that I see with mine eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question’ (Berkeley, Principles, ¶35). But Berkeley makes a stronger point. That being perceived implies existence allows that there are sensible particulars that exist but are not perceived. Berkeley goes on from this to argue that the converse is also true: for a sensible particular to exist is for it to be perceived. This is his famous formula that for sensible things – for the objects given in sense in ordinary perception – esse is percipi. This is not part of his realism: this is his idealism, the claim that everything that exists is either a mind or in a mind. The realism has it that percipi implies esse, the idealism has it that esse implies percipi. Berkeley’s argument in favour of realism – that is, in effect, his empiricist argument, based on the Principle of Acquaintance – and against representationism is what establishes that to be perceived is to exist. Yet Berkeley clearly holds that his argument also establishes the stronger, idealist claim, that to be is to be perceived. To be sure, when Berkeley defends this idealist claim, he does not mean to deny that there are many sensible appearances which neither I nor any other finite thing actually experiences. Those particulars unsensed by me or by any other finite person all exist. But Berkeley proceeds to add that even when they do not exist in any finite mind, they nonetheless depend for their existence on their being perceived, save that it is a matter of being perceived by some infinite spirit, commonly known as God: ‘So long as they [all the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth] are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit: it being perfectly unintelligible and involves all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of spirit’ (Principles, ¶6). Berkeley argues that for sensible impressions to exist, they must exist dependently upon some spirit. He offers a sort of causal argument to infer the existence of spirits other than himself: ‘The ideas imprinted on them [my senses] are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other will or spirit that produces them’ (ibid., ¶29). Now, this argument is of dubious quality. For one can ask how it is that this principle of causal dependence can be defended by Berkeley. Indeed, how even can it be thought, since we do not have any idea of such causes (‘only an idea can be like an idea’). Here he is not saying that perceptual objects cause changes among themselves, that is, cause

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changes in the sense that there are regular patterns of change among these things; from one sense impression such causal regularities can only justify accepting the existence of other sensible particulars. Such empirical causation is not the sort of thing upon which Berkeley must rely in order to reach idealism. In fact, Berkeley makes it clear that what he needs, and thinks he has, is some sort of necessary truth. Thus, on the basis of the principle that what is possible in thought is possible in reality, that something’s existing cannot be conceived apart from its being perceived, he tells us that ‘it is impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it’ (ibid., ¶5). And furthermore, ‘to be convinced of’ the impossibility of separating the existence of sensible things from their being perceived, one ‘need only reflect and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its being perceived’ (ibid., ¶6). This inconceivability amounts to logical impossibility – the criterion has been standard for philosophers since Aristotle and certainly since Descartes: ‘For an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing, is a manifest contradiction; for to have an idea is all one has to perceive: that therefore wherein color, figure, and the like qualities exist, must perceive them; hence it is clear that there can be no unthinking substance or substratum of those ideas’ (ibid., ¶7). Now, as these points make clear, Berkeley conceives of perception, the awareness of sensible things, in terms of a substantial mind: to be present to consciousness is to be in an active, spiritual substance. Berkeley makes this clear in the Principles, right from the beginning. Thus, in the second paragraph we are told that, besides the sensory ideas that constitute things, ‘there is likewise something which knows or perceives them.’ This something that perceives is, we are told, a substance: ‘This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself’ (ibid., ¶2). The argument against material substance is taken to establish that ‘there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives’ (ibid., ¶7). There is no material substance, but there is spiritual substance, and it is in the latter that sensible qualities exist, or, rather, must exist: it is contradictory to suppose, on the one hand, that they exist, and to also suppose, on the other hand, that they exist apart from this spiritual sort of substance, the only kind of substance there is. It is evident that Berkeley is relying on the metaphysical principle that the existence of properties consists of their being in substances: he is relying on the principle that it is metaphysically incoherent to think otherwise. This is the same principle that Descartes applied in order to infer

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his own existence from the fact that there is present to him the property of thinking – the inference expressed in the formula cogito, ergo sum. And Berkeley takes it to be as necessary as does Descartes. Otherwise it would not be contradictory, as he says it would be, to assert that a sensible quality exists but is not in a substance. Here is now Berkeley puts his argument: ‘Thing or being is the most general name of all, it comprehends under it two kinds of entity distinct and heterogeneous, and which have nothing in common but the name, to wit, spirits and ideas. The former are active, indivisible substances: the latter are inert, dependent beings, which subsist not by themselves, but are supported by, or exist in minds or spiritual substances’ (ibid., ¶89). Here is Berkeley’s argument that sense impressions must be perceived, the view that for sense impressions, not only that to be perceived is to be, but also that to be they must be perceived: their very esse is constituted by their being percipi. Sense impressions are dependent beings; they depend for their existence on substances; the only substances that exist are minds; hence, sense impressions, to be, must be perceived. These are several major difficulties with the argument – difficulties that render it clearly unsound. These difficulties turn, quite naturally, on the premise that sense impressions are properties and as such must be in substances in order to exist. In the first place, the traditional formula is closely connected to the substance ontology. The idea behind that formula is that there are no appearances which are not the appearances of some thing. Put another way, the properties of things – that is, the ways in which they appear – are dependent on things in the sense that there are as it were no unattached properties. This means that properties are dependent on substances, the things of which they are predicated. But properties, the appearances of things, are not predicated of substances in Berkeley’s ontology. Denying the existence of material substances, Berkeley has rethought the notion of predication. In the substance ontology, the predication relation in language reflects the relation between a property and a thing in the sense of substance: that is what things are on this ontology. But in Berkeley’s ontology, where appearances are the reality of things, and where nothing is hidden, there are no substances of which those appearances can be predicated. The predication relation in language now reflects, as Berkeley clearly recognizes, the relation between a part and the whole of which it is a part. The argument for the dependence of properties or appearances on the things of which they

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are predicated must now become the argument that there are no properties apart from the collections we call things. One can no longer use the principle in order to infer that there are no properties apart from substances.73 In the second place, there is an important sense in which the principle on which Berkeley relies cannot be thought upon his principles of concept formation. If it is ideas with which we think, and if ideas are derived from impressions, then we have no impression of a necessary connection. All that we have in ordinary experience is regularity. Berkeley tends to agree with this, clearly making the correct point that, on his metaphysics, a causal law of the sort that we have in natural signs is a regularity, a general pattern of sensible appearances. But having affirmed that this is our notion of empirical causation – the only notion that we can have of it – he goes on to say that we have this other notion of cause, enshrined in the necessary truth that appearances are dependent on substances. Hume made the relevant point subsequently in his Treatise; Hume is speaking of the Cartesians, but the point, suitably modified, applies equally to Berkeley: Matter, say they, is in itself entirely unactive and deprived of any power by which it may produce, or continue, or communicate motion: but since these effects are evident to our senses, and since the power that produces them must be placed somewhere, it must lie in the Deity, or that Divine Being who contains in his nature all excellency and perfection. It is the Deity, therefore, who is the prime mover of the universe, and who not only first created matter, and gave it its original impulse, but likewise, by a continued exertion of omnipotence, supports its existence, and successively bestows on it all those motions, and configurations, and qualities, with which it is endowed. (169)

However, We have established it as a principle, that as all ideas are derived from impressions, or some precedent perceptions, it is impossible we can have any idea of power and efficacy, unless some instances can be produced, wherein this power is perceived to exert itself. Now, as these instances can never be discovered in body, the Cartesians, proceeding upon their principle of innate ideas, have had recourse to a Supreme Spirit or Deity, whom they consider as the only active being in the universe, and as the immediate cause of every alteration in matter. But the principle of innate ideas

210 External World and Our Knowledge of It being allowed to be false, it follows, that the supposition of a Deity can serve us in no stead, in accounting for that idea of agency, which we search for in vain in all the objects which are presented to our senses, or which we are internally conscious of in our own minds. For if every idea be derived from an impression, the idea of a Deity proceeds from the same origin; and if no impression, either of sensation or reflection, implies any force or efficacy, it is equally impossible to discover or even imagine any such active principle in the Deity. (160)

Berkeley wishes to have it both ways, and unfortunately he cannot have it both ways. Either all our ideas derive from experience and our only notion of causation is regularity, or pattern; or there is at least one idea, that of causation or dependence upon substances, that is not so derived: either could be true, but not both. The thrust of his argument is toward the former position, but he needs the latter to get his idealism and his vision of God. Hume got it right: if you abolish the idea of efficacy, then you abolish it in God also. There is, therefore, no causal or ontological dependence of things on the causal support of a spiritual being. Finally, just as Berkeley has no support for the concept of causation that he uses, he also has no support for his concept of substance. He abolishes material substance essentially on the grounds that we are not acquainted with such an entity in ordinary experience. But in that same experience we also do not experience mental or spiritual substance. We can, therefore, form no concept of spiritual substance, any more than we can form the concept of material or corporeal substance. Descartes does not have this problem. He does not claim, when he presents us with the cogito, that we are acquainted with substances in the way that we are acquainted with sensible appearances. The latter are present in consciousness; and the latter is, for Descartes, a substance; but the latter is not experienced but rather thought of by means of the abstract idea of a spiritual substance. But Berkeley has discarded all such abstract ideas. For him there are no a priori concepts of things that are not given in ordinary experience. In fact, there is only one way in which Berkeley could argue that we have experience of a spiritual substance. We are conscious of something such as a sensible appearance only when it is present in our mind understood as a mental substance, where to be present in the mind is for the appearance to be dependent upon it. Now, in terms of the substance ontology, properties are indeed dependent upon substances. This is

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reflected in the fact that properties are predicated of substances. But substances cannot be predicated of substances: that violates the idea of a substance as something not dependent upon something else. Consciousness of something is, for Berkeley, for that something to be present in our mental substance, so if we are to be conscious of a mental substance, if such a substance is to be presented to us in ordinary experience, then we require a substance to be present in, and therefore dependent on, another substance. That, however, is impossible upon the substance ontology to which Berkeley here appeals. Berkeley’s metaphysics of consciousness does not leave him any room for being acquainted with a mental substance, and he is therefore precluded from holding that he has a concept of such a substance derived from his experience of it. Berkeley is vaguely aware that he has a problem here. The awareness of a philosophical difficulty does not appear in the first edition of the Principles. But by the time he published the second edition, he had come to see that there is a real issue here. For he adds several passages in which he points out that we have no idea of spiritual substance, but suggests that we are otherwise aware of it because we have a notion of it. Thus, he tells us that anyone who claims to have an idea or sense impression of an active being should but reflect and try if he can frame the idea of any power or active being; and whether he hath ideas of two principal powers, marked by the names will and understanding, distinct from each other as well as from a third idea of substance or being in general, with a relative notion of its supporting or being the subject of the aforesaid powers, which is signified by the name soul or spirit. This is what some hold; but so far as I can see, the words will, soul, spirit, do not stand for different ideas, or in truth, for any idea at all, but for something which is very different from ideas, and which being an agent cannot be like unto, or represented by, any idea whatsoever. Though it must be owned at the same time, that we have some notion of soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving, hating, inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning of those words. (Principles, ¶18)

But Berkeley never tells us what a notion is, or how it fits into his ontology. And short of that, he has not solved the problem of how we know mental substances, only pointed to it.74 Finally, Berkeley’s analysis of what it is to be conscious of something is in error. Consciousness is far different from inherence; the two rela-

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tions are basically different. Consciousness is always consciousness of something: it as it were points to the entity or entities which is or are the object of thought, it has a direction from the mind to the object thought. Inherence or predication does not have that directedness, the directedness of intentionality. This intentional connection is what distinguishes things mental from all other things in the universe. Inherence does not so distinguish things; neither does the presence of some sort of substance or other, not even a mental substance.75 We may agree, then, that Berkeley, while he has made a strong case for realism, has not established his idealism: we may, along with the common sense that Berkeley valued so much, accept the former while rejecting the latter. K. Whither Minds? There is here a problem for Berkeley that he does not really confront. That is the problem of our knowledge of mental substance: On what grounds are we to affirm its existence? Material substance is dismissed on the grounds that we are not acquainted with it. Here Berkeley is deploying the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance. One must ask, however, not just about material or corporeal substance but also about our inner awareness of things, inner awareness of our own mental states. If we dismiss material substance on the basis of the fact that it is not given in sense experience, then, equally, if we are not acquainted in inner awareness with mental or spiritual substance, then the latter, too, must be excluded from our ontology. And Berkeley does allow that we are not so acquainted. To be sure, as we have seen, Berkeley does allow that, although we are not presented with mental substance in our inner consciousness, nonetheless we have a ‘notion’ of spiritual substances; but then he leaves that thought unexplored: we are never told what a notion is, nor therefore how it is that we are supposed to know mental substance. On the empiricist Principle of Acquaintance, then, mental substance cannot be admitted into one’s ontology. It was Hume who made this step, the final step away from the traditional substance ontology and its concomitant theory of knowledge. He argued, cogently, that the impressions which go to make up one’s experience are all logically separable: ‘All these [our particular perceptions] are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may exist separately, and have no need of anything to support their existence’ (Treatise, 252).

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The traditional idea, still there in Berkeley, is that sensible qualities require a substance for their support. But taken in themselves, sensible qualities require no such support: they are presented in bundles or collections, wholes, and that is how they are. As for the supposed substance, that can be dismissed on grounds of its not being presented in acquaintance: ‘For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure’ (ibid.). The mind, like ordinary objects, is a collection: a mind, such as myself, is ‘nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions’ (ibid.). To be sure, the mind is a unity, though there be no simple entity, one and identical with itself, that exists unchanged through the whole series of perceptions that form myself. The unity comes not from identity of substance, but from other relations. There is in the first place, of course, the reference of the conscious states to the same body, the same corporeal object, a body to which we have a unique relation, viewing the world from the perspective that it determines. Thus, Hume speaks of ‘the qualities of mind and body, that is, self’ (303). Second, the parts of the bundle that makes a person are related by virtue of ‘a reference of the parts to each other, and a combination to some common end or purpose’ (257). The example that Hume gives is that of a ship, where over the years the parts have each been systematically replaced, so that none of the original parts remains, yet the result is nonetheless referred to as the ‘same’ ship: ‘This common end, in which the parts conspire, is the same under all their variations, and affords an easy transition of the imagination from one situation of the body to another’ (ibid.). There is, third, the way in which the parts of, for example, a living creature such as a plant or animal form a unified and working whole, each adjusting itself relative to the others and to the environment in order to maintain the organism in existence; as Hume puts it, there is ‘a sympathy of parts to their common end ... [in which] they bear to each other the reciprocal relation of cause and effect in all their actions and operations’ (ibid.). Finally, fourth, there is the set of relations that the whole bears to other things. Hume suggests the example of a parish church repaired over the years so that no part of its original material remains nor even the same basic form, and which is yet denoted the same church. What is important for our calling it the ‘same church’ is the constant relationship that the building in all its variations has to the inhabitants of the parish (ibid.). All these reasons make clear that there is nothing implausible in holding that the mind is at once a bundle of impressions

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but at the same time denoted as something identical, the ‘same person’: unity of mind is to be analysed for Hume and for the empiricist not as unity of substance, but rather as the unity of a complex united by observable relations among the parts. These relations are of different sorts. There are the relations that connect mind and body. There are the relations, such as those of memory, that link past to present. There are relations of a social sort, not only those connected with pride and humility but also those connected with our moral sentiments, including those relations which define the forensic notion of a person. There are the relations established by the teleology of the self, the purposes and goals that the person attempts to achieve over time. This teleology is a matter of as it were self-movement, a matter of oneself setting goals and purposes that one strives for – for example, the goal of knowledge, or the goal of becoming a morally better person. But this teleology is not only a matter of self-movement, but also a matter of the social relations shaping the ways in which the person through his or her internal teleology grows and develops. But however various are these relations, the point is, to repeat, that they are relations. Thus, on Hume’s view, the self is an essentially relational entity. If the self is a bundle, then it is, on Hume’s view, an essentially structured bundle.76 The basic idea here is that the concept of a person is, as Locke had earlier put it, a unity that indissolubly involves both consciousness and self-consciousness: a person is a ‘thinking intelligible being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as a self, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking’ (Essay, II, xxvii, 9). Again, he points out that what counts for our getting on in the world is the notion of a person as a bundle, not the any supposed nonempirical substance: ‘Self is that conscious thinking thing, (whatever substance, made up of whether spiritual, or material, simple or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concern’d for the self, as far as that consciousness extends’ (ibid., II, xxvii, 17). The limits are defined not by metaphysics or ontology, nor by straightforward matters of fact; rather, the concept of a person is a moral concept, one that we have for our practical purposes, not for purposes of simply describing the world we experience. In this respect it is like the concept of mother-in-law or bachelor, rather than elephant or parsnip or plutonium: ‘In this personal identity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment; happiness and misery; being that, for

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which everyone is concerned for himself, not mattering what becomes of any substance, not joined to, or affected by that consciousness’ (ibid., II, xxvii, 18). As he expresses the point, the term ‘person’ is a ‘forensic term appropriating actions and their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable of a law, and happiness and misery’ (ibid., II, xxvii, 26). For our purposes, we do not need to go into the details of the relations that group impressions into a sort of bundle that constitutes what we refer to as a self. For our purposes, all that we need is the point that such a self is a bundle; there are no parts of it that are beyond the reach of inner awareness. Moreover, the parts are distinguishable and distinct and therefore logically separable from one another. What are the parts of such minds? What belongs to the conscious states that are parts of such a self? What, indeed, is a conscious state? We have, in the first place, sensible objects. These include such things as coloured expanses, musical notes, and weighty volumes. Among these sorts of entities are, as Locke says, pains and pleasures. Many of these pains and pleasures are located inside our body. The pain I now feel is in my big toe; that is the place at which it is located. Other feelings of pain and pleasure are more diffuse, filling the body, as it were.77 Then there are afterimages and such like things. All these things, understood as particular occurrences, are experienced by one person alone, by myself. At the same time, however, things of the same sort are experienced by others. The pain I now feel in my big toe is experienced by me alone, but other things of that sort, namely, pains, are experienced by others. These particulars are private, but the characteristics are not. Then there are our awarenesses of these things. These entities, these awarenesses, are particulars, they occur at particular moments in time. As particulars, they are of certain kinds. Specifically, they are characterized as experiences; that is the sort or species of these things. Then these experiences are of the various things that they intend or are about. We shall have more to say about this ‘relation’ of intentionality in due course. Here, two points are relevant. We have made both of them previously, but they bear restating. The first is negative: the relation is not that of inherence. The second is that we can be aware of states of affairs that do not exist. Thus, for a state of affairs to stand in the relation of being intended by an awareness is no guarantee that that state of affairs exists. This marks this empiricist account of mental states as different

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from that of Berkeley. For the latter, if an impression was in consciousness, then that guaranteed its existence. For upon the substance ontology, if a property exists then it is in a substance, and for Berkeley this means that if one is aware of an impression by virtue of that impression inhering in the mind, a mental substance, then that impression must exist: that is what is meant for a property to exist. This, after all, is the basis of the Berkeleyan dictum that for sense impressions, esse is percipi. One way of characterizing the mental is that the mental is ‘intentional’: a state is mental just in case that it intends some other state of affairs. If this be taken as the mark of the mental, then it is clear that pains, for example, or sensed blue patches, are not mental. To have a pain is already to be outside the mind, and more generally, to have a sense impression is already to be outside consciousness. As Russell once put it, it is false to assume that ‘if anything is immediately present to me, that thing must be part of my mind.’78 Again, the contrast to Berkeley is important. For Berkeley, such things as felt pains or sensed sense impressions are all mental: they are in the mind. This is by virtue of the fact that for Berkeley, to be conscious of a pain or a sense impression is for that object to inhere in the mind, where the latter is understood as being a substance. Thus, on the latter view, when we are aware in experience of a pain or of a sense impression, that object is in the mind. On Berkeley’s view, such an object is mental; on the empiricist non-substantialist account that we, following Hume, have introduced, such an object is not mental, and to be aware of it is already to be outside the circle of ideas. Unlike Berkeley’s account of what it is to be conscious of something, the one that we have introduced does not lead to idealism. Nor is there a problem with there being an awareness of an awareness. Berkeley has a difficulty with this: in his metaphysics one cannot be conscious of a consciousness. For as we have previously noted, that would involve one consciousness, that is, one substance, being in the other consciousness, another substance: and in the substance tradition, properties are in substances, but substances are not in substances. This requires the denial, then, that one can be conscious of a consciousness, and this is problematic. After all, it is the point of Descartes’s cogito, ergo sum, to emphasize that we can be aware of an awareness. In the first of Descartes’s Meditations, consciousness is always of something that is not mental, horses – or oak trees, or the objects present to us in dreams. Then, at the beginning of the second Meditation, there is a shift of attention, and one is now attending to one’s conscious state: ‘I think’ – not just ‘Lo, there is a tree!’ but ‘Lo, there is a thought!’ For Berkeley, to have

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such an awareness would be for the mind as a substance to inhere in itself as a substance. But substances, to repeat, do not inhere in substances, nor especially does one substance inhere in itself: that is contrary to the logic of the substance ontology. In contrast, on the account that we have introduced, to be aware of something is for that something to be in the intention of the act of awareness. There is nothing about intentionality that prohibits the obvious fact that one can be aware of one’s awareness. There are many ways of being aware of something. Thus, it can be given to us in sense experience or in inner awareness; it can be perceived visually or tactually; it can be merely thought of; it can be wished for or hoped for; or it can be willed. All these are various species of mental act, various ways in which we can be aware of some (other) state of affairs. Each of these sorts of act is a sort of mental act; for each of them intends a state of affairs.79 Whenever there is an act of awareness of one of these sorts, then it is also true that one is conscious of it. This means that it is itself the object or intention of an act of experiencing: the mental act is itself the object of a mental act.80 And so, in the perceiving of the oak tree we can distinguish several things. There is, first, the sense impression. Then there is the act of perceiving that locates this sense impression as part of a material object. Finally, there is the act of awareness that has both of these as parts of its intention, the act of awareness that makes both the sense impression and the perceiving entities that are present in consciousness. This last awareness, the awareness that has the other awarenesses in its intention, is the basis of what Russell once called the relation of ‘being experienced together’ (Theory of Knowledge, p. 79). We have already insisted that we may characterize the mental in one sense (call it ‘mental1’) as that which stands in the intentional relation to (other) states of affairs. At this point we can locate another meaning that might be attached to the term ‘mental’ (‘mental2’). This is the idea of being in a conscious state – that is, in effect, being the object of an act of acquaintance. On this meaning of ‘mental,’ acts of believing, for example, or acts of willing or acts of doubting, and so on, are all mental. At the same time, it is also true that sense impressions are objects of direct awareness, acquaintance. Therefore, in this second sense of ‘mental,’ sense impressions, such as red patches, or the feeling of pain that I have when I have a toothache, and so on, are all mental. These entities are present in consciousness, and in that sense are mental (mental2). But they are not themselves intentional entities. They are therefore also not

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mental (mental1). Indeed, in the sense of mental1, a sense impression is outside the circle of the mental. We can also now see another of the roots of Berkeleyan idealism. Being mental2 amounts to being present in a conscious state. But being present in a conscious state is given a different account in the Berkeleyan ontology. For a sense impression to be in a conscious state is for that impression to inhere in a mental substance. Berkeley in effect analyses mental2 as inherence in a substantial mind. It should not surprise us, then, that for Berkeley sense impressions turn out to be minddependent – that is, that Berkeley ends up in idealism. We can also see the important truth that William James has stated, that once one gets rid of substantial minds, the world in effect is composed of entities that themselves are neither mental nor physical, but neutral. The ultimate constituents of the world are sense impressions, and these are, on the one hand, both neither physical nor mental, and on the other hand, both physical and mental. ‘Consciousness is,’ James tells us, ‘the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first principles. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumour left behind by the disappearing “soul” upon the air of philosophy.’81 Sense impressions that we experience are on the one hand mental and on the other hand physical or at least among the parts of those bundles of sense impressions that are the objects of perception. The impressions themselves are in themselves neutral; they become mental when bundled in one way, physical when bundled in another: ‘The central point of the pure-experience theory is that ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ are names for two groups into which we sort experiences according to the way in which they act upon their neighbours. Any one ‘content,’ such as hard, let us say, can be assigned to either group’ (‘The Place of Affectional Facts,’ p. 139). The divide that we find in Descartes between the mental and the physical disappears: ‘My thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff ‘pure experience,’ then knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one another into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation itself is a part of pure experience; one of its ‘terms’ becomes the subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower, the other becomes the object known’ (James, ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ p. 4). The bundling of sense impressions is done by two sets of relations. There are on the one hand the relations that bundle impressions into the

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perceptual objects such as oak trees. There is on the other hand the act of experiencing, which bundles sense impressions and various mental acts, including the acts of perceiving by which we are aware of the material objects of which the sense impressions are parts. There is another way that bundling occurs – namely, through the bundling of conscious states into the states of a person. But there is one point that we need to make before turning to that issue. The point we need to note is that this latter act of awareness, the act that makes the other things parts of the conscious state, does not require a further act of awareness for its existence. There is, it seems, no perceiving or no willing without that perceiving or that willing being present in consciousness, without it being in the intention of an act of experiencing. But the awareness of those awarenesses, the awareness that makes them parts of a conscious state, is not itself present to consciousness; it is what makes other things present to consciousness but is not itself so present. It is therefore not itself part of that conscious state, nor is it itself the intention of some further act of awareness. At the same time, however, there is nothing that prevents it from becoming the object of attention, the content of a conscious awareness.82 Indeed, if it was not ever experienced, we would have no basis in inner experience to suppose that it existed. This act of experiencing is itself experienced through its being, at times, the object of a further awareness, that awareness or act of experiencing that makes it the content of a conscious state. Most have had, I think, the experience of not just seeing something but of catching oneself in the conscious state of seeing. It is not something that happens routinely; it is certainly not something that happens by deliberate focusing of attention; nor can we hold it steady before us when we are conscious of it, as we can hold an afterimage before us, and attend to its parts over a perhaps brief time. Consider when we catch ourselves as conscious of seeing our oak tree. We then have an awareness of seeing the oak tree; it is that awareness which is the content of the conscious state. The consciousness which is the content of the conscious state is something that is not palpable, but rather more like a thin or diaphanous veil that is within the conscious state and that comes between that consciousness and the seeing of the oak tree. Note that it is not that it comes between that consciousness and the oak tree, but: that it comes between that consciousness and the seeing of the oak tree – that is, not: the material object; but: the act of perceiving that material object. When the seeing is the content of the awareness that constitutes the conscious state, then one is attending to

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the oak tree; when the seeing is the object of attention, then the awareness of the seeing is the content of the (further) awareness that constitutes this other conscious state. Such acts of awareness, while normally not themselves contents of conscious states, are nonetheless there, constituting our conscious states, though to be sure not in those conscious states; and in constituting our conscious states they form our acts and impressions into unities that are forever changing – ‘which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement,’ as Hume says (Treatise, 252). In one sense, then, the person is this whole bundle extending through time of rapidly changing conscious states. But in another sense, the person is that awareness or act of experiencing which stands outside the contents of the state and by virtue of its intending them constitutes the conscious state and makes them jointly the contents of that conscious state.83 It will pay to come at some of these issues, in particular that of intentionality, from another direction. Berkeley eliminates material substances. That transforms ordinary objects, as he well understands, into collections of sensible events. (These events are, of course, for Berkeley ideas in the mind, given the argument for idealism.) These collections are not merely momentary but are spread out through time: an ordinary thing is a lawfully, temporally, and spatially ordered sequence of sensible events. Where previously things were substances, they are now analysed as processes consisting of many parts, all sensible and therefore all separable. To perceive an object is to be aware of a momentary sensible event – an idea, if you wish – that is part of the larger sequence that is the object. We perceive a tree, which is a whole, but we are aware through our senses of only the part of the tree that is presented to us and not, for example, the far side. The momentary sense impression, or – in the early modern terminology that Berkeley adopts – the idea of which we are directly aware, it must be insisted, represents the object that we are said to perceive but that is not, as such, presented to us.84 We are in fact aware of only part of the whole that we perceive, and that part is the representative in consciousness of the whole. There is, therefore, what some might call a semantic relation between the idea of which we are directly aware and the object that we perceive – a semantic relation, that is, a relation through which the act means or intends the object. Berkeley does eliminate any semantic or intentional relation between the idea and an object – that is, the material substance – of no part of which are

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we ever aware, nor even can we ever be aware; but he does not eliminate the semantic relation between the presented idea and something which is not presented but which that idea represents – namely, the unperceived parts of the object perceived.85 The notion, developed for example by the Hausmans,86 that Berkeley solves a semantic problem by eliminating the external reference of ideas is, therefore, mistaken: for, whatever Berkeley does, he does not eliminate the need for ideas to stand in semantic relations to things other than themselves, things of which, by virtue of those semantic relations, they are the representations in consciousness. The problem for the early modern philosophers was not with the notion that ideas represent but that ideas represent objects, which these philosophers argued had to be of a sort – and this, which, as it turns out, creates particular difficulties. On the traditional view deriving from Aristotle, and still defended by such Berkeleyan contemporaries as John Sergeant,87 ‘like knows like’: the object known comes to be such by virtue of a causal process through which its properties come to be present in the mind. But the substance philosophy of the early modern period creates problems about knowing that take one beyond the traditional Aristotelian account of knowledge. Whatever is the specific account one gives for the ontology of the knowing situation, one cannot avoid the fact that knowledge does involve an intentional relationship between what is present to consciousness and the object known. Since the object intended by the mental act is what that act means, it may also be referred to as a ‘semantic’ relationship. In other words, when a mental act means or intends an object, then there is a semantic pattern connecting the object known to the conscious state that is the knowing of it. By virtue of this pattern, the object known is able, in a transition from some extra-mental fact to the mental act – a ‘language entry’ transition – to evoke the conscious state that constitutes the knowing of it. The obtaining of the semantic relation thus requires a causal interaction between the known and the knower. The crucial point is that the metaphysics of substance adopted by the early modern philosophers renders any such causal interaction impossible. Here two points are relevant.88 In the first place, the early modern philosophers argued that there were two sorts of objects, namely mind and body. The essential property of mental substance was thought, the essential properties of body were either extension alone or extension and solidity. According to Descartes and Malebranche – Locke wavered on this in his correspondence with Stillingfleet – extension and thought are contraries: if

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characteristics of one of these sorts are present, then characteristics of the other sort are excluded. It follows that properties of body cannot be in the mind, and the former can, therefore, not be known by the latter. In the second place, mind and body are separate substances, independent of each other. To say this is to say that the one could exist and remain identical with itself even if the other ceased to exist. It follows that the substances can exemplify only non-relational properties.89 That being so, it follows in particular that there can be no causal transaction between them.90 Transeunt causation, though not immanent causation, is impossible on the account of substances adopted by the early modern philosophers. There is, in short, no possibility that a causal process can bring it about that properties of body can come to be present in the mind, and, more generally, no possibility that there can be any causal process of the sort that must obtain if there is to be a semantic relation between the object known and the state of consciousness that is the knowing of it. The sceptical conclusions are inevitable, as Berkeley clearly saw. Berkeley removes this looming scepticism by giving up the ontology that is its source: he rejects the substance analysis of things. This in turn requires him to rethink the relation between the representative in consciousness of the thing and the thing it represents. In place of the ontology of substances, Berkeley offers his analysis of things as wholes consisting of sensible parts. Some of these parts we actually sense; these sensible parts that are present in consciousness are what Berkeley, following the tradition, calls ideas. The relation between the thing represented by the sensed sensible part and that part is not that of an external substance causing the part to come to be in a second substance. Rather, the relation between the sensed part and the whole which is the thing it represents is that of part to whole, and, more specifically, the pattern or regularity among the parts of the whole that defines the sort of whole that it is – for example, a tree in a quad. This avoids the problem of substantial interaction. Furthermore, the representative is a sign of the whole, that is, of all the other parts that constitute the whole. These other parts are also sensible, having precisely the same sorts of characteristics that the idea has. There is therefore no problem of one kind of thing making a toto caelo different kind of thing known. Thus, as we have seen, Berkeley’s radical innovation in ontology solved, or rather dissolved, the sceptical crisis that had been implicit in early modern philosophy. This of course assumes that the sensory representatives in conscious-

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ness of ordinary things are objective parts of those things. The brown of which we are conscious is precisely the property brown that characterizes the tree in the quad. Indeed, as Berkeley insists (cf. Philosophical Commentaries, ¶19), this is precisely what common sense would seem to maintain. Moreover, there is no reason a priori to think that this should not be so. It is simply dogma to hold that the representation in consciousness is an entity that is not part of the thing known. It is of course a dogma that receives support from the traditional substance account of knowing, so it is not surprising to find Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke accepting it. There is less excuse for D. Dennett, who also holds that what represents is always not a part of the thing represented.91 To be sure, some representations are not parts of ordinary things – think of afterimages or cases of perceptual error, cases that Berkeley himself recognized. But from the fact that some sensible impressions are not parts of things, it cannot be concluded that none are. The trick is to distinguish those which are and those which are not. On Berkeley’s view, as we have seen, there is not much of a problem here: it is simply a matter of coming to learn the regularities or patterns among sensible particulars. Through experience we become aware that some entities that we sense are parts of patterns that define ordinary things, while others do not fit into such patterns. There are no more problems about this than there are problems about learning that smoke means fire. At least, there are no problems of principle. And equally, there is no problem of principle in maintaining that the ideas that represent things are parts of those things. Dennett, in fact, simply takes for granted but does not defend, nor does he attempt to justify what he takes to be axiomatic – that representations are not parts of the thing known. Dennett is also wrong in his suggestion that understanding meaning – understanding how things represent other things – involves, for the classical empiricists, a sort of person within a person, the homunculus who is the entity that really does the work of conferring meaning and who is the thing that really understands that meaning. These philosophers, the early empiricists, quite correctly, took ideas to be representations that are internal in the sense of being immediately present to consciousness.92 One understands an object when one has ideas that represent that object. One understands a piece of behaviour, say an uttered sentence, if one has the ideas that give meaning to that sentence. These ideas represent what the sentence means; specifically, the sentence means what is represented by those ideas with which, by established linguistic convention, the sentence is associated.

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The object or behaviour evokes the response. The response is the presence in a conscious state of the idea. The object or behaviour evokes the response because that idea represents or refers to that object or behaviour. We have here an empirical pattern or regularity linking the object or behaviour on the one side and the (presence of the) idea on the other. This regularity is an instance of the sort of pattern governed responses to objects and behaviours that one finds in systems, such as persons, that understand. These patterns are not simply patterns, however; they are also rule governed.93 The latter is a point that we have made in chapter 1; it is also a point that we again shall take up directly. For the present, what is important is the pattern. The patterns we have just noted are what we have called world–word transitions. There are also word– word transitions, such as inferences, deductions, and so on, and word– world transitions, such things as actions, rational actions, speech acts, and so forth. The world–word or language-entry transitions are part of the broader pattern of language transitions that constitute the fact that the ideas refer to or designate certain things or behaviour; they are part of the broader pattern of system transitions that constitute the semantics of ideas. There is no problem here if ideas wear their semantics on their faces – that is, if meaning is intrinsic. In the case, it would be transparent to consciousness what the reference or intention is of the ideas that are present to it when it perceives objects or understands behaviours. Among the sorts of things classified as ideas, however, according to the early modern philosophy, and not incorrectly, are sensations; and like ordinary objects and items of behaviour taken as such or like sentences taken as sets of marks or noises, they have no intrinsic meaning. Indeed, nothing has intrinsic meaning.94 We therefore need to select from among all the patterns those specific ones which constitute the meaning. The suggestion is that the early modern philosophers solved this problem by introducing within the person another understander who then selects those effects of the ideas that constitute their meaning. The consciousness to which the ideas are present must therefore not be mere consciousness but must be, beyond that, an understander. The consciousness to which ideas are present thus becomes, according to Dennett, an inner homunculus,95 the substantial self that we find in Descartes and Berkeley. Every real person thus comes to have, according to this reading of early modern philosophy, a wee inner person. Beyond the real person who is conscious of inner ideas or representations, there must be a further inner person to whom ideas are present as

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external objects are present to the real person, and whose role is to understand the ideas, grasp their meanings, just as the real person understands or seems to understand the meanings of perceived objects and behaviours (e.g., ‘smoke means fire’). Dennett suggests, naturally enough, that this does not solve the problem.96 In the first place, it is either circular or leads to a vicious infinite regress. If one attempts to explain the understanding that a person exemplifies by the understanding exemplified by the homunculus, then it is circular, explaining understanding in terms of understanding. And if one insists that understanding at each level is so to be explained, then the little homunculus will require a still smaller homunculus inside it, which will require a further, even smaller, homunculus, and so on, to infinity, and viciously so since one never reaches a point where understanding has been explained. Moreover, in the second place, from the viewpoint of empiricism, the wee inner self remains forever elusive: we seem never to be acquainted with it in our ordinary experience.97 On Dennett’s view, the early modern philosophers attempted to solve the problem of understanding by means of a metaphysics of a substantial mind, a wee inner homunculus. In the end, the problems became evident and philosophers had to reject the homunculus. It was Hume, Dennett argues, who saw the problems98 and who argued consistently on empiricist grounds that we should eliminate the substantial mind.99 The result was an inner self that was no more than a bundle of impressions and ideas. Unfortunately, according to Dennett, this new inner self lacked the resources to account for understanding: impressions and ideas are without any intrinsic meaning, and there is nothing else in the Humean apparatus to explain understanding.100 So, although Hume sees the problems of the metaphysics adopted by the early modern philosophers, he has nothing adequate with which to replace that metaphysics, and the problem of understanding remains unresolved. Again, enter the Hausmans. They argue101 that Dennett’s model can provide us with insight into Berkeley’s idealism. They take for granted that Dennett’s picture is a fair one. The ideas or inner representations that explain perception and other forms of understanding have (relevant) sorts of meaning: there is their syntax and their semantics. The syntax has to do with their complexity; the syntactical structure of a complex idea – say, a proposition – is given by the relations that structure the simple components into that complex. The semantics has to do with the reference of ideas to the objects external to themselves that

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they represent. For Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, each in his own way, this external reference is to something other than an idea. This creates a problem for the semantics of ideas: how does the homunculus interpret ideas – that is, understand their meanings – if that which they mean is neither an idea nor like an idea? One perceives an object. This perceiving consists in selecting the object by means of an idea. This idea means the object. But the idea is simply a sensation, without intrinsic meaning. Thus, first, the homunculus must grasp this meaning. Second, given the principles of this metaphysics of understanding, only ideas are present to the homunculus. And third, the meaning of an idea consists of a semantic relation between the idea and the object that is external to and unlike it. These three propositions together entail that the homunculus cannot grasp the meanings, the semantics, of ideas. Hence, the Hausmans propose, the scepticism that the earliest critics had already seen to be implicit in Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke. The Hausmans’ suggestion is that Berkeley, along with other early modern philosophers, accepts the first two propositions, but in order to avoid scepticism, he rejects the third. When he does this, he eliminates the entities that constitute the external referents of ideas. Since now there are no external objects, only ideas, it follows that there are only two categories of entities that exist, to wit, the ideas and the homunculus that grasps their meaning. But ideas, on the metaphysics of understanding developed by the early modern philosophers, are precisely those entities which are present to the wee inner homunculus. For the latter is introduced precisely in order to account for the understanding, not of external objects, but of ideas. Hence, the existence of all entities besides the homunculus consists in their being present to the homunculus: their esse is percipi. In other words, on the Hausmans’ proposed reading of Berkeley, his idealism follows immediately from his attack on scepticism, given, that is, Berkeley’s commitment to the metaphysics of understanding that Dennett ascribes to the early modern philosophers. Now, ideas in the sense of sense impressions are of course intrinsically meaningless. To say that they have meaning, including a semantics, is to presuppose that there is a person who understands them, that is, one who grasps from all those patterns that describe its behaviour those that constitute its meaning. But there is no reason why this person needs to be a wee inner person; it can just as well be taken to be the ordinary person – just as the known can be taken to be the ordinary tree. Hume saw this clearly.

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A person is intimately related to his or her own body, and is capable of monitoring and controlling, within limits at least, both its own behaviour and its own mental representations. Thus, the patterns that define the system transitions are themselves rule governed. That is, if we have the pattern (*)

all A are B

then the rulish thought that A’s ought to be B, or, in symbols, (**)

O (all A are B)

– ‘O’ indicating the operator ‘it is obligatory that’ – brings it about, that is, brings it about causally, that, generally at least, (*) is true.102 These rulish thoughts bring it about that behaviour and thought – reality – conforms to their content. Rules of this sort were explored in detail by Hume, both in the context of social norms such as property and promise keeping – his discussion of the latter is particularly important103 – and in the context of cognition – see his ‘Rules by which to judge of causes and effects’;104 we have discussed these things in detail in chapter 1. The set of such standards and rules forms a passably coherent set that constitutes a standard to be lived up to. Each person represents him- or herself as an ‘I’ having both a body and a mental life with a past and a future, an ‘I’ that has both an actual life and an ideal standard for that life, an ‘I’ which is aware of its own behaviour and mental life and which attempts, often at least, to bring that behaviour into line with the standard, the ‘ego ideal’ if you wish, that it sets before itself. This idea of oneself is of course complex. When Hume rejects the notion of a self in Book I of the Treatise, it is the idea of the self as a simple substance. But in Book II he goes on to point out that for purposes of discussing the passions and our system of moral values and rules, we do need to refer to our idea of the self. This is a complex idea – the self is ‘that succession of related ideas and impressions of which we have an intimate memory and consciousness’ (277), ‘that individual person of whose actions and sentiments each of us is intimately conscious’ (286); it includes an awareness of the body – he speaks of ‘the qualities of our mind and body, that is, self’ (303); and it is, Hume says, an idea of which we are constantly aware – ‘the idea, or rather impression, of ourselves is always intimately present with us, and our consciousness gives us so lively a conception of our own person that ’tis not possible

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to imagine that anything can in this particular go beyond it’ (317). Hume had earlier pointed out that the identity of a person is not that of a simple substance but rather teleological, analogous to the sort of unity that we attribute to plants and animals (254); the imagination leads us to mistake the succession of related objects for an identical object: we hide the interruption by feigning that the person is a simple substance, ‘something unknown and mysterious connecting the parts beside their relation’ (254).105 Such a substantial self violates the empiricist Principle of Acquaintance and must therefore be exorcised from ontology. But this does not eliminate the self as a complex entity that unites the series of ideas and impressions into a teleologically structured whole. For us, the important point is that this concept of the self is not that of an inner homunculus. It is not the concept of a person that lies inside and controls the real person. It is simply the concept of a person who controls and monitors his or her own behaviour and, in many cases, the representations that are part of the person as a cognitive system. It is the person who understands, not the inner person or homunculus. Dennett suggests that the only unity that Hume provides to the self is the glue provided by association, and that this is inadequate to account for the capacity of the person to understand. However, this is to ignore the role that Hume assigns to the idea of the self in controlling our mental life and behaviour. Dennett seems not to have read in the Treatise beyond the end of Book I. If he had, he would have discovered that Hume developed certain themes for which Dennett is now claiming originality. We can use some of these results to further explore the notion of intentionality, the aboutness of thought. There has been some argument about this. The continental philosophers so called have said much about intentionality, but in fact have done little to address the philosophical issues surrounding this connection. One finds greater sensitivity to these issues among analytic philosophers so called, or at least among some of them. Russell, for one, was sensitive to these issues and attempted to deal with them. We have already seen some aspects of his thinking on these matters: we can learn from them if we pursue them further – learn more that will be relevant to our defence of Hume’s account of the external world. Russell, as we know, proposed to analyse intentionality in terms of a descriptive relation, in a way similar to the way in which he had analysed ‘x kicks y.’106 This seems to make great deal of sense, initially: after

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all, grammatically the phrases ‘intends’ and ‘is about’ function as relational predicates, connecting the mental act – say, of perceiving – to the state of affairs that it intends or is about – thus, ‘I perceive that this is a tree’ grammatically relates the perceiving on the one hand, the conscious state, with, on the other hand, the state of affairs, represented by ‘This is a tree,’ which that perceiving intends or is about. There is a problem, however, as we have seen: if ‘x kicks y’ is true then both x and y must exist: one cannot be a kicker unless there is a kickee. This means that if intentionality is to be analysed as a relation, then both relata – the perceiving, in our example, and the state of affairs intended – must exist. Russell argued that this is no problem for sensible acquaintance, since that is infallible. Or at least, Russell argues that sensible acquaintance, though not perceiving, is quite certain, and clearly supposes that such certainty can be accounted for provided one makes acquaintance a relation – like kicking – that guarantees the existence of its object. Now, sensible acquaintance and inner awareness might well be certain, and thus candidates for infallible judgment; certainly, Russell so takes it. He argues that ‘the objects of acquaintance cannot be “illusory” or “unreal”’ (Theory of Knowledge, p. 48). Russell also puts it this way: in the case of acquaintance, the issue of truth or falsity does not arise as it does in the case of, say, doubting, or believing, or even perceiving. This makes acquaintance a case of knowing in a way that the other forms of awareness are not. His point is that acquaintance is a form of awareness different in kind from other forms of awareness in that it does, where the others do not, guarantee the existence of their objects. ‘The fundamental characteristic which distinguishes propositions (whatever they may be) from objects of acquaintance is their truth or falsehood. An object of acquaintance is not true or false, but is simply what it is: there is no dualism of true and false objects of acquaintance’ (ibid., p. 108). It is thus fairly clear that there is no problem with construing what Russell calls acquaintance as a relation in the ordinary way in which things are related, presupposing the existence of both relata. The contrast to other forms of awareness is clear, according to Russell: while it is true that acquaintance is certain and therefore somehow infallible, this is not true of either perceiving or believing. (The latter is the example that Russell discusses, but he makes it clear that what he says applies to the former also.) These sorts of mental acts are not infallible; to the contrary, they are quite often false. But if false, then their objects do not exist. In that case the simple relational account that Rus-

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sell gave to sensible acquaintance and inner awareness cannot apply to believing or perceiving. There were philosophers who did advance an account of perceiving that is strictly relational in just the way that Russell argues that acquaintance is relational, relational in the sense that both relata must exist if the relational fact is to obtain. These were the American New Realists. W.P. Montague argued that ‘The true and the false are respectively the real and the unreal, considered as objects of a possible belief or judgment.’107 This is non-controversial. But he construes belief as a relation and thereby is committed to the view that besides the true as part of the world there is also the false. The real, as Montague describes it, is not beyond controversy, but it is equally true that it is not implausible: ‘The real universe consists of the space-time system of existents, together with all that is presupposed by that system’ (‘A Realistic Theory of Truth and Error,’ p. 255). But besides the real there is also the false: ‘And as every reality can be regarded as a true identity-complex or proposition, and as each proposition has one and only one contradictory, we may say that the remainder of the realm of subsistent objects [i.e., the unreal] must consist of the false propositions or unrealities, particular and universal, which contradict the true propositions comprising reality (ibid.). In other words, every reality is a proposition; reality consists of false propositions as well as true ones; true propositions are existent while false propositions are subsistent. But as Russell says, this view is simply unacceptable: ‘The unreal is simply nothing, and is only identical with the class of false propositions in the same sense in which it is identical with the class of simoniacal unicorns, namely in the sense that both are null’ (Theory of Knowledge, p. 25). The inference that Russell draws is undoubtedly correct: ‘The possibility of error in any cognitive occurrence shows that the occurrence is not an instance of a dual relation’ (ibid., p. 49). One way that Russell makes this point is by appeal to the example of Othello believing – falsely – that Desdemona loves Cassio.108 Since it is false that Desdemona loves Cassio, one cannot make believing a relation between Othello and this state of affairs. Russell suggests that though that state of affairs does not exist, its constituents, namely, Desdemona, Cassio, and loves, all exist. Thus believing is, he proposes, a multiterm relation that relates Othello to Desdemona, Cassio, and loves, and this belief is true (false) just in case the state of affairs that Desdemona loves Cassio exists (does not exist). This avoids the problem of false beliefs and perceivings, only to raise

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others. In the first place, it does not distinguish between Othello believing that Desdemona loves Cassio and Othello believing that Cassio loves Desdemona. Second, as Wittgenstein argued,109 it does not make it impossible to have nonsensical thoughts: from a knowledge of the fact that Othello is related to Desdemona, Cassio, and loves, how can one from that information alone guarantee that he is not thinking the nonsense thought that Cassio is Desdemoning the relation loves? Third, Russell’s analysis treats two different forms of the same thing – sensible acquaintance and inner awareness, on the one hand, and on the other, believing and perceiving and all other forms of consciousness – in two different ways: the former is a simple two-term relation, the latter is multiterm and in fact could become very complex indeed if there were more than a few entities in the state of affairs believed or perceived. Fourth, this analysis makes the belief true or false depending on whether the state of affairs that Desdemona loves Cassio exists or does not exist. Implicitly, therefore, Russell is still smuggling in that state of affairs as the object of belief, as that which the belief is really about, reintroducing – albeit covertly – all the problems of how the existing state of believing can be related to a state of affairs that does not exist. Wittgenstein therefore attempted another analysis. He proposed ‘that “A believes p,” “A has the thought p,” and “A says p” are of the form “‘p’ says p”; and this does not involve a correlation of a fact with an object, but rather the correlation of facts by means of the correlation of objects’ (Tractatus, ¶5.542). This makes thought a special case of language: the meaning of thoughts is to be analysed on the model of the meaning of language. As Wittgenstein would have it, a thought is an image or set of images that functions as a sentence functions, playing the role in inner language that the corresponding sentence plays in overt speech. Any sentence becomes a meaningful proposition, the Tractatus argues, when it pictures a state of affairs. The state of affairs to which it is thus coordinated is its meaning or sense (Sinn). The sentence becomes meaningful by virtue of sharing a logical form with the state of affairs pictured. This shared logical form establishes an isomorphism between the picturing sentence of thought and the pictured state of affairs. But the isomorphism by itself does not establish that the sentence or thought is about the state of affairs pictured; for, given that a relation of isomorphism is symmetric, that would imply that the thought or sentence is itself pictured by the state of affairs, that the state of affairs as much means the sentence as the sentence means the state of affairs. What makes the sentence or thought about the state of affairs is

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the fact that the names that, in concatenation, make up the sentence designate the objects in the state of affairs rather than conversely. By virtue of these relations an object becomes the meaning in the sense of referent (Bedeutung) of a word. In Wittgenstein’s metaphor, these relations of designation or reference are as it were ‘antennae’ or ‘feelers’ that reach out from the words in the thought or sentence to the objects of the state of affairs pictured: ‘The pictorial relationship consists of the correlation of the picture’s elements with things. / These correlations are, as it were, the feelers of the picture’s elements, with which the picture touches reality’ (ibid., ¶2.1514–15). This does avoid the problems that are raised by Russell’s account of belief. But it has its own difficulties. The meaning of a term in its most general sense is given by the role that it plays in language. This role consists of regularities or patterns that describe the patterns of use or dispositions to use of the word. These regularities include the syntactical regularities (word–word connections) and semantical regularities (world–word connections). They also include pragmatic aspects of language (word-world connections), but Wittgenstein ignores these latter in the Tractatus; he indicates that he has become aware of them only when he turns to the ‘Slab!’ example at the beginning of the Philosophical Investigations110 – which makes it clear that he was later to discover these aspects of language and of linguistic meaning. Now, in any use of a word, many of the dispositions that form part of its meaning are not exercised. We can know that a disposition is present only if we infer it or if we experience its exercise. In the case of thoughts, we do not infer – our knowledge of what we are thinking about is in this sense immediate – and many of the dispositions determining the meanings of the words and sentences are not exercised at that moment. But we do know what we mean: our sense of knowing what our thought is about is immediate and patent. Russell made this point in connection with a discussion of claims that William James made about the possibility of analysing the aboutness of thoughts in terms of what he called ‘functions,’ that is, the connections of sense impressions to other sense impressions. James held that consciousness connotes a kind of external relation, and does not denote a special stuff or way of being. The peculiarity of our experiences, that they not only are but are known, which their ‘conscious’ quality is invoked to explain, is better explained by their relations – these relations themselves being experiences – to one another. (‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ p. 25; James’s italics)

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James gives an example. As he makes clear, he intends his account of meaning to apply both to images of things and to simple images of words that one uses to refer to those things: Suppose me to be sitting here in my library at Cambridge, at ten minutes’ walk from ‘Memorial Hall,’ and to be thinking truly of the latter subject. My mind may have before it only the name, or it may have a clear image, or it may have a very dim image of the hall, but such intrinsic differences in the image make no difference in its cognitive function. Certain extrinsic phenomena, special experiences of conjunction, are what impart to the image, be it what it may, its knowing office. (‘A World of Pure Experience,’ p. 54)

‘Function’ understood in the psychologists’ terms means effects: thus, the function of the heart is to circulate blood – that is the effect which it brings about. Thus, for James the meaning of a word or image is understood in terms of word–word or word–world (intralinguistic and language-exit) transitions: If I can lead you to the hall, and tell you of its history and present uses; if in its presence I feel my idea, however imperfect it may have been, to have led hither and to be now terminated; if the associates of the image and of the felt hall run parallel, so that each term of the one context corresponds serially, with an answering term in the other; why then my soul was prophetic, and my idea must be, and by common consent would be, called cognizant of reality. That percept was what I meant ... In this continuing and corroborating, taken in no transcendental sense, but denoting definitely felt transitions, lies all that the knowing of a percept by an idea can possibly contain or signify. (Ibid., pp. 54–6; James’s italics)

This is to explain meaning in terms of linguistic patterns: two words or images have the same meaning just in case they conform to the same patterns. James tends to play down the importance of language-entry (world–word) transitions – that is, relations of denoting or reference and those relations through which events in the world evoke assertions that describe them. But they are there, in spite of the suggestion of the term ‘function’ that they do not form part of the meaning of a word. In this, James is rather different from those who would proclaim that ‘meaning is use.’ Use implies what can be brought about: the use of a knife is to cut butter or, perhaps, to trim leather. Thus, if meaning is use,

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then meaning is explained in terms of the effects of the use of a word or sequence of words. This is to identify meaning with word–word and word–world transitions, the syntax and performative aspects of language, at the expense of reference, world–word transitions. James is therefore rather more perceptive than those who defend a simplistic ‘meaning is use’ doctrine. However the latter may be, what is to be noted is that on this (James’s) account of meaning in terms of patterns, regularities, and dispositions, to know the meaning of a term involves knowing these patterns and dispositions. But then it follows that at the moment when one knows the meaning of a word or expression, one knows also those other words, images, expressions, and perhaps (linguistic) actions to which these patterns and dispositions connect that word or expression. In short, meaning is not wholly present to consciousness but consists rather in these relations to other images, words, and so forth that are at present outside one’s consciousness. But, Russell cogently objects, meaning is wholly present: It seems to me possible to imagine a mind existing for only a fraction of a second, seeing the red, and ceasing to exist before having any other experience. But such a supposition ought, on James’ theory, to be not merely improbable, but meaningless.

For, according to him [James], things become part of my experience in virtue of certain relations to each other; if there were not a system of interrelated things experienced by me, there could not be one thing experienced by me. To put the same point otherwise: it seems plain that, without reference to any other content of my experience, at the moment when I see the red I am acquainted with it in some way in which I was not acquainted with it before I saw it, and in which I shall not be acquainted with it when it ceases to be itself present in memory, however much I may be able to recall various facts which would enable me to see it again if I chose.

Russell concludes that this acquaintance which I have with what is part of my momentary experience seems to deserve to be called cognitive, with a more indefeasible right than any connected ideas such as James describes in speaking of Memorial Hall. (Theory of Knowledge, p. 23)

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We know the meaning of our present cognitive states, immediately and wholly, as we have previously argued. Russell is proposing, against James, and in agreement with what we have proposed is the case, that we know the meaning or meanings of our cognitive states in a way that would not be possible if James’s account of that meaning were to be the whole story. I know immediately and certainly, without any inference, what are the meanings of my intentional states. In this sense, meaning must be wholly present to consciousness. Since meaning is as it were wholly present, it follows that it cannot be simply a sentence or words as images that carry the meaning; there must be some nonimage present in consciousness by virtue of which we know what our thought is about. Wittgenstein saw this point clearly in the Philosophical Investigations: ‘Experiencing a meaning and experiencing a mental image. ‘In both cases,’ we should like to say, ‘we are experiencing something, only something different. A different content is proffered – is present – in consciousness.’ – What is the content of the experience of imagining? The answer is a picture or a description. And what is the content of the experience of meaning? I don’t know what I am supposed to say to this.’111 We should begin with what meaning is not: it is not an image: it is an imageless thought, where the content is expressed by a sentence but not described by sentence. Wittgenstein is here discovering, as it were, what had earlier been discovered by the Würzburg psychologists of the school of O. Külpe.112 It was G. Bergmann who took up both the point of view of the Tractatus and that of the Würzburg psychologists. He argued that this problem confronting the analysis of the Tractatus could be solved if one took that which carried the meaning to be an imageless simple character, exemplified by mental acts, including mental acts of thinking, believing, perceiving, approving, wishing, and so on. This simple character he referred to as a proposition or propositional character. The relation between the thought or belief and that state of affairs which is its object he took to be a logical relation, by which he then meant a linguistic or syntactical relation. He takes the sentence which describes the state of affairs that the thought is about and refers to it as the ‘text’ of the thought. He then forms what he refers to as a predicate by putting the text in quotes; this predicate designates, he has it, a simple character. This character is a character or property of thoughts, mental acts, including beliefs and perceivings. Bergmann refers to these as the different species of mental act; but all species have in common that the acts they characterize are also characterized by a propositional character, where the latter is that character by virtue of which the thought intends

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the state of affairs described by its text. It is that character which is present in the consciousness of one who knows the meaning of the sentence that is the text, and which is absent from the mind of one who hears it uttered but who does not know its meaning. By virtue of this character – this propositional character – being present in consciousness, we know what state of affairs it is that the mental act is about or intends. Bergmann represents this connection by the sentence +p,M p where ‘M’ means ‘means.’ This is supposed to be true by virtue of its syntax – it is true if and only if the ‘p’ after the ‘M’ is the same as the ‘p’ in the corner quotes – and it is therefore supposed to be analytically true.113 But on this view, the connection between the propositional character and the state of affairs that it means or presents or represents is merely linguistic. This would make the connection one that holds by virtue of the conventions that govern the use of language. But the connection is that which holds between the propositional character and the state of affairs which the mental act, by virtue of that character, intends. Conventions, however, are contingent; they could be other than they are. On this view, just as ‘bachelor’ could mean ‘unmarried budgerigar,’ so too the propositional character designated by ‘+this is red,’ could be used to mean what is now meant by ‘+this is square,.’ That is, it could mean (‘M’) what is now represented by the sentence ‘this is square.’ Of course, though it would be the same simple character, it would in such circumstances be designated by ‘+this is square,’ rather than the way it is now designated, but that is no problem. The problem is that it would seem that we could change the intentional object of our thoughts simply by changing the conventions of our language. And that does not seem plausible: one can easily see that one can change the conventions for the use of ‘bachelor’ or for ‘red,’ but it is quite another thing to suppose that simply by deciding to use words differently we can change the objects that our thoughts present to us. Bergmann later changed his account of ‘M.’ On his later view, it is not merely linguistic, but represents an intrinsic feature of propositional characters, and as such has ontological status.114 Searle has later taken up Bergmann’s point and offered a similar account of mental acts. In particular, he offers the same linguistic representation of mental acts. As he puts it: ‘A belief is intrinsically a repre-

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sentation in this sense: it simply consists in an Intentional content and a psychological mode.’115 Here the mode of the psychological state – whether it is a believing, or a willing, or whatever – is what Bergmann earlier called the species.116 Searle considers John’s belief that King Arthur slew Sir Lancelot, and argues that the statement that John believes that King Arthur slew Sir Lancelot is one whose ‘truth requires only that John has a belief and that the words following “believes” [what Bergmann calls the text] accurately express the representative content of his belief [what Bergmann calls the propositional character] ... In reporting his belief I present its content without committing myself to its truth conditions.’117 As for Bergmann on his later view, so for Searle, this intentionality of mental states is an intrinsic feature: ‘Beliefs, fears, hopes, and desires ... are intrinsically Intentional.’118 Searle differs from Bergmann only in making the character denoted by +p, or by the sentence in the that-clause, a characteristic of brain states rather than the specifically mental, and non-physical, particulars that Bergmann regards as individuating mental acts. Mental states, Searle says, are ‘realized in the structure of the brain.’119 There is a problem, however – one that Bergmann recognizes but that Searle simply ignores. It is this. Once one gives ‘M’ ontological status as an intrinsic feature of propositional characters, then one must ipso facto give ontological status to the propositional character, which is no problem, and to the state of affairs meant, which is a problem. It is a problem when the belief is not true, since in that case the state of affairs does not exist. Bergmann accepts the point and is prepared to grant ontological status to states of affairs that are merely possible but not actual.120 This solves the problem, but only at the cost of introducing as an ontological category, as existents, things that do not exist. But as one of the central principles of Spock’s metaphysics maintains: ‘Nothing unreal exists.’ Or as Russell insisted, an ontologist must have a robust sense of reality, or at least a sense of reality sufficiently robust that the unreal is not made somehow real, even if it is real only in a shadowy sort of way. Bergmann, in order to solve one problem, gives up this robust sense of reality; as for Searle, we do not know how robust his sense of reality is because he ignores the issue. There is another problem that neither Bergmann nor Searle ad-

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dresses. That is the fact that in granting ontological status to ‘M,’ one is creating an absolutely unique ontological category. That is in effect to give up any attempt to explain the intentionality of thought. Richard Watson has put the point nicely, when he states that ‘what is required to support a way of ideas is an ontological model that shows how ideas provide knowledge of things. To be explanatory, the model cannot consist merely of a set of entities whose ad hoc nature it is to do what is required, entities that are related by relations that are named but not analyzed.’121 What Watson goes on to show is that most recent attempts to provide an analysis of ‘M,’ one that in his sense is explanatory, do so in terms of a relation of isomorphism. He traces this notion from D to C – Descartes to Churchland. The problem is that this proposal collides with Wittgenstein’s proposal that all thought is to be analysed in the way that one in general analyses ‘“p” says p.’ We thus seem to be caught in a dilemma. Either we provide an analysis of ‘M’ in terms of isomorphism, in which case the result is inadequate to the phenomenology of mind, or we take ‘M’ to be a primitive term, in which case we are stuck with something that remains an ontological mystery together with unacceptable unreal but existent states of affairs. I do think that Watson is on the correct track, however. There is a point to making isomorphism central to the analysis of ‘M’ – intentionality, that is, using the conventions of language (including what Wittgenstein referred to as ‘antennae,’ designation or referring relations) to explain aboutness. After all, it does work reasonably well for the aboutness of language. The problem is that the thoughts that language as ‘text’ express cannot, on phenomenological grounds, be construed as images or tokens of words: those thoughts must be construed as Bergmann construes them, as simple unified wholes. Now, what made us conclude that the characters that carry the meaning in consciousness are simple unified wholes was the fact that when they are in consciousness, we know, immediately and without inference, the texts the utterance of which would express those thoughts. But what is it to ‘know’ in this context? It means to be present in consciousness. Also, it does not mean to ‘judge’ that the propositional character has the text it has. Nor is the description of this character something for which we search and that we then discover: it is just there, so to speak, as is the ‘knowledge’ that we have of its nature. All that it seems to mean, besides the presence of the character in consciousness, is that we are disposed, directly and without inference, to

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express the thought by uttering its text as a meaningful expression representing a state of affairs. This is a causal relation: the propositional character functions as the ground in consciousness of the disposition or rather set of dispositions that constitute the meaning of the text.122 And to say that John knows directly when he believes or perceives that p, to say that that thought is the thought that p, is simply to say that that is the thought the presence of which disposes him to utter the text ‘p,’ to make the assertion that p.123 And the thought that p is about p precisely because it is the thought that disposes one, directly and without inference, to make the assertion that p.124 If this is correct, then there is nothing mysterious about intentionality, about the aboutness of thought. We do not need to make a special ontological category for it, transforming it into a special relation of a sort of which there are no other examples.125 There is no need to introduce as special objects of false thoughts states of affairs that do not exist but have some sort of wispy reality. We have explained the aboutness of thought in terms of the aboutness of language, as Watson suggested we must do if we are to provide an ontological analysis that explains how such aboutness works, but we have done so while retaining the thought as a simple character grounding our knowledge of the state of affairs that the thought is about. The objection to thus attempting to understand the intentionality of thought in terms of the aboutness of language is that the intentionality of language presupposes the intentionality of thought. Thus, Searle, for one, speaks of the ‘pervasive and fundamental confusion’ that ‘we can analyze the character of Intentionality solely by analyzing the logical peculiarities of reports of Intentional states.’126 As Searle sees it, words are not intrinsically intentional, unlike thoughts. Their meaning, the states of affairs that they represent, or, as Searle puts it, their conditions of satisfaction, are something imposed on them. A string of sounds or marks as it occurs in an utterance act acquires conditions of satisfaction through an intentional act of the speaker: ‘The utterance act is performed with the intention that the utterance itself has conditions of satisfaction.’127 Thus, the correlations that connect words to objects concatenated in states of affairs are dependent on the intentions of the speaker to endow those words with those referents, where these intentions are the intentions in the sense of volitions that cause the speaker to make the utterance and are themselves intentional states, and where the latter are in Brentano’s sense of ‘intentional.’ But Wittgenstein argued effectively against this viewpoint. As he put

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it, considering the correlation of names to things named: ‘We may indeed fancy naming to be some remarkable act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object. And we can also say the word “this” to the object, as it were address the object as “this” – a queer use of this word, which doubtless only occurs in doing philosophy’ (Philosophical Investigations, ¶38). In this way, ‘naming appears as a queer connexion of a word with an object’ (ibid.; his emphasis). The name–named correlation is a world–word connection. Searle’s suggestion is that an act of naming creates and establishes the correlation. Wittgenstein’s point is that baptism is itself a rite or ritual, thoroughly convention laden, and so is ordinary naming. It cannot therefore be the source of the conventions that define language. Wittgenstein’s argument here is parallel to Hume’s argument that promising or entering into a contract cannot be the source of the property and exchange conventions that define civil society, because promising can create social conventions only by virtue of the previously established conventions which define that practice.128 Addis has argued in a way that is similar to Searle: ‘There cannot be conventional representation unless there is also, at some level, unconventional or natural representation; for deciding or coming to agree that one entity – the word “red,” for example – shall represent another – the property of being-red – presupposes that one is already able to represent each, not of course by words (which form of representation would be circular) but, ultimately, in some non-linguistic way that is non-conventional.’129 Now, it is true that one cannot agree with others to establish the correlation recorded in the norm (n)

‘red’ means red

unless each of the group is able to attend to both the marks represented by ‘“red”’ and the colour red, and such attention is a case of mental acts being about or intending those things. The establishing by agreement of the rule (n) to establish a correlation of marks (or sounds) and the colour red thus cannot be the sort of process that is used to establish all correlations of marks and objects. In other words, agreeing to establish the practice governed by the norm (n) itself presupposes conventions: here is simply another case of the practice of naming, and this practice, just like baptizing, involves prior conventions, and therefore cannot be the basis for establishing all conventions of naming. The original conventions must be established by some other means. For Addis, such

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conventions presuppose non-conventional aboutness, established by an ontologically grounded ‘M.’ But Addis’s conclusion does not follow. All that follows is that the original conventions cannot be established by some conventional practice. Contrary to Addis, such a process does not need to involve nonconventional aboutness. All that one needs is that there be a regularity established between the mark or sound and the colour. Such a correlation could be established by learning: either by simple conditioning (association) or by reinforcement. Such learning does presuppose that it is possible to discriminate both the mark or sound, on the one hand, and the colour, on the other. But the presence of the capacity to discriminate does not require that one have intentional conscious states. Addis and Searle are wrong, then, in their claim that conventional aboutness presupposes non-conventional aboutness.130 It would seem, then, that intentionality can after all be analysed, as Hume proposed and as Richard Watson has proposed, in terms of isomorphism, and specifically – as Wittgenstein suggested in the Tractatus – in terms of an isomorphism constituted by the conventionally established correlations by which language can picture or represent states of affairs in the world. L. Truth All sorts of things change once one gives up the substance ontology. Among these is the notion of truth. Aquinas notes that ‘as the good denotes that towards which the appetite tends, so the truth denotes that towards which the intellect tends.’131 We ought to believe that which is true and disbelieve that which is false. About this no one would disagree. But for Aquinas the notion of truth as that toward which the intellect tends is bound up with the ontological notion of form or essence which is, he contends, the object of knowledge. But this notion of form or essence comes under attack in the early modern period; that is part of the attack on the substance metaphysics. Thus, the notion of truth changes as one moves from a world of substances – as was the world of Aquinas – toward the world of Berkeley, in which there is no world beyond the world as it appears to be. For Aquinas, there is a sense in which truth belongs to the intellect. But in this same sense, truth resides not simply in the intellect that knows but also in the thing known: ‘Since the true is in the intellect in so far as it is conformed to the object understood, the aspect of the true

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must needs pass from the intellect to the object understood, so that also the thing understood is to be true in so far as it has some relation to the intellect’ (Summa Theologica, Pt. I, Q. 16, art. 1). But, Aquinas insists, the object known is related to the intellect in two ways. In the primary way, the object known is related to the intellect in the sense that it is related to the form or essence of that thing so far as that form or essence is the archetype for the thing in God’s mind. But the object known is also related to the mind of the knower, when that object is known by us. That is not an essential relation, however, but only accidental relative to the thing known: ‘A thing as understood may be in relation to an intellect either essentially or accidentally. It is related essentially to an intellect on which it depends as regards its essence; but accidentally to an intellect by which it is knowable; even as we may say that a house is related essentially to the intellect of the architect, but accidentally to the intellect upon which it does not depend’ (ibid.). It is the essence, for Aquinas the form in God’s mind, that is the standard of truth, in the case of natural things; and in the case of artificially created things, the standard of truth is the essence in the mind of the artist. Thus: ‘We do not judge of a thing by what it is accidentally, but by what it is essentially,’ and ‘a stone is called true, which possesses the nature proper to a stone, according to the preconception in the divine intellect.’ In this sense, things themselves can be said to be true to the extent that they reflect their essence, and false to the extent that they do not in their external appearances reflect that essence: ‘Thus ... truth resides primarily in the intellect, and secondarily in things as they are related to the intellect as their principle’ (ibid.). As Aquinas notes, this implies that truth and being are convertible (ibid., Pt I, Q 6, art. 2). But this presupposes a world of substances. When one eliminates, first, abstract ideas, and then, second, substances, the notion that truth resides in forms and also in things to the extent to which they reflect those forms must of needs also disappear. Aquinas’ notion of truth has no role to play in the world that is Berkeley’s legacy. Indeed, by the time substances were declared to be things ‘I know not what’ by Locke, the concept of truth had already changed. Truth still resides in the intellect, but the basis of truth is a simple correspondence between the intellect of the knower – that is, the thoughts in the intellect, or the words used to express those thoughts – on the one hand, and, on the other, the appearances of things. Locke notes that ‘the joining or separating of signs ... is what by another name, we call proposition,’ and that of proposi-

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tions ‘there are two sorts, viz. mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. ideas and words.’ Truth ‘properly belongs only to propositions’: ‘Truth ... seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them, do agree or disagree with one another’ (Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, II, v, 2). So far, so good. But this leads to a difficulty. Propositions in Locke’s sense – that is, our thoughts – point to empirical reality; they have ‘feelers,’ as Wittgenstein put it. A proposition is true just in case that to which it points exists. Or to put it another way, a proposition is true just in case that there is a fact, there in the world, that corresponds. Moore once suggested that there is ‘a certain one-one relation’ that holds ‘between the predicate [which] then attaches to me viz. “believing that soon after t it will be dark,” & the fact “soon after it was going to be dark.”’132 This is the relation that he calls ‘correspondence,’ or as he attempts to state it more accurately, the fact which stands in that oneone relation ‘directly verifies’ the belief. But then he goes on to say that in the case of a false proposition, there is a one-one correspondence that relates it to the existing fact that makes it false, a relation he refers to as ‘directly negated by.’133 A false proposition is made false by the absence of a positive fact that corresponds to it. We are back to the notion that Bergmann introduced when he suggested that the connection between a thought and what it is about can be represented by +p,M p It is true that Moore avoids the subsistent false facts to which Russell objected. But the negative facts, the specific absences that make propositions false – the ‘direct falsifiers’ if you wish – seem equally objectionable. Russell went on to suggest his more complicated analysis of thought. In particular, he suggested that if one understands the proposition that Rab then one stands, not in a one-one relation to a fact, for there might be no such fact, but rather to the constituents that make up the fact, if the fact exists. That is, we have (1)

M(s1, R, a, b)

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where ‘s1’ refers to the subject who understands – or, since there may (Russell suggests) be no substantial minds, more properly, ‘s1’ refers to the act of understanding, and the whole expression represents that the act s1 means or intends the state of affairs pictured by ‘Rab.’134 This relational fact can obtain even where it is not true that ‘Rab.’135 Understanding, that is, Russell’s ‘M,’ is perforce a complicated relation, and it becomes more complicated if the proposition in question contains a predicate with relata of three or more terms: this relation is sometimes a four-term relation, sometimes a five-term relation, sometimes a sixterm relation, and so on. Be that as it may – it is, however, a major objection to Russell’s view – Russell is able to make clear with this notion what exactly a proposition is. The standard view is that a proposition is what is commonly asserted with respect to two people when they believe or judge or conceive the same thing. Russell takes this definition for granted. The task, as he sees it, is to develop a concept that meets this definition. But that is easy: one treats a proposition as a form that is shared by all such acts. If (2)

M(s2, R, a, b)

is a second act of understanding, then (3)

(M)(x)[M(x, R, a, b)]

is the form that these two acts have in common, and this therefore represents the proposition.136 The notion of a proposition as something that comes between the mind of the knower and the object known disappears. The difficulty from the point of view of the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance is that one does not seem to be acquainted with these odd relations M, the various primitive and unanalysable forms of understanding, judgment, belief, and so forth. But if one is not acquainted with them in any direct way, then they must somehow be analyzable. But what this analysis is, is another issue. Russell at first has considerable difficulty in providing an adequate analysis of this relation. In the first place, there is the ‘x,’ the subject of the relation. This cannot be a substantial self of the sort that Descartes claimed to have discovered in the cogito, for Russell agrees with Hume that there is no such thing to be found in inner awareness: the self is, for Russell the empiricist, a bundle of impressions. The subject ‘x’ of the

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relation is rather a momentary occurrence within a momentary consciousness. Then, in the second place, Russell locates various of the relata in different domains of being. The particulars – in (1) the particulars ‘a’ and ‘b’ – according to the Principles of Philosophy, exist in one way, properties (including relations) in another.137 Moreover, the former are given to us in one way, by sensation, while in contrast, the properties of these things are not given in sensation but in another, second, form of acquaintance, what we can refer to as ‘conception.’138 This view of the properties predicated of things places them in a separate realm, as it were, one not accessible by ordinary sense experience or inner awareness, which, it is held, is always of particulars and not their properties. There are two problems with this ontology. The one is that we judge of particulars that they have certain properties – ‘this patch is red.’ The patch is known by the eye of sense, the redness by the eye of the mind. The point is that although we are aware of redness on this account and aware of the patch, these two things, the patch and its property, are (often) connected with each other to form complexes, which Russell refers to as facts.139 Facts are given to us in a third form of acquaintance, which Russell calls ‘perception.’140 As he puts it elsewhere: ‘[Sensation] gives us particulars, while [perception] gives us facts.’141 We are never told, however, what the connection is between sensation and conception, on the one hand, and perception, on the other. We are presented with the particular and the universal in different acts of acquaintance, in separate sorts of act, where we must also come to be aware of them in yet another sort of act as united, united in a complex or fact, and presented to us as so united.142 We are never told how the various separate acts are related to one another. The second difficulty is that the property is a sort of abstract idea, not part of and indeed divorced from the world that is supposed to be the empirical world in which we live our ordinary lives, the world that Berkeley argued is the real world. Both the entity, the property as separate from the particular which it is supposed to characterize, and the special sort of awareness of it cannot therefore be part of the world defined by the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance. However, if the special sort of awareness referred to as ‘conceiving’ is not part of the empiricist’s world, it is hard to see how the relation of understanding ‘M’ could be part of that world. Certainly, so far as ‘M’ connects the subject ‘x’ and the particulars ‘a’ and ‘b’ to the transcendent property, or in the case of our example, the relation ‘R,’ it too cannot be an empirical relation, one

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permitted into one’s ontology by the Principle of Acquaintance. It follows, of course, that within this ontology there is no analysis of the relation ‘M’ that is compatible with empiricist principles. Things become even more complicated, however, when Russell allows, as we saw, that there is another sort of acquaintance – namely, acquaintance with complexes, with facts.143 Now this, like other forms of acquaintance, is a relation, and therefore something that can obtain between or among its relata only if those relata exist. Hence, if we are acquainted with facts, those facts must exist: awareness in this form implies the existence of the entity presented: ‘We have contended that it is possible to have acquaintance with a complex. Seeing A and B together, we may have acquaintance with the complex ‘the similarity of A and B.’ This will, on our theory, assure us of the truth of the belief that A and B are similar. Thus ... our doctrine of the direct perception of complexes, seems unusually fitted to account for the possibility of belief which is knowledge [i.e., incorrigible belief], and the way in which perception gives rise to such belief.’144 But now, with the introduction of acquaintance as a form of awareness of facts or complexes, we have an odd sort of relation. It is one that obtains, on the one hand, between the act, what corresponds to ‘s1’ of (2), which is a particular, and, on the other hand, a fact that is a complex entity, which in the case of perception consists of a universal and one or more particulars (e.g., to use Russell’s example, the fact that ‘A is similar to B’). Where usually relations relate particulars or at least entities of the same type, here we have a case of a relation that unites entities of different types, particulars to facts. We recognize in this a connection between what Russell is now calling perception and what we previously recognized in Bergmann’s +p,M p which he construes as a real relation obtaining between (as he sees it) the character ‘+p,’ and the state of affairs or fact represented by the sentence ‘p.’ The difference is that Russell recognizes that he must construe all perception to guarantee the existence of what is perceived, whereas Bergmann allows that some relata need not exist in the fullblooded sense but may also exist in a shadowy realm as ‘subsistents’ – that is, as entities which at once are but yet are contrasted to ‘existents.’ And Russell distinguishes perception, which guarantees the existence of its object, from the various forms of judgment based on the relation

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of understanding, the relation in his (2), where there is no guarantee that the state of affairs that it is ‘about’ must exist, even in a shadowy way. Russell eventually works his way through many of these difficulties. In part this involves an insight based on Wittgenstein’s claim that mental acts all have the form ‘p’ says p and in part it involves rejecting the separation of the particulars given in sense experience from the properties that hold of and among these particulars. By the time he wrote his 1919 essay, ‘On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean,’ Russell had revised his views from the earlier Theory of Knowledge manuscript. He now draws a distinction between acquaintance, of which sensation, introspection, and perception are species, on the one hand, and merely thinking or understanding a proposition. The former guarantees the existence of its object, whether that object be a simple particular or a universal, or a complex (a fact); the latter does not. That means that the former sort of consciousness – acquaintance, as Russell speaks – is a direct relation to its object, what it intends. The consciousness is an awareness of what is truly there because of its status as a relation. If we say that a state of consciousness involves a truth just in case what it intends is really there, then there is no question here of truth – the relation guarantees the existence of the truth maker. In contrast, the other form of consciousness, the cases of merely thinking or of judging in its various species, does not consist in a direct relation to its object, what it intends. Rather it involves a relation to what would be the constituents of the fact that it intends if that fact exists. And it involves the same relation to those same entities in case the fact that it purports to be about does not exist. In the one case, that of acquaintance, the consciousness involves a direct relation to the fact that is the truth maker, whereas in the case of thinking or judging there is no relation to the truth-maker: there is no truth maker. Thus, in the case of judging that A is similar to B, an instance of the second kind of consciousness, we have M(s1, A, B, Similar)

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where the proposition is (M)(x)(x, A, B, Similar) ‘The belief in this proposition,’ Russell tells us, ‘is true when there is a complex, whose constituents are A and B and similar, while otherwise it is false.’145 Russell came to revise this view of the nature of the objects of consciousness. Moved by the unsatisfactory and indeed excessively complex account of the aboutness of thought that was brought home by Wittgenstein, he replaced the view that we can have awareness of particulars alone, or of properties (universals) alone. In consciousness, what carries the meaning becomes a linguistic entity, an image or a form of words: ‘The crucial phenomena as regards introspection are images of public sensations, i.e, especially visual and auditory images. On grounds of observation ... it seems impossible to deny that such images occur.’146 ‘Meaning’ sometimes involves a ‘direct relation’ between the word as a physical occurrence and the object itself, where, often ‘the relation must pass through a “mental” intermediary, which could be called the “idea” of the object.’147 The relation in question is that of linguistic meaning understood in terms of patterns. When you understand a word, you use it in conformity with patterns that govern its use (‘on suitable occasions you use the word properly’), including language-exit transitions (‘when you hear it, you act appropriately’), intralinguistic transitions (‘you associate the word with another word’), and language-entry transitions (‘you associate it with an object, which is what it “means”’).148 Note in particular that ‘some images mean particulars and others mean universals,’ and that ‘an image means a universal if its effects depend only upon its prototype being an instance of that universal.’149 Universals are now in things, the things of which we are aware in ordinary experience. The propositions – words or images – are themselves complexes – that is, as Wittgenstein also put it, facts. Thus, when I believe that p, with an inner experience not consisting of overt words, ‘there is a complex fact composed of images, having a structure analogous to that of the objective fact which would make the belief true.’150 The thought, in other words, is not a complex or fact that is isomorphic to the state of affairs thought about. The meaning relation is now receiving a very complex analysis. That analysis is in terms of the patterns or habitual regularities that define the meaning of the word. It is the world–word, word–word, and word–world patterns to which Rus-

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sell appeals as he proposes his new account of understanding and thinking: we understand just in case our usage of words and images fits the patterns that define the use of that word or image for those who use the language. Building on Wittgenstein’s ‘p’ says p Russell has come to analyse ‘M’ in (1) M(s1, R, a, b) as we have suggested the ‘M’ in +p,M p be analysed, in terms of the patterns that define the linguistic meaning of the linguistic item or image in question. On Russell’s new model of thought, thought is essentially linguistic. By way of isomorphism, the linguistic item or image pictures a state of affairs in the world. This state of affairs in the first instance consists of particulars that are propertied and related in various ways. The patterns that define the isomorphism, the ‘feelers’ in Wittgenstein’s words, the relations of designation or reference, are parts of a larger set of patterns – syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic – that define the meaning of the item in question. Since it is possible, through the relations defining isomorphisms, to picture a state of affairs that does not exist, the problem of false thoughts does not arise. Thus for example, the proposition (M)(x)(x, A, B, R) relates the image or words ‘x’ – or rather the parts of this fact – to the non-linguistic entities A, B, and R via the patterns or regularities that define the meaning of the words or signs in ‘x’ that refer to these entities. The proposition, that is, ‘x’ as defined to have the meaning determined by the complex linguistic conventions M that relate the parts of ‘x’ to the entities in question, is true just in case the state of affairs represented by those words or images does in fact exist. Russell’s analysis, in other words, goes through, but with the world now consisting of complexes, facts, and the meaning relation now not a

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primitive unanalysable term but rather defined by the patterns that define the use of words. There remains a problem, however. This is the problem that Russell had earlier spotted in James’s account of meaning. It is this. When one analyses the intentionality of thought in terms of linguistic regularities and patterns and dispositions to use words or images in certain ways, then those regularities, and so on, are not wholly present in consciousness, nor, therefore, is the meaning as such wholly present in consciousness. It follows that one cannot account for the fact that we do know, and know immediately without inference, what our thoughts are about. For that one needs not just meaning as linguistic but meaning as imageless thought. It was Bergmann who recalled to us the need for imageless thoughts. He was followed by the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations. This is not the main point that should now be made, however. This point is that Russell of the Theory of Knowledge manuscript and Russell of the later essay ‘On Propositions’ recognized the need to abandon the principle that we saw Moore embrace – namely, the principle that there is a special relation that correlates propositions to the facts that make them true.151 The simple truth about the world is that it consists of facts. These facts we (often) confront, or, perhaps more accurately, they confront us – they grab out attention and force themselves upon us. But we also talk about these facts confronting us; we make pictures that stand in relations of isomorphism to those facts. Our language is richer than that, however. In the language we use to talk about the facts that confront us, we can form sentences that are pictures, pictures of states of affairs if you wish, but pictures where there is no such state of affairs there that confronts us in the world. There is, then, truth as reality or being and truth as a property of propositions. Both sorts of truth involve facts, but involve them in very different ways. Russell once put the distinction this way: ‘A belief is ‘verified’ when a situation arises which gives a feeling of expectedness in connection with it; it is falsified when the feeling one of surprise. But this applies only to beliefs which await some future contingency for verification or refutation. A belief which is an immediate reaction to a situation – e.g. when you are waiting for a race to begin and presently you say ‘They’re off’ – has no need of verification but verifies other beliefs.’152 Beliefs that are verified are truths about facts that do not confront us;

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we have truths in this sense, propositional truths, when we are as it were standing back from the world and comparing our beliefs to what we have or might come across. But there are beliefs that do not involve such a comparison. There is no standing back from the facts that make them true: those facts are the reality that immediately confronts us, the reality that seizes us and imposes itself upon us, the reality or being that demands acceptance, not reflection. Here is the spot to which we have come, where Berkeley and Hume have taken us. Scientia, infallible knowledge, has disappeared: it is an unattainable goal. It is therefore unreasonable to join Descartes in laying it down as the end defining our cognitive goal. We are therefore left with Descartes’s second-rate enterprise of relying on opinion to get on in the world: our cognitive end must be limited to the attaining of opinions. The road to this conclusion in effect consisted of the attempt to attain knowledge in the sense of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, infallible scientia. But as we attempted to attain that end, as we undertook the Cartesian project, we discovered that such a cognitive goal presupposed an ontology of forms and substances. These forms and substances proved to be in fact inaccessible to us; whatever they are, they are not part of the world as we ordinarily experience it. No wonder, then, that the upshot of the Cartesian project was nothing more than a radical scepticism. That means that we had proposed to ourselves an unreasonable cognitive goal; as reasonable persons we should give up the attempt and limit ourselves to something that is not in principle unattainable. In rejecting the ontology of forms and substances we discovered that what counts as reality is far different from what that ontology proposed. Specifically, the world is as it appears to be: things are simply bundles of sensible appearances. And this world is a world to which we clearly have cognitive access. Moreover, there is nothing metaphysically puzzling about the ‘us’ or the ‘me’ that does the knowing. Just as ordinary things are pellucid to our experience, so are our selves pellucid. It turns out that our minds are not some sort of mysterious substance; rather, they are nothing more than the impressions and acts that they appear to be in our inner awareness. Recall the point about perception, that even though the perceptual object is not wholly there or even if it is not there at all, I am nonetheless

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wholly certain that what is perceived is (say) a tree: I am certain that what is perceived is a tree and not, for example, a fence post. What enables me to say that ‘That is a tree’ and to say with certainty that ‘I perceive that that is a tree’ is the presence in consciousness of a property. This is easily accounted for on the substance viewpoint: that property is the form or essence of the object perceived. That account disappears with Berkeley and Hume. This means that these philosophers – and, more generally, those who do ontology based on the Principle of Acquaintance – must give a different account of perception and of the intentionality of thought. It is suggested by some – Dennett for example – that the tradition of Hume fails to provide the required account of intentionality. We have argued, however, that as regards at least intentionality, there is in Hume enough material to provide the outline at least of an adequate account of intentionality, of the aboutness of thought. What we have now to try to do is to form a clear concept of what our cognitive enterprise can be in this world freed from the illusions of the substance ontology, this unmysterious world of everyday experience, the world as first clearly described by David Hume. This world as bequeathed to us by Bereley and Hume, this world which Hume defends, is a world in which things are as they appear to be. Hume’s account of the world offers this as the truth about what exists, both the things of common sense – the world of the ‘vulgar,’ as he calls it – and world as science describes it – the world of the ‘philosophers’ as he calls it. The former is reasonable, but latter is reasonable also only deeper and more accurate. This is the world of the critical realist. Our aim is to give an exposition of that critical realism which (we are claiming) Hume defends. What, more specifically, we aim to do is to show that there are in Hume’s arguments and Hume’s claims the resources to provide an account of human knowledge that allows for a defence of that critical realism but which, in contrast to Descartes, also finds a place for the commonsense world of the vulgar. We aim also to defend Hume, as well as to give an exposition of his views. To do this latter we must show further that there are within his works not only his account of the world and our knowledge of it, but also sufficient resources to meet challenges deriving from more recent work. We have already discussed Dennett, but we shall be looking at a number of others, for example, William Alston, Barry Stroud, and Lorraine Code. We

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shall also be looking at some nineteenth-century discussions of some of these topics. They have a continuing interest in themselves, but in addition they throw light on Hume and at times on some of the more recent twentieth-century discussions at which we shall be looking, such as that of Stroud. On the whole, as we shall see, Hume‘s claims turn out to be ones that can be characterized in a way that I think he himself might have wished, namely, as reasonable. This is not to say that there are no puzzles in a Humean world. There is in particular the question of ‘truth’: What is its nature? It cannot have the sense it has for Aquinas. For the latter, truth is not a way that characterizes (some of) our beliefs (and disbeliefs): it is rather the internal power that moves the thing toward being the truth of itself, a power that moves the thing known and the mind of the knower toward an agreement with regard to the being of things. For Hume, there are no such internal powers, and the mind that seeks the truth, does so as it were under its own powers, with reference to standards that it sets for itself, in a world into which he or she is willy nilly thrown and in which he or she must find his or her own way about. Truth and the search after truth become very different projects, in the world of Berkeley and Hume. The picture of this world at which Hume arrives, we are arguing, is that of the critical realist. To see how Hume gets there, and to see that it is a defensible position, one that a reasonable person might accept – to show this, we have to examine a number of other themes in Hume’s work, including his views on geometry, on the defence of the scientific method, and on testimony. To these we now turn. Only after looking at these in the context of Hume’s theory of knowledge, shall we return to the central theme of our knowledge of the external world.

3 Geometry as Scientia and as Applied Science: Hume’s Empiricist Account of Geometry

Traditionally, rationalism gets its hold on one through geometry. Geometrical truth is (as we now speak) synthetic: it states facts about the world. Such truths are not ordinary truths but essential truths, giving the reality of the empirical world in which they are imperfectly embodied. But if such truths give facts about the world, it is also the case that our knowledge of them is absolutely certain. It is certain because it is about such ideal geometrical concepts as that of a perfect circle, or exact equality. Knowledge of these entities is not given in sense, so they must be known a priori, from whence derives the certainty of the knowledge. The argument here is well known: it goes back to Plato in the Phaedo, and it finds its place in early modern philosophy in Descartes’s Meditations. It is the central argument in the defence of Platonism and rationalism and against empiricism. If, then, Hume is to make his case in favour of empiricism, he had best say something about geometrical knowledge. He does provide such a discussion of geometry. He does this in a discussion of our knowledge of space (and time) – this is in Part II of Book I of the Treatise. He deals with the issues rather briefly in the first Enquiry: he eliminates much of the detail of the Treatise, here as elsewhere. If the aim of the Enquiry was to present a more popular version of the philosophy in the Treatise, then he was wise to leave out the material on geometry and space: the latter is pretty hard going. But it is worth looking at in order to find how Hume proposes to deal with this stronghold of rationalism. Now, the rationalists appeal to a doctrine of abstract ideas – indeed, abstract ideas our knowledge of which is innate. This gives us access to the ideal objects and the a priori truths of geometry. Then there is sense that gives us knowledge of the geometrical structure of the perceived

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world: here the ideal objects find empirical embodiment, but only inexact embodiment – being embedded in matter will do that to one.1 So there is a distinction between pure and applied science in geometry – only the former is scientia. Now, it has been argued that Hume makes no distinction between pure and applied geometry.2 Hume cannot do this – that is, allow that there is such a distinction – because he does not allow that we have concepts of ideal geometrical objects. As Flew has put it: ‘Unable to see how ideal geometrical concepts could be derived from experience or how any concepts could occur without mental imagery, Hume had no option but to argue that really there is no such creature as an ideal geometrical notion.’3 In this context it is suggested that there is a tension between this position, which is given in the Treatise, and that of the Enquiry. On the one hand, it is said that, because there are no ideal geometrical objects, the subject matter of geometry are the objects of sense experience: as Hume says in the Treatise, ‘Geometry falls short of that perfect precision and certainty, which are peculiar to arithmetic and algebra’ (71). This is true, Hume says, because the ‘first principles [of geometry] are still drawn from the general appearance of the objects; and that appearance can never afford us any security’ (ibid): ‘The reason why I impute any defect to geometry, is, because its original and fundamental principles are derived merely from experience’ (ibid.). On the other hand, there is the claim of the Enquiry that ‘propositions of this kind [those of geometry – which describe relations of ideas] are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is any where existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths, demonstrated by Euclid, would for ever retain their certainty and evidence’ (E 25). The contrast between the Treatise and the Enquiry is clear: indeed, there seems to be a straight-out inconsistency between the two claims.4 As for the position of the Treatise, it is said that ‘Hume wages war against the metaphysical theory of infinite divisibility of extensions.’5 Hume argues that the point which is the subject of geometry cannot be either a physical atom (an extended point) or infinitely divisible extension. He argues that he has found a happy ‘medium’ between ‘the system of physical points’ and the theory ‘maintain’d in the schools, that extension must be divisible, in infinitum’ (Treatise, p. 40). The points of geometry are, rather, ‘parts of extension, which cannot be divided or lessened, either by the eye or imagination. These images, then, which are present to the fancy or senses, are absolutely indivisible’ (E 156).

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Hume infers that the number of extensionless points that as it were make up any extension is finite: ‘Upon the whole, I conclude, that the idea of an infinite number of parts is individually the same idea with that of an infinite extension; that no finite extension is capable of containing an infinite number of parts; and, consequently, that no finite extension is infinitely divisible’ (Treatise, p. 30). This account of geometry has usually been seen as rather silly. The implication is that whatever we are going to say about geometry, we had better allow for infinite divisibility. After all, that follows directly from Euclid.6 Moreover, we are apt nowadays to approach Hume’s account of geometry from the perspective of recent mathematics, postCantorian mathematics in particular. To be sure, the latter introduces an account of real infinities that is in many ways inconsistent with views of infinity of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But we have become used to real infinities and therefore find it odd indeed when a philosopher – even one as astute as Hume – rejects real infinities. We are more inclined to approve Leibniz’s views on infinity than those of Hume, even though from our modern perspective there are also difficulties in the Leibnizian account of infinity. In fact, however, a careful reading of Hume’s texts reveals that there is more to his account of geometry than these views allow. A careful reading will show that Hume does after all allow for concepts of ideal geometrical objects, and that he can quite easily accept infinite divisibility as true of these ‘objects.’ Hume is not, it turns out, a strict finitist: to be sure, real extension is not infinitely divisible, but there is no reason why ideal extension is not infinitely divisible.7 However, what holds of our ideas holds of those things of which they are ideas: ‘the possibility of that idea, and consequently of the thing’ (53). So there does seem to be a problem. Thus, I am arguing that we do have concepts of ideal geometrical objects, objects that exist only ideally and not in reality, and that it is true of these objects that they are infinitely divisible – where we understand infinite divisibility to be a concept that applies correctly only to ideal objects, but does not apply correctly to real objects in the world. With regard to real objects the concept of infinitely divisibility taken strictly applies only falsely to these objects: however, it is also true that this concept does apply to these objects with approximate correctness. Moreover – and this is the main point of our present concern – if Hume is to defend his empiricism against the claims of the rationalists such as Plato and Descartes, then he needs a reply to those rationalist

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opponents who argue that, since we have ideas of ideal things, things not to be found in ordinary experience, they must be innate. The argument for this is there in philosophy from its origins: it is the argument that Socrates uses for the existence of forms in the Phaedo. The rationalist argument is not without its strengths, and certainly many have found it convincing. Hume therefore needs an alternative account of how we form the idea of perfect equality or of a perfectly straight line or of a perfect triangle, or – to take a somewhat different example, one that agitated Hume’s predecessors – the idea of infinite divisibility, that is, of an infinitely divisible line. If Hume cannot supply that account, the philosophical support of knowledge as scientia has not been fully removed. So our aim in the present chapter is to examine Hume’s view of space8 and to show, first, that his discussion of divisibility neither is nor is intended to be, simple scepticism; and to show, second, that Hume has a reply to the rationalist argument that we cannot understand geometry as true knowledge unless we assume a world of transcendent forms. A. Extension and Its Idea ‘Now, ’tis certain we have an idea of extension; for otherwise why do we talk and reason concerning it?’ (Treatise, p. 32). Question: What is this idea of extension? How does Hume describe this idea that he here asserts to exist? Well, like all ideas it is derived from impressions. And we can decide ‘controversies concerning ideas’ by tracing them back to the impressions to which, semantically, they refer, and which, psychologically, are their genetic antecedents: ‘Impressions always take precedency of them [ideas], and ... every idea, with which the imagination is furnish’d, makes its first appearance in a corresponding impression’ (33). Now, ‘my senses convey to me only the impressions of colour’d points, disposed in a certain manner’ (34). The idea is an image that resembles those impressions which are its cause, its genetic antecedents: ‘The idea of extension is nothing but a copy of these coloured points, and of the manner of their appearance’ (34). More fully, however, the idea of extension as such is an abstract idea. We first experience points coloured, let us say, red, disposed in a certain manner, but later we have pink points, then green, and so on. These different sets of impressions have ‘resemblance in the disposition of colour’d points, of which they are composed.’ We note this point of resemblance, ignore

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the differences, and associate a general term with that resemblance: ‘We omit the peculiarities of colour, as far as possible, and found an abstract idea merely on that disposition of points, or manner of appearance, in which they agree.’ Moreover, ‘all abstract ideas are really nothing but particular ones, consider’d in a certain light; but being annexed to general terms, they are able to represent a vast variety, and to comprehend objects, which, as they are alike in some particulars, are in others vastly wide of each other’ (34). There are several components of this account to which we must attend. First let us note that the abstract idea of extension is the idea of a collection of coloured (or tangible) points that are disposed in some manner or other. Here we note the clear reference to the relational nature of extension. We are given to understand the presence of this feature by the reference to the points being disposed in certain ways, in certain manners. This manner of disposition is given in the impressions we have of extended things. But it is not as it were another impression alongside the others. It is, moreover, a feature not of single impressions but of a collection of them taken together. This is clear from a remark that Hume makes about time. (Hume makes this comment on time, and it is especially clear. It is on time, to be sure, but what he says here applies equally, one naturally gathers, to space or extension.) The point is that the idea is not drawn from a single impression of sense: ‘The idea of time is not deriv’d from a particular impression mix’d up with others, and plainly distinguishable from them, but arises altogether from the manner in which the impressions appear to the mind, without making one of the number. Five notes play’d on a flute give us the impression and idea of time; tho’ time be not a sixth impression, which presents itself to the hearing or any of the other senses (36). Hume does not say this explicitly about space, but the whole of Book I, Part ii, deals with the ideas of space and time together, so that the implication is that, save for some obvious exceptions, what is said about the one is to be said about the other. The point is that the idea of time, and therefore space, is derived from what is given to us in experience. But it is not derived from a single impression; it derives from several impressions. But not from those impressions taken severally. Nor from a further impression added to, or inserted among, the others. Rather, the idea is derived from the ‘manner’ in which those impressions are presented. It is evident that Hume is drawing our attention to the fact that space is essentially relational: what we are presented with when we are pre-

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sented with spatial data are facts best represented by sentences of the form Rab Such facts are presented as unitary complexes: the relation – ‘manner of disposition’ – is not a separate particular thing or impression alongside the impressions a and b. Moreover, what is relevant is a and b together: the manner R in which they are disposed, the spatial structure, is exemplified not by a alone, nor by b alone, but by a and b as a pair, taken together. Hume has genuine insight here into the spatial properties of and among the entities presented to us in our ordinary sensible experience of things. Relational structures are just that: relational. They are properties of things, but they are not properties – such as colours are – of things, impressions, taken individually. Rather they are properties of pairs, and triples, and so on, of things taken together. However, this conflicts with the implications of one of the metaphysical principles that Hume takes as self-evident. In fact, it is one of a pair of principles. These are: whatever objects are distinguishable are distinct, and whatever objects are distinguishable are separable (18). These principles have, for Hume, a significant implication: two things that are distinct, and therefore separable, are such that the one can exist and be itself even if the other were not to exist. Thus, he tells us that ‘since all our perceptions are different from each other, and from every thing else in the universe, they are distinct and separable, and may be consider’d as separately existent, and may exist separately, and have no need of any thing else to support their existence’ (233). This means that, if we have two impressions a and b, and b ceased to exist, a could continue to exist as itself unchanged in its being. But now consider Rab again. This makes a single predication of a pair, but also two predications of the individuals. It predicates of a the property is R-ing b and it predicates of b

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is R-ed by a Now let b cease to exist. This means that b is not and is therefore not Red. Thus, it also ceases to be true of a that it is R-ing b. To use a concrete example, Peter kicks Paul. Peter is the kicker and Paul the kickee. The point is that there is no kicker without a kickee and no kickee without a kicker. If Paul the kickee ceases to exist, then Peter ceases also to be a kicker. So, given the relation of kicking, Peter, who is the kicker, cannot exist as he is unless Paul exists, and if Paul ceases to exist, then Peter no longer exists as the thing he was: if Paul ceases to exist, then Peter no longer is what he was. So Peter cannot exist as he is separately from Paul. Nor Paul from Peter. More generally, if we have Rab then a is the R-er and b is the R-ee. And if b, the R-ee, ceases to exist, then a ceases to be an R-er, ceases to be unchanged from what it was. It follows that if we have ‘Rab’ then a and b are not separable. If there is a genuine relation holding among two sensible particulars, then those particulars are not separable. But two distinct particulars are, because they are distinct, separable. There are therefore no genuine relations. The way to deal with this implication in one’s ontology is to deny that there are genuine relations. Any relational fact Rab is reducible to two facts each of which attributes a non-relational property to the related individuals. We therefore have our relational fact reduce to r1a & r2b where the properties r1 and r2 are the ‘foundations’ of the relation. This is how Locke analysed relations. They are ideas but not of things as they are in themselves; rather, they are ideas only as the mind compares one thing to another: ‘Besides the ideas, whether simple or complex, that the mind has of things, as they are in themselves, there are others it gets from their comparison one with another’ (Locke, Essay, II, xxiv, 1). These relative ideas are based on non-relational foundations: ‘Relations ... [are], expressed by relative terms, that have others answer-

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ing them, with a reciprocal intimation, as father and son, bigger and less, cause and effect’ (II, xxiv, 2). Relations do not affect the being of things, they are not as it were real properties: thus, ‘relation’ is such that it is ‘not contained in the real existence of things, but [is] some thing extraneous and superinduced’ (II, xxiv, 8). The unity established by a relation, and expressed by a statement of the form Rab derives not so much from the things related as from the mind that joins them in an act of comparison: ‘The nature therefore of relation consists in the referring or comparing two things one to another; from which comparison, one or both comes to be denominated’ (II, xxiv, 5). Because the unifying connection is not there in the things, but only in the mind making the relational judgment, the things are separable, in the sense that one could exist as it is, unchanged, if the other ceased to exist: ‘If either of those things [the things related] be removed or cease to be, the relation ceases, and the denomination consequent to it, though the other receive in itself no alteration at all’ (II, xxiv, 5). Hume in fact adopts the same account of relations. He, of course, does not speak of mental acts of comparison, but rather of associations. But the account is otherwise the same. There is, first, the connection made by the mind in comparing the two things related: the relation is ‘that quality, by which two ideas are connected together in the imagination, and the one naturally introduces the other’ (13) – introduces it, that is, through the mechanism of association. This is relation understood naturally. But there is the other side to relational judgments, the objective side. This is relation considered philosophically: relation is ‘that particular circumstance, in which, even upon the arbitrary union of two ideas in the fancy, we may think proper to compare them’ (13). Every relation therefore has an objective side, where the objects are separable and not connected into a genuine unity, and a subjective side, where the objects are connected into a unity established subjectively, for Locke by an act of comparison, and for Hume by an established associational habit. We have seen how Hume gives just this sort of analysis of the relation of cause and effect. But he takes it to apply to all relations in general and in particular to relations such as ‘distinct’ and to, slightly more generally, ‘space and time’ (13–14).9 Hume, then, adopting the ‘Lockean’ account of relations, analyses space into a series of non-relational points: ‘Our ideas of [space] are

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compounded of parts, which are indivisible’ (38). These points are separable – thus, ‘let us take,’ he suggests, ‘one of those simple indivisible ideas, of which the compound one of extension is form’d, and separating it from all others, and considering it apart’ (38). It is clear that Hume is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, there is the array of points as experienced: this array is experienced as arrayed in a certain ‘manner.’ The ‘manner’ is an aspect of the object that is experienced. But on the other hand, the parts of object of experience are separable, their spatiality constituted by monadic foundations for the spatial relations,10 and what unites them into a relational whole is the subjective act of comparison that has the mind moving from the one to the other to yet another and so on through the whole set of the related pairs.11 This is not the place to deal with the many issues that this double view of extension entails. Metaphysics does require such a discussion, but it goes beyond what we must do; for our purposes we need not go further into these issues.12 For us, what is important is that Hume does have a relational view of space as given in experience while at the same time his view of space is that of a unity of indivisible parts. But one thing is worth mentioning. This is the role of associationism. In terms of associationism, the experience of relational wholes is the product of separately experienced indivisible points. The relational wholes are as it were emergent relative to the points that are the entities related. In our ordinary perception of space and extension, those points are present only dispositionally – they are not real parts, existing really in the fact perceived. Under the analytic set, it requires attention to discern these entities; only with that attention does one become aware of them: ‘’tis ... difficult for the imagination to break it [an idea of extension] into its component parts, because of the uneasiness it finds in the conception of such minute objects as single point’ (42). Considered in terms of the notion of introspective analysis as it occurs in associationist psychology, then, as we saw in chapter 1, there are on the one hand the analytical parts and on the other hand the phenomenologically given whole of which they are parts. Those analytical parts as they are produced under introspective analysis are, as parts present in the state analysed, present only dispositionally, not really present but there to be recovered when the whole is analysed. On this point, about analytical parts being present only dispositionally, Hume here agrees with John Stuart Mill on the analysis of an idea; this pattern from classical psychology we have described in chapter 1. ‘They,’ Hume tells us,

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that is, the various parts of the abstract idea, ‘are not really and in fact present to the mind, but only in power; nor do we draw them all out distinctly in the imagination, but keep ourselves in a readiness to survey any of them, as we may be prompted by a present design or necessity’ (20). In particular this applies, for Hume, to the idea of extension. The parts that are present dispositionally are the separable parts that constitute the extended impression or the extended image that is the idea. So, the separable parts do not appear in the spatial fact as perceived or experienced: what is perceived is the relational unity as a whole, as partless. So Hume can in effect have it both ways: extension is made up of separable points, but also is a whole of related and therefore inseparable parts. Here, one might raise the following sort of objection: ‘If the association is on the basis of contiguity, then isn’t the whole presupposed rather than emergent? How can I notice that one thing is to the left of another if they are “separately experienced”? Don’t I have to see them together, as parts of a whole, before I can notice that they are contiguous?’ The process goes like this. We have facts like this:13 a is in p1 & b is in p2 These are not associated in consciousness; they simply are presented as it were side by side, conjoined if you wish, but not united. In reality, or objectively, they are separable. But after a series of being presented together, they come to be associated in thought. They are now inseparable in thought, so united that the one introduces the other. Objectively they are still separable – and will remain separable – for, objectively, relations are always (as Locke argued) reducible to non-relations. What we come to have after this is a fusion of the psychologically inseparable parts into a conscious state Here is an (a-is-in-p1-&-b-is-in-p2) where a simple character is presented as characterizing the entire situation. This character is not made up of a, b, and so on, as distinct and presently discriminable parts. Those parts are not present as integrant parts. The parts have as it were disappeared into the whole, into the psychological unity. Those parts have, however, not disappeared – they are still present, but only dispositionally, as metaphysical parts, ready to be recovered associatively under the appropriate set. That is how

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association works: the product of the process arises from genetic antecedents that remain present but only dispositionally, not there but capable of becoming discernable under the analytic set. We thus see that the objection we are considering misses the point about how associative mechanisms work. Specifically, it presupposes that the discriminable genetic antecedents of the product of the association are discriminable integrant parts of the product, where in fact they cannot be discriminated in the product. To be sure, these parts are there, but not as themselves: as themselves they are present only dispositionally. One other point about the context of Hume’s thought in the history of psychology. We have noted that the blur between the parts taken as separable genetic antecedents and the parts as metaphysical parts of the product of the association enables Hume to gloss over the differences between his view of spatial facts as unified wholes and as composed of separable parts. But before making that point, a few remarks might help introduce it. Recall once again from chapter 1 that the parts present dispositionally in the spatial expanse given as a unity are the genetic antecedents of sensed expanse. These parts enter consciousness through the senses. The different sensory pathways are conceived as separate conduits that transmit as it were the bits of sensory information that strike the skin where the conduits originate to consciousness where the conduits end. The bits appear in consciousness as separate parts, arranged as the conduits are arranged where contact as it were with consciousness occurs. Then the mechanisms of association keep these parts united in the ‘manner’ in which they are ‘disposed,’ to use Hume’s terms. But the product of the association is not a complex – a sort of heap, if you wish – of separate parts, but a unified whole that is a fusion of those parts. The model of the sense as little tubes or conduits was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See, for example, Descartes’s notion that the nerves are little tubes in which animal spirits flow, carrying information from the periphery of the system to the central nervous system, that is, the brain, where they come together in the pineal gland, which is the point of contact, if one may so speak, between the nervous system that is bodily and that terminates there, and one’s consciousness, which is not corporeal. The thought is that the parts which are the genetic origin arrive as parts presented to consciousness as separate parts: they enter as parts because of the structure of the mechanisms of the nervous system, as a

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set of separate tubes or pipes. The sensory ideas arrive as separate parts because they are transmitted from the periphery of the system – from the skin where it comes into contact with the external objects, or whatever, which are the points where the information is transferred from the world external to our bodies to the bodily parts to be transmitted to the central parts of the system. The model of the nervous system as a set of tubes or conduits shapes the way these philosophers and scientists view the object or objects that constitute the genetic origins of the sensory images-impressions as they are given to us in our ordinary experience. It of course had to be this way: the psychologists who were doing the theorizing (Hume included) had no real access to the images and ideas with which (it was speculated) the associational process began – that originating event occurred too early in one’s history or too deep in one’s unconsciousness for it to be given in our ordinary inner awareness and observed or known directly. As we have said, the thought that the nervous system is a set of tubes or conduits is there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – it is how Descartes saw things (not without some physiological evidence), and no doubt it is how Hume saw things. But it goes back to the ancient world. It is there in Aristotle (see for example, De Anima, Bk. II, ch. 6, 418a7ff). It makes its appearance already in the pre-Socratics. The pattern is indeed an old one, and on this matter it is not surprising that Hume hardly departed from the tradition – he had others things to do, his originality lay in philosophy. As a psychologist he was largely one of a lot: good, and better than a lot of critics maintain, but only that. He was sensitive to the issues and in many respects first rate, but still he was not among those who, like Berkeley in the ‘new theory of vision,’ were among the revolutionaries of the science, among those who made important and original contributions. It suffices that Hume is among the most significant of the metaphysicians – that he is less significant as a psychologist should not surprise us. It cannot be expected that he could be fresh everywhere. B. Infinite Divisibility Hume’s argument for his account of extension as consisting of indivisible parts begins from two axioms. The first is that ‘the capacity of the mind is limited, and can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity’ (26). Hume’s second principle is that ‘whatever is capable of being divided in infinitum, must consist in an infinite number of parts’

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(26). Our ideas are images of impressions. Our idea of extension is therefore an image of extended things. This idea cannot contain an infinite number of parts. But if the image were infinitely divisible, it would contain an infinite number of parts. The image or idea is therefore not infinitely divisible; it is only finitely divisible. The ultimate parts are minimum sensibles: ‘The imagination reaches a minimum, and may raise up to itself an idea, of which it cannot conceive any sub-division, and cannot be diminished without a total annihilation’ (27). Our idea of extension thus consists of a finite number of these minimum sensibles. But what holds of our ideas holds of the entities of which those ideas are the representations: Our ideas are adequate representations of the most minute parts of extension; and, through whatever divisions and subdivisions we may suppose these parts to be arrived at, they can never become inferior to some ideas which we form. The plain consequence is, that whatever appears impossible and contradictory upon the comparison of these ideas, must be really impossible and contradictory, without any further excuse or evasion. (29)

It follows that no finite extension can be infinitely divisible. He takes the least part of extension that he can conceive; whatever can be constructed out of this has the quality of being extended. This augmentation of the simple idea of extension can be continued indefinitely: When I stop in the addition of parts, the idea of extension ceases to augment; and were I to carry on the addition in infinitum, I clearly perceive, that the idea of extension must also become infinite. Upon the whole, I conclude, that the idea of an infinite number of parts is individually the same idea with that of an infinite extension; that no finite extension is capable of containing an infinite number of parts; and, consequently, that no finite extension is infinitely divisible. (29–30)

Hume is here assuming that he can treat infinite divisibility as equivalent to a composition. In this he follows others such as Isaac Barrow, who equated the issue of ‘the perpetual Divisibility of Quantity’ with the ‘Composition of Magnitude.’14 On this position, to say that an extension is infinitely divisible is to say that it is composed of an infinity of parts. The argument is the simple one that if a magnitude is increased indefinitely by adding further parts, it will in due course exceed any given finite extension, and that a perpetual increase as presupposed by

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the doctrine of infinite divisibility will yield a magnitude that exceeds any finite magnitude. No finite magnitude can therefore be infinitely divisible. Barrow of course rejected this argument against infinite divisibility. He argues to the contrary that extension is in fact infinitely divisible: The perpetual Divisibility and Composition of Quantity our of common homogeneous Parts ... does answer well to the Ideas of Men; and ... most of the excellent Philosophers have supposed and defended it.15

But in the end he admitts that this is hardly convincing and that the concept has many difficulties: I deny not but it is difficult to be understood, how every single Part can be divided so as all not to be actually reduced by the Division to Indivisible, or to Nothing or what is next to Nothing: Nor yet do I think, by reason of the Imperfection of the Mind of Man and the Smallness of our capacities, that therefore the Truth is to be deserted, when proved by so many evident Tokens, and supported by so many strong Arguments.16

It was no doubt this sort of attitude to which Hume was objecting when he stated: I doubt not but it will readily be allowed by the most obstinate defender of the doctrine of infinite divisibility, that these arguments are difficulties, and that it is impossible to give any answer to them which will be perfectly clear and satisfactory. But here we may observe, that nothing can be more absurd than this custom of calling a difficulty what pretends to be a demonstration, and endeavouring by that means to elude its force and evidence. (31)

If there is a problem with a demonstration, it is not a ‘difficulty’; it is a contradiction that leads one, or ought to lead one, to reject the demonstration. Or, as he had stated earlier, whatever has the air of a paradox, and is contrary to the first and most unprejudiced notions of mankind, is often greedily embraced by philosophers, as shewing the superiority of their science, which could discover opinions so remote from vulgar conception. On the other hand, any thing proposed to us, which causes surprize and admiration, gives such a satis-

268 External World and Our Knowledge of It faction to the mind, that it indulges itself in those agreeable emotions, and will never be persuaded that its pleasure is entirely without foundation. From these dispositions in philosophers and their disciples, arises that mutual complaisance betwixt them; while the former furnish such plenty of strange and unaccountable opinions, and the latter so readily believe them. Of this mutual complaisance I cannot give a more evident instance than in the doctrine of infinite divisibility, with the examination of which I shall begin this subject of the ideas of space and time. (26)

For Hume, the attitude of Barrow was the height of obscurantism, the sort of obscurantism that provided support for the absurdities of theology and religion. There have been a variety of objections to Hume’s argument. Thus, Flew objects that Hume’s second principle is false: to say that something is divisible is not to say that it is actually divided into parts, as, for example, a cake is divisible into parts without being actually divided.17 But Flew is confusing divisibility with separability. We can distinguish various ways in which the cake can be divided; it is divisible in each of these ways. Each of these ways defines a set of parts. But from the fact that it can be distinguished into these parts, and therefore consists of such parts, it does not follow that it is actually separated into these parts. All that follows is that the cake is separable in each of these ways. In fact, Hume derives this principle for his account of space from a more basic set of principles. These are the principles ‘that whatever objects are different are distinguishable, and that whatever objects are distinguishable are separable by the thought and imagination’: ‘It requires scarce any induction to conclude from hence, that the idea which we form of any finite quality, is not infinitely divisible, but that by proper distinctions and separations we may run up this idea to inferior ones, which will be perfectly simple and indivisible. In rejecting the infinite capacity of the mind, we suppose it may arrive at an end in the division of its ideas; nor are there any possible means of evading the evidence of this conclusion’ (18). Flew has also objected to the first principle, that the mind has no more than a finite capacity. There is, Flew suggests, ‘no insuperable difficulty about learning the ordinary uses of the words “infinite” and “infinity,” and we can perfectly well understand what is meant by talk of a series being infinite or going on to infinity.’18 It is not clear to many, contrary to Flew, that ‘infinite’ has any clear ordinary sense. Certainly, the struggles of mathematicians to clarify for themselves the notion of

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an infinite series, and the struggles of students to come to understand clearly the meanings of the concepts that the mathematicians have produced, indicate that the task is far from easy. But Flew’s point is that we do seem to have an idea of infinity that Hume is claiming we cannot form. But this is not what Hume is up to. What Hume says is that we ‘can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity’ (26). He is in fact not claiming that we have no idea of infinity, only that we have no ‘full and adequate idea.’ These are in fact two different things. The notion of an ‘adequate idea’ is defined in Locke’s Essay: adequate ideas are those which ‘perfectly represent those archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from; which it intends them to stand for, and to which it refers them. Inadequate ideas are such, which are but a partial or incomplete representation of those archetypes to which they are referred’ (I, xxxi, 1). Our simple ideas are all adequate – they are exact copies of, and therefore fully represent, their archetypes – but there are other ideas that are not. Hume is claiming that we have no adequate idea of infinity. Unlike our simple ideas of simple impressions, our idea of infinity is not a copy of an archetype. In that sense it can never be adequate. But from the fact that it is not adequate, it does not follow, as Flew supposes, that we do not have such an idea. Nor does Hume’s first axiom imply that we lack such an idea. In fact, Hume never argues that we have no idea of infinite extension or of infinite divisibility. What Hume proposes is that ‘if it be a contradiction to suppose, that a finite extension contains an infinite number of parts, no finite extension can be infinitely extended’ (29), and what he argues is that it is indeed a contradiction to suppose that a finite extension contains an infinite number of parts. But this is not to say that the notion of infinity itself is contradictory and therefore inconceivable. What Hume is arguing against is not the notion of infinity as such but the notion that visible and tangible extension is infinitely divisible or, what is the same, has an infinite number of parts. C. Our Idea of Infinity Hume’s first axiom – ‘the capacity of the mind is limited, and can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity’ (26) – was in fact accepted by many philosophers of the age. Locke, in his Essay,19 makes the same point with regard to space: ‘We are carefully to distinguish between the idea of the infinity of space, and the idea of a space infinite:

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The first is nothing but a supposed endless progression of the mind, over what repeated ideas of space it pleases; but to have actually in the mind the idea of a space infinite, is to suppose the mind already passed over, and actually to have a view of all those repeated ideas of space, which an endless repetition can never totally represent to it; which carries in it a plain contradiction’ (II, xvii, 7). We can have an adequate idea of an extension only in the case that it has a finite number of parts. In that sense, we can have no adequate idea of an actual infinity. It does not follow that we have no idea of infinity. Locke makes this point clearly. Barrow makes much the same point when he describes the ‘Conception of Infinity’ as one ‘which is not perfectly comprehensible to us.’20 If it is not perfectly comprehensible, it does not follow that we cannot use it as a conception that is no doubt less than adequate and therefore not perfectly comprehensible. The same doctrine can be found in the Cartesians. These philosophers denied that we can have an adequate idea of any actual infinity. That would imply we can have a knowledge of the infinite perfection of God that is equivalent to the knowledge that God has of Himself. But we can still think of things as infinite in the sense of being indefinitely repeated. The Port Royal Logic proposes as the ninth axiom in the search after truth that ‘The nature of a finite mind is such that it cannot grasp the infinite.’21 Arnauld had taken this claim over from Descartes, who held that ‘our mind, being finite, cannot comprehend the infinite.’22 He made the same point in his Replies to the First Set of Objections: ‘So let me say first of all that the infinite, qua infinite, can in no way be grasped. But it can still be understood, in so far as we can clearly and distinctly understand that something is such that no limitations can be found in it, and this amounts to understanding clearly that it is infinite.’23 Notice, too, how Descartes is claiming that, while we can have no adequate idea of the actually infinite, we can nonetheless have an idea of the infinite – that is, an inadequate idea, but still for all that an idea. Descartes distinguishes the true infinite from a somewhat different conception, that of the indefinite. He explains this in his Replies to the First Set of Objections: I apply the term ‘infinite,’ in the strict sense, only to that in which no limits of any kind can be found; and in this sense God alone is infinite. But in cases like the extension of imaginary space, or the set of numbers, or the divisibility of the parts of a quantity, there is merely some respect in which

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I do not recognize a limit; so here I use the term ‘indefinite’ rather than ‘infinite,’ because these items are not limitless in every respect.24

In this sense, space is indefinitely large rather than infinite, and finite extensions are indefinitely rather than infinitely divisible. But Descartes recognizes at the same time that his sense of ‘indefinite’ is, so far as concerns our conceptions of magnitude, in effect the standard or non-theological sense of ‘infinite.’ Thus he states in his Replies to the Second Set of Objections that there are many indefinite particulars of which we have an idea, such as indefinite (or infinite) knowledge and power, as well as number and length and so on, that are also infinite. Now we recognize that some of these (such as knowledge and power) are contained formally in the idea of God, whereas others (such as number and length) are contained in the idea merely eminently.25

The idea of the infinite that we actually use is the idea of the indefinite, where the latter is the idea of a capacity to add indefinitely. Thus, he tells Mersenne in the Replies to the Second Set of Objections that I can see that, in so far as I think, I have some degree of perfection, and hence that others besides myself have a similar degree of perfection. And this gives me the basis for thinking of an indefinite number of degrees and thus positing higher and higher degrees of perfection up to infinity. Even if there were just one degree of heat or light, I could always imagine further degrees and continue the process of addition up to infinity.26

Locke makes the same point, arguing that the infinity of God is incomprehensible – ‘the great God,’ he says, is ‘incomprehensibly infinite’ (II, xvii, 1) – and our concept of infinite as applied to extension derives from elsewhere. He argues that we get the notion of space as indefinitely large from our capacity to repeat as often as we want our idea of a magnitude: ‘By the power we find in ourselves, of repeating, as often as we will, any idea of space, we get the idea of immensity’ (II, xvii, 5). This power is the original of our idea of infinity: ‘Our idea of infinity [is] got from the power we observe in ourselves of repeating without end our own ideas’ (II, xvii, 6). Not all agreed, of course, that we have no (positive) idea of an actual infinity. The Jesuits were able to make this point – that we cannot grasp

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the infinity of God – one of the Cartesian propositions that were condemned by the Church. It was important for them to retain the doctrine that had come down to them from mediaeval scholastic philosophy that the infinite qua infinite can be grasped. It was these scholastic discussions that later led Georg Cantor to speculate concerning infinity in mathematics.27 These speculations were fruitful indeed, but Cantorian transfinite arithmetic, with its infinite sequence of infinite numbers, has always made many uncomfortable: in spite of the beauty and power of Cantorian arithmetic, there is still a resistance to the notion of a positive infinity. For many, the positively infinite entities of Cantorian arithmetic are unintelligible, as unintelligible as the fundamental notions of theology; they are within mathematics the progeny – illegitimate, it is suggested – of the alien notions of mediaeval theology. For us, however, the important point is that Hume need not, and does not, reject the concept of infinity that we find in Locke – that is, the concept of the infinite as the indefinite in the sense of a set of like entities to which others like them can be added without end – ‘can be’ in the sense of there being no logical or ontological impediment. In fact, Hume’s argument against the infinite divisibility of extension presupposes the intelligibility of the concept of infinity in the sense of the ‘indefinitely addable to.’ As we have seen, it is Hume’s argument that it is ‘a contradiction to suppose, that a ... finite extension can be infinitely extended’ (29). It is not the notion of infinite extension – indefinite addability to – that is contradictory. Rather, the contradiction is between two separate ideas. The one is the notion of a finite extension; the other is the notion of an extension that can be infinitely extended. The contradiction is between the idea of a set of magnitudes extended to some end, on the one hand, and, on the other, the idea of a set of magnitudes extended without end. The contradiction – with end and without end – is clear. But the two ideas that contradict each other are themselves free from contradiction: each is in itself intelligible. For Hume, the problem is not the concept of infinity – he can use as well as Locke and Descartes the concept of the indefinite – but rather the concept of infinite divisibility. D. Real Extension out of Extensionless Points It was Descartes’s view that ‘however many parts a body is divided into, each of the parts can still be understood to be divisible and so we shall hold that quantity is indefinitely divisible.’28 Descartes’s view

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contrasts with Hume’s argument that extension is not infinitely divisible. In denying infinite divisibility, Hume was preceded by Bayle.29 But, where Hume was arguing to a conclusion that affirmed (he believed) the reality of space – that is, of the spatial aspects of the world in which we ordinarily live – Bayle argued that not only does Descartes’s view lead to scepticism but so also does any other view. So Bayle concludes, contrary to Hume, that space is ideal, not real. So Bayle’s argument aimed at a conclusion very different from that of Hume. Hume is aiming to defend a certain account of extension. For him there is no question but that extension is real: ‘’Tis certain,’ he says, ‘we have an idea of extension’ (32), that is, a non-contradictory idea. For Hume, then, since what is thinkable is possible, it follows that extension can exist. Hume’s problem is not the existence of extension but rather that of giving a correct philosophical account of extension. Hume rejects as impossible the claim that extension is infinitely divisible; so does Bayle. But Bayle, to the contrary, argued the much stronger and more problematic thesis that extension cannot exist: every concept of extension is impossible. Hume argued for the consistency of the thesis that extension consists of extensionless or mathematical points. Bayle’s argument against extension appears in Remark G to the entry on Zeno of Elea in his Historical and Critical Dictionary.30 Were this argument to succeed, it would be – as Bayle no doubt hoped it would be – devastating to the standard conceptions of material substance, whether those of the Cartesians, who identified material substance with extension, or those of Gassendi, Locke, and the Newtonians, who held that material substance is both extended and solid or massy. These conceptions of material substance all hold that it has extension as an essential characteristic, either the only such characteristic or one among several. So, if extension does not exist, then there are no material substances, and the world as it appears to us is ideal rather than real. But Bayle’s argument cuts deeper than even this, since it also challenges the notion that empirical phenomena can be extended: even our sensible images or impressions must all be contradictory and unreal. Or so he argues. Here is Bayle’s argument: If extension existed, it would be composed either of mathematical points, or of physical points, or of parts divisible in infinitum. But it is not composed either of mathematical points, or of physical points, or of parts divisible in infinitum. Therefore it doth not exist.

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With respect to the first alternative, the doctrine of mathematical (i.e., extensionless) points, Bayle objects that ‘several nothingnesses of extension joined together will never make an extension.’ With regard to the second alternative, the Epicurean doctrine of physical points or atoms (i.e., the doctrine of ‘extended and indivisible corpuscles’), Bayle objects that ‘every extension, how small soever, hath a right and left side ... therefore it is a conjunction of distinct bodies ... and consequently every extension which fills several parts of space contains several bodies.’ As for the third alternative, the conception of extension in which it is infinitely divisible, Bayle uses the same argument that Hume was later to use, that ‘An infinite number of parts of extension, each of which is extended, and distinct from all others, as well with respect to its entity, as with respect to the space it fills, cannot be contained in a space one hundred thousand millions of times less than the hundred thousandth part of a barley corn.’ If every point of space is divisible, then every point is extended. But a large number n of extended points will add up to an extended space. For any finite space, a finite number n of the extended points will exceed that space, provided only that n is sufficiently large. Or, let us put it this way. Let m be the extension of the space we are given, and let k be the size of the extensions into which a space has been divided. k is finite, since each such k is itself infinitely divisible. But for any m, there is an n, sufficiently large but still itself finite, such that n 3 k = m, or, what is the same, such that (n + 1) p 3 k > n, or, in Bayle’s terms, such that (n + 1) 3 k ‘cannot be contained in’ m. Bayle thus rejects all three alternatives. Since he takes these to exhaust the possible accounts of extension, and since each is impossible, it follows that extension cannot exist. Since extension is an essential or even the essential attribute of matter, it follows that material objects do not exist: they are ideal and not real. Bayle no doubt had in mind the Cartesian arguments concerning space. Descartes, like Bayle after him, rejected the Epicurean and Gassendist claim that space or extension is divided into finite physical atoms (Bayle’s second alternative), arguing (like Bayle) that such atoms are not indivisible and, more strongly, that all matter is infinitely divisible: We also know that it is impossible that there should exist atoms, that is, pieces of matter that are by their very nature indivisible . For if there were any atoms, then no matter how small we imagined them to be, they would necessarily have to be

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extended; and hence we could in our thought divide each of them into two or more smaller parts, and hence recognize their divisibility. For anything we can divide in our thought must, for that very reason, be known to be divisible; so if we were to judge it to be indivisible, our judgement would conflict with our knowledge. Even if we imagine that God has chosen to bring it about that some particle of matter is incapable of being divided into smaller particles, it will still not be correct, strictly speaking, to call this particle indivisible. For, by making it indivisible by any of his creatures, God certainly could not thereby take away his own power of dividing it, since it is quite impossible for him to diminish his own power, as has been noted above. Hence, strictly speaking, the particle will remain divisible, since it is divisible by its very nature.31

He concluded that however many parts a body is divided into, each of the parts can still be understood to be divisible and so we shall hold that quantity is indefinitely divisible.32

So Descartes, rejecting the second alternative, accepts the third. But where Descartes accepts this alternative, Bayle, and following Bayle, Hume, rejects it. Hume framed his views on space and extension largely as a response to Bayle: Hume, in contrast to Bayle, wishes to defend the idea that there are extended things – unlike Bayle, Hume is not a sceptic with regard to extension. Now, Hume rejects, with Bayle, each of Bayle’s three alternatives. Hume adopts an alternative that Bayle does not mention; he therefore escapes between the horns of the dilemma (or trilemma) that Bayle has proposed. Hume argues that the first alternative can be understood in a different way. This modification of the first alternative yields what is in effect a fourth alternative. He therefore rejects Bayle’s argument that the doctrine of mathematical, that is, extensionless points is to be rejected; there is after all a satisfactory version of that thesis. He argues, then, that contrary to Bayle, extension is real; that is, the extension of the world that we experience is real. Hume is therefore free to hold that there are extended objects: there is no reason to deny the existence of material things on the grounds, mistaken grounds, that they are impossible because extension is impossible.

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So Hume must argue that real extension, the extension that constitutes the ordinary world in which we live, consists of extensionless points. But Hume argues that mind is finite and therefore cannot have before it an infinite number of ideas. So, he is committed to the view that real extension not only consists of extensionless points but also consists of a finite number of these extensionless points. So, to defend the reality of ordinary extension, Hume must show two things. First, that the doctrine that space consists of extensionless points does, contrary to Bayle, make sense. And second, that its consisting of a finite number of such points also makes sense. But Bayle has other arguments for the ideality or non-existence of extension. Thus, for example, Bayle offers another argument to the effect that it is impossible that real extension consists of extensionless points. This argument begins with the idea that if extension consists of an array of extensionless points, then they must be sufficiently next to one another that there is no gap between them: they must touch. Bayle argues that this implies a penetration of dimensions, which in turn implies that under those conditions extension cannot exist: ‘If extension existed, it would not be possible for its parts to touch one another, and it would be impossible that they should not penetrate one another.’ If the separate parts of extension actually touched, they would touch at a point that was common to the two. But if there is a common point, then the two objects penetrate each other. And if they penetrate each other, then they are not after all separable parts. So the separate parts of extension do not touch one another. However, if you place a lead bullet on a table, where the bullet has some liquid colour placed on it, then ‘the weight of the bullet will show that it immediately touches the table; for if it did not touch it in this manner, it would remain suspended in the air, and your eyes will, besides, convince you of this contact by the track which the bullet has left.’ Thus, the parts of extension do in fact touch, and there is a penetration of dimensions, something that is in reality impossible. Descartes had already made a similar point. He argued that as I have often said, nothingness cannot possess any extension. Hence, if someone asks what would happen if God were to take away every single body contained in a vessel, without allowing any other body to take the place of what had been removed, the answer must be that the sides of the vessel would, in that case, have to be in contact. For when there is nothing

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between two bodies they must necessarily touch each other. And it is a manifest contradiction for them to be apart, or to have a distance between them, when the distance in question is nothing; for every distance is a mode of extension, and therefore cannot exist without an extended substance.33

Thus, if Hume is to defend his claim that extension – real extension – consists of a finite number of extensionless or mathematical points, then he must also reply to these arguments from Bayle and Descartes concerning the penetration of dimensions. With regard to the Humean notion of mathematical points, the argument from Bayle that we have just noted is particularly telling. For on that notion, extension will consist of points that either are or are not next to one another. Bayle’s argument is that both must be true, which is impossible. On the one hand, if two points next to each other do not touch, then there is a space between them, in which case they touch the points of this space between them. On the other hand, if two simple extensionless and dimensionless points do touch, it is at a point. Since they have each but one point at which they can touch, and since they must share this point, it follows that there is but one point, rather than two as we had supposed. The two have ceased to be distinguishable and have become one. Thus, if all points touch, then all extension reduces to a single point; there are no distinguishable and separable points after all. So, if all points touch then they become one, while if they do not touch there is space between then and therefore points that they touch, in which case extension is reduced to a single point. In either case, extension reduces to a single point – which is impossible. But one of the two cases must be true. So, whichever is the case, extension reduces to a single point – that is, in reality extension is impossible. So Hume needs to reply to this argument from the penetration of dimensions. There is a related line of argument that Bayle also develops. Mathematical points are separable. But for reasons just given, those points must touch. However, touching will involve a penetration of dimensions. If a penetration of dimensions occurs, then at the point of contact at least the objects will no longer be separable. So the separable objects are after all not separable. But this is impossible. It therefore follows, once again, that extension does not exist. And, as Bayle was never one to forgo yet another argument, there is yet another version of this argument that he makes against extension-

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less or mathematical points. This is an argument from perfect equality. This is an important argument for Hume, and his reply is central to his argument regarding geometry. Hume’s reply to this argument is of central importance: it is in effect his reply to the argument of the platonists and the rationalists, deriving from the PHAEDO, that geometry requires the introduction into one’s ontology of a world, not given in ordinary experience, of perfect geometrical figures. The argument from perfect equality, as Bayle develops it, is an argument based on the claim that two circles one of which is wholly inside the other are in fact equal in circumference. This is the argument that, as Bayle puts it, ‘amongst concentric circles, the least would be equal to the largest’ since ‘all the right lines which may be drawn from the circumference of the largest circle, will find room in the smallest circumference.’ The argument was well known. Thus, Isaac Barrow, in his textbook The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning explained and demonstrated, being Mathematical Lectures read in the Publick Scholls at the University of Cambridge, offered the same argument against extension consisting of extensionless points: ‘If the Circumference of a Circle be supposed to consist of any Number of Points to every one of which Radii are drawn from the Centre, it is very evident, that the Circumferences of more concentric Circles will consist of the same number of Points with the former, and consequently are equal to it, which is most absurd: Or otherwise these Radii do touch, meet, or intersect one another in some Place else than the Centre.’34 Hume would of course know this argument from Bayle, bur no doubt knew it from Barrow also; he refers to these Mathematical Lectures in the Treatise, in the part dealing with the reality of extension.35 This argument is clear. It considers two circles with the same centre, one within the other. A radius from a point on the outer circle will go directly as it were to the centre without touching any other radius. In particular, it will pass through a smaller concentric circle without touching any other radius. If the number of points in the outer circle were greater than that of the inner circle, then the radii of the larger would have to pass through the inner at some common point, that is, they would have to meet at a point other than at the centre. For similar reasons, the number of points on the inner circle cannot exceed the number of those in the outer circle. The number of points on the outer circle must therefore be equal to the number of points on the inner circle. Now, two lines are equal just in case they have the same number of

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points: ‘A Point is the common Measure of all Magnitudes, and every one Magnitude is to another as a Number of Points to a Number of Points’ (155). It follows on the doctrine that extension consists of extensionless points that circles of different lengths are to the contrary equal in length. So much for the doctrine of extensionless points. Hume replies to Bayle. It is Hume’s argument that his account of extension provides a way of escaping Bayle’s conclusion that extension is impossible. Bayle presented three alternatives as to the analysis of extension. Hume, like Bayle, rejects the third alternative; he clearly accepts Bayle’s argument that the concept of real extension as involving infinite divisibility is unsound. Bayle put the argument this way, as we have seen: An infinite number of parts of extension, each of which is extended, and distinct from all others, as well with respect to its entity, as with respect to the space it fills, cannot be contained in a space one hundred thousand millions of times less than the hundred thousandth part of a barley corn.

Hume puts it this way: The idea of an infinite number of parts is individually the same idea with that of an infinite extension; that no finite extension is capable of containing an infinite number of parts; and, consequently, that no finite extension is infinitely divisible. (30)

Again, Hume, like Bayle, rejects the second alternative: he clearly accepts Bayle’s conclusion in this case also, that the Epicurean concept is impossible: The system of physical points ... is too absurd to need a refutation. A real extension, such as a physical point is suppos’d to be, can never exist without parts, different from each other; and wherever objects are different, they are distinguishable and separable by the imagination. (40)

Barrow, too, accepted this argument against indivisible physical atoms. Barrow rejects the doctrine of physical points, on the same grounds that Bayle and Hume rejected it: there is no contradiction in supposing that the extended indivisibles of the Epicureans have parts.36 As for the first of Bayle’s alternatives, this, as we have said, Hume

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accepts, or at least, he accepts it as he reinterprets it, rejecting Bayle’s own interpretation. More specifically, what Hume rejects in this case is Bayle’s argument that it is impossible for extension to consist of extensionless points. Bayle’s argument against extensionless points. Here we should recall Descartes’s argument: When there is nothing between two bodies they must necessarily touch each other. And it is a manifest contradiction for them to be apart, or to have a distance between them, when the distance in question is nothing; for every distance is a mode of extension, and therefore cannot exist without an extended substance. We should notice something very well known by the natural light: nothingness possesses no attributes or qualities.37

Bayle accepts this Cartesian axiom, that nothingness lacks everything, and the converse, that wherever there is an attribute there is something: ‘Nothingness possesses no attributes or qualities.’38 So, if a point is extensionless, then it has neither length nor breadth nor height; it lacks all geometrical properties, and, lacking properties, it is nothing: what is not something is but a nothing, neither this nor that nor anything. And nothings, no matter how many of them, cannot add up to something.39 Hume’s reply to Bayle. Hume argues that there are, constituting real extension in the world as we ordinarily experience it, extensionless points. He must therefore argue against Bayle’s argument that there are no extensionless points. He restates Bayle’s argument in this way: ‘That system [that extension consists of mathematical points] is absurd, because a mathematical point is a non-entity, and consequently can never by its conjunction with others form a real existence’ (40). He now escapes between the horns of Bayle’s dilemma (actually a trilemma). He argues that it is not required that one accept the position that the extensionless points are non-entities, nothings. He argues that the points of real extension are not non-entities, not nothings; they are in fact somethings. For they are coloured and tangible, and this makes a difference. Bayle’s argument, he indicates, ‘would be perfectly decisive, were there no medium betwixt the infinite divisibility of matter, and the non-entity of mathematical points. But there is evidently a medium, viz. the bestowing a colour or solidity on these points; and the absurdity of both extremes is a demonstration of the truth and reality of the medium’ (40).

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So Hume meets Bayle’s challenge. In effect, Bayle offers a metaphysical argument against this, the first of his alternatives, using a principle that was commonly accepted. That principle was also accepted by Hume. This is the principle that ‘nothing has no properties (and conversely).’ Hume’s response is one that accepts this rule as metaphysical sense. But he denies that it applies to extensionless points as Hume conceives them. The points are extensionless, but it does not follow that they lack properties and that they are therefore nothing. The points of space – that is, space as we ordinarily experience it – are coloured and tangible. This makes entities of them, somethings that have properties. Bayle, of course, has Descartes as his target. Descartes does not allow that space or extension has such qualities as colours: extended things are not coloured and in fact have no properties other than those which geometry ascribes to extended objects. For Descartes, then, if space consists of extensionless points, then these points lack all qualities, each of them is nothing; and if each is a nothing, nothing can be made of them. So, given that Bayle’s target is the extended substance of Cartesian metaphysics, his argument, grounded in an accepted metaphysical principle, is sound. Hume, however, is concerned with space, with extended things as we experience them. And such objects are experienced as having various sensible qualities.40 The metaphysical principle that applies, and that makes nothings of extensionless points in the Cartesian system, does not apply. So, for Hume, spatial points can be extensionless and yet not nothings. Each of them is therefore a something, and these somethings together can be a something: space as we experience it can be constituted by these somethings. It is worth noting that Hume, in offering this argument, is in good metaphysical company: a similar argument is developed by Leibniz to meet the same Baylean problem.41 He agrees with Bayle that Bayle’s first and second alternatives (mathematical points and physical points) are not acceptable: ‘Physical points are indivisible only in appearance; mathematical points are exact, but they are merely modalities.’42 It is the third alternative, infinite divisibility, that is acceptable. According to Leibniz, space is infinitely divisible into extensionless points. But this is satisfactory because the points into which reality is divisible are not nothings, but are rather metaphysical realities that have being: ‘Only metaphysical points or points of substance (constituted by forms or souls) are exact and real, and without them there would be nothing real, since without true unities there would be no multitude.’43

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He made the same argument elsewhere: ‘Since atoms are excluded, what remains is something lacking extension, analogous to the soul, which they once called form or species.’44 Leibniz’s metaphysical realities are, of course, different from those of Hume. For the former, the extensionless points are monads, each of which has being: each is as required by its individual essence. For Leibniz, the metaphysical points are substances with all the metaphysical characteristics of substances. For Hume, in contrast, the metaphysical realities are points in space as we experience it, and the relevant properties are those of ordinary experience, that is, colours and so forth. But the structure of the argument is the same: both Leibniz and Hume escape Bayle’s criticism of extensionless points by insisting that the points do have predicated of them properties which are not spatial and concluding that they are therefore entities or beings and not mere nothings – and since they are somethings and not nothings, something can come of them. So Hume has good metaphysical company when he proposes his reply to Bayle on the issue of the existence of extensionless points. But this is not the end of the argument Hume has with Bayle. Bayle’s argument from the penetration of dimensions. Hume also takes up Bayle’s argument with regard to the penetration of dimensions. He does this by proposing a ‘juster idea of penetration’ (41). The idea of penetration on which the argument proceeds is, he proposes, that of two bodies which unite to form a body no more extended than either. On Bayle’s model of penetration, the two become one. Hume allows there to be a penetration of dimensions, as Bayle requires, but proposes an alternative model for the penetration of dimensions: ‘This penetration is nothing but the annihilation of one of these bodies, and the preservation of the other, without our being able to distinguish particularly which is preserv’d and which annihilated’ (41). It is penetration in this sense that occurs when points touch. This annihilation becomes clear if we use as an example, not bare points, but points that are coloured. Let the points be different colours, so that they are clearly distinguishable, and let them approach each other. Hume inquires rhetorically, ‘Does [one] not evidently perceive, that from the union of those points there results an object, which is compounded and divisible, and may be distinguish’d into two parts, of which each preserves its existence distinct and separate, notwithstanding its contiguity to the other?’ (41). Thus, on Hume’s account of extension as consisting of a finite num-

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ber of extensionless coloured and tangible points, there can be points which are next to each other, that is, without any other points between them, and which also do not penetrate losing their identities as distinguishable entities. And so long as they are distinguishable, they are separable. Contact, the absence of points between two points, thus does not require the sort of interpenetration that demands the two points become one and inseparable upon contact. Hume has therefore met Bayle’s objection from the supposed penetration of dimensions. E. Ideal Equality, Ideal Figures: Scientia Criticized Finally, there is Hume’s reply to the argument from perfect equality. In particular, there is the argument from the length of circumferences. But this latter argument is a special case of the more general one made by Bayle and Barrow to the effect that, the doctrine that extension consists of extensionless points has the consequence that things of unequal length (e.g., concentric circles) turn out to be equal in length. Since the consequence is absurd, the doctrine that extension consists of extensionless or mathematical points is absurd. If it is an argument about divisibility and extensionless points, it is also a special case of the argument based on the concept of exact equality, to be found in the Phaedo, for the existence of the ideal or perfect forms of the Platonist and the rationalist. We shall examine it, and Hume’s replies to it, in its several variations. Hume’s reply to this argument or arguments in fact makes a radical break with the traditional accounts of geometry. The Bayle–Barrow argument depends on taking as a standard of equality the number of points in a line. Hume challenges this criterion:45 counting equal numbers of points is not the criterion we use to judge equality of length. But Hume wishes to do more in his reply than defend the doctrine of extensionless points; he has a more general point to make, a more general challenge to the critics of empiricism, one that goes directly to the traditional line that geometry as a science is exactly true, and exactly true because it is about a set of abstract ideas, the ideas of perfect squares, perfect triangles, perfect circles, perfectly straight lines, and of course perfect equality.46 Hume’s response, his challenge to the rationalist tradition, is part of a broader critique of the rationalist argument deriving from the Phaedo, for the reality of perfect equality and of other perfect geometrical figures. We are by now familiar with the argument traditionally used by the Platonists and the rationalists to justify the claim that geometry is pri-

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marily about figures in an ideal realm. Hume challenges the argument offered for the existence as real things of perfect geometrical form. This challenge addresses the issue, and, in particular, the claim that there is an ideal form of perfect equality, which is the concept on which Plato builds that rationalist case in the Phaedo. Addressing this argument is part of a more general discussion of equality, and of the notion that one judges of equality in terms of equal numbers of points. And still more broadly, Hume’s point turns upon his thesis that extension consists of extensionless mathematical points – that is, of extensionless mathematical points which, while extensionless, nonetheless are, have being – they are the coloured and tangible points constitutive of space as we ordinarily experience it. Here is Hume’s argument. We have seen how Hume does propose that a line consists of a series of extensionless points. Bayle and Barrow think about equality in these terms. Their thought is that in principle one could compare the lengths of lines by comparing the number of points in each. Hume argues that this criterion for equality of length cannot be taken seriously in practice. For, the supposed points are too small and too many, too closely packed together to be clearly distinguished in ordinary circumstances. That means that in practice we can never use the number of points in each of a pair of lines to determine their equality. The criterion is one that is impossible to use in practice – for example, in land surveying: This standard of equality [that of an equal number of points] is entirely useless, and that it never is from such a comparison we determine objects to be equal or unequal with respect to each other. For as the points which enter into the composition of any line or surface, whether perceived by the sight or touch, are so minute and so confounded with each other that it is utterly impossible for the mind to compute their number, such a computation will never afford us a standard by which we may judge of proportions. No one will ever be able to determine, by an exact numeration, that an inch has fewer points than a foot, or a foot fewer than an ell, or any greater measure; for which reason, we seldom or never consider this as the standard of equality or inequality. (45)

For real extension, then – the extension we encounter as it were in our ordinary experience of the world – there is no criterion of perfect equality based on the number of points in a line.

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But we do often judge carefully that lines are equal: the room is square-shaped, we might judge. We must therefore have other criteria of equality that we use in dealing with real extension. What we do use to measure equality in the case of real extension – that is, geometry when we come to consider it as true or false, applying or not applying to the real world as it appears to us in ordinary experience – what we do use is not this imaginary standard of equal numbers of points, but instead certain arbitrarily chosen standards of length, for example, a standard yard or a standard foot, or even a standard stone.47 We then determine equality by comparing lengths of lines to these standards. We can in fact go through a process of correcting and adjusting our initial judgments, to get more exact estimations of equality in length: It is evident that the eye, or rather the mind, is often able at one view to determine the proportions of bodies, and pronounce them equal to, or greater or less than each other, without examining or comparing the number of their minute parts. Such judgments are not only common, but in many cases certain and infallible. When the measure of a yard and that of a foot are presented, the mind can no more question, that the first is longer than the second, than it can doubt of those principles which are the most clear and self-evident. (47)

This is how ordinary empirical geometry proceeds. Ordinary geometry thus provides us with an empirical standard of equality, one that actually works, unlike one based on equal numbers of points. Of course, this is not an exact standard. The best that we can do is say that lines are nearly equal, or as nearly equal as we can judge. So the truths of geometry, to the extent that they describe the world of ordinary experience, are not exact. Indeed, taken literally, the propositions of pure geometry are false of the real world, the world that appears to us in ordinary experience, or, rather, when these propositions are applied to the real world they are only approximately true: When geometry decides any thing concerning the proportions of quantity, we ought not to look for the utmost precision and exactness. None of its proofs extend so far; it takes the dimensions and proportions of figures justly; but roughly, and with some liberty. Its errors are never considerable, nor would it err at all, did it not aspire to such an absolute perfection. (44)

Indeed, not only are the truths of geometry inexact, they mostly turn

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out to be false if taken strictly. Thus, Hume considers the proposition that ‘two right lines cannot have one common segment,’ that is, that they can meet at at most one point. Hume suggests that, Euclid notwithstanding, the contrary might be true. To the claim that such a thesis is absurd: I [Hume] would answer, that I do not deny, where two right lines incline upon each other with a sensible angle, but it is absurd to imagine them to have a common segment. But supposing these two lines to approach at the rate of an inch in twenty leagues, I perceive no absurdity in asserting, that upon their contact they become one. For, I beseech you, by what rule or standard do you judge, when you assert that the line, in which I have supposed them to concur, cannot make the same right line with those two, that form so small an angle betwixt them? (51)

Similarly, if one counted the minute parts of the squares on the hypothenuse and on the other two sides of the triangles, then perhaps the size of the square on the hypothenuse does not add up exactly to the sum of the sizes of the squares on the other two sides. Or again, perhaps not every line can be bisected into equal segments, as Euclid claimed, for the bisected line might contain an odd number of points. Here, with regard to the inexactness of geometrical truths, Hume does not depart radically from the tradition. To be sure, that tradition held that Euclid’s geometry is exactly and necessarily true. But what Hume is talking about is geometry as applied to the real world of experience, that is, applied geometry, and this, all acknowledged, is inexact: when the perfect forms come to be instantiated in matter, they lose their perfection. Predecessors of Hume, such as Descartes, allowed that empirical geometry was of course inexact. Yardsticks and theodolites cannot be used to conclusively verify the truths of geometry. At the same time, of course, the tradition held that there is more to geometry than applied geometry. There is also the realm of exact triangles, exactly straight lines, exact equalities, and so forth. Indeed, it is precisely with exact equality that Socrates argued for the existence of ideal forms. At its best, this tradition argues, geometry is about these ideal figures and forms. Geometry was in fact the paradigm of the ancient ideal of scientia, a deductive science proceeding necessarily from premises that are themselves necessary and known. Geometry applied primarily to the essences of things. That is why it could be construed as necessarily true. These essences were, however, embodied only imperfectly in matter, in the material things that we observe by

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means of our senses. Thus, for the tradition, geometry could be held to be at one and the same time both an exact science and an inexact science – ideally an exact science and empirically an inexact science. But Hume has no essences, no ideal forms. With Berkeley, he argues that there are, as they both put it, no abstract ideas. He deprecates such ‘ideas’ as figments of the philosopher’s or mathematician’s imagination: It is usual with mathematicians to pretend, that those ideas, which are their objects, are of so refined and spiritual a nature, that they fall not under the conception of the fancy, but must be comprehended by a pure and intellectual view, of which the superior faculties of the soul are alone capable ... But to destroy this artifice, we need but reflect on that principle so often insisted on, that all our ideas are copy’d from our impressions. (72; Hume’s italics)

We must be careful in our analysis of this argument, as we shall see. But the point is clear. It is an attack on the claim that we have positive ideas of ideal forms, and in particular of ideal geometrical forms. We do have positive ideas of imperfect figures, say imperfect triangles, derived from objects as we experience them. But because there exist no ideal forms or essences in things as we experience them, there are, therefore, no ideas of such forms: since the forms are not there to be ‘copied’ in our ideas, we have no positive ideas of such perfect forms. To suppose that we can think of such forms, in the absence if ideas, is absurd: Plato’s heaven is incoherent. Hume must therefore rest content with saying that geometry, insofar as it is about ordinary things, is only an inexact science. Since these things have no underlying perfect essences, it follows that Hume cannot add, as Descartes could, that geometry is also an exact science. For Hume, geometry becomes an empirical science alongside mechanics, optics, and psychology, an inductive empirical science rather than scientia. The attack on abstract forms or essences – entities somehow separate from empirical entities – was begun by Berkeley. So was the argument that the need for perfect forms or essences could be met within the resources of associationist psychology. We may recall the discussion from chapter 1. The traditional account of the use of words, still present in Locke, depends upon a particular account of abstract ideas. On this account, things resemble one another by virtue of the properties that are present in, or characterize those things. Two particular things, two pieces of candy, say, or a piece of candy and a mental image of such a piece of

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candy, resemble each other in, for example, being red by virtue of the property red that characterizes both particulars. On the traditional view, abstract ideas consist of properties that have in the mind become, by a process of abstraction, separated from the things they characterize. The idea in the mind is the same as the property that characterizes various things in the world. For example, the abstract idea of red is the property red separated from any particular thing. The various things which are red, that is, which are characterized by the property red, are said to fall under the abstract idea of red. Words become general by virtue of becoming associated with abstract ideas; through such an association, words apply to, or mean, any thing that falls under the abstract idea, that is, is characterized by the property which the abstract idea is. And just as red can be abstracted from red things, so the determinable characteristic of colour can be separated in thought from the determinate species red. Similarly, we have various extended things. The various determinate species of magnitude can be abstracted from these. Thus, we can form the determinate abstract idea of an extended thing being two yards long; this is a determinate species of extended thing. Furthermore, we can abstract from these determinate magnitudes the more generic determinable characteristic of extension. In the standard terminology, the genus has the species as its parts. So the determinable extension has the various determinate species of extension – for example, a magnitude of six furlongs and a magnitude of five furlongs, as parts. Of course, a particular extended thing will have extended parts; a thing six furlongs long will have as a part a thing that is five furlongs long. These are two different senses of ‘part,’ but which sense is meant is usually clear from the context.48 It was this account of abstract ideas, we now recall, that was the object of Berkeley’s attack in the ‘Introduction’ to his Principles of Human Knowledge.49 As we saw, this account of how thought becomes general required the affirmation of three propositions that are in fact, when taken together, inconsistent: 1 Whatever exists must be particular. 2 What is conceivable (possible in thought) is possible (in reality). 3 Abstract ideas are created by separating properties from particular things. If abstract ideas are properties separate from things, then their separateness is possible in thought; but then their separateness is possible in

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reality; in which case it is possible that not every existent is particular. Philosophers such as Descartes and Locke, according to Berkeley, and quite correctly, accept all three propositions. Something must go. Berkeley and his empiricist successors accept the first two, agreeing here with their predecessors, but in disagreement with them, they reject the third. Hume agreed with Berkeley’s argument that the traditional doctrine of abstract ideas was inconsistent with the principles that he, following Berkeley and the tradition, accepted.50 Berkeley takes the discussion not much further; he is content to establish the negative thesis that abstract ideas in the traditional sense do not exist. That presents a problem for his successors, however: How is it that words become general in their signification? Hume took up this problem. He went on, where Berkeley made only tentative suggestions, to offer an account of how words become general. This account of abstract ideas is based on the associationist psychology he was defending. Moreover, Berkeley’s case did not provide a reply to the strongest argument in favour of abstract ideas. Hume took up this problem, too. Using his account of abstract ideas, Hume is able to provide a reply to the traditional – and powerful – argument in defence of abstract ideas. Recall the pattern of associationist psychological theory. If A’s and B’s are related by the relation of resemblance R, then A’s and B’s become associated in thought; and if, furthermore, a general term comes to be associated with these ideas, then we have an abstract or general idea.51 On this account, terms become general by becoming associated with resemblance classes of impressions and ideas. It is in this way that ‘some ideas are particular in their nature, but general in their representation’ (22). When we experience some thing, then that thing calls up by association a particular idea that resembles it in a certain respect, and this resemblance in turn calls up the general term, which we thereby apply to the thing in question: ‘The word raises up an individual idea, along with a certain custom; and that custom produces any other individual one, for which we may have occasion’ (21). The abstract idea consists of, or has as its parts, all the ideas that resemble it in the relevant respect. But these parts are not literally there, though they are there potentially, ready to recovered under the appropriate set. On this point, as we have seen, Hume in effect agrees with John Stuart Mill on the analysis of an idea.52 As Hume explains, we may recall, ‘they’ – that is, the various parts of the abstract idea – ‘are not really and in fact present to the mind, but only in power; nor do we

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draw them all out distinctly in the imagination, but keep ourselves in a readiness to survey any of them, as we may be prompted by a present design or necessity’ (20).53 The same particular idea may also represent several different classes, depending upon the resemblance relation with which the general term is associated. Thus, the image of ' ABC can represent all isosceles triangles, insofar as it resembles all isosceles triangles. The particular triangle will also have a certain colour, but we are not considering it in respect of how it resembles other particulars in respect of colour, but only how it resembles other particulars in respect of shape, and, more specifically, how it resembles others in respect of being isosceles triangles: ‘Even when the resemblance is carried beyond the objects of one sense, and the impressions of touch are found to be similar to those of sight in the disposition of their parts; this does not hinder the abstract idea from representing both, upon account of their resemblance. All abstract ideas are really nothing but particular ones, considered in a certain light; but being annexed to general terms, they are able to represent a vast variety, and to comprehend objects, which, as they are alike in some particulars, are in others vastly wide of each other’ (34). If our particular ' ABC can represent all isosceles triangles, then it could also be taken to represent all triangles, insofar as it resembles all triangles. In the former case the abstract idea is the idea of a determinate species of triangle; in the second case, the abstract idea is the idea of the determinable characteristic of being a triangle. In this way one and the same particular idea can be different abstract ideas, more or less determinate according to which resemblance relation is picked out by the general term applied to ' ABC: if we apply ‘isosceles triangle,’ we pick out one resemblance relation, the more determinate relation; while if we apply ‘triangle’ we pick out a more determinable resemblance relation. This account of abstract ideas, or of how words become general in their signification, was a major contribution of Hume to associationism and was accepted by later associationists such as John Stuart Mill. An idea of a particular thing remains, of course, a particular image. This is always finite in the sense of being limited with regard to its parts to a finite number. This is Hume’s first axiom that we have already noted, the axiom that ‘the capacity of the mind is limited, and can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity’ (26). Consider, now, the abstract idea of something consisting of two pieces of extension. This will be present in consciousness as an image of two extended things next to each other. These extended images will have some colour or

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solidity, depending upon whether we have visible or tangible extension. However, we are not considering them in respect of their colour or solidity, but only insofar as they are extended, that is, only insofar as they stand in the resemblance relation of extension to other particular images and impressions. Moreover, we are considering them as a pair. Thus, the abstract idea has as its resemblance class all pairs of extended things. We now have the power to transform this idea into an idea of a triple of extended things by adding another extended thing to it. We recognize that there is nothing about extended things that prevents us from repeating this process indefinitely. The sequence thus has the property of being indefinitely extendable, and resembles other sequences of extended things in this respect. We thus have the abstract idea of infinity: it is the class of things that resemble one another in being indefinitely extendable sequences of extended things. I would hardly wish to claim that this Locke–Hume account of the abstract idea of infinity is without its problems. (Is there any account of infinity that is without problems?) But the account does have a certain plausibility, and it is not obviously absurd. It does show that there is within the Humean framework the outlines at least of an account of the abstract idea of an infinite extension. It is an abstract idea, and therefore does not contain an actual infinity of particulars; and, again since it is abstract, it is not adequate. But it is an idea, and allows Hume reasonably to hold that we can consistently think of an infinitely extended space. With this account of abstract ideas ready to hand, Hume can turn to the traditional argument ignored by Berkeley for the existence of abstract ideas in the traditional sense, abstract forms that are independent of sensible particulars. This is the argument first presented in Plato’s Phaedo that we require a priori concepts of geometrically perfect entities. Recall the argument in the Phaedo: All we ever see are pairs of things that are imperfectly equal. In the case of sensibly equal things, Socrates asks: ‘Do they seem to us to be equal in the same sense as what is Equal itself? Is there some deficiency in their being such as the Equal, or is there not?’ It is agreed, of course, that there is some deficiency. The sensible pairs are only imperfectly equal, falling short of perfect equality. But in order to judge that these are not perfectly equal, we need the concept of perfect equality. Since ex hypothesi we do not obtain this concept from experience, we must have it prior to experience. Socrates continues: ‘Whenever someone, on seeing something, realizes that that which he now sees wants to be like some other reality but

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falls short and cannot be like that other since it is inferior, do we agree that the one who thinks that must have prior knowledge of that to which he says it is like, but deficiently so?’ It is naturally so agreed by Socrates’ interlocutors, and we arrive at the a priori concept of perfect equality.54 A similar argument can generate a priori concepts of perfect triangles, perfect circles, perfectly straight lines, and so on.55 The argument is powerful and persuasive. It has a long history subsequent to Plato, and in the early modern period it was to be restated more generally by Descartes in the Meditations, where it is argued that we can judge that we are imperfect beings only because we have the idea of a perfect being. It is this powerful argument that Berkeley ignores. Hume, in contrast, attempts to meet it head on. If we reject Plato’s argument then we are faced with the problem of accounting for our capacity to judge that ordinary lines are not perfectly straight. In order so to judge, Plato is quite correct, we need the concept of perfect linear straightness. But if all that we are ever presented with in experience are imperfectly straight lines, then how can we ever form the concept of a line that is perfectly straight? It is this question that Hume tries to answer. The story he tells – one that is eminently plausible – goes like this. We are presented in sense experience with lines that are jagged and lines that are curved. They resemble one another as lines; they share this generic characteristic. Curved lines share another sort of resemblance or similarity. Among the curved lines, there are some that are less curved than others. This relation marking degrees of resemblance is presented in experience. A straight line is one that is not curved to any degree: Nothing is more apparent to the senses than the distinction betwixt a curve and a right line; nor are there any ideas we more easily form than the ideas of these objects. But however easily we may form these ideas, it is impossible to produce any definition of them, which will fix the precise boundaries betwixt them. When we draw lines upon paper or any continued surface, there is a certain order by which the lines run along from one point to another, that they may produce the entire impression of a curve or right line; but this order is perfectly unknown, and nothing is observed but the united appearance ... But though we can give no perfect definition of these lines, nor produce any very exact method of distinguishing the one from the other, yet this hinders us not from correcting the first appearance by a more accurate consideration, and by a comparison with some

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rule, of whose rectitude, from repeated trials, we have a greater assurance. And it is from these corrections, and by carrying on the same action of the mind, even when its reason fails us, that we form the loose idea of a perfect standard to these figures, without being able to explain or comprehend it. (47)

We can thus form the abstract idea of a perfectly straight line, and use it to judge of the lines that we experience that they are imperfectly straight. Yet it is the characteristics of the imperfectly straight lines that are positive, and the idea of a perfectly straight line that is negative: a perfectly straight line is one that is smooth and lacks any degree of curvature. We thus have an empiricist account of our concepts of ideal geometrical figures. The important point is that, contrary to Plato, it is the concept of the perfectly straight line that is negative, not the concept of the imperfectly straight line. But negative or not, it is still the concept of a perfectly straight line, and in terms of it we can judge that the lines that we observe in sense experience are not perfectly straight. Hume makes the same case with regard to exact equality, the example that occurs in the Phaedo. We derive this idea by extrapolating from the process of correcting judgments with respect to inexact equalities. As for the standard of equality that involves the number of points, this arises from the observations that inequalities involve differences, that small inequalities involve small bits, and that ever smaller inequalities involve ever smaller bits: As sound reason convinces us that there are bodies vastly more minute than those which appear to the senses; and as a false reason would persuade us, that there are bodies infinitely more minute, we clearly perceive that we are not possessed of any instrument or art of measuring which can secure us from all error and uncertainty. We are sensible that the addition or removal of one of these minute parts is not discernible either in the appearance or measuring; and as we imagine that two figures, which were equal before, cannot be equal after this removal or addition, we therefore suppose some imaginary standard of equality, by which the appearances and measuring are exactly corrected, and the figures reduced entirely to that proportion. This standard is plainly imaginary. For as the very idea of equality is that of such a particular appearance, corrected by juxtaposition or a common measure, the notion of any correction beyond what we have instruments and art to make, is a mere fiction of the mind, and useless as well as incomprehensible. But though this standard be only imaginary, the

294 External World and Our Knowledge of It fiction however is very natural; nor is any thing more usual, than for the mind to proceed after this manner with any action, even after the reason has ceased, which first determined it to begin. (47)

Now, it is often said that Hume argues for, as Flew puts it, ‘the impossibility of experiential derivation’ of ideal notions.56 If such a derivation were impossible, then the ideal concepts to which Plato referred would turn out to be meaningless. That is certainly one way in which Hume could establish that the ideal concepts of the mathematicians could be nothing more than a ‘pretense.’ For as we have seen, Hume holds that ‘mathematicians ... pretend, that those ideas, which are their objects, are of so refined and spiritual a nature, that they fall not under the conception of the fancy, but must be comprehended by a pure and intellectual view, of which the superior faculties of the soul are alone capable ... But to destroy this artifice, we need but reflect on that principle so often insisted on, that all our ideas are copy’d from our impressions’ (72; Hume’s italics). But one need not construe this passage, as Flew does,57 as claiming that the ideal concepts of the mathematicians are meaningless since they are not derived from experience. In the first place, what Hume is denying, quite clearly, is that the concepts require some superior faculty, some sort of ‘pure reason.’ Indeed, he is saying that the mathematicians’ claim is that the ideal concepts do not fall under the conception of the fancy. It is this claim that Hume is denying. He is, in other words, arguing that these concepts do fall under the conception of the fancy. And that is to say, in turn, that these concepts, contrary to the mathematicians, and contrary to Flew, really are derived from experience. Nor should we construe Hume’s reference to his principle that all our ideas are derived from impressions found in sense experience as implying that the ideas of ideal forms cannot be derived from experience. If we fill in the context, this becomes evident. For what Hume makes clear is that he takes the mathematicians to be claiming that there are abstract ideas separable from the things of sense experience, exactly the sorts of entities that Berkeley’s and his own argument is designed to reject. Hume says, in fact, that ‘the same notion [as that of the mathematicians] runs through most parts of philosophy, and is principally made use of to explain our abstract ideas, and to shew how we can form an idea of a triangle, for instance, which shall neither be an isosceles nor scalenum, nor be confined to any particular length and proportion of sides’ (72).

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The appeal to experience is designed to refute abstract ideas in this sense. In this sense, there are no positive abstract ideas of such things as perfect triangles. But the argument is not designed to refute every notion of abstract ideas. Indeed, as we well know, Hume explicitly develops his own account of abstract ideas; and this account of abstract ideas is designed to be compatible with the principle that ‘all our ideas are copy’d from our impressions’ (72). And, indeed, compatible it is. So, when Hume invokes this principle, he is not drawing the conclusion that the ideal concepts of the mathematicians – and philosophers – are somehow meaningless, only that they are not abstract ideas in the traditional sense. But that is compatible with their being abstract ideas in Hume’s sense. It is clear that Hume does mean his argument to imply that there is no realm of pure forms of perfect geometrical objects construed as positive beings in the way that the beings of sensible experience are positive beings; and this means that we have no adequate ideas of such beings (in Locke’s sense of ‘adequate idea’), as we have ideas that are adequate to the things we encounter in experience. But it does not follow that we have no ideas of such geometrical figures. In fact, given the structure of Hume’s argument, aiming as it does to reply to the Platonic argument, we should be surprised if we had to conclude that Hume thought such concepts were meaningless. He is in fact arguing that they are meaningful, but that their meaning is not a matter of positive and adequate ideas. But there are also the remarks that Hume makes about the ideal standard of equality in particular, and about ideal forms in general, to the effect that these ideal concepts are ‘useless,’ ‘incomprehensible,’ ‘imaginary,’ and ‘fictions.’ If these characterizations are not carefully understood, it could be thought, as it is by Flew, that in so characterizing the concepts of the ideal forms, Hume was rejecting such concepts as meaningless, indicating ‘the impossibility of experiential derivation.’ There is no reason, however, to think that Hume meant his characterizations to imply that the concepts of ideal forms are meaningless. To see this we should look at these characterizations in detail. Begin with ‘incomprehensible.’ It is important to recognize that in the discourse of the age, to say that things that conformed to these ideal standards would be incomprehensible is not to say that the notions of such things are meaningless. This can be made clear from an examination of the way Locke uses the notion of ‘incomprehensibility’: it is clear that he does not mean by it ‘meaningless.’ Thus, Locke speaks of God insofar as He is infinite as ‘incomprehensible’:

296 External World and Our Knowledge of It It is true, that we cannot but be assured, that the great God, of whom and from whom are all things, is incomprehensibly infinite: But yet when we apply to that first and supreme being our idea of infinite, in our weak and narrow thoughts, we do it primarily in respect to his duration and ubiquity; and, I think, more figuratively to his power, wisdom, and goodness, and other attributes, which are properly inexhaustible and incomprehensible, &c. (Essay, II, xvii, 1)

Incomprehensibility is linked to the concept of infinity and is contrasted to positive ideas that are comprehensible. The notion of infinity involves the concept of endless repetition: When the mind pursues the idea of infinity, it there makes use of the ideas and repetitions of numbers, as of millions and millions of miles, or years, which are so many distinct ideas, kept best by number from running into a confused heap, wherein the mind loses itself; and when it has added together as many millions, &c. as it pleases of known lengths of space or duration, the clearest idea it can get of infinity, is the confused incomprehensible remainder of endless addible numbers, which affords no prospect of stop or boundary. (ibid., II, xvii, 9)

In contrast, a positive idea may involve repetition but the repetition is finite; it does not continue indefinitely, it is always within bounds: He that thinks he has a positive idea of infinite space, will, when he considers it, find that he can no more have a positive idea of the greatest, than he has of the least space. For in this latter, which seems the easier of the two, and more within our comprehension, we are capable only of a comparative idea of smallness, which will always be less than any one whereof we have the positive idea. All our positive ideas of any quantity, whether great or little, have always bounds; though our comparative idea, whereby we can always add to the one, and take from the other, hath no bounds: For that which remains either great or little, not being comprehended in that positive idea which we have, lies in obscurity; and we have no other idea of it, but of the power of enlarging the one, and diminishing the other, without ceasing. (ibid., II, xvii, 18)

The parts of an infinite idea = idea of something infinite are not in that idea. We therefore have no positive idea of something which is infinite. An infinite being, whether God or space, is therefore something that is

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in its positive being incomprehensible to us. This applies equally to an infinitely divisible line: He that thinks on a cube of an inch diameter, has a clear and positive idea of it in his mind, and so can frame one of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and so on till he has the idea in his thoughts of some thing very little: But yet reaches not the idea of that incomprehensible littleness which division can produce. What remains of smallness, is as far from his thoughts as when he first began; and therefore he never comes at all to have a clear and positive idea of that smallness, which is consequent to infinite divisibility. (ibid., II, xvii, 18)

But to say that something infinite is in its positive being incomprehensible to us is not to say that the concept of such a being is meaningless. To the contrary, Locke has attempted to give an account of precisely how the concept of the infinite acquires its meaning. We should, I think, read Hume in the light of these Lockean notions. So, when Hume asserts that the notions of perfect geometrical figures, or infinitely divisible lines, or an ideal standard of equality, are incomprehensible, this should not be understood as claiming that these concepts are meaningless. Rather, it means simply that these ideas involve the concept of infinity and therefore do not include positively all the parts that would be required if we were to comprehend – that is, fully comprehend – entities falling under those concepts. What we are examining is a list of terms Hume uses to characterize ideal geometrical concepts: ideal concepts are ‘useless,’ ‘incomprehensible,’ ‘imaginary,’ and ‘fictions.’ We have just dealt with ‘incomprehensible’. Turn now to the notion of these concepts being ‘useless.’ Again, the important point is to recognize that to say this does not imply that the concepts are somehow in themselves illegitimate or meaningless. The traditional doctrine of abstract ideas as found in, say, Descartes held that one could find out the truth of ordinary things by discovering their essences. The other way of finding out the truth about ordinary things is by way of ordinary sense experience. The abstract ideas of ideal forms can do neither of these things. On the one hand, they are not essences; the critique, given by Berkeley and Hume of the traditional doctrine of abstract ideas, removes this possibility. At the same time, they are inadequate to any empirically given entity. In this sense, these concepts are, contrary to the tradition, useless in discovering the truth of ordinary things. It does not follow that they are meaningless, however. We should note that Hume holds that ‘many of our complex ideas

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never had impressions that corresponded to them, and that many of our complex impressions never are exactly copied in ideas. I can imagine to myself such a city as the New Jerusalem, whose pavement is gold, and walls are rubies, though I never saw any such. I have seen Paris; but shall I affirm I can form such an idea of that city, as will perfectly represent all its streets and houses in their real and just proportions?’ (3). The idea of New Jerusalem is positive but inadequate, and, more importantly, inapplicable to things. It is therefore useless in discovering positive truths about the world. In contrast, the idea of Paris, while inadequate, has a real object falling under it and is therefore useful in stating positive truths about the world. The analogy to the ideal concepts is not exact, but the point is clear: we can have many ideas that are useless, that is, useless in our attempts to discover positive truths about the world we experience; but these concepts do not thereby turn out to be meaningless. Specifically, then, though the ideal concepts of geometrical figures and the ideal standard of equality are useless – that is, useless in our attempts to describe empirical reality – it does not follow that they cannot be derived from experience and that they are somehow empirically meaningless. In characterizing the ideal concepts as useless and incomprehensible, Hume is contrasting the account of these ideas that he has given with the account of the mathematicians and philosophers, that is, thinkers such as Plato and Descartes. The latter, in taking these concepts to be peculiarly spiritual and independent of their instances, attribute to the human reason that grasps them a capacity to rise above mere sense experience to a pellucid world of timeless Truth. Hume’s characterization is intended to place such views in a more reasonable light: the pellucid world of timeless Truth is in fact a world of abstract ideas derived from sense experience, the only world that we know, and even then, relative to this world, they are useless and incomprehensible. The claims of the philosophers are no more than illusions. Turn now to Hume’s characterization of the ideal concepts as ‘imaginary’ and ‘fictions.’ Here again he is making a contrast to the philosophers and the mathematicians such as Descartes and Plato. According to these philosophers, the ideal forms are accessible only to the ‘superior faculties of the soul,’ as Hume puts it; and the concepts of these things, far from being the products of our own thought, are rather innate, and the objects falling under these concepts are independent of us and of the world as we ordinarily experience it, existing in a ‘spiri-

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tual’ realm. But in fact, Hume is arguing, this characterization of these ideas and of our human cognitive capacities is false. They are not innate structures deriving from some spiritual realm, but rather the ordinary products of an ordinary this-worldly human faculty, the imagination. This is to locate them in our mere fancy, if you wish, and this would be to reduce the spiritual worth of humankind, at least from the viewpoint of the Platonists and the Cartesians. It would be to reduce humankind to merely mundane creatures, hardly superior to animals. But of course, once we leave implicit value judgments to one side, discourse such as this is mere rhetoric, however often we hear it – and we still hear it; and it is Hume’s program to give a naturalistic, this-worldly account of humankind. As for ‘fictions,’ we must remember that the use of this term does not necessarily imply for the eighteenth century as it does for us the notion of falsehood. It has the implication, rather, of ‘being made’: to say that an idea is a fiction is to say that it is made by us. Again, the point is to contrast Hume’s position with that of his Cartesian and Platonist opponents. For the latter, ideas of ideal forms are innate, not made by us, but deriving from an external and superior spiritual source. For Hume, in contrast, these ideas of ideal forms are made by us, they are human products of a human mind. ‘In vain,’ he says, ‘should we have recourse to the common topic, and employ the supposition of a Deity, whose omnipotence may enable him to form a perfect geometrical figure, and describe a right line without any curve or inflection’ (50). Here too, Hume is emphasizing his naturalistic program and his naturalistic vision of humankind. At the same time, Hume insists that ‘though the standard [of perfect forms and perfect equality] be only imaginary, the fiction however is very natural’ (47). It arises in the first place from the mind’s capacity to carry on indefinitely certain processes. But this does not account for the confusion of the mathematicians and the philosophers to attribute to the fiction a reality that it does not have. Here we can have recourse to a point that Hume makes somewhat later in the Treatise. This is the point that two relations that resemble each other can, by virtue of the fact that resemblance relations generate associations, come to be associated with each other in a single (complex) idea. Hume considers a case where ‘there are two relations, and both of them resemblances’; in such a situation, ‘these resemblances we are apt to confound with each other; and it is natural we should, according to this very reasoning’ (204n). A similar mechanism can be seen to be at work in the case of the ideal

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forms of figures and equality. In these case, there are pairs of ideas. There are, first, the empirical figures of which we have determinate and positive ideas. Then there are the ideal equivalents of them. Thus, for example, there is the empirical standard of equality, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the ideal standard of equality. Here we have two abstract ideas. But these abstract ideas resemble each other in both being standards of equality. The mind is therefore very naturally led to confuse these two ideas with each other. Such confusion would lead it to attribute the reality and utility of the determinate and positive idea to the ideal form, which lacks those qualities. The ideal standard of equality thus comes to be thought to have a reality, a positive quality, and a utility that it in fact lacks. This would hold for the other ideal forms besides equality, attributing to these, too, a reality that they do not in fact have.58 This confusion is very natural, and accounts for how the basic, though confused, thoughts of the philosophers naturally arise in human thought. In a similar way, the confused notion of an objective necessary connection arises from a confusion of the two abstract ideas of causation that Hume gives in his two definitions of ‘cause.’ We may conclude that for Hume our concepts of ideal geometrical forms and processes are thus compatible with empiricism; it is simply not true that he defends the thesis that ‘really there is no such creature as an ideal geometrical notion.’59 To the contrary, as we have seen, Hume provides a doctrine of abstract ideas in terms of which we can quite reasonably hold that such concepts can be experientially derived. Furthermore, we can even state propositions involving these concepts, and deduce others from them. For example, we can assume Euclid’s axioms and deduce the Pythagorean theorem. Neither the axioms nor the theorems deduced therefrom will be true, since the ideal forms are useless so far as concerns empirical truth, the only truth that we can discern. As Hume puts this point: ‘As the ultimate standard of [perfect geometrical figures] is deriv’d from nothing but the senses and imagination, ’tis absurd to talk of any perfection beyond what these faculties can judge of’ (29). Truth – that is, truth about the world in which we live our lives – is matter-of-fact truth and is discerned by our senses. There are no transcendent forms or essences, as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and other metaphysicians argued, that lead us to the conclusion that, to discover the truth about the world, our ordinary world, we must turn to a realm beyond this world, to a immaterial world of infinitely perfect

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beings, of lines that are infinitely straight and infinitely divisible, of points and figures that are infinitely small, of line segments which are exactly equal, not different in length down to any bit however infinitely small. To be sure, ‘a false reason wou’d perswade us, that there are bodies infinitely more minute’ (17). Nonetheless, it is also true that we can notice that these propositions, while not exactly true of empirical reality, are still to a good degree approximations to the truth about sensible things. Like Aristotle, Hume in effect distinguishes pure and applied geometry. As Aristotle says, there are difficulties in applied mathematics in contrast to the mathematics that deals with abstract objects, perfect forms or essences: ‘There will be difficulties in physics which are not present in mathematics; for mathematics deals with an abstract and physics with a more concrete object.’ This is because the presence of the attributes of bodies introduces complications absent from pure mathematics: ‘There are many attributes necessarily present in physical bodies which are necessarily absent from indivisibles‘ (Aristotle, De Caelo, 299a2ff). The real world of everyday life introduces complications that create conditions in which there are deviations from the ideal. In this sense, if the propositions of pure mathematics are taken to be propositions of applied geometry, then these are simply and literally false – but we must add, they are approximately true of the objects of the ordinary world. Because of the last, we can therefore use the propositions about ideal entities to describe the ordinary world – we as it were make them empirical by recognizing their limitations. At the same time, we can hold that these propositions hold exactly with regard to the ideal forms – provided that we don’t take this to mean that these propositions are exactly true of some abstract reality beyond the ordinary reality of sense experience. In particular, then, Hume is consistent with the view of the Treatise when he asserts in the Enquiry that ‘Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is any where existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths, demonstrated by Euclid, would for ever retain their certainty and evidence’ (E 25). There is thus no contradiction between the position of the Treatise and that of the Enquiry, contrary to what some have claimed.60 Finally, let us turn to infinite divisibility. Among the propositions involving ideal concepts are those which concern infinite divisibility. These are indeed, like the other propositions about ideal geometrical forms, useless and incomprehensible:

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‘The idea which we form of any finite quality, is not infinitely divisible, but that by proper distinctions and separations we may run up this idea to inferior ones, which will be perfectly simple and indivisible. In rejecting the infinite capacity of the mind, we suppose it may arrive at an end in the division of its ideas; nor are there any possible means of evading the evidence of this conclusion’ (18). Hence, the propositions, if taken to be about the extension that we really experience, are simply false. Nonetheless, we can hold that these propositions, too, hold exactly with regard to the ideal forms – provided that we don’t take this to mean that these propositions are exactly true of some abstract reality beyond the ordinary reality of sense experience. Our idea of space, understood as an idea that describes extension as we experience it, is limited. This limitation is one that derives from our cognitive capacities, our capacities to distinguish within some part of extension further parts. But we can think of divisions greater in number than we can make in our imagination with parts smaller than those of which we can form images: When you tell me of the thousandth and ten thousandth part of a grain of sand, I have a distinct idea of these numbers and of their different proportions; but the images which I form in my mind to represent the things themselves, are nothing different from each other, nor inferior to that image, by which I represent the grain of sand itself, which is supposed so vastly to exceed them. (27)

Indeed, we can form ideas of parts that are smaller than the parts – the extensionless parts – that we are given in our experience of space: A microscope or telescope, which renders them [minute parts of things – e.g., parts of delicate bodies, or of distant bodies (27)] visible, produces not any new ray, but only spreads those which always flow’d from them; and by that means both gives parts to impressions, which to the naked eye appear simple and uncompounded, and advances to a minimum, what was formerly imperceptible. (29; Hume’s italics)

We can think of perceptual minima as having parts that are imperceptible. Parts such as these are incomprehensible – we cannot form ideas, that is, images, of them. Yet we can think them. They are, therefore, abstract ideas, in Hume’s sense, and, moreover, abstract relative ideas. These parts of minimal sensibles are related as part to whole and as

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similar in respect of quality. We therefore think of them in terms of relative ideas of entities that resemble things given in sense – where a relative idea is to be understood roughly in Russellian terms as definite descriptions. We require the idea of infinite divisibility. Well, we have the idea of parts many times inferior in size to the parts that are given in sense: ‘I have,’ we saw Hume say, ‘a distinct idea of these numbers and of their different proportions’ (27). One runs into a problem only if one attempts to form of them a concrete idea; the problem is that the parts are smaller than the minima visibles: ‘The images which I form in my mind to represent the things themselves, are nothing different from each other, nor inferior to that image, by which I represent the grain of sand itself, which is supposed so vastly to exceed them’ (28). So, one can form ideas of very small parts of minima visibles (or tangibles), parts that themselves are not perceptible. For Hume, therefore, there is no problem in our forming an abstract relative idea of a great many parts of a minimum visible. What about an infinity of parts? Any minimum visible, and therefore any part of extension, is divisible – ideally and in thought but not in reality – into a large number of imperceptible parts – a large but still finite number. Is it possible to think or suppose that they are thinkable as extensions that are infinitely divisible? When Hume rejects infinite divisibility, he is rejecting the notion that our images can be indefinitely divided into an actual infinity of parts: ‘In rejecting the infinite capacity of the mind, we suppose it may arrive at an end in the division of its ideas; nor are there any possible means of evading this conclusion’ (27). Absent such an idea (image) actually infinitely divided, we cannot comprehend an infinitely divisible extension. But our idea of imperceptible parts is an abstract relative idea – an idea that enables us to think but not to comprehend any large numbers of imperceptible parts. We are supposing the mind to perceptually divide a piece of visible or tangible extension into a large number of imperceptible parts. We can suppose the number of dividings to go on to become much larger. Can the process go on indefinitely? (It is, remember, a process that occurs in thought only.) Recall Locke on the infinity of God. (Descartes makes similar points.) The infinity of God is incomprehensible, he argues: ‘The great God,’ he says, is ‘incomprehensibly infinite’ (Essay, II, xvii, 1) As for our idea of space as infinitely in the sense of indefinitely large, this derives, he argues, from our capacity to repeat as often as we

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want our idea of a magnitude: ‘By the power we find in ourselves, of repeating, as often as we will, any idea of space, we get the idea of immensity’ (ibid., II, xvii, 5). This power is the original of our idea of infinity: ‘Our idea of infinity [is] got from the power we observe in ourselves of repeating without end our own ideas’ (ibid., II, xvii, 6). We can have an idea of an infinity of parts provided we have a power to divide and there is nothing to prevent the repeated exercise of this power. But our capacity to exercise this power in reality is limited. It is limited by our organs of sense: they prevent the division in experience of a piece of extension into more than a finite number of minima visibles or tangibles. But we are abstracting from the limitations that our sensible awareness of the world imposes upon us. There is therefore nothing that could prevent ‘repeating as often as we will’ the act of dividing a piece of extension. In other words, in the realm of abstract ideas, we can conceive of a piece of space or extension as infinitely divisible. In this sense, while Hume does argue that sensible extension consists of a finite number of extensionless points, he also holds that propositions about infinite divisibility are meaningful, and, within their limitations, true – that is, approximately true of the ordinary world, and also true, wholly true, in the unreal world defined by the ideal concepts. In this sense, Hume is not a strict finitist. I do not want to claim that Hume’s account of infinite divisibility in terms of his account of abstract ideas is free from problems. There clearly are problems with the notion of indefinite repetition. But these problems Hume’s view shares with that of Descartes and Locke, from whom he took the notion. There are also problems, more unique to Hume, with regard to his account of abstract ideas, which he develops as an account alternative to the accounts of his predecessors. I do claim to have shown, however, first, that Hume is not to be interpreted as someone who is by intention a strict finitist in geometry; and second, that Hume has provided himself with sufficient analytical apparatus to defend, with prima facie reasonableness, the (anti–strict finitist) proposition that (ideal) extension is infinitely divisible. The point here, once again, it seems, is that a careful reading of Hume’s texts, together with an attempt to place them in their historical context, reveals a Hume who is more subtle than permitted by the usual reading, which treats him as a crude empiricist and nominalist. Empiricist and nominalist he may be, but he is hardly crude.

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More importantly, we see that he has in detail a case against the argument of the Phaedo that the truth of the world of ordinary experience must be found in a world of forms and essences that is perfect and that transcends the world of ordinary experience. Understanding the world and ourselves does not require our human reason to transcend the world of ordinary experience. In fact, there is no such transcendent world and no reason that takes us outside our ordinary world to one that transcends it; nor are there any reasons to suppose that such a world exists or to suppose that there is a reason in any such sense. The world is the world of the empiricist and not that of the rationalists or the Platonists, and people are wholly of this empiricist world, and not demigods, not beings half in this world and half in a world that transcends it. To be sure, some feel the need to suppose there is a transcendent realm of perfect forms and beings, and to suppose that we have cognitive access to such a world, and that such cognitive access is essential to our understanding of ourselves and of the world in which we live. But, given Hume’s arguments, such cognitive aims cannot be fulfilled. It is therefore irrational to have such aims. Instead of trying to achieve such aims, we ought instead to try to understand why we have such irrational aspirations.

4 Hume’s Defence of Empirical Science

When Hume argues on the basis of his Principle of Acquaintance (PA) that causal generalizations are nothing more than matter-of-fact regularities, he is often accused of falling into a Pyrrhonistic scepticism, and of adopting the position that empirical science can have no rational justification. But these claims are just wrong. It is incorrect to construe Hume as a Pyrrhonian sceptic. Or so we are arguing in the present study and so I have argued elsewhere.1 To the contrary, Hume in fact offers a detailed defence of the thesis that the norms of scientific inference2 – that is, the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ – are reasonable rules to follow in forming our beliefs.3 Conforming to these rules in its formation of causal beliefs is a strategy that the understanding employs in order to satisfy the end of curiosity (271).4 Science is a reasonable because, so far as we can, within our fallible limits, discover, it is the strategy of belief formation that is the best means of achieving our end of truth, insofar as the latter is, within our fallible limits, attainable.5 Curiosity, or the love of truth, is important for Hume.6 This end of curiosity that justifies science as reasonable is the only end that moves the academic sceptic.7 But of course we are in fact moved by many other ends, too. Thus we want to feel comfortable in the face of natural terrors,8 and we wish to have a stable social order.9 In order to achieve either of these, it may well be that we should cultivate religious beliefs, which, however, are not justified by scientific evidence. When these other desires are added to that of curiosity (Natural History, p. 47), it may well be that strategies of belief formation other than the scientific may be more reasonable to adopt. Perhaps superstition will turn out, after all, to be more reasonable than science. But of

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course Hume wants to defend science against superstition. Just how does he do this? The aim of the present chapter is to lay out the structure of Hume’s full defence of empirical science, against scepticism and Cartesianism on the one hand, and against superstition on the other. The upshot will be, in effect, that Hume is much more correctly viewed as attempting a positive defence of Enlightenment ideals than as a merely negative sceptic. Section (A) sketches Hume’s defence of causal inference against both sceptics and Cartesians. Section (B) sketches Hume’s defence of the inductive experimental method, or, what is the same, of scientific rationality relative to the end of curiosity or love of truth. Section (C) sketches Hume’s defence of science against superstition. A. Hume against Rationalism Peter Jones, in his important book, Hume’s Sentiments,10 has drawn our attention to the Ciceronian roots of certain of Hume’s positions, and it will be useful to begin with these. For Cicero,11 probability is sufficient for action and practice (Academica, pp. 593, 601). In contrast, absolute certainty is not necessary for action (p. 603), nor is demonstrative knowledge necessary for arts and crafts (p. 653). But probability is necessary for action and for the arts and crafts: if, taken literally, we understand nothing, practical life collapses (p. 655), and to that extent we do need knowledge (p. 655). Where there is probability, the wise man will not be at a loss about what to do (Natura Deorum, p. 15, Academica, p. 609). The dogmatists in their disagreements provide no guidance for life (Natura Deorum, p. 15, Academica, p. 611), but since it is impossible to dispense with all standards (Natura Deorum, p. 15), the rule of probability is adopted as the most reasonable, that is, the best means for getting on with the task of living (p. 15). When Cicero asserts that all philosophy has a practical bearing (p. 9), he is in effect arguing for the primacy of practical over theoretical reason; and justifying the adoption of moderate academic scepticism as his ethics of belief: adopting these norms rather than those will be more conducive to human happiness. In particular, he proposes contrary to the dogmatists that the norms need not demand metaphysical certainty, but against the Pyrrhonians, too, that some assent is required. The result is the moderate ethics of belief of the academics. As Árdal12 has emphasized, there is a sense in which the primary

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notion of reason in Hume is reasonableness:13 moderation is a theme not only for morality but for reason, not only for ethics but for the ethics of belief.14 But Jones brings out far more clearly than does Árdal the Ciceronian idea in Hume that theoretical reason is subservient to practical reason (Hume’s Sentiments, p. 175). As Hume put it in his well-known phrase: ‘reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions’ (415). Or, as he put it at the end of the Treatise: ‘the most abstract speculations concerning human nature, however cold and unentertaining, become subservient to practical morality’ (621). Hume thus follows the Stoics, as endorsed on this point by Cicero (De Finibus, p. 253), in taking reason to be a virtue or, more accurately, taking conformity to the truth strategies of the understanding to be a virtue. If mind at its best is rational, that amounts to saying it is virtuous: ‘The happiest disposition of mind is the virtuous; or, in other words, that which leads to action and employment, renders us sensible to the social passions, steals the heart against the assaults of fortune, reduces the affections to a just moderation, makes our own thoughts an entertainment to us, and inclines us rather to the pleasures of society and conversation than to those of the senses.’15 ‘Art and philosophy’ are valued for its ‘chief triumph,’ that ‘it insensibly refines the temper, and it points out to us those dispositions which we should endeavour to attain, by a constant bent of mind, and by repeated habit.’16 But these habits include the habits of causal inference (Treatise, p. 172) and also the habits of how we form habits of causal inference (133, 173–4). The latter include habits that lead to bad habits of causal inferences; these are the principles of ‘unphilosophical probability’ (143ff). But, Hume argues, what we should cultivate are the norms of science for our causal beliefs (104, 135ff., 173–4) rather than other norms – for example, those of ‘unphilosophical probability’ (153), or those of the superstitious (115), or those of persons who simply accept what is most comfortable (Treatise, Book I, Part iii, Section 13; cf. p. 153).17 But how exactly does Hume argue that scientific reason is the most virtuous – that it is these strategies rather than those of, for example, superstition that are the most reasonable? Let us see. The world in which we live and which we experience by means of our senses is one in which distinct events are such that affirming one is consistent with denying the existence of another; facts are logically independent of one another (92). Dogmatists proclaim that causal knowledge as a matter of demonstrative inference is reasonable; we ought to aim at incorrigible judgments. But such judgments are possible only in a world in which there are objective necessary connections:

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only if the effect is necessarily tied to or contained in the cause can knowledge of the cause yield incorrigible knowledge of the effect. But in Hume’s world, the world given to us in sensible experience, there are no such necessary connections. In this world, then, there can be no incorrigible knowledge of causes. In the absence of objective necessary connections, all that one has in the world of ordinary experience is regularity, and our grasp of regularities on the basis of experience is always a matter of inferring what holds in a population from what holds in a sample. And that is always fallible. So it is a matter of opinion and probability and not a matter of knowledge. Taken philosophically, to deny the possibility of demonstrative knowledge is to fall short of our cognitive ideal, and given the absence in the world of objective necessary connections it is inevitable that we fall short: genuine knowledge is impossible, we cannot escape scepticism. To be sure, ordinary arts and science can get by with probability, as Cicero says and as Hume grants. But probability is always second best relative to incorrigibility. If we were able to take our scepticism seriously, then we would, in the light or knowing nothing, be able to do nothing. But, Hume argues, nature, human nature, does move us nonetheless to act, it does require us to get on with living – it does move us to get on with living in spite of the inevitable scepticism – and nature therefore moves us to rely on opinion and probability, in spite of the inevitable irrationality of such reliance. Popkin, Passmore, and Kemp Smith18 therefore suggest that, while Hume has a reply to the sceptics sufficient for purposes of getting on with the task of living, he does not, in the end, succeed in establishing the rationality of the habit of making causal inferences. As Popkin puts it: ‘if one is a Pyrrhonian, as Hume is, one will be as dogmatic and opinionated as one is naturally inclined to be’ (‘Hume’s Pyrrhonism,’ p. 95) – dogmatic and opinionated because one must be, but not rational, for being dogmatic and being opinionated are hardly cognitive virtues! Hume does not succeed in establishing the rationality of causal inference, but merely its unavoidability; to that extent, according to Popkin and Kemp Smith, Hume remains a sceptic. Hume, however, wants more than this; the conclusion that he wishes to draw is that ‘it is only proper we shou’d in general indulge our inclination in the most extreme philosophical researches’ (273; italics added). To this end Hume used the converse of the principle that ought implies can, namely, the principle that must implies ought,19 the principle that the reasonable man will make a virtue out of necessity. Precisely because one must make causal inferences, it is only reasonable or proper that one do so, fallible though

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those inferences may be.20 Hume’s fallibilism is a ‘moderate scepticism’ (224), but it is a scepticism that not only is not irrational but also is reasonable. Jones brings out well how Hume uses the necessity of making causal inferences in order to argue for the rationality of that habit (Hume’s Sentiments, pp. 151, 162, 173, 174–5).21 Lenz, Capaldi, and myself22 have previously argued the same case. Cicero holds, with the Stoics and J.S. Mill,23 that any proposed end must fit with human appetites; if we cannot be motivated to pursue a proposed end, then it cannot be a genuine end (De Finibus, p. 409). Virtues are rooted in human instincts (pp. 121, 233). For this reason, we need a knowledge – causal knowledge – of human nature in order to discover the human virtues (p. 133). Reason is a virtue (p. 293), and to argue this requires us to argue back to the instincts that require us to think in accordance with the patterns of causal inference. Hume undertakes this Ciceronian task, and by relating it to Cicero’s writings, Jones succeeds in bringing out – as Lenz and Capaldi do not – precisely how the necessity of the habit of making causal inferences makes of that habit a cognitive virtue. So far so good. But it should be pointed out that, contrary to what Jones holds (Hume’s Sentiments, pp. 165, 175), there is nothing Kantian in this, just as elsewhere in Hume’s theory of mental activity there is nothing Kantian.24 The natural motive of curiosity leads us to aim to understand the world in terms of causal relations, that is, matter-offact regularities. Mere experience alone is not enough to satisfy our cognitive interests: one also needs judgment. There is nothing in this positivist-empiricist position that justifies construing Humean judgments as somehow requiring an underlying Kantian account of mental activity.25 Malebranche26 distinguishes ideas of sense from those of imagination (Recherche, I, 17); this corresponds to Hume’s distinction between impressions and ideas. The imagination is the mind’s capacity to make absent things present (I, 86). The distinctness with which one imagines objects depends on the traces made by animal spirits in the brain (I, 87– 8). In all practical sciences, including morality and politics – that is, in ‘la science de l’homme’ (I, 111; II, 485), we must have recourse to probabilities; in the nature of the case we can do no better than that, though judgments of probability do often have the psychological force of demonstrations (I, 17). The basis of the non-demonstrative inferences of practical life are what Malebranche calls ‘natural judgments’ ( jugements naturels). These are judgments that relate sensations to one another by relating them to the bodies that cause them (I, 37–8, 49). They are natural because they are not within our control: ‘J’ai appellé naturels ces

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sortes de jugements pour marquer qu’ils se font en nous, sans nous, et même malgré nous’ (I: 52). These natural judgments are essential to life (I, 61): ‘Sans eux on ne peut rendre raison de nos diverse sensations, puisqu’elles les supposent et qu’elles en dépendent nécessairement’ (III, 222). Nonetheless, such judgments are fallible and sometime mislead us (I, 37). Jones (Hume’s Sentiments, pp. 23ff) brings out Hume’s indebtedness to this doctrine of Malebranche: causal judgments, habits of causal inference, just are natural judgments in the Malebranchean sense and play the same role in practical life and the science of man (human being).27 Yet again, however, Jones misses an important difference. Malebranche followed the Cartesian line that in knowledge, judgment involved ideas so clear and instinct as to exclude all possibility of doubt (Recherche, II, 158). Once this standard is accepted the natural and necessary but fallible judgments of everyday life are inevitably all judged to be second best. The Port Royal Art of Thinking28 also accepts the Cartesian standard of clarity and distinctness that demands incorrigibility and excludes all possibility of doubt (Art of Thinking, pp. 294, 335). But while allowing for probable judgments falling short of this standard (pp. 340–4, 350–7), it clearly condemns them as second best (pp. 337, 342).29 Hume rejects this standard of clarity and distinctness and incorrigibility; he therefore rejects any judgment that natural causal inferences ought, because fallible, be judged as second best.30 For the substance tradition, certainty of inferences from samples to populations is achieved through a grasp of the essences or natures of those things which determine the objective necessary connections among the events in the world of ordinary experience.31 Causal activity of a thing in accordance with its essence guarantees that always in similar circumstances it will again behave in similar ways. Hume of course argues vigorously against this view (Treatise, p. 57ff), adopting arguments from Malebranche (158). Indeed, he almost quotes Malebranche verbatim (III, 124), as pointed out by Jones (Hume’s Sentiments, p. 24). Malebranche argued that there are no objective necessary connections other than those of God’s causal activity: ‘Les causes naturelles ne sont point de véritable causes ... Il n’y a donc que Dieu qui soit véritable cause, et qui ait véritablement le puissance de mouvoir les corps’ (Recherche, II, 200, 203). Hume refers to this ‘Cartesian’ doctrine (Treatise, p. 159) and argues that it is untenable (160): if, as these philosophers hold, there are no objective necessary connections among bodies because we have no impression of such a connection, then neither do we have any idea of it – ideas being derived from impressions – and there-

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fore we cannot have an idea of God that includes within it the idea of causal power or activity.32 ‘We never therefore have any idea of power’ (161). Objectively considered, then, there is no distinction between an accidental generalization and a causal generalization: both are of the simple form ‘all A are B.’ This is Hume’s first definition of ‘cause’: ‘An object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are plac’d in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects, that resemble the latter’ (172; italics in original). This is ‘cause’ defined as a philosophical relation (94, 170). All causation is therefore regularity. Objectively, then, there is no distinction between causation and accidental patterns: all is regularity. But, as we have emphasized earlier, for Hume there is a distinction between post hoc and propter hoc. As Hume puts it, ‘There is a necessary connexion to be taken into consideration’ (177; cf. 155). In the substance tradition the distinction is grounded objectively: connections propter hoc are a matter of objective necessities, connections post hoc are not. But, as Hume has argued, there are no objective necessary connections. The distinction between post hoc and propter hoc therefore cannot be objective; it is rather, Hume argues, subjective. This is the thrust of the second definition of ‘cause,’ which asserts that a generalization is causal just in case we are prepared to use it in counterfactual assertions and in predictions: ‘An object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it in the imagination, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other’ (172; italics in original). This is ‘cause’ defined as a natural relation (97, 170). The idea of necessary connection, then, which is an ingredient in the idea of cause, is the (acquired) propensity of the mind to make inferences in the case of causal connections – a propensity that is absent in the case of accidental generalities (167).33 (Such determination is itself a case of causal determination, and is also, of course, subject to Humean analysis [169].)34 The subjective attitude located by the second definition has two aspects. On the one hand, when the hypothesis is causal, ‘the impression of the one ... form[s] a more lively idea of the other.’ So, for example, if we have an impression of a light switch being turned to the On position, then there is formed for that reason a more “lively” idea of the light coming on – that is, a belief or expectation that the latter will occur. Thus, when the hypothesis is causal it is used to predict. On the other hand, when the hypothesis is causal, then ‘the idea of the one deter-

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mines the mind to form the idea of the other.’ So, for example, if we have an idea of a switch being turned to the On position – if, in other words, we have the idea that if the switch were to be On – , then we have the idea of the light coming on – then, in other words, we have the idea that the light would be on. Thus, when the hypothesis is causal or lawful we use it to support the assertion of contrary-to-fact or subjunctive conditionals. In contrast to the causal generality, ‘whenever the light switch is turned to the On position, then the light goes on,’ we have the accidental generality that ‘all the coins in my pocket are copper.’ We do not use the latter to predict that the next coin in my pocket will be copper – it might, after all, be a nickel. Nor do we use it to support the assertion of subjunctive conditionals to the effect that if this coin in my hand were in my pocket, then it would be copper – for the coin in my hand is nickel, and merely putting it in my pocket will not bring it about that it is copper. So the difference between that lawful generality and the accidental generality lies in our subjective attitudes, not in anything objective:35 lawful regularities are those which subjectively we use to predict and to support subjunctive or contrary-to-fact conditionals.36 The idea of ‘cause’ is thus really two abstract ideas, one the idea of a natural relation, the other the idea of a philosophical relation. Now, for Hume, as we have discussed in chapter 1, an abstract idea is a resemblance class of ideas and impressions with which a general term has become associated (20). Furthermore, as we have also discussed in chapter 1, if two ideas closely resemble each other then we are naturally liable to confuse the two (cf. 146); in fact, the resemblance between a resemblance among impressions and an act of surveying such a resemblance is sufficient to lead to a confusion between the two resemblances (204n), that is, the two abstract ideas. This is what happens in the case of the two ideas of causation: the resemblance between them leads to their being confused with each other and fused into a single (incoherent) idea of an objective necessary connection. This is the origin of the ‘obscurity and error [that] begin ... to take place ... when we transfer the determination of the thought to external objects, and suppose any real intelligible connexion betwixt them; that being a quality that can only belong to the mind that considers them’ (168). The Cartesians, then, and the Aristotelians by a natural tendency of the human mind,37 are led to form the confused idea of an objective necessary connection. On this basis they convince themselves that absolute certainty is attainable:

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once we grasp the objective necessary connections, we will have knowledge of causal connections that is infallible, excluding all possibility of doubt. Clear philosophy (Hume’s) carefully distinguishes among ideas, even those which we naturally tend to confuse. Once this is done we recognize that objective necessary connections are non-sense, that all causal judgments are therefore fallible, and that the Cartesian standard of absolute or infallible certainty is an illusion, humanly unattainable. There are no objective necessary connections, and therefore, given that we are not omniscient, all our causal judgments will inevitably be fallible. Yet we must make them. The Cartesian proposes a cognitive standard of absolute certainty. That standard is impossible to attain. Yet we continue to make causal judgments because we must. By the Cartesian standard, we are all, all the time, irrational. But the reasonable thing to do is make a virtue of necessity. Hume argues: must implies ought. Goals, including cognitive goals, must be adapted to the means available. The Cartesian standard ought to be rejected by reasonable people precisely because of the impossibility of its fulfilment. The plausibility of the Cartesian norm arises only because humans are gripped naturally, but nonetheless confusedly, by the idea of objective necessary connection. Once clarity of thought forces us to reject the latter as confused, and once we realize that making fallible causal judgments is, as a matter of fact, part of the human condition, then we recognize both that settling for fallibility is reasonable and that – contrary to Descartes, the Port Royal logicians, and Malebranche – there is no (reasonable) higher standard which could justify condemning the fallible judgments of everyday life as somehow second best. It is clear from all this that Hume has in fact a perfectly adequate reply to the following criticism by Passmore: ‘What is commonly done, we philosophers shall also do, not because we want to, or because we ought to, but just because this is how we are made. The “answer” to scepticism is not a philosophical argument but a psychological fact’ (Hume’s Intentions, p. 149). Passmore simply misses the point that it is Hume’s intention to establish that it is ‘only proper we shou’d in general indulge our inclination in the most extreme philosophical researches’ (273; italics added) – it is proper, that is, the right or reasonable thing to do. Thus, contrary to Passmore, it is what we ought to do. Hume argues for this ought on the basis of the psychological fact to which Passmore refers. Passmore simply fails to notice that to hold that something is a psychological fact is compatible with holding that it is also what ought

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to be. He misses, too, that an inference from is to ought is reasonable (though not deductive, of course), provided that the is is a must. As for whether we want to make such inferences, it all depends. If we must make fallible causal judgments yet adopt the Cartesian norm that beliefs short of absolute certainty ought to be rejected, then our human nature will force us to think contrary to the cognitive goal we have posed for ourselves; our human nature will therefore be felt to be coercive.38 But if we adapt our cognitive goals to the means available, reject the Cartesian norm, and accept that it is only proper or reasonable to continue making fallible causal judgments, then our human nature (how we are made) will simply be leading us to do what we have come to do. For the Humean, if we are reasonable we will want to do what our human nature says we must do, and because we must do it, we will also be wanting to do what we ought to do.39 Passmore’s criticism has force only for those still gripped by the illusion of objective necessary connection, and by the illusion that the Cartesian standard is a reasonable one. Reject those illusions and Passmore’s objection is without force, for contrary to what he suggests, in doing as we must we shall be doing as we ought and doing what we want. By focusing on where Hume is similar to Malebranche and not equally on where he differs, Jones misses bringing out as adequately as it should be the full strength of Hume’s reply to criticisms of the sort Passmore raises. B. Hume’s Defence of Scientific Inference The argument against the Cartesian is but the first step of Hume’s defence of empirical science. The first step in a world without objective necessary connections, and in which we are not omniscient, justifies causal inference as such. But it does not justify one sort of causal inference in contrast to another. It does not, for example, justify science – inference in accordance with the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (173–4) – rather than inferences of superstition and prejudice. The second step in Hume’s argument is to justify, among all species of causal inference, inference in accordance with the rules of experimental science, and at the same time to reject other forms of causal inference.40 This is a central part of Hume’s enterprise, laid out in the Introduction, above, in defending science and the Enlightenment against religion in general and Christianity in particular Jones notes that Hume aims to argue against the extremes of supersti-

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tion and religious belief (Hume’s Sentiments, p. 168). He notes that the beliefs Hume is concerned to argue against have their roots in the imagination (Treatise, pp. 175–6). Philosophy, that is, science, ‘which contents itself with assigning new causes and principles to the phaenomena, which appear in the visible world,’ is much less ‘bold in its systems and hypotheses’ than superstition, which ‘opens a world of its own, and presents us with scenes, and beings, and objects, which are altogether new’ (271). Hume ‘makes bold to recommend philosophy, and does not scruple to give it preference to superstition of every kind of denomination’ (271). However, superstition remains a species of causal inference where scientific inference is another species. The argument from ‘must’ to ‘ought’ establishes only that to make causal inferences is cognitively virtuous; it does not establish that one species is to be preferred to another. It therefore does not establish that among causal judgments only those are cognitively virtuous the formation of which is in conformity with the rules of the scientific method, the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ So Jones, like Lenz and Capaldi, since he adds nothing further to the ‘must implies ought’ inference, apparently thinks that that justifies philosophy (i.e., science). But in this he is wrong. Note, however, that Cicero at no point undertakes to justify a set of specific cognitive norms. Cicero argues that we must make causal inferences, fallible though they may be, since arts and crafts (all practical life) depend on our making such inferences. He justifies this practice against dogmatists and Pyrrhonians. That leaves many possibilities, however, and unlike Hume, Cicero does not try to further delimit the possibilities. Neither, by the way, does Wittgenstein. The latter, like Hume, argues from ‘must’ to ‘ought’ in order to justify causal inference,41 but unlike Hume he is not concerned to condemn religion as irrational; but for further discussion of Wittgenstein, we come to that below. Had Jones been concerned to bring out differences as well as similarities between Cicero and Hume, he would have discovered the important gap in his account of how Hume justifies philosophy as against superstition. Also missing from Cicero is mention of a motive of curiosity for knowledge.42 We need knowledge, and therefore reason, according to Cicero; but just as the Epicurean, in his account of virtues such as temperance and friendship, treats these simply as means, not as ends, and fails to provide what the Stoic insists is essential – to wit, a non-prudential motive to virtue – so Cicero provides no non-prudential motive for searching after knowledge. Hume, in contrast, devotes a whole section (Treatise, II, iii, 10, pp. 448ff.) to this motive. The two points where Hume differs from Cicero are connected.

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Curiosity moves us to seek knowledge of matter-of-fact generalities. The ‘must’ to ‘ought’ inference establishes that habits of causal inference, fallible though they may be, are the rational means to employ in trying to satisfy this interest. In order to justify the ‘rules by which to judge of cause and effects,’ Hume presents an elaborate argument in Book I, Part iii, of the Treatise to the effect that among all the possibilities – including, among others, induction by simple enumeration (148ff.); choosing to accept judgments according to whether we want them to be true (153); and judging causes according to the rule that if A is like B then A causes B (111ff., 148) – the rules of science alone can, within the fallibilist limits that the world imposes, lead to judgments that satisfy the motive of curiosity. I have given the details of this argument elsewhere,43 so we need not go over it here. If Hume’s argument justifying the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ is even plausible, then he has an adequate reply to those who, like Stroud, accuse him of offering, in his second definition of ‘cause’ (172), as a definition that distinguishes propter hoc from post hoc, an account that is ‘subjectivistic’ in the sense of denying any objective basis to the claim that a connection is propter hoc rather than post hoc.44 Now in the first place, Hume is explicitly offering a subjectivistic account of causation: to judge that A’s cause B’s just is to assert in a specific way the matter-of-fact generality that all A’s are B’s – to wit, to assert that it is usable for purposes of prediction and support of the assertion of counterfactual conditionals. After all, having argued against any objectivist account of the distinction between post hoc and propter hoc, Hume had little choice but to locate the difference as one of the cognitive attitude. In the second place, however, Hume does distinguish between when a generality is worthy of being asserted causally and when it is not. A generality, he holds, is worthy of assertion as a causal relation just in case its assertion has been caused by reasoning that conforms to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ Whether or not reasoning conforms to these standards is an objective matter. Furthermore, Hume also argues, as we have said, that so disciplining our reasoning as to conform to these norms is the best way available to us to satisfy the passion of curiosity. Whether or not conforming to the norms of experimental science is most conducive to satisfying our love of truth is an objective matter. Thus, although the distinction between accidental generalities and causal connections is subjective, whether or not a generality ought to be asserted as a causal connection, is an objective matter. If we take as given Hume’s case that

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there are no objective necessary connections, then this does, it seems to me, fully answer Stroud’s charge that Hume makes determination of causal regularities subjectivistic in the sense of a matter of whimsy – that is, subjectivistic in the sense of denying that there can be any objective justification for making any causal assertion. What Stroud fails to note is the simple point that, while the distinction between post hoc and propter hoc may lie in the way in which the two are asserted, and may therefore be subjective, that is compatible with the notion that whether or not a generality is worthy of being asserted as a causal connection is an objective matter. Reason is thus, according to Hume, reflective. It has a goal: matter-of-fact truth. The cognitive goals of the Aristotelians and the rationalists are rejected: reflection on our concepts and intellectual capacities (together with our knowledge of the way the world is – there are no objective necessary connections) establishes that these goals are unattainable. These goals are therefore rejected as unreasonable. Moreover, reflection on the world and our knowledge of it establishes that knowledge of matter-offact truth cannot be attained with certainty: the Cartesian standard of knowledge is therefore rejected as unreasonable. We therefore adopt as our cognitive goal moral, rather than absolute, certainty about matterof-fact truth. Reflection on our experience further reveals that some patterns of inference are more efficient than others in yielding such certainty as we can attain about matter-of-fact truth. These efficient patterns are the ones which Hume refers to as the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ We therefore adopt these (experience tells us) most efficient means toward achieving our cognitive goal as the standards defining reasonable inferences. The mind arrives at these standards of rationality through a process of reflecting on the world as it is experienced and, equally importantly, on itself also as it is experienced. We set goals, including cognitive goals, and adopt means for achieving those goals. Through experience we discover our capacities for attaining these goals, and efficiencies of the means we use. Reflecting on this experience, we adopt goals that are attainable and means that are efficient. Self-reflection leads to standards of practice that define the (cognitive) virtue of rationality; it also leads to standards that are attainable and efficient. In other words, selfreflection leads to a reasonable standard of rationality. As we shall see in detail below, this capacity for self-reflection is a central ingredient in Hume’s concept of the person. Hume’s notion of a

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person, and his concept of personal identity, are thus bound up with his empiricist account of human rationality. Note: Hume’s ‘Rules by Which to Judge of Causes and Effects’45 Just to remind ourselves, here are Hume’s rules for the experimental method. They are the best statement of these rules before Herschel;46 in their brevity they have a certain lucidity that is missing even from Mill’s own statement of these methods. 1. The cause and effect must be contiguous in space and time. 2. The cause must be prior to the effect. 3. There must be a constant union betwixt the cause and effect. It is chiefly this quality that constitutes the relation. 4. The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises but from the same cause. This principle we derive from experience, and is the source of most of our philosophical reasonings. For when by any clear experiment we have discovered the causes or effects of any phenomenon, we immediately extend our observation to every phenomenon of the same kind, without waiting for that constant repetition, from which the first idea of this relation is derived. 5. There is another principle which hangs upon this, viz. that where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality which we discover to be common amongst them. For as like effects imply like causes, we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance wherein we discover the resemblance. 6. The following principle is founded on the same reason. The difference in the effects of two resembling objects must proceed from that particular in which they differ. For as like causes always produce like effects, when in any instance we find our expectation to be disappointed, we must conclude that this irregularity proceeds from some difference in the causes. 7. When any object encreases or diminishes with the encrease or diminution of its cause, it is to be regarded as a compounded effect, derived from the union of the several different effects which arise from the several different parts of the cause. The absence or presence of one part of the cause is here supposed to be always attended with the absence or presence of a proportionable part of the effect. This constant conjunction sufficiently proves that the one part is the cause of the other. (Treatise, pp. 173–4)

Some comments are in order, just to be clear on how these rules are being construed.

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Re 3. There must be a constant union betwixt the cause and effect. It is chiefly this quality that constitutes the relation. This, the ‘constant union,’ is causality objectively understood, as regularity; this rule is in a way the conclusion of Hume’s argument against objective necessary connections. It re-states what Hume includes in his first definition of ‘cause.’ Re 1. The cause and effect must be contiguous in space and time. 2. The cause must be prior to the effect. What is given in rule 3 is the central idea of cause, that of regularity: it is ‘this quality’ of regularity which ‘chiefly’ constitutes the relation of causation. Rules 1 and 2 therefore state subsidiary features: one can have a regularity and therefore causation without the features mentioned in rules 1 and 2. Rules 1 and 2 state features we would prefer causal regularities to record. Ideally this is what our cognitive interests aim to achieve in the causal regularities we aspire to know. Rule 2 indicates that what we cognitively aim at is regularities concerning how systems develop over time. Rule 3 indicates that our cognitive aspiration is for regularities that describe ‘gapless’ processes. With these two Rules, Hume is struggling to articulate as an ideal of causal knowledge what has been called ‘process knowledge.’47 Re 4. The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises but from the same cause. Several points must be made. First, this states a principle that ‘we derive from experience’: it is a rule that asserts a generality that is confirmed in experience. Second, It is not a regularity about particular things, but about species: it is a generality about generalities, a law about laws. It is confirmed by finding regularities of the sort it describes. Third, it guides our research: we look for laws or regularities that have the general form it asserts to obtain. It is, as Hume says, ‘the source of most of our philosophical reasonings.’ As such a source, it is clearly held by Hume to assert not merely that like causes have like effects, but also that there are causes of the relevant sort.48 This rule thus functions logically as a Principle of Determinism, as well as a Principle of Limited Variety. This rule thus functions logically as a premise for the use of observational data to discover and confirm generalities by eliminative induction. As Hume himself puts it: ‘When by any clear experiment we have discovered the causes or effects of any phenomenon, we

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immediately extend our observation to every phenomenon of the same kind, without waiting for that constant repetition, from which the first idea of this relation is derived.’ Re 5. ... where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality which we discover to be common amongst them. This rule states the method for infering a regularity not from repetition but from data in order to eliminate alternatives. As Hume says, this principle ‘hangs upon this,’ referring to what has just preceded – that is, it ‘hangs upon’ rule 4, which functions as a premise justifying the inference under appropriate conditions of elimination to a regularity, in this case one asserting a necessary condition. In Hume’s words, rule 5 states that ‘Where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality which we discover to be common amongst them.’ This is the Method of Agreement. Hume then adds for emphasis that this inference is justified by rule 4: ‘For as like effects imply like causes, we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance wherein we discover the resemblance.’ Re 6. The difference in the effects of two resembling objects must proceed from that particular in which they differ. This states the Method of Difference; it locates sufficient conditions.49 It, too, ‘hangs upon’ rule 4 as a premise; as he puts it, ‘the following principle [rule 6] is founded on the same reason [rule 4],’ which he then elaborates with the comment: ‘For as like causes always produce like effects, when in any instance we find our expectation to be disappointed, we must conclude that this irregularity proceeds from some difference in the causes.’ Re 7. When any object encreases or diminishes with the encrease or diminution of its cause, it is to be regarded as a compounded effect, derived from the union of the several different effects which arise from the several different parts of the cause. This is Hume’s version of the Method of Concomitant Variation. C. Science versus Superstition We have not, however, reached the end of the story of Hume’s justification of science against superstition. Philosophy proceeds by a method that satisfies the motive of curios-

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ity, or at least by the method that has any tolerable hope of satisfying, within the fallibilistic limits, the motive of curiosity. But we have many other motives. Why let curiosity alone provide the guide to life? Hume tells us that ‘where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to’ (279), and curiosity is such a propensity (270–1). He contrasts in particular the sentiments of spleen and indolence (270) with the passion of curiosity (270–1). It is the latter that justifies philosophy (271).* Religion, in fact, is largely a matter of the sentiments of our spleen and indolence: In matters of religion men take a pleasure in being terrify’d, and ... no preachers are so popular, as those who excite the most dismal and gloomy passions. In the common affairs of life, where we feel and are penetrated with the solidity of the subject, nothing can be more disagreeable than fear and terror; and ’tis only in dramatic performances and in religious discourse, that they even give pleasure. In these latter cases the imagination reposes itself indolently on the idea; and the passion, being soften’d by want of belief in the subject, has no more than the agreeable effect of enlivening the mind, and fixing the attention. (115; italics added)

What science (philosophy) requires is discipline, not indolence (175).50 At the same time, perhaps the sentiments of our spleen and indolence will be more conducive to the good life than the discipline required by the passion of curiosity, the love of truth. It may well be true that ‘while a warm imagination is allow’d to enter into philosophy, and hypotheses embrac’d merely for being specious and agreeable, we can never have any steady principles, nor any sentiments, which will suit with common practice and experience’ (272). But perhaps nonetheless other ends (e.g., religious) will be served, higher interests the serving of which cannot but contribute to our well-being. Hume in fact provides an answer to the question that is here implied. The answer, not surprisingly, is in the Ciceronian style delineated by Jones: the alternatives all make for a poorer life than the principle of accepting that what is good for curiosity so far as belief and inference are concerned is good enough for life. In the Treatise this answer is presented in bare outline, more asserted than argued for:

* We shall see in chapter 8 more of these passions and the rules of right reason that they justify; they play a central role in Hume’s justification of our knowledge of the external world.

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As superstition arises naturally and easily from the popular opinions of mankind, it seizes more strongly on the mind, and is often able to disturb us in the conduct of our lives and actions. Philosophy on the contrary, if just, can present us only with mild and moderate sentiments; and if false and extravagant, its opinions are merely the object of a cold and general speculation, and seldom go so far as to interrupt the course of our natural propensities. The cynics are an extraordinary instance of philosophers, who from reasonings purely philosophical ran into as great extravagances of conduct as any Monk or Dervise that ever was in the world. Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. (271–2)

Hume elaborates on these points elsewhere. One place is in his essays. Jones concentrates on the four essays that fit the Ciceronian types of the De Finibus and the Academica – namely, the essays on the ‘Epicurean,’ the ‘Stoic,’ the ‘Platonist,’ and the ‘Sceptic.’ These are the philosophical types. Equally important for Hume’s case, however, which Jones does not adequately emphasize – is the essay ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiasm.’51 A second place in which Hume brings out the relevant point is in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. And, finally, there is the History of England.52 The last is neglected – unduly so – by philosophers. But it is surprising that Jones also neglects the relevance of the other two sources to the case he is making for a Hume committed to the Ciceronian doctrine of the subservience of theoretical to practical reason. Superstition consists of rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices, and so on that are aimed at preventing imagined threats and terrors: ‘Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are ... the true sources of Superstition.’53 Enthusiasm responds to an imagined world of glorious spirits with emotional raptures and feelings of divine inspiration: ‘Hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance, are ... the true sources of Enthusiasm.’54 Thus, these two species of religious belief and behaviour arise from a mixing of a propensity other than curiosity with the understanding. This is true of religion in general (Natural History, pp. 27, 29). Hume has in fact explained the relevant mental processes in the Treatise. Passions can enliven an idea, creating a belief out of it, even contrary to what the rules of science might require (115, 120). A lively imagination very often degenerates into madness or folly, and bears it a great resemblance in its operation ... When the imagination, from any extraordinary

324 External World and Our Knowledge of It ferment of the blood and spirits, acquires such a vivacity as disorders all its powers and faculties, there is no means of distinguishing betwixt truth and falsehood; but every loose fiction or idea, having the same influence as the impressions of the memory, or the conclusion of the judgment, is receiv’d on the same footing, and operates with equal force on the passions. (123)

As Jones correctly argues, both Cicero and Hume following him saw enthusiasm and superstition as threats to the social order that is essential for human happiness: Enthusiasm produces the most cruel disorders in human society; but its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust themselves in a little time, and leave the air more calm and serene than before ... Superstition, on the contrary, steals in gradually and insensibly; renders men tame and submissive; is acceptable to the magistrate, and seems inoffensive to the people: till at last the priest, having firmly established his authority, becomes the tyrant and disturber of human society, by his endless contentions, persecutions and religious wars.55

In the Dialogues one must contrast the philosophical attitude of Cleanthes with the religious attitude of Demea. Both are concerned to defend propositions about God. Both, as Philo shows, are in error. But Cleanthes’ philosophical attitude (Dialogues, p. 220) guarantees that his disagreement with Philo does not poison their social relations (pp. 214, 221, 227–8). Demea, in contrast, is a dogmatist; and it is his emotions, not reason, that control his argument and dictate which premises to adhere to, and with what strength. When the argument leads in a direction uncongenial to his commitments, he quits the party with some ill grace (p. 213). Demea’s ‘argument a priori,’ Philo remarks, has seldom been found very convincing, except to people of a metaphysical head, who have accustomed themselves to abstract reasoning, and who finding from mathematics, that the understanding leads to truth, through obscurity, and contrary to first appearances, have transferred the same habit of thinking to subjects where it ought not to have place. Other people, even of good sense and the best inclined to religion, feel always some deficiency in such arguments, though they are not perhaps able to explain distinctly where it lies. A certain proof, that men ever did, and ever will, derive their religion from other sources than from this species of reasoning. (pp. 191–2)

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To which Demea’s immediate and revealing reply: ‘It is my opinion, I own ... that each man feels, in a manner, the truth of religion within his own breast’ (p. 193), citing hopes, fears, misery, wretchedness, and terror as the feelings that prompt the acceptance of religious belief (p. 193). So strong is Demea’s commitment to his position that it is evident that, given the opportunity and need, he would not restrict himself to reason but use all means to protect religion, and religious belief, including the force of the civil magistrate. When Philo later points out the role of hope and fear as inclinations that generate popular and non-rational religion (p. 225), we are no doubt expected to read this into Demea’s character. Once again it is emphasized that the problem with such non-philosophical beliefs is that they lead to immoral behaviour (p. 222) and socially pernicious practices (p. 223). Cleanthes, to be sure, holds the contrary view (p. 219),56 but that is not Philo’s view (pp. 220ff.), nor is it Hume’s (Natural History, pp. 70ff.). In the History of England, Hume argues that the upshot of the Puritan revolution was the constitution and liberty that England in his age enjoyed: Hampden ‘has merited great renown with posterity, for the bold stand which he made in defence of the laws and liberties of his country’ (History VII, 213); and the Long Parliament, too, in its first reforming phase, deserves such merit as the achievements ‘so outweigh their mistakes, as to entitle them to praise from all lovers of liberty’ (VII, 361). The changes were not, however, effected without unpleasant excesses: ‘If the means by which they obtained such advantages savour often of artifice, sometimes of violence; it is to be considered, that revolutions of government cannot be effected by the mere force of argument and reasoning’ (VII, 362). Both the changes and the excesses are not to be understood apart from the religious fanaticism that motivated the reformers, the ‘infusion of theological hatred’ (VII, 315), that ‘great tang of enthusiasm in the conduct of the parliamentary leaders, which, though it might render their conduct sincere, will not much enhance their character with posterity’ (X, 187). The Commons’ encroachments on the Royal Authority in 1641, which led to the first Civil War, would not have been ‘in the power, scarcely in the intention of the popular leaders ... had it not been for the passion which seized the nation for presbyterian discipline, and the wild enthusiasm which at the time accompanied it’ (VII, 393). The new plan for liberty that was proposed involved an experiment, a regular limited monarchy, shorn of all discretionary power – an arrangement hitherto unheard of in the history of government and wholly untried. Since, as Hume says in ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,’ ‘superstition is an enemy to civil liberty, and

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enthusiasm a friend to it,’57 we are not surprised at the outcome. Nonetheless, though in the event, in spite of some ‘sensible inconveniences,’ the new plan has been found to work (History, VII, 360), ‘it must ... be confessed, that the experiment here made by the parliament, was not a little rash adventurous’ (ibid.). As he puts it in ‘Original Contract,’ the innovations of Charles I’s reign ‘were derived from faction and fanaticism,’ and while they ‘have proved happy in the issue,’ they nonetheless ‘were long the source of many disorders.’58 If the issue in the long run proved happy, it was more an accident than any intention or policy: ‘It is an observation by all history, and by none more than by that of James and his successor, that the religious spirit, when it mingles with faction, contains in it something supernatural and unaccountable; and that, in its operations upon society, effects correspond less to their known causes than is found in any other circumstance of government’ (History, VI, 569). Enthusiasm is not to be trusted, rulers are warned not to innovate lightly in ‘so dangerous an article’ (VII, 569). It is disruptive to the fabric of society, as in 1630 when ‘the spirit of enthusiasm being universally diffused, disappointed all the views of human prudence, and disturbed the operation of every motive which usually influences society’ (VII, 171). In general, then, the message is, non-rational religious belief is conducive to human happiness and an improved social order only accidentally. Once again, the case is made for the Ciceronian conclusion that reason as guided by curiosity rather than superstition and enthusiasm is to be valued as the best means for getting on with the task of living. Such, then, in outline at least, is Hume’s defence of empirical science and philosophy against religion, the philosophical dogmatists, and the sceptics. It is in fact, I believe, a strong case, and one that now, even more than in Hume’s day, ought to be taken seriously.59 Certainly, we shall take it seriously, or at least for granted, when we turn to look at the account of material objects and of the external world. D. Science as Cognitive Virtue To complete the picture we have of Hume’s defence of science, it is necessary to pick up a theme from chapter 1.60 We have just seen that Hume’s justification for science is that it best serves two ends. One is more or less individual: conformity to the rules

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of science yields beliefs that, so far as we can tell, best serve the end of curiosity – that is, the love of truth about the ordinary world. Not knowing the truth of things makes the philosopher ‘uneasy’ (Treatise, p. 271): ‘I [the philosopher] cannot forbear having a curiosity’ (270–1) about these things, and human nature in particular. But there is the further point – namely, that the practice of science itself, doing science, ‘natural philosophy,’ is fun. The second end is social – doing science is a social good: conformity of our judgments to these rules of the scientific method at least does no harm, unlike conformity to the rules of superstition: ‘errors in religion,’ we may recall, ‘are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous’ (272). But furthermore, scientific knowledge does in fact improve the lot of humankind. No one could really believe superstitions about comets once Newton had provided his explanation and Halley the confirmation of that theory. Knowledge of anatomy – for example, of the circulation of the blood – enabled physicians to help people cope with the ills we suffer. Knowledge of geometrical optics enabled people to produce lenses that perfected sight. And so on. Increasingly so on. So the practice of science, conformity to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ brings satisfaction to and serves the well-being of others; it serves their interests – including, of course, their curiosity. Now, what makes any pattern of behaviour (or of thought) a virtue is the ‘beneficial consequences of this virtue [, which] are foundations of its merit’ (470), or, again, ‘every quality of the mind, which is useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others, communicates a pleasure to the spectator, engages his esteem, and is admitted under the honourable denomination of virtue or merit’ (E 251).61 Conforming our thoughts to the rules of the scientific method is productive of pleasure both in oneself and in others. Such habits are therefore virtues: reason is a virtue. Reason is, moreover, in Hume’s sense, an artificial virtue – that is clear. There is no innate tendency to avoid superstition – to the contrary, superstition seems more natural than reason, and real efforts are needed to cultivate cognitive virtue. It receives its justification like any other artificial virtue, whether of justice or language or whatever. There is a shared need – that of coming to know, on the one hand, the causes of things, and, on the other hand, the foundations of virtue and vice and of government. It is a fact that these shared ends can be met only if there is cooperation. In this case, the cooperation consists in the joint conformity to the rules of the scientific method. It is perhaps easier in

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this case to violate the rules than in the case of justice: it is easier to be a clever knave (to use Hume’s characterization of one who violates the rules for cooperation) – it is easier in the case of reason than it is in the case of justice – sloppy reasoning is more common than sticky fingers, and the penalties are generally less severe. This justifies our conformity to the rules of science rather to than those of superstition – it is justified both for the individual and for society as a whole. Such conformity, justifies, too, a system of sanctions for those who violate these rules – from a lower grade for an ill-punctuated essay; to public ridicule, perhaps severe, for one’s being superstitious: ‘Do you really believe black cats mean bad luck?’; to death, perhaps widespread, for those who did not or would not get themselves vaccinated for an anticipated outbreak of Asian flu; to loss of political influence – cf. the case of Stockwell Day, former leader of the Reform Party of Canada, who believed, apparently, the doctrines of the scientific creationists (e.g., humans and dinosaurs lived together on the Earth some six thousand years ago) and who lost political influence when he acknowledged that he did indeed so believe. Nor are sanctions the only means for securing conformity to these rules. There are, for example, appropriate forms of training and education. Like the practices of justice and of promise keeping, we want and need the practices of right reasoning to be widespread. When the rules are violated we feel the pain of those who are injured by the violation. The mechanism of sympathy works here, as elsewhere. It generates those feelings which make the rules normative. Through this mechanism we come to feel that conformity to the rules is what, normatively, we require of people – including ourselves: these norms define the sorts of persons we ought to be, and thereby what we ought to do. Conformity to the rules is not merely prudentially justified, but comes to be itself normative, what ought to be done. In short, like other forms of artificial virtue, right reason – or conformity to the rules of the scientific method – is justified in the first instance by its utility; and conformity to these rules comes, though the mechanism of sympathy, to be felt to be normative, what ought to be and ought to be done. Then these norms as felt norms bring it about in oneself and others that there is conformity to those norms. Two comments: (1) These norms ‘bring it about,’ that is, bring about conformity to themselves, in the sense of ‘cause’: that is, as felt feelings they cause it to be the case in one-

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self that there is conformity and cause it to be the case that one encourages, secures, and so forth the conformity of others. (2) The conformity is of course more or less – there is always the rational knave lurking about, and there are always those who don’t quite ‘fit in,’ or who are in some way or other ill. The norms of reason – that is, of scientific reason, the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ – are thus both normative for and descriptive of the behaviour of the community. This is how reason, like justice and promise keeping, and like language, becomes normative, defining the community as it is (or fairly closely is) and as it feels it ought to be. One further point perhaps ought to be emphasized. Hume is indeed a sceptic: he is sceptical about the claims of metaphysics that do not conform to the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance, and more generally about the claims of superstition. It is an academic scepticism: there is nothing there to know, so he does not know and knows he does not know. But there is no reason to hold that he is sceptical about either our ordinary knowledge of the world or about the claims made by science, the long arm of common sense. In fact, it has become evident that it is profoundly wrong to hold that Hume is a sceptic about all knowledge claims – that is, a sceptic who concludes that we have no justification for accepting any belief as more reasonable than another. This latter is the cognitive aim attributed to him by the standard interpretation, whether Reid’s version or Green’s, or Popkin’s, or Passmore’s, or, for that matter, Kemp Smith’s, or Stroud’s. To the contrary, Hume’s aim is not to dethrone reason but rather to defend its claims. But this does not include claims that it is able to go beyond this world to one that transcends it. Descartes aimed to doubt everything, to establish if he could that no belief can be rationally justified. But that was not Hume’s aim. Hume has, rather, Locke’s aim – to reign reason in, as it were, to make it less pretentious, to get it to restrict itself to the world of sensible experience. At the same time, however, he aims to enlarge our conception of reason. Reason is not simply the capacity to grasp a priori principles, as it was for Descartes and Aristotle. To be sure, that is part of what reason does, but, as with Locke, that is a relatively trivial part in the search after truth. For Hume, reason comes to include inductive inference, the rules of the scientific method. And, it is also to be emphasized, the world with which it deals includes the world of inner awareness, and therefore makes our world social and passionate, as Annette Baier has emphasized,62 and as we

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have argued in chapter 1. In Book I, Part iii, of the Treatise, Hume enlarges the notion of reason beyond that of the rationalist’s demonstration to include induction; and in Book III he enlarges it still further to include practical reason. The reason that leads us to agree concerning the artifices of property, contract, and political legitimacy is not ‘pure’ (in Kant’s sense); rather it is guided by broad sympathies and by the pleasure we all take in mutually beneficial cooperative schemes.63 That which is a reasonable sense of reason is determined in the first instance by a passionate concern for the truth, and the goals and norms that we adopt to satisfy this human concern are, reflective experience tells us, those which are fitted to our humanity. These cognitive virtues themselves take their place within the broader concerns that we have as persons for our own good and, through our sympathetic responses, for the good of others. These concerns lead us to recognize that in the long run, the cognitive standards of superstition and enthusiasm are unreasonable, unworthy of pursuit, vices rather than virtues. In the end, reason becomes humanly reasonable only when it passes the test of reflective self-awareness and becomes not just the lively love of truth but also a moral virtue – that is, only when it comes to incorporate shared sentiments and a shared love of truth.64 Once again we have to recognize that it is the self-reflective capacity of the mind, its ability to reflect on its own experience, that leads to a reasonable standard of rationality. And to emphasize once again, this capacity for self-reflection is a central ingredient in Hume’s concept of the person. Hume’s notion of a person, and his concept of personal identity, are thus bound up with his account of human rationality, which is at once empiricist, humane, and social. Then there are our own purposes: Hume’s critical realism and its defence. We have developed Hume’s account of human rationality, and suggested how it might be defended against the claims of superstition and against the claims of the older view of science as scientia. It is within this framework that we have to fit his critical realism. There is a long way to go, but this framework provides us with a guide. There are, moreover, aspects of Hume’s justification of (a reasonable) reason that have become clear to us. These will turn out to figure seriously in our defence of Hume’s critical realism. These too will guide us. Perhaps the most important point to be recognized is the way in which Hume appeals to considerations of practical reason to determine

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the norms of rationality, the way in which considerations that are, broadly speaking, moral, guide our judgments in defining the norms of theoretical reason. Such considerations have entered at two points. One is in the appeal that we make as reasonable people to the acceptance of necessity as a reason for accepting certain practices – for example, that of inductive inference – as rational. And a second way in which practical considerations have entered is through our judgments about what are reasonable as our cognitive norms: those norms are reasonable just in case conformity to them best means to satisfy, so far as we can tell, our cognitive interests. These include the passion of curiosity or love of truth. But they also include those passions which lead to participation in, and service in, civil society. Finally, to elaborate on the first point, we should bear in mind that as part of his justification of causal inference, Hume appeals to the principle that ‘must implies ought.’ Hume is notorious for having noticed the gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought.’ But this principle enables one to bridge this gap. Nor is it an arbitrary principle: it is, to the contrary, a principle that it is reasonable to accept.65 We have seen its use in justifying inductive inference. We shall in due course see that it also plays a role in Hume’s epistemology (chapters 6 and 7). And we shall discover in particular (in chapter 8) that it plays a role in Hume’s defence of his critical realism and of our claims to know the external world. As we shall see, then, appeals to these sorts of practical considerations are significant for establishing central features of Humean epistemology and for his critical realistic account of the world in which we live. There remains one other feature of Hume’s account of knowledge that we need to introduce before we turn to the question of the external world. This is best done through an examination of his account of testimony. That is the topic of the next chapter.

5 Hume on Testimony and Its Epistemological Problems

We have seen in the preceding chapter that reason, on Hume’s account, is a virtue. Specifically, it is a virtue to conform one’s judgments to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ the rules of the scientific method. We need, however, to look at another aspect of the cognitive or epistemic virtue of right reason. This is the idea of the responsible knower. We can get hold of this idea, I think, if we look at how Hume deals with testimony. And we can begin our discussion of this topic by putting Hume’s account of testimony into something of its historical context. The relevant context is the Christian religion of the eighteenth century, and what was thought necessary to make it reasonable. The context, in other words, is that of the rational justification of Christian belief. There are two arguments that were thought in Hume’s day to be necessary to justify belief in the articles of the Christian religion: the existence of God; but beyond that the triune nature of God, with Jesus the son of God, who is God incarnate and who died and rose again from the dead to redeem us of our sins. The first of these arguments was the argument of natural theology for the existence of an all-powerful, omniscient, and benevolent deity. But that only gets one theism: it does not establish Christianity: the existence of God is easy enough, but the whole story of Jesus the son of God, and the triune nature of God and all the rest of it, is pretty fantastic, almost beyond belief. Who would ever think such things are true? Through what hypothesis could they be justified? Nothing of the fantastic story seems even barely susceptible to direct proof. It is the job of the second argument to provide this sorely needed justification of this which is quite beyond belief. This second argument is that of miracles. Jesus performed such feats as only

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could be done by the deity itself. He therefore is the agent of that deity, those miracles attest to his mission. Since he can thus justify his claim that his is a divine mission, we ought, as reasonable persons, to accept what he says as true. Since he says he is the son of God, we ought therefore to accept that as so: Jesus is in fact God become incarnate. We ought also to accept that he died in order to save us from our sins. All this on the basis of the miracles he performed. However, we ourselves have of course not witnessed these miracles. But we do have it on good authority that these miracles did occur. There were apparent witnesses, and their testimony has been passed from the beginning of the Christian era down to Hume’s own day (and ours). And so in the eighteenth century it was argued that it was rational to believe in God, in Jesus as the Son of God, and in the Trinity. Hume set out to demolish these arguments. The former of the two arguments received its most thorough treatment in Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, the latter in ‘On Miracles,’ an essay in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. It is the latter that we need. There are in effect two arguments in this essay, designed to cover two cases. For the Protestants anyway, miracles more or less ceased after the first generation of disciples. Things were more complicated for those such as Pascal who accepted that miracles were commonplace. Or for John Wesley. There is, therefore, one line of argument in ‘On Miracles’ that deals with those like Pascal or Wesley or the first Apostles who claimed to have witnessed miracles. The second line of argument deals with those who claimed to believe in miracles on the basis of testimony. It is aspects of the latter discussion that we need for our purposes to discuss. And it is the idea of testimony itself that is of interest here, not so much its relevance to miracles or to the argument for Christianity – though I would not want to deny the importance of these issues.1 But here it is testimony that is of concern – of concern both in its own right and as a beginning point for a discussion of other aspects of Hume’s epistemology. A. Testimony in Hume: Some Epistemological Problems Hume is reliable in his account of testimony, or is so on the whole, but it is also true that he does not always appreciate the importance of testimony in everyday life. There is, he tells us, ‘no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men and the reports of eye-

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witnesses and spectators’ (E 111). He then has this to say about the nature of the capacity of testimony to attest to the truth: This species of reasoning, perhaps, one may deny to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. I shall not dispute about a word. It will be sufficient to observe that our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses. It being a general maxim, that no objects have any discoverable connexion together, and that all the inferences, which we can draw from one to another, are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction; it is evident that we ought not to make an exception to this maxim in favour of human testimony, whose connexion with any event seems, in itself, as little necessary as any other. (E 111)

C.A.J. Coady, in his Testimony,2 has (chapter 4) characterized this approach as ‘reductive’ in an attempt to reduce testimony to perception, and has argued to the contrary that testimony is as irreducible a form of knowledge as perception or memory. But this does raise a question of justification, and Coady goes on to propose a sort of vindication of testimony as generally reliable on the grounds that if it were not then public discourse would be impossible. Where Hume argues that ‘the reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them’ (E 113), Coady is in effect arguing that there really is some sort of a priori connection between language and reality, assertion and truth. Coady takes up Hume’s statement that our reliance on testimony is a matter of ‘our experience of constant and regular conjunction’ (Testimony, p. 80). He focuses on the phrase ‘our experience.’ He points out that Hume often means by the phrase the common experience of humankind. For example, Hume argues a little later on in the essay on miracles that It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die of a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must therefore be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation (E 115).

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It is not just that Hume has, if he has, experienced the sudden death of persons in apparent good health. But, he asks, are the observations made in ‘any age or country’? This is clearly a reference to persons other than Hume. From this, Coady (p. 81) infers that if Hume means this when he characterizes our grounds for being able to rely on testimony, then it is circular: for in giving the grounds for relying on testimony it takes for granted that testimony, is reliable. Coady therefore concludes (p. 82) that Hume requires the experience in each case to be the experience of the individual. And in particular, he requires each of us to have gathered evidence required to justify the assertion of a regular and constant conjunction between what people report and the way the world is: a set of correlations, in other words, between the kinds of reports made and the kinds of situations (p. 81). He appeals to Hume himself on the point, who tells us that ‘as the evidence, derived from witnesses and human testimony, is founded on past experience, as it varies with the experience, and is regarded either as a proof or a probability according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable’ (E 112). Coady then argues that this itself may be taken in two ways, depending on how one understands the notion of a ‘kind or report.’ If by this one means the kind of speaker – Is he or she a reliable reporter? – then we would have to know antecedently that the speaker is reliable or not in order to establish the correlation. But that, of course, is the very thing that is at issue (Testimony, p. 83). So the phrase ‘kind of report’ must mean ‘report of a kind of situation’ (p. 84). But it is pretty clear that no one, including Hume, has done the sort of evidence gathering that would seem to be needed (pp. 82–3). If we do proceed by means of induction by simple enumeration to gather evidence then the task is a mighty big one. But Coady has a stronger argument. This is to the effect that Hume’s characterization of the situation is basically incoherent. It allows for there to be a possibility that there is a lack of correlation between kinds of reports on the one hand and situations reported on the other. It allows that there might be no conformity at all between testimony and reality: Hume’s position requires the possibility that we clearly isolate the reports that people make about the world for comparison by personal observation with the actual state of the world and find a high, low, or no correlation between them. (p. 85)

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But he thinks the very idea that this could happen is incoherent, that there is no such possibility: To take the most extreme discovery: imagine a world in which an extensive survey yields no correlation between reports and (individually observed) facts. In such a colossally topsy-turvy world what evidence could there possibly be for the existence of reports at all? (Ibid.).

The very practice of reporting presupposes the reliability of reports: the very meaning of the reports, or so-called reports, would become incoherent if there were no correlation between those reports and the states of affairs they are purported to describe (p. 87). So there must, after all, be a real necessary connection and not just a correlation between testimony on the one hand and matters of fact testified to on the other. Contrary to Hume, the reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians is derived from some connection, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, and not because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. Coady has a suggestion why Hume, and those who follow Hume, get into this problem. This is, that they are under the spell of the Enlightenment ideal of the ‘autonomous thinker’ and the ideal that this thinker’s knowledge has been validated through the experience of the thinker him- or herself. This is the ideal of ‘autonomous knowledge,’ where the thinker works everything out for him- or herself (Testimony, p. 99). But such an ideal is impossible. Indeed, this is the real upshot of Coady’s argument. People are in fact not isolated individuals in the way in which the ideals of autonomous knowledge or of the autonomous thinker suggest. They are rather parts of a greater social whole, and they cannot attain to knowledge in any serious sense unless they are parts of this whole and take for granted the general reliability of human testimony. B. A Wrong Model of Empiricism The argument is complicated and interesting. Coady is plainly correct that, if Hume’s account is to go through, then the issue is clear: what must be defended is the supposition that the relevant connections between kinds of reports, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, kinds of situation, are correlations, or, perhaps, ‘mere’ correlations. Let us begin with his suggestion that Hume requires such inferences to proceed by induction by simple enumeration.

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Now, some have made in all seriousness just this proposal that this is how we justify accepting testimony. W. Salmon, in his little volume on Logic,3 took up the argument from authority. This argument form is usually classified as a ‘fallacy’; it is often discussed under that classification in standard textbooks on logic, which repeat a long historical tradition that this argument form is among the informal fallacies. Salmon rejects the testimony of this long tradition, arguing that some such appeals are valid, some invalid. The argument from authority is an inductive argument, he proposes, and can be understood in terms of induction by simple enumeration. Thus, suppose we take some person, or some book, say Jones, and look at the assertions, that Jones makes, and then look at the number that are true. Let N(A) be the number of assertions and let N(T) be the number of these that are true. Consider the relative frequency N(T) / N(A). If this relative frequency is high, then Jones is a reliable authority, if it is low, then he or she is not reliable. This is a special case of induction by simple enumeration, a form of inference that Salmon has consistently defended over the years. If A is sometimes followed by B and sometimes not, then consider the number of B’s relative to the number of A’s: N(B) / N(A). If this is high, then we infer a correlation between A’s and B’s; indeed, if it is high enough, we infer that being A is the cause of being B. But Hume rejects this form of inference as generally unsound. He considers the case of his watch, which sometimes goes when it is wound and sometimes does not.4 On Salmon’s view, one would count the number of times when it was wound, and the number of times when wound that it did go. If the ratio of the latter over the former was large enough, then one would count this as a case in which winding the watch caused it to go. It would be just a matter of the chances of the situation that sometimes it did not go when wound. Hume acknowledges that to be sure, this is the view of some. And so he tells us that the vulgar, who take things according to their first appearance, attribute the uncertainty of events to such an uncertainty in the causes, as makes

338 External World and Our Knowledge of It them often fail of their usual influence, though they meet with no obstacle nor impediment in their operation. But philosophers observing that almost in every part of nature there is contained a vast variety of springs and principles, which are hid, by reason of their minuteness or remoteness, find that it is at least possible the contrariety of events may not proceed from any contingency in the cause, but from the secret operation of contrary causes. This possibility is converted into certainty by further observation, when they remark, that upon an exact scrutiny, a contrariety of effects always betrays a contrariety of causes, and proceeds from their mutual hindrance and opposition. A peasant can give no better reason for the stopping of any clock or watch than to say, that commonly it does not go right: but an artizan easily perceives that the same force in the spring or pendulum has always the same influence on the wheels; but fails of its usual effect, perhaps by reason of a grain of dust, which puts a stop to the whole movement. From the observation of several parallel instances, philosophers form a maxim, that the connexion betwixt all causes and effects is equally necessary, and that its seeming uncertainty in some instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary causes. (132)

Salmon’s position is clearly that of those whom Hume calls the ‘vulgar,’ who are willing to attribute the sometimes working, sometimes not, to chance, – that is, to an ‘uncertainty’ in the causes. But the philosopher, the scientist, does not allow for such chance or uncertainty in the causes. If there is a case, as in the watch, where there is a contrariety in the effects, then this is not a matter of chance but rather a matter of there being causes as yet hidden from one. The situation of the vulgar and of Salmon is not the end of the matter. Rather, it poses a question that needs an answer: What, precisely, are the hidden causes that are at work and that produce the contrariety of effects? Real causes are genuine constant conjunctions, genuine regularities, as Hume insists. These cannot be discovered by the rule of induction by simple enumeration. One needs deeper research according to ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ In particular, the research will be guided by Hume’s Rule 4, that like effects have like cases and conversely, a rule which Hume explicitly mentions in this context; it is this rule that permits one to infer that where one has contrary effects, then there are contrary causes, that is, to infer the presence of causes which have not yet been observed but which we know will, when identified, explain the contrariety of effects. Only research aimed at identifying the causes the presence of which we infer from Rule 4 will uncover the real causes, and

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show that the apparent contrariety of effects is really an example of underlying regularities, of genuine causes. Salmon and the vulgar ‘take things according to their first appearance’; it is they who rest content with the principle of induction by simple enumeration. In contrast, Hume and the philosophers take things more seriously and probe behind first appearances for the real causes.5 The same sort of consideration applies to appeals to authority. Here, too, contrary to Salmon, one does not appeal to induction by simple enumeration. As we have seen, what Hume says here is that ‘as the evidence, derived from witnesses and human testimony, is founded on past experience, as it varies with the experience, and is regarded either as a proof or a probability according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable’ (E 112). But if we find it to be variable, then we must not settle for the position of the vulgar that it really is a mere matter of chance, probability. Rather, we must seek for the underlying causes, and seek the constant conjunctions that underlie the apparent contrariety. Hume does believe in testimony: as we have seen him say, ‘No species of reasoning [is] more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men and the reports of eyewitnesses and spectators’ (E 111). But sometimes people do not report correctly, and this for a variety of possible reasons. Intent to lie, delusion, misperception, are all possibilities. Hume remarks about these possibilities in his essay on miracles: Were not the memory tenacious to a certain degree; had not men commonly an inclination to truth and a principle of probity; were they not sensible to shame, when detected in a falsehood: were not these, I say, discovered by experience to be qualities, inherent in human nature, we should never repose the least confidence in human testimony. A man delirious, or noted for falsehood and villainy, has no manner of authority with us. (E 111)

If we know that there are causes inclining the person to make false reports, to give false testimony, then we do not believe what he says. But for the most part these conditions are not present, and when they are not we can accept testimony. Coady, of course, has accepted the position of Salmon, and supposes that Hume is committed to the view that justification of appeals to

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authority is through induction by simple enumeration, and that this is the rule of inference that Hume must use in order to justify his assumption that the human reliance on the testimony of others is a reasonable practice. He ignores Hume’s reference to ‘proofs and probabilities’ in this context. But that is to miss an important part of Hume’s position: one can have proofs here – that is, justifications based on the rules by which to judge of causes and effects. Where there are probabilities, that is only because we have not – that is, not yet – uncovered the underlying grounds for the apparent contrariety of effects. The point is that the model of empiricism that Coady uses to paint his picture of Hume is inadequate. In his inferences to regularities, Hume does not rely on the principle of induction by simple enumeration. To be sure, the inferences are to generalities. Moreover, learning our way about the world has its origins in learning by simple association. But as we saw in the last chapter, that is not the end to the story of human learning: there is also research in conformity to the rules of scientific method. In the Humean scheme, there is more to justification than Coady allows. And, in particular, of course, there are the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ Coady (like so many) ignores this aspect of Hume. We shall find, moreover, that there is still more than this to Hume’s account of justification. But it is best if we begin with those rules. C. Autonomous Thinkers Here is the autonomous thinker: Nevertheless, as far as the opinions which I had been receiving since my birth, I could not do better than to reject them completely in my lifetime, and to resume them afterwards, or perhaps accept better ones, when I had determined how they fitted into a rational scheme. And I firmly believed I would succeed in conducting my life much better than if I had built only upon the old foundations and gave credence to those principles which I had acquired in my childhood without ever examining them to see whether they were true or not.6

These remarks are near the beginning of the second part of the Discourse on Method. It shows Descartes’s readiness to doubt and therefore reject judgments of fact based on testimony. This is the autonomous thinker whom Coady finds – rightly – so implausible. This is the position that Coady attributes to Hume.

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Yet it turns out, after we read Hume carefully, that he in fact agrees with Coady that the ideal of the autonomous thinker, as Coady describes this sort of person, is quite unreal. This ideal follows evidently from Descartes’s adoption as the standard of judgment that one reject any proposition for which he himself cannot find evidence that renders it incorrigibly certain. The result of adopting this standard is to fall into scepticism: all our ordinary judgments are to be rejected. This includes the judgments one makes that are based on testimony. In fact, it leads one to doubt even the existence of other people both as physical and as social beings. One who adopts this standard is indeed the autonomous thinker; it is the autonomous thinker as a social and epistemic atom, cut off from all intercourse with others. But the autonomous thinker is also the lonely thinker, forlorn and lost, frightened and despairing. The autonomous thinker finds him- or herself among the wreckage that he or she has created, knowing nothing and able to go nowhere, trapped where he or she does not want to be, cognitively and physically, and unable, cognitively and physically, to escape the morass – or perhaps the abyss. Hume has an image (in the Treatise) that applies to this person.7 He tells us that this person has made his journey through philosophy and has found little that is solid, not as solid at least as the system of the Cartesians purports to be: ‘before I launch out into those immense depths of philosophy which lie before me, I find myself inclined to stop a moment in my present station, and to ponder that voyage which I have undertaken’ (263). The image is that of a sailor. This is a sailor – Hume himself – who ‘having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap’d ship-wreck in passing a small firth, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances’ (263–4). The dangers that confront him on this perilous voyage evoke the passion not just of fear but of despair: ‘This sudden view of my danger strikes me with melancholy (264). Isolated and lonely the sailor despairs of completing his project: ‘This sudden view of my danger strikes me with melancholy; and, as it is usual for that passion, above all others, to indulge itself, I cannot forbear feeding my despair with all those desponding reflections which the present subject furnishes me with in such abundance’ (264). The aim of the lonely sailor is vain, and when this is recognized the result is not glory but melancholy. And, of course, the sailor is at once

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both Hume and the Cartesian. Hume finds a way out, the Cartesian does not. Hume argues that the task of the social atom in discovering true philosophy is hopeless: There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Descartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgment. It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties; of whose veracity, say they, we must assure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning, deduced from some original principle, which cannot possibly be fallacious or deceitful. But neither is there any such original principle, which has a prerogative above others, that are self-evident and convincing: Or if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, but by the use of those very faculties, of which we are supposed to be already diffident. The Cartesian doubt, therefore, were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject. (E 149)

Hume escapes where the Cartesian does not. He escapes through the presence of others, his friends who come by when he has found certainty an impossibility and has therefore fallen into melancholy and despair. These friends induce him to ‘make merry’ and have a game of backgammon. The melancholy dissipates: there is a voyage that Hume can undertake, and it is not the lonely and impossible voyage of the Cartesian – it is not one that adopts the principles of ‘metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians’ (Treatise, p. 264) – it is a voyage, rather, to find cognitive standards that are not impossible of attainment, a voyage that Hume can undertake not with Cartesians but with ‘honest gentlemen’ (272). The Humean project is one that is essentially social: individualistic social atomism is simply incompatible with that project. We need to place Hume’s appeal to the rules by which to judge of causes and effects in this context. Consider again the case of the watch. The inferences to which Hume draws our attention take their starting point from the fact that we have a generalization – wound watches work – which we discover has exceptions – sometimes wound watches do not work. The rules lead us then to the conclusion that there is an as yet undiscovered cause for the watches

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sometimes not working. The rules lead us to the conclusion that there is a gap in our causal knowledge. Moved by an interest in the truth – by the passion of curiosity or love of truth, as Hume calls it – the philosopher is now guided by the rules in ways that lead to the discovery of the causal condition that fills the gap – in effect, we ought to use the method of difference (the sixth of the rules) to discover that condition. Notice what has happened. We enter the situation with a given set of beliefs, and in particular with a given expectation with regard to wound watches, the acceptance of something like a causal regularity. We then discover that it is not a causal regularity after all. The rules direct a person interested in the truth of the matter to proceed in certain ways to improve the set of beliefs, to eliminate the gap that has been discovered. The rules by which to judge of causes and effects are rules for the improvement of knowledge. This does presuppose a starting point. It is not the Cartesian starting point of the mind devoid of any beliefs, devoid of all knowledge. There are no such persons. By the time one has reached the level of cognitive maturity where one can apply the rules for the improvement of knowledge, one’s mind is full of beliefs. Nor can these be dismissed. To the contrary, it is precisely here that one starts the process of inquiry. We begin with what is not so much given to us as comes with us – or, at least, with what seems best among those beliefs and principles. And we proceed from there. Not dogmatically, but carefully, moving forward in the interests of truth to improve our knowledge and our beliefs: It must ... be confessed, that this species of scepticism [antecedent scepticism], when more moderate, may be understood in a very reasonable sense, and is a necessary preparative to the study of philosophy, by preserving a proper impartiality in our judgments, and weaning our mind from all those prejudices, which we may have imbibed from education or rash opinion. To begin with clear and self-evident principles, to advance by timorous and sure steps, to review frequently our conclusions, and examine accurately all their consequences; though by these means we shall make both a slow and a short progress in our systems; are the only methods, by which we can ever hope to reach truth, and attain a proper stability and certainty in our determinations. (E 150)

Coady quite ignores this aspect of Hume’s thought – that is, Hume’s identification of reason with the application of the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ We must locate what Hume says about testimony in this context.

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There are regularities here – from ‘persons regularly tell the truth’ onwards. There is no difference between this case and the cases of stones and planets – or watches that sometimes work when wound and sometimes do not. The method to be used to uncover the true regularities is that which, so far as we can tell, is best conducive to the truth. So, in this case, too, just as in the case of stones and planets, we apply the rules by which to judge of causes and effects to discover the relevant regularities – not only the regularities defining human nature but also regularities in individual persons. Now, we are not devoid of beliefs either in respect of the general issue regarding what is involved in human nature or in respect of what is involved in the case of the individual testifier. We do assume in persons, as Hume says, a general inclination to truth; we do assume that there is in most a principle of probity at work; and so on. But in some cases we find that the application of these general principles to individuals is not appropriate. Our knowledge after all is, here as elsewhere, gappy. Our interest in the truth – in this case, both the truth of the testimony and the truth about the deeper structure of regularities that remains to be uncovered – directs us to try to fill in the gaps. As in the case of the watch that does not work when wound, we are directed by our interest in the truth and by the rules by which to judge of causes and effects to proceed in certain ways in our research to uncover the hidden causes that explain the deviations from a regular pattern. What do we discover? Perhaps delirium, perhaps villainy. In the person delirious there is no inclination to truth; in the villain there is no principle of probity at work. The ways in which these things are discovered are, to be sure, not those of the watchmaker. No artisan’s glass will help us in the case of testimony. But we have other methods. There is, for example, the method of cross-examination. Hume in effect instructs us in the second part of the essay on miracles how we can systematically cross-examine those who testify to a miracle. If we discover there to be present one of the conditions – for example, villainy, or special interests – that often cause deviations from the truth in the case of testimony, then we can conclude that probably the person is wrong. Or rather – given the argument of the first part of the essay, that there are no miracles – we can discover what it is about this person that accounts for the deviation from the normal pattern of truth in testimony – perhaps the zeal or avarice of a superstitious priest. There is no assumption here of the radically atomistically autonomous thinker who starts from zero evidence and tries to build up a jus-

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tification of testimony. There is no assumption that one enters the process of inquiry devoid of beliefs. Rather, the thinker begins from a set of background beliefs and then uses the rules, appropriately applied, to attempt, in the interest of truth, to improve his or her cognitive stance. How do we acquire these beliefs from which the process of inquiry begins? Well, in the ordinary course of experience, for the most part. It is there that we learn that fire burns and that food nourishes. But there is also education, as Hume points out. He accepts Coady’s point (Testimony, p. 82) that we acquire beliefs about the geography of the world, or the circulation of the blood, or almost whatever, through education.8 That is not a problem: the aim of Hume’s rules by which to judge of causes and effects is the improvement of our beliefs; their aim is not to bring belief about from a situation in which we are devoid of belief. In this sense there is no reason why Hume ought not to accept Coady’s point that there is no autonomous thinker. D. Social Context: Language and Testimony It is important in this discussion to bring out clearly certain aspects of human sociability. In particular, we need to attend to Hume’s account of language, and recall certain points that we have developed in chapter 1. Here what is relevant is Hume’s discussion in the Treatise about how it is that some words become general in their signification. In Descartes and Locke this came about by virtue of words becoming associated with general abstract ideas. But Hume accepts Berkeley’s argument that there are no abstract ideas: all ideas are particular. So the traditional account of how ideas become general cannot rely on a principle of abstraction, nor therefore can the account of how words become general rely on a doctrine of abstract ideas. Hume proposes an alternative account. Here we may recall our discussion from chapter 1. Hume builds on two central points of his philosophy. The first is that resemblance is the first in importance among all relations. Things – impressions and ideas (images) – resemble one another in various ways. They may resemble one another in being red, or in being coloured, or even more generally in being qualified. And when one says, for example, that like causes have like effects, then one is presupposing the relation of ‘likeness,’ that is, resemblance. The second point on which Hume builds his account is the doctrine of associa-

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tionism. If x and y stand in relation R, and are so presented on several occasions, then that produces the habit that if again presented with an impression of x or with an idea (image) of x, then one will be presented with the idea of y. By virtue of the relation R, x and y come to be associated in thought. The case where the relation R is that of spatio-temporal contiguity is well recognized as playing a central role in Hume: that is the relation that in the first instance produces those habits of mind which we call causal inferences. But the principle of association holds also in the case where we take R to be the relation of resemblance: if x and y are similar or resemble each other in some respect, then an association between them will be established in the mind, and the one will tend to introduce the other. Now let the general term ‘red’ apply to x and y by virtue of their resembling each other in respect of that colour. It also applies to z, u, v, w, and so on ad infinitum. If the general term does not mean an abstract idea that stands for all these individuals, then it must mean these individuals directly, as it were. Instead of the abstract idea being before the mind when one uses the general term ‘red,’ one must have this infinity of individuals before the mind when one uses the term. But our minds are finite; they do not have the capacity to hold before themselves at one time an infinity of ideas – that is, an infinity of particular images. This is the problem that seems to confront any account of thought that would do away with abstract general ideas. Hume’s solution is to argue on the basis of his associationism that x which is red introduces by established custom or association the other particular ideas which resemble x in respect of being red. They are introduced by ‘that custom, which we have acquired by surveying them’ (20). However, they are not actually all before the mind; they are there only potentially: ‘They are not really and in fact present to the mind, but only in power; nor do we draw them all out distinctly in the imagination, but keep ourselves in a readiness to survey any of them, as we may be prompted by a present design or necessity’ (20). On Hume’s account, an abstract idea is a habit or custom: we have made this point earlier, and it is equally applicable here. It is of course true that, if something is before the mind only potentially then it is not really before the mind. As Hume himself has previously noted: ‘When a quality becomes very general, and is common to a great many individuals, it leads not the mind directly to any one of them; but, by presenting at once too great a choice, does thereby prevent the imagination from fixing on any single object’ (14). So this can-

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not be the full story of abstract ideas. We can obtain the remainder by asking this question. How does Hume account for how words become general in their meaning? Where others had made the abstract idea play the central role, Hume makes the word itself play a crucial role. On Hume’s account, general words mean by becoming associated with some way or other in which things – impressions and ideas (images) – resemble one another. Thus, the general term ‘red’ means things by virtue of becoming associated with that way of resembling that holds among stop lights, stop signs, fire trucks, and so on: it means just those things which resemble one another in this way. I have an impression or idea of x which is red. This introduces by association the word ‘red.’ This in turn introduces some one or another of the various ideas of things which are red, together with the custom, the tendency, or the disposition of other such ideas to be available as it were for recall as fit: ‘The word raises up an individual idea, along with a certain custom, and that custom produces any other individual one, for which we may have occasion’ (20). To think in general terms, to use an abstract idea, is not just to have an association among ideas based on some relation of resemblance. That association will not by itself place a particular idea before the mind. What plays the role of introducing a particular idea before the mind when we think in general terms is the general term itself, by virtue of its association with the relevant relation of resemblance. And here what is crucial is not that the general term applies to all the particular impressions and ideas; what is crucial is the tendency or disposition of the mind to apply the term to those things. The meaning of a general term is a matter of the complex associations that link it and the members of a resemblance class of things – that is, of impressions and ideas or images. Let us, for the sake of simplicity, refer to these conventions by the simple formula that, for example, ‘red’ means red We can now see that, according to the Humean account of language and thought, what goes on in a judgment where we identify something as of a particular kind, that is – as falling under some abstract general idea – is something like this. Let us say we are judging of an impression that this [the impression] is red

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This judgment is a complex idea in which two ideas are joined. On the one hand there is the idea of the impression itself – the ‘this.’ On the other hand there is the abstract general idea. On Hume’s account, both the impression and the idea of the impression that is part of the judgment resemble each other in being red. This quality, by virtue of an established association, introduces the word ‘red.’ This in turn introduces another particular idea of something red, that is, another red image. But it carries with it the tendency or disposition to introduce into thought any of the other things to which the term applies. So, in the judgment in which we identify the thing as red, there is joined to the idea of the thing another idea. This other idea is introduced by the general term. This general term is itself introduced by the thing itself and its idea. By virtue of the habits of association, the idea introduced by the term stands proxy for all the other things that the term denotes – that is, all the other things to which it is linked by its association with a way of resembling. Thus, an abstract idea, as it appears in judgment, is a customary connection established among words, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, among objects insofar as they resemble one another in some certain way. What is important is not so much the details as the fact that Hume understands abstract thought in terms of the use of words, where the use of words is a matter of established associations. The next point we must grasp is that the associations which determine the use of words and therefore of abstract thought are social conventions. As we noticed in chapter 1, to see this we must (once again) complete our reading of the Treatise and move to Book III, where Hume talks about the conventions of justice. The account of justice – that is, of property – is well known. Justice is a convention and therefore, to the extent that it is a virtue, it is an artificial virtue. It is in the material interest of each that all conform to the convention of property. This justifies institution of that convention on prudential grounds: each will see to it that all, including him- or herself, conform to the convention. This argument only establishes that there be a convention of property. It does not justify specific conventions – that, for example, one gains title through inheritance or through mixing one’s labour. These latter specific conventions are merely a matter of historic record: since it is costly to alter such universal conventions, it is best on the whole to let them be. Note that this, too, is a prudential argument. The conformity to the prevailing conventions of property is of course a habit or custom. But conformity to a norm justified on prudential grounds is not yet a moral virtue.

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Here the mechanism of sympathy enters. Sympathy with the plight of someone who has been exploited by a person violating the norm transforms conformity into a virtue. These norms are as it were built into one through training in the context of the family. There one learns to share, and to feel that such sharing is morally appropriate. These are the habits, both prudential and moral, that are built into one. These habits to be sure have a rational justification. But the habituation, and the internalization of the norms, is something that precedes rational reflection. One first has the habits and the norms, and only after that does one, on reflection, recognize the prudential rationality of the norms of justice, and recognize how important it is that these norms be enforced not merely by interest but also by one’s moral conscience. For our purposes, the important point is given in a short remark (which we noted earlier) that Hume adds after giving his basic prudentialist account of justice: ‘In like manner are languages gradually established by human conventions’ (490). What this means is that conformity to the patterns of language such as the one encapsulated in the statement that ‘red’ means red is to be understood as an artificial virtue after the model of justice. There is the end that all seek: material interest. This end is best achieved for each if there is a series of conventions defining a shared language. Which language is not specified: that is a matter merely of history. These are the conventions into which one is habituated by the language teachers in the family. Moreover, through the mechanism of sympathy these conventions become normative. They not only describe what are the patterns of language but also tell us that those are the patterns that ought to be. These are patterns of which, no doubt, Descartes would prefer to divest us as we begin the process of inquiry. He does not mention them, but he ought to have done so. But here, as elsewhere, it is impossible to begin afresh, devoid of any habits or beliefs. Here is where we obtain our basic patterns that describe human linguistic behaviour. These are patterns that are, when we reflect on the situation, reasonable. Moreover, these patterns are enforced as it were by, if not conscience, then our sense of language: they are artificial, and furthermore, conformity to them is a virtue.

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It is not so much a matter of evidence that is relevant, as the fact that we are indeed social beings. Our interactions with others, governed by such norms as those of justice and of language, provide us with patterns of behaviour and thought that we simply for the most part take for granted. Just as we take for granted that food nourishes. Or that fire burns. Or that rainbows are ephemeral. Or that aunts are reliable. For the most part, these social patterns hold; that is why we can take them for granted. This is true for justice, and it is true for language. There is theft, but for the most part most people respect property. There are violations of linguistic norms, too, but not very often. For the most part, the social and linguistic patterns hold. It is only when we reflect on these patterns, with a concern for the truth – that is, when moved by the passion of curiosity, and when we then attempt to judge them as good or bad, as conducive to the truth or not – that we seek to find the causes of exceptions. E. Testing Testimony These linguistic patterns are what lie behind our reliance on testimony. Among the norms of language is this: ‘assert that p only if p,’ or, briefly: (A)

Ap only if p

‘A’ of course represents what Hume referred to as the ‘force and vivacity’ that attends some of our ideas, and that makes those ideas beliefs rather than fantasy or mere supposition. It is general conformity to this norm which guarantees that testimony is for the most part reliable. That is, it is a true regularity about human speech that (A9)

It is true in general that testimony is to be trusted.

that is, that (A99) It is true in general that persons conform their speech to norm (A). Coady makes the interesting argument that it is true a priori that testimony can be trusted. He is arguing, in other words, that (A9) = (A99) is true a priori. He conceives this to be contrary to what Hume would argue. In this, Coady is definitely correct: Hume would certainly disagree – to be sure, he would hold that (A9) = (A99) is true, but it is certainly not true a priori. Let us see how it goes.

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The principle (A) is more than simply a convention; it is also normative. It not only describes our linguistic behaviour, but also prescribes it; and because we have, at our mother’s knee, internalized this norm, the prescription is efficacious: it helps ensure that we do in fact conform to the convention. We in fact take it without real reflection in our ordinary discourse that this norm is indeed efficacious and that it does correctly describe human behaviour. It is, as it were, a given that people conform to this. It is taken for granted. As a generalization, it is rather like generalizations such as ‘fire burns’ and ‘food nourishes.’ These too we learn at our mother’s knee. And it should be clear that in none of these cases do we learn that they hold through induction by simple enumeration. There are other mechanisms through which we learn such things. Sympathy, for example. In the first place, like almost all norms, (A) is acquired simply by habit, and its normative force is acquired through sympathetic reaction to others, who themselves conform to the norm and enforce conformity in others. But there is another role that sympathy plays. Hume does not examine this in detail, but he does give one example that clearly illustrates his view. Here is what he says – he is discussing responses to human qualities that pride produces where merit does not justify those responses: When a man, whom we are really persuaded to be of inferior merit, is presented to us; if we observe in him any extraordinary degree of pride and self-conceit, the firm persuasion he has of his own merit takes hold of the imagination, and diminishes us in our own eyes, in the same manner as if he were really possessed of all the good qualities which he so liberally attributes to himself. Our idea is here precisely in that medium which is requisite to make it operate on us by comparison. Were it accompanied with belief, and did the person appear to have the same merit which he assumes to himself, it would have a contrary effect, and would operate on us by sympathy. The influence of that principle would then be superior to that of comparison, contrary to what happens where the person’s merit seems below his pretensions. (563)

The other person takes pride in having certain qualities that he does not have; and though he does not have them, we nonetheless come to believe that that person does have those qualities through our sympathetic response to his pride: ‘Sympathy has such a powerful influence

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on the human mind’ (563). It is this, as well as repetition, where lies the power of education: its capacity to form beliefs that are, if not contrary to reason, at least not justified by it – the beliefs that are among the absurdities of religion, or at least of older religions: ‘Education had then [in this former (pre-Enlightenment?) world] a mighty influence over the minds of men, and was almost equal in force to those suggestions of the senses and common understanding, by which the most determined sceptic must allow himself to be governed’ (Dialogues, p. 139). Note by the way, the reference to beliefs that are part of our ‘common understanding’ of the world. But that is not our present point. We shall return to these later, in chapter 7. Here the question is this: What accounts for the trust we have in others with regard to speaking the truth? After all, we trust them so to do, and non–truth telling is the exception to the rule. Hume’s answer is clear: it is sympathy. Another person asserts, that p and this expresses his or her belief that p. The person who hears this responds sympathetically. The sympathetic person responds to a passion by feeling the same passion with the same object; in the same way, sympathetic person responds affirmatively to the beliefs of the other person, when he or she expresses them: the sympathetic person responds by coming to have those beliefs. And because people generally tend to conform to the norm (A), there is a regular correlation between beliefs thus acquired and the fact or facts those beliefs assert to be there, so far at least as these facts can be ascertained by the hearer. (A) is thus confirmed, and the trust placed by the hearer in the speaker is shown not to be misplaced. But also, even if all the speaker does is repeat – perhaps forcefully – the assertion that p, then the hearer through habit will come to accept or believe that proposition. This is how education works. But Coady is correct: mere repetition cannot seriously confirm that there is general conformity to the norm (A) – that is, it cannot be that rational reflection on the basis of enumerative evidence is what leads us to suppose that it is true that the regularity (A9) = (A99) holds. What secures conformity to (A) – why we trust others – is the action of sympathy conveying to one the beliefs of others. It has little to do with rational deliberation, especially when the learning is taking place with children; essentially, they are told, or they hear, and they trust, or, rather, they just accept – in fact, it is not a matter of trust in the best sense of that term. It is only later that rational reflection comes to play a role in our acceptance of testimony.9 Before we turn to Coady’s claim that it is true a priori that testimony

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is to be trusted, it will pay to look at a somewhat similar position advanced by Thomas Reid, also in criticism of Hume.10 Reid argues first that there is in such things as facial expressions, bodily deportments, hand gestures, and so on, a ‘natural language,’ one in which there are ‘natural signs’ in this language of ‘the human countenance’ (Inquiry, p. 195). We all know this natural language. In fact, it is natural in the sense that it is unlearned, innate to the human being. This natural language is such that ‘prior to experience, the signs suggest the thing signified, and create the belief of it’ (ibid.; italics added). Beyond this natural language, there is our ordinary artificial language. When we learn the conventions of this artificial language, we do indeed learn the connections by experience, but this experience is not just a matter of habit formation through repetition, as a narrow reading of Hume would suggest. Rather, the learning is facilitated by our already knowing our natural language: the learning of the conventions of our artificial language is through experience ‘but not without the aid of our natural language’ (ibid.). Moreover, the conventions are internalized successfully by virtue of an innate trust in others – specifically, an innate trust that others who speak to us will use the same words with the same signification: ‘There is ... in the human an early anticipation, neither derived from experience, nor from reason, nor from any compact or promise, that our fellow-creatures will use the same signs in language, when they have the same sentiments’ (ibid., p. 196). This early anticipation is ‘an original principle of the human constitution, without which we should be incapable of language’ (ibid.). And being incapable of language without this principle, human beings would be incapable of instruction. But we are so capable: the implanting of this principle is the work of the ‘wise and beneficent Author of Nature’ (ibid.). This Author of Nature has implanted two further principles in the human breast. The first is ‘A propensity to speak truth and to use the signs of language so as to convey our real sentiments’ (ibid.). There is, in other words, an innate tendency to conform our speech to the principle (A). The other principle is ‘a disposition to confide in the veracity of others, and to believe what they tell us’ (ibid.). We trust others and take what they say to be the truth: this is an innate feature – yet another innate feature – of human being. Interestingly enough, Wittgenstein was later to make the same point. Thus, he tells us that ‘I really want to say that a language game is only possible if one trusts something. (I did not say “can trust some-

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thing.”)’11 This is much the same as Reid claimed, except that there is no invocation of the ‘Author of Nature.’ Hume does not disagree. Of course, Hume agrees with Reid – against, say, Pufendorf – that this sort of trust is provided by some sort of social contract. But also, of course, Hume unlike Reid does not rely on an ‘Author of Nature’ to provide an explanatory context. Nor does he leap immediately to a postulation of innate principles. What Hume does suggest is that a naturalistic explanation can be found among the ordinary processes of learning. Specifically, he suggests that there are two mechanisms that account for our trust in the testimony of others – that is, why conformity to (A) by oneself and by others is taken for granted. These are the mechanisms of sympathy and habit formation, especially in the latter case in the form of education. There is no need to postulate special innate principles. What happens is this. We acquire the habits of language, including conformity to (A), and including the trust we place in the testimony of others, in our younger years. This is before we have learned enough to think reflectively about these habits. But then there comes the time when we become responsible adults. We then discover that there are times when people do not conform to principles like (A), and times when our trust is misplaced. We then want to find out when these breeches of the norms of language occur. We rely on the testimony of others, we trust them, that is what we habitually do – at least, that is what we do until we have reason not to. We learn that the generalization that (A9)

it is true in general that testimony is to be trusted.

that is, that (A99) it is true in general that persons conform their speech to norm (A) is after all false: to be sure, it is pretty good, but there also are, as one says, exceptions. The point is that we do not come into the world of the adult and of the reflective thinker devoid of beliefs and devoid of habits. These habits include conformity to (A) and trusting the testimony of others. They include the habits of judgment to the effect that fire burns and food nourishes – those beliefs that form part of our ‘common understanding’

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of ourselves and of the world in which we find ourselves. Contrary to Descartes, we do not shed such beliefs and such habits of thought when we start to reason reflectively about these things. As we come to reflect on these things, all these habits of thought soon reveal themselves to have exceptions. Fire burns, but if one is quick one can painlessly snuff out a candle by pinching it. Food may nourish, but eggplant seldom does, and neither do English bangers. And testimony is sometimes unreliable. When this happens, then reason leads us to correct the error and to find not only where the exceptions occur but why, so that they may be anticipated and perhaps avoided. The philosopher will reflect here (in contrast to the vulgar) and reason in terms of the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ As in the case of the watch that does not work when wound, so here: only when we discover that our assumptions about the other fellow are not sound, and that sometimes he or she does not conform to this norm – only then, and only then if we are moved by an interest in the truth, do we proceed on the basis of the rules by which to judge of causes and effects to improve our understanding. We learn the sort of points to which Wittgenstein directed our attention when he remarked that ‘I believe what people transmit to me in a certain manner. In this way I believe geographical, chemical, historical facts, etc. That is how I learn. Of course learning is based on believing.’12 We discover which ‘manners’ are those that are trustworthy. We do this through the rules by which to judge of causes and effects. But the discovery of causes tends to confirm the general causal principle that every event has a cause and that like causes have like effects. This is the point Hume makes in his comment on the causal principle taken as Rule 4 among the ‘rules for the discovery of causes and effects’: ‘The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises but from the same cause. This principle we derive from experience, and is the source of most of our philosophical reasonings. For when by any clear experiment we have discovered the causes or effects of any phenomenon, we immediately extend our observation to every phenomenon of the same kind, without waiting for that constant repetition, from which the first idea of this relation is derived’ (174; emphasis added. Our ‘experience’ through which the causal principle is confirmed is the discovery of causes by means of experiment, that is, by means of the methods of eliminative induction – the other rules by which to judge of causes. In the case of testimony, this is sometimes reliable and sometimes not. The situation is, as we have already noted, like

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that of the watch that, when wound, sometimes works and sometimes does not. That it happens this way is not a matter of chance. Neither is the fact that some people sometimes are not worthy of our trust. We apply the rule that like effects have like causes. In the case of the watch, the artisan discovers that it is a speck of dust that makes the difference between working and not working. Similarly, we discover the various ‘manners’ through which we recognize trustworthy testimony. Here we rely on observational data – the manner of speaking about things miraculous by zealots and the superstitious are signs that they are not to be trusted – but not only on that. We also rely on the principle of Rule 4 that like effects have like causes. These – data and principle – serve to confirm the more specific principle that (A999) it is true in general that there are manners that mark which testimony is to be trusted. That is, the fact that there is general conformity to the rule (A), subject to the qualification that there are exceptions, those cases marked by the absence of some appropriate ‘manner.’ That there is general conformity is confirmed not by simple enumeration but rather by discovering through experience and experiment the different manners that mark testimony as reliable (or unreliable). There is some jargon that goes with this in the current literature.13 What we are looking at is the Humean claim about the epistemology of testimony that (a)

one is never justified in believing what a person (baldly) asserts unless the hearer has good, independent reasons to trust the speaker on that occasion.

But we have the general regularity (A9) = (A99), or, more accurately, (A999). At least on reflection, we have good inductive evidence that (A999) is true. Since this regularity is indeed true, we can infer about (most) persons that they are trustworthy. Hume rejects the claim that (b)

sometimes a hearer is justified in believing what a speaker (baldly) asserts simply because the speaker asserts it, even if the hearer lacks good independent reasons to trust the speaker on this occasion.

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Coady, in contrast, accepts (b). He accepts (b) by virtue of his accepting that it is true a priori that (A9) = (A99) is true. Now, to accept (b) is in effect to accept as an epistemic rule the principle that (c)

a hearer has a presumptive epistemic right to believe what a speaker (baldly) asserts even without positive independent reason for trusting the speaker on this occasion.

But there are exceptions: people sometimes are not be trusted in what they say. Thus, we have, not so much (c) as our epistemic rule, but rather (d)

a hearer has a presumptive epistemic right to believe what a speaker (baldly) asserts even without positive independent reason for trusting the speaker on this occasion. This presumption is defeated, however, if the hearer has negative evidence that makes the speaker’s assertion untrustworthy.14

If the hearer has reasons for doubting the speaker’s sincerity or competence in the context in which the hearer and speaker find themselves, then this defeats the presumption in favour of trust. But the presumptive epistemic right to believe does not require further, testimony-free reasons for trusting the speaker.15 The reasons that can defeat the presumptive right to believe are, of course, much of a piece with those which Hume would invoke; these are the inappropriate ‘manners’ of asserting that (A999) asserts are there – there, to be located through the usual methods of experiment, the methods of eliminative induction as described by the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ For Hume there also is a presumptive right to believe testimony, but it is justified, at least on reflection, by the truth of the general regularity (A9) = (A99) – or, better, because more accurately, the regularity (A999). For Coady, however, the presumptive right requires no such justification in terms of regular matters of fact about people and their testimony: it requires no such empirical justification because (A9) = (A99) is true a priori. Coady, in defence of this claim, makes the point that we neither learn through simple association that there is general conformity to (A) nor justify our acceptance of that fact by induction by simple enumeration. In this respect Coady is certainly correct, but it must be emphasized that in this respect Hume agrees with him.

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Coady reasons somewhat as Reid does. He argues that conformity to (A) must be assumed to be true prior to any reasonable engagement in human discourse and social existence. General conformity to (A) is an a priori truth precisely because we accept it and because we are required by our own ways of thought to accept it, prior to experience. In this Coady of course disagrees with Hume. The latter holds with regard to the principle (A) – taken as descriptive of linguistic behaviour – that it is true only as a matter of fact, that in some sense it is conceivable that the contrary be true; for, Hume argues, there is no ‘connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality’ (113; Hume’s italics). This contingency of the fact that there is general conformity to (A) is of course compatible with Wittgenstein’s point that ‘a child who has mastered the use of the word [“red”] is not “sure that in his language this colour is called”’ (On Certainty, ¶527). To be beyond doubt can be true of the contingent as well as of the a priori. At least, that is so for everyone save the Cartesian. But the Cartesian is unreasonable. Wittgenstein is not. Neither is Hume. Coady argues, however, that the proposition that there is general conformity to (A) is a priori – that, in other words, it is true a priori that testimony is reliable. His argument for this consists in the claim that the contrary is in fact inconceivable. Hume holds that the truth of (A) taken as descriptive – that is, the truth of (A9) = (A99) – is contingent. The basis for this judgment that this proposition is contingent is, among other things, the fact that we are sometimes wrong about testimony. Coady indicates that he takes the argument to be this: because there are exceptions, the principle (A) considered as descriptive can only be true as a matter of fact. Coady (Testimony, p. 97) argues, however, that this inference is wrong: ‘This surely has only to be stated to be seen to be invalid, for the fact that observation can sometimes uncover false testimony does nothing towards showing that the general reliability of testimony depends upon observation in the way [Hume’s reductionist thesis] requires.’ We have already seen that Coady is unreasonable is his reading of Hume on the nature of the rules by which to judge of testimony: simple enumeration is not enough. The present point, however, is that Coady wishes to argue that it is a priori true that testimony is reliable, but then is prepared to allow exceptions – those which are uncovered by observation. It is a necessary truth that (A), he suggests, but there are exceptions. This is his position. But surely Hume is correct: if there are exceptions then it cannot be a necessary truth.

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Coady makes his point only by insisting that, according to Hume and the Humean, since we discover exceptions by observation, therefore justification proceeds by induction by simple enumeration; but it does not proceed by the latter, and so (Coady is arguing) we need not accept the claim of the Humean that general conformity to (A) is a contingent matter. Since it does not proceed by simple enumeration, it must be a priori. And the fact that there are exceptions cannot weaken that conclusion. However, the Humean does not claim that the general conformity to (A) is learned and justified by induction by simple enumeration. Rather, what we succeed in justifying is a modification of the propositions accepted on the basis of the primitive trust of the child, trusting now as a reflective adult where the trust can reliably be placed, distrusting where it cannot; and we locate the factors that account for the difference between conformity to (A) and non-conformity by using the rules by which to judge of causes and effects. We modify the general trust that we came with when we became persons capable of reflective reason, and try to adjust our rules to take account of the exceptions. These adjustments take place in conformity with the rules of eliminative induction, not induction by simple enumeration. It is Coady’s claim that is unsound, not Hume’s. Equally unsound is Coady’s other argument for the a priori nature of general conformity to (A). This is the argument that we cannot conceive a world in which testimony is generally unreliable. This could not be a world in which we systematically told falsehoods, for in such a world we would merely be replacing accepting with rejecting. Rather, it would have to be a world in which, just randomly, acceptance and truth were united. There is little doubt that Coady is correct on this point. In such a world, there would be no practice of testifying, of reporting to others what is the case. Moreover, without the connection between acceptance and truth there would also be a severing of the semantic connections, such as our example that ‘red’ means red. What this rule means is that the term ‘red’ has come to be associated with red things. In judgment it introduces the abstract general idea of redness. If we start saying ‘This is red’ randomly, sometimes where the this is not red, sometimes where it is, then there will be no regularity holding between the term ‘red’ and red things. And without such regu-

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larity, it will not be true that ‘“red” means red.’ Thus, a world in which there was no conformity to the norm (A) and to the other semantic norms of language would be a world without communication. How one could live in such a world is hard to conceive. We are, after all, social beings. So it is hard to conceive that (A) and all like norms are false. It does not follow that (A) is necessary: all we have to do is to conceive human beings as brutes, more or less solitary, lacking communication. Perhaps these brutes would have sympathy, perhaps enough to keep a family unit together. But it would still be an odd unit. Its members could not, for example, warn others of danger, nor invite them to share the newly gathered food, since all that sort of thing would be reporting, testimony. Nor, of course, could these brutes make plans, let alone execute them, not even solitary plans. For planning requires abstract thought, and abstract thought requires words, language, and in the absence of reporting and testimony there would be no serious use of language. What would such a life be like? Hard to conceive. But clams do it. So it is conceivable. Nor, therefore, is it unreasonable to propose, with Hume, that it is a fact that norms such as (A) do describe the world but do so only contingently. Coady is just wrong in his inference from the inconceivability of a social world in which (A) does not hold to the conclusion that therefore (A) is a necessary truth. The inconceivability of a world in which (A) does not hold shows in fact how useful it is that we all of us conform our thought and language to this norm. We can see how the conventions of language merit the sort of justification that Hume provides, and how, too, these conventions can come to have normative value. In fact, we see that Hume can provide a perfectly reasonable justification for linguistic conventions without having to resort to some sort of transcendental vindication of the sort suggested by Coady. Nor is there any need to try to make conformity to norms such as (A) somehow true a priori. Good old contingency, properly located, will do just fine. F. The Responsible Knower Hume’s account of human nature is far from that of the autonomous thinker, the solitary Cartesian thinker, described by Coady. Nonetheless, there is a point to what Coady says about Hume: there is something to the idea of the autonomous thinker to be found in Hume’s account of epistemic justification. This is clear from Hume himself. After all, as we have seen, he does put the point about the veracity of

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testimony in individualistic terms: ‘Our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses’ (E 111). The reference to ‘our’ observation cannot be to one’s own self together with others, since that would then require reliance on testimony, which would in turn mean that one was relying on testimony to justify testimony – a blatant circle, as we have seen Coady point out. So the observation must be by the individual, which seems to make Hume’s position that of the autonomous thinker, after all. We must recognize, however, the role of the rules by which to judge of causes and effects. The picture that Coady gives of Hume’s notion of rational thought is that of mere habit formation based on induction by simple enumeration. But as we have argued, this is an incorrect reading of Hume: for Hume, reason is a matter of conforming our thought to the rules of experimental philosophy. This conformity is not a mere matter of habit; there is nothing automatic about it. Far from being a matter of automatic and passive response, such a conscious reflection on one’s beliefs and conscious attempts, in the interest of truth, to improve those beliefs, in fact requires a certain measure of strenuous mental activity.16 As Hume points out, all the rules of this nature [rules by which to judge of causes] are very easy in their invention, but extremely difficult in their application; and even experimental philosophy, which seems the most natural and simple of any, requires the utmost stretch of human judgment. There is no phenomenon in nature but what is compounded and modified by so many different circumstances, that, in order to arrive at the decisive point, we must carefully separate whatever is superfluous, and enquire, by new experiments, if every particular circumstance of the first experiment was essential to it. These new experiments are liable to a discussion of the same kind; so that the utmost constancy is required to make us persevere in our enquiry, and the utmost sagacity to choose the right way among so many that present themselves. (179)

We need ‘constancy’ and ‘sagacity’ to apply the rules. Phrases like these make clear what should in any case be clear: that the rules are rules for consciously and reflectively evaluating our causal judgments. Reason is not a matter of unreflective habit formation; it is, rather, a capacity for reflecting on, and evaluating, and improving our causal judgments. Those

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causal judgments we acquire in various ways prior to reflecting on them, prior to rationally evaluating them. We do not come thoughtless, devoid of beliefs, when we reflect on our thoughts about the world in which we find ourselves: we are not Cartesian autonomous thinkers who come naked of all beliefs to the process of reasoning about things. Reason in the sense of conformity to the rules by which to judge of causes aims at improving beliefs with which we enter the process of evaluation; they are not rules for initially acquiring those beliefs. We do reflect on our beliefs and evaluate them and change them for the better. However, having accepted this, it does not follow and indeed ought not to be the case that we are forever and constantly evaluating the habits that are there in our thought and language. No more than we are constantly reflecting on the rules of property in order to evaluate their rationality. There are times when it is appropriate to ask for the justification that might be given to the rules of justice. But most of the time it is not the occasion. Similarly, there are times when it is appropriate to reflectively evaluate our causal judgments. But most of the time it is not the occasion. The occasions for reflective evaluation occur when the truth of a matter of importance is called into question, when there is a challenge of a serious sort to some of our beliefs. Then, provided that we are moved by the passion of curiosity or love of truth, we must reflect on our judgments and apply the rules by which to judge of causes in order to justify where we are at, or, if not that, then to determine better what the truth of the matter really is. In the case of testimony, most of the time is not the time to call it into question. We no more need to worry about that than we need to worry about the fact that food nourishes or that fire burns. But at times we do worry about food: Is this in fact poisonous? Has it gone bad? Has it been handled by someone who has Hepatitis A? In these latter cases it is necessary to bring to bear the rules by which to judge of causes. Similarly, testimony. At times we do need to worry about testimony, even if most of the time such worry is pointless. Where there is a dispute, as, for example, there so often is in a court of law, we need to bring to bear the rules by which to judge of causes, and cross-examine the witness. In that case the interest in the truth requires that we reflect on the testimony and the testifier in order to determine as best we can what the truth of the matter is. Again, in the case of miracles, much does turn on it; most importantly, what turns on it is the rationality of Christianity. So in this case, too, it is important to reflect on the testimony and to

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bring to bear on the alleged witnesses the techniques of cross-examination to determine whether it is reasonable or not to accept what they say. So there are occasions when it is reasonable to reflectively apply the canons of rationality to our own judgments and to the testimony of others. But notice that it would be irresponsible for a person to forever be considering whether his or her moral judgments are correct. It would be a waste of time. Or worse: it could delay the making of a decision to the point where one outcome – likely the wrong one – is willy-nilly forced upon one. Similarly, it would be irresponsible to spend one’s time constantly calling into question and evaluating one’s ordinary causal judgments. Nor, finally, would it be responsible to spend one’s time constantly calling into question the trustworthiness of the testimony of others, and to argue about which is the appropriate ‘manner’ of testimony to be reckoned reliable. There are better things to do, and, again, if one did this, it would often lead to the postponement of a decision to the point where it is made not by one but for one. The Cartesian, who demands that everything be called into question, all causal judgments and all testimony, is simply irresponsible. The Cartesian program is impossible for humans to fulfill and if (per impossible) it were put into practice it would amount to nothing more than dithering, and dithering is not a virtue, neither in matters moral nor in matters epistemic. What Hume describes is the responsible thinker, someone who calls things into question, and who reflectively evaluates where he or she is at, only on those occasions where the demands of truth clearly require it.17 Nor is the Cartesian the only sort of philosopher who is epistemically or cognitively irresponsible. So is the person who relies on that easy way to create procedures or habits of inference, the method of induction by simple enumeration. There are better rules, ones that are more consistently conducive to the truth, than this simple rule. The responsible thinker will use the better rules. He or she will prefer – reasonably prefer – the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ Or so Hume argues, as we saw in the preceding chapter. As Coady describes Hume’s account of testimony, the thinker is a solitary individual who calls all testimony into question. Such a thinker is irresponsible in two ways. In the first place, he or she is like the Cartesian, insisting that everyone begin from nothing. In the second place, he or she follows only the rule of induction by simple enumeration. This picture of persons as inherently cognitively irresponsible is far from the

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Humean conception of a human being and his or her cognitive capacities. What Hume actually describes is the cognitively or epistemically responsible person. Such a person, when his or her beliefs are challenged, either by the world or by human nature, can provide a response. This response must be something in his or her set of beliefs that can provide a ground or reason for supposing the challenged belief is true. The responsible person proceeds in terms of the rules of reason – that is, the rules that reason has found to be such that conformity to them is most conducive to truth. A belief will be justified in case it has passed such a test. As for the other beliefs that we have, the ones that we never put to the test, these will be rationally justified just in case that, if they were to be challenged, they would be able to pass the test. The epistemically responsible person is one who has the relevant beliefs and relevant standards to respond in a reasonable way when a belief is challenged in a way that is important. That is why most of those beliefs which we accept as a matter of course, – be they acquired through our experience of the world or of human nature, or through education, through by testimony – are secure and justified: each of them can be defended, albeit not all at once. In the preceding chapter we argued that for Hume, reason is a virtue. Specifically, it is a virtue – a cognitive or epistemic virtue – that one conform one’s causal inferences to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ the rules of the scientific method. We now see that there is more to cognitive virtue than simply this: what is required if one is to be cognitively virtuous is that one be a responsible knower. Not questioning everything all at once means taking for granted for most of the time our ordinary knowledge of the world, and this includes most of what we take on trust by way of testimony. It means taking for granted that one is part of a community, and in particular that one is part of a community of knowers. In this epistemic community, knowledge is shared. So is evidence, and so is criticism. One can claim to know only if one has taken care and indeed pains to become familiar with the currently available information and evidence that seems to be relevant to one’s claim to know. In specific areas, one must be familiar with ‘the state of the art.’ Not to take care with these things is epistemically irresponsible. But it would be wrong to suggest that it is epistemically irresponsible if one fails to take into account evidence that is in a way available but that has for some reason been concealed, for example, by a corrupt judge. The scientist undertaking research in his or her area has a responsibility to be more diligent than the casual

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inquirer: standards become stricter the more authority one claims for one’s beliefs. The physician, who claims the status of a scientist, must be more scrupulous than one’s maiden aunt when it comes to proposing cures for one’s common cold. The standards also become stricter the more significant are the consequences that depend on the belief being true – for example, engineers building bridges are held to a stricter rule than are sous-chefs making salads. (But even with salads, not ‘everything goes’ – we expect the chef to have ensured that the greens are clean and fresh. Making sure of those facts is his or her responsibility – that is, his or her cognitive responsibility.) It is likely that nothing much turns on our estimate of the amount of rain that fell yesterday, but how much water we add to the IV of a sick patient in the ER may have momentous consequences: our standards for evidence will be stricter in the latter case than in the former. These various standards and rules, as well as the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ whose application they surround, all contribute to, and are part of, our notion of epistemic responsibility.18 This notion, it is clear, is a social notion. It requires various things of the knower, but many of these things are a matter of the social context, of the community of knowers to which the individual belongs. Reason is a cognitive virtue, and the concept of reason this requires is that of a responsible knower. That knower is of course an individual, but as a responsible individual he or she is part of a community of knowers; the standards to which the responsible knower conforms mean that that knower is certainly not an atom, or at least not an isolated atom. We can now recognize the nature of Hume’s emphasis, in his discussion of testimony, on the individual. It is not an emphasis on doing everything for oneself anew and independently of others. Coady is wrong to attribute such a Cartesian methodology to Hume.19 The Humean emphasis is rather that the individual ought to be a responsible person in matters cognitive as well as matters moral. It is a responsibility that we can of course evade if we are so inclined. But it is a responsibility that we ought not to evade. It is incumbent on us to train ourselves to be cognitively responsible so that when the need arises, when the demand for truth requires it, we are in a position to find reasons which, according to the best principles of reason, do in fact justify the claim that that belief is true, or – if there are problems with that belief – then that the cognitive tools are available such that we can go about improving on it. In this sense what Hume is describing and defending is indeed an autonomous thinker. But the autonomy is that

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of a real person, situated in a real natural and social context, with a real history. The autonomy is not that of the Cartesian isolated social and epistemic atom,20 but that of the reflective thinker, who comes to the process of inquiry not bereft of all beliefs, but rather, when required, when a belief is somehow challenged, is prepared to show that that belief is justified, or, where that is not possible, to go about improving that belief in the interest of truth. Descartes’s autonomous thinker may be reflective, but his or her reflection removes all beliefs; then, bereft of all beliefs, and therefore of any starting point, he or she, no matter how methodical, can go nowhere and can get nowhere. Hume, in contrast, starts somewhere, where he finds himself, and has a method that takes him somewhere, albeit tentatively, and fallibly, but to where there is so far as he can see an improvement in his knowledge. Unlike Descartes’s vision of autonomy, Hume’s is a reasonable version of the Enlightenment ideal. It is this ideal that he is defending, and it remains an ideal worthy of defence.

6 Knowledge

We have come this far: For Hume, given our interest in truth, conformity to the rules for evidence is the means by which we achieve, as best we can, that end, and such conformity is cognitively virtuous: it constitutes our epistemic or cognitive duty. In the light of our experience of the world, we ought to adjust our belief-forming mechanisms and inference patterns in such a way that we maximize the amount of our beliefs that are true and minimize the amount that are false, and to proportion the strength of our beliefs (and disbeliefs) to the strength of the evidence available – recognizing that such cognitive decisions may be adjusted according to the significance, be it theoretical or practical, of the belief. For Hume, virtue is a teleological notion in the sense that the possession and exercise of a virtue tends to lead one more or less dependably to the attainment of certain ends – in general terms it will be some end that is a benefit to oneself and/or to others. He would have learned this from Aristotle – for him, too, virtue is a teleological notion; for him, too, virtue is constituted by habits that contribute dependably to the wellbeing of the possessor and to that of the community of which he or she is a functioning part.1 Aristotle proposed that wisdom is the chief of the cognitive virtues.2 Wisdom, he argued, ‘is comprehension that grasps the first principles.’ Knowledge follows comprehension: ‘Knowledge is belief about things that are universal and necessary, and there are principles of everything that is demonstrated and of all knowledge (for knowledge involves reasoning).’ This grasp of first principles is infallible and incorrigible: it is ‘the states by which we have truth and are never deceived about things that cannot – or can – be otherwise.’3 Scientific knowledge is, then, a matter of demonstration – that is, of syllo-

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gistic inference from these first principles. Now, as for Aristotle so for Hume: cognitive virtue involves teleology. For both, this teleology has as its aim the truth of things. Except that, for Aristotle, the truth of things is given by principles that are universal and necessary, and the grasp of these principles is infallible. The teleology of virtue for Aristotle thus has scientia as its aim. This hardly surprises us. Nor does the consequent contrast to Hume. It is true that for Hume as for Aristotle, cognitive virtue has a teleology. But the cognitive aim is matter of empirical fact truth, not the truth that derives from a realm of forms or essences that transcend ordinary reality. And the means is not the infallible rational intuition of such forms or essences but rather the method of simple common sense and its long arm, science. We have looked at the methods of science, and their justification. We have seen some of the forms of argument that are used in this justification. In our attempt to defend Hume’s critical realism, these arguments are important. Hume’s case for critical realism depends on a causal argument, so to defend Hume on this point we shall have to defend casual inference. But causal inference is itself rooted in something prior. This something prior is perceptual knowledge. We have discussed in chapter 2 how Descartes handled perceptual knowledge. But that depended on the world being one for which scientia made sense. With Hume there is no more scientia. We must therefore find in this new world in which there are no objective necessities a different account of perceptual knowledge – a Humean account of how we know the world of ordinary sensible experience, the world of tables and chairs, of oak trees and fogs, of oysters and rainbows, a world with shadows as well as objects, and a world of Macbeth’s dagger and with straight sticks that look bent in water. What we need to do is discover how our ordinary perceptual judgments can be justified as providing knowledge. For this we need an account of mental acts – of perceptual acts in particular – that, unlike Descartes’s, does not involve any reference to entities that transcend ordinary experience. We must provide an account of such judgments rooted in nothing more than our ordinary experience, and that account must arise from our inner awareness of such judgments. We have seen already in chapter 2 something of what emerges about these things as scientia disappears and takes with it the notion that there is something about perceptual judgments that reaches out to a realm of objective necessities beyond the realm of ordinary things.

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We have not yet, however, asked whether we can in fact reasonably claim that we know in a world devoid of objective necessities and from which scientia has disappeared. Or at least, we have not answered that question. If we are to defend Hume’s critical realism, we must find out what happens to knowledge after the waning of scientia. By what arguments can knowledge claims now be justified? In our discussion of Hume’s defence of science against superstition and of his account of testimony, we have seen something of these arguments. But we need to pursue the matter to a deeper level, to that of perceptual knowledge. Knowledge is a virtue. It has a teleological order. Its aim is matter-offact truth. Its method is that of experimental science. But that process will be rational only if the starting point is rational. Only if we can show how perceptual knowledge can be rationally justified can we say that we have shown how our claims to know the external world are justified, and in particular how Hume’s critical realism can be justified. We need to say what knowledge has become in a world from which scientia has disappeared. What arguments can be used – that is, used reasonably – to justify knowledge claims in such a world – in what is in fact the world of ordinary experience? The significant point is that these arguments have as their context a view of the world in which there are no objective necessary connections, a world that is, unlike that of scientia, pervaded by contingency. The problem is that in a world pervaded in this way by a radical contingency, all judgments are fallible; nothing is, in Plato’s terms, tethered; and all is open to doubt. So do we after all have any right in such a world to say that we know? This is the problem that confronts us as we attempt to justify Hume’s account of our knowledge of the external world and of his critical realism. We have, then, arrived at this point. In a Humean world, in a world delimited by the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance, there is no such thing as knowledge in the traditional sense of scientia: there is no ontological guarantee that any of our judgments is true, there is no judgment of which we can say that we know incorrigibly that it is true. Neither the sort of guarantee envisioned by Descartes, nor the sort of guarantee proposed by Berkeley, is there to ensure that some at least of our judgments are correct. We do not even have the sort of ontological guarantee suggested by Russell for acts of acquaintance or experiencing, the sort of experience that we have of our sense impressions and of our mental acts. These acts of experiencing are mental acts themselves

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and therefore, as we argued in chapter 2, intentional; but there is nothing about intentionality – again as we argued in chapter 2 – that can guarantee the existence of the state of affairs intended. Now, it is easy to confuse the search for tethered knowledge with our ordinary ways of speaking. After taking due account of the evidence available for the truth of a proposition, and finding it all in favour, it is simply habit to assert that proposition: that is the way our language works. But of course, we have to keep in the back of our mind that this assertion must be tempered by the fact that we know that such an assertion is not tethered in the way that traditional philosophy from Plato to Descartes would have it tethered, infallibly as scientia. If we are to claim to know certain things, we can do so only in the context of what would, from the point of view of these earlier philosophers, be called scepticism. Hume notes this point in the Treatise, when he comes to the end of Book I, and offers a sceptical resolution of the doubts that he has raised about the possibility of knowledge – that is, knowledge in the traditional sense: Nor is it only proper we should in general indulge our inclination in the most elaborate philosophical researches, notwithstanding our sceptical principles, but also that we should yield to that propensity, which inclines us to be positive and certain in particular points, according to the light in which we survey them in any particular instant. It is easier to forbear all examination and enquiry, than to check ourselves in so natural a propensity, and guard against that assurance, which always arises from an exact and full survey of an object. On such an occasion we are apt not only to forget our scepticism, but even our modesty too; and make use of such terms as these, it is evident, it is certain, it is undeniable; which a due deference to the public ought, perhaps, to prevent. I may have fallen into this fault after the example of others; but I here enter a caveat against any objections which may be offered on that head; and declare that such expressions were extorted from me by the present view of the object, and imply no dogmatical spirit, nor conceited idea of my own judgment, which are sentiments that I am sensible can become nobody, and a sceptic still less than any other. (293)

Knowledge in this sense is but opinion in the sense of the earlier philosophers whom Hume is concerned to refute, and thereby to deny a place in determining how we should conduct our cognitive life. The

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position at which Hume has arrived is that of the academic sceptic. The academic does not know but knows that he does not know. Hume knows that there are no (objective) necessary connections: as he argued, following Locke, there are no necessary connections presented to us; the concept is therefore unintelligible, having no ties to the world we know in sense experience and inner awareness, the world that we live in and the only world we encounter in experience. Because he knows that there are no necessary connections, he knows that he does not know – that is, does not know in the sense required by the tradition that had an ontology of substances and forms. The very unintelligibility of the notion guarantees that he does now know that there is nothing there to be known. This means that Hume, confined to the world of sense experience and inner awareness, has settled for a world in which there is no conclusive certainty, in which there is no infallible guarantee. He must settle for something less than what earlier philosophers had aimed to achieve: that cognitive target is illusion and, in Berkeley’s phrase, dust that means one cannot see the truth about the world in which we find ourselves. We are reduced to experience, as Montaigne sees. We are reduced to the second best on which Descartes relies when he is not in the state of meditating, not thinking about how to go about fulfilling his goal of infallible certainty but not yet attaining it – we are reduced to the second best on which Descartes relies when going to war or fleeing Paris or fathering children or just going to bed and waking up and knowing he isn’t dreaming. But this sort of judgment, this reliance on opinion, is no longer second best: it is now the very best that we can do – any better is literally unthinkable, and therefore impossible, and therefore unreasonable as a cognitive goal. But this does not mean that we must give up aiming at the cognitive goal of truth: we need not adopt the Pyhrronian attitude of suspending judgment about everything. That would be no better than the problematic situation in which the Cartesians finds themselves when they discover that their proposed cognitive goal is impossible to attain. This Pyrrhonian attitude is literally impossible, for nature will not let us rest content with coming to no conclusion: it requires us to act, and to believe in order to act: The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism, is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life. These principles may flourish and triumph in the schools; where it is,

372 External World and Our Knowledge of It indeed, difficult, if not impossible, to refute them. But as soon as they leave the shade, and by the presence of the real objects, which actuate our passions and sentiments, are put in opposition to the more powerful principles of our nature, they vanish like smoke, and leave the most determined sceptic in the same condition as other mortals. (E 159)

The Pyrrhonist or Cartesian principles are in fact what lead one to a more sober view of human cognitive capacities: A correct Judgment observes a contrary method, and avoiding all distant and high enquiries, confines itself to common life, and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience; leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators, or to the arts of priests and politicians. To bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable, than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the Pyrrhonian doubt, and of the impossibility, that any thing, but the strong power of natural instinct, could free us from it. (E 162)

The reasonable person avoids attempting to explore the world of the forms and other entities outside the world of ordinary experience – including, Hume will add, God or gods. It is the principles of academic scepticism that yield this reasonable attitude. We do not set ourselves never to seek the truth, as the Pyrrhonian would have it, nor to be forever denied access to the truth, as the Cartesian would have it. The rational arguments of the Pyrrhonians and the Cartesians yield, not knowledge, but dithering. We cannot find it: it is not there to be found. Truth to be told, the truth is before us and can be sought. It is unreasonable for the Pyrrhonian sceptic to deny this. It is in fact simply irresponsible. In contrast, the reasonable sceptic, the academic sceptic, is cognitively responsible: though restricted to the realm of opinion and of ordinary experience, such a one does not forsake the pursuit of truth. It is just that he or she recognizes that what is attainable is only opinion and therefore only probability, not certainty. However, as Hume indicates, there is opinion and then there is opinion. Opinion comes with degrees of certainty, degrees of probability, degrees of rational worth. And if the academic eschews certainty in the pursuit of truth, he or she does not eschew probability. Some opinions more than others are made firm by the evidence we have available – or rather, more correctly, are rationally made more firm by that evidence.

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The question which must now concern us is this: What are the norms that establish that certain kinds of evidence are good and others are not good? What are the norms conformity to which can, in a Humean world, satisfy our cognitive interest in the truth? What are the implications of Hume’s philosophy for what we ought to believe? There are those who argue that such a program is not possible. In a Humean world, they propose, it is simply not possible to avoid radical scepticism that makes all belief rationally unjustified. Such a one is Barry Stroud, who argues that ‘if we acknowledge that our sensory experiences are all we ever have to go on in gaining knowledge about the world, and we acknowledge, as we must, that given our experiences as they are we could nevertheless be simply dreaming of sitting by the fire, we must concede that we know nothing about the world.’4 It is not that we have to know that we are dreaming in order to call into question any claim to know anything. It is just that dreaming must be at least a possibility. It seems reasonable to hold that in order to know that one is dreaming, one must have some kind of knowledge of the world. But in order to entertain the possibility of dreaming, one need not presuppose any sort of knowledge, either on one’s own part or on anyone else’s. Stroud makes this clear: when he is talking about the possibility of dreaming, ‘I mean simply the possibility that I am dreaming now, whether I could ever come to discover that or not.’5 He argues that ‘the possibility [of dreaming] continues to make sense even if I go on to imagine that no one on the face of the earth or anywhere else could ever know that I am dreaming because they too could never know whether they were awake or dreaming.’6 Now, we have argued that in a Humean world of radical contingency there is never any guarantee. Thus we are holding that there is nothing about our perceptual awareness – or our sensible awareness, or our inner awareness – that guarantees that the object perceived or experienced, the object that is present to us or is presented to us in such experience, does really exist. We are holding, in other words, that it is always possible that we are dreaming, or (what is the same) always possible that our present experience of the world is all false. That is what happens when we eliminate the top part of the divided line, when we restrict ourselves to a world in which there is no scientia, only opinion. This, according to Stroud, immediately plunges us into the deepest scepticism: unless we exclude the possibility that our experience of the world is false, then we have no right to make a knowledge claim about

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the world. This cognitive state into which we are plunged is a radical Pyrrhonism. The Humean reply to Stroud is simply the same as the Humean dismissal of any sort of radical scepticism, be it that of the Pyrrhonist or that into which the Cartesians plunge us. Why accept as our cognitive standard the rule that we ought to accept as worthy of belief anything for which there is the logical possibility that it is false? Such a norm is impossible to live up to. To accept it would require us to take the position that we ought to meet a standard that is impossible for us to meet. Moreover, not only is it impossible to achieve, but we must also, as moved by our natural instincts, believe; that is, we must accept propositions in a way that is counter to the standard we have set for ourselves. All that we can achieve is frustration and, perhaps, a feeling of guilt over our incapacity to live up to the standards that we have imposed on ourselves. Why should we set ourselves up to be that sort of being? Is that the sort of ideal of a knower that we should set before ourselves and attempt to meet? Why do that to ourselves? Why not restrict ourselves, as Hume put it, to ‘common life, and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience’? Why not accept our limitations and get on with the task of living a reasonably good life? Surely that is the reasonable thing to do. Moreover, why not, as part of that task, determine which norms may reasonably be adopted as guides to which propositions we ought to accept – that is, accept as more probably true than others? And, therefore, of course, accept as more worthy guides to action than others? Anyway, this is how we shall go. We shall begin by asking what becomes of knowledge after the demise of scientia. What becomes of knowledge when, in terms of the divided-line metaphor, the top part of the line has been eliminated? What becomes of knowledge when there is no knowledge and only opinion remains? And in due course we shall attempt to answer this question: How, in a Humean world, a world of radical contingency where there are no guarantees, can our claims to perceptual knowledge be rationally justified? Then, and only then, will we be in a position to look at how Hume might use such knowledge and use scientific knowledge to arrive at a rationally justified conclusion that critical realism is in fact a reasonable position to adopt. Enough introduction. There is yet a long way to go: let us get on with it.

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A. After Scientia: What Knowledge Becomes and Problems with It I. Knowledge as Justified True Belief Within the new ontology of everyday experience – within, in other words, the Berkeleyan and realist ontology of everyday experience – the epistemological task consists in locating the norms conformity to which will enable us to achieve our cognitive goal of discovering the truth, that is, as it has become, true opinion: truth as matter-of-fact truth about the world of everyday experience. To emphasize this point, and make it our point of departure, this world is not one in which we can locate and tie down these opinions infallibly; in the world of everyday sensible experience, the Cartesian standard cannot be attained and is therefore to be reckoned as unreasonable. So we must settle for probability. To secure the best we can, we have to aim to accept those judgments which are most probably true – that is, judgments which are so tied to the evidence available that it is reasonable to accept them, tentatively at least, as true. Obviously, knowledge cannot be simple true belief: we may arrive at true beliefs simply by guessing; if we simply guess, then some at least of those beliefs will likely be true. Or one may be superstitious: one may have some bad luck and that may occur subsequent to one’s having crossed paths with a black cat; one may have firmly expected such bad luck, not on the basis of sound evidence but on the basis of the fact that one is superstitious. But beliefs like this will not be tied down, made secure, by way of evidence. It is only true beliefs that are rooted in evidence that count as knowledge. They will count as knowledge only where one is entitled, rationally, in feeling that they are certain. Such entitlement comes by way of evidence. As Ayer once put it: ‘The necessary and sufficient conditions for knowing that something is the case are, first, that what one can be said to know be true, secondly, that one be sure of it, and thirdly that one have the right to be sure.’7 Within a Humean universe, it is opinion that counts as knowledge, and among opinions, what counts as knowledge is justified true belief. Locke had already made the relevant point: ‘He governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves, according as reason directs him’ (Essay, IV, xxvii, 24). And the reason that one is talking about is reason in the world of sense experience, where the best that we can do is opinion.

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This is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go far. In fact, of course, rather more must be said about what is to count as ‘justification.’ What are the norms of the new empirical reason that now governs our assent? As soon as it is proposed, it is clear that as it stands, the formula is inadequate: there are counterexamples, true beliefs that are, apparently, justified, but that we are not inclined to call knowledge. An example from Russell makes the relevant point: ‘If you look at a clock which you believe to be going, but which in fact has stopped, and you happen to look at it at a moment when it is right, you will acquire a true belief as to the time of day, but you cannot correctly be said to have knowledge.’8 On the assumption that our friend had good reason to think that the clock was working and keeping good time, he had a justified true belief, and therefore under the proposed analysis knew what the time was. Here is another version of the same point, again from Russell: ‘If a man believes that the late Prime Minister’s last name begins with a B [this is in 1912], he believes what is true, since the Prime Minister was Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr. Balfour was the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister’s last name begins with a B, yet this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge.’9 Russell’s counterexample to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief was later taken up by E. Gettier.10 The latter presents his case in terms of a friend of his, Smith, who has strong evidence for the truth of (*)

Jones owns a Ford.

This person Smith might know, for example, that Jones has always owned a Ford, so far as he, Smith, can remember, and has in fact just offered this person a ride in the car he is driving, which is a Ford. Now suppose further that Smith has another friend, Brown, of whose whereabouts he is completely unaware at this moment. Gettier has his friend Smith form the proposition: (**)

Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Peggys Cove.

He then proposes that Smith in fact accept this proposition as true. Smith is justified in believing (*), and (**) follows validly from (*) –

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something that Smith, who is a logic teacher, knows. Our person therefore is justified in believing (**). Gettier now imagines that in fact Jones does not after all own a Ford; he has just sold his car, and has not yet replaced it, but has rented a Ford until he obtains a replacement. Suppose also that Brown, unbeknownst to Smith, really is in Peggys Cove. In this case, Gettier’s friend Smith believes (**), (**) is true, and he or she is justified in accepting (**). But it is clear that Smith does not know that (**). We therefore have a counterexample to the proposed definition of knowledge as justified true belief. This counterexample is not as neat as that of Russell. Gettier’s example depends on the validity of the following inference pattern (called ‘Addition’ in logic): p [ p or q or, in the well-known symbols, p [ p v q11 the validity of which inference pattern in turn depends on ‘v,’ that is, ‘or,’ having the meaning given by the following truth table: p

q

pvq

T T F F

T F T T

T T T F

If any instance of ‘p’ is true, then so is the corresponding instance of ‘p v q.’ Thus, given the truth table that defines the meaning of ‘v,’ there is no case in which the premise is true and the conclusion is false. In other words, Addition, on which Gettier’s counterexample relies, is a valid rule of deductive logic. There are, however, problems with counting this rule of inference as one that justifies moves in a chain of justificatory inferences. We shall turn to these directly. The point here is the simple one that Russell’s

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example is neater in that it does not depend on this rather odd rule of the logicians. In any case, it was Gettier’s example that set off a minor cottage industry for philosophers, who attempted to add clauses to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief, in the hope of ruling out counterexamples of the Gettier sort. Someone would propose a way of filling the gap; another would then dream up a counterexample to this revised definition.12 The game soon got boring, but the industry survives, it has its devotees. The results are not worth surveying. Even so, useful lessons can be gained from the counterexample. These lessons all concern the notion of justification that enters into the definition. We shall explore three of these. II. Coherence and Justification The way in which disjunctions are commonly used in everyday life is as premises for disjunctive syllogisms – that is, as arguments of the form13

(+)

pvq ~p [q

‘Either the butler or the maid did it; it wasn’t the butler; so it must have been the maid.’ And such arguments are used to prove to those to whom they are addressed in conversation or in disputations that the conclusion is true: the purpose is to convince that person that the proposition which is the conclusion is true. For an argument to be useful in this way, it must itself fulfil two conditions: (1) (2)

It must be valid. The premises must be true.

But there are two further, epistemic, conditions that must be fulfilled for the argument as used to fulfil the purpose of convincing the person to whom it is addressed that the conclusion is true: (3) (4)

The person must have reason to believe that the premises are true. The person must not antecedently have reason to believe that the conclusion is true.

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If condition (4) is not fulfilled, then there is no need to use the argument, it would be pointless. If condition (3) is not fulfilled, then the person to whom the argument is addressed, having no reasons to accept that the premises are true, will not have any reason to suppose that the conclusion is true.14 Now, let us suppose that Gettier’s friend Smith has (*) as the only ground he or she has for accepting the disjunction as true. In that case Smith knows that ‘p v q’ is true only because he or she knows that ‘p’ is true. But in that case the second premise of (+) would be false. But then condition (2) for the use of disjunctive syllogism would not be fulfilled. Smith may have grounds for believing (**) to be true, but he or she has not obtained a proposition that can justifiably be put to the common use of disjunctions – namely, as a premise in disjunctive syllogisms. In that sense, although Smith has grounds for accepting the disjunction (**) as true, those grounds do not in fact, taking things objectively, justify him or her in accepting a proposition that can usefully be employed in common forms of discourse. It is also worth noting that if the grounds for Smith’s accepting as true the disjunction (**) were the knowledge that the second disjunct ‘q’ is true, then condition (4), the second epistemic condition for the use of disjunction syllogisms, would not be fulfilled. In general, a disjunction cannot be used in a normal way in disjunctive syllogisms if the ground for accepting the disjunction as true is nothing but the knowledge with regard to one of the disjuncts that it is true. Thus, in these circumstances one cannot reasonably introduce the disjunction into the context of ordinary discourse. So, when Smith accepts the disjunction (**) as true because he or she accepts (*) as true, and uses the rule of Addition to infer (**), then he or she is accepting as true a proposition that he or she cannot be justified in using in the normal way that disjunctions are used – namely, as premises in disjunctive syllogisms that have the capacity to provide grounds for the listener to accept the conclusion as true. We are not surprised, in other words, that something funny is going on with Gettier’s proposed counterexample to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief. Russell’s counterexample does not run into this difficulty. But we can learn something from Gettier’s case. We must ask this: Under what conditions can we assert disjunctions in such a way that they can be used in ordinary arguments to prove that their conclusions are true? The answer is easy: when one has grounds for accepting the disjunc-

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tion as true which do not consist solely in knowing that one of the disjuncts is true. Thus, a customs inspector might be prepared to assert this disjunction: Either he has tobacco or he has alcohol. on the basis of his experience about those who come to this particular border crossing that Everyone has either tobacco or alcohol. In symbols, where ‘a’ is the person in question, our customs inspector accepts Ta v Aa because he or she accepts (x)(Tx v Ax) and the former follows deductively from the latter. Our customs inspector can now use this disjunction in a disjunctive syllogism: Either this guy has tobacco or he has alcohol. This guy does not have tobacco. So, this guy must have alcohol. Using this argument, the customs inspector or any of his colleagues can reasonably accept as true the proposition that This guy has alcohol. This works where the customs inspector has evidence to accept the general rule; he or she then applies the general rule to another particular instance of that rule. The idea is that the inspector can accept that the disjunction is true in a way makes the disjunction useful in ordinary applications in disjunctive syllogisms, not where the inspector somehow knows the facts that make the disjunction true, but because the disjunction coheres with other knowledge that inspector has.

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Gettier sets out his proposed counterexample in terms of a chain. The suggestion now is that this chain model of justification is not appropriate; one needs instead to turn to a web model, in which coherence provides the grounds for justifiably accepting a proposition as true. The notions of ‘web’ and ‘chain’ are of course in themselves just metaphors and therefore hardly constitute a philosophical terminology. Yet, like all good metaphors, they have their point. We shall explore some of their significance in due course. III. Objective versus Subjective In both the Russell and the Gettier versions of the proposed counterexample to the post-scientia notion of knowledge as justified true belief, one can note that there is a sense in which the belief in question is not justified. In Gettier’s example, the disjunction ‘p v q’ which provides the paradox, is inferred by the rule of Addition from one of its disjuncts ‘p.’ But ‘p’ is false. Therefore the second of the conditions for the usefulness of an argument is not fulfilled: the argument that is used to justify the acceptance of ‘p v q’ is unsound: the argument is based on a valid form, but the premise is false and therefore the conclusion remains unjustified. What leads to the paradox is that there is another way in which the inference to ‘p v q’ is justified. One validly infers ‘p v q’ from ‘p.’ Moreover, Jones believes with good reason that ‘p’ is true. Therefore, since Jones reasonably believes that ‘p’ is true and knows that Addition is a valid rule, he is thereby justified in accepting the disjunction as true. The point is that, on the one hand, subjectively Jones is justified in his belief – that is, is justified according to the information he has available; while on the other hand, unbeknownst to Jones, his belief that ‘p’ and therefore his belief that ‘p v q’ is unjustified – that is, unjustified objectively according to what is objectively the case. Now, there is a distinction made in ethical theory by those who argue that an action is justified by its consequences. The difficulty is that an actor can never know what are all the consequences of his or her actions. It follows immediately that an actor can never know, or know for certain, whether the act he or she performs is the right thing to do in the circumstances. It follows that an actor might very well try to discover as best he or she can what the consequences are of the action about to be performed; that he or she might be as conscientious as possible in

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attempting to come to know what is right; but that, owing to the fallibility of human reason, he or she will still do what, objectively speaking, is wrong. Insofar as the person has done something wrong, that person is to be morally condemned for that action; it just was not, objectively speaking, the right thing to do. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to subject this person to moral criticism. After all, that person did the best that could be done in the human circumstances at hand. So, although objectively the actor was unjustified in what he or she did, subjectively he or she did the best that could be done, and was therefore subjectively justified in doing it. Indeed, the person should be praised for what was done, that is, for doing his or her best to find out what was the right thing to do and then so acting. The person is praiseworthy – that is, it is morally justified to praise that person for doing as he or she did, even though the action was wrong. This is a point commonly made by consequentialists in ethics.15 The result is a distinction between actions that are objectively justified and those that are subjectively justified. This allows an action to be objectively unjustified, even where in the circumstances that actor has done the best he or she could to find out the moral correctness of the action – that is, even where the actor is subjectively justified. We are here in our epistemological considerations faced with the need for a similar distinction. Jones was objectively unjustified in accepting the disjunction as true; the reasons used did not, objectively speaking, provide a sound argument in support of such acceptance. At the same time, we supposed that Smith did indeed have good evidence that his or her acceptance of the disjunction as true was justified. Smith was therefore subjectively justified in accepting that proposition as true. Although something had gone wrong objectively in those reasons, subjectively Smith had been as cognitively conscientious as he or she could have been. We thus have the distinction between objective and subjective justification. This makes it clear how Smith could, as a conscientious or responsible knower, claim, rightly, to have a justified true belief, and therefore could reasonably claim to know the disjunction to be true, even where, objectively speaking, Smith did not have a justified true belief, and therefore could not, objectively speaking, successfully claim to have justified true belief: Smith did not, after all, objectively speaking, know that the disjunction was true. Thus, Smith could reasonably assert that he or she knew something when objectively he did not know that thing: even where one does not know, one can reasonably claim to know.

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The same reasoning applies to Russell’s counterexample. The person could reasonably claim to know what the time was; subjectively, he or she was justified in that belief, but objectively speaking, that person really did not know the time. We thus see how, with the distinction between objective justification and subjective justification, much of the paradox of the Russell and Gettier counterexamples to knowledge as justified true belief disappears. IV. Knowledge by Accident There remains something unhappy about the situation, however. We are not wholly satisfied. The problem is the fallibility of human reason, the possibility that there can be a separation of objective justification and subjective justification. This is clear from the examples. In both cases, it is evident that the fact which makes the accepted proposition true is not connected to the reasons that subjectively justify one in accepting that proposition as true. To be sure, it is trivial that the fact that makes the proposition true – the truth maker – does make it the case that the proposition is true. That connection, the truth making connection, is established by the rules of language. But it, the truth-maker, is only accidentally connected to the reasons that subjectively justify the acceptance of the proposition. It is to make clear that the connection of the truth maker to the acceptance of the proposition believed is non-accidental that some have argued that the condition be built in, as it were, to the justification – condition, the condition that in order for an opinion to count as knowledge, the person who accepts it must be justified in accepting it. Thus, Unger has proposed that we analyse knowledge in this way. Specifically, he has proposed that ‘for any sentential variable p (at time t), a man knows that p if and only if (at t) it is not at all accidental that the man is right about its being the case that p.’16 Mackie has made a similar point, locating the notion of being ‘nonaccidental’ in the notion of counterfactual inference. He proposes that ‘S knows that p’ be understood as ‘S’s believing that p is related to the fact that p in some way such that if the fact had been different then the belief is at least likely to have been different.’17 Two points are relevant. First, we need to understand the logic of counterfactual claims. If we accept Hume’s account of contrary-to-fact inference, in terms of accepted laws of nature, then we have to be pre-

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pared to some extent at least to spell out the relevant laws. The condition for justification, then, is that there be a law that relates as cause to effect the fact believed to the state of believing, a law that the fact believed be causally sufficient for the believing. The details need not be formulated. There are undoubtedly many variables that have to be reckoned with in any account of the causal process governing our sensory and perceptual awareness of the world, many of which we do not yet know; our knowledge of the relevant laws is in this way ‘gappy,’ to use Mackie’s term.18 This leads in the next point. Second, because the knowledge is gappy, the connection between the fact known and the belief in that fact is not one that works all the time; there are occasions when the connection fails owing to the presence of uncommon interfering factors. The best that one can do in practice is a statistical inference; there is, as Mackie says, a ‘likelihood’ that the fact known is causally sufficient for the believing of that fact. The point of the Russell and Gettier examples that is here to be emphasized is the fact that knowledge must be non-accidental. As with scientia, so here: knowledge may be opinion, but it still requires some sort of tethering, some connection – though to be sure, not infallible tethering – between the fact known and the knowing of it, a connection that so ties the two together that the former is some sort of guarantee that the opinion is correct: the fact known somehow guarantees the knowing of it. This feature of knowledge is hardly news, however. This point was already clearly developed by Hume. B. Reliablism and Externalism One of the major responses to the Gettier example that develops the idea of a non-accidental connection is the one that defines knowledge as belief or opinion that is formed on the basis of some reliable process, one the conformity to which is conducive to true belief. Thus, A. Goldman offers this definition: ‘For a belief to count as knowledge ... it must be caused by a generally reliable process.’19 There are different ways in which people acquire beliefs about the world. Observation is among them. So is the method of scientific inference. So is the thought that there are psychic powers. So is the method of searching sacred texts such as the Bible. So is the Romans’ method of prognosticating on the basis of examining the entrails of sacrificed birds. So is the method of inferring in conformity to the rule that one accept as true what one wants to be true. Hume clearly accepts the first

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two as reliable, and rejects the others: they are not conducive to true beliefs. Thus, on this account of knowledge, Hume would have a justified true belief just in case it was acquired by a process of observation or by inductive inference therefrom. Clearly this definition needs attention. We need to add that deductive inference from accepted premises is also conducive to the truth and therefore is a reliable method. If we are to be really complete, we need to add stuff about testimony. We need to specify which methods of observation are relevant – for example, we likely mean sight and touch, and also our capacity via kinaesthetic sensations to know the location of our own body; whether we include taste or smell would be a further issue. These are details into which we need not go. There are deeper problems than filling in such details. If our knower – say the Smith with whom we are familiar – is to justifiably know by observation – say by seeing – that some fact obtains, then he must also know that the process by which he acquires those observational data is reliable. If he does not, then we cannot hold that he is justified in his belief, nor, therefore, that he knows. Some have argued differently. They have argued that knowledge may be acquired through a reliable process, and count as knowledge, even when the knower does not know the process through which the knowledge has been acquired. Such a position has been referred to as ‘externalism.’20 This account of justification takes seriously the notion of objective justification. In fact, for this philosopher, there is no need for subjective justification. But surely we need both. Certainly, that is what Hume would insist on. He urges the rational or reasonable person to rely in his or her inferences on evidence. He does not allow that we merely respond as nature beckons and then conclude, with the externalist, that that is all there is to it. Hume is a conscientious and responsible knower; he is no mere automaton who happens to have the capacity to respond correctly, more or less, to external stimuli. As a conscientious knower, Hume demands that one understand why one ought, reasonably to accept these propositions. For Hume, a rational person must be able to give a subjective justification for the beliefs he or she accepts, or at least those that matter. There is no escaping the need for a rational and conscientious knower to have, ‘internal’ to his or her awareness, the reason he or she has for accepting as true those propositions which he or she has accepted as true.21 To be sure, Hume does argue that we are moved by nature to accept

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many propositions where inferences of justification of the sort that Descartes demanded are not available: ‘Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless estemm’d it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and arguments’ (187). To defend this position, Hume must argue that accepting those propositions which Nature moves us to accept is the rational or reasonable thing to do. But that takes us ahead of ourselves. In fact, there is no reason not to hold that sense impressions cause our awareness of them, and that we know this to be the case. There is no need to turn to externalism to solve our problems. Assume that my visual field suddenly changes so as now to contain a red patch, and that this is the only thing that has changed in my visual field. My conscious state now contains a red patch where it did not before contain this. But my conscious state also contains my awareness of the patch. The patch is there, and furthermore, its coming to be there has caused me to come to experience it. Why have I come to experience it? Because I know that that experiencing has been caused by the coming to be of the red patch in my visual field: that is the only change that has occurred – everything else, so far as I experience it, in my conscious visual awareness has remained the same – and since that is the only change that has occurred, I may reasonably infer that the coming to my consciousness of the red patch has caused to be present in the same consciousness my experiencing of that patch. Ths inference depends on one’s being able to infer a cause, and therefore a causal regularity, from one instance. There is one event: the visual field changes from not-R to R: this change occurs before my consciousness. At the same time, there is another event: my conscious state comes to have in it an awareness of R where previously there was none. Thus, there is another event: my conscious state changes from not-A to A. Everything else remains the same. I infer that the coming of the R has brought about the coming of the A. We have, in other words, the following changes:

time 1: time 2:

No awareness of red patch present absent

Presence of red patch absent present

Other conditions present present

Given the assumption – perfectly reasonable and picked up from experience – that for any event such as the coming to be of an aware-

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ness of something there is a sufficient condition for its occurrence, then a simple application of Mill’s Method of Difference (Hume’s Rule 6 of the ‘rules by which to judge of causes’) to the facts before and after the intervention of the red patch leads directly to the conclusion that the following regularity holds: (L)

Whenever the other conditions obtain, then the presence of a red patch is sufficient for the awareness of that patch.

That is, from the observed facts we can directly infer from those facts that there is a causal law of which the facts are an instance. The causal explanation of the facts is discovered in the facts themselves.22 But this discovery does depend on the Method of Difference, and that is sound only with the premise that there is a sufficient condition – that is, a Principle of Determinism. ‘This principle,’ Hume correctly states, ‘we derive from experience’ (173). The inference that the coming into my visual field of the red patch is the cause of my experiencing the red patch is a sound inference; I know that the one event is the cause of the other. But that knowledge is possible only if I presuppose that I know to be true the generalization that for all events such as coming to experience things there are sufficient conditions. Thus, I can come to know that my experiences are caused by the things of which they are experiences. I can know that the experiencing is nomologically necessitated by the event experienced. The law that I come to know when I come to experience the event tells me that the causal connection is indeed reliable. So I have come to be aware of the presence of an event – to judge that it exists – by a process that is reliable. It follows that the reliablist’s criterion for being justified in our claim to know is indeed satisfied: the process by which I have come to know is one that is reliable, and one that I know to be reliable. But, it is also true that I can come to know that the process is reliable only if I also know that the Principle of Determinism holds; and this I can come to know only if I have observational evidence that supports that generalization – evidence drawn, as Hume says, ‘from experience.’ And I can claim reasonably to know those observational data only if I can presuppose that the generalization is true. The reasoning involves a circle. Let us lay out the point more clearly. The definition of ‘reliable process’ implies that there is a causal regularity between the fact known and the knowing of it. It is of the form

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(i)

All A are B

This being so, then it can be known only on the basis of an inductive inference from observational data such as This is A and this turned out also to be B. That is A and it turned out also to be B. And so on. This means that in order to accept (i), we need to rely on knowing such facts as (ii)

This is A.

But we accept (ii) as expressing a justified belief based on observation only because we justifiably accept the regularity (i). But we accept (i) only because we justifiably accept (ii). The circle is obvious. More generally, we will have a principle something like this, depending on which version of reliablism that you choose: (t)

A belief that p is an instance of knowledge just in case that it satisfies condition C.

(t) means something to the effect that (tt)

A belief p is true just in case it satisfies condition C.

In order to accept (t), we must know that (tt) is true. What reliablism requires is that in justifying the acceptance of (tt), we must accept (tt). It is this which gives circularity to the justification. Of course, it is not the circular argument itself that justifies the acceptance of (tt); the justification of (tt) lies in the fact that (tt) satisfies condition C. The problem is that, if we are to be justified in using (tt) to justify our beliefs, then we have to know that (tt) satisfies C. And we can know that only if we already know that (tt) is acceptable as true. Sosa has argued that, in the face of the sceptic who challenges the acceptance of (tt), one can do no more than cite this sort of circular justification, but that this suffices to do the job of justification: ‘Given those assumptions [about (tt)] there seems no way of correctly answering such a sceptic except by “begging the question” and “arguing circularly” against him. But once we understand this, what option is left to us except to go ahead and “beg” that question against a sceptic.’23

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This is because any attempt to ‘appeal to other beliefs that constitute one’s reasons for holding the given belief’ could only lead to an infinite regress.24 But if a regress does not solve the problem, neither does a circle. This is the best we can do. ‘How could we possibly improve our epistemic situation?’ Sosa asks.25 This may not be entirely satisfactory, and leaves us uncomfortable in not having closed the gap between our perceiving and the perceived object. But, he argues, this is a ‘discomfort we must learn to tolerate.’26 The problem is that of establishing a connection between our perceiving, on the one hand, and on the other hand our knowing the things we do, as we ordinarily do, about the objects we perceive. The reliablist does propose that there is such a connection. Indeed, the reliablist is making the commonsense point that there is a connection between the perceptual object and the perceiving of it. The issue, however, is how we know that there is such a connection. If the reliablist is correct, and if I did come to have my belief in conformity with the process to which the reliablist directs our attention, then I do in fact know: my belief is justified. The issue, however, to repeat, is how we know that there is such a connection: how do we know that the antecedents of these conditionals are true? Stroud has put the point nicely and simply: ‘We want to be in a position knowingly to detach that consequent about ourselves, and at the same time to know and so to understand how any or all of that knowledge of the world comes to be.’27 It is just this that the reliablist does not provide. The best that the reliablist can do is turn to our actual practice of forming beliefs. Alston has noted the circularity that confronts the reliablist. He is concerned to justify what he refers to as our ‘Standard Practice’ (SP) in forming beliefs – the practice of relying, as more or less satisfactory, on our ordinary sense experience and inductions therefrom (and memory and the a priori truths of logic and mathematics and a few other things, the details of which we need not go into, interesting as they may be). He recognizes the circularity in this way. Consider our sense-perceptual doxastic practice SP (our total way of forming beliefs based on sense perception). The reliability of SP is inferred, we suppose, by relying on the deliverances of SP itself. Hence, assuming that our reasoning is otherwise unobjectionable, the belief that SP is reliable is justified by SP – that is, justified by SP provided that SP is reliable. But using the deliverances of SP to argue for the belief that SP is reliable would seem to be unacceptably circular. In Alston’s words: ‘The argument would ... be epistemically circular, for I am still assuming in practice the reliability of forming perceptual beliefs.’28 Alston argues, however,

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that one does not have to be justified in making this assumption in order to be justified in accepting the premises of the inference. Provided that SP is reliable, one’s acceptance of those premises is a justified belief: ‘The epistemic circularity does not prevent justification from being transmitted from the premises to [the] conclusion.’29 In our terms, the person who so reasoned would be objectively justified in accepting the belief that SP is reliable. But lacking grounds for accepting the assumption, that person would not be subjectively justified. All that a person can conclude on the basis of reasons known to him- or herself is that he or she is justified if sense perception is reliable. But that person does not have reasons known to him- or herself that the condition – sense perception is reliable – is justified. What we need are grounds available to the person to justify the principle that sense perception is reliable. As Alston puts it: [When] we ask whether one or another source of belief is reliable, we are interested in discriminating those that can reasonably be trusted from those that cannot. Hence merely showing that if a given source is reliable it can be shown by its record to be reliable, does nothing to indicate that the source belongs with the sheep rather than with the goats. I have removed an allegedly crippling disability, but I have not given the argument a clean bill of health. Hence I shall disqualify epistemically circular arguments on the grounds that they do not serve to discriminate between reliable and unreliable doxastic practices.30

In this circumstance, Alston argues, one can do no more than retreat to what is our actual practice in forming beliefs. These and these alone are available to justify themselves. That is a circle. But there is something more fundamental – namely, the fact that we engage in those practices. This gives them a sort of pragmatic justification: In the nature of the case, there is no appeal beyond the practices we find ourselves firmly committed to, psychologically and socially. We cannot look into any issue whatever without employing some way of forming and evaluating beliefs; that applies as much to issues concerning the reliability of our doxastic practices as to any others. Hence there is no alternative to employing the practice we find firmly rooted in our lives, practices which we could abandon or replace with extreme difficulty, if at all.31

This argues, we are told, ‘that it is eminently reasonable for us to form beliefs in the ways we standardly do.’32

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The pragmatic justification justifies rule R through the fact that it has worked: so far as we can tell, conforming to R is conducive to truth. Now, this is in effect an inductive inference: ‘R is reliable and will continue to work because, on the one hand, it has worked in the past, and, on the other hand, we cannot avoid the practice, cannot avoid conforming to rule R.’ This, in fact, is just the argument that Hume offers to justify the practice of making inductive inferences. The practice of inductive inference – of judging the future on the basis of the past – is justified because this is what we must do, and since it is what we must do, it is therefore reasonable for us to do it. So in the end, what the reliablist must do is appeal to the argument that Hume developed. But not quite. The argument here that the reliablist advances aims at justifying acceptance of the principle that conforming to doxastic rule R will be truth conducive in the future. R may be contrasted to R*. For example, we ought to conform to R, the method of science, rather than R*, the method of authority. R works, R* does not. This is how Hume defended the practice of science. But note that there is here no ‘must.’ One can follow the method of authority if one so chooses. The point is that if one aims at truth, then one knows by experience that R, the method of science, is more conducive to truth. Where the ‘must’ enters is through the determination to rely on experience, to make ‘it works’ the test. It is indeed true that we must rely on our past experience; that is how we are naturally moved to deal with the world, and we cannot do otherwise. At least, we cannot do otherwise if we hope to get on with the task of living a reasonable life. But this argument – this ‘inductive’ argument – that ‘R works’ goes like this: On this occasion the use of R led to truth. On that occasion the use of R led to truth. On this other time the use of R led to truth. ... Therefore in general the use of R will lead to truth. The conclusion is justified, made reasonable, by the fact that we must make inferences of this sort, that this is the sort of natural being that we are. What that ‘must’ justifies is the movement from ‘premises’ to ‘conclusion.’ The problem that remains is that of making reasonable the acceptance of the premises. Alston’s appeal to practice does not, at least so far, provide an answer that responds to this problem. So we have not

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yet justified, shown to be reasonable, some of our ordinary doxastic practices. The issue of the gap between subjective justification and objective justification remains. C. Coherentism One response to the issue of the gap between perceiving and what is perceived is to turn to one of the points that, as we have seen, arises when we discuss justification in the context of the Gettier ‘paradox.’ There we noted that justification often involves the notion of coherence. Another example will make the point equally as well: coherence often at least plays a role in justification. Let us suppose that I hear a noise at night in the darkened home that I am house sitting for the weekend, and the toilet flushes. I am surprised and wonder what made that happen. There is only one hypothesis that I can think of that explains the noise. There must be another person in the house33 – and since I believed that I was the only person in the house, it must be an intruder. Quietly, I telephone my friend whose house it is. My friend advances an alternative hypothesis that had not occurred to me. It turns out that he has trained his cat to use the toilet and flush it after use. Since I had never conceived that cats could be so trained,34 this hypothesis had not been among those I considered. At the same time, I realize that the intruder hypothesis is not very likely, since an intruder, bent perhaps on burglary, would most likely not make the sort of noise that would awaken someone in the house – burglars do not want to get caught. It is true that later information might come to hand that would raise the likelihood of the intruder hypothesis – for example, I hear the door open quietly. But in terms of the evidence I now have – my friend is, after all, reliable – the explanation in terms of the cat is the most reasonable: that justifies my accepting that hypothesis as true. Here, the background knowledge of the reliability of my friend’s testimony is what is crucial. The hypothesis that I end up accepting is justified not by virtue of a simple chain of inference, as in the Gettier example. Rather, the test that makes it acceptable is how it ‘fits’ with a whole body of other information and background knowledge which I have. Nor is it just a matter of how that hypothesis fits in; it is also how background information leads me to reject alternatives – for example, I reject the intruder hypothesis on the basis of my background information that intruders do not usually want to make noise. Both of these hypotheses in turn are connected

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to other knowledge that I have – for example, about how toilets work and the sorts of noises they make, about why intruders generally do not want to get caught, about the habits of cats, about how telephones work, about the legal system that makes my friend the owner of the house, the sorts of things about a house that owners and guests are likely to know, and so on and so on. The confirmation works the other way, too, from my present acceptance of the cat hypothesis to support for parts of the background information on which I rely. I know that cats are able to see better in the dark than can human intruders. Accepting the cat hypothesis will include the idea that the cat can sense the presence of the toilet quite well in the darkened house, thus further confirming (though only by a little, no doubt) that cats are able to see things quite well in the dark, better anyway than humans. Coherence, then, does play a role in justification. But the coherence theorist argues that all justification is coherence. Note also that the argument offered for this position is not simply that attempts such as reliablism seem to have failed. There is also a direct argument. The basic notion is that reasons are what might be called propositional. They – reasons – can be good or bad, strong or weak, and above all true or false. But only beliefs have these properties of truth and falsehood. A perceived fact, in contrast, is just there. It is not true or false, it is not even true, it is just there. Moreover, in order to have reasons that justify, the reasons must stand in logical relations of some sort or other to one another. But only propositions so stand. Facts believed stand to beliefs as causes to effects. But causal relations are not logical relations. The basic thought about coherence accounts of justification has been neatly stated in this way: What distinguishes a coherence theory is simply that claim that nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief ... The relation between a sensation and a belief cannot be logical, since sensations are not beliefs or other propositional attitudes. What then is the relation? The answer is, I think, obvious: the relation is causal. Sensations cause some beliefs and in this sense are the basis or ground of those beliefs. But a causal explanation of a belief does not show how or why the belief is justified.35

But just what counts as coherence? In the first place, as many have pointed out, it is evident that coherence cannot mean only consistency. For there can be many systems of

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propositions that are internally consistent but at the same time externally inconsistent with one another. Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries are internally consistent, yet their structures are such that they are mutually exclusive when taken as possible descriptions of the world. If coherence were merely consistency, then these two systems would count as equally true. At the same time, taken as describing the world, they are mutually inconsistent. They therefore cannot both be true. If coherence is mere consistency, one can only say that there are many true systems, and that in general the mutual inconsistency of these systems implies that only one is true. One cannot have it both ways: but coherence as mere consistency does try to have it both ways. This is a reductio ad absurdum of the idea. The example we gave just above makes the relevant point. The network of propositions that justifies asserting all of those propositions on account of that coherence includes within itself statements of propositions that provide explanations – causal explanations – to justify our accepting those propositions which purport to describe the material reality of perceptual objects. These causal explanations are just the sort that deal with normal processes of sensible perception, those sorts of mechanisms to which the reliablist directs our attention, and which one can argue are reliable precisely because they have been shaped by Darwinian forces of natural selection that have made us fit for survival in the environment in which we find ourselves. The idea is clear: a belief coheres just in case, with the total set of those beliefs that are of concern to us, there is an explanation – a causal explanation – of every belief taken individually. We have, then, the principle that the better the explanation, the better the coherence, and the better the coherence, the more justified one is in accepting the belief alongside the other beliefs in the set of acceptable beliefs. Of course, the idea is that the acceptance is not of the isolated belief but rather of the whole web of which that belief is a part. It is the whole web that is crucial: both justification and acceptance proceed on a holistic basis. One might mention three aspects of this ideal of coherence.36 First, propositions about individual events are connected to propositions about other events by general propositions that provide the explanatory causal connections between the two events. This assumes something more or less like the Humean position that causation is regularity and that the explanation is by subsumption under a statement of regularity. Second, some regularities provide greater detail than others about the relevant features of the process linking cause and effect. That is, some explanations are less gappy than others. Ideally, one would

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prefer a gappless explanation, one that fits the ideal pattern of what Bergmann once called ‘process knowledge.’37 Third, ideally each specific law explaining particular events would itself be a specific instance of a generic law that also has as its instances other specific laws: the specific laws should fit into a system of abstract generic principles.38 There are other points that might be made, but the notion is clear enough.39 The problem remains, however, that we have not ruled out the possibility of there being two coherent but inconsistent systems of belief. The problem arose when we applied mere consistency as the criterion of coherence; strengthening the latter notion to include the idea that a coherent system needs to provide an explanation of the beliefs it contains did not eliminate the problem. This being so, the coherentist has two alternatives. One is to give up the law of non-contradiction and to accept both systems of coherent beliefs on his or her own ground of justification by coherence. But if one is going to give up the law of noncontradiction when comparing systems, then there is no reason why one should continue to hold it within systems of belief. At which point one will be committed to believing anything and everything. That is a rather high price to pay; it is in fact a reductio ad absurdum for this alternative. The other alternative is to relativize acceptance as true. On this alternative one would not speak of ‘accepting as true’ but only of ‘accepting as true relative to this or that system of beliefs.’ And then one could select the propositions one accepts as true simply by choosing the appropriate system of beliefs.40 In effect, this would constitute a radical subjectivity of justification.41 There is another problem for the coherentist: if my beliefs are to constitute reasons for me that justify my beliefs, then I must know what those beliefs are. I must justify those beliefs about my own belief system. How, in terms of coherence, do I justify this metabelief? In fact, if this belief is to be justified, if I am to have reasons for accepting it, then I must recognize that it too coheres. In other words, I must have a metametabelief about that metabelief. A regress looms, one that is vicious, since unless it comes to an end I cannot arrive at a set of reasons able to justify to me any of the beliefs in my total system of beliefs.42 Most coherentists do not take up this point, but L. Bonjour has faced up to the issue, arguing that here one must make the doxastic presumption, a presumption to the effect that ‘the beliefs constituting my overall grasp of my system of beliefs are, by and large, true.’43 This does indeed cut off the looming vicious regress. But it is clear that it does so only at

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the cost of being itself, within the coherentist framework, an unjustified belief. And since the remainder of the justification depends on this metabelief being justified, it follows that it constitutes no serious reply to the sceptic.44 The problem here is that of the gap between our beliefs, on the one hand, and the facts that they are about, on the other – the gap, in other words, between subjective justification and objective justification. It arises first at the level of beliefs. Bonjour’s doxastic presumption is an assumption that this gap does not exist at that level. But it reappears at the metalevel, at the level of the belief that constitutes the doxastic presumption. And if one makes another such presumption for this metalevel, then the gap reappears at this metametalevel. Since the gap is never closed, the sceptic is not answered. Some have argued that there is a coherentist way out, a way that counts as a form of justification. This way is to build into the set of beliefs the belief that on the whole what one believes is true. This move has been suggested by K. Lehrer. Putting it a bit roughly, Lehrer defines a person’s ‘acceptance system’ as the set of propositions that the person accepts for the purposes of attaining the truth.45 Acceptance of a proposition is justified by coherence with one’s acceptance system. But there is the gap between subjective justification and objective justification. How can this be closed? Why ought the fact that the proposition that I accept coheres be a ground for thinking that it is true? One must add here some further information that will make it reasonable to suppose that acceptance in such circumstances is in fact a reliable guide to the truth.46 This further information is the ‘Principle of Trustworthiness,’ what Lehrer refers to as principle ‘T’: Whatever I accept with the objective of accepting something just in case that it is true, I accept it in a trustworthy manner. (T) guarantees that my accepting something provides a reason for accepting it, a justification that makes that acceptance reasonable, or more reasonable than not.47 But why accept (T)? It is evident that (T) really is a generalization: it states that on the whole, the propositions that I accept are true. Naturally enough, it provides a link between my accepting things and their being true: it bridges the gap between subjective justification and objective justification, guaranteeing that on the whole, when I am subjectively justified in my acceptances, then I am objectively justified. Lehrer suggests at one point that the justification in accepting (T) is that it is an inductive inference from knowledge that its instances are true, and is therefore accept-

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able. It is this which bridges the gap. As Lehrer puts it: ‘If I accept that I am trustworthy as a result of my trustworthiness, then it is not a lucky guess.’48 However, there must be grounds that make it reasonable to the accept instances of my trustworthiness. On Lehrer’s view, these must be either prior to the acceptance of (T) or posterior to it. If the former, then the criterion of acceptability is no longer merely coherence. And if the latter, then the justification is circular: I accept the instances as true because I accept (T) and I accept (T) because I accept that its instances are true. Lehrer has two further moves. One is in line with the general idea that coherence provides the grounds of acceptance. For the coherentist, the acceptance of (T) must be justified by the way in which it coheres with one’s other beliefs. Lehrer makes two suggestions. The first is that (T) be applied to itself.49 But that is circular. The second is that one make the move that Hume makes, and Alston too, following Hume. This is to adopt the argument that acceptance of (T) is justified by the fact that (T) is an inescapable doxastic practice: ‘The acceptance of (T) is, perhaps, the result of our nature and universal among people.50 If we are to get on with the task of living, then, we cannot avoid accepting (T). It is therefore reasonable to accept it. Now, this may be so; indeed, it undoubtedly is so. But as understood by the coherentist, it cannot bridge the gap between subjective and objective justification. For the coherentist, the proposition that we must accept (T) is something that we accept, but only on the basis of how it coheres with our other beliefs. In itself, it cannot bridge the gap as the coherentist is hoping; nor can the fact that it is part of a coherent whole of beliefs. To put this last point in another way, suppose that we have accepted p, q, and r, and that we then accept (T). This now makes it reasonable to accept p, q, and r, and also (T) itself. But p, q, and r can be any set of propositions. In other words, simply adding (T) to the body of propositions that we accept will raise any set of propositions to the level of acceptability, no matter how wrong this might be from an objective point of view. We need reality to place constraints on what we believe, and the addition of further principles to our body of beliefs, no matter how inescapable those beliefs are, does not bring about such a constraint. Unless we have grounds for thinking that our beliefs are not merely coherent but objectively true, grounded non-coherently in objec-

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tive evidence, we have no basis for taking the acceptance of them as more reason than not.51 Bonjour makes a move somewhat different from Lehrer’s. That is to rely on perception to provide a starting point for acceptance. He points out that there are what he calls ‘cognitively spontaneous’ beliefs; these are the mark of the observational. ‘It is cognitive spontaneity which marks the belief as putatively observational, as ... a “language-entry transition,” in a way which can be recognized from within the system of beliefs.’52 Suppose that I now notice that there is a red book on the desk at which I am working: ‘What matters for the moment is that I do not infer that there is a red book on the desk, nor does the belief result from any other deliberative or ratiocinative process, whether explicit or implicit. Rather it simply occurs to me, ‘strikes me,’ in a manner which is both involuntary and quite coercive; such a belief is, I will say, cognitively spontaneous.53 It strikes me that there is a red book; I spontaneously accept that there is a red book before me. The acceptance involved in this belief is not a matter of coherence, for no inference is involved. The proposition that there is a red book before me is reasonable for me to accept, not simply because of coherence – though that may later come to play a role, strengthening the reasonableness of accepting the proposition – but because I am coerced into accepting it, it is a case where the acceptance is unavoidable: I must accept this observational proposition, and therefore it is reasonable so to do. Bonjour then takes such spontaneous acceptances, acceptances imposed on me by the world in which I find myself, to anchor the web of coherence. To the objection that there are equally coherent systems of beliefs and no non-systemic ways to choose among them, he replies that spontaneous acceptances enables us to distinguish that set which is acceptable because it is true: It is very hard to think of any alternative explanation which could be offered at this level for the existence of significant numbers of cognitively spontaneous beliefs which are at least largely in agreement with each other. Thus such beliefs will normally be at least claimed within the system to constitute extratheoretic input.54

It is these spontaneous perceptual acceptances that justify all other empirical beliefs – this is what Bonjour refers to as the ‘observation requirement’: ‘Any claim in the system which is not justified a priori

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should in principle be capable of being observationally checked, either directly or indirectly, and thereby either confirmed or refuted.’55 It is in this context that we can place the Doxastic Presumption that Bonjour must make, that his (meta)beliefs about what beliefs or acceptances one has must be taken for granted. Were this not so, then epistemic reflection could not even begin: that is the starting point of rationality about the empirical world.56 The relevant point is that the Doxastic Presumption is itself an inductive generalization, the instances of which are one’s first-order beliefs. These conscious states are given, spontaneously and without deliberation in our inner awareness, in our ‘introspective’ knowledge of our own conscious states: ‘The approximate accuracy of my overall grasp of that system [of beliefs] must be taken for granted in order for the coherentist justification to even begin. This grasp presumably results from the psychological process of introspection.’57 What Bonjour is after is clear: what he refers to as ‘spontaneous beliefs’ are beliefs and judgments that are parts of our conscious states. Bonjour does suggest that there is a criterion of spontaneity that comes from within the system of beliefs – namely, ‘that a claim of cognitive spontaneity is often justifiable simply by appeal to my grasp of my overall system of beliefs and in particular to ... the absence from that system of any beliefs which could serve as plausible premises or intermediate steps for a discursive derivation of the belief in question.’58 This allows him to suggest that these spontaneous beliefs are systematically justified even though they do not originate from within the system. Thus, he distinguishes ‘a belief which originated in some noninferential way,’ but at the same time allows that such a belief be ‘justified or warranted only by appeal to coherence with the rest of the system of beliefs.’59 But this won’t do: it raises again the possibility of alternative coherent systems with no extra-systemic criterion to decide among them. We are therefore back at the point that spontaneous beliefs are coerced, imposed on us, unavoidable. That is, we are once again back at Hume’s argument based on the principle that ‘must implies ought.’ But the point is that the criterion for reasonable acceptance is not simply coherence. In the end, the coherentist is driven back to the position that there is a way in which we bridge the gap between subjective justification and objective: it is the coercion and spontaneity and unavoidability that unites myself and my subjective justification to the objective order of things.

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D. Experience and Justification (i): Radical Contingency It is worth noting that it can plausibly be argued that there is no escaping reliablism: justification by appeals to various accepted rules must always come to an end, and that end itself will be an unjustified justifying principle – one that, if we are wise, is taken to be reliable, one that can, in other words, be justified only by appeal to the notion that ‘it works.’ The charge of the internalist is that, if this principle is not itself part of one’s reasons for justification, then one has not provided a set of reasons that are open and pellucid to reason itself, and that those reasons therefore do not yield a justified true belief. On the internalist account of justification, justification of any belief is made by reference to other beliefs. Either the principle by which this justification proceeds applies to itself, or it is justified by some other principle. If the former, then the circularity is clear. If the latter, then an infinite, and vicious, regress looms. In either case, the internalist position becomes one in which the sceptic triumphs.60 That is, the sceptic triumphs provided that one remains an internalist. To avoid that, one must settle for a concept of reason, a concept of justification, that allows there to be principles conformity to which justifies those principles themselves without there being anything better than its justifying itself – a circular justification. And thus we have: Going along with what works works. But in Hume’s terms, this seems like settling for what comes easily: it satisfies ‘the sentiments of my spleen and indolence.’ We are at the point where Hume ‘must confess ... that philosophy has nothing to oppose to them, and expects a victory more from the returns of a serious good-humour’d disposition, than from the force of reason and conviction’ (270). That is, at this point there seems to be little that philosophy can offer. It fits with the standard picture of Hume as a sceptic. However, we should note that Hume makes the point in the Conclusion of Book I of the Treatise (at 270) but does not there end his discussion: in fact, the argument to justify his system of beliefs (including his belief in the external world) goes on for four more pages. We must follow Hume’s argument to the end. We shall discuss some of these issues further in chapter 8, where we deal with Hume’s critical realism, but some of them we must take up at this point. So, let us see if we can find some

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rationality in the workings of the scientific mind, more than what we are inclined to accept due to our ‘spleen and indolence.’ We must go back to the beginning. As we know, Hume distinguishes the perceptions in the human mind into ‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’: ‘The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought and consciousness. Those perceptions, which enter with the most force and violence, we may name impressions’ (1; Hume’s italics). We should remark on four things. First. Where we begin – what we, as human beings, start from – is with what impresses itself on consciousness. In this sense, and in this sense alone, we begin with what is subjective: Where else could we begin? As William James once put it: ‘The fons et origo of all reality, whether from the absolute or the practical point of view, is ... subjective, is ourselves.’61 What I experience is subjective in the sense that it is I who experience it, but what I experience in my sense experience is not subjective: that I experience a fact is a subjective fact, but to experience that fact is already to be outside the realm of the mental.62 Second. The impressions constitute for us reality. They confront us and we confront them. When we have an impression, the world impresses itself upon us and in their being so impressed we acquire the truth of being, of the way the world is, and not merely propositional truth. Thus, Hume makes the point that ‘every thing that enters the mind, being in reality a perception, ’tis impossible any thing shou’d to feeling appear different’ (190; his italics). note: With propositional truth, the fact is that which makes the proposition true; it is the truth maker, as it were. This is truth as correspondence: a proposition is true just in case it corresponds to reality, to the facts of the world. But the facts that we take as the truth of the world are the truth of being. These are the facts that make those propositions true; they constitute the reality to which true propositions correspond. The truth of being is prior to truth as correspondence. Correspondence involves propositions being true to the world; the truth of being contains the truth as a straight edge is true when it is flawless or exact: it contains within itself the standard by which it is judged. Third. In perception the world seizes us; it forces itself upon us and

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holds our attention: we must accept that it is there, that it will not allow otherwise. That is why we speak of ‘impressions.’ In holding this, Hume is following a tradition established long before he wrote. Think of Descartes’s description of how we know that material objects exist. His ‘proof’ begins with the premise that he, too, takes for granted, that our perceptions of things, our impressions, yield natural beliefs. Berkeley, too, distinguished those impressions which force themselves upon us, against our will – that is, those impressions which constitute the reality in which we live – on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those sense contents which belong to our fantasy life, conjured up by the mind for itself to enjoy. More recently we have seen such diverse epistemologist/ontologists as Alston, and Sosa, and Lehrer, turn at crucial points in their argument to the inescapable nature of various ‘doxastic practices.’ Russell made the same point. They are all following the earlier insight of Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume. Another way of making this point: to say that the world that seizes us is real is to say that when we experience the fact that p, saying that p is real adds nothing to what we have. James put it this way: The object of belief ... reality or real existence, is something quite different from all the other predicates which a subject may possess. Those are properties intellectually or sensibly intuited. When we add one of them to the subject, we increase the intrinsic content of the latter, we enrich its picture in our mind. But adding reality does not enrich the picture in any such inward way; it leaves it inwardly as it finds it, and only fixes it and stamps it to us.63

Fourth. The impressions command our attention: reality, the truth of being, demands and commands our consciousness of it. James, again, makes this point well: ‘Whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real; whenever an object so appeals to us that we turn to it, accept it, fill our mind with it, or practically take account of it, so far it is real for us, and we believe it.’64 Here we must recognize that there is the fact, the reality, on the one hand, and our attending to it, on the other. The impression is one thing, the consciousness of it another. These are two facts, and as such they must be distinguished. Hume does run them together. Thus, he speaks of an impression as entering the mind with ‘force and liveliness’ or ‘force and violence’ (1), and that this feature of the impression is what distinguishes it from sen-

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sory contents that are mere images and ideas. In the Appendix, he indicates how this is to characterize the ‘manner’ in which the thing impression is conceived; this characteristic is something ‘felt’ by the mind when it distinguishes ‘ideas of judgment from the fictions of the imagination.’ This difference in feeling we can all recognize as the simple feature that it is, and this different feeling is described metaphorically: ‘This different feeling I endeavour to explain by calling it a superior force, of vivacity, or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness.’ The metaphor derives its point from the consequences that accrue to awarenesses of this sort, from the fact that this species of act ‘gives them [the acts it characterizes] more force and influence; makes them appear of greater importance; infixes them in the mind; and renders them the governing principles in all our actions’ (628–9). In chapter 1, we have examined how and why Hume runs these things together. He runs them together because he is following out, as best he can, the implication that he thinks obtains from his theory of psychology: that all mental acts can be psychologically or introspectively analysed into sensory contents. This suggestion makes it reasonable, or perhaps unavoidable, that he describe a feature of the act as a feature of the sensory content that the act is of. That is, his program of introspective analysis leads him to blur the act/object distinction when it comes to impressions. But if we keep this point clearly in mind, then we can see that Hume clearly ought to – and really does – make a distinction between the sensory content, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, our awareness of it. James again states it nicely: ‘In every proposition ... so far as it is believed, questioned, or disbelieved, four elements are to be distinguished, the subject, the predicate, and their relation (of whatever sort it be) – these form the object of belief – and finally the psychic attitude in which our mind stands towards the proposition taken as a whole – and this is the belief itself.65 note: What is absolutely essential in all this is to recognize that Hume is not to be so construed that what he calls impressions are made into ontologically mind-dependent or private entities. To be sure, Hume does argue that ‘all impressions are internal and perishing existences, and appear as such’ (194). But that is innocuous; specifically, it does not mean that impressions are inseparable from and therefore dependent on the mental. In fact, what Hume does mean, and says he means, is two things. It means, first, re ‘internal,’ that impres-

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sions are internal in the sense of being present in consciousness. But all that this means is that the starting point of all our knowledge is subjective in the sense that the content of our own consciousness is the starting point for all our claims to justified belief. It does not mean or imply an ontological dependence on that consciousness. Hume’s remark means, second, re ‘perishing,’ that the impressions present to us in our ordinary experience, unlike substances in the traditional ontology, are not entities that endure unchanged through time. We must keep in mind that Hume is here describing the world that we know in ordinary experience, the world in which things are structured bundles of impressions, and that among these impressions are those which are sensed and those which are unsensed. It is a Berkeleyan world, and its ontology is realistic with regard to ordinary things. Except for one qualification: where Berkeley had a substantial mind, the world that Hume is describing is one in which the mind, like ordinary material things, is also a bundle of perceptions. Hume does go out of his way to establish that sense impressions are not the sorts of things that are necessarily tied to being perceived. That, of course, was true of Berkeley’s world, which retains a substantial mind, just as in Descartes’s world it was ontologically impossible for material objects to be present to consciousness. But in Hume’s world that mind in the sense of the substantial mind has disappeared, and there is no substance on which the impressions might be ontologically or metaphysically dependent; at the same time, there is nothing about ordinary material objects and our impressions of them that somehow excludes the latter from being present in consciousness. Hume raises the possibility that there is a contradiction in saying that impressions exist apart for the perceiving of them: ‘I may be doubted, whether we can ever assent to so palpable a contradiction, and suppose a perception to exist without being present to the mind’ (206). He moves to dispel the notion that there is a contradiction in holding that something is an impression and can exist unperceived. In the first place, there is nothing in the perceiving of an impression or in the impression itself that requires or provides an ontological guarantee that when the former, the perceiving, exists, then the latter, the impression, also exists: logically and ontologically, the two are separable: We may observe, that what we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations [at this

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point Hume has not yet given the bundle account of the ontology of mind, and has just referred his reader in a footnote that such an argument may be expected in a later section of the Treatise (206n)] ... Now as every perception is distinguishable from another, and may be cosider’d as separably existent; it evidently follows, that there is no absurdity in separating any particular perception from the mind; that is, in breaking off all its relations, with that connected mass of perceptions which constitute a thinking being. (207)

Moreover, there is nothing in the concept of any object that requires that object or impression to be dependent, logically or ontologically, on the perceiving of it – but also, nothing logically or ontologically that renders it impossible for the impression of the object to be in or present to consciousness: ‘If the name of perception renders not the separation from a mind absurd and contradictory, the name of object, standing for the very same thing, can never render their conjunction impossible. External objects are seen, and felt, and become present to the mind; that is, they acquire such a relation to a connected heap of perceptions, as to influence them very considerably in augmenting their number by present reflexions and passions’ (207; Hume’s italics). It is the impressions that impose themselves on our consciousness that constitute the beginnings of our knowledge of the world. ‘Since all actions and sensation of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear’ (190). To be sure, there is no logical or ontological necessity in this. But to deny that sort of necessity is not to deny that there is another sort of necessity. And Hume is saying that there is indeed a necessity to the impressions that are the starting point of our knowledge claims, our justified true beliefs. But this necessity is not ontological; rather, it is the necessity that derives from fate, from the way the world requires us, forces us, to see it and to feel it. It is the felt necessity that this is the way the world is. There is no ontology that guarantees incorrigibility; there is no guarantee. The parts of the world, including the mind and the objects or impressions that it perceives, consist of logically separable parts. But for all that, as the result of a necessity impossible to evade, we are required to accept as real the impressions as they come before consciousness; such is our fate. It is the force that impressions exert in imposing themselves on us that compels our assent, demanding of us that we accept them as real and as being what they appear to be.

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It is important to see all this; because impressions, as the point where knowledge of reality starts, are often viewed by Hume’s interpreters as somehow private and mind-dependent, which in turn makes it possible for them to argue that Hume has arrived at or begins from a scepticism in which it would seemingly be impossible for any claims to knowledge to proceed beyond the mind on which those impressions are dependent. Hume would hardly disagree with Quinton, for example, when the latter asserts that ‘the ostensible firmness and incorrigibility of these assertions [about sense impressions, the objects of sense acquaintance] is a consequence, not of their referring to a class of private, given, entities, but rather of the modesty of the claims they make.’66 Of course, in their claims about the way the world is, judgments about perceptual or material objects are not as modest, as the simple judgments about the sense data that willy-nilly come into our consciousness. Perceptual judgments involve an inductive inference (in terms of its logic) that goes beyond the logically more basic claims about sense impressions. In this sense, the latter judgments claim less and are therefore more ‘modest.’ The certainty of our judgments about sense impressions derives not from the fact that they are private and inseparable from the knowing mind, but simply from the fact that world compels us to accept them: that is our fate. And certainly, we could never infer the presence of public objects if all our sense impressions were private because mind-dependent. As Quinton sees it, the demand for certainty leads the empiricist – Hume in particular – to make private objects the foundation for empirical knowledge; but then that privacy which guarantees the certainty of the judgments precludes our ever being able to ground any knowledge of the public material objects with which we constantly and daily interact. But since Quinton’s charge that the empiricist begins with private, mind-dependent sensations does not apply to Hume, we can safely dismiss his critique: it applies, perhaps, to certain philosophers – possibly naive sophomores, possibly equally naive but otherwise unknown Oxford dons – but it does not apply to Hume. Here is another example, this time from a recent introductory text, of the same misreading of the sort of empiricist foundation that Hume intends to give for empirical knowledge. On this account of empirical knowledge, we are told, ‘justified beliefs about the physical world are always inferred from other beliefs,’ and ‘we never experience the physical world itself (or we never experience it directly) – we experience only our own sense impressions which justify our belief that we are

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having these sense impressions, and that belief in turn is used to justify our belief about the physical world.’67 However, ‘sense impressions do not by themselves yield justified beliefs about the external world.’ But since beliefs about ordinary perceptual objects such as tables and chairs and oak trees and rainbows and shadows require that we be able to infer to public objects, objects that are not private, and since the background information that enables me to infer such objects must be information about public objects, it follows at once that ‘knowledge of the external world is impossible. It could be achieved only by those who already had it.’68 Here is another version of the argument, this time by Stroud: We are confined ... to representations of things [around us] or states of affairs which, for all we can know, might or might not have something corresponding to them in reality. We are ... imprisoned within those representations, at least with respect to our knowledge. Any attempt to go beyond them to try and tell whether the world really is as they represent it to be can yield only more representations [recall Berkeley’s ‘only an idea can be like an idea’], more deliverances of sense experience which themselves are compatible with reality’s being very different from the way we take it to be on the basis of our sensory experiences. There is a gap, then, between the most that we can ever find out on the basis of our sensory experience and the way things really are.69

There is, as it were, a veil between ourselves and reality, and ‘we could know nothing but the veil itself.’70 The charge is that we are trapped in scepticism by a version of representationalism, or – if we abandon the world beyond the veil – then we are trapped in idealism. This is no doubt a fair account of the views of at least some philosophers, those who ‘raise a dust and then complain they cannot see.’ The argument is satisfactory as far it goes, but it does not apply to Hume, who therefore need not be defended from its implications. For Hume does not hold that the impressions which form the starting point for empirical knowledge are private in the sense of being ontologically dependent on the perceiving of them. To the contrary, so far as concerns impressions, to have one is already to be outside the mind in the sense of being logically and ontologically external to the act of awareness through which that impression is known.71 Here is another case. G.E. Moore once held that ordinary objects are independent of the perceiving of them, but that it is different with cer-

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tain other sensible objects such as pains and afterimages. Ordinary objects fall into the category of entities that are ‘things to be met with in space.’72 Pains and afterimages, while in a sense capable of being in space, in the sense of standing in spatial relations to things which are to be met with in space, are not themselves to be met with in space. It is only the latter, the entities that are to be met with in space, that are external to one’s mind: ‘Pains are in fact a typical example of the sorts of “things” of which philosophers say that they are not “external” to our minds, but “within” them. Of any pain I feel they would say that it is necessarily not external to my mind but in it.’73 Moore’s use of ‘necessary’ makes it clear that he holds it to be a contradiction to say that something is a pain or an afterimage and is not independent of my mind: its esse is percipi. True, pains and afterimages are objects of direct awareness, and in that sense are in the mind – they are mental2 as we earlier put it. But it does not follow that they are therefore somehow ontologically dependent on the mind. That follows only if one is committed to something like a substantialist view of the mind – something that Hume rejects. But as we have argued (in chapter 2), there is a sense of mental – mental1 – in which to be mental is to be an intentional entity; and in that sense, to have a pain is already to be outside the circle of ‘ideas,’ outside the circle of things that are properly said to be mental (mental1). And for Hume, to be in the mind is either to be part of an ordered bundle of perceptions of the sort we characterize as a mind, or to be an awareness of some members of that bundle, or to be an object of a direct awareness that is part of the bundle. But in any case, there is no contradiction in saying that the pain or the afterimage is independent of the mind that is aware of it. At the same time, one must also say that if ‘external to the mind’ is meant to include – as Moore seems to mean it to include – the idea of something that is ‘to be met with in space,’ then the most that this can be taken to imply is that it is the impressions of touch that we are taking to be the ‘direct’ impressions of the object with which we are concerned, are the ones that determine the place in space where we in perception locate the visual appearances of the thing. Moore makes it seem as if there is a difference in kind between having a sensation – which seems to be dependent on the mind that is aware of it – and being presented with an object, such as an oak tree, that is to be met with in space. But there is no difference in kind, just a difference in the modality of sense, visual in the one case and tactile in the other. Now, when one speaks ontologically, one must say of the entities given in one sensory modal-

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ity what one says of entities given in another sensory modality. Hence, if pains are in the mind, so are visual sensations and so therefore are tactile sensations. But pains, for Moore, are in the mind, necessarily tied to it. Hence, so also are tactile sensations. All our contact with the world that exists independently of mind, external to it, all contact with objects to be met with in space, has turned out to be after all not such: all such entities are mind dependent. Moore is then confronted with the problem of proving that there are, after all, objects to be met with in space. We cannot penetrate beyond the veil of sense impressions: the problem is unsolvable. That is, it is unsolvable in the terms in which it is represented. The key to solving the problem, or rather dissolving it, is to make pains already outside the mind, thereby denying that there is any veil that must be penetrated. This is Hume’s move. Moore is simply another of those philosophers who ‘first raise a dust and then complain that they cannot see.’ Here is yet another example of a philosopher who wrongly attributes to Hume a view of impressions that makes representationalism and therefore scepticism inevitable. H.A. Prichard writes: ‘Hume considers the vulgar view ... It cannot, he contends, be due to the senses, since they cannot present to us the existence of anything after it has ceased to appear to the senses; nor to reason, since we have only to think of a perception to see that it cannot continue to exist beyond the mind. The belief, therefore must be due to the imagination (i.e. it must be illusory).’74 Prichard is correct in reading Hume as saying that our senses cannot give us knowledge of things that are not sensed – that is, our senses cannot by themselves give us such knowledge. It is also true that Hume argues that when we reason about impressions, we discover that they are as it were momentary – in particular, that they do not, like traditional substances, endure identically as themselves through time. Prichard is also correct when he ascribes to Hume the claim that we fill in the blanks among and beyond our impressions in such a way that there are entities there which we do not experience, unsensed sensibles. But the working of the imagination in this way is a working of causal reasoning. (Causal) Reasoning is simply one species – and a justified species at that – of the work of the imagination. In particular, there is no reason to think that such reasoning, when it is justified, is a matter of illusion, as Prichard maintains. The view that our thought of the world beyond the impressions we sense is all illusion is not Hume’s view: Hume’s view is, to the contrary, an instance of Berkeleyan realism.

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Beyond misinterpreting Hume in a way that is seriously misleading – because it implies that a sort of scepticism is Hume’s position – Prichard clearly fails to see that Hume is offering and defending an account of reason that is different from that of Aristotle and the rationalists such as Descartes. On Hume’s view, reason is not insight into the ontological structure of a reality that consists of substances. Causal reason is simply the discovery of matter-of-fact regularities among the parts of the way the world appears to us. Prichard fails to note how, in the transition to the realistic tradition of Berkeley and Hume, the concept of human knowledge and human reason itself comes under criticism – there are no ‘abstract ideas’ for reason to grasp – and how the traditional concept of reason is replaced by another, more human, concept, one that recognizes how we actually in fact employ our mind at understanding the world. Prichard also attacks the notion that sense impressions are ‘private to me.’ In this case his explicit opponent is Russell, but his comments apply equally, and equally wrongly, to Hume. Prichard considers Russell’s point that the sensible entities, the sense impressions, that come to one in experience are ‘private to me,’ and comments: ‘It [the phrase “it is private to me”] must mean “dependent on me”; i.e. such that if I had not existed, it would not have existed, the dependence consisting in the various species of being “given in sense,” viz. being seen, being heard, etc., by me.’75 Here, Prichard makes it seem that for Russell and Hume, ‘private’ implies ontologically dependent on me. But Hume and Russell both make it clear that there is nothing self-contradictory in the notion that a sense impression that I sense can exist unsensed. Of course we experience the world from our own ‘point of view,’ and in that sense the world we experience is ‘private’ to us. But such a world, Prichard asserts, cannot consist of objects that are, to use Moore’s phrase, ‘to be met with in space.’76 For, he says, appearances cannot stand in spatial relations, only material objects can do that. But, in the first place, appearances – that is, sense impressions – can by themselves stand in spatial relations both to one another and to material things. One has merely to think of afterimages, or shadows, or rainbows, or the pain in my big toe, to recognize that Prichard is just wrong on this point. In the second place, there is no reason to hold that because the sense impression of the world that I have is an impression that is private to me, that it is ontologically dependent on me or on my sensing of it. And in the third place, there is no reason why the impression we obtain in our pri-

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vate point of view on the world cannot contain parts that are publically accessible. Just because the whole is private does not imply that all the parts are private. Thus, when I see a coin from one perspective and you from another, each of us is experiencing by sense an elliptical shape that is unique to our own point of view; but from both our points of view, we both see that the portrait of the monarch’s head is within the circumference: such topological facts are common to both points of view. We should also note that Prichard is critical of the Berkeley–Hume– Russell idea that ordinary things are structured bundles of sense impressions, some sensed, many unsensed. Prichard objects that these philosophers, Russell in particular, are not defining things or what things are but rather ‘formulating the nature of certain assemblages or groups of other realities [that is, realities other than material things] which will have the same properties as things and which therefore can be considered substitutes for them.’77 This is metaphysically illegitimate, he suggests. But surely the opposite is true. Those who would, like Prichard, insist that the world consists of continuants and substances that endure through change are defending a world that is, as Berkeley argued, beyond the world of common sense. Our philosophers are defending a commonsense realism; it is precisely this that is not done by Prichard, Aristotle, and the rationalists, who insist on taking reason – an inhuman reason – beyond the realm of things that are as they appear to be to a world of substances and forms and essences. Prichard also charges that since ‘appearance’ is a relative term, implying both an appeared to and something that does the appearing, to conceive the world as limited to appearances is to imply, incoherently, the existence of material objects distinct from appearances78: it is, Prichard charges, to presuppose the very thing that is being denied. But again Prichard is wrong. Appearances are indeed the appearances of things; fine, those things which do the appearing are bundles of sense impressions – appearances if you insist – but there is no reason why we have to suppose that these sensible entities = appearances are entities that imply that there is something which is appeared to. Berkeley does argue that an appearance must have a mind that is appeared to, but Hume and Russell argue against this, defending Berkeley’s realism while denying his idealism. Again, Prichard insists that when we are aware of appearances, we are aware of them as appearances of material things.79 Yet, contrary to Prichard, there is no reason why one who defends a Berkeleyan realism, one such as Hume or Russell, cannot

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agree; it is just that the Berkeleyan realist construes material things as structured bundles of appearances. Nor is this all: Prichard has other weapons in his attack on the realism of Berkeley, Hume, and Russell. He criticizes these philosophers for raising questions about the existence of unsensed sense impressions. According to Prichard, if they knew what they were doing they would see that these questions are out of place.80 Sense impressions are ontologically dependent on the sensing of them; such appearances therefore cannot exist unsensed. So the questions of Russell and others are therefore illegitimate. These philosophers take them to be legitimate, and give seemingly odd answers to them, because they take sensing to be a form of knowledge, and since the objects of knowledge are independent of the knowing of them, they think (wrongly) that it makes sense to speak of unsensed sense impressions. But we are again back at Prichard’s insistence that the object of sensation is dependent for its existence on the sensing of it, and that therefore the sensing of a sense impression cannot be a knowing of that impression. It is precisely this that Hume and the others will deny: the sensing of or consciousness of a sense impression is, contrary to Prichard, separable, logically and ontologically, from the impression that is present to that consciousness. Prichard’s argument does not go beyond begging the question: what he must do is to show the intelligibility of the doctrine of objective necessary connections that Hume and Russell, following Locke, deny. Prichard must show that within experience, we are presented with objective necessary connections among the events and kinds of events that are given in our ordinary experience of the world. That he must do this seems to be beyond the capacity of Prichard to grasp. Interestingly enough, Prichard has another argument to the effect that Descartes is profoundly wrong – an argument which assumes that what is present directly to consciousness is something known. Prichard argues that knowing and believing are two different species of mental act, as different as ‘desiring and feeling’ or ‘a red colour and a blue colour.’81 This difference is given in experience, one presumes. But it is not the only difference. Another important difference is that ‘Though obviously knowledge is not false,’ and ‘though obviously, when we know we are not mistaken,’ nonetheless ‘knowledge is not true.’ In contrast, ‘beliefs are either true or false.’82 Moreover, knowledge is ‘direct.’83 Thus, when I hear a noise and recognize it as a loud noise, I know this and also do, or can, know that I am knowing, and so cannot be mistaken. In contrast, when I hear the noise and identify it as the noise of a car, that is a belief, for I can be mistaken, but I do, or can, know that I am so

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believing. In both cases, Prichard avers, the knowledge is direct. Prichard emphasizes that when we know something, then we do or can know that we are knowing: we recognize this much as a character of the state of consciousness we are in. Furthermore, when we believe something, then we do or can know we are in a state of believing. He concludes that Descartes’s difficulty – the difficulty of finding a state of knowledge that will relieve his doubt – is spurious: in doubting, he (Descartes) is already in a state of knowing – that is, specifically he knows that he is doubting. In which case he has already solved his problem of finding a state of knowledge, that is, a state that guarantees the existence of its object.84 Prichard does not elaborate on his account of knowledge – he apparently takes it as needing no elaboration – but it is clear that he takes it that we know when the fact known is itself present in consciousness. That state of experiencing or direct awareness is the state of knowing, and there is no question of truth or falsity because the fact known is right there, and facts, unlike beliefs, are not the sort of thing that are true or false. This is so also in the case of doubting – the doubting is there, present in the awareness, and we therefore know that we are doubting. But Prichard also says that we can know the difference between a red colour and a blue colour. So colours, and therefore, one presumes, coloured things (because we never confront instances of colour that are not exemplified), are present as themselves in consciousness: that is what makes the facts about colour known to us. That means, however, that the objects of sense are after all known – contrary to what Pritchard asserts when he is criticizing Hume and Russell. It is clear that for Prichard, to know something is for that thing to be mental2. What we can also say against his views is that even being mental2 is by itself no guarantee that the fact of which we are aware must exist. The knowing and the fact known are given in experience as two facts, and these facts are separable, they are logically and ontologically distinct. And if they are logically distinct, then the one can exist without the other, and in particular the awareness can exist without its object existing. Contrary to Prichard, the world in which we live in ordinary experience is a world without guarantees – contrary to Prichard, the world is Humean, it is a world that is structured but in which the structure is contingent throughout. It is important, therefore, that if we are to proceed with a Humean analysis of the knowing situation, with a Humean analysis of what constitutes a reasonable epistemic justification, then we must keep clearly

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before us the fact that the world in which we live is a world in which a radical contingency is inescapable – that it is a world in which all facts, including mental facts, are all separable, logically and ontologically. E. Experience and Justification (ii): Reasonable Acceptance Justification in a Humean world presents problems. It was far easier for both Berkeley and the earlier Russell. We seem to have escaped from the radical scepticism that Berkeley (and, malgré lui, Descartes) reasonably located as implied by the earlier substance ontology, only to find ourselves in a world in which a radical contingency about all facts, including the mental, prevents us from forming a reasonable conception of what can constitute in epistemology some sort of rational justification for the propositions that we accept. It is clear that we do reasonably accept some propositions and reasonably reject others. It is also the case that we have found ourselves as empiricists to be committed to a Humean world of radical contingency. We have to see if we can after all find a way to reconcile these two points. If we are to solve or resolve these issues, we clearly need to come at them from another point of view, building on what we have available. We need to reorient ourselves to obtain a different perspective on the problem. We can do this by looking at another philosopher, some of whose views we have already examined. This is Chisholm, who devoted considerable attention to these issues. Chisholm considers the notion that there are properties of persons that ‘present themselves’ to the person. Properties are said to present themselves just in case that (1) they are necessarily such that if a person has them and if he considers the question whether he has them ... then ipso facto he will directly attribute them to himself; and (2) they are properties such that we can consider the question of our having them while we are having them.85

He gives the example of being sad: being sad is necessarily such that if you do feel sad and if you consider the question whether you feel sad, then you will believe yourself to feel sad. The second clause is there in order to allay the fears of the nit-pickers – it excludes properties such as being unconscious from being included in the class of self-presenting

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properties; one could as easily have excluded them by insisting that what it means to have such a property is for that property be present in a conscious state, that is, such that there is a direct awareness of it. In any case, Chisholm goes on to tell us that ‘if a person is aware of a self presenting property then it is certain for that person that he has that property.’86 By virtue of the certainty that thus attaches to propositions about self-presenting states, they ‘could be said to constitute that which is directly evident.’ The set of self-presenting properties that one has at any given moment is one’s evidence base. The acceptance of a proposition is justified by one’s evidence base just in case, with regard to one of the properties in one’s evidence base, it ascribes that property to one at the time it is present.87 Among those properties which Chisholm takes to be self-presenting is the property of ‘being appeared to in a certain way,’ where an example of such a way is ‘being appeared to redly.’ In our Humean way of going about things, this presumably means something like this: one is being appeared to redly just in case redness is present in one’s conscious state. This is fine as far as it goes. The deeper issue is the nature of the ‘necessity’ that Chisholm uses to get the notion of a self-presenting property off the ground. Self-presenting properties are such that necessarily, if they are in the conscious state of a person, then that person accepts a proposition describing that state. Unfortunately, Chisholm never explicates this notion. If the suggestion is that there is an ontological guarantee because the property is present in a substantial mind, then we have excluded that as not reasonable in a Humean world: there are no substantial minds. If the suggestion is that in being presented to one, there is a relation between one’s conscious state and the fact which is the object of that awareness (after the fashion of the earlier Russell), then there are all the problems that such an analysis raises: it does not have a place in any reasonable ontology of the knowing situation. There is also the possibility that Chisholm means that the acceptance of the proposition is necessary simply because the fact it describes is in our conscious state – that is, by the fact that the that fact is mental2. But that does not by itself make it necessary for the proposition we accept to be accepted as a matter of necessity. To the contrary, that the fact described by the proposition is present in my conscious state is a simple contingent fact: such is the nature of the intentional connection. Then there is the possibility that, as we have found, other philosophers invoke – phi-

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losophers as diverse as Descartes, Alston, and Bonjour: that the necessity of the belief lies in the fact that the fact of which we are aware is imposed on us, that the awareness of the fact is something that is for us inescapable. As we have also put it, it is necessary in the sense that being in a world that contains such a fact is something we find to be our unavoidable fate. Details aside, it is clear that Chisholm is arguing that self-presenting states provide an evidential starting point for the process of epistemic justification. And among the states he considers self-presenting are states in which a person is being appeared to – that is, states in which the person has a direct awareness of being appeared to in some sensory way or other. In an earlier study, Chisholm had delineated a clear notion of evidence. A criterion that one must have adequate evidence for a given proposition is characteristic of a state such that, in the first place, it is not itself a state the description of which requires evaluation in the normative language that determines our judgments of epistemic evaluation. Thus, to judge that a characteristic of a state of affairs constitutes a criterion is to make a purely descriptive statement, one that in itself involves no epistemic evaluation. To judge that a characteristic constitutes a criterion is to describe it, not to evaluate it, and in particular not to evaluate it epistemically. A criterion that one must have adequate evidence for a given proposition is a characteristic of a state such that, in the second place, if a subject judges that he or she is in that state, then he or she ‘could not make any mistake at any time about his [or her] being in that state or condition at that time.’88 A criterion that one must have adequate evidence for a given proposition is a characteristic of a state such that, in the third place, whenever the person is in that state, then he or she has adequate evidence for the proposition. He then argues that being appeared to in a sensory way is a criterion of knowledge. For in the first place, it is possible to describe such a state in sensory terms that do not involve any evaluative terms from epistemology; in the second place, one cannot be mistaken about how one is being sensibly being appeared to; and in the third place, ‘surely,’ Chisholm says, being appeared to in such and such a sensible way means that one has adequate evidence that one is being so appeared to. But what justifies this last step? We noted earlier that what he seems to be appealing to is the fact that such a state is imposed on us. So it seems to be this that brings about the transition from fact to evi-

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dence: those judgments are evident just in case we must accept them. Earlier, we discussed the charge that to retreat to ‘it works’ for some doxastic practice seems not to provide a rational justification for the beliefs accepted on that basis; we seemed there more to be giving in to our feelings of spleen and indolence than providing a rational justification. We seem now, once again, to be giving in to those sentiments of spleen and indolence. But does that constitute rational justification? The question is, why ought we, rationally, as reasonable persons, accept such judgments? Why should we suppose that feelings of spleen and indolence provide us with a guide to (objective) truth? At this point we must also note, however, that it does seem to be the case that now we have gone beyond these feelings. It is not merely a matter of spleen and indolence that we accept these judgments. It is now a matter of necessity. However, this seems hardly much better. Why should the fact that we must accept these judgments, that we cannot conceive their contraries, be a mark of truth? Why should we accept this apparently psychological fact that the contrary is unimaginable as our criterion of truth? Chisholm clearly regards as reasonable the transition from a judgment satisfying his marks of evidence to the acceptance of that judgment as rationally justified. He clearly accepts the transition from the factually descriptive to the epistemologically normative. We have a transition from the empirical or descriptive to the evaluative, from what is accepted to what ought to be accepted. But what justifies this linkage? What justifies this move from ‘is’ to ‘ought’? Chisholm does not say. To the extent that he does not, his account of epistemic justification remains incomplete. Now, some have argued that this question has no answer: there is no bridging the gap from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ in the ethics of human action. Hume argued this point quite clearly: I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the ususal copulation of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what

418 External World and Our Knowledge of It seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction for others, which are entirely different from it. (469)

Wilfrid Sellars made the same point with regard to epistemic justification: ‘In characterizing an episode or state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says.’89 Sellars uses this to argue that there is an inevitable logical gap between the objective order of fact and the subjective order of justification, and that therefore one is, as it were, stuck with accepting a coherentist account of justification. However, this thesis – that the objective order and the subjective space of justification cannot be bridged, that ought cannot be derived from is – must be qualified. It can be bridged in the case of ethics. And for similar reasons, it can be bridged in epistemology. There has been long agreement that the point of moral discourse – the point of using sentences with ‘ought’ as the connective, to use Hume’s way of putting it – is to move people to action. Since morality is not a matter of bald fact, it must rest in something else: it rests in the sentiments that move us to action: ‘The course of our argument leads us to conclude, that since vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, or the comparison of ideas, it must be by means of some impression or sentiment they occasion, that we are able to mark the difference betwixt them ... Morality ... is more properly felt than judg’d of’ (470). Moral discourse therefore loses its point if the action it aims to promote is not possible: one would be tilting at windmills. This point is embodied in the well-known dictum that ought implies can. We may symbolize this with Op o Lp where ‘Op’ means ‘it is obligatory that P’ and ‘Lp’ means ‘p is possible.’ Similarly, it is pointless to insist that ‘not-p is permitted’ when ‘p is necessary’ and even more pointless to insist that ‘not-p is obligatory’ when ‘p is necessary.’ If ‘p is necessary,’ then one cannot succeed in getting anyone to make it true that not-p, for they can’t make it true that not-p. So if ‘p is necessary,’ then, from the point of view of one attempting

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rationally to move people to make p be the case, or to do p, it is pointless to urge that someone do the opposite and even more pointless to insist that someone do the opposite. As Aristotle quite reasonably insisted in this context, since our essence or form does as a matter of metaphysical necessity determine our ultimate ends, it is pointless to deliberate over those ends.90 Those ends therefore define what morally we ought to be and ought to do: they are, according to Aristotle, the ends that define the moral law, the natural law in the terminology of that tradition.91 Thus, the rational person, wishing to construct his or her moral discourse so that it can be used to move people to do certain things, constructs that moral language in conformity with the rule that ~[Np & (P~p v O~p)]92 where ‘N’ is necessary and ‘P’ is permitted. But this is equivalent to ~Np v ~[P~p v O~p] and equivalent to ~Np v [~P~p & ~O~p] and equivalent to ~Np v [Op & Pp]. But to be obliged to do something is to take it that that something is permitted: Op o Pp. We therefore have ~Np v Op. But this is equivalent to Np o Op which is the principle that ‘must implies ought.’ And so we have it that

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the rational person constructs his or her moral language in conformity with the rule that must implies ought. It is clear that these considerations about the principles of moral discourse apply equally to the normative discourse of epistemology. That is, the reasonable person will construct his or her cognitive discourse in conformity with the principles that must accept that p implies ought to accept that p and must infer in conformity with doxastic principle R implies ought to infer in conformity with doxastic principle R. Now we have seen how philosophers have concluded that there are unavoidable doxastic practices, and that in the last analysis it is this unavoidability that makes them justified practices. We have seen Hume adopt this principle to establish that the practice of relying on evidence from the past to judge the future is a reasonable practice. We must do that, it is our fate, so we ought to accept it, conform our reasonings and epistemological discourse to it, it is reasonable so to do, it is what we are justified in doing. Contrast this case – that of basing inferences on past experience – with that of the rules of the scientific method. Among the various kinds of inference that can be based on past experience, we adopt the rules of science from among the set. Here we have choice. We could, for example, allow ourselves to be superstitious. Or we could simply accept what happens to slip into our mind, that is, allow ourselves to reason in conformity with the rules that come to us when we are moved by feelings of spleen and indolence. We adopt the rules of science, the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ from the possible alternatives that are open to us; we choose to conform our thoughts and reasonings to these rules, to make that conformity our practice, because so conforming our inferences is conducive to our acquiring true beliefs and avoiding false ones. Conforming our practices in this way is a means to satisfying our cognitive ends. So it is reasonable to adopt those practices; it is rationally justified.

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There we had a choice. We could choose between science and superstition. But with regard to the practice of basing inferences on past experience, we are looking at a case where we have no choice. The practice of using the fallible evidence we derive from the past is not something over which we have a choice: that, simply, is how we are, it is our fate. We cannot adopt the Cartesian norm of accepting only such beliefs as we know are infallibly guaranteed to be true. There are no such beliefs: we cannot, with our human cognitive capacities, in the world in which we find ourselves in ordinary experience, conform to that standard – and if we are reasonable we won’t ever try to conform ourselves to that standard. Furthermore, we must make inferences from restricted data, from samples to populations, from past to future, and since we must do this it is unreasonable to try to do otherwise. We must do this, and the reasonable person accepts this as his or her fate. Only unreasonable people struggle against what they know to be their fate: such struggle can only result in pain and frustration and is therefore not undertaken by the reasonable person. More strongly, we must do this, so it is not only unreasonable to set cognitive goals contrary to these inductive practices, but also reasonable to accept those practices as our fate: we must undertake not only to tolerate such practices but also actively accept that that is the sort of person we are because that is what we must be. To struggle against this would be unreasonable, and to accept that fate is precisely what we have to take as reasonable – in other words, to take as rationally justified. We take it as a practice for which we can a give reason, that reason being that we must accept that practice. And Hume emphasizes the unavoidable in perception as strongly as he does in our inductive practice. Impressions are impressed. But he was hardly the first to stress this point, and indeed, to rely on it philosophically. We have seen that this is a significant feature of Descartes’s account of our knowledge of material objects. Berkeley takes up the same view: those sensible appearances which we take to be of ‘external’ objects are those which are involuntary. Lehrer and Alston in the end turn to unavoidability and fate, the human lot, as justifying our basic human doxastic practices, the acceptance at a fundamental level of our perceptual judgments. So does Bonjour. So does Chisholm. They all take the facts that impose themselves on us in sensible experience and inner awareness to be the starting points from which rational justification proceeds. It is this that Russell makes the key point in his definition of those

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judgments which form the rational basis of the edifice of empirical knowledge. Russell raises the objection that takes its point from his example of a true belief that subjectively seems justified but objectively is unjustified – the example that Gettier was later to take up. The counterexample has as its target the thesis that knowledge is justified true belief. One can avoid the problem by distinguishing between objective justification and subjective justification. But this does not seem after all to be a way out. For the separation of objective and subjective justification allows there to be justification by accident, and such justification cannot yield what one might reasonably call knowledge. Russell quotes Meinong: ‘But if it depended only on chance, that once in a while, so to speak, the right judgment and the right proposition should come together, then in the end it could also be only a chance when a man holds a judgment which is true to be true.’93 Meinong suggested that evidence is a property of certain judgments that we can recognize intuitively to be present, and that when that property is present, the judgment is guaranteed to be true: that is the nature of evidence. It is this perspective which Chisholm in effect takes up. But this by itself will not do: we cannot appeal to the evident truth of evident judgments to establish that these judgments are in fact true. That would be blatantly circular. Montaigne showed us as much. There must be more to the property of being evident than the presence in judgments of a simple characteristic. Russell first suggests that ‘a judgment is self-evident when it is contemporaneous with acquaintance with the corresponding complex.’94 But he raises the objection that this does not meet Meinong’s concern: the proposal leaves the connection between the judgment and the fact judged about more or less accidental. We could have, on the one hand, the judgment that Rab, and, on the other hand, the awareness of the fact or complex that Rab – where these two facts are separable. It is the latter that is important: it is the judgment that is supposed to be evident. However, the fact that the judgment intends that state of affairs by itself will not do the job required of evidence. For the intentional relation between the judgment and the fact of which we are aware does not provide any sort of matter-of-fact guarantee that the judgment is true. The connection is, as Russell says, extraneous: ‘It might quite well happen that we did in fact perceive the corresponding complex, without the judgment feeling different from other judgments, unless perception of the corresponding complex causes the judgment to have some intrinsic property. But if any such intrinsic property is so caused, it may be capa-

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ble of other causes. And I think it undeniable, on grounds of inspection, that evident judgments do feel different from other judgments.’95 Evident judgments do feel different, they do have such a property; but if that property is simple, then there is no necessary connection to the fact that causes its presence, and therefore there is no guarantee: it is not a criterion of evidence after all. There must be more to making a judgment evident than simple simultaneity of the judgment with the fact judged about, but a simple feeling will not do the job: there must be more to the feeling of evidence than the presence of a simple property in the judgment. Russell goes on to argue that evidence must be based on reasons, but those reasons provide a subjective justification only if they are before consciousness: ‘Now a reason for certainty must involve reference to the facts. But an ascertainable reason for certainty must involve reference to ascertainable facts. Now the only way of ascertaining facts (except by judgment, which is liable to error) is by acquaintance. He knows that if self-evidence is to be defined in such a way as to give reasons justifying certainty as regards our beliefs, it must be defined by means of acquaintance with facts connected with the beliefs.’96 This argument is internalist, in terms of what it is to be responsible in the judgments one accepts, accepting only those judgments which we know to be justified, and where we recognize or ascertain those reasons: our subjective justification for accepting a belief must, if we are responsible knowers, be one where we can discern and provide the reasons for acceptance. Russell then proposes that we have the required condition provided that the perceptual judgment occurs in the same conscious state as the fact the judgment intends or is about. He then proposes that ‘self-evidence is a property of judgments, consisting in the fact that, in the same experience with themselves, they are accompanied by acquaintance with the fact that accounts for their truth.’97 Our place in the world must be such that the world evokes a conscious state in which the perceptual judgment and the fact judged about come together: though logically separable, they are inseparable in one’s consciousness. Russell explains elsewhere what this relationship must be: ‘I think the fundamental relation is this: a form of words is true if a person who knows the language is led to that form of words when he finds himself in an environment which contains features which produce reactions in him sufficiently strong for him to use the words which mean them.’98 For a judgment to be evident, the fact known must evoke that judgment; it must impose that judgment on consciousness. We have, then,

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another instance of a pattern with which we are now familiar: the evident judgment is one that is imposed on us. As Russell makes clear, it is one that is imposed on us by the fact judged about. Once again, then, knowledge of truth lies in the first place in the truth of being, in the way the world imposes itself on our consciousness of it. It is these judgments that form the rational basis of the edifice of knowledge. All of these philosophers appeal to the same principle. One way or another, they hold that our basic judgments are those which we are forced to take as basic, those perceptual judgments which are imposed on us. Now, it is clear that these judgments are not merely a matter of spleen and indolence. They are not things that we can choose to accept or not to accept: there is no choice in the matter. When Pyrrho sat in the street and the chariot bore down upon him, he had a choice whether to move or not, but he had no choice as to whether he saw the chariot: that was not a matter of choice. His sceptical exercises could never place him in the doxastic position of simply rejecting what he saw: he could ignore it, but he could not avoid noticing it. Our basic perceptual judgments are judgments that we must accept if we are to get on in the world – or, more basically, if we are simply to be in the world. Pyrrho might choose not to get on in the world, and leave it for his students to give him a helping hand; but if he is there in the street, then the chariot binds him to see that it is coming: the chariot necessitates his seeing it, he is so bound by the chariot. If we did not accept these basic perceptual judgments – if, for example, we (per impossibile) imposed on ourselves the Cartesian standard of belief, if we in that way wholly detached ourselves from the world about us – then we could do nothing: acting and indeed our very being would be impossible, we could do nothing, and moreover, we could not even refrain from doing nothing, since nothing would be possible. If we are to be, then we must at least resign ourselves to accepting those judgments which the world imposes on us: such is our fate. We must take them up at least with the attitude of resignation: this is the way the world is, and let us get on with and within the world that so forces itself upon us. We are thrown into the world, and these perceptions that the world imposes on us are how we are bound to it. That’s life. We must have these perceptions. These seem to be those judgments which philosophers have agreed are somehow evident. However, we cannot yet say that this fact, that they are imposed, amounts to epistemic justification. We have not yet bridged the gap between is and ought, between objective justification and subjective.

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We are able nonetheless to take the analysis a bit further. After all, the principle here is clearly the same principle to which Hume appealed when he justified the practice of inductive inference in a world in which the Cartesian standard of clarity and distinctness is unattainable. We must accept these beliefs, and therefore, according to Hume’s principle, we ought to accept them: we are rationally justified in accepting them because such acceptance is the reasonable thing to do. It is this principle that provides the connection between the is and the ought: because we must accept these basic perceptual judgments, we are therefore justified in accepting them, that is, epistemically justified in accepting them; this is what it is reasonable to do. So goes the argument. This argument has, however, been attacked at its very basic point. We may have to resign ourselves to living with what we must believe. Indeed, such resignation may be the reasonable thing to do. Still, such resignation in the face of the inevitability of certain beliefs does not show that acceptance of those beliefs is rational. More strongly, the fact that we must accept those beliefs shows that we can have no epistemic duty to accept them. Some at least have so argued. For example, Alston has so argued. He makes the analogy to ethics. We can be held morally responsible only for those actions which we voluntarily perform. Where we are compelled to act, we cannot be held responsible. Similarly, where we are compelled to believe, there we cannot have an epistemic duty to believe. Those who look to justification as an internalist does, in terms of epistemic duty, are saddled with the false view that all belief is voluntary. Or, conversely, given that there are many beliefs that are true and that, involuntarily, we must have, then these beliefs lack epistemic justification.99 In either case, the internalist account of justification that Hume accepts cannot be an adequate account of knowledge as justified true belief. We must explore these issues very carefully. It will be agreed that a person is regarded as morally responsible for some act or event x if and only if he or she is believed (1) to have done x or to have brought about x, and (2) to have done it or brought it about freely, voluntarily. Acts for which we are responsible are those for which we can be morally praised or blamed: to be responsible for x or for bringing about x is to be held accountable for it. Now, I can have responsibilities before x, those matters that are relevant because of my position, as a teacher say, or that it is up to me to take care of – determining the consequences of my action, for example. Then I also have responsibilities for what happens as a consequence of x. Thus, if a death results as a consequence of what I do –

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or what I fail to do – then I am responsible for that death. In one sense, a responsible person is one who can be held responsible – morally praised or blamed for those things for which he or she is responsible. But there is a stronger requirement for a person to be responsible. The responsible person is one who can be trusted to discharge those responsibilities prior to the event and who accepts his or her responsibility for the consequences of the event. In this sense, the irresponsible person is one who does not take his or her responsibilities seriously. Central to all this is the idea that an action is voluntary, that it is a free action. As Chisholm once put it: ‘If a man is responsible for a certain event or a certain state of affairs ... then that event or state of affairs was brought about by some act of his, and the act was something that it was in his power either to perform or not to perform.’100 The basic notion of freedom or voluntariness is simply that of doing what one wants: to say it was in his (or her) power is to say that nothing prevented him (or her) from performing the act or from not performing it. The contrast to freedom in this sense is bondage, where one is prevented from doing what one wants. An action is involuntary if it is forced upon one – that is, if one is not doing as one wants. The parallel to our epistemic case is clear. The idea is that one can have an epistemic duty to believe p only if belief in p is voluntary. For it is only then that one can be held cognitively responsible for that belief. Only for voluntary beliefs can one be a responsible knower or be called to account. When we are compelled to do something, we do not do it voluntarily and cannot be held responsible for it. Similarly, it would seem, if we are compelled to believe something, we do not do it voluntarily and cannot be held responsible for it: it cannot be our epistemic duty, its acceptance can never be cognitively justified. But the moral case deserves more careful consideration. A careful look at the issues shows that it is not as simple as what has just been said. Spinoza thought long and hard about freedom and bondage, and his discussion will, I think, prove illuminating, both in its own right, and, what is important for present purposes, for the light it can shed on the notion of compulsory belief and epistemic duty.101 What is important to note for present purposes is that one can be free in the sense of doing as one wants and yet not feel that one is free. The bank manager who takes money from the vault and gives it to the criminals who are threatening the lives of her husband and children is no doubt doing what she wants, and in that sense her act is freely done. But she hardly feels free, nor would anyone consider her act, or any act

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done under threat, to be a free act for which one could be held morally responsible. The point is, of course, that she is moved by a desire, that she does not want to have, namely, that of giving over the money in order to protect her family. We may well be moved, as is this bank manager, by desires we do not want to have, and if that is so then we feel constrained. Thus, if our actions are to be free, then they must flow from desires and motives that we want to have. Now, it is clear that we do choose some values that we have. We reflect on ourselves – comparing ourselves, perhaps, to some more ideal self, or looking, perhaps, toward some more distant end and recognizing that if we changed our values, our goals, our motives, we could better achieve that more distant end, becoming, we would no doubt like to think, happier persons. Hume fully acknowledged the importance of such longer-term or ‘distant’ considerations in our attempts to achieve happiness. In any case, as we reflect on ourselves in this way, we can act to transform ourselves into something closer to the ideal or something that better serves the more distant end. We cannot of course choose between values in the way we can choose between using a hammer or a screwdriver, or between two kinds of toothpaste, or between whether we will speak rudely to the shopkeeper or not. But we can discipline ourselves, and train ourselves to desire some things and to be averse to others. It was the claim of Hume’s associationist theory of psychology that this would be a matter of either building up – reinforcing – or breaking down the relevant associations (i.e., habits or customs). There is clearly something to this theory, but the details are not important. What matters is, first, that many desires and aversions, if not almost all, are learned or acquired; and, second, that we ourselves can act on ourselves to cause ourselves to learn new and to unlearn old values. We can, in other words, in the light of more distant ends, decide so to discipline ourselves that we acquire new values that are rendered desirable by those more distant ends. And in this sense we can choose our values. Thus, one can choose to become a different sort of person as a means toward more distant ends. Naturally, there are sentiments, values, and emotions that we cannot, as a matter of fact, choose to eliminate. Thus, for example, there is the emotion of fear. Situations of danger will always, without doubt, continue, in a way quite beyond the influence of our will, to evoke the emotion of fear and, as part of that emotion, the impulse to flee the danger. But even if the emotion and its associated impulse cannot be eliminated, they can be influenced by the will guided by reason. In the first

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place, we can train ourselves to respond with fear only to those situations where there is indeed danger. Where the object of the emotion is not in fact dangerous, reason can so discover. Since acting on the impulse to flee in such circumstances can at best lead to no good, concern about our longer-run well-being can lead us to attempt to restrain and repress the fear that such circumstances initially evoke. Through an effort of will, we can begin to restrain the emotion and eventually suppress the fear evoked by situations that are not, by reason’s estimation, dangerous. Thus, we can train ourselves not to respond with irrational fear to, say, mice; or, again, we can train ourselves not to fear death. In the second place, where the situation is one that is in fact dangerous, we need not let the impulse move us willy-nilly. We can, rather, restrain the impulse and choose a line of action that is rationally appropriate for defending ourselves from the danger. We might choose to stand and, bravely, face the danger; alternatively, we might cautiously retreat; but in any case we can choose a line of action in the light of the details of the situation of danger in which we find ourselves. Spinoza argued this case carefully.102 ‘He who is led by fear,’ he argued, ‘and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason’ (Ethics, Bk IV, Prop. 63). Though good is done, the person is not virtuous, since he or she was led by fear rather than by reason (i.e., the vision of the good). And so, when we do good out of fear of punishment after death, we are not in fact doing good: ‘Superstitious persons, who know better how to rail at vice than how to teach virtue, and who strive not to guide men by reason, but so to restrain them that they would rather escape evil than love virtue, have no other aim but to make others as wretched as themselves; wherefore it is nothing wonderful, if they be generally troublesome and odious to their fellowmen’ (ibid., note). Fear is but one case of the general category of emotions. According to Spinoza, the emotions in general, like fear in particular, are impulses to action and more generally to self-preservation. But the mind, constituted primarily by its awareness or idea of the body, is aware of these bodily impulses. So an emotion is a mental impulse as well as a bodily impulse; the experienced idea is felt as an impulse toward pleasure or away from pain: ‘By an emotion I mean modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications’ (ibid., III, Def. 3). These impulses can be restrained or controlled by reason. For with reason guiding us, we can make a sacrifice or endure a short-

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term loss in order to achieve a greater good in the future: ‘We may, under the guidance of reason, seek a greater good in the future in preference to a lesser good in the present, and we may seek a lesser evil in the present in preference to a greater evil in the future’ (ibid., IV, 66). In particular, we can come to understand the causes of our emotions and thereby bring them under our control: ‘The mind has greater power over the emotions and is less subject thereto, in so far as it understands all things as necessary’ (ibid., V, 6). This understanding gives us a clearer and more distinct idea of these passions. Once we achieve it, we cease to be merely passively moved by the emotion and are moved instead by ourselves as rational beings concerned with what we ought to do. In other words, instead of reacting passively to the emotion – to the passion – we respond actively to the situation of which the emotion is a sign: ‘An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof’ (ibid., V, 3). In this respect, then, we can choose the sort of person we are going to be. We can choose to simply respond passively, and irrationally, to felt emotions. Or we can choose to control our emotions and treat them as signs to be used as we rationally interact with our environment – that is, we can treat them, in the words of Weston LaBarre as they ‘properly’ (i.e., rationally), should be treated, ‘as tools for the exploration of reality.’103 If the former, we will be moved by things other than ourselves; if the latter, we will be moved by ourselves. The former sort of person will, in Spinoza’s terminology, be in bondage to his or her emotions; the latter sort will be free: ‘Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse’ (ibid., IV, Preface). For Spinoza, of course, the causes and effects of our emotions – through knowledge of which we can learn to control them so as to become rationally active beings – in the end constitute a knowledge of necessary connections. But there is no need to treat the patterns of thought and feeling of which he speaks in that way, as objectively necessary. The connections to which he points can be understood simply as Humean regularities. To that extent, there is no reason why someone who accepts the Epicurean–Humean view of the universe should not find acceptable this Spinozistic wisdom. To be sure, we should probably recognize the limited nature of Spinoza’s scientific grasp of the

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emotions. For it is largely common sense given a scientific aura by being based primarily in nothing more than Cartesian speculative physiology. There is an element of associationism in this theory – thus Spinoza tells us that ‘If the mind has once been affected by two emotions at the same time, it will, whenever it is afterwards affected by one of the two, be also affected by the other’ (ibid., III, 14). He also appeals, like Hume, to the mechanism of sympathy: ‘Simply from the fact that we conceive, that a given object has some point of resemblance with another object which is wont to affect the mind pleasurably or painfully, although the point of resemblance be not the efficient cause of the said emotions, we shall still regard the first-named object with love or hate’ (ibid., III, 16). Hence: ‘He who conceives, that the object of his love is affected pleasurably or painfully, will himself be affected pleasurably or painfully’ (ibid., III, 21). These points Spinoza takes over from a long tradition – going back to Aristotle at least – of reasonable human selfknowledge. Like Spinoza, Hume also takes over these points. However, Hume goes forward and elaborates these insights into a much more adequate psychological theory of learning, one that can provide a considerably more effective causal account of the emotions. To be sure, we must recognize the limitations of Hume’s psychology, too; his classical associationist learning theory, even when supplemented by the mechanism of sympathy, is still very imperfect, far short of the sort of exceptionless body of laws that we would, as a cognitive ideal, prefer to have. But for all that, we must also acknowledge that his psychological theorizing is a considerable improvement on that of Spinoza and is therefore more useful to anyone who wishes to attempt to make a better person of him- or herself. And of course, all the improvements to psychological theory since then – especially those of Sigmund Freud – have continued the process of providing the self-knowledge that is important for self-formation. For Spinoza, moral values are given by reason, That is, by the insight we have into the Natures of things, Natures that both explain and are normative. We therefore do not find him treating moral values the same way he treats the emotions, that is, ‘as tools for the exploration of reality.’ But Hume argues that any sort of objectivist account of our moral sentiments, including Spinoza’s, is mistaken, and that the moral sentiments, too, are simply emotions of a sort. So these, too, can become the concern of practical reason; if we choose, we can discipline and modify them, in the light of long-term considerations of our own happiness. In this sense, our moral sentiments can be conceived as tools for guiding

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people in their interactions with others. If experience tells us that we can live a better life by changing those tools – that is, by modifying our values – then concern for that better life will prompt us so to change ourselves. Having said all this, however, we must also recognize that any choice of values always presupposes some other values on the basis of which the choice is made. If we choose one set of values, desires, or sentiments over another, it must be because the chosen set is more valued; and to say that one set is more valued than another is already to have a set of (higher-order) values that does that ranking. If we can choose a set of values, It is only because we already have a set of values which are themselves not chosen. This must be emphasized: every choice of values presupposes a set of values not chosen. For Hume, the ultimate value to which we come is the desire for long-run happiness. Many other values may be chosen, but this one is not; it is, rather, just as a matter of fact how human beings are. For Spinoza, as for Aristotle and the Stoics, there are further forms of behaviour built naturally into human beings; according to these philosophers, we must as a matter of metaphysical necessity develop as moral beings. Hume rejects the metaphysical claims about objective necessity; the only causal necessity is that of matter-of-fact regularities. But he could still accept that moral rules are somehow – though only as a matter of contingent fact – built into human nature and human psychology. He argues, however, following Locke, that there are no such innate tendencies to morality. Rather, these sentiments arise, as we saw, from conventional behaviour justified by self-interest and made moral – that is, made the objects of our moral sentiments – through the mechanism of sympathy. But in any case, the point remains that at some state one will come to a stop at some set of values and sentiments that are built into one by nature, and that one cannot successfully eliminate or change no matter how hard one tries. It may well be that this point of uneliminable values at which we arrive will not consist in a set of values that are innate, but rather in a set that we have learned, but where the learning has made those values so deeply a part of our human being that we can never succeed in unlearning them: they are imprinted on us as a second nature, as it were. In any case, however, it remains true that we arrive at something that we must be. Here, choice of self comes to an end. But having said that, and accepting it to be so, we must immediately qualify it. We should of course seek the self-knowledge that tells us where these limits of choice are, the knowledge that tells us which among the things

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that we are we must be. In general, the wise person seeks to find out what is and what is not within his or her control. Causal connections being what they are, whether for Spinoza or Hume, there is in fact a necessity there, and that necessity means there is no point in trying to change those values: if A causes B, then if A is given, then B must be, and there is no point in trying to change that course of events. To say that there is no point is simply to say that if we try, we will fail. And so, if our aim is to change that sequence, then the aim will be frustrated. Assuming with Hume that our long-run aim is happiness, we shall not set it as our goal to change that sequence – if we do, we will inevitably suffer the pain of frustration. Given that we cannot alter (genuine) causal relations, all we can do is change the initial conditions. If we want to avoid B, we cannot do so if A occurs; but if we can prevent A, then we will thereby not have to suffer B.104 But in order to prevent A from happening, we will have to intervene. Sometimes we will succeed, other times we will not. Perhaps the causal texture of reality is such that there is nothing we can do to prevent A; perhaps we simply lack the power to effect the change. In such circumstances, no matter what we do, A will happen. Again, there is no point in trying to change A, nor, therefore, B: if we try, we will fail. And so, if it is our aim to change A or to change A in order to prevent B, then the aim will be frustrated. Again assuming with Hume that our long-run aim is happiness, if A cannot be avoided, then we will not set it as our goal to change A, or to prevent B by changing A – if we do, then we will inevitably suffer the pain of frustration. In general, where something is beyond our control, then, given that our long-run aim is happiness, we will not set it as our goal to change that thing. Or, if it is our goal to change the inevitable, then, given that our long-run aim is happiness and given that all that will result in trying to achieve the goal is the pain of frustration, it follows that we should make every effort to change our values and give up that goal. We should acquiesce in the inevitable, and accept that what must be ought to be: that is the rational thing to do. As Spinoza puts it: Human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a

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part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. (Ibid., IV, Appendix, 32)

In particular, this rule of reasonable persons, that we ought to acquiesce in the inevitable, applies to ourselves. In choosing the sort of person we ought to be, we inevitably come upon certain limits, the limits that define what we are through what we must be. Once again, in this case as in others, in the case of our own selves as in the case of things external to us, where something is beyond our control, then, given that our long-run aim is happiness, we will not set it as our goal to change our self. Or, if it is our goal to change our self to something other than what inevitably it is, then, given that our long-run aim is happiness and given that all that will result in trying to achieve the goal is the pain of frustration, it follows that we should make every effort to change our values and give up that goal of trying so to change our self. The rational person acquiesces in what he or she must be. Spinoza argues that ‘In so far as a thing is in harmony with our nature, it is necessarily good’ (ibid., IV, 31); it follows that a person who is not in harmony with his or her nature, one who is trying to change what he or she naturally or inevitably is, is living a life that is less than good, one filled with pain, the pain of frustration at trying to change the inevitable. Life in harmony with oneself, life in conformity to one’s nature, is the same as life in conformity to reason; and life in conformity to reason is the virtuous life; and so reason approves the life that is in harmony with itself: ‘Self-approval may arise from reason, and that which arises from reason is the highest possible’ (ibid., IV, 52). If someone desires to be a sort of person other than what he or she as a person must be, then he or she has desires, motives, emotions, and values that he or she does not want to have. This person will feel coerced, not free. This person will feel coerced by a self that is unavoidable, bound by a self that is hated or despised. Inevitably, the life of this person will be unhappy, full of the frustration of unfulfilled desire and self-hatred. One releases oneself from the pain and frustration of such bondage by coming to value as acceptable and as what ought to be that which one inevitably is. The release from such bondage requires, first, self-knowledge, once again as enjoined by Socrates and, before him, by the Delphic oracle.

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One requires knowledge of what one is: both what one must be and what one can be. And the release from bondage requires, second, that one be reasonable, someone who adapts means to ends, in this case one’s own values to the more distant goal of happiness. In this case, of course, what one adapts are ends, doing so because these ends serve as means toward more distant or longer-run ends, such as, long-run happiness. Since one cannot change what it is inevitable that one be, then, given that one’s long-run aim is happiness, it follows that one should strive to discipline oneself so as to give up the goal of trying to change in that respect. One should try so to discipline oneself that one accepts what it is one’s fate to be. One may conclude that in this sense, and in this sense alone, one can choose oneself: one can choose oneself not in the sense of trying to change the inevitable but in the sense of making a virtue of necessity and recognizing that what one unchangeably is is what the reasonable person accepts as what ought to be: the reasonable person accepts responsibility for being what he or she inevitably is. A must can be something that goes contrary to what one wants. In that sense, an action that one must perform is neither free nor voluntary. But if the must is accepted as one’s fate, and acquiesced in, then an action that one must do is voluntary and free. For the free person, for the responsible person, for the reasonable person, doing as one must is doing as one ought, it is doing one’s duty. For the free person, for the responsible person, for the reasonable person, must implies ought. With these thoughts in mind, let us return to the case of justification in epistemology, to the case of epistemic duty. We were arguing that the principle that must implies ought applies to our beliefs and that it yields the conclusion that inescapable perceptual judgments are judgments that we ought, as reasonable persons, to accept as rationally justified. The objection was raised that since such judgments are not voluntary, it is wrong to suggest that we can be held responsible for them, and that therefore their acceptance cannot be counted as epistemically justified. But take the Spinozistic considerations seriously. The inescapable perceptual judgments are our fate, and in that sense they are beyond our control. But we may acquiesce in them, accept them as our fate. This is the strategy or practice at which we arrived. And to the extent that we acquiesce in them, accept them as our fate, they are not beyond our control. Accepting them, we are not bound by them: we take responsibility for them as defining the sort of being that we are. The rational person will not resist them, but freely acknowledge them as cognitively binding, as our epistemic duty.

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We may therefore conclude that the responsible knower accepts inescapable perceptual judgments as rationally binding and that it is our epistemic duty to accept them. Many epistemologists from Hume on have turned to the fact that certain perceptual beliefs are inescapable. These include, as we have seen, such diverse thinkers as Alston, Bonjour, Chisholm, Sosa, Lehrer, and Russell. As with Hume, we find a separation between, on the one hand, primitive perceptual beliefs about our sensible experience, and, on the other hand, basic patterns of inference, and in particular the practice of relying on the evidence of our perceptual judgments to draw inferences from the known to the unknown. The practice of accepting such judgments and the practice of making such inferences are both necessary, an inescapable part of our human being. The rationality of these practices provides a starting point for our inferences about the sensible world and a basic rule for relying on the evidence of our senses for our inferences to the world outside those parts of the world which we do experience. Hume provided the fundamental idea that these justifications rely on the rational principle that must implies ought. These norms are thus not merely the result of our ‘spleen and indolence.’ To the contrary, they are rationally justified; they are precisely those norms which the reasonable person would adopt for the knowledge claims he or she makes in the world in which he or she finds himor herself and to which he or she is inescapably tied. It is not spleen and indolence that justifies them; it is, rather, that reason justifies them – our human reason. Hume may in some sense be a sceptic, but it is also true, as we now see, that he insists that in the end, reason and reasonableness triumph over any radical scepticism that attempts to exploit the fact that the world in which we find ourselves and which imposes itself on us is a world of radical contingency. This demonstration of the rationality of these practices provides an internalist account of justification. We are subjectively justified in our beliefs if we arrive at them in these ways. It certainly is true that justification comes to an end, that appeal to rules for justification in the end becomes an appeal to a matter of fact – to the inescapable doxastic practices that we must accept. Those facts bring the regress of rules and inferences to an end because they are themselves normative. And they bridge the gap between subjective and objective justification because they are at once objective – that is, facts which are outside the realm of the subjective, the realm of ideas – and at the same time subjective – they impose themselves on us, force on us our awareness of them. Finally, because the objective here imposes itself on the subjective, the

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possibility of the connection being only accidental is eliminated. It is here, at the point where the subjective and the objective inevitably meet, that the responsible knower lets his or her justifications come to an end – a reasonable end. We saw previously that Hume’s account of testimony is one that relies on the idea of the responsible knower. We now see that the same is true for his more general account of empirical knowledge. And both discussions make clear Árdal’s point that central to Hume’s concept of human rationality is the concept of the reasonable person. F. Experience and Justification (iii): Perception Wayne Waxman, in an often perceptive discussion of Hume’s philosophy, has argued that Hume ends up in a radical scepticism in which knowledge is restricted to atomistic sense impressions. He argues that the naturalist reading of Hume is mistaken. Naturalism is the view that so far as concerns reason, Hume is indeed a sceptic; but that he is rescued from his scepticism by the natural beliefs in the existence of body (material objects) and by our natural tendency to make inductive inferences. However, for Hume, Waxman argues, ‘beliefs founded on the immediate data of sense have precisely the same nature and authority as the beliefs he ascribed to the idea-enlivening imagination: each alike owes its dominion over us not to what they reveal or enable us to discover, but simply and solely to the feeling of vivacity they engender in the contemplating mind.’105 Since beliefs following from the natural inferences of the imagination are in conflict with the beliefs we acquire through our immediate impressions, we end up in a scepticism that both reason and nature are powerless to overcome and that we deal with only through inattention to the incoherence within our total body of beliefs: ‘Perpetually confronted with such conflicting evidence, even the least philosophical person cannot help being troubled, albeit inarticulately and without contemplating the consequences, by the absence of a justification for belief in continued existence; and, while our imaginations are amply equipped to fashion illusions to deal with the ensuing discomfort, we must accept that, in the end, they can only tame, not resolve or conceal, conflict between the natural beliefs.’106 This is not the place to discuss all the points raised in this interpretation, but some matters should be clear. In the first place, since straightoff scepticism of the sort it is suggested that Hume falls into is simply

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not a reasonable position, one should only with great reluctance attribute that attitude to a philosopher who aims to justify being reasonable as a way of life. One should try to be generous in one’s reading of Hume instead of sticking to a reading that leads to a hopeless scepticism. With this point in mind, we should note, in the second place, that Waxman does not allow for the distinction that must be drawn between the impression and the awareness of it. To be sure, Hume does blur these. But that is due (as we saw in chapter 1) to what was for him the still not completely understood program of introspective analysis. Straighten out these confusions and we see that Hume really does not collapse the act/object distinction. In the third place, vivacity as the criterion for belief must be qualified, both for the complications deriving from the problems with the notion of introspective analysis, and for the confusion between vivacity as a matter of being imposed upon us, and vivacity as a mark of belief, imposed and unimposed. Only vivacity as imposition is a criterion of knowledge. In the fourth place, this account of Hume on the standard of knowledge locates that standard in the certainty of imposed belief, but neglects the fact that Hume offers a justification of inductive inference as also rational and, indeed, a justification of methods in conformity with the norms of science as rational. To be sure, these latter inferences are all fallible and therefore do not have the certainty of the beliefs acquired though the force of immediate impressions. But to fall short of the standard of certainty established by impressions is not in any way to make those beliefs less rational. The fallibility of our inferences from the known to the unknown – for example, our inductive inferences – does imply that there may well be a gap between what we are subjectively justified in believing and what we are objectively justified in believing: we may have (subjectively) justified beliefs that we can count as knowledge while (objectively) they are not really justified, not true, and therefore not knowledge – beliefs that are reasonably but incorrectly taken to be knowledge: that is the fact of a reason that is fallible. Humean principles therefore justify as reasonable those beliefs which go beyond the deliverances of our sense impressions. We should now recognize that these beliefs include many of our perceptual judgments. Thus far we have located as reasonable the judgments concerning our sense impressions that are imposed on us by the impressions they are about. But there is more to perception than sense impressions. There are judgments about material objects – those judgments that are there when I see an oak tree, or notice that I am sitting at a desk writing

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my lectures, or recognize that my hand is out here before my eyes. Hume himself certainly means to include such perceptual judgments as among the ones it is reasonable to accept – as among those which, because they are impressed, make an impression on us. Thus, when he ventures on to a more detailed discussion of the ordinary Berkeleyan world – what he calls the ‘world of the vulgar’ – he tells his reader that: ‘In order ... to accommodate myself to their notions [that is, the notions of the vulgar], I shall ... suppose; that there is only a single existence, which I shall call indifferently object or perception, according as it suits my purpose, understanding by both of them what any common man means by a hat, or shoe, or stone, or any other impression, convey’d to him by his senses’ (202). ‘A hat,’ ‘a shoe,’ or ‘a stone’: the awareness of these material objects is what is a ‘perception,’ and the object itself is an ‘impression.’ It is perceptual judgments that are thus imposed on us and that yield knowledge of the world of ordinary experience. This shows how wrong it is to interpret Hume’s impressions solely as sensations, or as atomic sense data, as does Waxman and as do many other commentators: Hume’s account of our knowledge of the world of ordinary experience is more complicated than that account allows, and also simpler. Chisholm argued, unknowingly following Hume, that the perceptual judgments concerning material objects also have a mark of evidence, just as do our awarenesses of sense impressions. Chisholm’s argument on this matter was needlessly made more complicated by another argument that he was deploying. He proposed to argue against the Berkeleyan ontology, the ontology which argues that material objects should be understood, ontologically, as being as they appear to be – that is, as being bundles of sense impressions, some sensed, many unsensed. If Chisholm’s conclusion were true, that this ontology is inadequate in its account of material things, then it would be necessary to introduce another sort of perceptual knowledge, on pain of falling into a scepticism concerning material objects. Chisholm has this sort of motive for introducing a form of evident judgment over and above sense experience, a form that will ensure that we have perceptual knowledge of material objects. But as we have discussed, Chisholm’s argument, much like Quinton’s, on this point is unsound. He does not present us with grounds for thinking that material objects are anything other than bundles of sense impressions. His criticism does not touch the Berkeleyan ontology. Yet he has a point.

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Chisholm defines a notion of ‘taking’ that is to be understood in terms of our perceptual awareness of material objects. The sentence ‘There is something x such that S takes x to be f’ is defined by Chisholm to mean that ‘there is something x such that x appears in some way to S; S believes that x is f; S also believes, with respect to one of the ways he is appeared to, that he would not be appeared to in that way, unless the conditions which now obtain, if x were not f; and S did not arrive at these beliefs as a result of deliberation, reflection, or inference.’107 And he argues that ‘taking’ satisfies the conditions he has laid down for a characteristic being a mark of evidence: (1) taking is not itself an epistemic term, it is descriptive, not epistemically normative; (2) one cannot be mistaken in the belief that one is taking an x to be f, so long as one is taking x to be f; and (3) if a person takes something x to be f, then he or she ‘has adequate evidence for the proposition or hypothesis that the thing is f.’108 In the case of sense experience, we argued that there had to be a premise that justified the move in step (3), from ‘is evident’ to ‘ought to be accepted.’ This, we argued, was Hume’s premise that must implies ought, though we also recognized that Chisholm would be unlikely to accept this gloss, where the relevant necessity is established at step (2), where it is required that the judgment be in some way necessary, one that imposes on us the acceptance of the proposition. What we should notice is that beliefs about perceptual objects are often imposed on us in our sense experience of the world. Chisholm is correct: such judgments carry the mark of evidence. They are imposed on us, and this necessity becomes a must that renders their acceptance our epistemic duty. Chisholm was arguing that such judgments are evident as part of the case he was making against a Berkeleyan form of realism. But it is still true – even if one accepts a Berkeleyan realism and rejects Chisholm’s motivations – that such perceptual judgments, such takings, are imposed on us, and therefore are evident: since they must be accepted, they ought to be accepted. As we have insisted, there is nothing about a Berkeleyan ontology, nor anything in Hume’s philosophy, that prevents such a philosopher holding that perceptual judgments are imposed on us. Descartes held that such judgments are forms of natural belief. They are unavoidably imposed on us. In point of fact, he was right. He also argued that there was, in terms of his substance ontology, a need to justify them as worthy of acceptance. The Humean can agree with the fact: material-object perceptual judgments are imposed on us:

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that is what the world does to us. The Humean can also agree that this acceptance must have a foundation in human reason. But the Humean justification is simple, and of this world; certainly, it lacks the imposing metaphysical framework that marks Descartes’s justification. That unimposing nature makes it look as if we can after all ‘repose no faith in such an implicit confidence’ as we ordinarily attach to our perceptual judgments about material objects: ‘I cannot conceive how such trivial qualities of the fancy, conducted by such false suppositions, can lead to any solid and rational system’ (Treatise, p. 217). But the Humean justification seems trivial only when it is compared to the a priori metaphysics of Descartes. In fact, the Humean justification turns out to be solid and binding, both naturally and normatively. The Humean’s human reason, though fallible, is in fact as solid as any person can reasonably desire. Chisholm is not the only philosopher to follow Descartes in holding that accepting perceptual judgments about material objects as time is both natural, imposed on us, and cognitively our duty. Norman Malcolm is another.109 Malcolm argues that there is a sense of ‘know’ – its ‘weak’ sense – such that one can know only what can be doubted. One says one knows something in this sense when one has wondered about the truth of a proposition and has then undertaken a search for evidence that does, as it turns out, verify the proposition. When one knows in this sense, one can imagine evidence that would, if it appeared or came to be available, lead one to say that one only thought one knew. One does not believe that there is such evidence – indeed, one can reasonably say that one knows there is no such evidence – but such evidence is conceivable: it is conceivable that one does not after all know. ‘Where,’ Malcolm tells us, ‘I use “know” in the weak sense I am prepared to let an investigation (demonstration, calculation) determine whether the something that I claim to know is true or false.’110 However, there is another sense of ‘know,’ Malcolm also argues – its ‘strong’ sense – in which, when one says one knows in this sense, one cannot imagine any evidence that would lead one to recognize that one only thought one knew: ‘When I use ‘know’ in the strong sense I am not prepared to look upon anything as an investigation. I do not concede that anything whatsoever could prove me mistaken; I do not regard the matter as open to any question; I do not admit that my proposition could turn out to be false; that any future investigation could refute it or cast doubt on it.’111 Malcolm compares knowing in the weak sense with the sort of

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knowledge that Descartes says he has when he holds that he has moral certainty about the truth of our perceptual judgments. In contrast, knowing in the strong sense is analogous to the sort of knowledge that Descartes claims to have when he has clear and distinct ideas, where the evidence is so complete that all possibility of error is excluded. But Malcolm argues that we have knowledge in the strong sense of certain contingent, empirical states of affairs, states of affairs where Descartes would allow us to have only moral certainty. In this sense there are empirical propositions, propositions that are not logically necessary and the falsity of which is inconceivable. This, he insists, is a logical point about the nature of evidence: when I know a proposition in the strong sense, then there is ‘no imaginable future occurrence [that] would be considered by me now as proving that’ that proposition is not true, that I would count as evidence that the proposition is not true.112 This is never made exactly clear: we are never told much about the sensees in which ‘logic’ and ‘evidence’ are being used. But an example that Malcolm uses does make things more clear. The example is that of oneself sitting at a desk writing with an ink bottle before one. I perceive the ink bottle sitting before me on the desk at which I am writing. This is a perceptual judgment. It is a case where I can correctly say that I know in the strong sense that there is an ink bottle before me. The example makes clear why Hume and the Humean can accept most of what Malcolm says about knowledge in the strong sense: they can agree with him that there are perceptual judgments about material objects in which we know in the strong sense. The judgment about the material thing is something I find unavoidable. It is a judgment that I must have. It is therefore an epistemic duty that I accept it. It is a contingent proposition, but one for which it is a matter of reason that the proposition is epistemically acceptable. It must be true, and therefore there is nothing that I would count as possible evidence against it; and because the judgment is imposed on me, its not being true is unimaginable. Because accepting it is a matter of necessity, both psychologically and rationally, it follows that there is nothing to which I can, rationally, appeal to suggest that it might turn out to be false: it is firmly grounded, psychologically and rationally. Hume’s account of the rationality of such beliefs makes it clear why Malcolm’s own discussion is often, and rightly, felt to be in the end unsatisfactory and unconvincing. Malcolm tells us about his ink bottle that ‘there is nothing whatever that could happen in the next moment that would by me be called evidence that there is not an ink-bottle here

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now.’113 But why just ‘call’? Could that calling or not calling be just happenstance? or accident? or whim? Or must there be a reason? If the latter (which one hopes is in fact the case), then Malcolm provides no reason, leaving it for his readers to figure out what the rules of evidence or justification are to which he thinks himself to be appealing. Hume does better, with his appeal to the unavoidability of the judgment and the must implies ought rule to provide the rational justification. And this Humean justification seems to be behind Malcolm’s attempt to justify his accepting the perceptual judgment that there is an ink bottle before him, that the sense impressions he is experiencing are reasonably judged to be those of an ink bottle. Similar comments are in order with respect to a resembling argument advanced by Wittgenstein.114 He considers examples such a ‘I am in pain’ and ‘Here is my hand,’ and correctly points out that ‘we don’t ... arrive at any of them as a result of investigation’ (On Certainty, ¶138). These are propositions for which in fact there is no issue of undertaking inquiry to discover their truth, unlike, say, ‘Such and such is the distance of a planet.’ He tells us that ‘all enquiry on our part is set so as to exempt certain propositions from doubt, if they are ever formulated. They lie apart from the route travelled by enquiry’ (¶88) It is clear that the propositions about the pains one feels or about one’s own hand of which one is aware are among those exempted from doubt and therefore from inquiry. Wittgenstein suggests that ‘The expression “I do not know” makes no sense in this case,’ and then goes on: ‘It follows from this that “I know” makes no sense either’ (¶58). Cases of knowing where doubt and inquiry are possible correspond to what Malcolm refers to as knowledge in the weak sense. Cases where doubt and enquiry are inappropriate correspond to Malcolm’s knowledge in the strong sense. In the latter sort of case, one can of course say ‘I know’ according to Wittgenstein, but then it ‘is conceived as a grammatical proposition,’ not one making a substantive claim about evidence (¶58); or rather, it is used to make a logical point: ‘“I know” is here a logical insight’ (¶59). The logical insight is that in these cases, the propositions cannot be doubted, they are exempt from doubt. But the question arises here, as for Malcolm, concerning just why they are exempted. Is it by whim? or by accident? or for sound logical reasons? If the latter (which one hopes is what Wittgenstein means), then what exactly are the relevant norms, and why should they be accepted by the rational person? Here we see Wittgenstein making the Humean point that in those cases where there is no possibility of doubt with respect to the proposi-

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tion one accepts, then in those cases the acceptance of the proposition is imposed on one: ‘This direct taking-hold corresponds to a sureness, not to a knowing’ (¶511). When we come to recognize this, we come to recognize ‘the groundlessness of our believing’ (¶166). Wittgenstein also makes the Humean point that the same sort of argument applies to reasoning in conformity with the principle of induction: 499. I might also put it like this: the ‘law of induction’ can no more be grounded than certain particular propositions concerning the material of experience. 500. But it would also strike me as nonsense to say ‘I know that the law of induction is true.’ Imagine such a statement made in a court of law! It would be more correct to say ‘I believe in the law of ...’ where ‘believe’ has nothing to do with surmising.

As with Malcolm’s belief that there is an ink bottle before him, so with the law of induction: ‘A man cannot make a mistake.’ It is declared that ‘“can” is here used logically,’ and it is suggested that ‘if someone denied those beliefs, ‘we should regard him as demented’ (¶155). But as with Malcolm, we find it being declared to be a logical point without any clear argument for that claim. Here we must go beyond Wittgenstein, as we have to go beyond Malcolm, and fill in the logical principles that implicitly describe the reasoning they accept. This principle is the one that Hume uses to justify believing in those cases where the belief is ‘groundless’ – namely, the principle that must implies ought. It is those propositions which are accepted because they are imposed on us that provide the inferential framework in which we go about our lives as human beings; they define our practices in the world to which we are tied, and they tie us to the world. These propositions constitute ‘the inherited background against which I distinguish true and false’ (¶94). But of course these propositions are propositions of fact; they are matter-of-fact truths. These matter-of-fact propositions, because their acceptance is imposed on us, are also normative: ‘The truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference’ (¶83). And the same proposition may be both a matter of fact and be the standard by which we judge the truth: ‘The same proposition may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of test-

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ing’ (¶98). Our accepting the proposition that here is an ink bottle sitting on the desk at which I am writing, like our accepting that here is a hand when I am holding my hand up in front of me, and like our accepting the law of induction, is part of our frame of reference in the world, and at the same time part of the standard determining those propositions which, alongside the proposition that ‘here is an ink bottle ...,’ ought to be accepted by the reasonable person as true. The connection being made here – it is also made by Wittgenstein – is to G.E. Moore’s famous ‘proof of an external world.’115 Moore aimed to prove the existence of an external world consisting of objects to be met with in space. He conducted his proof by exhibiting two such objects – by proving that such objects exist in the same way one might prove there is a watch in the drawer by searching the drawer and pulling it out. The two objects that he exhibited were his two hands. The proposition that ‘here is a hand’ as used in that context is one the acceptance of which is, in that context, imposed on us. Which means that we know it – know it in Malcolm’s strong sense of ‘know,’ know it in the way indicated by Wittgenstein in which the use of ‘I know’ is logical. This is a rigorous proof of the existence of material objects – though it is not a grand metaphysical construct of the sort Descartes forced himself to try to construct. The world of ordinary experience to which we are tied and which binds us in a certain way is not like that. It is in fact much simpler: it is one in which we can prove the existence of material objects, things to be met with in space, by pointing them out in certain obvious contexts. Moore’s proof here is of a piece with a similar argument in Hume. Hume allows that, even when one undeniably sees a hand or an ink bottle, the sceptic can argue that it is still possible that one is wrong. As Hume makes the point, the sceptic will or may go on with his (or her) reasonings, denying the acceptability of our judgments of sense, but we nonetheless are forced to accept our judgments that the material objects that we perceive are there, objectively to be perceived: The sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even tho’ he asserts, that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho’ he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem’d it an affair of too great importance to the trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations.

We cannot really wait on Descartes to fix up his proof of the external world before we get up for breakfast:

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We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ’tis vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is something, which we must take for granted in all our reasoning. (187)

But the sceptic still has his or her arguments: there is no doubt that even when one waves one’s hand or notices the presence nearby of an ink bottle, one into which one has recently dipped the pen one is now holding, it is still logically possible that one is in error – as indeed, Moore clearly concedes.116 That is the nature of logical possibility: so long as the proposition is not logically true, it is possible for it to be false. Stroud has agreed with the sceptics relative to the Hume–Moore argument that we are not beyond reasonable doubt when we claim to know that a hand exists when we wave it. Stroud has argued that the proof of ‘an external world’ does not succeed so long as the mere logical possibility of error remains. What Stroud argues is that ‘once he [Moore] accepts the possibility of his dreaming as an objection to his claim to know that he is standing up, Moore must show how he knows that the possibility does not obtain.’117 It is true that it is logically possible that one is mistaken. It does not follow that accepting the possibility implies that one should also admit it as an objection to the claim that one knows that there is, say, an ink bottle on the desk or that one is waving a hand. It is of course true that there is no knock-down proof that the ink bottle exists, no argument from incorrigible premises through deductively valid steps to the conclusion that here is an ink bottle. But given the contingency of the world, such a proof is impossible, and ’tis vain to aspire to that sort of assurance. And it is therefore unreasonable so to aspire. Stroud, arguing on behalf of the sceptic, is setting unattainable and therefore inhuman cognitive goals. In order to adequately reply – that is, reply in a way that is acceptable to anyone with reasonable cognitive aspirations – attainable cognitive aspirations, Hume and Moore have only to argue that letting such logical possibilities determine one’s cognitive standards is unreasonable. And in fact, since must implies ought, it is unreasonable to let those mere possibilities determine what the reasonable person will accept as reasonable. In the face of the reality that certain things are logically impossible, one must settle for some contingent facts as determining our cognitive framework. Such is the human lot, in this vale of tears. But since it is our lot, it is what the reasonable person and responsible knower accepts. To put it another way, what Stroud is directing our attention to, is the logical gap between subjective justification and objective justification. So long as there is nothing that will guarantee that what is subjectively

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justified cannot diverge from the objective justification, we will, he proposes, be unable to claim rationally that we know. And it is a proposal – Stroud nowhere justifies it a being a standard that reasonable people can adopt as a norm defining what they ought to accept. But in a world like ours, which is through and through contingent, no such guarantee is possible. Maybe after all, the best subjective justification that we can attain fails to be objectively justified – maybe that is so. The reply of Moore and more emphatically of Hume is that while this may be so – while there is indeed such a possibility – nonetheless the way the world imposes certain beliefs on us makes it unreasonable to suppose there is such a gap. The responsible knower will not take such a possibility seriously: it will be dismissed as unreasonable, and one who seriously accepts it to act on it will be deemed, as Wittgenstein indicates, demented, or perhaps, as Hume indicates, frivolous, someone who neglects his or her cognitive responsibilities and makes knowledge to be whimsy. In this, Stroud is on the side of scepticism and whimsy and the demented, Hume and Moore on the side of reason and the wise person.

7 Naturalism and Scepticism

A. Defending Common Sense There is an important sense in which Hume is a defender of common sense, that is, a defender of the acceptance as true of certain propositions about perceptual or material objects – objects ‘to be met with in space’ – such propositions as here is a hand (when I wave my hand – Moore’s example), or here is an ink-bottle (where I am writing in good light on the desk at which the ink bottle is located – Malcolm’s example), or here is a shadow; and of the acceptance of certain further propositions defining the normal framework of belief – propositions to the effect that there are material objects, or that many of these material objects have existed for a long time, and so on. Other philosophers have defended the same propositions, often with the added claim that they are defending them against the sceptical principles of David Hume. Among these are G.E. Moore and Thomas Reid. It will pay to compare the positions and arguments of these other philosophers to those of Hume. Examples of the sort of commonsense judgments that we are now discussing have been given by Moore, in his well-known essay ‘A Defence of Common Sense.’1 Among those which Moore lists are these: – there exists at present a living human body, which is my, body; – this body was born at a certain time in the past, and has existed continuously ever since, though not without undergoing changes; it was, for instance, much smaller when it was born, and for some time afterwards, than it is now; – ever since it was born, my body has been either in contact with or not far

448 External World and Our Knowledge of It from the surface of the earth (for astronauts this will have to be qualified); – at every moment since my body was born, there have existed many other things, having shape and size in three dimensions, from which it has been at various distances; – also there have (very often, at all events) existed some other things of this kind with which it was in contact.2

We could go on extending such a list, but it is not necessary. What interests us is the defence that Moore gives for accepting these commonsense truths. As it turns out, the defence that Moore gives is of a piece with that which Hume gives of our belief in body and our belief in induction. The point is that the propositions of common sense that Moore lists are propositions that all people must accept. In getting on with the task of life, we have no choice: they are shackles that living in the world places on us. This must applies to each of us; it is in fact a lawful regularity that describes each person. It therefore yields a doxastic norm rationally binding on all people. Similarly, for the same reason, it is a doxastic norm, applying to each person, that he or she accept that there are material objects, that space exists – that is, that material objects stand in spatial relations defining a three-dimensional order, that time exists, and so on.3 The criterion of what we must believe thus provides each of us with, first, a number of singular propositions about material objects (we each believe that we exist, we believe that there is an ink bottle before us (when there is one there), that we are standing before an oak tree (when we are so standing), and so on), that that other object has a shadow, and so on; second, a few ‘framework’ propositions (there are material objects, space exists, and so on); and, third, a means of thinking beyond what each of us is presently impressed with (the framework of inductive inference). Since each of us must, as people, believe these, we obtain the doxastic norm that each of us ought so to believe. In the context of these ‘givens,’ each of has the task of so to speak constructing his or her picture of the world in which we live, and all of us the task of constructing our shared picture of the world in which we live. Not that there is any guarantee that these pictures are true. Nor even that there is any guarantee that any commonsense feature of the world is true. This is exactly as with induction. Each causal inference is fallible. So it is logically possible that any of Moore’s commonsense features

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of the world might be false. Cartesian and Stroudian doubts can be raised about any and all of them. The problem is, of course, that no one can live the life the Cartesian recommends – suspend judgment unless there is a guarantee. Moore offers the same argument on this point as Hume does on induction. He suggests that some philosophers have recommended the Cartesian norm and have as a consequence denied or doubted, so they claimed, the principles of common sense.4 But Moore thinks as Hume thinks, that ‘the first and most trivial event in life will put flight to all his doubts and scruples,’ at least so far as concerns their effects on his or her practical life, ‘and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect of those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches.’5 Moore puts it this way: All philosophers who have held such views [that is, denied or doubted the principles of common sense] have repeatedly, even in their philosophical works, expressed views inconsistent with them: i.e. no philosopher has ever been able to hold these views consistently. One way in which they have betrayed this inconsistency, is by alluding to the existence of other philosophers. Another way is by alluding to the existence of the human race, and in particular by using ‘we’ in the sense in which I have already constantly used it, in which any philosopher who asserts ‘we’ do so and so, e.g. that ‘we sometimes believe propositions that are not true,’ is asserting not only that he himself has done the thing in question, but that very many other human beings, who have had bodies and lived upon the earth, have done the same.6

The point is not made with Hume’s style,7 but it is the same point: even if one tries to live as a denier or doubter of common sense, one cannot so live. There is a must that prevents me from being a Cartesian. There is a must here, and therefore an ought. But Moore’s discussion implicitly raises another issue.8 What Moore is suggesting is that bad faith is a possible response to the must, a response that ignores the inference from that must to the reasonable person’s ought. This will suggest that there is after all a sense in which one might doubt what one must believe, including the truths of common sense. But such doubt is possible only at the cost of a dissociation in one’s person. The idea is that one might, in the first place, set oneself a Cartesian standard for cognitive acceptability; in the second place, note that one cannot in one’s ordinary life conform to such a standard; but in the third

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place, argue that, since we are compelled to accept the world of common sense we can use this as an excuse for not being a Cartesian as one ought to be, according to the rational standards one has set for oneself. To put it another way, one may accept, in the first place, the doubts about common sense that are created by one’s acceptance of the Cartesian standard, but, in the second place, do as one’s nature demands and act contrary to that standard. One will, by one’s standard, be irrational, but one will use the fact that irrational beliefs are forced upon us contrary to our reason as an excuse. We may accept those doubts raised by our Cartesian standard, even though we recognize that they cannot affect us in our ordinary life. In that case, we would, by virtue of a natural, uncontrollable necessity, be involved in a sort of Sartrean bad faith, a dissociation of self in which one side is pitted against another side, where our natural being as being forced upon us is an excuse for not being as good as our standards require. Even so, such dissociation of one’s being, in which one’s reason is pitted against one’s natural being, is not really possible, where one struggles to overcome the latter in the name of the former. Or so Moore suggests: ‘They [those who deny the propositions of common sense] seem to me constantly to betray the fact that they regard the proposition that those beliefs are beliefs of Common Sense, or the proposition that they themselves are not only members of the human race, as not merely true, but certainly true; and certainly true it cannot be unless one member, at least, of the human race, namely themselves, has known the very things which that member is declaring that no human being has ever known.’9 Moore is here ruling out that the person of dissociated sensibility is genuine. I may well believe with certainty as I go about the business of living or even of doing philosophy, while nonetheless wondering about it: perhaps it is, after all, quite unreasonable. Such wonder will not affect me, or if it does, I will soon be nudged by nature out of that mood. There will be a divorce between instinct and sentiment, which guides my life, and reason, which leads me to wonder about the rationality of it all. But I carry on my life, and, as I am inclined by sentiment at times to do, explore the world I must believe in. As I fill in the details of my picture of the world, I come to realize that my philosophic, or Cartesian, or Stroudian doubts, really are unreasonable: I am a human being in a human world, and it is a lawful and universal truth about humanbeing-in-the-world that we believe in the world in which we live. No

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longer am I inclined to wonder about the rationality of what I cannot help being: my sensibility becomes integrated, as I gradually come to recognize that my way of being and of cognitively being is as humanly justified as it could reasonably be. We just spoke of exploring the world in which we live, filling in the details of our picture of it. The questions are these: By what rules do we build up this picture? What are the norms of correctness, and how are they justified? Hume gave an answer to this question: What we must believe is the framework of inductive inference. Within this framework we can believe as the scientist or as the superstitious. A further argument is needed, and given, to justify the rules of scientific inference as the standards by which to construct our picture of the world. (We should here acknowledge the role that Hume allows for testimony in constructing our picture of the world.) In the case of Moore, what we must believe is the commonsense framework and what amounts to a scattering of individual empirical facts. Within this framework we might believe as the scientist or as the superstitious. But the rules of science do tell us how properly to infer from samples to populations. The very existence of the sample itself comes to be questioned, however, in the context in which Moore as a philosopher is attempting to work, a context in which all beliefs are challenged. Beliefs that involve inferences going beyond presently accepted data came under challenge; furthermore, those very data themselves are challenged. We therefore need norms that will enable us to decide which data to accept, norms that go to a deeper level. What Moore allows is that the connection between judgments concerning sensible appearances and judgments about material objects are not clear: Just as we found in the case of ‘This is a human hand,’ that what I was knowing about the sense-datum was certainly not that it itself was a human hand, so, is it perhaps the case, with this new proposition [that ‘This is part of the surface of a hand’], that even here I am not knowing, with regard to the sense-datum, that it itself is part of the surface of a hand? And, if so, what is it that I am knowing about the sense-datum itself? This is the question to which, as it seems to me, no philosopher has hitherto suggested an answer which comes anywhere near to being certainly true.10

It is not exactly clear what Moore has in mind, but one can suggest a possibility. The material object with which Moore is concerned is in one

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respect nothing more than a lawfully ordered bundle of impressions that are its appearances, sensed and unsensed. In another sense, the material object is a collection of atoms or whatever they are that physicists now say compose such objects. If we take the former view, there is nothing terribly problematic about the perceptual inference from sensed sense impressions to bundles. It is inductive, but complicated: the details are, at least right now, beyond us. Fortunately, our natural capacities for learning to get on in the world have made it automatic for us to make what are, usually, the correct inferences from sensory inputs to perceptual judgments. But the relation of sense impressions to collections of atoms is much more problematic. If we take this idea seriously, then we have to conclude that all unsensed sense impressions do not exist, that there are no appearances save those which we actually sense. And even the location of the latter is problematic. Scepticism raises its ugly head. Moore suggests that no one has solved these problems. Certainly, few have considered them in detail. But is the scepticism reasonable? Moore sees no way out it. Hume, however, has an argument that enables us to deal, he thinks, with this form of scepticism consequent on our using the methods of science to explore the natural world. This is his defence of critical realism and his criticism of what he refers to as consequent scepticism. But of that, more later (see chapter 8). More, too, of Moore: for the world of atoms is not Moore’s only concern. He is also inclined to argue – with the philosophers with whom Berkeley aimed to dispute – that beyond the world of ordinary experience there are substances, simple entities of which sense impressions are appearances, and which endure through change. But before turning to those issues, it will pay to say more on the defence of common sense. Moore’s defence of common sense had been anticipated in many respects by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid.11 Reid enunciated a series of principles of common sense. He saw himself defending these against the attack of Hume. Among these principles of common sense that he saw himself defending were these (among others): • ‘That the thoughts of which I am conscious, are the thoughts of a being which I call myself, my mind, my person.’ • ‘That those things do really exist which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and are what we perceive them to be.’ • ‘That the rational faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious.’

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• ‘That, in the phaenomena of nature, what is to be will probably be like to what has been in similar circumstances.’ (Works, pp. 443–51) The parallels to Moore are clear. So is Reid’s defence of the acceptability of these principles. Methinks ... it were better to make a virtue of necessity, and, since we cannot get rid of the vulgar notion and belief of an external world, to reconcile our reason to it as well as we can ... If Reason ... will not be the servant of common sense, she must be her slave. (Ibid., p. 127)

Or again, It is a bold philosophy that rejects, without ceremony, principles which irresistibly govern the belief and the conduct of all mankind in the common concerns of life; and to which the philosopher himself must yield, after he imagines he hath confuted them. Such principles are older, and of more authority, than Philosophy: She rests upon them as her basis, not they upon her.12

We see the same appeal as in Moore to the ‘must implies ought’ principle to reply to the sceptic and to establish the rationality of accepting these framework beliefs, which we all, in the task of getting on with living, must accept. Reid in fact indicates that he takes Hume as the sceptic who is his opponent: Mr. Hume, by tracing with great astuteness and ingenuity the consequences of principles commonly received, has confirmed that they overturn all knowledge, and at last overturn themselves, and the mind in perfect suspense.13

Or again, Mr. Hume saw very clearly the consequences of this [the ideal] theory [the way of ideas], and adopted them in his speculative moments; but candidly acknowledges that, in the common business of life, he found himself under a necessity of believing with the vulgar.14

Reid reads Hume as arguing for the irrationality of the beliefs of common sense, but then after all simply accepting them for the sake of get-

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ting on with the purposes of life. As Reid sees it, Hume accepts the way of ideas – which, again, Reid sees as inevitably involving representationalism – and that this representationalism commits one to a form of scepticism. Reid is quite correct in suggesting that representationalism leads to scepticism. He is less correct in his claim that this (representationalism) is also the view of Berkeley and Hume. In fact, he totally misses the fact that Berkeley aims to establish a form of realism about common sense. He also fails to notice that Hume, too, defends the system of the vulgar. To be sure, Hume does argue that there is a real and important conflict between the system of the vulgar, the realism of ordinary material things, and the system of the philosophers, the system in which material objects are understood as congeries of atoms or some other sort of wee particle or semiparticle. But he fails to acknowledge, or try to understand, Hume’s ‘sceptical resolution of these doubts.’ We shall later (in chapter 8) take up this Humean position, his critical realism. But for now, what is important is his (and Berkeley’s) realism: it is this that Reid does not recognize. Nor does he recognize that Hume accepts that the reasonable person will adopt the principles of common sense. What we need to recognize is that Hume in fact accepts the case that Reid makes for the rationality of the principles of common sense. Hume, like Reid, is prepared to accept the justification in terms of the principle that must implies ought. But have we been entirely fair to Reid? The vehemence of his criticisms of Hume suggests that there is more to his concerns than we have so far located. It is true that Hume is a sceptic about those philosophical claims that are supposed to support religion in general and Christianity in particular. Hume is quite critical of natural theology – the world did not have to wait for the Dialogues on Natural Religion, this much was already clear in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding – and he rejects the argument for Christianity based on the claimed existence of miracles – this, notoriously, is found in the Enquiry. Certainly, then, Hume found rather less in the principles of common sense than did Reid, who suggested that they were sufficient for the defence of Christianity. So for Reid, the good Christian, there was much to the charge that Hume was a sceptic. But there was more to Reid than this abrupt reaction of a person settled in his Christianity, as we shall see in the next section, when we turn to discuss these issues. Indeed, as we shall also see, there is more to Moore’s philosophical approach to these issues than we have so far examined.

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B. The Role of a Principle of Acquaintance in Ontology Moore argues that we must accept certain material object judgments, and therefore the judgment that there are material objects. These are over and above the beliefs we have concerning what we are presented with in our sensory experiences of things. He argues further that we have observed, attended to, believed, imagined, dreamt, and so on, many things. Briefly, we cannot avoid having certain beliefs about material objects and our awareness of them, and, indeed, about our awarenesses of these awarenesses: these are our basic empirical beliefs. Moore infers from the necessity of these beliefs the rationality of accepting them. What can be asked is whether there are any beliefs other than empirical beliefs for which acceptance of them is a doxastic obligation. Some have argued that there are. Thus some have argued that we have a doxastic obligation to accept some beliefs at least about God. Some have argued that no person is an atheist, that all people must believe in God. It is likely true, after all, that there are no atheists in foxholes. If it turned out that we must have certain beliefs about God, then the proposition that God exists would be as doxastically obligatory as the proposition that material objects exist. Moore himself explicitly excludes God as well as any immortal soul from the list of things that common sense defends.15 Beliefs about non-empirical entities are not required of us. But it does not follow that they are irrational. There might be other doxastic standards than those of common sense, and these might well admit as rational the acceptance of such entities. Such beliefs are excluded only if being empirical is the only criterion of doxastic obligation. In order to exclude non-empirical beliefs as irrational, it has to be argued not only that we must have empirical beliefs but also that these are the ONLY sorts of beliefs that we can have. Those who do philosophy within a framework defined by a Principle of Acquaintance (PA) are committed to the view that empirical beliefs are the only sorts of beliefs that we can have (other than the a priori truths of logic and mathematics). At least, this is one main implication of this philosophic principle. We must, however, say a fair bit more before what is involved becomes tolerably clear. Sextus was perhaps the first to adopt, explicitly, a PA as a methodological rule: ‘And in general it is impossible to find in conception anything which one does not possess as known by experience. For such a thing will be grasped either by way of resemblance to things which

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have been presented in experience, or by way of enlargement thereof, or of diminution, or of composition.‘16 Hume, of course, adopts the same rule: ‘that all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent’ (4). In terms made familiar by more recent philosophy, the point would be put by saying that the undefined descriptive constants (individual constants, and predicate constants, and among the latter both monadic and relational) in a language perspicuously representing one’s ontology must refer to entities that are or could be presented to one in acts of sensible experience or inner awareness. The qualification ‘could be presented’ means that they are of a kind that is presented. Thus, someone who is adhering to a PA could hold that non-presented coloured objects exist, because he or she is acquainted with colours. In contrast, a Platonic form is a kind of entity none of which has ever been presented in acts of ordinary experience. It follows that no terms of an empiricist language refer to such entities; thus they are not admitted into an empiricist’s ontology. Putting the matter in terms of language has the advantage of divorcing the role of the PA as a meaning criterion for concepts from what seems to be Hume’s idea – that learning the meaning of such concepts requires, genetically, acquaintance with previous impressions. The latter may well be true, but it is a thesis of learning theory, a part of the empirical science of psychology, and not a thesis of philosophy. Furthermore, putting the thesis in terms of language enables us clearly to distinguish questions of meaning from questions of truth. Acquaintance provides a criterion for the meaning of concepts, even when, in terms of epistemology, judgments of acquaintance are fallible. One can adopt a PA even when one holds that it does not provide a criterion of infallible knowledge. It is worth emphasizing that an adherent of a PA in ontology can admit to the existence of entities that are not presented. The mechanism is, of course, that of definite descriptions. Taking PA to provide a meaning criterion for the descriptive predicates of our ontologically perspicuous language, what this means is that such sentences as the following are well-formed and meaningful sentences:

(*)

The desk is in the next room. The cherry tree in the quad exists. That fallen tree, there in the forest, made a sound when it fell.

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These are acceptable as statements in the empiricist’s language, at least so long as their descriptive predicates (the non-relations: ‘desk,’ ‘room,’ cherry tree,’ ‘quad’; and the relational: ‘next,’ ‘in’) satisfy the requirements imposed by a PA. In particular, such statements as (*) are acceptable even if no one is acquainted with the entities (the desk, the cherry tree, the noise of the falling tree) the existence of which is asserted. To say that such statements are acceptable is to say that the defender of PA can admit into his or her ontology the entities they assert to exist. That is, he or she can admit them as possible entities. For so long as such sentences use only predicates compatible with PA, the entities will be of kinds that are presented. However, to admit that such sentences as (*) are acceptable – that is, are well-formed sentences of the empiricist’s language – is not to hold that such sentences are true: to say that the states of affairs (*) asserted to exist are possible states of affairs is not to say that they are actual states of affairs, that they actually exist. To move from possibility to actuality, one must have evidence justifying the acceptance of the sentences (*) as true. Such evidence is, of course, often forthcoming: we have the best inductive evidence to justify our holding that desks and cherry trees generally continue to exist unperceived and that falling trees make a noise even when unobserved. All of this Hume understands fairly well. Thus, he is quite willing to speak of unobserved and minute parts that nonetheless we can plausibly conjecture to exist: Philosophers observing, that almost in every part of nature there is contain’d a vast variety of springs and principles, which are hid, by reason of the minuteness or remoteness, find that ’tis at least possible the contrariety of events may not proceed from any contingency in the cause, but from the secret operation of contrary causes. This possibility is converted into certainty by farther observation, when they remark, that upon an exact scrutiny, a contrariety of effects always betrays a contrariety of causes, and proceeds from their mutual hindrance and opposition. A peasant can give no better reason for the stopping of any clock or watch than to say, that commonly it does not go right: But an artizan easily perceives, that the same force in the spring or pendulum has always the same influence on the wheels; but fails of its usual effect, perhaps by reason of a grain of dust, which puts a stop to the whole movement. From the observation of several parallel instances, philosophers form a maxim, that the connexion betwixt all causes and effects is equally necessary, and that its

458 External World and Our Knowledge of It seeming uncertainty in some instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary causes. (132)

On the other hand, to speak of entities of kinds we are not acquainted with is pointless: I am, indeed, ready to allow, that there may be several qualities both in material and immaterial objects, with which we are utterly unacquainted; and if we please to call these power or efficacy, ’twill be of little consequence to the world. (168)

The irony of the ‘may’ is clear from the last clause: in such circumstances, ‘power’ and ‘efficacy’ will be words without meaning, referring to nothing, denoting no entity one that should or must admit into one’s ontology. Hume also recognizes that there are definite descriptions that are meaningful – acceptable, in an empiricist’s language – but that do not denote anything. Thus, he points out that certain concepts of God are meaningful, in the sense of satisfying the conditions laid down by PA. In the first Enquiry he introduces PA: ‘When we analyze our thoughts or ideas, however, compounded or sublime, we always find that they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were copied from precedent feeling or sentiment [i.e., in the terminology of the Treatise, from precedent impression].’17 He then shows that it applies to cases which, on the surface at least, might appear least amenable to such analysis: ‘The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.’18 Just as we can conceive a line as an extended ordered aggregation of points, so, when we consider qualities admitting of degrees, we can take them as an ordered aggregation of degrees. We can conceive lines infinitely long. So also can we conceive infinite wisdom. Both are extrapolations to the limit. In particular, in the case of wisdom, we form the definite description ‘the quality which is the limit of this series,’ where the series is that of degrees of wisdom. The definite description is acceptable because we are acquainted with the earlier portion of this series, with properties (‘wisdom’) of the same kind as that which the definite description purports to denote, and with the relations (‘degrees’) that order these properties in the series. For the sake of the argument, we may take the relation to have such structural properties,

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beyond those of transitivity and asymmetry, as to justify the claim that the series does converge to a limit. That is, we may assume that the definite description succeeds. The property, then, may be admitted into one’s ontology. God, then, is an entity with that property. He or she is also an entity with the property denoted by the definite description ‘infinite goodness.’ If we also take him or her to be infinitely powerful, then, as Hume argued in Dialogues on Natural Religion, he or she does not exist. Still, the concept is meaningful, the idea can be formed. Hume sees the essential point. But he is hindered by a struggle to correctly analyse the notion of ‘degree.’ The notion of limit really does elude him, so far as detailed analysis is concerned. This does not surprise us: after all, it was only with Russell that we obtained an adequate analysis of definite descriptions (which is, of course, at the core of the idea of a limit). But Hume is confused in his account of relations, a notion that underlies the concept of degree. Hume’s account of relations is nominalistic, in that it attempts to reduce them all to non-relational predicates. Here he is in effect adopting a thesis incompatible with his commitment to PA, which does require one to accept relations: for, as William James pointed out to philosophers, irreducible relational facts are presented. Hume’s nominalism prevents him from offering an account of relations that is both logically adequate and compatible with PA. And this prevents him from providing any adequate analysis of definite descriptions involving relations, such as, for example, the notion of the limit of a series. Still, as must be emphasized, Hume does see the essential point. The inadequacy really bedevils Hume at one point only. There he takes the correct attitude, a rather nonchalant one. And this has made certain commentators almost livid with fury. Which has in turn made this a passage that commentators cannot ignore. I refer, of course, to the missing shade of blue.19 Hume introduces PA: ‘All our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them and which they exactly represent’ (4); and he proceeds to comment on this principle: There is however one contradictory phaenomenon, which may prove, that ’tis not absolutely impossible for ideas to go beyond their correspondent impressions. I believe it will readily be allow’d, that the several distinct ideas of colours, which enter by the eye, or those of sounds, which are convey’d by the hearing, are really different from each other, tho’ at the same

460 External World and Our Knowledge of It time resembling. Now if this be true of different colours, it must be no less so of different shades of the same colour, that each of these produces a distinct idea, independent of the rest ... Suppose therefore a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it has never been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be plac’d before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; ’tis plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place betwixt the contiguous colours, than in any other. Now I ask, whether ’tis possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, tho’ it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe that there are few but will be of the opinion that he can; and this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always derived from the correspondent impressions; tho’ the instance is so particular and singular, that ’tis scarce worthy our observing, and does not merit that for it alone we should alter our general maxim. (5–6)

Hume’s attitude is appropriate: when one faces an apparent difficulty for one’s principles – principles that nonetheless solve a good number of problems – one may, for a while anyway, put the difficulty to one side, hoping one will later be able to return and clear up the matter. Nonetheless, this attitude, apparently insouciant, has enraged certain commentators. H.A. Prichard, for example, remarks: ‘This is, of course, just the kind of fact which should have led Hume to revise his whole theory. It is really effrontery on his part and not mere naiveness to ignore an instance so dead against a fundamental doctrine of his own.’20 But it is neither naivety nor effrontery; rather, it is a combination of honestly admitting difficulties while nonetheless having a certain confidence that one’s principles are doing a fairly good job. Flew is even more censorious that Prichard: ‘Not allowing this concession [that there is, in the case of the missing shade, a simple idea without an impression] to knock him off his stride Hume went on brazenly to dismiss the fault as only a little one.’21 Such remarks as these of Flew and Prichard indicate rather more accurately a lack of sympathy than they judge Hume as a philosopher. The difficulty, as I see it, is easily removed. We can easily form the idea of the missing shade. This idea is the definite description: ‘the shade of colour between this shade and that.’ Each of the concepts ‘colour,’

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‘between,’ ‘this,’ and ‘that’ refer to entities with which we are acquainted. Hume’s discussion makes this evident. This definite description will succeed provided that the relation between has the structural properties of an ordering relation.22 It does. To say that it does is to say that certain laws are (so far as we know) true. The evidence that these laws are true derives from experience; Hume’s discussion makes it clear that he realizes such evidence is both needed and available. Hume thus grasps the central points about the idea of the missing shade of colour: this idea is a definite description that denotes that shade; this definite description is compatible with PA; and its success is established by our knowledge of the colour spectrum. But Hume does not see clearly just how to analyse definite descriptions. Clearly, though, however one does it, they must be complex ideas.23 Yet what this definite description denotes must, like all shades of colour, be simple. Now, it seems to be the rule that complex entities yield complex ideas and that simple impressions yield simple ideas (‘Every simple idea has a simple impression, which resembles it; and every simple impression a correspondent idea’ [3]). How can one have a complex idea of a simple entity? It is this that is the problem that Hume is puzzled by. To solve it, he must solve the problem of how correctly to analyse definite descriptions. And that, in turn, he could not do until he solved the problem of relations, invented multiple quantification, and so on. No doubt these are puzzles – puzzles that proved difficult to solve. Nonetheless, Hume got the essentials correct. And especially, he is correct when he says that the idea of the missing shade of colour in no way compromises what is fundamental: PA as a meaning criterion. Another couple of threads in Hume’s thought should be disentangled before we proceed. We have done this before, in fact, for these threads (in chapter 1); but it will pay to do it again with a shift in focus that is relevant to the present context – that of clarifying the idea of the empiricist’s PA and its role in ontology. On the one hand, Hume tells us that ‘all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent’ (4). On the other, he also says that ‘by ideas I mean faint images of these [i.e., impressions] in thinking and reasoning’ (1), and holds that ‘the difference betwixt these [impressions and ideas] consists in degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike the mind’ (1). How can an idea that differs from its antecedent impression in force and liveliness exactly represent that impression? At the least, it cannot represent it exactly in its force and

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liveliness.24 Wherein is the exact resemblance? The exact resemblance, we may say, following Ronald Butler,25 lies in the conceptual content. But they differ in force and vivacity, what we may call their ‘feeling-tone.’ To be sure, there will only be what Hume calls a distinction of reason (25) between the conceptual content of an idea and its feeling-tone.26 It is, nonetheless, a distinction, and for present purposes that will suffice. Seen in this way, it is clear that the rule ‘no (simple) idea without a corresponding impression,’ is simply PA, functioning as a meaning criterion, a criterion for the empirical meaningfulness of (basic) concepts. This is one strand of Hume’s theory of ideas: it is the thesis that Flew has called ‘logical empiricism,’27 the thesis that concepts are not admissible if they do not refer to entities given in sensible acquaintance or inner awareness or are not defined in terms of such concepts (taking ‘defined’ broadly enough to include definite descriptions). There is another strand, however, that needs carefully to be distinguished. To have less force and liveliness is not quite the same as being faint. Yet Hume equates them. This shows that Hume takes ideas to be images. It would thus seem that a thesis about concept formation is taken by Hume to be equivalent to a thesis about image formation. But this is misleading. Besides defending PA, Hume is also defending a second thesis, this one not about the logical nature of concepts, not about ideas as things with conceptual content. This second thesis is one of psychology – more specifically, of introspectionist psychology. It is a thesis we first looked at in chapter 1. It is a thesis to the effect that all higher mental processes, such as thinking and reasoning, can be analysed – in a technical sense of ‘analyse’28 – into processes involving images. It may be that this thesis involves the ‘mistake of exaggerating enormously the importance of mental imagery,’29 yet as a scientific hypothesis (which it is, given the technical sense of ‘analyse’), it is not obviously false. Considerable research was done on it, by Wundt and Titchener and the Würzbergers.30 In the end, the evidence was against it: imageless thoughts do exist.31 Nonetheless, it was a not implausible thesis, and Hume thought the evidence was in its favour, so he accepted it and, indeed, pursued it. But this second, psychological, thesis is one thing, and the thesis that PA is the meaning criterion is quite another. On the one hand, we can reject the former while retaining the latter. On the other hand, to defend both is not to be confused. Thus, Flew is most unjust to Hume when he tells us that ‘the upshot is that Hume becomes committed to defending a psychological thesis about the limitations of the capacity to form mental imagery; and is mistaking this for a ground,

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both for a criterion of meaningfulness of words, and for a method of clarifying their meanings.’32 Even if Hume did not distinguish the two theses carefully for us, because he was defending both, that does not prevent us from distinguishing – both for us and (if you wish) for Hume as well – the two quite different theses, the logico-ontological thesis about PA, and the psychological thesis about the analysability of thoughts into images. And for what we are at present about, we can ignore the second of these theses; we are concerned only with the first. But we may note that if we think of the missing shade of blue in terms of imagery instead of conceptual content, then the difficulties will seem all the more puzzling.33 What holds for ideas also holds for impressions. Impressions are, in the first instance, perceptions: ‘Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions’ (1). That is, they are perceivings, acts of awareness. What is given to us in such awarenesses are ‘our sensations, passions and emotions’ (1). Here, we are distinguishing between the awareness, and what the awareness is of or intends; this is the crucial distinction between an act and its object. But Hume proposes to analyse, in the introspectionist’s technical sense of ‘analyse,’ higher mental states (such as acts of awareness) into sensible entities such as images or the entities that are sensed, the sensations. He thus does not carefully distinguish the sensation from the sensing of it. And so at one point he tells us that ‘the farthest we can go towards a conception of external objects, when suppos’d specifically different from our perceptions, is to form a relative idea of them, without pretending to comprehend the related objects. Generally speaking we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attribute to them different relations, connexions, and durations’ (68). There is more to be said about this passage, but for now the point is that we must distinguish what Hume does not carefully distinguish: perception in the sense of perceiving and perception in the sense of perceived. Once again, we may reject the thesis of introspectionist psychology, and also hold that to distinguish sensations and sensings – what is sensed and the sensing of them – is to remain faithful to Hume. We can, however, make an important point about the supposition so often made (e.g., by Waxman34) that Hume insists that sensation provides an incorrigible foundation for empirical knowledge. A sensing of x or a perceiving of x intends x, whether or not x exists. This is the central feature of intentionality: it is a relation – a ‘relation’ – that can obtain even if one of its relata does not exist. So long as the act merely intends

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its object, then the existence of the act in no way guarantees the existence of its object. Sensible awareness, taken in this way, provides no incorrigible foundation for empirical knowledge. But if awarenesses are to be analysed into sensations, then the sensing/sensation distinction will be blurred. One will tend, in that case, to the view that sensing, since it is a sensation, guarantees the existence of its object, the sensation. A foundation is thus provided for empirical knowledge. But once we give up the psychological thesis, we have a position that is not foundationalist in the sense of providing an incorrigible foundation. Hume argues that certain entities are presented in sensible awareness: it follows that they are admitted by PA into the Humean ontology. Hume mentions ‘figure, bulk, motion and solidity of bodies’ and ‘colours, tastes, smells, sounds, heat and cold’ and also ‘pain’ and ‘pleasure’ (192). Importantly, while he allows that there are impressions of things like hats, bodies as such are not so presented. Whatever the details of Hume’s list, it is clear that for him, tables, chairs, oak trees, and so on are not given in sensible awareness. To be sure, we do perceive a table, say, and the impression we have is the impression of a table, but the table as such – that is, as a whole – is not given in experience. For the table is a bundle of sensible impressions, a whole consisting of many sensible parts, many of which are not given in experience: the bundle as a whole is an inference from what is given in sense. What we are given in sense, then, and what is admitted by PA into our and Hume’s ontology, are sensible impressions – that is, sensations and images and the other things on Hume’s list, as well as, of course, the properties of and relations among these entities. But, though we do perceive material objects, these are admitted only as bundles of sensible objects. We can now raise this question: What is the status of the Principle of Acquaintance? Commentators on Hume have differed widely on this point. We shall consider three of the more recent commentators before we turn to an earlier commentator, Reid. The more recent ones are Basson, Flew, and Noxon, each of whom has in his own way grasped part of the truth. Along the way we shall examine the views of Moore. I. Hume and PA Basson refers to Hume’s first principle – ‘no simple idea without a corresponding impression’ – as ‘Hume’s chief analytical tool,’ which indeed it is; and goes on to warn us that the principle is not an empirical

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preopsition at all but rather a definition: ‘No matter how he purports to prove his principle, the use he makes of it shows that for him an idea is by definition a copy of an impression.’35 He notes that ‘Hume describes his method as an experimental method, involving careful and accurate experiments,’ and then warns ‘the reader that this is not a fair description of Hume’s procedure,’36 as if Hume’s claim about having a scientifically based picture of human nature was somehow incompatible with his also having another principle that was not scientific. In any case, Basson raises the criticism that Hume ‘cannot show the limitations of the human understanding simply by making a definition.’37 This is fair enough: it cannot be done by mere stipulation. At the same time, however, I do not think that it is a mere stipulation, though it is, in a sense at least, a necessary truth – in a very deep sense of ‘necessary.’ Perhaps Basson means to draw our attention to this sense of ‘necessary’ when he refers to Hume’s PA as non-empirical. In any case, Basson himself is not greatly disturbed by what he sees as Hume’s betrayal of the empirical method at the very first step. For Basson does not believe that the limits of human understanding is an empirical problem to be solved by scientific investigation. And about that he is no doubt correct. Basson makes the point that Hume’s aim was to persuade others that their efforts to answer certain questions would be wasted because the ideas needed to ground their thinking in experience could not be forthcoming. Hume could not do this merely by offering inductive evidence for a conclusion about the limits of human knowledge on the basis of observation and experiment. Basson’s remark is just ‘that Hume’s theory of impressions and ideas, and of the connexion between them, is not so much a psychological theory to be verified by observation, as an attempt to provide a framework for analysis.’38 Less just is his remark that ‘if Hume’s works are seen in this light, they make great philosophy and great sense. If they are taken in the other way, they look like poor psychology and poor sense’:39 Hume’s psychology is better than often thought. Nonetheless, detaching the copy principle – that is, in effect, PA – from the psychological theory elaborated in Hume’s Treatise is one merit of Basson’s commentary: he sees clearly that the philosophical value of this principle is not to be assessed by criteria and tests appropriate to empirical theories in science. But, having recognized that the copy principle, PA, is not the first principle of an empirical psychological theory, Basson sees no alternative to construing it as a definition of ‘idea.’ It would, of course, be impossible to defend Hume against the charge of dogmatism if he has based his philosophical analyses on nothing more

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than a perfectly arbitrary definition of this term. The way to meet such a charge is to construe Hume’s principle not as an empirical generalization and not as a stipulation but rather as a third type of proposition, of a sort we shall shortly consider. But first another commentator. Flew is more heavy-handed than Basson. He accuses Hume of converting his first principle, first presented as an empirical generalization, into a ‘pretentious tautology.’ He charges that Hume dogmatically rejects any supposed counterexample as failing to qualify as a real idea by the terms of his own definition. Regarding what he disparagingly calls Hume’s ‘armchair psychology,’ he says that it leaves the doctrine a contingent generalization, open to falsification by the production of a recalcitrant negative instance. But Hume wants also to base a method of challenge on precisely the same proposition, taking the absence of any appropriate antecedent impressions as a sufficient reason for saying of any supposed idea that there really is no such idea.40

Hume’s ‘intellectual misdemeanour,’ we are told, consists in: first presenting a generalization as a matter of universal but contingent fact ... and then refusing to accept as authentic any counter example suggested, and this on the sole ground that, as the original generalization is true, what is offered cannot possibly be a genuine case of whatever it is which would falsify it.41

Flew concludes this phase of his critique with a tidy formulation of a common and what is in fact a destructive objection to Hume’s way of expressing his first principles: Most of the time they [Hume’s first principles] are taken to express a contingent generalization; but at some moments of crisis he apparently construes them as embodying a necessary proposition. Such manoeuvres have the effect of making it look as if the immunity to falsification of a necessary truth has been gloriously combined with the substantial assertiveness of a contingent generalization. But this, as Hume himself is going soon most clearly an unequivocally to insist, is impossible. The ground which Hume tried to defend is thus manifestly untenable.42

It is clear that Hume does conceive his first principle to be, at least in part, an empirical generalization. Thus, he (Hume) tells us that ‘the

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constant conjunction of our resembling perceptions, is a convincing proof, that the one are the causes of the other; and this priority of the impressions is equal proof, that our impressions are the causes of our ideas, not our ideas of our impressions’ (5). If his first principle or maxim is based, like all inductions, on the causal relation, then it cannot be regarded as an intuitive truth, nor as demonstratively certain. Since the contrary of every matter of fact is possible, Hume has no logical warrant for denying the existence of any idea not derived from an impression. Thus Hume is depicted by such critics as Flew as beginning his whole empiricist program by impaling himself on the horns of a dilemma. If Hume’s first principle is accepted, as Hume presents it, as an empirical proposition, then it lacks the logical force required for his analyses. If it is taken as a definition, his use of it is quite arbitrary, and his claim to have ‘proved’ it violates his own distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. Noxon offers a third view, a via media as it were, with respect to Hume’s first principle – or, as Noxon calls it, the ‘copy principle’: The copy principle is neither a ‘contingent generalization’ nor a ‘pretentious tautology.’ Nor is it a logical bastard born of miscegenation between these two distinct breeds of propositions. The copy principle is a rule of procedure. It prescribes a technique for investigating terms which are suspected of not having the meanings imputed to them in philosophical theories. It is a methodological instrument devised for semantic analysis. It is, as Hume says, a ‘maxim,’ which means, in one acceptable sense of the term, ‘a general principle serving as a rule or guide’ – in this case, a rule or guide for testing terms by attempting to locate their referents amongst experienced ideas. The question of whether or not a man has actually experienced the ideas required to ground his terms empirically is a question about his mental biography. It is inconvenient that no one but himself has access to the historical evidence needed to answer the question. No one can falsify his claims by adducing contrary empirical evidence, much less demonstrate their absurdity. But we are entitled to demand some information about the experiences from which his alleged ideas could have been derived. If the man suspected of talking nonsense is unable to indicate any imaginable experience to the content of which his terms might be related, this will serve to confirm our suspicion.43

Noxon’s view is just. The picture deriving from Flew of Hume dismissing philosophical terms as meaningless (or ideas as fictions) by an

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automatic or semi-Carnapian application of his principle is an oversimplification that bears almost no resemblance to Hume’s actual philosophic practice. Hume always and carefully explains how terms – which are, in the sense in which intends, empirically vacuous – could possibly have found their way into the philosophical vocabulary. His aim is not the merely negative one of eliminating ideas; it is also to remove confusion by clarifying ideas and by diagnosing how confusion could arise. He does not, to use but one example, simply discard the idea of necessary connection after failing to find the impression of it in causally related objects. He continues his analysis until he has elucidated the idea by discovering its source in a mental habit or propensity. And so, speaking of ‘power,’ ‘force,’ and ‘necessary connexion,’ he tells us that in all expressions so apply’d [that is, as if there were some objective feature of the world to which they apply], we have really no distinct meaning, and make use only of common words, without any clear and determinate ideas. But as ’tis more probable, that these expressions do here lose their true meaning by being wrongly apply’d, than that they never have any meaning; ’twill be proper to bestow another consideration on this subject, to see if possibly we can discover the nature and origin of those ideas, we annex to them. (162; his italics)

The true meaning of ‘necessary connection’ lies in a certain mental impression, which he then proceeds to locate. The idea of necessity derives from ‘a determination to pass from an object to its usual attendant,’ which determination is an ‘impression of reflexion’ (165). Thus, ‘necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects.’ (165) But, as we have seen, Hume also holds that there is a natural tendency in us that leads the mind to seek an efficacious quality in objects, when that quality lies only in the mind itself (268); Hume thus provides an explanation, based on his psychological theory, of how we can – and often, almost inevitably, do – mistake a meaningless expression for one that really does have empirical content. He thus explains how concepts that are empirically vacuous could come to be part of a philosopher’s vocabulary. In this way he achieves his clarifying and diagnostic aims. Hume systematically examines concepts (I deliberately do not say ‘ideas’) from theology, rationalist metaphysics, and objectivity ethics. He does this in accordance with his first principle, using it as a procedural rule. For some, he finds a corresponding impression; for many, he

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does not. Wherever Hume finds a corresponding impression, this impression is one of sensible experience, either of external sense or of reflection. Hume never finds an impression that is not one of sensible experience. Where there is a corresponding impression, the sense of the concept is clear: it is given by the idea deriving from the impression, or referring to it, if you wish to make it sound less psychological. Where there is no corresponding impression, there is no real concept, no sense, only an ‘expression’ where ‘we have really no distinct meaning, and make use only of common words, without any clear and determinate ideas’ (140). In such cases, however, as in the case of necessary connection, Hume always finds a way in which the semblance of sense has been created. Using his psychological theory, he shows how the mind, unconsciously, comes to mistake one idea for another, or, rather, how the mind mistakenly takes an expression for which no idea exists to be one that has a genuine sense by virtue of an illegitimate association of some actually irrelevant idea with the particular expression in question. In this way, Hume not only discovers that all ideas derive from sensible experience but also is able to ‘explain away’ the supposed counterexamples. Thus, when Hume uses his first principle as a methodological rule, he discovers it is a useful rule, one that yields successful analyses. Hume thereby discovers that there are no non-sensible impressions and no ideas of non-sensible entities. This, however, is the generalization that all (genuine) concepts are empirical concepts, the generalization that the only genuine beliefs that we form are empirical beliefs (ignoring, as not here relevant, a priori beliefs). The use of Hume’s methodological rules provides inductive evidence for the truth of this generalization. This evidence consists of positive instances, but more importantly, it involves the explanations of why the various supposed counterexamples that Hume examines are so often supposed to be what they are not – namely, genuine counterexamples. A bit of terminology: Beliefs are propositional. Propositions are formed from ideas, and more specifically by ideas structured by a logical form. (Russell and the positivists were later to distinguish descriptive terms from logical terms. Formation rules, or rules of syntax, determine how propositions – sentences, if you wish – are formed from this vocabulary. Ideas correspond to descriptive terms.) Ideas that are derived from impressions let us call empirical. (For Russell and the positivists, what this means is that the descriptive terms are interpreted into entities with which we are acquainted in ordinary sensible experience.) Let us call a proposition empirical just in case the ideas out of

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which it is formed are all empirical. On this way of speaking, tautologies and contradictions will turn out to be empirical, provided that the ideas they contain are empirical. (For Russell and the positivists, tautologies and contradictions are well-formed sentences of the empiricist language, and in that sense are empirical – though of course their truth or falsity is necessary and not contingent, and though if true they are vacuously true.44) Finally, let us say that a belief expressed by an empirical proposition is an empirical belief. (The connection between Hume’s way of talking and the idea of Russell and the positivists is, I expect, reasonably clear.) Hume is arguing that our ideas are all derived from impressions, those given in sense and those given in inner awareness. Our ideas, then, are all empirical. There are no other sources – no, for example, rational intuitions – for our ideas. And since our ideas are all empirical, so are our beliefs. At least, this is so for those beliefs which have any real sense. We do have confused thoughts and therefore confused beliefs. But they don’t count. So, what Hume argues is that our beliefs are all in fact empirical – that is, our beliefs insofar as they make sense and are not confused. We can now see this: as we follow Hume’s methodological rule and further as he reflects on the way people are – particularly as Hume uses the methods of science to investigate human being and its capacities – it soon becomes clear that it is no contingent fact about some but not all people that they can form only empirical beliefs, as it is contingent fact that some but not all people are blind and have no colour concepts. It is, rather, a lawful fact about people, and their world, that they can form only empirical concepts. The investigator comes to recognize that it is a lawful and universal truth about people that the only beliefs that they form are empirical beliefs: as a matter of lawful necessity, people can have none other than empirical beliefs. It is therefore our doxastic obligation to restrict ourselves to empirical beliefs: all non-empirical ‘beliefs’ are to be judged to be confused and irrational. With this judgment, we judge that the limits of sense are the limits of the world. What, then, is the status of the Principle of Acquaintance? Here it is easiest to think in terms of an empiricist’s language. PA tells us how to interpret this language. It tells which predicates we may use in any linguistic picture of the world. No sentence is admissible into the empiricist’s language if it contains predicates other than these. With the predicates given, so are all possible atomic sentences.45 With all possible atomic sentences given, so are all possible molecular sentences, and all

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possible quantified sentences, since these latter two kinds are defined in terms of the former.46 The predicates admitted by the PA thus determine the limits of what can be said, or equivalently, what can be believed. And since these limits are limits of what for us, rationally, can be thought, they are the limits of the world that reason as it were sees: it is irrational to try to go beyond these limits. Within the empiricist’s language we will draw a distinction between sentences of the sort (a)

Fa

and (b)

Fa v ~Fa

– truths about matters of fact, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, truths about relations of ideas, to use Hume’s rather dated terminology. The former are the statements that are contingent – contingently true if they are true, and contingently false if they are false. Sentences of the sort (b) are statements that are necessary – in this case, necessarily true. Any sentence of the form (a) is possibly false. In contrast, it is impossible for a sentence of sort (b) to be false. These are matters of logical possibility and logical necessity. The point here is not to explore these concepts any further, to give them a complete explication;47 rather it is that the distinction between logical possibility and logical necessity is one that is made within the world of experience, within the world delimited by the Principle of Acquaintance. What of the basic concepts admitted by the Principle of Acquaintance? These are the limits of the world. This proposition – that these are the limits of the world – is not something that is stated in the empiricist’s language. In contrast, it is a truth that shows itself in the language; it shows itself by there being just these concepts and no others. Now, statements that are necessary or contingent are made in the empiricist’s language. Thus, the proposition that we are now considering, PA, is one to which the categories of ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’ do not apply: it is one with respect to which the categories of ‘logically possible’ and ‘logically impossible’ are only senselessly applied, that is, senselessly if those categories are taken in the sense in which they are appropriately applied to (a) and (b). At the same time, however, we need not be so restrictive in our use of

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‘empirical’ and ‘necessary.’ The proposition that these are the limits of the world – referring to the concepts admitted by the Principle of Acquaintance – is, quite obviously, a statement about the world. In at least one sense of ‘empirical,’ that makes it empirical. Moreover, there is a sense of ‘might’ in which the world might be other than this proposition – that these are the limits of the world – asserts it to be. The PA admits so many empirical concepts. We are quite able to construct uninterpreted calculi in which there are a greater number of primitive descriptive constants. In this sense, the world might have been otherwise, and limits on what is the logically possible might have been other than they are. Equally, however, the proposition about the limits of the world can be characterized as necessary. In one sense of’‘necessary,’ the necessary is what holds in all possible worlds. All logically possible worlds are describable within the empiricist’s language. For each possible world, what does happen in it is no more than can happen in it according to the limits established by the Principle of Acquaintance. So the proposition, that these are the limits of the world, is one that is true of all logically possible worlds. It is, therefore, in that sense, necessary. It is, perhaps, this sense of ‘necessary’ at which Basson was hinting when he characterized Hume’s first principle as a necessary truth, without really wanting to hold that it is, for Hume, a mere stipulation. II. Moore and PA In fact, some philosophers have argued that the world must be different from, larger than the world the limits of which are found in sense experience, that it contains entities that transcend this ordinary world. The substance philosophers were such a group. Interestingly enough, Moore is also to be counted among this group. In several ways, he was committed to an appeal to the Principle of Acquaintance. Thus, he used it to attack the ‘real meanings’ of the holists.48 And he used it to attack the nominalism of G.F. Stout.49 Nonetheless, in spite of this commitment to PA, Moore also held that certain entities had to exist outside the world delimited by this principle. He argued that an adequate ontology could not be formulated unless one admitted such entities into one’s ontology. For these entities, Moore offered a transcendental argument. This is an argument that attempts to prove that unless certain noncommonsensical entities exist, the certain commonsensical truths cannot be true. We have to examine these sorts of arguments, and Moore’s in particular. Realism is the philosophical view which holds that there are mental

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things, but there are also things which are non-mental. In one sense of ‘mental’ – what we earlier called ‘mental1’ – the class of mental things consists of various forms of awareness, and in the case of sensible awareness, the various forms of experiencing.50 In these various forms of experiencing, we become aware of, or are presented with, various sorts of non-mental entities. These are all entities admitted into one’s ontology by PA. In that sense, PA demands a realistic ontology. Realism, in a stronger sense, holds that material objects exist – that is to say, that some judgments of the sort ‘This is an ink bottle’ are true. Ink bottles and, more generally, material objects have parts that are unperceived though perceivable. Even if an ink bottle is unperceived, it has sensible parts or aspects that are not given to one in one’s sensory experience. In ‘Defence of Common Sense,’ Moore defends realism in this stronger sense. But there is a third, still stronger sense of ‘realism.’ In this strongest sense, realism offers a particular ontological analysis of material objects. According to realism in this sense, any philosophically adequate account of material objects must posit that each material object contains an entity of the sort that philosophers have called substances. Realism in this strongest sense, then, defends a substantialist account of material objects. Clearly, and as we have seen, realism in each of the first two senses is compatible with PA. This is not so for realism in the third sense. On a non-substantialist account of material things, there is no part that could not be given in sensible experience. Upon such an account of material things, there is no one object that remains literally and identically the same through all change. Rather, the material object is a patterned set of entities, all of which are or could be given in sense experience. Moore is quite clear as to what is involved in this sort of account of material objects.51 Towards the end of his important paper, ‘Some Judgments of Perception,’ he states this view succinctly, yet very clearly: [According to this view] when I judge ‘This is an inkstand,’ I am judging this presented object to possess a certain property, which is such that, if there are things, which possess that property, there are inkstands and material things, but which is such that nothing which possesses it is itself a material thing; so that in judging that there are material things, we are really always judging of some other property, which is not that of being a material thing, that there are things which possess it.52

Moreover, he makes a strong judgment about the final upshot of his arguments:

474 External World and Our Knowledge of It Indeed, this paper may be regarded, if you like, as an argument in favour of the proposition that some such view must be true. Certainly, one of my main objects in writing it was to put as plainly as I can some grave difficulties which seem to me to stand in the way of any other view.53

Nonetheless, Moore himself cannot accept the non-substantialist account. He gives his reasons in the sentence that immediately precedes those just quoted. [Philosophers who propose a non-substantialist account of material objects] hold, in short, that though there are plenty of material things in the Universe, there is nothing in it of which it could truly be asserted that it is a material thing: that, though, when I assert ‘This is an inkstand,’ my assertion is true, and is such that it follows from it that there is in the Universe at least one inkstand, and therefore, at least one material thing, yet it does not follow from it that there is anything which is a material object.54

Moore here is insisting that no ontological account of material objects is adequate unless there is quite literally one entity that is the inkstand. Any account that takes material objects to be patterns of entities – however the entities are taken to be related to one another and tied together into structured wholes – is objectionable to Moore simply because it makes a material object into a pattern of entities and not into a single entity. This single entity exists as a core that is present through all the patterned changes, and the unity of the whole derives from its presence and not from the patterning relations alone. Moore defends a substantialist account of material objects.55 Now, the difficulty with the substantialist account of material objects is that the substance – the continuant that remains identically the same through all change – is not given in sense. It is, as Locke might say, an ‘I know not what’ – so long, anyway, as one is committed to the PA. But in spite of his appeal to that principle elsewhere, Moore does not heed it at this point. What we have to discover is why Moore thinks that the substances he posits must be there. On Moore’s account of material objects, there is an obvious way to explain the fact of error. Within the substantialist account, there is a distinction between what is given in sensible experience and the substance, which is not given in sensible experience. When one perceives, and judges, let us say, that ‘This is a hand,’ the hand is the substance, the word ‘this’ refers to a sensible appearance, and that judgment is

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true because the latter is representative of the former. In perception, what is given in sense represents something that is not given in sense. But such representation may be correct or incorrect. If correct, then the judgment is veridical; if incorrect, then it is in error. In his discussion of perceptual situations, Moore makes use of this distinction between a sensible object that is presented to one, and the material object that is judged about and of which the sensible object is representative. Thus, in ‘A Defence of Common Sense,’ Moore writes: Two things only seem to me to be quite certain about the analysis of such propositions [as ‘This is a hand’] ... Namely that whatever I know, or judge, such a proposition to be true, (1) there is always some sense-datum which is a subject (and, in a certain sense, the principal or ultimate subject) of the proposition in question, and (2) that, nevertheless, what I am knowing or judging to be true about this sense-datum is not (in general) that it is itself a hand, or a dog, or the sun, etc., etc., as the case may be.

... In other words, to put my view in terms of the phrase ‘theory of representative perception,’ I hold it to be quite certain that I do not directly perceive my hand; and that when I am said (as I may be correctly be said) to ‘perceive’ it, that I ‘perceive’ it means that I perceive (in a different and more fundamental sense) something which is (in a suitable sense) representative of it.56

And in ‘Some Judgments of Perception’ he tells us that in all cases in which I make a judgment of this sort, [as, for example, that this is a hand] I have no difficulty in picking out a thing, which is, quite plainly, in a sense in which nothing else is, the thing about which I am making my judgment; and that yet ... I am, quite certainly not, in general, judging with regard to it, that it is a thing of that kind for which the term which seems to me to express the predicate of the judgment, is a name.57

In both passages, Moore is distinguishing between, on the one hand, the sensible object presented to one in the perceptual situation judgment, and, on the other hand, the material object (the hand or the inkwell) that one may correctly be said, in the situation, to perceive. And he holds that the former is representative of the latter.

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That there is such a distinction, between the sensible object that is presented and the material object of which it is the representative, is, I think, clear. Indeed, it is common sense: it is essentially in terms of this distinction that one accounts for the commonsense fact of error. The non-substantialist realist accepts this distinction as much as the substantialist. On the non-substantialist account of such perceptual judgments about material objects as ‘This is a hand’ or ‘This is an inkwell,’ the judgment makes a claim about sensible entities that are not presented to one (though they could be, and, in fact, would be, were one otherwise situated). Like causal judgments (inductive inferences), and as Berkeley among many others has pointed out, perceptual judgments go beyond the sensible entities that are presented, making claims about the existence – and the existence in certain definite patterns – of other sensible but unsensed entities. The presented sensible entity is representative of the other entities in the pattern that are not presented.58 If the non-presented sensible entities that are judged to be there really are there, then the perceptual judgment is veridical; if they are not there (or are not in the pattern they have to be in if they are to constitute the material object that is judged to exist), then the perceptual judgment is not veridical. Usually when we discover the falsity of a perceptual judgment, we compare it to reality as judged by other perceptual judgments. We look at an object, look at it again from another perspective, and so on. If these perceptions cohere, then each is further confirmed.59 The reference is to the lawful patterns of these perceptual objects. But often enough, as Firth pointed out in his discussion of Chisholm, we return to the real core on which these inferences rest, the core of sensed sense impressions. So, fallible though our perceptual judgments may be, it is not beyond our power to correct them. The point is that, as Berkeley saw, this, the correcting of perceptual judgments, is not possible on the substantialist account of perceptual objects. This account, too, uses the distinction between material object and sensible appearance representative of the material object. Error exists if the material object that is represented to be there does not exist. However, there is no way to verify whether that material object is or is not there. It is never as such presented to us: it remains forever outside the world of sensible experience. It thus becomes impossible ever to come to know when we are in error. Far from being able to correct our judgments, we end up, as Berkeley argued, in an inescapable scepticism. And Berkeley recognized the way out: appeal to PA to exclude the unperceived substances and to develop another account of error.

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In Moore’s case, his use of the distinction, material object/sensible object representative of the material object, in the passages quoted above, is revealing of his substantialism, and furthermore of the problems to which it gives rise. Note, first, Moore’s statements (1) and (2), in the first of the quoted passages: ‘(1) There is always some sense-datum which is a subject (and, in a certain sense, the principal or ultimate subject) of the proposition in question, and (2) that, nevertheless, what I am knowing or judging to be true about this sense-datum is not (in general) that it is itself a hand, or a dog, or the sun, etc., etc., as the case may be.’ These do not commit one to a substantialist account (‘analysis’) of perceptual judgments about material objects. The statements (1) and (2) can be adopted by a Berkeleyan realist, one who works within the framework established by PA and who excludes substances from his or her ontology. In (1), Moore perhaps is hinting at the issue of the status of sense-data (sense impressions), but if so, then what he says is misleading. In (1), Moore neither offers an answer nor prejudges an answer to the question of whether sense data are mental, nor, if they are mental, to the question of in what sense of ‘mental.’ In ‘The Nature of Sensible Appearances,’60 he argues at length that he is not using ‘sense-datum’ in a sense that prejudges answers to these questions. He carefully distinguishes his use of ‘sense-datum’ from Broad’s use of ‘sensum,’ the distinguishing mark being that Broad makes it part of the very meaning of ‘sensum’ that sensa are always directly apprehended and are never constituents of material objects. As Moore says about his own use, in ‘Some Judgments of Perception,’ ‘If we want to define ... a sense-datum, in a manner which will leave it open to doubt what sort of things we are talking of, and that there are such things, I do not know that we can do it better than by saying that sense-data are the sorts of things, about which such judgments as these always seem to be made – the sort of things which seem to be the real or ultimate subjects of judgment.’61 In this sense of ‘sense-datum’ it is perfectly clear that there are sensedata – Quinton and the like notwithstanding. There is no doubt that, when we make perceptual judgments, there is always something that is what we are judging about, and this something is an object given in sensible experience. The use of ‘sense-datum’ as a name for this sort of entity is perhaps unfortunate. It suggests both a dependence on the experiencing and (in the ‘datum’) an incorrigible givenness, neither of which follow from the sense that Moore so clearly specifies for the term. The term, ‘presented object,’ which Moore also uses in ‘Some Judg-

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ments of Perception,’ is perhaps less subject to misunderstanding, though it too has problems. But it is not Moore’s use of ‘sense-datum’ that poses the philosophic problem so much as that of which the sense-datum is representative. When Moore says that the presented object is not itself a hand, or inkstand, and so on, he can mean either of two things, both compatible with PA, or a third thing, which is not compatible with PA. What he might mean is the point we expressed by saying that perceptual judgments always go beyond what is sensibly presented to one. Or he might mean that, to put it very roughly, there is only one hand but there are many more objects presented on various occasions about each of which, on the occasion when it is presented, one can truly say ‘This is a hand.’ One is in ever so many perceptual situations in which one perceives one’s own right hand; and though one can correctly say of each of the many sensible objects that ‘This is my right hand,’ yet all these presented objects are representative of one and the same material object, namely, my right hand. If Moore were to mean either of these things, he would not violate PA. But what he really means is neither of these, but a third thing, one that violates PA – namely, that the presented object is not itself a hand because the hand, the material object, is a substance, and substances lie outside the world of sensible experience. In the passages we quoted,62 Moore says we can correctly speak of perceiving, for example, a hand. Thus, in the first of the passages he writes: ‘When I am said (as I may be correctly said) to perceive [a hand].’ This phrase may be misunderstood in two ways. One misunderstanding Moore himself is guilty of. It is a slip that Moore makes because of the needs of his substantialist ontology. First, one could take Moore to mean merely that there is an ordinary use of ‘perceive’ which is such that one can, without linguistic impropriety, say ‘I perceive a hand.’ There is, of course, such a use. But when Moore speaks as he does, holding that I may be correctly said to perceive a hand, he is not calling attention to this fact. Rather, what he means is that the sentence ‘I perceive a hand,’ sometimes when it is used, is used to state something true. In saying this, Moore is correct. Second, one might hold that I can correctly be said to perceive a hand only when there is a hand there to be perceived. Indeed, this is what Moore himself thinks. Thus, in ‘Some Judgments of Perception,’ he tells us that ‘I may, for instance, judge, with regard to an animal I see at a distance, that it is a sheep, when in fact it is a pig. And here my judgment is certainly not due to

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the fact that I see it to be a sheep; since I cannot possibly see a thing to be a sheep, unless it is one.’63 This claim of Moore is, quite clearly, mistaken. Suppose Joe perceives a rat running up the wall. Assume that actually a rat is there – that is, that the sentence ‘A rat is running up the wall,’ uttered by Joe, is true. And assume that Joe is perceiving, and not, for example, wondering whether a rat is there, or doubting it, and so forth. There is, then, a constituent of Joe’s state of consciousness that accounts for the fact that he is perceiving this state of affairs, and not wondering about it or doubting it. With this Moore agrees. But now consider a situation, involving Sam, who is, as we would say, speaking from the outside, not ‘actually’ perceiving but hallucinating that a rat is running up the wall. The sentence, ‘A rat is running up the wall,’ uttered by Sam, would state a falsehood. Nevertheless, as we have argued, the states of consciousness of Joe and Sam are the same: both are perceiving a rat running up the wall. With this, Moore disagrees, and in this he is wrong. Moore believes that if, on any occasion, I may correctly be said to perceive a hand, then the sentence expressing what this perceiving is of, namely, ‘This is a hand’ is true. This, as we just said, is wrong. Moore fails to distinguish ‘I may be correctly said to perceive a hand,’ and ‘I may be correctly said to perceive veridically a hand.’ He incorrectly thinks that the second is a redundant form of the first.64 Why is Moore thus confused? I have suggested that it is due to the needs of his substantialist ontology. We can see this, I think, once we recognize that only someone who requires a foundation for knowledge would hold that, from a statement about a state of awareness or consciousness, ‘x perceives that p,’ one could, with necessity, infer the state of affairs that the state of consciousness was about. If ‘x perceives that p’ entails ‘p,’ (which is Moore’s position), one has no choice but to infer that to hold the existence of the state of affairs ‘p’ is to hold that some cases of (c)

x accepts p o p

are necessary truths, and to hold that is to hold that there is a criterion for knowledge. Moore’s need for a criterion is clear: claims about the existence of substances cannot be confirmed in the world we know by means of sense, nor can we go beyond that world in our sensible experience. Yet the presence or absence of substances is what accounts for the veracity or error of perceptual judgments. We are back to Descartes’s

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problems. How are we to justify claims to truth of such judgments? We can do so only if there is some guarantee within experience that what transcends experience really is there. Such a guarantee – for example, clarity and distinctness – will exist provided that at least some judgings with respect to material objects (= substances, for Moore) can guarantee the existence of what those objects are about. That is, there will be a guarantee within experience that some substances exist, provided that some judgings with respect to substances provide a criterion that establishes their own veracity. Moore’s substantialism thus drives him to hold that such a criterion exists. But does such a thing exist? We have been through this before. If the criterion is to do the job required of it, then it must be present in experience, and we must be able to identify it. If we cannot identify it, then we cannot use it to conclude the existence of what lies outside experience. If we are to identify it, then it must have a distinctive characteristic. When Moore says that these special awarenesses are cases of seeing, he does not help us. For there are cases of seeing that are not veridical – recall Joe and Sam. We therefore need a characteristic of incorrigible seeings that distinguishes them, as seeings, from the ordinary, fallible kind. Moore does not help us locate this special feature of incorrigible seeings. The substantialist account of material objects provides an account of error. Every day, we rectify our errors. If Moore’s ontology is correct, then we must rectify our errors by appealing to those special incorrigible seeings. Indeed, our everyday life must be permeated through and through by such experiencings. Nonetheless, Moore cannot get those who doubt to recognize the special forms of experiencing that he says are there and that (if he is correct) permeate our daily experience. If Moore is correct, surely serious disagreement cannot be possible. Yet such disagreement does exist: Montaigne versus Descartes. And that testifies to the non-existence of the criterion. One can also challenge, as Berkeley did, the meaningfulness of any such sentence as (c) that purports to take one, through a necessary connection, to a world beyond that of ordinary experience. Here the question is not merely whether (c) is necessary, but whether it is true – or, rather, how it can be known to be true, given that we seem to have no meaningful concept of the object that is supposed to be described by ‘p.’ If one cannot even know it to be true, how can one know it to be necessarily true? Knowledge, freedom from error, ceases to be possible: those offering to provide a criterion can neither provide it nor justify our accepting it.

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What they therefore try, of course, is some indirect route: they try to convince us that we must have such a criterion in order to convince us that we do have it. That is, they offer a transcendental argument to convince us that the criterion must exist. They begin by offering a transcendental argument that certain non-empirical entities must exist. But usually, if such entities are to do what they are required to do, then existence is not enough, they have also to be knowable. One could then argue that since the transcendental entities must exist, and since they cannot do what they have to do if they are not known, therefore they must be known. Thus, Plato argues that forms must exist, and then argues that we must know them, positing the existence of that special form of knowing that Socrates called ‘reminiscence.’ Or, for another example, Moore holds that substances must exist; recognizes that these must be known if they are to do the job that is required of them; and concludes that special forms of seeing must exist, such that when one sees in this special sense, one sees a substance, and that what is seen is guaranteed to exist by the fact of its being seen. However, what must be in experience is in experience. At the same time, contrariwise, the fact that there is serious disagreement casts doubt on whether it really is in experience. Certainly, profound confusion would result if one accepted the argument yet failed ever to find among one’s experiences one of these special forms of experiencing. In fact, once one failed to find it, one could not but fall into the most radical scepticism about one’s knowledge of the world: it must be there, and one must be capable of knowing it, yet one does not know it. What sort of being, then, am I? Am I always to be thus discontent, capable of knowing the truth but unable to know it? Or do I really know it but do not know that I know it? If so, what assurances do I have? And why should I accept those assurances rather than my own consciousness that I do not have these special forms of awareness? How do I end this miserable state of being? How do I end this disquiet in my soul? As Pascal said: ‘What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe.’65 How shall we get out of this slough of despond? Pascal in fact offers a way out, namely, religious faith – about which Hume is duly scathing, as we know. But the point here is to try to see how Moore got us into so philosophically problematic a state. Hume’s way out we shall examine in due course.66

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We are here: Moore has a substantialist ontology, and this provides an account of error. This account is viable only if it can be shown to work in actual cases of error; after all, it is precisely those for which it attempts to account. So Moore’s ontology is defensible only if a criterion exists. However, it does not exist; at least, we are unable to find it. Since Moore needs it but we cannot find it, this suggests that he invents it and has been led to believe wrongly that ‘I may be correctly said to perceive veridically a hand’ is only a redundant form of ‘I may be correctly said to perceive a hand.’ What, then, of Moore’s starting point? Why, precisely, does he defend a substantialist ontology? What sort of transcendental argument does he offer in its favour? Moore argued as early as ‘The Refutation of Idealism’ that sensible objects can exist unperceived. But this is no guarantee that they do exist unperceived. Thus, afterimages can exist unperceived, but they do not. To be sure, for some sensible objects, we have good reasons for holding that they continue to exist after we have ceased perceiving them. Moore at one point67 gives the example of a spark that crosses one’s visual field. In the context of a fireworks display, one would have every reason to suppose that the spark continued to exist even after one ceased to cognize it visually. Note, however, that to mention context is to mention certain patterns that permit one to infer from what is presented to what is not presented and to what would be presented if one were positioned differently. There is nothing about sensible objects that guarantees such patterns will hold. Error is always possible: perhaps the spark does not exist unperceived. Perhaps the spark is, after all, not a material object. That is, perhaps the sensible object, of which we say in a perceptual situation that ‘This is a spark,’ is not representative in any sense of a material object but is, rather, like an afterimage, causally dependent on the experiencing of it. Indeed, perhaps this holds for any sensible object of ,’ where the which we say in a perceptual situation that ‘This is a blank is filled by some material object term: perhaps no such sensible object represents a material object. This inference – that maybe this does obtain – will hold only if the material object is not a substance. Contrariwise, if it is a substance, then the change from perceived to not-perceived will not affect its existence: a substance is just the sort of entity that endures, identically, through change. Just as Socrates remains Socrates when he changes from white to red, sunburned in the agora, so this inkwell remains its selfsame self as it changes from perceived to unperceived. This is not merely a matter of certain lawful patterns con-

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tinuing to hold, but rather of the very nature of the ontological category of substance: it is part of what it is to be a substance that substances endure through change. So, I perceptually judge, ‘This is a hand’: since the hand is a material object, and since material objects are substances, the hand will endure when it ceases to be true of it that I am perceiving it. On the substance account of material objects, the mind-independence is guaranteed by their being ontologically of a kind that continues to exist when unperceived (or thought of, or known in any other way). The continuant, which (according to Moore) the material object is, is the ontological ground of this independence. On the non-substantialist account of material objects – the account first proposed by Berkeley – there is no such entity that guarantees mind-independence. The commonsense fact that material objects are in fact mind-independent can nonetheless be accounted for on that ontology. The point here is simple enough, and was first made by Hume: on the non-substantialist account, the sensible objects that, qua patterned, constitute the material object are not qualities of the contents of our mind. At least, there is nothing about the non-substantialist account that requires one to also hold that the sensible constituents are somehow ‘in the mind.’ So long as this is so, it is sufficient to ensure the mind-independence of material objects. In fact, Moore recognizes this. In his early writings Moore attacks non-substantialist accounts of material objects on the ground that they make material objects mind-dependent, in the sense of being contents or qualities of the mind. But in his later writings, he no longer considers this line of argument to have any force, agreeing on this point with Hume. Thus, in ‘Some Judgments of Perception’ he writes that ‘I am quite unable to see that [certain arguments] have any [force: namely,] ... all those which assume ... that this sense-datum is a sensation or feeling of mine, in a sense which includes the assertion that it is dependent upon my mind in the very same sense in which my perception of it obviously is so.’68 Sense-data, sensible objects, can exist when not presented to anyone. So Hume insisted. Whether or not there are any individuals which do so exist is, of course, another question. But we do have reason to think that they exist. When I perceptually judge that ‘This is a hand,’ and the perception is veridical, then the sensible objects one experiences is representative of a whole complex of other sensible objects, namely, all those other sensible objects that are the constituents of the hand, the material object that is perceived. If the perception is veridical, then there are ever so many sensible objects that one is not experiencing.

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There is, however, no reason why all those other objects might not be objects of sensible experience in other perceptual situations. They are not, but that is simply a matter of fact. A contingent fact. And it is a fact (or, for many perceivings is a fact) that the unsensed sensible objects exist. But there is no guarantee – no ontological guarantee – that they exist: there is no guarantee that any of one’s own perceptions are veridical. As one as it were constructs one’s picture of the world within the framework of common sense, it turns out that the vast majority of one’s perceptions are veridical. But, to repeat, there is no guarantee. The nonsubstantialist, Berkeleyan, or at least Humean, account of material objects, when it analyses these into patterns of sensible objects, easily secures the ontological independence of sensible objects – and therefore of material objects – from the perceivings of them: in this way, it provides an ontological guarantee for the possibility that material objects exist unperceived. That that possibility is fulfilled is a mere matter of fact. To be sure, a piece of common sense, but a matter of fact – a matter of fact the acceptance of which is a norm of rational belief. What Moore insists on is an ‘analysis’ of material objects that provides an ontological guarantee that material objects exist unperceived. He insists on this because he wishes to account for the truth of what we may call the crucial proposition that ‘we are absolutely certain that material objects exist when not perceived.’ Moore’s argument for the substantialist account of material objects is the transcendental argument that if this account were not true then the crucial proposition would be false. It is ironic indeed, then, that when Moore’s ontology is probed, with dialectical tools as old as those of Sextus, certainty turns out, after all, to be quite impossible. A material object construed as a substance, and therefore as an entity that violates PA, may be ontologically of a sort that continues to exist when it ceases to be perceived, but when such an object is so construed it becomes impossible ever to know when it is actually being perceived. It is not just that one’s perceivings are fallible. Rather, it becomes impossible, as Berkeley argued, ever to discover whether one is in error, whether one’s perception is veridical, and impossible ever to rectify error. This radical scepticism is consequent on the introduction of transcendent entities, the substances that lie outside the world of sensible experience. Why does Moore seek an ontological guarantee that the crucial proposition is true? The answer is clear: not only does he think it true, but he thinks it to be a piece of common sense. But, we can ask, is it part of common sense? Indeed, is it even true? Of course, if the phrase ‘abso-

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lutely certain’ in the crucial proposition is taken in any ordinary sense – connoting a kind of belief-attitude appropriately taken toward a proposition with respect to which, given the evidence in experience, one is as justified as one could be in taking it to be true – then the crucial proposition is true. But Moore takes ‘absolutely certain’ in a stronger sense, one that requires him to provide an ontological guarantee for the certainty. So construed, we must ask, is the crucial proposition part of common sense? And even, is it true? To the second question, the answer is, clearly, negative. The answer is also therefore negative with regard to the first. In order to get on with life, we must indeed rely on our perceptions. In some cases we really do need certainty. But the certainty needed is certainty in the ordinary sense, not certainty in Moore’s special sense, not a sort of certainty that is forthcoming only if it is guaranteed by one’s ontological categories. Nor is the certainty that we need in everyday life, and that we so often have, in any way jeopardized by the recognition that all perceptual judgments are fallible, even those perceptual judgments which are certain. (That a judgment may be wrong does not imply that it is wrong, nor that we cannot have good reasons for being certain that it is not wrong.) The non-substantialist, Berkeleyan account of material objects as patterned bundles of sensible objects shows how we do get on without any ontological guarantee. If Moore is correct, then (since this is the structure of his transcendental argument for substances) we cannot have the guarantees we commonsensically require unless certain transcendental entities exist. The sceptical arguments deriving from Sextus, but familiar to Berkeley and to other critics of the substantialist account of material objects, lead us to doubt whether it really is rational to accept what Moore’s metaphysics claims to exist. Indeed, the doubts are sufficiently strong to justify what strong doubts always justify – namely, suspension of judgment. This was the Cartesian recommendation. Earlier, we saw how this recommendation fared, both in the case of inductive inference and in the case of common sense. In those cases, such a recommendation could not be acted upon, at least not in any way that could affect seriously our actual practices. In the practice of living we were unable to give up the habits of inductive inference and of accepting the propositions of common sense. It turned out that there are things we have to do; it is a matter of human necessity. Does the same hold in the present case? The answer is, clearly, in the negative: Moore claims that guaranteed certainty is part of common sense and that we cannot have this without accepting substances and all that goes with them; the arguments of Sextus and

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Berkeley cast doubt on the metaphysics, and in so doing make it unlikely that we could actually be doing what Moore says is part of common sense; we therefore, it would seem, can live without accepting Moore’s crucial proposition; and if that is so, then that proposition is not part of common sense, part of what we must believe. Moreover, the non-substantialist, Berkeleyan, bundle account of material objects shows how it is possible to get on in a world of material objects without the ontological guarantee that Moore thinks we need. The non-substantial analysis shows how we can get on in a human world – the world of sensible experience – in a human way: fallibly, but with the possibility of rectifying error. It shows how we can get on in the world in a way that, if Moore is correct, is at variance with common sense and with what we must do; and in a way that we cannot do unless we acknowledge the existence of certain transcendental entities. And this fact, that we can get on without the guarantees Moore thinks we need, shows that the crucial proposition, which is the premise for his transcendental argument, is not part of common sense after all. In which case, moreover, there seems no real reason even to think that the crucial proposition is true. The rejection of Moore’s metaphysics of substances is thus based on the fact that we can and do live without the ontological guarantee it is supposed cannot be had unless the metaphysics is true. This fact, that we do get on without the guaranteed certainty, is missed by Moore because he, in effect, goes about in a circle. This circular movement of his thought has the effect that Moore convinces himself that we do all have the special certainty at which he thinks we aim. Recall Moore’s view that all perception is veridical: he holds that one may be correctly said to perceive a hand only when there is a hand there to be perceived. This is a claim consequent on the introduction of the transcendent entities: since those entities exist, Moore infers, we need a criterion. Since the criterion that supposedly provides the certainty is introduced only after the transcendent entities are introduced, the existence of the criterion cannot be used to support the claim that the crucial proposition is true, that it is part of common sense that we are absolutely certain (in the special sense that Moore means) that the material object we perceive will continue to exist when we look away. Nonetheless one may overlook this. Once one has convinced onself that the criterion exists and thereupon collapses the distinction between correctly saying that one perceives a hand and correctly saying that one perceives veridically a hand, then one might easily mistake our commonsense form of cer-

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tainty with the certainty allegedly provided by the criterion. This circular movement of thought would enable one such as Moore to convince himself that the certainty of the criterion was indeed part of common sense, that the crucial proposition was, really, true. What is this commonsense certainty that could be mistaken for the certainty of the criterion? One who fails, as Moore does, to distinguish ‘I may be correctly said to perceive a hand’ and ‘I may be correctly said to perceive veridically a hand’ will tend to hold that one is certain that this is a hand in exactly the same sense in which one is certain that one is perceiving, in the sense that one cannot mistake one’s perceiving for, say, an imagining or a doubting. If we fail to make the distinction on which we have insisted, then the certainty attaching to our awareness of our own perceptions will be transferred to the perceptions themselves: one will be able to suppose that one cannot make a mistake with respect to what one perceives. If one makes this confusion – as one who fails, like Moore, to distinguish what we saw must be distinguished – then it may seem reasonable to suppose that no ‘analysis’ of material objects is adequate unless the certainty regarding one’s perceiving is grounded in the object perceived, in its ontological analysis. It nonetheless remains that one can be correctly said to perceive a hand, yet be mistaken with regard to what one perceives. In a perceptual situation one is certain, in the sense that one can make no mistake, both that a perceiving is occurring and that this perceiving is of a hand. Yet one is not certain, in this sense, that the perceiving is veridical. Rather, that one is certain – morally certain, if you wish – that some among one’s perceptions are veridical is a matter that we have learned thorough experience: perceptual judgments go beyond what is sensibly experienced, and create expectations about what else one will and would experience; and those expectations have in the past, for the most part, been fulfilled. And this sort of certainty suffices for our getting on in the world. I am suggesting that Moore effectively disguises this fact from himself, and can, in the process convinces himself that people really do aim at and achieve a stronger sort of certainty. In any case, we now understand the two failures in Moore’s thought that we noted before. For one, we noted that Moore provides no norms for constructing our picture of the world of material objects within the framework of common sense. We now see why he cannot do this. He cannot do this because material objects are substances, beyond the world of sensible experience. He cannot provide norms that adequately judge when a sensible object really is representative of a material object

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because, as Sextus and Berkeley argued, any such norm that attempts to reach transcendental objects must inevitably fail. In any case, Moore can convince himself that such norms are not really necessary. They are not necessary because perception is always veridical, and that will provide a sufficient standard for constructing our picture of the world of material objects. The second of Moore’s failures is that he does not note the possibility that while one is uncontrollably impelled to accept the propositions of common sense, nonetheless one might doubt the rationality of all this. That is, Moore does not recognize the possibility in this context of a dissociated sensibility. In fact, one might suggest that Moore’s own sensibility is dissociated. He aims at a sort of certainty which is not humanly possible to attain. At least, it is not humanly possible if we accept that PA describes the limits of thought and the limits of the world. And the fact that we have found reasons to reject Moore’s transcendental metaphysics and to accept Berkeley’s bundle view of material objects tends to support the thesis the PA does circumscribe the world. If that is so, then Moore is aiming to achieve a certainty impossible to achieve in this world. Yet Moore does not adjust his aim, his cognitive aspirations, to what can be achieved. Because he does not, he must remain inevitably dissatisfied, his cognitive purposes inevitably unfilled, in spite of his best efforts. But this sort of inevitable failure he masks from himself. First, he develops a transcendental argument to provide the objective grounds for the certainty at which he aims; then he invents a special way of knowing to provide the subjective grounds for the certainty. None of it works, we know. Still, Moore thinks that it does, and he thus disguises from himself the dissociation in his own sensibility. If Moore were to recognize that common sense might be doubted, in spite of our being compelled to accept it, he would have to recognize that his own construction might also be doubted. No wonder, then, he is not prepared to recognize that even common sense can be doubted. Moore thus fails to make a case for there being entities outside the world of sensible experience, the world delimited by PA. There might be entities outside the limits that this principle lays down, but Moore fails to establish that there are such entities. And when one probes Moore’s ontology, one finds it sufficiently weak that it can more properly be seen as disguising from Moore the unfulfillable aim he has when he aims at guaranteed knowledge that material objects exist unperceived. What ultimately relieves the tension is, first, a probing of Moore’s ontology, with such tools as those given us by Sextus and Berkeley, to reveal its weaknesses, its incapacity to do what is expected of it; and, second, as

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Montaigne argued, a recognition that comes through living that we can live without such certainty, that we can get by without any reference to the transcendental entities supposedly required to guarantee the possibility of the common sense that we affirm and live by. III. Reid and PA Thomas Reid and Hume are agreed on the importance of the commonsense view of the world. As Reid puts it: ‘Can any man prove that his consciousness may not deceive him? No man can; nor can we give a better reason for trusting it, than that every man, while his mind is sound, is determined, by the constitution of his nature, to give implicit belief to it.’69 Both Reid and Hume argue that these factual claims of common sense are normative for human beings: only people not in their right minds would disagree, only people who are, as Wittgenstein says, demented. Or they are philosophers moved by arguments, the arguments of the sceptic or the Cartesian. But as with Hume, and as with Moore, so with Reid: those arguments can carry no weight against the claims of nature – at least, not for the reasonable person: ‘Reason, says the sceptic, is the only judge of truth, and you ought to throw off every opinion and every belief that is not grounded on reason. Why, sir, should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of perception? – they both come out of the same shop, and were made by the same artist; and if he puts one piece of false ware into our hand, what should hinder him from putting another?’70 Every person has a natural trust in their faculties, those of perception and those of reason. Reid reads Hume as using reason to argue that our senses are unreliable and to undermine our commonsense view of the world. However, Reid replies, if one is called into question, why not the other? So, if we cannot rely on our natural beliefs in perceptual objects and in our commonsense view of the world, why should we rely on the reason that purports to call them into question? In fact, Reid’s response is a good reply to any defender of the representationalist view of the world that Berkeley saw was the heritage of Descartes. And the further response that Reid took, following Berkeley, was to challenge reason’s apparent starting point: the representationalist view of thought about the world. However, since Hume followed Berkeley in rejecting representationalism and then went further to reject Berkeley’s idealism, he can, and does, agree with Reid on this point.

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Nonetheless, Reid sees himself as defending common sense where Hume attacked it. Some of this is no doubt owing to a failure to read Hume with as much care as he (Hume) deserved: Reid was too eager to find scepticism in Hume’s principles. There is a solid core to Reid’s criticisms, however. What is interesting about this critique of Hume is that it is based on an appeal to the same PA to which Hume appealed. In fact, Reid represents a tradition of empiricism that argues for the empirical inadequacy of the analytical empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Some of Reid’s criticisms, while sound as far as they go, find an easy reply. Thus, Reid criticizes Hume’s account of belief in terms of force and vivacity: That a strong belief and weak belief differ only in degree, I can easily comprehend; but that belief and no belief should differ only in degree, no man can believe who understands what he speaks. For this is, in reality, to say that something and nothing differ only in degree; or that something is a degree of something. Every proposition that may be the object of belief, has a contrary proposition that may be the object of a contrary belief. The ideas of both, according to Mr. Hume, are the same, and differ only in degree of vivacity – that is, contraries differ only in degree; and so pleasure may be a degree of pain, and hatred a degree of love. But it is to no purpose to trace the absurdities of this doctrine, for none of them can be more absurd than the doctrine itself.71

This is fair. There is a difference in belief and disbelief, a difference in what we earlier called ‘feeling tone.’ Reid is correct: these are two species of mental act, and they differ in kind, not degree. Hume is just wrong when he suggests otherwise. Indeed, Hume is not carefully following his own determination to allow PA to determine what is and what is not to be admitted into his ontology. At the same time, it must also be insisted against Reid, that Hume is aware of the problem. Thus, as we noted earlier, in the appendix to the Treatise he indicates how this is to characterize the ‘manner’ in which the thing or impression is conceived; this characteristic is something ‘felt’ by the mind when it distinguishes ‘ideas of judgment from the fictions of the imagination.’ As Reid was also later to insist, this difference in feeling is something we can all recognize as the simple feature that it is, and this different feeling is described metaphorically: ‘This different feeling I endeavour to

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explain by calling it a superior force, of vivacity, or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness,’ Hume explains. The metaphor derives its point from the consequences that accrue to (some) awarenesses of this sort, from the fact that this species of act ‘gives them [the acts it characterizes] more force and influence; makes them appear of greater importance; infixes them in the mind; and renders them the governing principles in all our actions’ (628–9). In this sense, disbeliefs can be as forceful as beliefs. So Hume’s work is easily defended by an admission of a minor error; and since nothing essential is at stake, Reid’s criticism is hardly telling to any significant issue. At the same time, it should be noted that Reid, in making this criticism, is being more faithful to PA than is Hume. Hume indeed has made a slip, even when we recognize that it is no doubt motivated by a too rigid adherence to his own determination to find, by introspective analysis, sensory elements as the genetic parts of all the higher mental processes. In this sense, Reid is more faithful to empiricist principles than is Hume in his determination to push the theory of associationism beyond the limits of its applicability.72 Those empiricist principles insist that what is phenomenologically simple is to be admitted as ontologically simple. There is another point, equally valid, in Reid’s criticism of Hume on belief. Reid points out that there is a distinction between sensation and belief: ‘But what is this belief or knowledge which accompanies sensation and memory? Every man knows what it is, but no one can define it. Does any man pretend to define sensation, or to define consciousness?’73 There is the mental act of belief on the one hand, and there are sensory contents on the other. The difference between the two is an indefinable difference; it exists, and is there in experience, but it is a distinction of simple characteristics. In other words, the distinction between belief and disbelief is a phenomenologically given distinction of characteristics – in this case, characteristics of mental acts – and since it is phenomenologically given, this distinction of characteristics must be admitted into one’s ontology. There is a basic difference between these two characteristics: that is, beliefs and sensory contents.74 The former are not reducible to the latter. Those referred to by Reid as the ‘ideal philosophers’ found, according to Reid, their culmination in Hume. The last distinguished impressions from ideas. The latter are images of the former, resembling them as image to archetype. As Reid puts it, on the ‘ideal system’ of Hume ‘every object of thought must be an impression or an idea – that is, a

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faint copy of some preceding impression.’75 Among these one finds certain patterns; for the ideal philosophy there are ‘certain laws of attraction, or rules of precedence, according to which, ideas and impressions range themselves in various forms, and succeed one another.’76 However, such patterns cannot in fact account for thought: ‘I can think of the smell of a rose when I do not smell it; and it is possible that when I think of it, there is neither rose nor smell anywhere existing.’77 Thoughts have objects, and their having those objects cannot be reduced to resemblances among sensory contents nor to patterns among sensory contents. That our thought has such and such a meaning, or intention, is something that is wholly present to the mind and cannot be captured by patterns among sensory contents, many of which need not be present to that consciousness. This is a significant criticism of Hume; it certainly picks out what is at the very least a significant gap in his official doctrine. Intentionality is not and cannot be found in images, or at least not in images alone: meaning is not carried by sensory contents, but by phenomenologically simple ‘contents,’ thoughts. However, having admitted this failure in Hume, two points should be made. In the first place, there is nothing in this that requires Hume to give up his empiricism: it is compatible with PA, to the extent anyway that the object intended by the thought consists of entities that are themselves admitted by PA into one’s ontology. In the second place, one can also say that Hume is in his own way aware of the issue. For as we have emphasized, from chapter 1, on, ‘idea’ for Hume means both ‘image’ and ‘conceptual content.’ Reid focuses on the former, and ignores the latter. He ignores, in other words, the very point where, as it turns out, Hume does agree with Reid on the issue. One can, moreover, recognize how Hume blurs the two meanings of ‘idea’: it is the result of his pushing the claims of his associationist psychology farther than they can legitimately be pushed. This is indeed an error, and Reid is right to point it out. But it, too, is easily corrected, and nothing in Hume’s empiricism need be rejected. So far, then, Reid and Hume are basically in agreement. That is not, however, the whole story. For Reid introduces entities that violate PA. This is where he and Hume disagree. Reid emphasizes that in our perceptual judgments, we attribute a quality to a subject: ‘Sensible qualities must have a subject.’78 With this, Berkeley and Hume would not disagree: there are no qualities apart from things qualified. However, for Berkeley and Hume, that subject is a bundle of impressions, sensed and unsensed, and what predication

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represents is the relation of a part to a whole. Reid goes further. He holds that the subject to which the qualities are attributed is a substance; in fact, Reid holds that it is part of common sense that there be a substance which is the subject of the predication. Here we go beyond PA. Hume has no problem with agreeing that it is common sense that there are material objects, and that we are aware of these in our perceptual judgments. But he rejects substances on the ground that they are not given in sensible experience. Hume therefore cannot agree with Reid that substances are part of our commonsense view of the world. Reid in a way agrees with this; certainly, he agrees that substances are not given in ordinary experience. He therefore needs an argument, a transcendental argument, by which to go from what we are aware of in consciousness to what we infer must be there – that is, must be there, the argument goes, if we are to know as we do in fact know. What, precisely, is this argument? Does its conclusion yield knowledge of an entity that must be there, outside our ordinary experience of things? Is this argument sound? For Reid, as we have seen, there is a distinction between sensation and belief. The difference between the two is an indefinable difference; it exists, and is there in experience, but it is a distinction of simple characteristics. It is, as we have already noted, a phenomenologically given distinction, like the difference between belief and disbelief, and must therefore be admitted into one’s ontology. Consider a belief in the existence of some material object. This belief is had on the occasion of sensation – that is, a sensible awareness of a sensory element. The regular connection between the sensation and the belief may be a result of learning. Or it may be natural or innate. Of the former kind, where the connection is learned, Reid instances the connection between a certain sort of sound, on the one hand, and, on the other, the belief in the existence of a coach as the cause of the sound.79 In this case of belief, as in any other, the believing is a simple entity, not complex. It is not, for example, as Locke would have it, a matter of comparing ideas.80 It may well be the product of a process of association, but is not itself an association of ideas.81 But in other cases of sensation and associated belief in the existence of an object as the cause of the sensation, the connection is not learned, it is not the result of association. In these other cases, the connections are innate or natural, unlearned. Thus, sensations of touch naturally suggest the presence of hardness and therefore of a hard object.82 These connections are as it were a natural language, an unlearned language,

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regularities that are not learned; they are not a matter of either custom or reasoning, but are built into us as part of the mechanisms that determine our functioning in a natural world.83 In either case, whether the connection between sense impression and perceptual belief is natural or learned, we must distinguish the perceptual judgment, as an act in consciousness, from the object of that act, the material object: ‘Perception, as we here understand it, hath always an object distinct from the act by which it is perceived. I perceive a tree that grows before my window; there is here an object which is perceived, and an act of the mind by which it is perceived; and these two are not only distinguishable, but they are extremely unlike in their natures.’84 Thus far, Hume need not disagree with Reid, except for the point where he blurs things owing to his commitment to the theory of associationism and the connected doctrine of introspective analysis. It is with regard to the nature of the object that we find a metaphysically significant disagreement. For Hume, as Reid notes,85 the material object is a bundle of impressions; and our awareness of such a bundle is produced by a process of association.86 But, Reid argues, perceptual judgments are not a matter of learning based on either custom or previous judgments; they are there prior to all learning.87 On this point, regarding the innate or learned nature of the connections, Hume can well agree with Reid; nothing essential to empiricism turns on this disagreement. Moreover, there is, to repeat the point, nothing in his (Hume’s) position that requires him to deny the simplicity of perceptual judgments. To be sure, he does so, but that is entailed by his thesis that all perceptual judgments may be introspectively decomposed into associations of sensory contents. It is thus a thesis that is not essential to his empiricism. In any case, even this thesis is compatible with such judgments being simple products of a process of association of sensory contents.88 But Reid argues that the bundle view is unacceptable. This view, the bundle view, is a position that is, according to Reid, supposed by its proponents to be arrived at through an analysis of perception, but in fact it is only a hypothesis, a ‘may be,’ unsupported by evidence.89 It is in fact accepted by its proponents not as a confirmed judgment, but because it is a hypothesis held near and dear, a matter of prejudice.90 In other words, though it is taken to be acceptable on empiricist grounds, in fact it violates the sound Newtonian principle of scientific judgment, hypotheses non fingo:91 we are duped by favouring our hypotheses rather than the empirical data.92 The bundle view is unacceptable because in

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perception we attribute a property to a subject. The philosopher, whatever his or her official doctrine, does not really differ from the vulgar: ‘For, as they perceive a colour, and figure, and motion by their senses as well he does, and both are equally certain that there is a subject of these qualities, so the notions which both have of this subject are equally obscure.’93 However obscure the notion of the subject, Reid does think that we, or he, knows enough about it to assert that this subject of which we predicate the qualities we judge the material object to have, is something that retains its identity through time; there is present an entity that involves uninterrupted continuity of existence.94 This entity is a substance.95 But we do not in ordinary experience itself have anything other than a collection of properties. The substance as the entity that endures through change is only something relative: ‘The things immediately perceived are qualities, which must belong to a subject; and all the information that our senses give us about this subject, is, that it is that in which such qualities belong. From this it is evident, that our notion of body or matter, as distinguished from its qualities, is a relative notion.’96 The qualities we attribute to things are given in sense; they satisfy PA and are to be admitted into an empiricist ontology. But we are not so cognizant of what Reid calls the subject of those qualities. The best we can say is that it is ‘that thing in which these qualities inhere’; it is the idea of ‘that thing which supports the properties in the bundle.’ Unfortunately, Reid gives no clear reason why the object of a perceptual judgment must include among its constituents a simple object: the need for such an entity remains as obscure as the notion itself. The notion of the subject is the notion of something that is not given in acquaintance or in perception. Yet it is there. Clearly, Reid must rely on an argument to establish its presence. In fact, it is evident that Reid makes this assumption: (P)

If a form of judgment is simple and unlearned, then the object of that judgment must also itself be simple.97

It is here that we discover the transcendental argument that Reid requires if he is establish the existence of substances. Once he has this conclusion, it is clear how it becomes a piece of common sense: since the simplicity of perceptual judgments is a matter of common sense, and since it is part of common sense that the objects of our perceptual

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judgments exist, it follows by the given principle (P) that those objects must contain within them a simple substance that accounts for their identity. But if Reid can accuse Hume of violating the empiricist principle that one should not argue on the basis of mere hypotheses, Hume can argue in return that in fact there is no reason to suppose that the principle (P) that Reid uses for his transcendental argument for substances is true. Indeed, to the contrary, how could we possibly know it to be true, when we have no idea what a substance is? Telling us that it is a ‘relative idea’ will not suffice, because we still need some concept of the relatum, the substance; and by assumption granted by Reid, such substances violate PA: if the individuals of the kind are not given, then neither is the kind. To be sure, suggests Reid, we have innate ideas of such things. As he puts it: ‘A third class of natural signs comprehends those which, though we never before had any notion or conception of the thing signified, do suggest it, or conjure it up, as it were, by a natural kind of magic, and at once give us a conception and create a belief in it.’98 ‘Conjure it up’ is correct: magic to explain a mystery. Moreover, it is clearly nothing more than an unconfirmed hypothesis, introduced solely to allow Reid to defend his thesis that there are substances as parts of what we perceive. And how could it be confirmed when it contains a non-empirical concept, one that purports to apply to entities not given in experience? Thus, on the grounds that Reid used to criticize Hume, we can similarly reject his proposal. Reid’s move from common sense to a substance ontology is no more secure than Moore’s. Certainly, Hume escapes unscathed: we have no reason to think that a material thing is other than, or more than, the patterned bundle of sensible qualities of which we become aware in sensible experience. We may contrast Reid’s moves on this point with another, similar move that he makes elsewhere in his critique of Hume’s empiricism. This is his criticism of Berkeley and Hume on abstract ideas. Recall that Berkeley and Hume argue that words become general through a habitual association with members of a resemblance class of individual things. Those individual things themselves become associated with one another through the relation of resemblance. The disposition of one member of the resemblance class to call into thought one or another of the members of this resemblance class is the abstract idea expressed by the general term. When we have an impression that falls under the kind, the association based on the resemblance relation calls up an image (idea) that resembles that which is impressed upon us, and this

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in turn calls up the general term that applies to both the impression and the image (idea) and also to all the other images (ideas) that are there only dispositionally. But, Reid argues, when we apply the general term, we are conscious of the idea or notion that word expresses; that meaning is wholly present in consciousness and not merely dispositionally, as Berkeley and Hume would have it. The particular idea cannot surely be made a sign of a thing of which we have no conception. I do not say that you must have an idea of the sort, but surely you ought to understand or conceive what it means, when you make a particular idea representative of it; otherwise your particular idea represents, you know not what. When I demonstrate any general property of a triangle ... I must understand or conceive distinctly what is common to all triangles.99

This is in effect the same point as we discussed earlier – that meaning, intentionality, is wholly present in consciousness and cannot be accounted for if there is nothing more to thought than the disposition to use words in certain ways. This much we may grant Reid; and once again we note that it does not really affect either Hume’s empiricism or his realism. Reid now appeals to his principle (P) to argue that, since the meaning is carried in consciousness by a simple character or thought, therefore there must be a simple feature of things which that thought means or intends: ‘From this, it is evident that the applying the same name to several individuals on account of their resemblance, can, in consistence with grammar and common sense, mean nothing else than the expression, by a general term, something that is common to those individuals, and which, therefore, may be truly affirmed of them all.’100 The appeal to (P) does not go through; for reasons we have given, the Humean will reject this principle. But unlike the previous case, where (P) was used to infer the presence of a substance in the thing perceived, something not given in sense, the qualities (illegitimately) inferred to have a common character may for all that have a common character. For those qualities are given in sense experience, and by attending to them we can determine whether it is best for the empiricist to construe the qualities of things as particular – that is, as particular as the things they qualify – or as a universal common to several things. Moore argued that the latter is correct,101 doing so on the basis of an appeal to

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PA.102 We need not pursue this disagreement. It suffices to note that with regard to the issue of Hume’s account of material objects, it is quite irrelevant. Reid’s conclusion may be correct, but his argument is unsound. It has a correct premise: the intentionality of the general term is carried by a unity in thought. But the inference from this is based on the principle (P), which, for the empiricist, is excluded by PA. Through it all, no central claim of empiricism is refuted; Hume’s empiricist defence of common sense survives. C. The Role of a Principle of Acquaintance in Epistemology Our mental acts intend states of affairs. In particular, our acts of awareness and our perceptual acts intend states of affairs involving particular things, including their properties and relations. We are, as one says, acquainted with these states of affairs. Provided an entity is a constituent of a presented state of affairs, one with which we are acquainted, that entity is admitted into the empiricist’s ontology. That is the role of a Principle of Acquaintance in ontology. But among the states of affairs that are presented to us in acts of acquaintance, only some do we take as existing: only some acts of acquaintance are veridical. It is the task of epistemology to determine which among the states of affairs that are presented to us are facts, are existing states of affairs, real and not merely possible. Equivalently, it is the task of epistemology to determine which among our acts of acquaintance are veridical acts. That is, again equivalently, it is the task of epistemology to provide norms for deciding which among our acts of acquaintance are to be taken as constituting knowledge. This is the role of the Principle of Acquaintance in epistemology. We have argued that for Hume, as for Wittgenstein, certain empirical facts – both general and about particular material objects – that are central to our commonsense view of the world can become normative for the reasonable person. We must believe them, so if we are rational, we ought to believe them. All this, we have argued, is compatible with a realistic ontology in which material objects are (ordered) bundles of sense impressions, some sensed, many unsensed, and in which minds, too, are (ordered) bundles of impressions. Since these propositions defining our commonsense view of the world are in themselves contingent, and since the intentionality of thought is not such as to guarantee that the object of thought exists, it is logically possible, while we affirm them, to conceive that they are false.

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Though they are imposed on us, and though their acceptance is therefore rational, it is also true that it is logically possible that one is mistaken. It does not follow that accepting the possibility implies that one should admit it as an objection to the claim that one knows that there is, say, an ink bottle there on the desk, or that one is waving a hand. That is the Humean argument. There are those, however, who argue that these propositions of common sense are somehow logically necessary, true ex vi terminorum. This argument in turn is often based on an appeal to the thesis that truth is best understood, not in terms of correspondence, but in terms of justified assertibility. Now, once truth is made into justified assertibility, and one pursues the relevant notion of assertion, then one does avoid the problem of connecting the subjective and the objective aspects of justification. One does that by in effect eliminating the objective. The result is a sort of relativism in which what is true is determined by the subjective consciousness of the person. This eliminates the sort of scepticism that can be generated, in the way Stroud suggests, through a distinction between the objective justification and the subjective justification: with the demise of the objective there is no gap and therefore no scepticism. But the cost is enormous: the sort of subjectivism that is usually (but wrongly) attributed to Hume. It will pay, in our defence of Hume, to look at these philosophers. I. Logical Atomism The radical contingency in the Humean world derives from the logical atomism of his ontology, the doctrine that properties and things are logically separable. This doctrine of the logical separability of the objects of acquaintance is itself defended on the basis of an appeal to the Principle of Acquaintance. The British idealist F.H. Bradley attacked logical atomism in the name of an idealistic holism. He, like the empiricist, made an appeal to our experience of the world, to an account of perception. On this account, a content is ideal if it falls short of perfect reality. Now, the real is the fully individual or particular;103 as he puts it: ‘Nothing in the end is real but the individual.’104 This doctrine, that in order to be real an entity must be individual or particular, is applied especially to relations: his account of relations must fulfil the condition of construing them as particulars: ‘A relation, to be experienced and to be actual, must be more than a mere abstraction. It must be an individual or par-

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ticular fact, and, if less than this, it cannot be taken as itself.’105 Thus, an ideal content that falls short of full reality falls short of individuality or particularity. It is therefore abstract rather than concrete, general rather than singular or individual or particular. Furthermore, the particularity of a thing derives from its relations to other things. The this – this physical object, this sensation, this red, this colour – is what it is only because it is not that. This thing itself is a particular only to the extent, then, that it is an aspect of a larger relational whole. In itself it has less particularity, less reality, than the relational whole of which it is an aspect. The fully real is the relational whole that includes all other things as aspects of its own reality. The judgment that ‘this is a such’ brings together the subject ‘this’ and the predicate ‘such.’ This ‘this’ is isolated from other things, but when the ‘such’ is brought over against it and affirmed of it – that is, when it is said to be part of the whole which is the ‘this’ – we in fact particularize the thing by bringing it into relations with other things: the ‘such’ carries within itself relations, at least those of similarity and dissimilarity. And with those relations, the judgment points to other things, other ‘thats’ that are also such ‘suches.’ A judgment of the form S is P can be justified, according to Bradley, by forming an argument or, rather, inference M is P S is M S is P S implying M, implies P.106 The middle term M links together the S on the one hand and the P on the other. It as it were fills out the copula in ‘S is P.’ The judgment itself refers to a reality that links S and P, but in the judgment taken alone, that reality is ignored. In the inference, that background context becomes explicit: the conditions that were previously external to the judgment are internalized. The connection between S and P that was external to the judgment is internal to the inference. Where S and P were unconnected, they are now connected. In this internalization, the ideality of the judgment is decreased. At the same time, the contingency of the judgment is decreased. In the judgment the terms are separate; their connection (or, rather, ‘connection’) is contingent. As the inference fills out the judgment, the separateness of the terms is decreased, and therefore the contingency. In the inference we begin to grasp the structure that constitutes the necessary ties that

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link the terms of the judgment into a unified Whole. As ideality is decreased in the inference, so is the contingency; or, conversely, as the inference more closely approaches reality, so does it approach a complete necessity. In perception we isolate a portion of reality: ‘Lo! an S.’107 In judgment we locate the perceived S as a P. In such a judgment we separate the P from the S. In inference we proceed to fill in the context in which the S that is a P is located. The result is the location of the S that is P in the larger part of reality constituted by the M that links them. Now, one of the criticisms of the claim that coherence is the criterion of truth is that coherence, like consistency, is as compatible with falsehood as it is with truth. This is so even if one begins with perception, which must be, for us as finite beings, an isolation of part of the total reality. Bradley avoids this problem by insisting that beyond perception there is primitive experience or feeling: in feeling we encounter Reality; or, rather, in feeling Reality is fully present, not present to us, but including us within the whole. In the mere isolating sensation of the empiricists, in perception and even in judgment we separate parts of this whole, moving from reality – that is, the full reality present in feeling – to ideality. In inference we gradually move to restore the lost unity. As we fill in the structures in inference, we gradually lessen the separateness of the things that are first given to us in sensation, perception, and judgment. And in the ultimate judgment, or (what amounts to the same) the ultimate inference, the inference that culminates and includes all inferences, we discover the whole truth that we previously felt but lost in sensation, perception, and judgment. Only it is not ‘previously’: the feeling is there, with us, all the while. All the while in feeling we encounter the reality that includes us and to which we are in thought striving to return. Thus ‘judgement, on our view, transcends and must transcend that immediate unity of feeling upon which it cannot cease to depend.’108 Reality is both the origin of the movement of thought – reality as feeling – and the goal towards which thought moves – reality as self-conscious awareness of the manifold of structures that are implicit within itself. And more: reality is the structure that guides thought as it moves from feeling to the total self-conscious awareness that is its telos. We accept the idealizations in judgment not because they are true – for they are not wholly true – but because we have a sense that they can be made true, and, indeed, that they can ultimately be made true. In feeling, consciousness already implicitly recognizes its goal, that goal being the complete structured unity of which it is a part and which is at

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once the end and the guide toward that end. If at any point there were a genuine separation of knower from known, or of entity from entity, or of this from such, or of this from that, then there an ultimate reunion could not be achieved: no reunion without union. Bradley’s argument for this position consists in the claim that it can, where empiricism cannot, account for the soundness of inference. On the empiricist account of inference as defended by Hume and the Mills, what we know is what is given in sensation, and what is given in sensation are entities that are intrinsically separate and isolated, not related to other things. Or rather, insofar as they are related, it is only psychologically. What unity that is there is provided by the mind that judges them; objectively, however, in the entities themselves there are no connections.109 This is what Russell was later to refer to as the monadistic account of relations.110 Bradley proposes that genuine relations are incompatible with the independence that is a consequence of monadistic view. ‘A mode of togetherness such as we can verify in feeling,’ he tells us, ‘destroys the independence of our reals.’111 Conversely, if we do make the relata independent or absolute, then we destroy their relatedness: ‘Relations are unmeaning except within and on the basis of a substantial whole, and related terms, if made absolute, are forthwith destroyed.’112 The point that Bradley makes is that in the absence of any objective connections among entities, there is no objective ground for the soundness of inference. Judgments are justified by inferences, and the latter can do their job only if they are grounded in objective necessary connections among things. Bradley was not the first so to contend. The seventeenth-century English Aristotelian John Sergeant argued, as we have seen, in his Method to Science,113 that empirical science cannot achieve a genuine unity and therefore leaves things unexplained: Matter of Fact shows evidently, that this Method [that of experiment], alone, and Unassisted by Principles, is utterly Incompetent or Unable to beget Science. For, what one Universal conclusion in Natural Philosophy, (in knowing which kind of Truths Science consists) has been demonstrated by Experiments ... it is ... merely Historical, and Narrative of Particular Observations; from which to deduce Universal Conclusions is against plain Logick, and Common Sense. (unpaginated, d4)

Genuine science, in contrast, requires the grasp of objective necessities

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that tie things together into wholes. In order genuinely to understand things, this objective structure must be grasped: ’Tis Connexion of Terms which I onely esteem as Proper to advance Science. Where I find not such Connexion, and the Discourse grounded on Self-evident Principles, or (which is the same) on the metaphysical Verity of the Subject, which engages the Nature of the Thing, I neither expect Science can be gain’d, nor Method to Science Estalbish’d. (ibid.)

In fact, Sergeant, like Bradley, argues that judgment ultimately refers to a reality implicitly mentioned in the copula. Sergeant argued that ‘there is but one onely Notion that is perfectly Absolute, viz. that of Existence, and all the rest are in some manner or other, Respective’ (Method to Science, p. 15). We begin with the notion of being or existence and subdivide it according to species and difference, as Porphyry showed. Differences are successively added to genera to create ever more inferior species. The species most inferior to the supreme genus are individual things: ‘Every individual Man is but One Ens or thing; since he descends Lineally from that Common Head by intrinsecal Differences of more or less, which constitute him truly One in that Line; that is, one Ens, or one Thing’ (p. 32). At the other end of the scale, the supreme genus is that of being, which admits of no definition in terms of genus and difference. ‘The Notion of is, or Actual Being, is impossible to admit any Explication’ (p. 120). But if being is the supreme genus, it is also that which contains within itself as the source the being of all inferiors. If it is the supreme genus, it is also the most determinate beings, the most ‘fixed.’ As the source of all being, of all reality, being is that which links its own determinations into determinate wholes: ‘The Notion of is is the Determinate of its own Nature, and so most Fixt of it’s self; and, therefore, most proper to fix the Judgment’ (p. 120). Being ‘fixes’ judgments by providing the linkage represented by the copula: The meaning of the word is which is the Copula, is this, that those Words are Fundamentally Connected in the same Thing and Identify’d with it Materially; however those Notions themselves be Formally different, provided they be not Incompossible ... As when we say a Stone is Hard the Truth of that Proposition consists in this, that the Nature of hard is found in that Thing or Suppositum call’d a Stone, and is in part Identify’d with it;

504 External World and Our Knowledge of It however the Notions of Stone and Hard be Formally Distinct. Or, (which is the same) it is as much as to say, that that Thing which is Stone is the same thing that is Hard. (p. 119)

Thus, ‘this Proposition Self-Existence is Self-existence is, of it self, most Supremely Self-Evident’ (p. 133). This proposition, which is the same as the propositions that ‘what is is’ and ‘existence is existence,’ contains within itself all other predications: ‘Not only the Notion of the Copula, but of the Subject and Predicate too, is Existence’ (p. 134). Being, of course, is God Himself. As Sergeant puts it: ‘God himself has expressed his own Supreme Essence by this Identical Proposition, Ego Sum qui Sum’ (p. 145). Our primary awareness is an awareness of being: ‘The Notion of Existence is imprinted in the Soul before any other in priority of Nature’ (p. 15). But this being of which one is aware is the being which constitutes the objective order of things. Thus, the connection between things, on the one hand, is an act of judgment, and, on the other hand, is an objective connection in things: There being ... a Real Relation between those Notions which are the Subject and Predicate, the latter being really in the understanding and That which is said of the Former, and the Former that of which ’tis said; and Relation being necessarily compleated and actually such, but the Act of a Comparing Power; it follows, that every Judgment is a Referring or Comparing one of those Notions to the other, and (by means of the Copula) of both of them to the same Stock of Being on which they are engrafted, or the same Ens; where they are Entatatively Connected (or the same Materially) before they are Seen or Judg’d to be so by our understanding. (p. 121)

Locke, as we have seen, in his Essay concerning Human Understanding,114 argued against Sergeant’s account of knowledge. The necessary connections that Sergeant supposed to be there are in fact simply not to be seen. It is evident, Locke says, that we do not know the necessary connections required for an Aristotelian understanding of why parts of things cohere (IV, iii, 26, pp. 526ff). But even if we knew why the parts cohere, we still would not know everything necessary for a grasp of the notion of the thing in Sergeant’s sense. For the notion must account for all the causal activities of the substance of which it is the notion, insofar as these activities are not merely occasional. Now, the regular activities

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of external substances include the production of the ideas of the secondary qualities – that is, the production of the simple ideas red, sweet, and so on. For these activities to be knowable scientifically, in Sergeant’s Aristotelian sense, regularities revealed by sense about such activities must be demonstrable by syllogisms grounded in notions. But for that to be possible, there must be necessary connections between red, sweet, and so on, and the notions or natures of the substances that cause these qualities to appear. These necessary connections must be both ontological, in the entities themselves, and epistemological, giving us, when in the mind, scientific knowledge of those entities. But, Locke argues, we grasp no such connections: ’Tis evident that the bulk, figure, and motion of several Bodies about us, produce in us several Sensations, as of Colours, Sounds, Tastes, Smells, Pleasure and Pain, etc. These mechanical Affections of Bodies, having no affinity at all with those Ideas, they produce in us, (there being no conceivable connexion between any impulse of any sort of Body, and any perception of a Colour, or Smell, which we find in our Minds) we can have no distinct knowledge of such Operations beyond our Experience; and can reason no otherwise about them, than as effects produced by the appointment of an infinitely Wise Agent, which perfectly surpasses our Comprehensions. (IV, iii, 28, pp. 558–9; see also IV, vi, 10, pp. 384–5).

Properties are perceived to be just as they are, in themselves; to know them as they are we need not know any of the relations in which they stand to other entities: The immediate perception of the agreement or disagreement of identity being founded in the mind’s having distinct ideas ... affords us as many self-evident propositions, as we have distinct ideas. Every one that has any knowledge at all, has as the foundation of it, various and distinct ideas: And it is the first act of the mind (without which it can never be capable of any knowledge) to know every one of its ideas by itself, and distinguish it from others. Every one finds in himself, that he knows the ideas he has; that he knows also, when any one is in his understanding, and what it is; and that when more than one are there, he knows them distinctly and unconfusedly one from another. (IV, viii, 2)

Locke’s appeal to an empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance is clear. Locke concludes that the account of knowledge and of syllogism that

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Sergeant developed is not sound: we cannot erect the edifice of knowledge on the proposition that ‘what is, is’: All purely identical propositions ... obviously, and at first blush, appear to contain no instruction in them. For when we affirm the said term of itself, whether it be barely verbal, or whether it contains any clear and real idea, it shows us nothing but what we must certainly know before, whether such a proposition be either made by or proposed to us. Indeed that most general one, ‘what is, is,’ may serve sometimes to show a man the absurdity he is guilty of, when by circumlocution, or equivocal terms, he would, in particular instances, deny the same thing of itself; because nobody will so openly bid defiance to common sense, as to affirm visible and direct contradictions in plain words; or if he does, a man is excused if he breaks off any farther discourse with him. But yet, I think, I may say, that neither that received maxim, nor any other identical proposition teaches us any thing: And though in such kind of propositions, this great and magnified maxim, boasted to be the foundation of demonstration, may be and often is made use of to confirm them; yet all it proves amounts to no more than this, that the same word may with great certainty be affirmed of itself, without any doubt of the truth of any such proposition; and let me add also, without any real knowledge. (IV, vii, 4)

So much the worse for the sort of reason that Sergeant defends: the world in which we live is simply not one in which there are any of the objective necessities that that account of reason supposes are there.115 Russell made the same point against Bradley. Bradley’s account of relations requires the introduction of a third particular, the Whole, over and above the two entities that stand in relation to each other.116 This relation is such that the one entity so related cannot be identified independently of its necessary connections to other entities – connections that are necessary because they define the very being of the entities related. This applies in particular to ‘suches’ – that is, to qualities that are similar and dissimilar to one another. But, Russell argues, qualities can in fact be identified as themselves without reference to the relations in which they stand to other qualities and other things. As he puts it: To say that two terms which are related would be different if they were not related, is to say something perfectly barren; for if they were different, they would be other, and it would not be the terms in question, but a different pair, that would be unrelated. The notion that a term can be modified

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arises from neglect to observe the eternal self-identity of all terms and all logical concepts, which alone form the constituents of propositions. What is called modification consists merely in having at one time, but not at another, some specific relation to some specific term; but the term which sometimes has and sometimes has not the relation in question must be unchanged, otherwise it would not be that term which has ceased to have the relation. (Principles of Mathematics, p. 448)117

Note that here Russell is allowing Bradley’s point against the monadistic account of relations. On the latter, the predications of one term of a relation would not change if the other relatum ceased to exist. Russell accepts this; he accepts that the monadistic account of relations is mistaken and that there are, objectively, genuine relational unities. What he is denying is the implication of Bradley’s own account of relations – that there is something about properties or qualities as presented that requires us when we are identifying them to refer as a matter of necessity to other properties, those to which they are necessarily tied. Russell is holding that properties are presented to us as logically self-contained rather than as necessarily tied to one another; he concludes that there are no such necessary connections. But such connections are required by Bradley’s account of relations. The falsity of the latter view follows. Russell’s rejection of Bradley’s account of relations on the basis of an appeal to Locke’s Principle of Acquaintance is evident. Michael J. Loux118 has objected to the doctrine that there are, among the constituents of things, entities whose only role is that of individuators. These entities are said to be bare. Loux objects that ‘in themselves, they have no properties at all, so that they cannot be the object of any kind of cognitive act’ (p. 771). On this doctrine, an entity can be the object of a cognitive act only if we cognize it through its properties. This is the doctrine of Sergeant, that to know a thing is to know its definition. For Sergeant, this is to know its species, and to know that in turn requires us to know the genus and specific difference. To know genus and specific difference is to know how it is the same and different from other entities. Bradley argues the same thesis: to know a thing one must know its relations to other things, and in particular the relations of sameness and difference. Locke argues otherwise: when we are presented with a thing, we thereby know it as it is; and in particular, to know it we do not need to know its relations to other things. In order to know it, we do not need to know its species or its genus or any other property that it might have or to which it might be tied. The entity is, in

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Loux’s terms, bare. Locke is thus arguing on the basis of the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance that all presented entities are bare. The same point can be put another way. If to say something is taken to mean to assert a proposition, then with regard to the basic entities of the world, we cannot say what they are. Their being, what they are in themselves, cannot be expressed in a proposition. They can only be named, not said. Or, rather, as Locke saw, if it be said, as in, for example, ‘this is this,’ the proposition in which it is said is trivial and verbal. Since their being, what they are in themselves, can only be grasped in perception and not said, it is evident that such entities are ineffable. Bradley, too, has ineffable entities, or, rather, an ineffable entity. This is Reality as such, the Whole or the Absolute. To say something is to express a judgment, and a judgment S-P is always ideal, partially false, at least insofar as it requires us to separate the subject S from the predicate P. We achieve the truth, the whole truth, when we abolish the distinction between subject and predicate, when we grasp the ultimate unity that, precisely because it is a unity, cannot be said but only felt or experienced. It is the ineffable. The difference between the ineffable in Locke and the ineffable in Bradley is that for Locke, the ineffable is located in ordinary experience, whereas for Bradley it is located either as it were below ordinary experience, in mere feeling, or above ordinary experience, ordinary perception, in Absolute consciousness, the consciousness that the Whole, the Absolute, has of itself. Furthermore, even though for Locke ordinary entities are ineffable, it does not follow that nothing can be said about them. To the contrary. To say that the entities are bare and to say that they are ineffable is to make the same point. But to say that they are bare is not to say that they are presented devoid of properties and devoid of relations. It is clear from Locke, and from acquaintance itself, that we are always being presented with complexes, with facts, and not with solitary entities, things in total isolation from one another. To the extent that these entities do stand in various relations to other entities, things can be said about them – namely, such things as ‘this is next to that’ or ‘this has such and such a property.’ Bradley’s ineffable entity, however, stands in relation to nothing: all other entities lose their own being within its enfolding totality. For Bradley, nothing can be said that is wholly true. For Locke, in contrast, there are many things that can be said that are not just true but wholly true. What can be said, and truly said, is that things stand in various relations to one another. It is just that the intrinsic being of these

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entities, what they are in themselves, is not constituted by those relations to other entities. As we saw, Russell allows, with Bradley and against Locke and Hume, that there are objective relational structures. What he rejects is that these objective connections are necessary to the intrinsic being of the entities they relate. To put it another way, Russell is arguing that there are connections in the world of the empiricist but that these are not essential. In this sense, the entities of Locke’s world are all separable, albeit not in fact separate. This is in contrast to the monadistic account of relations on the one hand and Bradley’s account on the other. On the former account, things are not only separable but separate. On Bradley’s account, things are not only not separate but also not separable: the relations that structure them into unities are necessary, defining the intrinsic being of the entities related. For Russell, however, while entities are indeed structured by relations into unities, the related entities are separable in the sense that the relations are not necessary, not essential to the being of the things related. It follows that for Russell’s empiricism, because none of the relations in which things stand are essential, reason cannot consist in the grasp of essential truths. In this respect, then, Russell agrees with Locke, Hume, and the other empiricists that the soundness of scientific inference does not consist in the grasp of objective necessary connections. Thus, as Hume had already and clearly argued, understanding is no longer scientia, no longer the grasping of an entity that provides an underlying unity to the apparently separable. It is, rather, the recognition of things as falling under certain general patterns, universal but contingent regularities, that hold among the separable entities of experience.119 Equally important is what becomes of logical possibility. If ‘x is F’ is true, then, since there is nothing in x that requires it to be F, it is also possible that x is not F. Again, if ‘x is F’ and ‘y is G’ are true, then because there are no necessary connections among the properties, it is also possible that x which is F is also G: there is nothing about the bare properties F and G that excludes that possibility . Thus, for example, if ‘x is red’ is true, then there is nothing about x or about redness that excludes the truth of ‘x is blue.’ To be sure, x is not blue, given that it is red. It is as a matter of general fact true that whatever is red is not blue. But there is nothing about red and blue that makes that general fact a matter of necessity: it is not a logical truth, but only a matter-offact generalization, a contingency.

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What holds for the incompatibility of red and blue and of colours in general, holds for all the other propositions of common sense that Moore and Reid and Wittgenstein were concerned to defend: they are all contingencies. It is a contingency, too, whether the state of affairs a thought intends exists or not. It is always possible that the material object that I perceive does not exist. Thus, the commitment of the empiricist to PA commits that person to a view of logical independence, logical separability, that determines that there is in the world, the world in which we live our ordinary lives, a radical contingency. There is a looseness about the world, if you wish, a lack of any guarantee that it all hangs together. To be sure, things do not change without causes, and inkwells do not suddenly fly in the air and disappear. There is a cement to the universe. But this is merely another contingent fact among contingent facts, and it is contingent whether the cement will hold. This contingency is something that is there, given the discovery, as it were, of the fact that things and their properties and relations are what they are and not anything else. It is this fact about the world as it appears to us in ordinary experience that accounts for the fact of radical contingency. Indeed, they amount to the same fact. So, the fact that properties and things are what they are and not anything else accounts for the contingency of things. And this fact is one that the empiricist must accept, and take for granted: it is a given once he or she determines to use PA to determine the limits of ontology, what exists, and the limits of this world, including the possibilities in this world so delimited. II. Truth Again: First Person and Third Person We appeal to acquaintance in two roles. We apply it, in the first place, in ontology to determine the entities that we admit into our ontology. We apply it, in the second place, in epistemology to determine our basic beliefs and to root those beliefs in the reality of things, the being of the world. The former use does not require any need whatsoever that the acts of acquaintance be veridical. It matters not that our perception of a red patch is or is not veridical. We are acquainted with the redness in the patch, and we are acquainted with it as an entity that is wholly itself, not tied in its own being to any other entity. So we admit it to our ontology as a logically separable entity. In the other, epistemological, use, we want to take the basic acquaintances to be veridical. We have argued that there are among our perceivings some that impose themselves

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upon us – there are certain impressions of the world that take hold of us and demand that we accept the perceptual beliefs they imply. These impressions that we cannot avoid we take to be truth: being provides us with the truth of itself, the truth of being. At least, that is how the reasonable and responsible knower takes his or her being, in this world that seizes one and that is one’s fate. It is acquaintance in its ontological use that provides what we take as the logical possibilities in our world, the world to which we are inevitably bound. In this world and as part of it, we construct our picture of the world (and of ourselves as beings in this world). This picture consists of sentences that picture the states of affairs the existence of which we accept on the basis of the epistemological use of acquaintance. The criterion of truth is the truth of being, of the world as it imposes itself on us and determines our way of being. Within the world that determines our way of being, we find different properties and relations and particulars. We find nothing about these that establishes ontologically that any one of these is irrevocably tied to any other of these: no single one necessitates any other one. We can therefore take the terms that appear in the sentences that represent states of affairs in our world and rearrange them to form other strings or sentences. These other sentences are themselves pictures, or sorts of pictures; and they differ from the pictures we have already constructed in picturing nothing in the world that determines our way of being. These sentences are not pictures that represent the truth of being. But there is nothing about the world of being that requires them not to be real pictures; that follows from the ontological independence of the properties and relations and particulars that with PA we locate in our ontology of the world of being. We then denote them as representing possibilities with respect to the entities and facts in the world of being. These are possibilities that are found within the world of being. It is the latter that is primary; the possibilities are within it. There is another way of looking at these things. Take the names that refer to things in the world of being. Now lay down a rule for forming pictures. If the rule (or rules) is appropriately chosen, then we have a set of strings that we can count as possible pictures, as representing possibilities. Some of these possible pictures represent states of affairs in the world of being; these are the truths. The pictures that do not correspond to states of affairs in the world of being are the falsehoods; this is truth as correspondence. In this way of thinking about truth, one can imagine lines that con-

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nect strings in the set of pictures to states of affairs in the world of being. In terminology once used by Moore, the state of affairs in the world to which a picture is tied by a line ‘directly verifies’ that picture; that state of affairs is the truth maker for that string. Moore goes on to suggest that the strings that are not tied to states of affairs in the world of being have falsity makers – namely, the absence of the states of affairs that they picture from the world of being. Thus, corresponding to true strings are present states of affairs, while corresponding to false strings are absent states of affairs. For Moore, then, there is a line that stretches from every string: for some strings the line proceeds to a present state of affairs; for other strings, the line proceeds to a state of affairs that is absent. This is to come back to the to view that sentences – or, as we are now speaking, strings – mean the states of affairs they picture, where ‘means’ is construed as Bergmann construes his ‘M,’ as a relation that has entities as the things meant. But we need not so proceed: it suffices to note that some strings are connected to states of affairs in the world of being while other strings are not. Acknowledging truth makers does not require us to acknowledge falsity makers. For the sake of simplicity, suppose that we have the following strings and that lines proceed from the first, third, and fifth to states of affairs in the world of being: (^)

Fa, Fb, Fc, Ga, Gb, Gc

2

2

2

Now, given that PA tells us that properties and other entities are what they are and not any other thing, it follows that there is nothing about F and a as entities in the world of being that either precludes the combination of F with b, nor does anything require the combination of F with b. Nor, indeed, is there anything about the entities F and a that requires the combination of F with a to occur in the world of being. Thus, while there is a line from the string ‘Fa’ to a state of affairs in the world of being, making that string true, there is nothing about the entities in the world that requires another line to proceed from ‘Fb’ to a state of affairs in the world of being, or that precludes it from doing so. In fact, there is nothing about F, G, a, and b in the world of being that determines any particular distribution of lines to strings. In this sense, any distribution of lines from strings to the world of being is possible. For each string it is possible, so far as concerns the things and their properties, that it be true (i.e., tied with a line leading to the world of being) or that it be false (i.e.,

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not tied with a line leading to the world of being). In this sense, for each string in (^) it is possible that it be true and possible that it be false: which it is depends on the world of being. But in saying of each that it is possible that it be true and possible that it be false, we are saying that its truth is contingent. Thus, when we think of truth as correspondence, then it is always possible that a state of affairs in the world of being is false, it is always possible that it be absent from the world, that it not exist. If we take as our criterion of truth what is imposed on us, what is required by PA in its epistemological use, then it turns out that the world as it is thus known possibly does not exist. There is no guarantee in the world of being that guarantees that the states of affairs in that world exist. Maybe some or all of them do not: in spite of what we know and, as reasonable beings, accept, it is still possible that we might be wrong, it is still possible that the world might be other than we take it to be, and are required to take it to be. Note what has happened. We begin with the world of being, determined by PA in its epistemological use. Within this world we discover that there are states of affairs that are possible but not actual. To the entities in this world, we now apply PA in its ontological use. From this we discover with respect to the states of affairs in the world of being that it is possible that each or every one of them does not exist. But now apply Stroud’s (or Descartes’s) criterion of knowledge: we do not know that p unless we exclude the possibility that p does not exist. It has turned out that, in reflecting on the world as we know it – the world in which we exist and which imposes itself upon us, the world of being – we have discovered that it all possibly does not exist. By Stroud’s criterion we do not after all know anything at all about the world of being. And so, even though this is the world in which we find ourselves and which we find is our fate, perhaps after all it is all an illusion. From PA in its epistemological use, we can as reasonable people accept as real the world as it imposes itself on us; but then, as people who reflect on that world, we discover that within the possibilities in that world is the possibility that none of it exists. The issue is this. Ought we, as reasonable beings, to accept that we do not know the world of being in which we are fated to exist? Stroud maintains that we ought not to accept that. We have argued, following Hume, that such a position is unreasonable. But we can now see how the Stroudian position acquires its plausibility and its hold upon us. It comes from slipping out of the world as determined by PA in its episte-

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mological use to reflecting on that world in terms of PA in its ontological use. The ontological conclusions that we draw are not wrong. But they do lead us to conclude that it is always possible for any state of affairs in the world of being that it does not exist. And so we are led to doubt what it is unreasonable to doubt. The resolution of the doubt consists in recognizing that although it is logically or ontologically possible that we are wrong, it is unreasonable on that basis alone to doubt that we are wrong. In arriving at our predicament, we are moving back and forth between truth of being and truth as correspondence. If we fix on the latter, then we will arrive at the conclusion that it is always possible that we are wrong. If we fix on the world of being, in contrast, then, so far at least as concerns the basic states of affairs, it is inconceivable that we are wrong. It is thus both conceivable and inconceivable that we are wrong about the world of being. The apparent paradox is resolved when we recognize the shifting point of view: inconceivable from the epistemological point of view, conceivable from the ontological point of view. Both are necessary. Neither invalidates the other. But they are different points of view on the world in which we find it is our fate to exist. We can see a failure to recognize the two different but equally sound points of view in a controversy that went on in the nineteenth century between Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill on the criterion of knowledge. The difference between truth of being and truth as correspondence amounts to the difference between a first-person perspective on the world and a third-person perspective. It is the difference between taking oneself to be part of the world, among the beings involved in that world, and taking onself to be an observer of the world, outside looking in or at it. For the former, it is inconceivability that is the criterion of truth – that is, the impossibility of accepting otherwise. For the latter, it is discovered correspondence that is the criterion of truth. On the former criterion, one is as it were within the world as it acts on one; within the world, one accepts one’s fate that one must take the world as it imposes itself on one. For the latter, one is as it were outside the world and scanning it to find what is in it; one is taking the set of propositions that describe the world, and as it were comparing them to the way the world is. The nineteenth-century philosopher Herbert Spencer argued that the test of truth is inconceivability of the contrary.120 He first expresses the rule in this way: ‘The inconceivability of its negation is that which

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shows a cognition to possess the highest rank’: this ‘is the criterion by which its unsurpassable validity is known’ (Principle of Psychology, p. 407). The point is that ‘we are obliged to accept’ such a proposition. To this John Stuart Mill objected121 that, with respect to fundamental principles, axioms, they are matters of fact, and, when general, are inductive inferences, and ‘the real evidence for the supposition is not its inconceivableness, but the uniformity of experience.’ (Logic, p. 265). He goes on to argue that ‘uniformity of past experience is very far from being universally a criterion of truth’ (ibid.). He instances, as an example, the proposition entertained by Europeans before their first landing in Western Australia, that all swans are white. One therefore needs a more stringent test than mere uniformity of past experience. Now, Spencer agrees that the generalizations that he takes to be necessary, and to be subject to the criterion he proposes, are indeed matter-of-fact generalizations, and in that sense they are not necessary, in the way in which definitions are true ex vi terminorum. But not all matter-of-fact generalizations, such as the one cited concerning swans, are subject to his proposed criterion: it is indeed possible to think of non-white swans, and it was as conceivable to past Europeans as it is to us – they conceived it and accepted it, we conceive it and reject it, and the latter requires us to conceive the contrary. Mill distinguishes the inconceivable from the unbelievable and suggests that Spencer mistakes the two (ibid. p. 269). Mill uses as an example the belief among older European geographers that life was impossible at the antipodes. That such life was unbelievable to them was one thing, but that did not make it inconceivable. Thus, for example, they could conceive people standing on their heads – something that is unbelievable but not inconceivable. Mill is using ‘conceivable’ to mean what we would mean by ‘logically possible,’ and is arguing, correctly, that for many of the propositions that Spencer cites as having contraries that are inconceivable, it is logically possible that they are false. Mill makes his point in regard specifically to basic axioms – for example, those concerning the space in which we locate the objects we perceive, or those concerning the reality of, as one says, the external world: these, too, are inductive generalizations, but they are so deeply rooted in our thought by means of the mechanisms of association that we cannot conceive their contraries to be false. But, he argues, their contraries are for all that conceivable – that is, conceivably true. That is, it is logically possible that they are true (ibid., pp. 271–2). Spencer argues that these beliefs are in fact innate, native to the mind of the individual. The relevant tendencies to believe have been

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passed on through what we would now call our genetic inheritance, with nature selecting for survival and reproduction those among our ancestors whose thought conformed more exactly to the way the world is fundamentally structured. The inherited structures of the human mind to which Spencer refers – it remains plausible that there are such structures – make the relevant axioms a priori relative to the individual but a posteriori relative to the species. If the habit of belief has been built over a vast number of generations, that shows that there have been over all that time no counterexamples which would be able to undermine that habit. The fact that these truths have become a priori shows that they as it were summarize a vast background of experience (Pr. of Psych, 2: 414ff). Spencer’s argument shows that he holds that the test of the inconceivability of the contrary is used to pick out as worthy of acceptance certain matter-of-fact truths, certain inductive generalizations. He is in effect allowing Mill’s point that with regard to these propositions, it is logically possible that they are false, and logically possible that their contraries are true. He is arguing, furthermore, that the mechanisms of habit formation and of heredity provide a reliable method for forming beliefs. The structure of his case apparently locates him in the same camp as the more recent reliabilists such as Alston: a belief is acceptable just in case it is produced by a reliable method; the mechanisms of habit formation and of heredity are a reliable method of concept formation; inconceivability of the contrary is the sort of belief that has been produced by this reliable method; and it is therefore the test of truth, not only tautological truth, but also of the empirical axioms that define our basic set of rationally accepted beliefs. If that is the structure of Spencer’s case, then it is subject to the general sort of criticism that applies to reliablism: one knows that the method is reliable only through some sort of inductive inference, and the legitimacy of this inference depends on the acceptability of non-inductive evidence – the pattern of justification is circular. However, as it turns out, the point of Spencer’s appeal to the mechanisms of habit formation and of heredity is not to cite them as reliable methods capable for that reason of providing a set of beliefs from which further inferences can proceed. It is, rather, to argue that if it is Mill’s argument that these axioms are inductive generalizations secured by repeated instances, then on Spencer’s account of the psychological roots of these beliefs, those axioms must be even more inductively secure (ibid., pp. 416, 419).

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However, this is not the point of the test of the inconceivability of the contrary. That point is, rather, to provide a basis on which the world itself, the world where we find ourselves located, provides us with the set of basic propositions that are to be taken as rationally acceptable. ‘What is the point,’ he asks, ‘of critically examining our thoughts, or analyzing the dicta of consciousness?’ He answers: ‘To insure a correspondence between subjective beliefs and objective facts.’ He then continues: ‘Well, objective facts are ever impressing themselves upon us; our experience is a register of these objective facts; and the inconceivableness of a thing implies that it is wholly at variance with this register’ (ibid., p. 415). Those facts which impress themselves on us are basic. They become the test of truth; or rather, it is precisely the fact that they impress themselves on us that renders belief in their non-existence to be inconceivable. It is true that it is logically possible that they are false. But precisely because they impress themselves on us, they become the test of truth for reasonable people. As we put it earlier, the truth of being is prior to truth as correspondence. Correspondence involves propositions being true to the world; the truth of being contains the truth as a straight edge is true when it is flawless or exact: it contains within itself the standard by which it is judged. Spencer’s point is the same as the case later made by Russell. For the latter, a proposition is true just in case it bears a certain relation to the facts. But this relation is not one of simple correspondence. Rather, it is one where the fact impresses itself on us: ‘A form of words is true if a person who knows the language is led to that form of words when he finds himself in an environment which contains features that are the meanings of the words, and those features produce reactions in him sufficiently strong for him to use words which mean them.’122 This is not a general account of truth as correspondence. It is, rather, an account of the truth of those beliefs which are inescapably part of the picture of the world that we construct as we go about living in it. In this sense, a belief is true just in case the fact which that belief is about impresses that belief upon us. It is the truth of being, truth we must accept as beings in the world of fact. Mill, not incorrectly, looks at a set of beliefs from a standpoint outside the facts of the world, and asks which of these beliefs correspond to the facts in that world. He notes in particular that from that standpoint, there is nothing in the world which guarantees that any of our beliefs are true. Spencer, however – again, not incorrectly – takes as truth that

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which from a point within the world impresses itself on us. From this point of view, it is not possible for certain beliefs – those which the world impresses on us – to be false. Mill’s is a third-person point of view, from the outside. Spencer’s is a first-person point of view, from a place within the world. Both points of view are possible; both are legitimate. But one cannot argue from the former perspective that, since it is logically possible that what counts as truth in the second perspective might be false, therefore it is unreasonable to accept as true those beliefs which are imposed on us in the second perspective. The truths of being do not cease to be rationally acceptable as known truths simply because it is logically possible that they are false. Indeed, accepting those truths which are impressed on us is normative with regard to what we ought, epistemically, to believe. They are matter-of-fact, contingent truths; yet there is a sense in which, in the context of epistemic norms, they are indubitable. That is a psychological attitude, but relative to our epistemic norms, they are what we ought to accept with certainty. As Wittgenstein once put it, it is normative: ‘If someone doubted whether the earth had existed a hundred years ago, I should not understand that for this reason: I would not know what the person would still allow to be counted as evidence, and what not.’123 ‘I should not understand the doubting; but I can understand the contrary of the proposition.’ Not understanding the doubting is a matter of evidence; the evidence excludes such doubt. However, the norms that make such doubt inconceivable are not those of logic but simply the standards that regulate as reasonable or unreasonable the attitude – acceptance, rejection, and so on – that we adopt toward the proposition in question: ‘I want to say: it is not that on some points men know the truth with perfect certainty. But perfect certainty is only a matter of their attitude.’124 Such certainty is a matter of evidence, evidence so compelling that the contrary is inconceivable: ‘I can’t be making a mistake; but if after all something should appear to speak against my proposition, I shall stand by it despite this appearance.’125 This is the truth of being. D. Scepticism and Naturalism We are anchored in the world: the world anchors us. But the world is contingent through and through. And often enough, in a world where

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things might be and often are otherwise, we demand certainty: we want to feel secure that we know our way about. Alas, in our world of contingency, such certainty is impossible. But if we set such certainty as our cognitive goal, then no argument will lead us to that goal: the world prevents it. Reason may offer us arguments about how the goal might be achieved, but such reason will inevitably fail us: reason will be able to undermine any reason that purports to achieve such a goal. And so scepticism. Popkin has pointed out how Hume confronts the radical scepticism to which his ontology leads.126 He contrasts Hume to the ancient Pyrrhonists, who found flaws in the positions of all dogmatists – everyone who claimed to know things with infallible certainty – and recommended suspension of judgment for all knowledge claims. Hume argues that such suspension of judgment is impossible: nature requires us to get on with the task of living, and to do that, we must accept as true our perceptual judgments that various bodies exist – for example, the chair on which I am sitting; and certain at least of our causal judgments – for example, fire burns and food nourishes; and certain at least of the propositions of common sense about this world – for example, that it has existed for some time in the past; and so on. This is how nature moves us in thought and action. It is not reason, but nature: ‘If we live according to nature, we then suspend judgment only when it is natural to do so, and, as Hume contended, it is not natural to do so solely because we lack rational evidence for coming to a decision’ (Popkin, ‘David Hume,’ p. 91) On this reading we do believe – according to Hume because it is natural to do so, not because it is reasonable to do so. On this reading, then, Hume remains a sceptic: the natural beliefs are all irrational, without a basis in reason. The emphasis on natural beliefs provides a way of living with scepticism in an irrational world: ‘The proper Pyrrhonist [i.e., Hume], has no rational basis for his opinions, but still has strong opinions owing to his psychological and biological constitution’ (ibid., p. 93). On this reading, then, Hume remains a sceptic. There is another reading that is close to this, often referred to as the ‘naturalist’ reading of Hume. On this reading, again, we accept as true our perceptual judgments that various bodies exist (e.g,, the chair on which I am sitting), and certain at least of our causal judgments (e.g., fire burns and food nourishes): this is a matter of how we are as natural beings, located in a world, a world that is not of our own making but that we know through experience. As H.O. Mounce has put it: ‘The naturalist ... holds that our

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knowledge presupposes an intelligible order, not of our own making, which is common to nature and to ourselves.’127 He quotes Sir William Hamilton: ‘Belief is the primary condition of reason, not reason the ultimate ground of belief.’128 Mounce argues that justification consists in comparing a belief to reality, but that ‘the power of comparing a belief with the world itself presupposes beliefs about the world. We cannot step outside all our beliefs. This means that we cannot justify our knowledge as a whole’ (Mounce, Hume’s Naturalism, p. 2). Thus, ‘we would never have known an independent world were it not given to us in natural belief. It is the condition of all our knowledge’ (ibid., p. 2). Mounce suggests that Reid is a naturalist in just this sense, and argues that there is much of naturalism in Hume as well – enough that he can call Hume a naturalist as well as an empiricist. This reading of Hume is close to that of Popkin. However, where Popkin has no belief ever being rationally justified, Mounce allows that one can give reasons for many of our beliefs. In that sense, he, unlike Popkin, allows that Hume is not a sceptic. At least up to a point. But the basic beliefs – those which come to us naturally – cannot themselves be rationally justified: they are justifiers but are not themselves justified. It is not accidental that Mounce looks to Reid as the one who first defended a naturalism of this sort. Unlike Reid, however, Mounce finds a naturalism in Hume. What we have argued is that Hume does indeed accept the commonsense view of the world, as given in our basic perceptual judgments and our basic beliefs about the causal structure of the world. These beliefs are imposed on us, they are our fate, a matter of nature. But we have argued that, contrary to Popkin and Mounce, these facts – that we must accept these judgments – provide a rational ground for accepting those beliefs: if nature demands our assent, then for that very reason, reason also demands our assent. Thus, contrary to Popkin, reason does after all have a role to play in our cognitive life. And contrary to Mounce, it is not the case that there are basic beliefs that are prior to all rational defence. Mounce argues that there is another strand in Hume’s thought besides the naturalist. This is what Mounce refers to as the ‘empiricist’ strand. This is the view that ‘our knowledge begins in sense experience’ (ibid., p. 2). I think no one would disagree that this is indeed the starting point for Hume’s account of knowledge – that is, of our justified true beliefs. The justification requires us to in effect compare our beliefs to the world as we experience it. However, Mounce argues – not incor-

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rectly – that such a comparison can be made only if we as it were step outside the belief when we make the comparison to the world. But such a comparison can be made only if we already have beliefs about the world. ‘The point can be illustrated,’ he suggests, ‘by reference to our belief in an independent world’: On the empiricist view, this belief is justified by an inference from sense experience. But sense experience, being subjective, can give us no idea of an independent world. If we have no idea of such a world, how can we infer it? The inference from sense experience is plausible only if we already have knowledge of such a world. But if we already have such knowledge, it is unnecessary to make the inference. We could never have known an independent world were it not given to us in natural belief. For it is the condition of all our knowledge. (Ibid., p. 2)

What one must note is that Mounce is here mischaracterizing Hume: he (Hume) is not an empiricist in the sense in which Mounce is using that term. To be sure, Hume argues that ordinary things – tables, chairs, ink bottles, oysters, rainbows, shadows, and hats – are bundles (that is of course, organized and patterned bundles) of sensible appearances. But most of these appearances are certainly things that exist independently of the knowing subject. In fact, as we have argued, already to experience a sense impression is to be outside the circle of ideas. The experiencing is in the mind, but the experienced is not. The sensible appearances of things, including those sensible appearances which are actually experienced, are in this sense all mind-independent: Hume is no idealist, he has no substantial mind for sensible appearances on which to be dependent. In contrast, Mounce’s empiricist takes sensible appearances to be subjective things, which precisely because they are subjective could never give one the idea of something independent of mind(s). But, to repeat, sensible appearances – Hume’s impressions – do not depend for their being on the existence of a subject, of something like the self discovered in the Cartesian cogito: there is nothing about any sensible appearance that makes it somehow self-contradictory that it exist unperceived. Now, Mounce is undoubtedly correct in holding that an inference to the presence of a material object such as a chair presupposes certain other commonsense beliefs about the world. Hume would not disagree: we don’t argue about the existence of body, he tells us; all we can do is ask for the cause of our belief. And it turns out that the cause is compel-

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ling: these beliefs, including many of our perceptual beliefs, are in the appropriate sense natural. But it does not follow that the world is somehow not a matter of sensible appearances alone, that there are objects – substances, for example – that are there over and above the appearances. The empiricist – not Mounce’s ‘empiricist’ but Hume, for example – can hold that a material object is a pattern of sensible appearances, so that our judgments about it have the logical form of inferences; while also holding that our acceptance of those judgments as true is not a matter of inference, but simply a given, epistemologically, a starting point for chains of justification and not a step along the way. Mounce has the wrong model, for Hume at least, about how justification proceeds. He speaks about our comparing our beliefs to the world to discover their truth, and he proposes that any such comparison will presuppose a set of beliefs. But comparison is the wrong model. To be sure, the metaphor makes sense in cases where we wonder about the truth of one (or more) of our beliefs. And it is correct to say that there are epistemologically basic beliefs whose truth we take for granted and for which it makes no sense in terms of a possible inquiry to say that we discovered their truth by a sort of comparison to reality. These natural beliefs are imposed on us, they are rooted in sensible impressions. In fact, precisely because they are imposed on us, their acceptance is reasonable – that is, rationally justified. They are true, and in an important sense they are necessarily true: they are the truth of being, of being in the world which imposes itself on us and with which we find ourselves inevitably and inextricably engaged. Hume, then, is safely characterized as an empiricist, but also as a naturalist. But he goes beyond mere naturalism, offering instead a rational justification for the acceptance of our natural beliefs. There remain problems, however, for our reading of Hume. For Hume proposes that we have two conflicting views of the world. There is on the one hand the view of the world that is established by our natural beliefs – for example, our belief in bodies and therefore in body. These beliefs hold that a perceptual object – for example, a tree – endures when we do not perceive it, and that it is coloured, remaining the same colour for at least an extended period. What impresses itself on us, what is present to consciousness, is the body itself. This is the ‘blind and powerful instinct of nature’ (E 151). There is, on the other hand, the view of the world to which our causal reasonings lead us. When we see a tower from a distance and move closer, the shape we experience changes: as we move closer, it becomes larger. So, too, the colour changes (E 151). So the impression present in consciousness is

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not so much the body that is ‘out there’ independently of the perceiver and the perceiver’s consciousness, as it is a ‘mere appearance’ that depends for its existence on our situation and the state of our sense organs. There is therefore a conflict. Our perceptual judgments, which nature demands that we accept, place what is impressed on consciousness as ‘out there’; while, in contrast, our best causal reasoning demands that we accept the contrary conclusion that what is present in consciousness is impressed on us by something ‘over here,’ right where my body is – so ‘over here’ that it is in fact one’s own body. ‘These are the obvious dictates of reason’ (E 152). If there were a secure anchor for one or the other side of the contradiction, then the contradiction could be resolved. But our world is contingent through and through: there is no secure anchor, no way of tethering (some of) our beliefs. So even our natural beliefs are subject to rational doubt. In the first Enquiry, Hume notes the contradiction between reason and the natural beliefs that define the commonsense world: we are ‘necessitated by reasoning to contradict or depart from the primary instincts of nature’ (E 152). But he argues that there is no real (i.e., practical) problem: ‘The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life’ (E 158–9). To be sure, the contradiction is a challenge to reason, and to nature as well. But nature wins – that is what nature means. And so we go on living – that is, we go on, if we are wise, with the flow of nature. We do this since we must do this, and so doing, we will be happier than if we resist – fruitlessly resist – nature. So, that is the reasonable thing to do, the most rational – to go with the flow of nature is the ought that is determined by the must. The difficulty is, of course, that the argument establishes that the deliverances of reason are inconsistent with the natural beliefs that the rational person accepts. The reason, here, that leads to conclusions contrary to our natural beliefs is the causal reason that takes its place within the framework established by the natural beliefs. It is consequent to the natural framework. And since it involves the reasonable challenging the reasonable, it constitutes a species of scepticism – it is what Hume calls consequent scepticism (E 150). It seems, then, that if Hume is a naturalist, then he is one who also falls into scepticism. This scepticism is a result of reason within the framework of natural beliefs, the world of our commonsense beliefs – it is not due to some more esoteric principles of ‘empiricism,’ as Mounce maintains (Hume’s Naturalism, p. 59). It would seem, then, that the naturalist reading of Hume leads back

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to the sceptical reading of Popkin. And it appears that, after all, Hume is a sceptic. It is this view that we have been challenging. Obviously, then, we have not completed our task of establishing that Hume is not a sceptic. We must look in greater detail at the inferences we have just considered that lead to reason challenging the commonsense framework of our natural beliefs. It is to this task we must now turn, with a careful examination of Hume’s deepest analysis of this situation. We find it in Book I, Part iv, Section 2 of the Treatise, the section that deals with ‘scepticism with regard to the senses.’ Our conclusion will, eventually, be that Hume is after all not a sceptic, but rather one who defends the philosophical position that has been called ‘critical realism.’ It is to this task that we will be turning in the next (and final) chapter. But first, a little more stage setting. E. The Dream Problem, Again We have defended Hume’s Berkeleyan realistic view of the world. The world is as we experience it. There are objects such as apples and dice and trees in the quad and so on. These things are bundles of sensible appearances. In our experience of the world, we perceive material objects like these: in our perceptual awarenesses, material objects like these are present to us. But in our sensible experience of things, we are aware of only some among these appearances, only some parts of the bundles. In perception the part of the thing of which we are sensibly aware is located as part of the thing as a material object, as something that is ‘to be met with in space.’ The material object has many parts which are sensible but of which we are not sensibly aware. That is why perception is like induction: it is ampliative and goes beyond what is sensibly present to what is not sensibly present. The French phenomenologists were on to some of these points; though like so many, they did not get it exactly right and were as a consequence misled into thinking that the Humean (and Russellian) account of things is wrong. We have our attention directed toward the ampliative nature of perception, and to the fact that follows from this – that perception, like induction, is always open and subject to revision. Thus, we are told that ‘since it is from within the world that we perceive, experience is always perspectival, i.e., incomplete. For although we can be practically certain that we see a house, there is always more to the object than we can ever perceive.’129

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It is worth noting how on the one hand we are said to ‘see’ a house, but how on the other hand there is more to the house than we actually ‘perceive.’ But if, when standing in front of a house, we see a house, then we see an object that has a back as well as the front. What we see is the house as a whole. There is not more to the house that is outside what is seen. What is present to us when we see – and, in this sense, when we perceive – is the house, not just a perspective of the house. But there is ‘more to the object’ than we can ever ‘perceive.’ So now, what we perceive is less than the whole. It is presumably the ‘perspective’ that is in this sense ‘perceived.’ Which is to say that what is perceived in this sense is the sensible appearance. Thus, ‘perceive’ is now being used in the sense of ‘sensory awareness.’ In any case, the ampliative nature of perceiving (in the first sense) is recognized: when I perceive something, it may turn out that ‘upon further investigation we may discover aspects of the object which bring about a re-organization of our experience so that we see the object in a different way or even see a different object.’130 Perception is fallible, in other words, but we can discover our errors and correct them. In the world in which we find ourselves, there is ‘irreducible contingency.’ If there were not, if there were instead necessary connections that the mind could grasp, then perception would be tethered, incorrigible. But it isn’t tethered. We discover that ‘our experience is always meaningful yet always menaced by disorder and non-sense.’131 That is no doubt true, but that way of putting the matter is simply a pretentious way of saying that since it is ampliative, perception – though its object is imposed on us – is fallible. One need not disagree. Certainly, Hume would not disagree. However, an implication is drawn from this with which someone such as Hume, who denies idealism, will inevitably disagree. While arguing that the world does, in perception, impose itself on us, our ‘phenomenologists’ at the same time argue that the world is, after all, not simply something that imposes itself on us. Or so we are also told. The object of perception is an organized whole. Hence, ‘there is something wrong with the traditional [which tradition?] view that we experience “sense data” – isolated units of experience which must then be organized by the mind.’132 Thus, when I perceive a house, I cannot by an act of will make it that I am perceiving a facade, that that is what I am ‘really’ perceiving. It is the house that is present to me, and not an appearance of the house. Or at least, not merely an appearance, since after all the house is perceived from this perspective or that. It may even be that what is present to me

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is wrong and that I know it to be wrong, as when the moon appears larger on the horizon than at the zenith.133 However, it is ‘prejudice’ – an ‘inevitable prejudice,’ to be sure – to ‘assume’ that ‘the object ... is completely determinate and independent of our investigation of it.’ This is a principle of perceptual ‘faith.’ What philosophy must do, we are told – that is, what a truly ‘phenomenological’ philosophy must do – is recognize in perception its ‘activity of organization.’ So the object that is present to us in perceptual experience is an entity the organization of which is contributed by the perceiving of it: the object that is present is a product of the perceiving of it. The task of ‘phenomenology’ is that of ‘uncovering the steps by which perception hides its activity of organization and leads us to see the object as an independent entity.’134 Such an uncovering ‘shakes our perceptual faith in the independent solidity of objects.’135 Organization, structure – that is, relations – are contributed by the mind, and the object of perception is ontologically dependent on the perceiving of it. The apparent independence of the object is an illusion that perception creates in order to disguise its constructive activity from itself. For perceptual objects, esse is percipi. We are not just Berkeleyan realists, we are back to Berkeleyan idealism. The error is obvious. We perceive an organization that is not there: that is what happens when our fallible judgments actually fail. That non-existent organization is present to me. It does not follow from this that that organization, not being real, is the product of the perceptual process. That would be to assume that, after all, it had a sort of reality. All that the perceptual process has as its product is the perceiving – the perceiving which in this case is a misperceiving, one that has as its intention a state of affairs that does not exist. There is a percipi, but the object of which that percipi is said has no esse. The fact of perceptual error does not, therefore, lead us into idealism. But the fact of perceptual error does lead to other problems – or if not problems, then at least difficulties. In our sensible perceptual experiences, material objects are present to us. These perceptual experiences are imposed as it were on us, and the presence of the objects they present is inescapable. Not only do I have, unavoidably, a white sensation, but if I am sitting at my desk with a writing pad before me, unavoidably I also have the perceptual judgment that this, which is sensibly white, is a white piece of paper. And Moore finds the judgment that ‘here is a hand’ one that unavoidably imposes itself on him. And Malcolm cannot avoid the judgment that, there before him, on the desk, is an inkwell. These perceptual object

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judgments are coerced, imposed on us, and for them too our argument holds, that because we must accept them, therefore we ought to accept them – that is, such acceptance is rationally justified. What we have argued, following Hume, is that the necessity, the unavoidability of such judgments, their ‘coerciveness’ (to use James’s expression136), implies that we are rationally justified in accepting them: because we must accept them, therefore we ought to accept them. However, perceptual judgments, even when coerced, come into conflict. Certainly we can wonder about them, even when they are imposed on us. We have noted the moon on the horizon. We could have taken the straight stick that, when in water, looks bent. There are many other examples. Consider driving down a highway on a hot summer day. There, some distance in front of you, you see a sheet of water covering the road. You make the perceptual judgment that, ‘up there, ahead of us, on the road, there’s a sheet of water,’ a judgment in which you locate an expanse that is watery as the appearance of a sheet of water up there on the road. You cannot avoid this judgment. Yet you know it to be false. You have learned through experience that such perceptions are false: under the condition of looking at a highway pavement on a hot summer day, one is given the appearance of water on the road when in fact there is no water on the road. It is a visual illusion, caused, as we know, by the sunlight, the surface of the road, and the atmospheric conditions. What we know, then, is that we ought not to accept such a judgment, that its acceptance is not rationally justified. Then there is Macbeth’s dagger. Is this a dagger, which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: – I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling, as to sight: or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppresséd brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which I now draw. (Macbeth, 2.1.33–41)

There is the visual impression of a dagger, indeed, of a bloody dagger. Macbeth cannot avoid that sensible appearance; it is imposed on

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him. And also coerced is the judgment that locates this visual impression as part of a dagger: he sees a physical object, and that object which he sees is a bloody dagger. Yet he also wonders whether it is real: ‘Is this a dagger?’ The sensory appearance, what is given to him visually, he does not doubt: he has without doubt there before him an extension that has the shape a real dagger would have if viewed from where Macbeth is now, and which has the appearance that would be there if that dagger were to be bloody. But he does doubt the perceptual judgment that there before him is something that really is a dagger, the perceptual judgment that locates the coloured, shaped extension as the appearance of a bloody dagger. Macbeth even knows how he might test the visual judgment for its truth: ‘Art thou ... sensible / To feeling, as to sight’? If he can have a tangible experience of a dagger, then he has a test whether what he sees in his perceptual judgment really does exist; indeed, if he had that tangible experience, the judgment deriving from his visual impression would be taken to be verified. If what he sees is real, then were he to reach out toward it, he would experience it tangibly – that is the pattern which holds normally for material objects of the sort we encounter in space. But if there is no tangible appearance, then the perception is false – the visual appearance is there, but if there is no corresponding tangible experience when he reaches out and tries to touch it, then the object turns out not to be there after all: there is no such object. It is when coerced perceptual judgments contradict one another that the problem arises. Driving down the highway on a hot sunny day, one sees the sheet of water ahead, there at that point in the road ahead. Reaching that point, one perceives no water; where one perceived the water to be, there is bare pavement. One perceptual judgment was imposed by the world on us, then the other. The second contradicts the first. It is not possible (as a rational person) to accept both. Yet both were coerced, both were impressed on us by the world, and for that reason each is (we have argued) rationally acceptable. Clearly, we have a problem. One that is, however, easily solved. When the car we are driving arrives at the spot where, previously, we judged there to be a sheet of water, then at this point what is forced on us is the perception of the pavement as dry. But the judgment that the pavement was covered by a sheet of water is no longer imposed on us. To be sure, we remember seeing it, and we even remember the inescapable impression that the water was there. It is our rational obligation to accept what is impressed on us, when it is impressed on us – it is that

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which is inescapable – but we no longer have impressed on us the judgment we earlier had, and therefore its acceptance is no longer something that is rationally obligatory. So we are free to reject the earlier judgment – provided, that is, that we have a good reason for that rejection. But the later judgment provides us with such a reason: if the later one is true, then the earlier is false. Spinoza made much the same point: ‘If the mind had nothing before it but the winged horse [the horse that is imagined to have wings] it would contemplate the same as present, [it] would have no cause to doubt of its existence, nor any power of dissenting from its existence, unless the imagination of the winged horse were joined to an idea which contradicted it.’137 More generally, for Hume associations establish connections among ideas and impressions. ‘The vividness of the first conception,’ he writes, ‘diffuses itself along the relations and is conveyed, as by so many pipes or channels, to any idea that has any communication with the primary one’ (122). So, one in fact judges the perception of the sheet of water to be illusory even while one has that perception forced on one. Other judgments, equally coerced, overwhelm as it were the judgment. They do this through the interconnections they have with one another. The judgment that is illusory is forced upon me, and therefore rationally one accepts it as one’s fate – one does not struggle against it. It is a matter of coherence. But not simply a matter of coherence: as we have argued, the web of coherence must be hooked to reality. What is essential, then, is that initial vividness (in Hume’s terms), the force and vivacity that imposes on us a judgment or a set of judgments. Our best causal reason, hooked to the world by our perceptual experiences, is led to judge that some among those experiences are illusions. It is uncontradicted, unavoidable perceptual experience that we ought rationally to accept. If it is contradicted, then we will as rational people accept that we have to live with it, but we will also keep it in mind that it is not going to be in that picture of the world that we are using the best causal reason to construct. It is in this way that Descartes solved – at least to his satisfaction – the dream problem. Recall his problem. He is sitting at his desk, he sees the paper there on the desk, he raises his hand and reaches out. These judgments are coerced, imposed on him. This is true for Descartes himself, as similar things were for Malcolm and for Moore. Yet he has had similar experiences when asleep, in his dreams. The perceptual judgments in his dreams had similar sensory contents and similar objects: in his dreams Descartes has had the perceptual experience of being at his desk, before

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some paper, raising his arm. These perceptions have been as vivid and as coercive as any he has experienced: while he has them, they command his assent. But what those perceptual judgments present to Descartes as existing – the states of affairs that are given to him in those judgments – do not exist: those judgments are false. This is why he speaks of ‘having been misled, while asleep, by similar illusions’:138 ‘Je me ressouviens d’avoir été souvent trompé, lorsque je dormais, par de semblables illusions.’139 They are illusions, because they are false. He is remembering: so he is judging that they are illusions because they are now past; he now judges from his present position that those objects which were given to him in perception do not and did not exist, at least as they were presented as existing. But when he was having these experiences, they were imposed on him, and they were present to him as existing. So it is certainly true that what was present to him did not in fact exist – the world he was in was an illusion – and since that world was one imposed on him and one that he could not avoid, it is fair to say that to the extent he was so imposed on, he was misled – though, of course, it is also true that there was no deliberate attempt by anyone to mislead. More strongly, because these perceptual experiences so forcefully imposed themselves on him, his acceptance of those judgments was rational – that is, rational at the time; so at that time, he was deceived – deceived to the extent that he reasonably took as real the objects that were so convincingly present to him. O.K. Bouwsma compares Descartes being deceived in his dreams with a philosopher who, while walking down State Street in Chicago, is deceived by a person asking for money – he gives the guy the money and it later turns out that it was all a con and that the money was not being used for the ends proposed by the man, ends that secured the sympathy of the philosopher.140 Bouwsma is trying to bring out the differences between what happens during a dream and what happens in the awake state, and is trying to show that those differences are sufficient to cancel the sceptical implications usually found in the dream situation. The explanations of dreams are not like the explanations of deceptions. (‘He ate too much for dinner’ as opposed to ‘The guy was a skilful con man’ or even ‘Well, pavement in sunlight at noon does from a distance look wet.’141) But these differences do not cancel the fact that during the dream, the world the dreamer dreams – the world that is then present to the dreamer – is at that moment real. Those states of affairs impose themselves on him or her in such a way that he or she unavoid-

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ably accepts them – they are reality as it presents itself to him or her. The explanations that dreams receive come after the fact: but within the dream, explanations are similar to those ‘in real life’ (though their are sometimes weird differences) – walking on pavement feels much the same during a dream as it does while walking on State Street in Chicago. The question is this: Just how do we decide that the world that is given in dreams is after all, in spite of appearances, not really real? After all, dreams do not come labelled ‘dreams,’ as margarine is labelled ‘margarine’ or as copies of Dickens’s Bleak House come labelled as ‘Bleak House.’ And so Descartes says: ‘When I consider these matters carefully, I realize so clearly that there are no conclusive indications by which waking life can be distinguished from sleep.’142 The point is that we do not reject the dream world as unreal during the dream – that is something we do later, reflecting on the perceptually experienced world of the dream and the perceptual judgments through which that world was given to us. That is why the first step to solve the problem for Descartes is the selfawareness that comes with the cogito at the beginning of the second of his Meditations.143 Distinguishing dreams from reality requires reflecting on the judgments we have made – especially those made during the dream – and the judgments we are now making, and then inferring on the basis of these considerations that after all, the judgments that were imposed on us during the dream are not reasonably to be accepted. And so, at the end of the Sixth Meditation, Descartes tells us that after all, ‘I [Descartes] should reject ... that very general uncertainty about sleep, which I could not distinguish from waking life’: ‘For now I find in them a very notable difference, in that our memory can never bind and join our dreams together with one another and all with the course of our lives, as it habitually joins together what happens to us when we are awake.’144 Coherence, again, is what is crucial: How do things ‘join together’ or fail to join? This provides the criterion. The criterion for the truth of our perceptions is thus not a simple quality of the judgment, as Chisholm would have his criterion of evidence be, or even as Descartes would have his clarity and distinctness be. The criterion is the more complex one of coherence – in particular, coherence with those present sensations and perceptions that are necessary, that is, imposed on us. The criterion is as it were a shifting one; it changes in the light of the changing ways in which the world imposes itself on us. There are on the one hand framework principles: the world has

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existed for some time; material objects generally exist uninterrupted; and so on. There are also basic principles about the workings of the world: food nourishes, fire burns, and so on. All of these are inescapable: the world in which we find ourselves imposes itself on us in these ways; the world into which we are inextricably bound is a world with this structure. Then there is the basic principle by which we draw inferences about the world, the principle of induction. We find we must draw inferences and that we must draw them in this way; this is cognitively what we are, inescapably. It is unavoidable that these things bind us, so it is reasonable that we take them for granted. They are the framework of common sense, the strings of the web of coherence that tie together the things of the world and ourselves in it. But as we have seen, this web must be hooked to the world: if it ties things together, there must be things there to be tied. And we must have cognitive access to these things, these states of affairs. It is our perceptual judgments through which facts of the world are present to us. So, on the one hand there are the framework principles of common sense. And there are also, on the other hand, the perceptual judgments I now make: these, too, are imposed on me. They are, therefore, rationally acceptable. They constitute the reality that confronts one, they are the truth of being. But we do come to reject as real some things, some states of affairs, that have been perceptually present to us. This we do, for example, with the objects that are present to us when we dream. This we do, for another example, with objects like Macbeth’s dagger. If it turns out that a perceptual judgment previously imposed on us (as in dreams) or even presently imposed (as in the wetness of the pavement on the hot, sunny day) – if it turns out, regarding some judgment that is imposed on us, that it is inconsistent with our present judgments and with the framework of common sense – then that perceptual judgment, though once rationally acceptable – because of its inescapable presence, no longer is rationally acceptable: rationally it is to be rejected as false, and the object that is presented is to be reckoned as non-existent. As Descartes put it, if I have ‘made use of all my senses, my memory [for basic judgments about the perceptual world], and my understanding [for framework principles]’ – all of which is rationally acceptable because that is how people find the world and how it imposes itself on them – then ‘nothing ... which is inconsistent’ with them is rationally to be accepted.145 For reasons we have explored (in chapter 2), it is a long way for Descartes from the dream problem to its solution: he has to find himself

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confronted by the presence of God before he can accept that he is in the presence of anything else other than God and accept that this thing as presented has a structure it is presented as having. These things are present to him, with them he is unavoidably involved with the world. But though these things do inextricably bind him into the world, he cannot yet accept them as, for that reason, being cognitively a rational starting point. The necessity of the roundabout way he takes is a result of the substance philosophy he uncritically takes for granted. Berkeley extricated us from the bonds as it were of the substance philosophy, leaving us free as reasonable beings to accept our fate and take the world to be as it appears to be, to accept as our cognitive starting point those facts where the world firmly attaches itself to us, binding us inextricably to it. The point to be emphasized is that perceptual judgments that were once acceptable can cease to be so when they come into conflict with perceptual judgments that are now, from where we are now situated, those which are rationally acceptable: our cognitive starting points change. One thing we do discover is that we never confront the need to revise our judgments about our sensory experiences. We do locate them differently when we revise our view of the world, that is, when we come to reject perceptual judgments we once had about objects that were present to us. But we do not reject them: they remain as sensory experiences and retain their status as realities. During the dream, our sensory experience is located perceptually in certain ways as in objects taken to be real. Later, when we realize that we were dreaming, we reject the perceptual judgments: the objects we then took to be present we now reject as unreal on the basis of present experience. We do not, however, reject as unreal the sensory core. It is just that we locate it differently. We no longer locate it as part of a material object. Likely we don’t locate it as part of an ordinary object at all. We locate it, rather, as ‘in the mind.’ As Berkeley put it, ‘the ideas imprinted on our senses ... are called real things,’ in contrast to ‘those excited in the imagination’; the former are ‘more strong, orderly, and coherent’ than the latter which are ‘creatures of the mind’ (Principles, ¶33); we have ‘real things’ on the one hand and ‘chimeras, or ideas of our own framing’ (Principles, ¶34). Or as Descartes put it: ‘if someone suddenly appeared to me when I was awake and afterwards disappeared in the same way, as do images that I see in my sleep, so that I could not determine where he came from or where he went, it would not be without reason that I would consider it a ghost or

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a phantom produced in my brain and similar to those produced there when I sleep, rather than truly a man’ (Meditations, p. 142). The sensation is not merely ‘in the mind’ but produced by some sort of special state of the nervous system, peripherally or centrally. More generally, this is how perceptual error can be accounted for: the sensation is there, but it is not properly located as part of a perceptual object; rather, it is the simple product of some other sort of stimulus of the nervous system. So Descartes argues that the nature of man, in so far as he is composed of mind and body, cannot escape from being sometimes faulty and deceptive. For if there is some cause which produces, not in the foot, but in some other part off the nerve which is stretched from the foot to the brain, or even in the brain itself, the same effect which ordinarily occurs when the foot is injured, we will feel pain as though it were in the foot, and will naturally be deceived by the sensation. The reasons for this is that the same brain event can cause only a single sensation in the mind; and this sensation being much more frequently produced by a cause which wounds the foot by another acting in a different location, it is much more reasonable that it should always convey to the mind a pain in the foot rather than on in any other part of the body. (Ibid., p. 142)

Macbeth himself suggests that the dagger he sees is ‘a dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.’ James draws the distinction between a ‘floating conception’ or a ‘mere disconnected rarity,’ on the one hand, and ‘permanent ... objects,’ on the other. Both have ‘sensible effects,’ and these are equally real, even when they are merely, as we say, ‘chimeras’ that are ‘in the mind’ – they are the realities on which, in part at least, our knowledge of the special causes rests: ‘The effects, even though reduced to relative unreality when their causes come to view ... are yet the things on which our knowledge of the causes rests’ (Principles of Psychology, II, 301). Now, James makes the point that the rule that ‘the lively and the permanent is the real’ among our perceptual judgments may often be put aside. Our judgments about the causes of these judgments may well lead us to reject that they are presentations of the reality of the world; though the sensory content of those judgments will be retained – only now, as in Descartes and many others, as products of our brain state: ‘A conceived thing may be deemed more real than a certain sensible thing,

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if it only be intimately related to other things more vivid, permanent, or interesting than that one. Conceived molecular vibrations, e.g., are by the physicist judged more real than felt warmth, because intimately related to all those other facts of motion in the world which he has made his special study’ (ibid., II, 300–1). In the case of dreams – and illusions, such as the perceived water on the pavement of the hot highway – the perceptual judgment is rejected but the core sensory experience remains, albeit attributed to different, often physiological causes. Similarly, in general the ordinary object comes to be replaced by the scientific object, the congeries of molecules or whatever, and the latter produce changes in the brain states – changes that have as their effects the sensory events we experience, and our experiencings of those events, and the now rejected perceptual judgments locating those sensible events as parts of ordinary objects. Science leads us to such objects as molecules and gradually replaces ordinary objects with scientific objects. Our sensible experiences remain, but the objects in which we located those sensible events disappear like the objects present to us in our dreams. In a sense, as Berkeley put it, ‘what is real and substantial in Nature is banished from the world’ (Principles, ¶34). But Berkeley’s description is wrong: it is just that our reason leads us to the conclusion that the world in which our sensible realities are located is not like the world that is present to us in our perceptual judgments and that we now reject as unreal. The reason – the causal reason – that leads us to the strong world of science starts in the world of perceptual objects but ends up denying that world. But like that world, the world of science finds its cognitive roots in the sensible appearances and our experiencings of them – the appearances and the experiencing which that world of science creates as ties that bind us to it. This is an odd sort of situation, full of philosophical puzzlements. James put it this way: ‘Strange mutual dependence is this, in which the appearance needs the reality to exist, but the reality needs the appearance in order to be known!’ (Principles of Psychology, II, 301). All of this is relevant to our study of Hume. What we shall see in the next chapter is that Hume also struggles with these puzzlements, and tries to weave his way rationally through them to a fair account of the scientific view of the world.

8 Hume’s Critical Realism

We have been arguing that Hume’s account of material objects is nonsubstantialist but empiricist and objective. Many have argued that, while Hume’s account is no doubt non-substantialist and probably empiricist, it is hardly objective; there is the feeling that Hume is unavoidably subjectivist. What certainly is clear is that Hume is in some way sceptical about ordinary objects; in some sense, they do not really exist, according to his position. It is also clear that Hume is at least more sceptical than most about the objects – the atoms, or whatever – that so many scientists were unhesitatingly prepared to assert existed with such and such specific qualities, or perhaps with unknown and probably unknowable specific qualities. In all this, Hume’s view of the external world is much more tentative than that of Locke. But if it is more tentative, it is not, I think, any the less objective. In fact, I shall now argue that Hume’s view is parallel to that of Locke: in an important sense, the objects we ordinarily perceive – tables, trees, chairs, and stones – do not exist, while what exists – congeries of atoms, perhaps – we do not perceive. Furthermore, I shall argue that Hume, unlike Locke, makes this consistent with the empiricist philosophy in a way that makes it reasonable on Humean grounds to claim that we have a justified belief in the existence of the ‘external’ objects that we do not perceive. In short, what Hume does is take Locke’s non-substantialist, scientific picture of the world, square it with empiricism, and make it reasonable, and in an important way non-subjectivist. In fact, of course, we have already argued in chapter 2 that Hume is not a subjectivist, that the objects given in perception and sensation do not depend ontologically on minds and certainly not on substantial minds. And as we shall see, what Hume argues is that what brings about the fall into sub-

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jectivism and radical scepticism is precisely the substantialist account of minds that we find in Locke and Berkeley: Hume rejects substantial minds and therefore escapes the subjectivism and idealism that we find in Berkeley. This is far from the usual reading of Hume. On the usual view, he is a sceptic and a subjectivist, denying the rationality of both the view of the new realists and that of the critical realists. Thus, Maurice Mandelbaum, in an important essay,1 has defended critical realism against what he takes to be Humean scepticism. This scepticism he infers from what he calls Hume’s ‘subjectivism,’ which is the thesis that Humean impressions have the ontological status of mental entities.2 Similarly, part of the evidence that R.H. Popkin cites for his reading of Hume as a Pyrrhonist is the same suggestion that Hume accepts a radical subjectivism.3 The main text for this attribution of subjectivism to Hume occurs in the Treatise, Book I, Part iv, Section 2, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses,’ where Hume offers an argument to the effect that the sense impressions, which the vulgar takes to be continuing and independent entities, are dependent for their existence on the perceiving of them (210). I want to argue, however, that the upshot of the passage in question is not so clearly a subjectivism as Mandelbaum and Popkin suggest. In fact, I shall argue that the best reading of the passage in question shows that it aims to defend the claim that the true or correct view of the world in which we live is that of the critical realist; and also that Hume in this passage employs an argument much of a piece with that which the critical realists of the present century used to defend their claims. Section A introduces the argument I shall make. Section B discusses briefly the philosophical position of the critical realists as it was stated early in this century by those who chose that title for themselves. The next sections, C to G, follow in detail Hume’s discussion in ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses.’ Section C analyses Hume’s New Realism, or, in our terms, his Berkeleyan realism, that is, his account of what Hume himself calls the system of the vulgar. This section emphasizes how Hume uses ordinary inductive inferences to justify our ordinary awareness of perceptual objects, including their gapless continuity. But Hume also introduces, besides continuity, a continuant after the fashion of traditional substance philosophies. Section D analyses his reasons for introducing this continuant, which is, Hume acknowledges, excluded by his PA. It is concluded that these reasons, while understandable, are in the end not cogent: there is no need to introduce Hume’s fictional continuant into his account of body and of ordinary perceptual objects.

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The whole question of the nature of identity is raised and clarified, and will be available to us when we turn to persons and their identity. Section E discusses Hume’s causal inference to the world of the philosophers and argues that this inference, which leads from the ‘new realism’ of the vulgar to ‘critical realism,’ is in fact sound, provided that we take as given Hume’s account of causal reason in terms of his ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (173–5), that is, the Baconian canons of inductive reason that provide the logical structure of experimental science – rules that (as we saw above, in chapter 4) Hume had earlier in the Treatise defended as being the most reasonable norms to adopt for evaluating causal inferences. Section F discusses the system of the vulgar, the fact that it is false, the fact that inevitably we accept it, and, finally, the fact that it is not simply irrational to accept it. Section G discusses Hume’s account of the nature of the world of the philosophers, so far as we know it. Throughout sections C to G, comparisons will be made to the critical realists of the twentieth century, with the aim of showing that Hume really was trying to do what they were doing. Section H briefly summarizes the conclusions arrived at by this point. Then, in sections I to K, we examine how Hume proceeds in the remainder of Part iv of Book I of the Treatise to defend his critical realism; what we shall argue is that Hume accurately diagnoses the source of the sceptical tendencies in Locke and in the modern philosophy to lie in the doctrine that there is a substantial mind. Section L provides replies to four important criticisms of the interpretation of Hume’s account of the external world that we are offering. Then we have a brief concluding section M. A. Once Again: The Charge of Scepticism The interpretation I wish to give to ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses’ can best be grasped by contrasting it to the sceptical reading of the same passage. Popkin’s interpretation of Hume provides as always a useful point of comparison. A Pyrrhonist argues that every philosophical position can be shown to lead to contradiction and paradox. Once this is recognized, the mind will abandon philosophy and content itself with custom and habit, and in so contenting itself, it will be content. Popkin has argued that Hume is a radical Pyrrhonist who holds that both philosophy and common sense lead to paradox and contradiction. More specifically, he argues that for Hume, the mind in thinking about the world proceeds on the

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basis of two natural and inescapable principles of inference, to wit, that of the imagination and that of causal reasoning; and that the former generates beliefs in independently enduring bodies, while the latter generates beliefs to the contrary. According to Popkin, then, for Hume the mind naturally and inevitably falls into contradictions. Life, rather than reason, is the only escape from this radical scepticism. The textual basis is to be found, of course, in the whole of Part iv of Book I of the Treatise. In the conclusion (section 7) of that part, Hume mentions this ‘contradiction’ (266), and in this context he refers us back to section 2, where also he speaks (231) of a ‘direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and our senses.’ Such texts as these give strong support to Popkin’s reading. Indeed, they show that Hume did reckon that there do exist conflicts between reason and our senses. Any reading of Hume must take account of this fact. Yet from texts such as those cited, Popkin’s interpretation does not follow. Popkin’s reading holds only if Hume does not allow that the contradiction between reason and sense can be resolved in favour of one side or the other. What I shall propose is that Hume argues that causal reason is what ought to be accepted. If so, then Hume does hold that the contradiction is resoluble, and contrary to Popkin, no radical scepticism can be attributed to him, at least not on the basis of texts just mentioned. But there is indeed a tension. As we have argued in the preceding chapter, Hume is committed as strongly as Reid and Moore to a defence of common sense and to the existence of the material objects that we are given in ordinary perception – though, to be sure, he does reject a substantialist analysis of such objects: ordinary objects are as they appear to be, not as they are supposed to be behind the sensory appearances, which act as a veil to prevent us from knowing the object as it really is and not simply as it appears. Now, to make the case I have proposed would require a very detailed commentary on the Humean texts, indeed on all of Part iv of Book I and much of the rest of Book I of the Treatise. Obviously, the most that I can hope to do here is deal with but a portion of Popkin’s case; the most that I can hope to do is merely the modest task of throwing some doubt on Popkin’s interpretation. In particular, we cannot here address the issue that Hume raises in the first section of Part iv of the Treatise, the section devoted to ‘Scepticism with regard to Reason.’ But I have dealt with the issues raised by that section elsewhere, arguing that they do not imply any sort of radical scepticism.4 That is, the argument is that they do not support the Pyrrhonist reading that Popkin gives of Hume. What we

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must concentrate on here is scepticism with regard to the senses. And as Popkin argues, what is crucial here is the conflict between the natural tendency of the imagination to take the objects of perception to be real and the result of causal inference that leads us to the belief that they are not really there, that what is really there is congeries of atoms or whatever science says is there. There are two major points at which contradictions between our imagination and causal reason arise. One is the conflict between the system of the vulgar and the system of the philosophers in Part iv, Section 2. This problem is discussed in Sections C to E, below. The other is the problem that arises with what Hume calls the modern philosophy, which is discussed in Treatise, Part iv, Section 4. This is discussed in Section G, below. There is a further problem that arises with both the system of the vulgar and that of the philosophers. This is the problem of the continuing particular. That idea is certainly a notion that contradicts the fundamental principle of Hume’s philosophy – that impressions and other sensible particulars are momentary objects. However, it does not seem that Hume needs such a particular.5 The model of identity through change that he applies to personal identity would seem equally applicable to the case of body. It would seem that what is needed is an explanation of why Hume believes that such a continuing particular must be hypothesized, rather than a defence of that hypothesis. This problem, less central to our concerns, but nonetheless important, is discussed in Section D. The main thrust of the present chapter is the supposed conflict between causal reason and the imagination – between the system of the philosophers and the system of the vulgar – that is the main theme of Treatise, I, iv, 2, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses.’ The basic argument will be this: The faculty of causal reasoning and that of the imagination are different,6 and the former is, while the latter is not, capable of discipline as the self reflects on its activities. Nonetheless, in terms of their objective content, they have the same logic in the sense that they both involve inferences that go beyond immediate impressions. It follows that, relative to the cognitive interest of curiosity – relative to a concern for the truth in matters of fact – the criteria or norms for evaluating the inferences of causal reasoning are the same as those for evaluating the inferences of the imagination. From the perspective of the motive of curiosity, then, causal reason and the imagination are of a piece and are to be treated equally. The relevant standards are ‘the rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (173–4), which, as we

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argued earlier, Hume defends as the norms that ought to be followed by those moved by the motive of curiosity. These standards, I shall argue below, judge the inferences of causal reason to be justified, and those of the imagination to be unjustified – or, rather, only qualifiedly justified. Thus, Popkin is wrong in finding a conflict between causal reason and the imagination in Hume; to the contrary, Hume judges the former to be, and the latter not to be, rationally justified. A central pillar of Popkin’s case for Hume being a Pyrrhonist is thus eliminated. This conclusion amounts to the conclusion that Hume opts for the system of the philosophers rather than that of the vulgar. The system of the philosophers is, or so I shall argue, of a piece with that which was called ‘critical realism’ earlier in this century. According to this view, the real world is the world that science reveals to us, a world without secondary qualities; while the world of our ordinary perceptions does not exist. The former, for Hume, is the world to which we are led by the pursuit of causal inference; the latter, for Hume, is the world of imagination. The critical realists, such as Sellars pére, held that sound scientific inference led to this world view, that is, to what Hume called the ‘system of the philosophers.’ The position has more recently been defended by such philosophers as Bertrand Russell,7 Grover Maxwell,8 and Sellars fils.9 Hume not only describes but defends the same position – or at least, so I shall argue. The point is that, in defending that position, Hume is in good company. It is, moreover, company which shows that the term ‘sceptic’ is perhaps not to be applied so lightly to Hume as it usually is. Critical realism is a world view that is, in a way, sceptical with respect to the world of ordinary perception. But it is not simply sceptical. For it holds, as Hume – I argue, holds – that belief in what Hume calls the ‘system of the philosophers’ is rationally justified on the basis of sound causal inferences. And even with respect to the everyday world of ordinary perception, the term ‘scepticism’ is not wholly appropriate. For, after all, critical realism does not argue that one must suspend judgment about the perceptual world; rather, it holds that one is rationally justified in concluding that such a world does not exist, that all our ordinary perceptions are false. In precisely this sense, then, we may say that Hume is not a sceptic with regard to the senses. Mandelbaum has defended critical realism against what he takes to be a Humean scepticism. This scepticism he infers from his claim that Humean impressions have the ontological status of mental entities. In what follows I shall argue, as we have already argued in chapter 2, that

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in the section of the Treatise with which we are concerned, namely, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses,’ Hume explicitly denies that they have this status. Moreover, the causal argument Hume employs to justify the ‘system of the philosophers’ is, I shall argue, contrary to Mandelbaum,10 not meant to generate a claim that impressions are mind dependent in an ontological sense, but rather to generate the claim that sense impressions are not to be explained by the causal action of ordinary perceptual objects but rather by objects that lack secondary qualities. That is, the causal argument is not sceptical in intent, but aims to defend the sort of critical realism that Mandelbaum himself adopts. This interpretation makes Hume a non-sceptic only if he holds that the causal inferences that lead to the system of the philosophers are rationally justified. John Wright11 has argued that Hume is indeed a sort of critical realist in his metaphysics, but that he is a sceptic in his epistemology. This is not the place to deal with Wright’s position in detail,12 though we have, in chapter 1, looked at and rejected the position that Wright shares (which has been called the ‘new Hume’), which attributes to Hume the view that there are objective causal connections, only we can know them. In other words, the view that Hume is a causal realist but that he remains a sceptic with regard to causation (hence Wright’s characterization of Hume as a ‘sceptical realist’). With regard to this reading of Hume by Wright, suffice it here to say that I agree with others,13 and have so argued elsewhere.14 As well, of course, I have argued in chapter 4 that there is a good sense in which Hume is not a sceptic with respect to induction and causation. Beliefs arrived at by inferences in accordance with the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ are rationally justified; and therefore, contrary to Wright, critical realism is the world view that reasonable people – the philosophers – are rationally justified in adopting. B. Realism New and Critical In 1910 the new realists threw down a challenge to the idealists, who were still the dominant tendency in American philosophy.15 For the latter, realism had long been refuted and existed only as an example of something rather vulgar, and in serious thought fit only as a textbook example of an easily refuted position. An idealist was either subjective or objective, but in either case whatever existed was either a consciousness or a content of consciousness; and if the latter, then it was ontologically dependent on and inseparable from the consciousness of which it

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was the content. It was precisely this central claim of idealism that the new realism denied. The objects we think about in mathematics or the natural sciences are not mental, nor do they depend for their being on the mental.16 Consciousness is a relation, but it is an ‘external’ relation, so that contents of consciousness are not dependent in their being – not ontologically dependent – on consciousness.17 As one of the new realists put it: ‘The specific response which determines an entity to be a content of consciousness does not directly modify such entities otherwise than to endow them with content status. In other words, consciousness selects from a field of entities which it does not create.’18 Or, as another put it: ‘The realist holds that things known are not products of the knowing relation nor essentially dependent for their existence or behavior upon the relation.’19 While not taking it to be a major argument in favour of realism, but using it at least as prima facie evidence, the new realists claimed that their position ‘is the natural, instinctive belief of all men, and for this, if for no other reason, puts the burden of proof upon those who would discredit it.’20 The Critical Realists undertook just such a discrediting of the new realism, this belief that was claimed to be the ‘natural belief’ of all men. The central thrust of the critique derived from the old problem of error: What is the existential status of the objects of perceptual illusions and of other erroneous experiences? If all contents of consciousness are real, then so, too, are the contents that occur when we perceive erroneously. Thus, every object that appears to be in space is in space, and because different and mutually incompatible entities appear to occupy the same space (though not to the same observer at the same time), it follows that a perceptual object like a table or a tree at each instant is not a single entity in its own right; it, or perhaps ‘it,’ has no single position or shape that is literally its, but many positions and shapes each one of which is relative to some observer. To this, the critical realists21 objected that it was certainly not the natural belief of all men.22 For the new realists, perceptual objects are patterns of contents, or patterns of meanings (i.e., the entities meant or intended by conscious states), or, better yet, patterns of the neutral entities which, in certain contexts, become contents of consciousness; and error consists in consciousness having as its content some of these neutral entities that are not part of one of the patterned set is a perceptual object.23 Now, the critical realists agreed that there are such meanings, or data as they were also called, and that they are not ontologically dependent on consciousness. But

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while agreeing on this against the idealists, the critical realists objected to the new realists that nonetheless, ‘there are ... certain most important distinctions which need to be made clear ... which the new realism has failed to see – the distinctions, namely, between these meanings and the sensational part of our mental states on the one hand and the existential physical objects to which the meanings are attributed on the other.’24 The perceptual object itself is distinct from the neutral contents; it transcends all contents of experience,25 which, however, are referred or attributed to perceptual objects. Perception involves not just sensory, memory, and kinaesthetic images,26 nor even just non-imagistic contents, contents that are just meanings, but also ‘outer reference’ of the meaning or datum (but not the images) to an object at a point in space and time that may be far distant from us:27 ‘The datum is not accepted as alone and in itself an object awareness, but is, in a sense, projected outward, by which I mean it is unreflectively affirmed of some physical object existing in an external spatial world.’28 This position ‘makes a strong appeal to common sense in the distinction which it draws between the psychic state and the physical object of perception.’29 This appeal is counter to that of the new realists. At the same time, common sense is not unequivocal: it also comes down on the side of the new realism in identifying the meant content or datum with the perceptual object. But common sense, taken uncritically, should not have the last word, and a critical evaluation of its claims in the light of the facts of error leads directly to the distinction on which the critical realists insist – that is, the distinction between the meaning and the perceptual object to which it is attributed: Common sense may indeed give a snap judgment ... and insist on identifying the datum withe the object ... but there is no reason why common sense, which is merely primitive philosophy, should have the final decision. Various important considerations ... such as the differences between the data of different perceivers and between those of the same perceiver at different times, and the facts of error and illusion, force the serious thinker to modify considerably the snap judgment of common sense ... the facts referred to make it impossible to identify either the datum or the images which introspective analysis discovers with the independent and common object which common sense, as well as all realistic philosophy, believes in.30

Reflection on the facts of error and upon the facts of perspectival

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views that vary from individual to individual, and in one individual from time to time, thus lead to the conclusion that the external causes of perception are never given in experience.31 It is science, not either sensation or perception, that gives us knowledge of the physical world, which, in the end, is a world quite different from the world the naive new realist holds; the world of science, the world that physics discovers, is a world in which the physical objects that cause our perceptions lack secondary qualities. The physical world to which the datum is attributed in perception is very different from the world of the data. But the fact that the physical world is not like the data of perception is no reason to doubt, or be sceptical of, its existence. As Sellars père once put it: Is actual scientific knowledge an attempt to achieve images which faithfully copy the physical world? Does not this knowledge consist, instead, of propositions which claim to give tested knowledge about the physical world? I want the reader to get clearly in mind the difference of outlook which this suggestion involves. It involves a relinquishment of all attempts to picture the physical world. Science offers us measurements of things and statements of their properties, i.e., their effect upon us and other things, and of their structure; but it unconsciously swings ever more completely away from the assumption that physical things are open to our inspection or that substitute copies are open to our inspection.32

A series of eight propositions characterizes critical realism:33 1 Perceptual data and other contents of consciousness are not ontologically dependent on consciousness; but 2 Consciousness of contents is caused by ‘physical’ objects, and 3 In perception the contents of consciousness are referred to or attributed to the ‘physical’ objects that cause perceptions; 4 ‘Physical’ things exist ontologically and causally independently of being known; 5 They may be the objects of our perceptions, but they are never our mental contents; 6 They differ in some respects from the quality groups of the contents of our perception, e.g., in not possessing the secondary qualities that we find in the contents of our perceptions; 7 They stand in such causal relations to our perceptions that it is possible for science to investigate some of these relations and some of the

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relations among physical things, and thus to gain trustworthy knowledge concerning laws of their action; but 8 As for any exhaustive knowledge of the inner and ultimate nature of these non-human entities, we remain ignorant, though the progress of science may replace some of this ignorance by knowledge. The critical realists tended, like so many others, to view Hume as an opponent who defended subjectivism and thus aligned himself on the side of the idealists whom the realists, new and critical, aimed to refute. Thus, Sellars père tells us that, ‘Hume, and in our own day, F.H. Bradley, have ... driven home to philosophy the psychical character of everything which is directly present in the field of experience.’34 But to the contrary, what I now want to argue is that, given the qualifications we have noted, Hume is a critical realist in the sense of the eight propositions just presented. C. Hume’s New Realism: The System of the Vulgar; or, Hume’s Berkeleyan Realism Let us begin by turning once again to what Hume calls the system of the vulgar.35 This is the world of ordinary perceptual experience – devoid, of course, of substances of the traditional sort. As we have seen, Hume exorcised substances by appeal to a Principle of Acquaintance (PA). The world of the vulgar consists, rather, of sensible particulars gathered into kinds according to the laws (i.e., patterns) of regularity that they exemplify. This world is, in effect, the world of the new realists: in both cases the philosopher accepts the reality of the world as it appears to be, the appearances are what is real in the world. In the system of the vulgar, the world consists of objects such as green trees, brown chairs, and so on, construed as patterns of sensible particulars.36 Some of these sensible particulars are sensed – these are the impressions we have – but most are not given in sense experience. When we make a perceptual judgment – say, that this is a green tree – the judgment is in one way about an impression, and (assuming that the judgment is true) that judgment is to the effect that this impression is part of a class of sensible particulars that exemplify the pattern of being a green tree. The system of the vulgar thus includes what Price once called a selective theory of perception:37 perception selects one sensible particular from a pattern as that to which it refers.38 For the perceived pattern to be a green tree, there must be a systematic subpattern of green partic-

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ulars; and to say that it is a tree is to refer to particulars beyond the one that is given, where the existence of those unsensed particulars is entailed by the laws that define the tree pattern. Thus, our perceptual judgments, like inductive judgments, go beyond immediate experience; and moreover, they introduce unsensed but sensible particulars that resemble sensed particulars or impressions in such respects as colour. Wolterstorff39 has suggested, as an argument againt the bundle account of ordinary things, that there are many qualities and things presented and that these can be bundled in a wide variety of ways. Among these bundles are many ‘that it would be patently absurd to identify with external objects’: ‘Hence the great looming challenge to the Humean phenomenalist has always been to pick out, from among all the collections of sense data, those about which he wants to say, These are the physical objects.’40 Consider two squares – call then ‘a’ and ‘b’ – and a circle – call it ‘c.’ We have the collections {a}, {b}, {c}, {a, b}, {b, c}, {a, c}, and {a, b c}. But we have only one collection or bundle that is a ‘square on circle’ bundle. Similarly for sets of sense data or impressions. There are of course many bundles or mere sets of these things, most of which are not physical objects. Only those bundles which are structured in certain ways are physical objects. Wolterstorff suggests that here is a problem for the those – the ‘phenomenalists’ – who defend the bundle account. This is the problem of picking out those bundles which are material objects. This cannot be done, he claims: ‘The challenge has never been met.’41 But of course it has been met: those bundles are physical objects if the objects in the bundles satisfy the relations that make the bundle into a physical object. The relevant relations are there in the world, we identify them in perception. How exactly it is that we identify some bundles as oak trees, others as rainbows, others as ink stands, and still others as human hands? We do not know: that is for science to discover. But the different bundling relations are there, in the world: we see them and can in fact identify them. Wolterstorff’s supposed challenge is met all the time: we notice the relevant relational structures and identify and distinguish among them. That is what perception does for us. Wolterstorff suggests a further problem. ‘It is impossible,’ he points out, ‘that a set should have any other members than those it does have – on pain of no longer being that set.’ However, ‘an external object can always have had different perceptible qualia from those it has. If it’s green, it might have been blue and so on.’42 Berkeley’s claim was that ordinary things are bundle of qualities, and

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a

b

c j = a on c

that predication is understood in terms of the part–whole relation and not on the model of a quality inhering in a substance. Wolterstorff’s idea is that if ‘j’ denotes a physical object whole consisting of a and c, then the statement that ‘j is a’ is analytic, true by definition, as it were, of the whole j. We can think in terms of our little diagram. We let ‘j’ denote the whole of which a and c are parts, where those parts are structured by the ‘square on a circle’ relation. The circle c might have been with the square b, standing in that relation to it, but that is not the way our little universe actually is, it is only a might-have-been. So, as Wolterstorff says, j is a whole, defined by the togetherness of a and c, which would make it true to say that the statement ‘j is a’ is in a way analytic. That will hold of any bundle account of things: if predication is part–whole, then every predication will be as it were analytic. But understood as a genuine statement about a material object, the statement that ‘j is a’ is not analytic; it is, rather, contingent: it is ‘j is a’ that is true, but it might have been true that ‘j is b.’ This is so. But the relevant point is that j is what it is through its being a fact that it is ‘a is with b’ that is true and ‘b is with c’ that is false. Wolterstorff’s argument is frivolous: the bundle view of physical objects does not preclude contingency among the qualities a thing has. Wolterstorff has another argument. The bundle view takes perception to be in effect inference. Though not consciously an inductive inference, that is its logical structure: in sensation we are conscious of the sensory appearance of an object; in perception we go beyond sensation and locate the appearance as part of a physical object (or whatever), an object that has parts not given in the sensory awareness. Wolterstorff argues that the bundle account is here committed to an absurdity: I proprioceptively perceive my leg’s being bent at the knee; and that, so it

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is said [by the bundle theorist], I’m introspectively aware of having a sense datum that is a simulacrum of that quale in my leg. The proposal seems just wacky!’43 To the contrary, it seems right on: one does have given to one in sensation proprioceptive feelings about the position of one’s leg – as well as visual and tactile sensations; and one perceives one’s leg.44 But that perception is ampliative: like all perception, it goes beyond the sensory experience to locate what is experienced as part of a physical object – to wit, one’s leg as a three-dimensional object that is ‘to be met with in space,’ with many attributes that are not present to me at that point in my sensory experience. The visual and tactile appearances are related to the public aspects of one’s leg, they are appearances of the same sort as those which others can have in their tactile and visual experience. But my leg, or Moore’s hand, is not an inkwell. For some of the qualities that are given to me in my sensory experience, those deriving from the proprioceptive faculty, are within the skin and are private to my own experience. When I perceive my leg, I perceive it from the outside, just as I perceive the inkwell from the outside is the same that others perceive it. But I also perceive it from the inside, in a way that others do not perceive it and cannot experience it. I feel a pain and locate it inside my leg; it is a pain in my ankle. Similarly, I have in my experience proprioceptive sensory appearances, and these I locate in my perception as the positioning of my leg. There is nothing wacky in this. Or so it seems to me. There is little doubt that we all experience, to some extent, varying with the person, proprioceptive imagery. The associationist notion that an image of a lion can cause proprioceptive images of running away seems perfectly reasonable. Certainly, proprioception, as our postural sense, yields a constant flow of information about the position of the body’s parts at every waking moment. Proprioceptors, which are found in muscles and around joints, provide the nervous system with an image of the human figure from the inside; by this means, the person as something embodied or incarnate is able to anticipate and coordinate movement. Upon this figure, which originates in the muscle tissue itself, there is superimposed as it were an inner body image that is to a certain extent separate from the physical reality of my body and from the physiological mechanisms of the peripheral and central nervous systems from which it derives. This inner image can give rise to the phenomenon of the ‘phantom limb’: that is, the (mis)perception that an amputated arm or leg is still attached to the body – where at times there are given in experience sensations of pleasure or pain that are located in percep-

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tion in the phantom limb. And certainly, many often use imagery – proprioceptive imagery – in preparation for physical action, for throwing a baseball, for example. Thus, the athlete proprioceptively imagines what it will be like to throw a ball (when forming as it were a contraryto-fact or subjunctive concept of such an event), to move his or her body rhythmically. Or, to use another example, we might as students constructing proofs in logic create within ourselves for when we need it the capacity to move our bodies – that is, mainly our fingers – to the rhythm that must be followed in the writing down of a certain pattern of logical inference such as modus tollens or hypothetical syllogism. Hume, of course, did not think along these lines at all. He could not have done so: people did not really discover the proprioceptive faculty until the nineteenth century. But contrary to Wolterstorff, there is nothing about the proprioceptive sense that need cause either him or the bundle account of physical things any real difficulty. Wolterstorff comes at the same sort of point, however, from another angle. Again, the target is Hume and the Humean account of our perceptions of objects – he attempts, again, to show that there are facts about the world that are inconsistent with that account of perception, certain obvious facts that only someone setting out to defend a ‘wacky’ point of view (e.g., Hume) would overlook. Wolterstorff’s Hume is in many respects the Hume described by Reid. We are not directly aware of external things but only of ‘reflective images,’ where these images represent external objects to us the way a colour photograph of a mountain represents that mountain to us, or (to use Wolterstorff’s example) in the way an image of a mountain reflected in a lake represents the mountain.45 There is an isomorphism in the strong sense of a quality-for-quality, shape-for-shape correspondence. As Wolterstorff puts it: ‘The reflective image of a mountain in a lake really does have a whiteness and a specific contour; and it’s appropriate to infer that the mountain has a colour like that of the image’s whiteness and a contour like that image’s contour.’46 Now, this is misleading about Hume’s account of ordinary objects in the world of the vulgar and of our perception of them and of our direct experience of sensible parts of these objects. Thus, in our perception of a coin, what we perceive is a coin and that it is a round coin. We do have an image, but in the image we are presented with an elliptical shape. The relation between the shape given to us in our visual experience and the shape attributed to the object perceived is more complicated than the sort of one–one isomorphism laid out by Wolterstorff. So also for colour. I perceive a piece

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of white paper even when it is in green light, and what I sense visually is an expanse that is green. Hume is, of course, aware of these points. Wolterstorff also denies that ‘reflective images’ have any sort of external existence: they are, he suggests, in the mind, ontologically dependent on it.47 This, too, is of course contrary to Hume’s actual views: Hume insists that there is nothing logically or ontologically about impressions that precludes their existing outside the mind. Hume himself once commented on Reid’s account of perception – specifically, on Reid’s claim that sensations are states of feeling had by the mind rather than images that have qualities of the very same sort that can be attributed to the material objects, the bodies, that we perceive.48 If Reid were correct, Hume suggested, we should never have thought, as the vulgar clearly think, that ‘the sensible Qualities of Heat, Smell, Sound, & probably Colour’ are ‘really in the Bodies’ – that is, are really qualities of external objects.49 Reid actually accepted this point, arguing that when ordinary people attributed a quality to an object, it was not the sensory quality they were experiencing but rather an external cause of that feeling. But this is absurd: ‘Philosophy scarce ever advances a greater Paradox,’ Hume indicates, ‘in the Eyes of the People, than when it affirms that Snow is neither cold nor white: Fire hot nor red.’50 Hume’s system of the vulgar does not share with Reid the framework of representationalism, nor is it any sort of phenoemnalism: in Hume’s system of the vulgar, things are as they sensibly appear to us. Wolterstorff’s Hume is not the real Hume. Nonetheless, Wolterstorff’s point is worth looking at as we attempt our defence of the Humean account of the external world and (to a certain degree) the system of the vulgar. Wolterstorff’s basic thought (which he shares with Reid) is that the ‘way of ideas’ of which it was supposed Hume was the culmination leads Hume to a sort of phenomenalism. And he (Wolterstorff) thinks that there is a knock-down argument against phenomenalism: ‘Lots of external objects are hard, perceptibly so; among their perceptible qualia are their hardnesses. But nowhere within the realm of sense data is there a hardness to be discovered – hence, none that resembles the hardness of my desk in being a hardness.’ For ‘sense data, if there are such entities, aren’t the sort of things that could be hard.’ The view that we could come to know hardness through ‘reflective images’ is, according to Wolterstorff, ‘preposterous’ and ‘wacky.’51 But Hume is committed to that view. So much the worse for Hume. Here is Wolterstorff’s argument: ‘Neither the experience [that I have

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when I touch a hard body] as a whole nor any ingredient therein has the property of being hard. There is no such quality as the sensory experience’s hardness – none such as the sense datum’s hardness. There couldn’t be. Sense data, if there are such entities, aren’t the sorts of things that could be hard. There couldn’t possibly be a quality present in the sense datum [that] resembles the hardness of the object in that both are hardnesses.’52 But there is no argument here, just assertion – we are given ‘sense data can’t be hard,’ and that’s it.53 But why couldn’t Hume have a sensation or feeling of hardness? He has impressions of space, both tangible and visual, deriving from ‘two senses, the sight and touch’ (Treatise, p. 38). I let my hand drop into a pail of water. Visually, my sense experience is that of my hand passing through the surface of the water (and of slightly changing shape, owing to refraction – the old ‘bent stick’). Tactually, I experience no resistance, or at least only a very little when my hand enters the water. This is quite different from when I try to pass my hand through the surface of the wood desk at which I am working. Visually, my hand remains on the surface. Tactually, my hand does not enter the wood of the desk. I push ... there are feelings of muscular effort ... and then a sense that the object resists my attempt at penetration. The desk is solid, the water isn’t. And I can experience the solidity of the one and the lack of solidity of the other. Hume observes: ‘A man, who has the palsey in the one hand, has as perfect an idea of impenetrability, when he observes that hand to be supported by the table, as when he feels the same table with the other hand’ (230). Solidity, impenetrability, can, in other words, be seen as well as felt. Wolterstorff claims that no mere ‘reflective image’ of the mountain could be hard. Why not? It is true that the image in the lake to which the reflective mental image is compared is shimmering, and vibrates with the motion of the water, and I can see that the image, like the water in which it appears, is penetrable. In fact, in that respect the image in the water fails to represent accurately the mountain – the isomorphism is after all not one–one. The idea of hardness or impenetrability or solidity is a matter of how the visual and tactile parts of an extended thing remain disposed to one another after an impact or an attempt to penetrate: during such an attempt the parts remain the same relative to one another. Perhaps part of my idea is the feelings of resistance consequent on my pressing, perhaps even those feelings of pressure that we experience when we push. Certainly, the idea of hardness or solidity is, in contrast to whiteness, not a simple quality. Nor, indeed, is our ‘reflec-

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tive image’ of the mountain a simple idea. To the contrary, it too is complex, an idea that has among its parts visual and tactile parts disposed relative to one another in various ways. There is no reason to think, then, as Wolterstorff supposes, that one cannot have in one’s ‘reflective image’ of the mountain (i.e., one’s idea of the mountain), as part of that complex, those arrangements or dispositions – including the idea of the arrangements of parts being unchanging under pressure – which constitute our idea of solidity or hardness. One might perhaps add here the qualifications that must be made about the notion of a ‘part’ in a Humean idea, recalling the distinction between metaphysical parts and real or integrant parts that we need (as we saw in chapter 1) when we place some of Hume’s discussions in the context of a good understanding of associationist psychology. Be that as it may, the point we need here is the simple one, that Hume clearly has the resources in his account of ideas to meet Wolterstorff’s challenge. It is no doubt true that, as Wolterstorff says, ‘though mountains are hard, reflective images of mountains in lakes are not,’54 but a Humean idea is not a reflective image in a lake, and the idea of a mountain can certainly be the idea of a mountain that has the quality of being hard. Wolterstorff has therefore not made the case that the Humeam system of the vulgar is ‘wacky’ or ‘preposterous.’ His idea was that, in a world of sense impressions, one could have no hardness, no solidity. But we have seen that Hume can very well account for our idea of hardness and show how it has its archetype in the world we know by sense. We have been given no reason to reject Hume’s account of the world of material objects as a world of sensible appearances. His account of the world of material things in new realist terms – or, what amounts to the same, in Berkeleyan realist terms – holds good. There are still problems, however. Hume’s world consists of sensible appearances, many of them sensed, but many unsensed. The question yet to be answered is this: What justifies the introduction of the unsensed particulars? This question presupposes that such a move can, contrary to the idealists, be justified. As in the case of the new and critical realists both, it is necessary that the sensible particulars not be ontologically dependent on consciousness or on the sensing of them. As a consequence, Hume is careful to point out that the idea of an unsensed sensible particular is not self-contradictory, nor is it ontologically impossible (207), referring us ahead here to his discussion of the self (206n), as well as to the bundle account, which occurs later in Part iv, Section 6.

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There is another feature of the new realism that deserves comment, a point where Hume and the new realists disagree. The new realists proposed to analyse the intentionality of awareness as a relation of the same sort as ordinary relations such as ‘kicks.’ Such an analysis construes relations as ‘external.’ On such an account of relations, the kicker can exist apart from kicking (though not apart from being a kicker); there is no necessary connection between the kicker and the kickee such that the kickee depends for its existence on it standing in the relation of being kicked. It is this feature that prevents objects from falling into the mind of the knower. For on this construal, the object of awareness can without contradiction exist unperceived. This means that idealism of the sort defended by Berkeley is wrong: contrary to Berkeley, the objects of awareness can exist unperceived, their esse is not percipi. But construing the intentionality of awareness as an ordinary relation generates its own problems. For it was precisely this that led to the problems regarding error, those consequences to which the critical realists objected. If one’s awareness is erroneous, or if the belief is false, then the object of that awareness or that belief does not exist. But if the awareness or the belief has this intention by virtue of standing in an ordinary relation like kicking, then that intention must after all exist: an ordinary relation does not obtain unless both relata exist. If intentionality is construed as an ordinary relation, then all objects of awareness must exist, even those which do not exist – to put the point paradoxically. This is enough to condemn such an analysis of intentionality. Hume does not propose such an analysis. On his view, at least as we have reconstructed it in chapter 2, it is language that brings about the connection between the mental act which has the object and the object of that state. But those connections allow the mind, the mental act, to be connected – or, perhaps, ‘connected’ – to objects that do not exist. Hume thus agrees with the new realists on the bundle analysis of ordinary things. He also agrees with the new realists on the denial of idealism and the claim that the objects of awareness are ontologically dependent on the knowing mind. At the same time, though, Hume disagrees – or is best construed as disagreeing – with them regarding the nature of intentionality: for Hume the connection between a thought and its object is not a relation among relations; rather, it is brought about by the rules and conventions of language. For both Hume and the new realists there are unsensed parts to the ordinary objects we perceive. The analysis of thought, or intentionality, allows that it is possible for there to be unsensed sensa. But that does not

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by itself provide a reason for thinking that such entities do really exist: from the fact that such entities can exist, it does not follow that they do, and to hold that they do requires some sort of inference from what is experienced to what is not experienced. Descartes and Malebranche, of course, tried to provide such reasons. But those reasons have turned out to be unacceptable, grand though those metaphysical constructions may be. Like these philosophers, Hume does offer reasons to think that there are unexperienced entities, that the unsensed parts of ordinary objects really do exist. But unlike Descartes and Malebranche, he is not going to try to offer a metaphysical and a priori or a theological proof that body exists – that is, that unsensed particulars exist; rather, he is going to concern himself only with the causes of this belief – that is, the natural causes: ‘We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ’tis vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings’ (187; his italics). This resolution to avoid ordinary standard philosophical proofs of the external world in favour of simply locating the natural causes of our beliefs that unsensed entities exist should not, however, be taken as support for a sceptical reading, since the causes of belief may well include good reasons. For among the natural causes of belief may very well be reasoning in accord with the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (173; 132ff.). The cause of belief in body may generally be characterized as the imagination (198), but imagination includes as a species causal inference (Def. 2, 172, cf. 198), so that the causes of our belief in body can include more or less justified reasonings about cause and effect. Now, Hume has pointed out earlier that causal inference operating in an indirect and oblique manner in accord with the rules by which to judge of causes can lead to the reasonable belief in unobserved entities. He uses the example (with which we are by now familiar) of a watch that sometimes works when wound, and sometimes does not. The vulgar attribute this difference to chance, but the philosopher – the person who reasons in terms of causes and effects – will not so believe: he or she will believe that there is a cause for the difference in behaviour and that such a cause can be located (132f.). The person who accepts the principle that like effects have like causes will pursue the issue in order to locate the cause that is actually present. This might, for example, turn out to be a speck of dust (ibid.). The inference to the presence of a cause follows from the sixth of the

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rules ‘by which to judge of causes,’ which itself depends on the fourth rule, the rule that like causes have like effects, and conversely. This fourth rule, it soon becomes clear, includes within its logic the rule that every event has a cause. The sixth rule is this: that ‘where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them’ (274). This is Mill’s Method of Difference for the discovery of sufficient conditions. One can infer that the common condition is in fact the cause only if one makes two assumptions, those assumptions which later philosophers have called the Principle of Determinism (‘there is a cause’) and the Principle of Limited Variety (‘the cause is among these possibilities’). Hume recognizes this, for he tells us that this rule, the sixth, ‘hangs upon this [the fourth rule]’ (174). Thus the inference embodied in the sixth rule, according to Hume, depends for its conclusion on the rule that like causes have like effects. But the inference depends on the principle that there is a cause, so this feature must be included, as Hume sees it, in the principle stated in rule four, that like causes have like effects. The reasoning that there is a cause present which accounts for the different effects in the wound watch is not direct, by means of a habit formed through the action of the simple mechanism of association. Rather, the inference proceeds by means of the fourth rule, which is a law about laws. Other habits of inference directly formed by association lead the mind to locate a principle that governs the habits so formed – namely, the principle that like effects have like causes. This becomes a habit for as it were forming habits. As Hume puts it: ‘Our reasonings of this kind arise not directly from the habit, but in an oblique manner’ (133). [We must keep this language in mind: it clearly indicates reasoning that proceeds in terms of the rules by which to judge of causes and in terms of rule four, ‘like causes have like effects’ – in particular, where the latter is understood to carry the implication that for every event there is a cause.] Hume refers to this sort of reasoning when it comes to our filling in the gaps in series of impressions that we have. We regularly experience events occurring in a sequence. For example, we view a fire before us, and there is a regular pattern: one impression of the fire is succeeded by another, which is succeeded by another, and so on. But sometimes this sequence is interrupted. The porter knocks on the door, and we turn to talk to him. The impressions of the fire cease while we talk to the porter. But they resume when we turn back to face the fire. The gap contradicts our previous experience that there are no gaps in the history of the fire. These gaps ‘are contradictions to common experience, and may be

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regarded as objections to those maxims, which we form concerning the connexions of causes and effects’ (196). The inference that fills in the gaps cannot be a direct inference from habit, for the obvious reason that insofar as there is any habit formed, it would be that gaps habitually follow various impressions. But far from expecting a gap, we go out of our way to deny that such a gap exists. The usual reading is that we disguise the gap from ourselves by resorting to our imagination to as it were fill in the gap. But to the contrary, this reading is wrong: we do fill in the gap, but that filling in by the imagination is one that conforms to Hume’s rules of causal inference. The inference is therefore one that is rationally justified. The point is that it is like the wound watch which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t – the pattern of the fire is sometimes non-gappy and is sometimes gappy. The inference that fills in the gap is akin to the inferences in the case of the watch. Specifically, of course, the inference is not one of direct causal reasoning but of a more complicated form: ‘Tho’ this conclusion from the coherence of appearances may seem to be of the same nature with our reasonings concerning causes and effects; as being deriv’d from custom, and regulated by past experience; we shall find upon examination, that they are at bottom considerably different from each other, and that this inference arises from the understanding, and from custom in an indirect and oblique manner’ (197). ‘Indirect and oblique’: precisely the characterization that Hume gives for the reasoning that leads one to the supposition that there is a cause – an unsensed cause – for the watch sometimes working and sometimes not working. In fact, Hume is signalling here that the inference has that same form. Nor is Hume wrong: it is easy to see how the inference that fills in the gaps proceeds – indirectly and obliquely – in terms of the rules by which to judge of causes and effects. The model he presents goes, as we have seen, schematically something like this: Objectively we have a series of sensible particulars a1, b1,c1, with qualities F, G, H: (1)

Fa1, Ra1b1, Gb1, Rb1c1, Hc1

where ‘R’ represents that these particulars are in a continuous series. The pattern of properties and relations is continued in other series that we observe:

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(2) (3)

Fa2, Ra2b2, Gb2, Rb2c2, Hc2 Fa3, Ra3b3, Gb3, Rb3c3, Hc3

But we now observe a ‘gappy’ series of two particulars a4 and c4, which have the F and H properties, but for which there is no intervening particular of sort G: (4)

Fa4 .......... Hc4

The understanding ‘fills in’ the ‘gap’ by forming the idea of a particular that is G and that is R-ed by a4. Let us call this particular, of which we have no impression, only an idea, E. Then the series (4) as reconstructed by the mind is (5)

Fa4, Ra4E, GE, REc4, Hc4

(1), (2), and (3) are the ‘other instances’ that have ‘accustomed’ me to expect a G to be in a continuous series with an F and an H; this custom or habit leads me to attribute the same continuity or coherence to the ‘gappy’ pattern (4); and the result is (5), which now fits the pattern of (1)–(3). The most basic causal inferences are habits that the mind has become accustomed to make as a consequence of observed constant conjunctions (170), and the inferences by which the understanding fills in gaps in perceptual series are similar to this: in both cases they are a matter of custom controlled by past experience (197). Yet there is an important difference. In the perceptual case, the mind makes a customary inference based on (1)–(3) when it comes to observe (4). Yet in (4) there is a gap. This falsifies the causal inference that in every such series there is a G between the F and the H. Gappy series cannot support customary inferences; in fact, they imply that those inferences should be rejected. Nonetheless, instead of allowing (4) to falsify the inference, we to the contrary wish to maintain the inference and judge that our observations are at fault, that the series really is complete. We are, therefore, ‘involv’d in a kind of contradiction’ (199). The idea E is not a simple idea derived from an impression. It is a complex abstract idea constructed by us to refer to the unsensed particular. In Russell’s terms, it is a definite description. That is, as Hume says, we feign these ideas (208) and suppose them to exist (i.e., refer [199]), which supposition is transformed into belief by the force of memory of past regularities in experience (208).

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[note: To ‘feign’ is used here in the sense of ‘create’ and not in the sense of ‘create fictions’; something feigned may well be true. Hobbes uses ‘feign’ in a similar sense when he remarks that ‘fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, religion: not allowed, superstition. And when the power imagined, is truly as we imagine, true religion.’55 Just as there is no sceptical implication in Hobbes’s use of ‘feign’ so, I suggest, there is no sceptical implication in Hume's use of that word:56 there is nothing wrong in saying that the feigning is justifiably converted into belief.] So, to recall, we are involved in a ‘sort of contradiction.’ On the one hand, by sense we ascertain that there is a gap; while on the other hand, we feel that it is not the case that there is a gap – a feeling which we satisfy by as it were disguising that gap from ourselves through our imagination supposing there to be an unsensed impression to be there occupying the apparent gap. Hume wrote: ‘In order to free ourselves from this difficulty, we disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, or rather remove it entirely, by supposing that these interrupted perceptions are connected by a real existence, of which we are insensible’ (199). Thus, instead of letting (4) falsify the inference based on the observational data of series (1)–(3), we to the contrary maintain the inference and judge that our observations are at fault, that the series really is complete only we don’t know it, and that there is in fact a G, though we have not observed it, between the F and the H of (4): from (1)–(3), we conclude by the principle that ‘like causes have like effects’ that the F in (4) is followed by a G, and also conclude by the principle that ‘like effects have like causes’ that the H in (4) is preceded by a G. That is, we are led to the conclusion that there is a particular between the F and the H and that it is a G. We may refer to this particular that is there but is unsensed by the term (idea) ‘E.’ This E is a G and is situated between the F and the H. It is something that we suppose to be there. This idea of E of this gap-filling particular constitutes the ‘idea of continu’d existence.’ [note: It is important here to note is that there is no reason to construe the gap-filling particular on the model of traditional substances as a continuant. Many have thought otherwise; of this, more in the next section.] The mind thus fills in the gaps in its perceptions by making the ‘sup-

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position’ (199) that there are unsensed particulars. Such a ‘supposition’ is an existential hypothesis that has not been verified by observation. It is, however, a supposition or hypothesis that is believed (199), and, indeed, is made worthy of belief by the customary inferences derived from past experiences (199). Since it is an existential hypothesis, it is not falsified by our failure to observe the entity it asserts to be there. The logic is the same as with regard to the existential claim that ‘there are black swans’: this is not falsified by a failure to find black swans. It may be – and in fact in this case turned out to be – that one had not found any of the things asserted to exist because one had not looked in the right place. Similarly with regard to the fire. The existential hypothesis ‘GE’ is not falsified by a failure to notice the G that it asserts to be there. Failure to observe the G does not falsify the hypothesis. It may be that one has simply not looked in the right place: one did not locate the fire stage G because one had not as it were searched in the right place at the right time. In fact, as Hume’s story goes, one was not looking at the right place at the right time: one was looking at the fire when one saw the F stage and when one saw the H stage, but between seeing those stages one was not looking at the fire – the porter had entered the room at that moment, and had directed one’s attention momentarily in his direction rather than at the fire, to which one had been attending previously and to which one’s attention returned directly. So, not looking at the fire, one did not notice the G stage, which, nonetheless, one has good reason to suppose is there: after all, like causes have like effects and like effects have like causes. The inference that fills the gap is indeed based on custom, as are all inductive or causal inferences in Hume. But the inference that fills the gap cannot be the direct result of custom; rather, it arises ‘from the understanding, and from custom in an indirect and oblique manner’ (197; italics added), by way of rule four, that ‘like causes have like effects,’ which is a law about laws, a habit about forming habits. Hume argues, as we by now know, that such inferences are familiar: even as the inferences of the artisan to unobserved particulars are justified by their conformity to the rules by which to judge of causes and effects, so the inferences to unobserved particulars in the series of perceptions that we experience are also rationally justified by the rules by which to judge of causes and effects. In fact the perceptual inferences, and such inferences as those involved in the watch example, thus have essentially the same logical form, and are described by Hume in exactly the same terms, as ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique.’

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But having said this, we must also note that we must distinguish perception from causal inference. To be sure, objectively their content is the same – namely, patterns of inference that go beyond the data and that infer the future and the unobserved from present and past sense experience. Since the two are objectively the same, the same rules may be used to evaluate both. On the other hand, subjectively perception and causal inference are very different. Both are movements of the imagination (198), but causal inferences are more a matter of reflective thought than are our ordinary perceptual judgments, which are more a matter of instinctive response. Our ordinary experience, in which we fill in the gaps between our impressions, is primarily a function of memory and the inertia of thought moving in a pattern – in this case, the pattern of the object the initial part of which we have observed (198, 204, 208). Thus, causal inference and perceptual judgment are two different modes of association. Nonetheless, that they are different does not imply that causal reasoning cannot show that our perceptual judgments are justified; that is, it does not follow that one cannot use what Hume has argued to be the best norms for inductive inference – namely, the rules by which to judge of causes and effects – to judge that our perceptual judgments, which are also objectively inductive inferences, are justified. The significant difference between our perceptual awareness of the world and our conscious causal inferences lies in the fact that the latter are a matter of reflective inference: they are arrived at deliberately. Our perceptual judgments, in contrast, are not similarly subject to reflective control: they are, to the contrary, for the most part inescapable – our perceptions enter the soul with ‘force and violence’ (1). To say that our perceptual judgments are inescapable is to say that they are necessary, unavoidable. From that it follows, as we saw in the preceding chapter, that it is reasonable to accept them. It is precisely here that we have a conflict between the world of the vulgar, the world given to us in our perceptual experience, on the one hand, and the world of the critical realists, on the other. For if critical realism is accepted, then our perceptual judgments are in fact all false. There is thus a tension between the system of the vulgar, Hume’s Berkeleyan world, on the one hand, and the world of the philosophers, Hume’s critical realism, on the other. To put it another way, there is a tension between our natural perceptual beliefs, the beliefs in objects such as coloured trees, that we inevitably have, on the one hand, and our causal reason, on the other, which argues that those perceptual

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beliefs are in fact all false. It is this tension that is exploited by those who, like Popkin, argue that Hume is a sceptic. We shall return to this conflict in due course. But before we do that, there is another feature of Hume’s account of our perception of material objects, of bodies, to which we must attend. D. Continuity, Continuants, and Identity There is, in Hume’s discussion of the continuity of the perceptual object, another feature with which we must come to grips. This, too, contributes to the argument that Hume is a sceptic. Now, as we have just noted, on the sceptical reading of Hume as developed by such commentators as Popkin, we have, on the one hand, reason denying the truth of many of the judgments that we normally make; while we also have, on the other hand, nature by an unavoidable necessity moving us to make these judgments, the necessity of nature challenging the necessity of reason; and consequently, both taken together requiring the rational response of suspending all judgment. What we have been trying to argue, however, is that there is a positive thrust to Hume’s philosophy that requires one to read him, not merely as a negative sceptic, but as defending the rationality of empirical science, including the science of man (human being), of history, and of common sense, as well as – most importantly for what we are about – the science which holds that the real object is in fact radically different from the objects that the system of the vulgar takes to be in the world. This reading, like Popkin’s, also emphasizes Hume’s naturalism – that is, the notion that by nature we must unavoidably have certain beliefs. On this reading also, it is nature that provides the basic response to scepticism. Yet scepticism is, on this alternative, not inevitable, as it is on Popkin’s reading – at least that is what we are proposing to argue. For what this alternative argues is that there is an important sense in which empirical or causal reason does not come into conflict with our natural beliefs – or rather and more accurately, there is no conflict, since causal reason rather than nature is the standard to which the reasonable person acquiesces. Since reason, on this view, is not challenged by nature, the sceptical suspension of judgment is not forced upon one, and we are left free to argue not only for the rationality of certain beliefs but also for empirical or causal reason – in contrast to, say, superstition – providing the standard for the rationality of our beliefs. If this non-sceptical reading is to succeed, then it must challenge any

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interpretation that, like Popkin’s, finds a conflict or contradiction between reason and nature that cannot be resolved in favour of reason. The present section looks at one text that clearly supports the sceptical reading. This text is drawn from Section 2 of Book I, Part iv, of the Treatise, which has a direct bearing on some of the issues about substances, body, and continuants with which we are here concerned. It is often held that in the relevant text, Hume introduces an element that is contrary to reason and yet is inescapable. It is this text that we must now examine to see if it really does support the sceptical reading. We shall conclude that it does not. But we shall also use this as the occasion for clearing up a variety of concerns about identity – some of which are relevant to the issue, examined briefly in chapter 2, of the identity of persons as the latter are understood on the bundle view. Right off, it must be recognized that even on a reading such as Popkin’s, to offer a non-substantialist account of perceptual objects is not by itself to be a sceptic. This has been the thrust of the argument in chapters 2 and 6. The scepticism, on Popkin’s reading, arises not from the non-substantialist position to which reason leads us, but from the conflict between this non-substantialist analysis, which derives from reason, and a substantialist account, which nature is said to impose on us. To argue against the sceptical reading and to defend both reason and nature will therefore require us to criticize the thesis that nature requires us to believe in continuants or substances; we shall have to show that the belief in continuants is not natural in the sense of ‘nature’ in which Hume, even on the non-sceptical reading, appeals to nature – and to natural beliefs – as an answer to Pyrrhonism. There have been some, such as Price,57 who have defended Hume’s attempt at a nonsubstantialist reconstruction of perceptual objects, such as chairs and trees, as patterned bundles of sensible particulars. On this view, the non-substantialist conclusion that reason, according to Hume, is led to accept is essentially correct. But Hume does introduce a continuant, apparently in conflict with this: continuants are not given in experience and therefore do not exist, but we are nonetheless constrained to believe that they do really exist. Or so Hume suggests. This fiction58 that nature imposes on us conflicts with the demands of empirical reason, which again, it can be argued, implies a contradiction that forces the sceptical suspension of judgment. This is what makes this text a central one for the sceptical reading of Hume. Price does not take up the issue; he merely wonders how Hume could have felt it necessary to introduce the clearly superfluous idea of a continuant. An adequate

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defence of Hume as not falling into Pyrrhonism must face the issue of the continuant more squarely than this. The present section argues, first, that Popkin’s sceptical reading of the passages concerning the idea of a continuant is not forced on us by the text, and that an alternative is possible that fits more closely with the reading that takes Hume to be a defender of the rationality or reasonableness of empirical reason;59 and second, that contrary to Price, Hume is not merely being inconsistent when he introduces the idea of a continuant, that there is in fact a good reason for it – though, to be sure, Hume himself, for historically understandable reasons, is not entirely clear either on the problem with which he is struggling nor on its solution. There are five parts to this section. Part I summarizes our results concerning Hume’s account of how the mind goes about ‘constructing’ perceptual objects as continuing patterns of sensible particulars. It raises this question: If Hume achieves continuity, which is all that he needs to capture the commonsense world of the vulgar, then why does he also introduce a continuant? Part II shows how Hume struggles with the concept of identity and uses his analysis of that concept to account for why we describe continuing patterns as involving an identity. Hume’s account is inadequate – there is something problematic about the continuant – but it is also shown how Hume so isolates our ascriptions of perfect identity and references to a continuant that they do not interfere with his naturalistic response to the sceptic. Popkin’s sceptical reading of this passage is thus shown to be mistaken. In Part III it is shown how an analysis of identity ascriptions other than Hume’s can overcome the inadequacies of the latter. But it is also shown how Hume’s own analysis can be seen as insightfully struggling to come to grips with logical features of the more adequate account. Finally, Part IV relates Hume’s discussion on this topic to a second, similarly problematic, discussion in Hume. Part V briefly summarizes. I. Continuing Existence and Continuants Hume begins his discussion of perceptual objects in ‘of Scepticism with regard to the Senses’ by noting (188) that perceptual objects are taken to have a continued existence even when they are not perceived, as well as an existence distinct from the perceiver and therefore from the perceiving of them. He includes in the notion of ‘distinctness’ the external position of objects – that is, as he soon explains (190), the externality to or distance from our body, as well as their independence.60

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Now, we have no sense impression of an entity with a continued existence – that is, a continued existence as a simple entity; we have, in other words, no sense impression of a continuant (191–2). For all entities with which we are acquainted in sense experience are ‘perishing’ (194). Hume will later re-emphasize this in arguing – against both ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ philosophies – that the notion of a continuant or a substance is excluded by his basic principle that we have no ideas without antecedent impressions (220, 232–4). This same point is made early on in the Treatise when he tells us that ‘the idea of a substance ... is nothing but a collection of simple ideas’ (16). Moreover, both independence and externality are matters of inference based on laws (191), with no signs of independence. Nor do these ideas arise from (the sort of) reason that proceeds a priori from metaphysical principles (193), since it is perfectly evident that the vulgar conceive of objects as continuing and distinct even though they have not gone through metaphysical proofs of the continuing and distinct existence of the body (e.g., of the kind proposed by Descartes). The source of the ideas, then, must be imagination (193), which, however – we must never forget – includes the ‘understanding’ as ‘the more general and established principles of the imagination’ (267), principles that are the best habits of causal inference (150, 170 [cf. 183], 173–6).61 What distinguishes impressions ‘to which we attribute a continu’d existence’ is ‘a peculiar constancy, which distinguishes them from the impressions, whose existence depends upon our perceptions’ (194– 5).To be sure, the constancy is not perfect, but even though objects do change position and quality, those impressions which are reckoned external have a coherence that others do not share (195). If I do notice an alteration of an object after an interruption – for example, the fire in my fireplace after leaving and returning to the room – I may still attribute externality provided that ‘I am accustomed in other instances to see a like alteration produc’d in a time, whether I am present or absent, near or remote’ (195). If constancy is not perfect, then at least there is coherence. It is this coherence that provides the inductive justification of the inference of objective but unobserved continuity. We have already seen that Hume can provide a strong defence of the claim that inferences such as this can generate the full reconstruction of perceptual objects as patterns of sensible particulars, sensed and unsensed. But if this inference to perceptual objects is justified, then we must immediately go on to ask this question: If it is true, as we have argued, that the inference as Hume describes it (by which the understanding fills in the gaps in perceptual experience so as to contribute to

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that experience the idea of continued existence) is a sound inference, then why does Hume insist that there is an additional feature that introduces an element of unsoundness? I refer, of course, to the construal of continued existence as involving not just continuity but also a perfect identity constituted by a continuing particular that persists through change. To this topic we now turn. II. Filling Perceptual Gaps and Continuants To review Hume’s example, we look at the fire in our room (194–5), turn our head, and then look back. This is an interrupted or gappy series of impressions, which, however, through the process of inference already discussed, we fill in to constitute a continuous series of sensible, if not sensed, particulars. The sensible impression one has at the end of the series is different from the impression one had previously. Yet we say of what we now see not only that it is a successor in a continuous series of what we previously saw, but also that it is the same: this fire is the same fire as that fire. In terms of our simple example of a series from the preceding section, namely, (4), Fa4 .......... Hc4 or, as we took it to be reconstructed, (5), Fa4, Ra4E, GE, REc4, Hc4 we want to say that c4 is the same as a4. How is it that we attribute this ‘perfect identity’ (199) to these two different impressions? Why are we ‘not apt to regard these interrupted perceptions as different (which they really are)’? (199). This way of talking clearly has a legitimacy; and Hume is not prepared to dismiss it as simply an illusion of the vulgar in the same way that he is prepared, for example, to dismiss the belief of the vulgar that things really can happen just by chance. Yet when Hume comes to explain this way of talking, he is led to conclude that when we so describe things, we believe there to be a particular that exists invariably through the series. This belief, though, is on Hume’s account false and inconsistent with reality – that is, the reality of the series, which is in fact a series of different impressions, sensed and unsensed. We thus have a natural belief that, because natural, is unavoidable, but that rea-

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son shows to be inconsistent with the facts. Thus the sceptical reading of Hume. But we should not be too hasty. Hume is here struggling with the notion of identity, and others since him have had problems getting clear how exactly to handle that concept. Recall Frege’s problems with the morning star = the evening star, and Russell’s problems with Scott = the author of Waverley. These problems were resolved satisfactorily only with Russell’s development of the so-called theory of definite descriptions. If Hume struggled with these issues, it is perhaps not surprising that he did not satisfactorily resolve them and ended up in paradox; after all, other logicians have found paradoxes in the notion of identity. But if that is so, then perhaps some insight into a more adequate solution of the problem can be attained if we take into account logical analyses of identity statements that were introduced only much later in the history of philosophy. Perhaps this project will show that Hume is struggling to make a correct point and that he can, after all, make it without falling into the contradiction that generates the reading of Hume as a sceptic. Such at least is what I propose. And if this is so, then it will go some way toward disarming the sceptical reading of Hume. It will suggest that Hume is not at this point articulating yet another sceptical argument in his battery, but is, rather, attempting to articulate an important truth. Hume’s first point is that, taking it literally, the proposition a=a is vacuous, or, as we might now also say, analytic or a tautology, whereas the proposition that asserts the identity of the fire we now see with the fire we saw previously is not vacuous, and makes a real assertion: ‘In that proposition, an object is the same with itself, if the idea is express’d by the word, object, were no ways distinguish’d from that meant by itself; we really shou’d mean nothing, nor wou’d the proposition contain a predicate and a subject, which however are imply’d in this affirmation’ (200).

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In fact, Hume has earlier made the point that identity statements of the sort we are now considering (cf. 14) are not known a priori but are, like judgments of causes and effects, synthetic, known only through experience (69). All of this is, of course, precisely the point Russell insisted on when he distinguished between (i)

Scott = Scott

and (ii)

Scott = the author of Waverley.

Hume’s equivalent, in terms of our simple example (4) of a series, would be, correspondingly, (i*)

c4 = c4

and (ii*)

c4 = the second successor of a4.

Russell allowed the notion of identity in (i) and (ii) to remain the same and instead proceeded to analyse the definite description in (ii). Russell was able to solve the problem of how one could have non-vacuous identity statements. Hume, in contrast, attempts to solve the problem by distinguishing senses of ‘identity.’ In (i) or (i*), we have only a single object, and ‘one single object conveys the idea of unity, not that of identity’ (200) – that is, the concept of identity that is required for identity claims such as (ii) or (ii*) to be non-vacuous. Now, if identity is not unity, neither is it mere ‘multiplicity,’ since a multiplicity is always a multiplicity of distinct objects (200). So the idea of identity that we need is a more complex idea yet. The required idea of identity consists of both a unity – a single object – and a multiplicity – a multiplicity of times. The idea of identity is that of a single object enduring through a multiplicity of times (201): it is the idea of ‘the invariableness and uninterruptedness of any object, thro’ a suppos’d variation of time, by which the mind can trace it in the different periods of its existence, without any break of the view, and without being oblig’d to form the idea of multiplicity or number’ (201).

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Thus, an identity statement x=y can be significant, non-vacuous, provided that the identity is so understood as to imply a unity of object in a diversity of times, – that is, provided that the identity statement is analysable as something like i now is one (and the same) with i then. This solves the problem,. since the diversity of times provides the distinction of subject and predicate that is required for an identity statement to be significant. Significant identity statements thus turn out, on Hume’s account, to express very complex relational judgments. Given the long tradition of substance philosophy, in which the identity of an entity consists in its being a substance that endures through change, it is entirely understandable why Hume should propose his analysis of identity. Yet since Russell, we have been in a position to recognize that it is precisely the wrong move to make. Should it be surprising to us, then, that Hume falls into unwanted difficulties? But even if wrong, it is nonetheless the notion of identity that Hume uses. The members of the series of sensible particulars that constitutes a perceptual object are literally distinct, and the series involves no continuing particular. Yet we think of such a series as involving an identity and therefore a continuing particular. This, the idea that there is a continuing particular, is a falsehood. We nonetheless think it. Why? Hume’s answer to this question is that we so conceive the series through a confusion into which the mind naturally falls. On Hume’s account of relations,62 the relational judgment that a set of particulars constitutes a continuous series is similar to, or resembles, the relational judgment that a single object is identical with itself; and in fact the resemblance can cause confusion: ‘The thought slides along the succession with equal facility, as if it consider’d only one object; and therefore confounds the succession with identity’ (204). Since resemblance is one of the relations by which association proceeds (11), the one relation can thus come to be associated with and therefore naturally mistaken for the other: ‘’Tis therefore very natural for us to mistake the one for the other’ (204).63 Once this mistake occurs, the propensity to fill in gaps in a perceptual series – which proceeds by legitimate causal principles – becomes the propensity to find an iden-

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tity in a gappy series (205); and the habits of inference that justify our believing the existential hypotheses about how the gaps are filled move from the relation they concern, that of continuity (i.e., R in our miniexample), to identity, and generate the belief in an identity – which is illegitimate – over and above the belief in a continuous series – which is justified (208). Such, then, is Hume’s account of how we come to make such judgments of identity about perceptual objects, as in: The fire I now see is identical with the fire I saw then. Recall that for Hume, a mark of perceptual objects is that they are independent (190). They exist even when not perceived. They are perceived as a series. To secure independence of that which appears as this series, Hume has the mind insert as it were a continuant – that is, a substance – into the series. Since this entity that we suppose to be there continues even when unperceived, the independence of the perceptual object is guaranteed. This is similar to the pattern we found in Moore, which we examined in the preceding chapter: he, too, argued that a substance is needed to secure the independence of the perceptual object. We argued there that there is no need for such an object; it violates PA (which Moore does not really admit), and in any case independence can otherwise be secured (which Moore fails to see). Hume is similar: independence is secured through the positing of a continuant. But Hume, in contrast to Moore, does see that it violates PA and is therefore ontologically unacceptable. The unacceptability Hume regrets, but he does not see any other way to secure the identity of the perceptual object. We shall now argue that there is a way in which that identity can be secured – a way, moreover, that does not require the introduction of the fictional continuant (in both senses of ‘fiction’). Let us note a series of things. First, the judgment of identity as characterized by Hume, involving a continuant or substance, is false; we think there is such a continuing particular, but such a particular, on Hume’s analysis, does not really exist. Second, this denial that any continuant exists is, of course, of a piece with Hume’s earlier (11) and later (220, 232–4) discussions of substance, which, through an appeal to PA, deny the existence of continuants. Third, the false judgment arises through a mistake – namely, the mistaking of a relation of continuity for a relation of identity. Fourth, this mistake occurs by virtue of a resemblance that generates an association that is difficult to resist; thus, while it is a mistake, it is very natural for us to make it and, indeed, happens to

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most of us most of the time so that, as a consequence, we so often speak of identity where in truth it does not exist: ‘The persons, who entertain this opinion concerning the identity of our resembling perceptions, are in general all the unthinking and unphilosophical part of mankind [that is, all of us, at one time or other]’ (205). How is it natural? Here we must distinguish two senses of ‘natural.’ One is unavoidable: ‘Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determin’d us to judge as well as to breathe and feel’ (183). It is judgments which are natural in this sense that provide the Humean response to the sceptic.64 ‘Natural’ also means arising from natural causes (226), and in this sense a malady is natural though it is also avoidable.65 Our false reasonings and illusions are natural in this sense (225–6). In particular, of course, for our present purposes, the judgments that perceptual objects involve identities are in this second sense natural, but are not natural in the first sense: Hume states clearly that philosophers – at certain times at least – can resist the confusion and think unmistakenly about perceptual objects. How, indeed, could Hume himself make the distinction in the text if the association created an unavoidable confusion? Thus, since it is judgments that are natural in the first sense but not the second that provide Hume’s reply to the sceptic, it follows that Hume’s reply to the sceptic does not involve a commitment to accepting false beliefs that continuants exist and that perceptual objects exemplify perfect identity. And it further follows that the appeal by Popkin and others to Hume’s discussion of the identity of perceptual objects to support a sceptical reading is in fact contrary to the Humean texts. III. More on Identity There is more, however, to Hume’s discussion of identity than this. To stop here would be sufficient to save Hume from the sceptics, but it would hardly do justice to what he is about in his discussion of perceptual objects. The point to be noted is that the treatment which Hume accords to the continuing particular is significantly different from the treatment he accords to the idea of objective necessary connection. In many respects the two are treated in similar fashion. Hume, as we know, offers two correct definitions of ‘cause,’ one an objective definition of causation as consisting of constant conjunction, and the other a subjective definition of a causal judgment as a habit of the mind to pass regularly from the impressions of a sort of cause or an idea of it to the idea of its effect (170, 172). The first definition involves no necessity; upon it, a causal regularity is merely contingent. The sec-

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ond definition involves a sort of necessity – namely, the determination of the mind to pass from one state to another (165); but it is not objective – it is on the side of thought rather than what is thought about (165). There is no objective necessary connection, and in fact Hume has previously spent some time (157–66) arguing that this latter notion is really meaningless: ‘Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from causes to effects and from effects to causes, according to their experienc’d union’ (166). The idea of objective necessity, like that of the continuing particular, arises from a confusion of two relations that resemble each other – that is, in the case of necessity, the two relations given in the two definitions of cause – a confusion that involves the ever-present tendency of the mind to project its own states onto external objects (167).66 The tendency to think that objective necessities exist is thus entirely natural (167), but only in the sense in which, again, disease is natural. The careful inquirer can keep the two ideas distinct and resist the tendency to introduce the false or meaningless idea of objective necessary connection (170).67 There is a natural, in the sense of unavoidable, tendency to make causal inferences (183), and this provides Hume’s answer to the sceptic;68 but again we find that the tendency to introduce false ideas is not part of Hume’s reply to the sceptic. Thus far Hume’s treatment of objective necessity and of the continuing particular are alike. But there are two significant differences. In the first place, there is no idea of an objective necessary connection; the ‘idea’ is itself simply a confusion. In contrast, while the belief in the existence of a continuing particular is false and the result of a confusion, the idea of such an entity – or, what is the same, the idea of identity (i.e., identity through change) – is not as such a confusion: it is a perfectly legitimate and well-formed idea. The idea of a continuing particular, while false, is not incoherent as is the idea of an objective necessary connection. In the second place, while we all of us fall prey at times to the confusion of thinking of causes as objective necessities, causal reason at its best – that is, empirical science – has no need of that notion: science judges causes by the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ and not by reference to any idea of objective necessity. In practice, then, the metaphysical notion of objective necessity plays no role in our best causal reason. By contrast, Hume offers no suggestions with respect to the continuing particular that it might in practice disappear from our perceptual judgments. This suggests that Hume perhaps feels there is more legitimacy to the talk of identity than his own analysis allows.

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We want to be able to say that this fire that I now see is the same as that fire I saw before I glanced away. Or, in terms of our example, we want to be able to say that c4 is the same perceptual object as a4. Hume’s proposal shows us how we come to speak this way, but only at the cost of making this way of speaking illegitimate. Is there another way which justifies so speaking, and which at the same time shows that Hume’s feeling that it is legitimate is not unreasonable? Well, recall Russell. It is certainly not true that strictly speaking (A)

c4 = a 4

They are two sensible particulars, and that is that. If we take ‘R2’ to denote the relative product of R with itself so that R2xy means that y is R-ed by something that x R’s [i.e., (z)( Rxz & Rzy)] then, while (A) is false, we do have it after the fashion of Russell, and quite correctly, that (B)

c4 = (,x) (R2a4x)

which plausibly construes c4 is the same perceptual object as a4. More generally, it construes w is the same perceptual object as a4 as saying that there is a series of R-connected particulars that leads continuously from a4 to w. In other words, it is to say that (C)

(n) [w = (,x) (Rna4x)].

Technically speaking, we can use definite descriptions here in our inferences, especially to fill in the gap in the series (4) to give us

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E = (,x) (Ra4x) only if R has certain structural properties, properties such as asymmetry, which together guarantee that it generates a continuous series. But Hume’s discussion implies – though he does not (could not) know it – that such structural properties are assumed. This being so, a statement like (B) is perfectly justified in the context of the gap-filling inferences that turn our series of impressions into perceptual objects. Russell’s analysis of identity and definite description permits us, where Hume’s account of identity does not, to make a significant and true identity statement that links two members of series of particulars that constitute a perceptual object. If we accept Russell’s analysis as being able in (B) to render a plausible construal of c4 being the same perceptual object as a4, then we see immediately that the idea of c4 being the same as a4 involves in the definite description the idea of a4. Thus, as Hume correctly felt – and indeed in his analysis suggested though only at the cost of paradox – the idea of a perceptual object as a continuing series involves the idea of a given particular being connected with each succeeding member of the continuous series that constitutes the perceptual object. The difference between Russell and Hume is that Hume’s analysis requires the given particular to actually exist throughout the series – when in fact it does not, whence the paradox – whereas Russell’s analysis, when translated into the Humean language of ‘ideas,’ merely requires the idea of the given particular to appear in each of the complex ideas that are (the Humean counterparts of) the definite descriptions that denote each succeeding member of the series. We can make Russell’s correct account and Hume’s mistaken one approach even more closely if we notice a further crucial blur on Hume’s part. This is the blur between the idea of a simple and a simple idea. Consider the judgment of (B): c4 = (,x) (R2a4x). If we let ourselves write the idea I = Df (,x) (R2a4x), then the idea (I) denotes a simple entity. Hence, by the crucial blur, it must be a simple idea. But the only thing that could begin to count as simple in (I) is the idea of a4. Thus, given the crucial blur, there will be

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a tendency to collapse the complex idea (I) into the simple idea of a4. But that in turn would mean that the judgment (B) is in effect asserting an identity in which a4 has continued through the series to be the same as c4. In short, the crucial blur has the effect of transforming Russell’s analysis into Hume’s. Or conversely, given the crucial blur, we can see Hume’s incorrect and ultimately paradoxical analysis as an attempt with some portion of success to capture what Russell’s analysis successfully captures. The crucial blur is aided by a second Humean inadequacy – namely, the account of relations. On this account, relations are, objectively speaking, to be reduced to non-relational foundations. This won’t in the long run work,69 but it had a long history before Hume and was sanctified by tradition,70 so it is not surprising that Hume never freed himself from it. Had he done so, he might have abandoned some of the shortcomings of his philosophy – for example, his radical perceptual atomism71 – without rejecting the central core of his positive philosophy. The point is this: if relations are objectively nothing apart from their foundations, then the foundations of R2 in (B) are c4 and a4. Hence, in (I) itself, there is on this account nothing objective to the relational component other than the foundation a4 itself. So the second Humean inadequacy reinforces the tendency of the crucial blur to lead to the identification of the idea (I) with the idea of a4, which again helps minimize the differences between Russell’s analysis and that of Hume. Given the crucial blur and the second Humean inadequacy, we can see that Hume’s account of identity does indeed capture, in spite of its paradoxes, what Russell correctly analyses. We earlier suggested that Hume seemed to feel that there was more to the talk of identity than his analysis allowed. We now see that that feeling was correct, and that his own system, given its flaws, did in fact capture some of the truth he felt had to be captured. There is, in fact, given the flaws in his system, more truth in Hume’s account of the identity of perceptual objects than that system itself can allow. IV. An Analogous Case: The Missing Shade of Blue We were able to argue that Hume’s account of the identity of perceptual objects attained to truths in spite of the paradoxes that required him to argue that his account of the identity of perceptual objects was false. We were able so to argue because we assumed a crucial blur – between a simple idea and the idea of a simple – as well as, later, a second Humean

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inadequacy, in his account of relations. This account of Hume on identity will be strengthened if we can see the crucial blur and the second Humean inadequacy at work in Hume's philosophy as he elsewhere struggles to handle a problem that also requires for its solution recourse to Russell’s theory of definite descriptions. Let us return to Hume’s famous missing shade of blue. Hume argues that ‘all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent’ (4). These simple ideas are, clearly, images. However, Hume goes on, it does seem possible to have such an image without a corresponding impression. ‘There is ... one contradictory phaenomenon, which may prove, that ’tis not absolutely impossible for ideas to go before their correspondent impressions’ (5). The example is this: Suppose ... a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become particularly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be plac’d before him, descending gradually, from the deepest to the lightest; ’tis plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible that there is a greater distance in that place betwixt the contiguous colours, than in any other. Now I ask, whether ’tis possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply the deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, tho’ it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can; and this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always derived from the correspondent impressions. (6)

Hume now goes on: ‘The instance is so particular singular, that ’tis scarce worth our observing, and does not merit that for it alone we should alter our general maxim’ (6). The attitude is perhaps justifiable: it is often not unreasonable to put aside a difficulty to get on with the task at hand, leaving the difficulty to be solved later, perhaps even by others. At the same time, in the present case the exception opens up the possibility that there are other simple ideas that do not derive from impressions – for example, the simple idea of an objective necessary connection, which Hume is later to claim does not exist on grounds of no antecedent impression (157–8). Hume’s attitude at this point has simply infuriated some commentators – for example, H.A. Prichard,72 who thought that the admission of even one

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exception to the ‘no idea without an antecedent impression’ rule meant that Hume ought simply to have given up the whole project of the Treatise at this point. But Prichard had no sympathy with Hume’s project.73 Perhaps we can find an interpretation that will do justice to his insight yet also save his project. We have in fact looked at such a solution in chapter 1; it will pay if we recall it at this point. It is perfectly obvious that Hume is correct that we can and in fact do form an idea of the missing shade of blue. What is not obvious is that we can have an image of the missing shade of blue. But Hume identifies ideas of sensible particulars with images – ‘By ideas I mean the faint images of [impressions] in thinking and reasoning’ (1) – and so he infers that since the idea of the missing shade of blue is the idea of a sensible particular, it is therefore an image. But it is an image without a corresponding impression. Hence his difficulty. The issue is this: Is the identification of the idea of the missing shade of blue with an image reasonable? Let t1 be an impression that exemplifies the shade of blue on one side of the gap, and t3 be an impression that exemplifies the shade of blue on the other side of the gap. We can now form the following idea: (S)

A particular which is of the shade of colour of which is between the shade of t1 and the shade of t3.

The idea is, in the first place, an abstract idea involving the generic concepts of particularity and a shade of colour. It is therefore fraught with all the difficulties attendant on Hume’s account of abstract ideas. In the second place, however, these generic concepts are taken to have a unique instance – they are at once abstract and particular – or, in Russell’s terms, these generic concepts are taken to constitute a definite description – specifically, a definite description of a shade of colour. The use of this definite description is justified by the structural properties of the betweenness relation. Its success in actually denoting a unique shade can be established on the basis of the structural property that asserts roughly that for every pair of shades that are more than just noticeably different, there is a shade between them. That betweenness has this property can be established by examining, as Hume himself suggests, the patterns exemplified by shades elsewhere in the spectrum. Finally, in the third place, the idea of the missing shade involves a relation – namely, as we have said, the relation of betweenness. What Hume does is confuse the legitimate idea (S) that we have of

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the missing shade of blue, with an image of the missing shade of blue, which we do not have. Or, rather, he transforms the complex and abstract idea (S) into a simple idea. We can understand this mistake if we see it as another example of the crucial blur, that the idea of a simple is a simple idea: (S) is the idea of a simple – namely, a particular of that specific shade of blue, and Hume transforms it into an image of that shade, a simple idea. This transformation is again facilitated by the second Humean inadequacy that we identified, his account of relations. Although betweenness appears in the definite description (S), it is on Hume’s account (wrongly) held to be objectively nothing save its foundations, so that the structure that relates the missing shade to the observed shades is not an objective connection that holds among the shades; rather, it is collapsed into the shade itself, which by its own internal feature somehow locates itself at its position in the series of shades.74 In terms of its objective content, then, the idea (S) is an idea that consists only of the missing shade itself. This clearly facilitates the transformation – effected by the crucial blur – of the abstract idea of the missing shade into an image of the missing shade. Finally, to return to our previous discussion of identity, we see once again as we saw there, the crucial blur and the second Humean inadequacy functioning to distort unproblematic definite descriptions into something rather different and inadequate to do the logical job that must be done. The analysis of the example of the missing shade of blue example confirms our analysis of Hume’s treatment of identity. V. Several Concluding Non-sceptical Remarks In conclusion, there are, I think, four major points that have become clear: One. Hume’s treatment of the continuant, which he introduces into his discussion of the identity of perceptual objects, does not imply any sceptical conclusions, nor is it taken by Hume to introduce an element of scepticism into his system. Thus, the sceptical reading of Hume by Popkin and others receives no support from this particular part of Hume’s text. Two. Nor, for that matter, need Hume’s discussion of the missing shade of blue be taken to imply any inconsistency in Hume’s system. Three. Some at least of Hume’s discussion can be saved, and the points he wished to make achieved with no violence to his basic principles, provided that we introduce Russell’s theory of definite descriptions – or,

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more generally, enlarge the rather meagre logical apparatus that Hume has inherited from the tradition – along with a healthy dose of modern logic and, in particular, the apparatus of contextual definition. Four. It is not unreasonable to import such logical devices as just mentioned in order to achieve a sympathetic reading of Hume. In logic he was no innovator.75 But the tradition restricted his, as it restricted others’ ability to deal with a variety of problems. A sympathetic reader will help him out by using such devices, rather than simply charging him with error and inconsistency. Moreover, Hume is hardly to be blamed for his problems with logic. Relations did not receive an adequate treatment until De Morgan, Peirce, and Frege; and not until Russell was the logic of definite descriptions available that enabled one to conceive an abstract idea that was not an idea of something general but, like a concrete idea or image, was the idea of a particular.76 In terms of the history of logic, it is perfectly understandable, and excusable, that Hume suffered from many of the limitations one finds in him. And since excusable, there is no reason why one should not use those more modern advances to achieve a sympathetic reading, one that is more consistent with Hume’s own intentions. We shall see later that elsewhere, too, reading Hume with a touch of modern logic will show that his project does after all make a great deal of sense – that is, his project of defending critical realism. E. Hume’s Causal Inference to Critical Realism We have seen that causal inference and perceptual judgment are two different modes of association. Nonetheless, that they are different does not imply that causal inferences cannot show that our perceptual judgments are justified; that is, it does not follow that one cannot use the best norms for inductive inference – namely, the rules by which to judge of causes and effects – to judge that our perceptual judgments, which are also objectively inductive inferences, are justified. At the same time, however, causal inference might also show that various perceptual judgments are false. In such a case Hume speaks of a contrast between imagination and judgment (148, 267); though he also holds that in a broader sense, the imagination includes both solid and weak inferences (225), with the understanding, or judgment, being those inferences of the imagination that are more solidly established – that is, can be shown to be more rationally justified (267). Now in point of fact, causal inferences can often correct erroneous perceptual judgments. Suppose I see white paper under yellow light.

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Then what I perceive is that this paper is yellow. That, though, is mistaken, and I can use my knowledge of the laws of illumination to infer that, although the paper appears yellow in perception, it is in fact white. This causal knowledge enables me to assert of the yellow impression that it is a white piece of paper. This latter non-perceptual inference enables me to correct the erroneous perceptual judgment.77 Note, however, that while I reject the perceptual judgment as (partially) false, I do not cease to make it. As Hume would say, the inertia of the imagination carries on, determining that I continue to make the same perceptual judgment. When causal inference is used to correct causal inferences, the latter are in general modified or abandoned (147f); but sometimes other natural mental propensities determine us to continue to make judgments that we are prepared to say are erroneous (148f), and cases of perceptual error are of this sort.78 In the case of inferring that the apparently yellow paper is white, one has not strayed from the system of the vulgar. One can continue to hold a selective theory of perception, arguing only that one has, in such cases of error, selected as it were a wild sensible particular.79 However, what Hume argues is that causal reasoning about perceptual objects in the system of the vulgar if pursued systematically leads to the system of the philosophers. What does the case of seeing the tree look like in the system of the philosophers? There remain the entities, the sensible impression, with which we are directly acquainted, and there is the perceptual judgment that this impression is of a tree, with which we are also directly acquainted. In other words, in the system of the philosophers, there remain the green impression and the perceptual judgment that this impression is a tree in just the way a tree is described in the system of the vulgar. But in the system of the philosophers, as in the system of the critical realists, there is a distinction between impressions and objects. In this system, unlike that of the vulgar, the impression is not the tree, nor is it located as part of the tree – that is, as part of the object that is the cause of one’s sensing the impression and forming the perceptual judgment. To be sure, as in the system of the vulgar, so for the system of the philosophers: the tree is a continuing entity, and (we are taking it) this continuity is the continuity of a series. But the impression is not part of this series. The series that is the continuing tree has none of the qualities of impressions. This is the second way in which the system of the critical realists differs from that of the new realists. Impressions exhibit such secondary qualities as colours, tastes, and so on, and none of these

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qualities given to us in our sense experience is ever exemplified by the entities that are the various parts of the continuing entity that is the real tree. We perceptually judge of the impression that it is a tree, but it is not a tree nor even part of the real object, and therefore the judgment is false. As for the real tree, neither it nor any part of it is ever given to us, either directly in sensation or in our perceptual judgments. The relation between the real tree and the green impression is not part–whole as in the system of the vulgar; rather, it is causal. In perception in the system of the philosophers, the ‘real’ or physical tree interacts with the ‘real’ or physical body. When the body is in such and such a state and comes to be situated appropriately to the tree, then an interaction occurs, bringing about a change in the state of the body. The sense impression is the next step in this sequence of events: it, and our awareness of it, are brought about by the change in bodily state: ‘Our perceptions have no more a continu’d than an independent existence; and indeed philosophers have so far run into this opinion, that they change their system, and distinguish ... betwixt perceptions and objects, of which the former are supposed to be interrupted, and perishing, and different at every return; the latter to be uninterrupted, and to preserve a continued existence and identity’ (211). This system of the philosophers involves what has been called a ‘generative theory of perception,’80 which holds that the sense impression is actually brought into being by the physiological process that precedes the sensing of it, and that it would have no existence otherwise. In the system of the vulgar, the laws of perception are such that a physiological process causes and explains the awareness of the impression, but the impression itself is explained by its location in the lawful pattern of sensible particulars that is the continuing material object. In the system of the philosophers, the laws of perception are such that the physiological process causes not only the awareness of the impression but also the very existence of the impression itself. Clearly, the system of the philosophers contradicts the system of the vulgar.81 Hume is clear that he believes he can argue to an acceptance of the generative theory of perception as it appears in the system of the philosophers (211). He performs certain experiments, and these are designed to show that ‘all our perceptions are dependent on our organs’ (211). Note, first, that the dependence is a causal dependence on our organs, not an ontological dependence on our mind – that is, substantial mind, as in Berkeley and the idealists. As we noted above, Hume makes it clear that he agrees with both the new and the critical realistic positions that the

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idealistic account of the data given in perception is wrong: impressions are not ontologically dependent on minds. It does not follow that there cannot be a causal dependence of impressions on the perception of them. The point is that the latter sort of dependence does not imply idealism or subjectivism.82 Note, second, that Hume’s argument assumes the existence of sense organs, nerves, animal spirits, and so on – that is, it accepts realism. As Hume says, we arrive at the system of philosophers only by passing through the common hypothesis of unsensed objects, that is, the continuance of our interrupted perception (211). It follows directly that Hume cannot here be trying to establish some form of subjectivism.83 Hume’s argument is from such phenomena as the appearance of double images when the eye is pressed in a certain way. But its concern is not to establish subjectivism or scepticism; rather, it is to establish something about the causal status of sensed impressions. Moreover, Hume clearly takes it to be a sound causal inference. Indeed, the sceptical reading of Hume must also take it to be a sound causal inference. For if Popkin’s interpretation of Hume is correct, then the human mind naturally falls into the contradiction between the system of the vulgar and that of the philosophers, and this can be a genuine contradiction only if the reasoning that leads to the system of the philosophers is sound. What, then, is the structure of the causal argument that Hume uses? To begin, we must note that it begins within the system of the vulgar. The system of the philosophers distinguishes perceptions – that is, impressions – that exist only when perceived, and objects that have a continued existence. Now, Hume points out that, since the mind has no acquaintance with these objects – the continuing objects are unperceived congeries of atoms or quarks or whatnot – the system of the philosophers therefore has no primary recommendation to causal reason (212). It does not follow that it has no appeal to reason; for it could still have a secondary recommendation to reason. The relevant habits of causal inferences must be acquired elsewhere, and this elsewhere can only be the system of the vulgar; thus, ‘the philosophical system acquires all its influence on the imagination from the vulgar one’ (213).84 The point is that reasoning within the system of the vulgar will lead one outside that system to another, contrary system. Yet the habits cannot proceed directly but only in an indirect and oblique way, which, however, they already do in the system of the vulgar when the latter hypothesizes the existence of unsensed objects (197). It is such indirect and oblique reasoning based on the principle that every event has a

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cause and the same effects have the same causes (133) – a law about laws – that yields a secondary recommendation to reason. We learn about laws in the system of the vulgar; we generalize from this experience a law about laws; we use this to form our conceptions of the laws about the system of the philosophers. Causal reasoning, like the mental inertia that yields perceptual judgments, leads us to impose uniformity on nature. In fact, it yields greater uniformity than does perceptual experience. It is this search for uniformity that leads to the system of the philosophers that contradicts the system of the vulgar as it is given to us in our ordinary perceptual judgments. But the causal reasoning that leads to the system of the philosophers has its roots in the same sort of reasoning in the system of the vulgar. Thus, the system of the vulgar has epistemological primacy relative to the system of the philosophers. Hume’s causal argument that leads to the system of the philosophers proceeds from such events as double vision and perspectival variation. In this he was to be followed by the critical realists.85 Price has argued that from cases of this sort, one cannot infer – as Hume and the critical realists do – the causal dependence of sense impressions on our organs.86 All that the evidence cited shows is that, for example, in the case of the white paper seen in yellow light which makes the paper appear yellow, the yellow impression is dependent on the presence of yellow light. Similarly, the existence of perspectival distortions does not establish dependence on the sense organs but shows only that they are dependent on spatial position. ‘The flat and perspectivally distorted shape which I see when I look at a distant mountain could still continue in existence – for all that has been shown – when I go away and shut my eyes. But it would only exist from a certain place, not from other places.’87 One would have a realism of perspectives and appearances of the sort that had been proposed by Berkeley and later by the new realists and that was in fact Hume’s system of the vulgar. In Hume’s presentation of the experiments, the reference to perspectival variation only comes second, after the reference to double vision: ‘When we press one eye with a finger, we immediately perceive all the objects to become double, and one half of them to be remov’d from their common and natural position’ (210). Regarding these double impressions, Hume says that ‘we do not attribute a continu’d existence to both these perceptions’ (211). Thus, this first case at least is taken by Hume to establish that the existence of some sense impressions is dependent on our sense organs and bodily processes. But Price also questions

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whether the example establishes even this much.88 If I am looking at a chair and press my eyeball, then I am presented with two impressions of the chair; but if I am looking at a tree and press my eyeball, then I am presented with two impressions of the tree. Thus, double-vision phenomena are causally dependent, it seems, not only on sense organs but also on the external cause. Hence, Price argues: ‘The phenomena of Double Vision has no tendency to prove that any of our sense impression are totally dependent on ‘our organs and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits’ [Treatise, p. 211], as Hume thinks they have, and still less that all are.’89 We may take this in Price’s order, and attempt to see, first, whether double vision entails any conclusion about whether some sense impressions are totally dependent on our bodily state, and then, second, to see whether it entails that all are totally dependent. As for the first, it is clear that what is crucial is the meaning of ‘totally dependent’ (Price’s term). Hume cannot have ignored that when double vision occurs, then, in order to explain the impressions I have, reference must be made to the state not only of my organs but also of the physical objects that confront me and with which I, or my body, causally interacts in the perceptual situation. After all, even Hume specifically says that ‘all the objects ... become double,’ referring here to the objects of perception rather than the perceptions themselves. The point, simply put, is that the laws that causally explain the existence of the two impressions refer to certain physical objects, as initial conditions. Now, in the system of the vulgar, the case of veridical perception of the white paper, reference to the white impression occurs in the initial conditions. The white impression is part of the physical object, and what the laws of perception do is show how this object, with this part, related thus and so to me who is in such and such a bodily state, has as its effect my awareness of the white impression. But the second image in the phenomenon of double vision is not included in the initial conditions. Rather, it is only among the effects. Hume’s point is not to deny the causal relevance of external objects in producing the doubled impressions I experience. In that sense, the second image is, of course, only partially dependent on my organs. What Hume is concerned with is locating the event that the second impression is in the total causal process of perceiving. And what he does establish is that this event is not among the events that appear in the initial conditions as constituting the physical object that provides the perceptual stimulus. As we saw him put this point: ‘We do not attribute a continu’d existence to both

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these perceptions’ (211). The existence of the second impression is not explained by its being part of the series of sensible particulars that constitute the physical object mentioned in the initial conditions. The event, which the second impression is, appears only elsewhere in the process, at the point where the awareness of the impression also occurs, as the immediate causal upshot of my bodily state. Its existence is explained not in terms of its being part of a physical object but in terms of its being the immediate effect, like the awareness of it, of my bodily state. This is all Hume means when he uses the example of double vision to establish that some perceptions are ‘dependent on our organs.’ Price takes Hume to be arguing for a thesis stronger than that for which he actually argues. Price sees that this stronger thesis is indeed not entailed by Hume’s premises, and therefore he rejects Hume’s case. But he misses the point that Hume was actually trying to make, and which actually is valid. As for why Price attributes the stronger thesis to Hume, this is simply another aspect of the common tendency to misconstrue Hume in these passages as arguing for some form of subjectivism. But even if the existence of some impressions is, in Hume’s sense, dependent on our bodily state, can one conclude that all are so dependent? Clearly, not without additional premises. Hume explicitly introduces a second premise: the two impressions in double vision are, he says, ‘both of the same nature’ (211). How are we to interpret this? I think its context makes this clear enough. The context is that of a causal argument, that of an experiment. As Hume describes what he is doing: ‘When we compare experiments, and reason a little upon them, we quickly perceive, that the doctrine of the independent existence of our sensible perceptions is contrary to the plainest experience’ (210; italics added). The premise that all experimental reasoning relies on comes immediately to mind: like events have like effects, and like events have like causes, or, as Hume puts it in the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’: ‘The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises but from the same cause’ (173). In the experiment of pressing one eyeball, there are two impressions. That these ‘are both of the same nature, we clearly perceive’ (211). Since they are of the same nature, they are like events. Sound causal reasoning – that is, as Hume has argued, reasoning in accord with the rules by which to judge of causes, including rule four that like effects (causes) have like causes (effects) – should therefore assign like causes to the two impressions that occur in double vision, and locate them at like points in the causal

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process of perceiving. The vulgar, or the new realists, may be able to offer an explanation in which one of the impressions in the double image is located as part of the object that causes the process. But the system of the vulgar cannot do so for both. Since the two images are like, and must therefore have like causes, it follows that, if one cannot be located as part of the physical cause, then neither can. But the one is located not as part of the object perceived but as the immediate upshot of our bodily state. The other impression should be given the same location in the perceptual process. So both should be so located in the process as to have, as the immediate cause of their existence, the state of our sense organs – though of course the mediate or distal cause is the physical object. But furthermore, these impressions are of the same nature as all other impressions. So all impressions should be located at the same point in the perceptual process. None should be treated as part of the physical objects perceived; all should be treated as the immediate upshot of our bodily state. Hume therefore concludes that ‘all our perceptions are dependent [in his, not Price’s, sense] on our organs, and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits.’90 Since every sensory input depends for its existence on the state of our sense organs, it follows that the causes of those impressions lack any of the qualities that we sense. They lack colours and tones and smells and tastes, and they lack extension – that is, sensible extension, visible and tangible. We have an idea of such entities: it is an abstract idea. This abstract idea consists of the idea of an event (taking ‘event’ to be a genus), the idea of being qualified (taking ‘being qualified’ to be a genus), and, more specifically, the idea that the quality, whatever it is, is not sensible – that is, not a colour and not a tone and not a smell, and so on. And furthermore, the idea of such events or particulars includes the relative idea that they are the events that cause the sensible impressions that we experience. We must pause for a moment and note that we do have an abstract idea of extension, according to Hume, which is abstracted from coloured extension and tangible extension – that is, from what Locke would refer to as secondary qualities. In discussing extension, Hume tells us that finding a resemblance in the disposition of coloured points, of which they are composed, we omit the peculiarities of colour, as far as possible, and found an abstract idea merely on that disposition of points, or manner of appearance, in which they agree.

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The idea of an order or structure can be abstracted from the things ordered. But the abstraction is not just from things coloured. This abstraction is also an abstraction from tangible extension. He continues: Even when the resemblance is carried beyond the objects of one sense, and the impressions of touch are found to be similar to those of sight in the disposition of their parts; this does not hinder the abstract idea from representing both, upon account of their resemblance.

Then there is a comment that All abstract ideas are really nothing but particular ones, considered in a certain light; but being annexed to general terms, they are able to represent a vast variety, and to comprehend objects, which, as they are alike in some particulars, are in others vastly wide of each other. (34)

This means that the abstract idea of spatial structure, of things being ‘disposed’ in a certain ‘manner,’ would apply to things that are neither tangible nor visible. But then it could also be extended to things unsensed, so long as they were things that had qualities (though these qualities need not be those which are had by sensible particulars). The abstract idea of a structure can apply to the objects of the system of the philosophers as well as to sensible things. [note: I do not want to say that this can go through unproblematically for Hume. There are his problems with relations; his position that they can all be reduced to non-relational foundations won’t do. His notion of resemblance is problematic; it is especially problematic when applied to the already problematic relations. The point here is not to defend his account of abstract ideas, nor his account of an abstract idea of a structure. The point is to show that, difficult as these things might be, he does in fact hold that there are abstract ideas of relational structures. So these ideas are available as it were for use when he is unfolding our idea of the unsensed entities of the world of the philosophers that are the causes of the sense impressions that we experience.] Return now to the external causes of our sense impressions. We do not attribute to these external causes any of the qualities we attribute to sensible objects. They lack colours, tones, and so forth. And

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they further lack visible extension, which is inseparable (Hume and Berkeley agree) from colours, as well as tangible extension, which is inseparable from tactile qualities. But Hume does argue that these unperceivable events the presence of which we infer do stand in relations to one another. Thus, he tells us with regard to these ‘external objects’ that are ‘suppos’d’ to exist that ‘generally speaking, we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attribute to them different relations, connexions, and durations (68).91 And so, when one experiences a coloured impression in which the parts, all coloured, are ‘disposed in a certain manner’ (31), then the events that we infer to be the cause of this impression also have parts ‘disposed’ in a similar ‘manner.’ As we would now speak, the sensible event and the inferred cause share the same or a similar structure. We do not know how external objects are qualified; what we know of such objects is their structure. Hume’s critical realism is a structural realism. This structural realism Hume shares with the American critical realists such as Roy Wood Sellars, with Bertrand Russell of the Analysis of Matter, and with more recent exponents of the position such as Grover Maxwell. It is the nature of the inference to the external unperceived causes of our sensible appearances that is important. If that is not in order, then what one says about the supposed external causes could be anything. But the reasoning is in fact in order. It is causal reasoning that Hume uses to infer the existence and nature of these external causes. It is this reasoning that justifies as reasonable the ‘supposition’ that these external causes really are there. And this reasoning is in order since it is reasoning based on the inductive method of science, on the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ rules that Hume has previously justified as reasonable (see chapter 4). It is reasoning based on these rationally acceptable rules that has led him to develop a theory of the perceptual process in which all impressions are causally dependent on our bodily states. The facts of variation of size in perspective, the facts of apparent colours changing according to the conditions of illumination, the fact that objects appear differently when we have jaundice or when we are dizzy, and so on, can all be easily accounted for on this theory. As Hume says: ‘This opinion [i.e., his theory of perception] is confirm’d’ by all these other facts about perception. From all this, ‘we learn, that our sensible perceptions are not possest of any distinct or independent existence.’ That is, we have justified the hypothesis of the system of the philosophers. And, con-

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trary to what Price and Mandelbaum and others92 have argued, Hume’s reasoning here is sound causal reasoning, at least if we presuppose that, as Hume argued, his ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ are the best rules for causal inference. And in any case, the logic of Hume’s inference is of a piece with that which was later employed by the critical realists in their polemic against the new realists. Thus, for one, the facts of error, illusion, and perspectival variance were used to argue against the new realist identification of the datum with the physical object perceived; each was used to argue that appearances are one thing, the physical object another, and that, since some are not, none of the appearances are to be construed as part of the object perceived. Thus, Sellars père writes: When I approach a house, what I perceive changes continuously; the house grows larger and I can see details which were not at first apparent ... Now I know that it took at least a year to build this house and that it has a stability which contradicts these changes ... Hence, instead of saying that things change, I assert that their appearance to me changes. But how can I reconcile this assertion with my other natural belief that, in perception, things reveal themselves as they are? When is the moment in my approach or departure that the thing supplants the appearance, and the appearance the thing. Since I am aware of no such mysterious moment, I may well be sceptical of its existence ... The suspicion arises, as a consequence, that the individual perceives only the appearance of the thing and never the thing itself.93

What, then, is the status of the data, or, as Sellars calls them, percepts? Sellars goes on to point out how the percept depends not only on the physical object but also the position of the observer and, indeed, on his past history (i.e., his education), the associations that have built up, and the inferences that he has learned to make. All of this ‘proves beyond doubt that the percept arises not in the object but at the brain’94: In other words, working within the system of the vulgar, that is, with causal inferences with respect to situations of error and so on, one arrives at the system of the philosophers, in which all sense impressions depend causally for their existence on the state of our organs: ‘Natural [New] Realism ... is forced to testify against its own possibility and to furnish the basis for an explanation of that which occurs. The result is ... a compromise: things are where we judge them to be, but we do not perceive them. Instead, we perceive the percepts causally con-

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nected with them, and these percepts are spatially and temporally more directly related to the brain than to the things with which we ordinarily identify them.’95 It may be that these arguments offered by the critical realists are unsound. It may further be that in spite of their intentions, the critical realists end up in a sort of subjectivism and scepticism, as it is claimed so often that Hume does. But that is not the issue. The point of presenting these arguments of the Critical Realists is not so much to defend them, but rather to defend Hume, by showing that his discussion of the systems of the vulgar and of the philosophers is, in its intention and in the main thrust of its argument, of a piece with the intention and thrust of argument of the critical realists. No one reads the latter as subjectivists or as sceptics. Nor should one so read Hume. But it is also true that the argument used by the critical realists and by Hume to defend the introduction of the system of the philosophers is indeed a sound causal inference. F. The System of the Vulgar as False, Inevitable, and Reasonable Hume has now arrived at the following position. There are two systems, that of the vulgar, the Berkeleyan realist system of objects that we perceive, and that of the philosophers, which we arrive at by causal reasoning. Both systems generate predictions about which impressions we will and would perceive under such and such appropriate circumstances. Up to a point, these predictions agree. But they disagree about the unsensed particulars. Both systems introduce these, but that of the vulgar asserts that they are coloured and so on, qualified in just the way that sensed particulars (i.e., impressions), are qualified; whereas that of the philosophers asserts that the unsensed particulars differ from the sensed particulars in kind in not having the sensible qualities of the latter. The idea of a particular that is not sensed is an abstract idea, and the idea of such an event being a cause of my impressions is also an abstract idea, and moreover a relative idea; logically speaking, this abstract relative idea of the external cause of my impressions is in effect a definite description. Both systems require such ideas. In the system of the philosophers, the idea of an unsensed particular is the idea of the event that causes the impression I now have. The ideas in this idea are the abstract generic idea of an event, qualified but not by any sensible quality, and the (abstract) relative idea of a cause. Since we do not sense the particulars that fall under this idea, and since they lack all the specific

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sensible properties of (sensed) impressions, we do not form a specific idea of them, only a generic idea. (Hume makes this point repeatedly in the Treatise; see pp. 68, 211, 216, 227.) The concepts of event and cause appear, of course, in the causal principle that for every event there is an event that is its cause. It is this principle that justifies96 the introduction of the definite description, ‘the event that causes this impression.’ The causal principle has been confirmed in practice through the discovery of causes.97 Its acceptance is therefore justified. In turn it justifies introducing as hypothetical entities unsensed particulars, in both the system of the vulgar and that of the philosophers. Failure to sense these particulars does not falsify the causal principle, owing to the presence of the existential quantifier.98 Coherence is achieved that would otherwise be lost if we rejected the hypotheses about the unsensed particulars: for that would involve rejecting the causal principle. And achieving such coherence is a reasonable conclusion, since we have reasons for accepting, and none for rejecting, the causal principle.99 We have now arrived at the point in Hume’s discussion of the external world where he concludes that through the supposition of unsensed particulars as causes of impressions, coherence is achieved. At this point in his argument, Hume offers a brief characterization of how the mind arrives at the hypothesis of objects distinct from perceptions: The imagination tells us, that our resembling perceptions have a continu’d and uninterrupted existence, and are not annihilated by their absence. Reflection tells us, that even our resembling perceptions are interrupted in this existence, and different from each other. The contradiction between these opinions we elude by a new fiction, which is conformable to the hypotheses both of reflection and fancy, by ascribing these contrary qualities to different existences; the interruption to perceptions, and the continuance to objects. (215)

Imagination leads us to impose order or uniformity on our perceptions. Reflection – that is, causal reasoning – tells us that our perceptions are dependent on our organs just as our awareness of them is dependent on our organs, and that our impressions are therefore annihilated by their absence. But this causal reasoning turns on the principle of determinism (‘like causes have like effects, and conversely’) and this itself is a way of imposing uniformity. Reason thus takes up the project of the imagination to impose uniformity. A feature of the theory that reason

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proposes to explain our perceptual processes is the hypothesizing of objects distinct from our perceptions, which objects exhibit the same sort of continuance that the imagination imposes on our perceptions. The system of the philosophers thus defends a central idea of the imagination: that nature is uniform. At the same time, it also contradicts the system of the vulgar, when it asserts that our impressions do not have a continued existence. As Hume puts it a little later, the system of the philosophers ‘at once denies and establishes the vulgar supposition’ (218). But in the meanwhile, Hume elaborates the point that the hypothesis of the philosophers satisfies the demands of both reason and the imagination. Let us emphasize this point: the hypothesis of the philosophers satisfies the demands of both reason and the imagination. In the end, both reason and nature are satisfied: there is no conflict. Many of course have found such a conflict and have concluded, as Popkin does, that Hume is a sceptic with regard to the external world. We now see that such a conclusion is wrong: the hypothesis of the system of the philosophers conforms at once to the demands of our best causal reasoning and to the demands of nature. There is, to repeat, no conflict and therefore no scepticism about the external world. Hume makes this point clearly – though, it must also be said, he does so in a way that has misled many. Here is how he puts it: Nature is obstinate, and will not quit the field, however strongly attack’d by reason; and at the same time reason is so clear in the point, that there is no possibility of disguising her. Not being able to reconcile these two enemies, we endeavour to set ourselves at ease as much as possible, by successively granting to each what ever it demands, and by feigning a double existence, where each may find something, that has all the conditions it desires. Were we fully convinc’d that our resembling perceptions are continu’d, and identical, and independent, we should never run into the opinion of a double existence; since we shou’d find satisfaction in our first supposition, and wou’d not look beyond. Again, were we fully convinc’d, that our perceptions are dependent, and interrupted, and different we shou’d be as little inclin’d to embrace the opinion of a double existence; since in that case we shou’d clearly perceive the error of our first supposition of a continu’d existence, and wou’d never regard it farther. ’Tis therefore from the intermediate situation of the mind, that this opinion arises, and from such an adherence to these two contrary principles, as makes us seek some pretext to justify our receiving both; which happily at least is found in the system of double existence. (215–16)

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This requires close reading. Here is what it says. Nature leads us to make our perceptual judgments. In these we are presented with a world of continuing entities. Reasoning cannot destroy the tendency to impute an order and uniformity to the world as we sensibly experience it. At the same time, causal reasoning clearly asserts that the continuity given in perception is false; for perceptual error is a fact. If our perceptions never deceived us about continuity, if there never was error in our perceptual judgments, then there would be no contrariety in experience. But error is present, and this provides the motive to go beyond the system of the vulgar. However, if all we had were perceptions, with no tendency to recognize a uniformity in nature, reasoning would never lead us to the hypothesis of double existence: we can arrive at the latter only through considerations rooted in reasoning that is oblique and indirect and that presupposes the uniformity of nature. There is, on the one hand, the recognized discontinuity in our perceptions, and there is, on the other hand, the tendency to impute uniformity to nature: the mind tries to have both. And, happily, it finds a way: the system of the philosophers. In a sense, this is a ‘pretext’ (216) for having our cake and eating it, too. But in fact, it is not a mere pretext: the only sort of pretext that will do, the only sort that will in the long run actually satisfy us, is one that satisfies our best causal reasoning100 – and the system that satisfies this condition is the system of the philosophers. We must not let Hume’s somewhat bantering tone mislead us. The use of ‘pretext’ suggests that any hypothesis will do to set the mind at rest as it endeavours to reconcile its apparently contrary aims; it suggests some pretence as a reason for adopting the hypothesis, rather than a real reason. But this is misleading: the pretext is to be one for adopting a hypothesis that is satisfying to the mind, and specifically, of course, to the mind as it conforms to the standards of the best causal reasoning. A bit earlier, Hume made the same point that he is making here, but in a way less misleading in its suggestions: ‘In order to set ourselves at ease ... we contrive a new hypothesis, which seems to comprehend both these principles of reason and imagination’ (215). The only sort of pretext that will serve is one that satisfies reason, that is, causal reason. Here, as elsewhere, Hume’s somewhat bantering tone has the tendency to mislead. Another example should be considered. Hume clearly regards as sound the reasoning that leads to the conclusion that sense impressions are dependent on our sense organs. But does he regard the conclusion to which it leads to be acceptable? I think the answer to this question is clearly affirmative. At the same time, a nega-

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tive answer is invited when Hume proceeds to describe the resulting system as follows: ‘This philosophical system,’ he tells us, ‘is the monstrous offspring of two principles, which are contrary to each other, and which are mutually unable to destroy each other’ (215). The use of ‘monstrous’ here is suggestive. The term ‘monster’ may mean an imaginary animal or one of huge or extraordinary size. It may also mean a person of inhuman cruelty or wickedness. But neither of these uses is appropriate. The term ‘monstrous’ can also express indignation or wondering contempt; or, on the other hand, it may express nothing more than is expressed by ‘exceeding’ or ‘wonderful,’ as when Swift wrote to Stella about a day in which ‘we have a monstrous deal of snow’ (8 February 1710–11). But its conjunction with ‘offspring’ indicates that Hume is using it in a metaphor playing on the common usage, in which it refers simply to an animal or plant deviating in one or more of its parts from the normal type, an animal that is malformed relative to the norm. The system of the philosophers is monstrous, then, in no other sense than that the two principles each have normal offspring, and that the system of the philosophers, an offspring of both, diverges from the norm of each: the point is no different from the one Hume made earlier when he argued that this philosophical hypothesis has no primary recommendation, either to reason or to the imagination (212); or the point he makes later when he refers to reasoning ‘such as that of Sect. 2 [i.e., the section we are now discussing], from the coherence of our perceptions,’ as reasoning not ‘by any principle [i.e., a habit caused directly by an observed constant conjunction], but by an irregular kind of reasoning from experience’ (242). Passmore suggests that reasoning cannot be used to defend the ‘monstrous’ hypothesis. But, it seems clear, reason can after all defend the hypothesis. Passmore is very likely misled into thinking that the hypothesis of the philosophical system is indefensible by nothing more than Hume’s playful use of ‘monstrous.’101 The system of the philosophers, we thus see, does conform to the best canons of causal reason. We ought, therefore, by those canons to reject the system which contradicts that of the philosophers; we ought, in other words, to reject the system of the vulgar. We must, as one critical realist put it, distinguish perception from knowledge.102 In perception we have thing-experiences but we do not perceive the real physical things; we have only knowledge about, not experience of the latter, and epistemologically, ‘perception ... [is] subordinate to knowledge.’103 In spite of this, however, we continue to perceive, we cannot help it; or, in Hume’s terms, we cannot but affirm the system of the vulgar. The

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explanation for this is in terms of psychology: perceiving is an automatic process that occurs prior to and independently of reflective thought. In Hume’s associationist psychology, what this amounts to is, that the principle or mode of association that leads us to perceive as we do – that is, to perceive the world as described in the Berkeleyan system of the vulgar – is a principle irreducible to causal reasoning. But now Hume carefully proceeds to point out that the philosophical system is similar to that of the vulgar, enough so that we can revert to the latter without serious conflict. Another advantage of this philosophical system is its similarity to the vulgar one; by which means we can humour our reason for a moment, when it becomes troublesome and solicitous; and yet upon its least negligence or inattention, can easily return to our vulgar and natural notions. Accordingly we find, that philosophers neglect not advantage, but immediately upon leaving their closet, mingle with the rest of mankind in those exploded opinions, that our perceptions are our only objects, and continue identically and uninterruptedly the same in all their interrupted appearances. (216)

Nor is this reversion to the system of the vulgar irrational, even though we have every good reason to believe that system to be false. How can we understand this? Both systems generate predictions regarding which impressions we will and would perceive under such appropriate circumstances, and up to a point, these predictions agree. The radical disagreement concerns the nature of the unperceived particulars. Both systems introduce unsensed particulars, but that of the vulgar asserts that they are qualified in just the way that sensed impressions are qualified, whereas the system of the philosophers denies that the unsensed particulars are thus qualified. What the system of the philosophers does better than that of the vulgar is introduce greater coherence among the sensed impressions. The two systems disagree in the predictions they make. They disagree of course about the unsensed particulars, but up to a point they agree in their predictions concerning sensed impressions. Nonetheless, this latter agreement is only up to a point: beyond that, they disagree, and it is the system of the philosophers that yields the better predictions and introduces greater coherence. Even so, within the system of the vulgar, causal reasoning can be used to correct perceptual errors, thereby introducing a greater degree of coherence than is contributed by perceptual judg-

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ments alone. The point at which disagreement appears can thus be postponed. But when the causal reasoning is generalized to all domains, and so carried through as to lead to a unified theory of science – including a science of perception – then conflict does ultimately appear, and it is the system of the philosophers that must in the end be judged superior. The system of the vulgar cannot coherently account for the double image that occurs when one’s eyeball is pressed; the system of the philosophers can fit this in much more coherently – that is, in a way that better fits rule four, ‘like causes have like effects, and conversely.’ Thus, in terms of the logic of the situation, the system of the vulgar provides knowledge that, in its specific predictions, is imperfect relative to the knowledge of the system of the philosophers, and that, at the generic level, is less unified than the knowledge provided by the system of the philosophers.104 Still, it must also be recognized that within limits, it is knowledge, and if one ignores what is of practical inconsequence (i.e., the specific nature of the unsensed particulars), then for everyday purposes, for most pragmatic interests, the knowledge provided by the system of the vulgar is quite adequate. That is why philosophers revert to – and even they can get by with – the system of the vulgar when they shift from contexts where their motivation is that of idle curiosity, the realm of ‘pure’ reason, to contexts shaped by everyday pragmatic interests. To satisfy our pragmatic interests, we need knowledge of the world, knowledge of means. Often we do not need all the knowledge that science can give us; less will suffice. (In order to cure diseases, the physician does not need to know the details of the processes by which penicillin kills bacteria; the more imperfect piece of knowledge, that it does kill germs, suffices to enable the physician to achieve his or her ends.) So long as we stick with the system of the vulgar, and proceed somewhat indolently (269) in applying the general maxims of the world – that is, avoid applying in full strictness the causal reasoning of the philosopher – we avoid fundamental incoherence. All that happens is that we leave such phenomena as that of double vision causally unexplained; but that can hardly affect our ordinary life. Only an unusually motivated person – for example, a philosopher (empirical scientist) motivated by idle curiosity, or by passion (as moves the philosopher [270]), or by a love of truth for its own sake – would pursue causal reasoning beyond the point that ordinary pragmatic interests require. But, so motivated, and so tracing out the causal connections, one arrives at the system of the philosophers, which, like the system of the vulgar, is internally consistent, but which at the same

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time contradicts the system of the vulgar. The system of the philosophers shows the extent to which the system of the vulgar is and is not a true account of unperceived reality, as well as the extent to which it will and will not yield true predictions. In particular, among its consequences is the proposition that within the realm delimited by our practical concerns, the system of the vulgar can be expected to yield correct predictions. The disinterested search after truth or curiosity that motivates the academic philosopher leads us,105 as we apply the best rules of causal inference, to reject the system of the vulgar and to accept that of the philosophers; yet the latter then shows that, as a matter of fact, within the area of our practical interests, we are justified in relying on the system of the vulgar to provide us with knowledge of means. The system of the philosophers itself provides the argument that, within the realm of everyday interests, the system of the vulgar is rationally justified.106 Such, I am proposing, is the thrust of Hume’s argument. It is, moreover, an argument that escapes the criticisms that are regularly advanced against it. Price has suggested that Hume’s discussion aims to show not that the system of the vulgar has a limited rationality, but that the system is wholly inadequate because it is inconsistent.107 But, as we have argued, the system of the vulgar is not by itself inconsistent. Nor does Hume suggest that it is. Indeed, it is the system that all of us normally use: even philosophers ‘immediately upon leaving their closets, mingle with the rest of mankind in those exploded opinions, that our perceptions are our only objects, and continue identically and uninterruptedly the same in all their interrupted appearances’ (216). The system of the vulgar – that is, the world as given to us in our perceptual judgments – has its roots in our imagination, and these judgments of the (mere) imagination are not reducible to causal reasoning. So long as we stick with this system, and proceed somewhat indolently (269) in applying the general maxims of the world – that is, avoiding applying in full strictness the causal reasoning of the philosopher – then we get into no fundamental incoherence. I say ‘fundamental’ because particular perceptual judgments may disagree, as indeed they often do, and we have techniques based on causal reasoning for setting them aright; but this does not mean that there is a defect in the framework as such. But there is nothing in the ordinary flow of the world that compels or motivates the ordinary person to use the best causal reasoning to resolve his quotidian misperceptions, nor anything that compels him to causally

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explain such phenomena as double vision, which hardly distract from the customary flow of one’s perceptual experience. Only an unusually motivated person, for example, a philosopher (= empirical scientist) motivated by something like idle curiosity, would pursue causal reasoning beyond the point required by ordinary pragmatic interests. Within these limits, then, the system of the vulgar is quite consistent, and – what is of present importance – Hume sees it as consistent. Price is therefore wrong to suppose that Hume aims to find an inconsistency in the system of the vulgar. The conflict that Hume discovers is neither in the system of the vulgar by itself nor in the system of the philosophers by itself; rather, as Popkin says (and to repeat), the conflict is between the two, one of which we must accept (that of the vulgar) and one of which our best causal reasoning tells us that which we ought to accept (that of the philosophers). In effect, this settles the argument against Popkin and Mandelbaum. Hume is not a subjectivist, but a critical realist. Moreover, he holds that there is only one system, that of the philosophers, that we ought rationally to accept; there is thus nothing contrary to reason that would force Hume into a Pyrrhonist conclusion. But Hume’s discussion continues of course for some time, and he himself raises a variety of sceptical issues. Before we turn to these, we should explore the world of the philosophers in greater detail. G. The World of the Philosophers Hume has established that it is reasonable to suppose that there are external physical objects which cause our impressions, and that the latter depend for their existence on the state of our organs.108 He has also established that the reasoning which justifies this conclusion is not direct cause–effect inference but the imagination inferring ‘from custom in an indirect and oblique manner’ (197) in conformity to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ This is where he arrives at the end of Section 2 of Part iv of Book I of the Treatise. At this point Hume turns briefly to make a couple of points about the detailed descriptions that the system of the philosophers gives of the physical objects which it asserts to be the causes of our perceptions. These, too, he tells us, do not depend on direct cause–effect inferences: ‘There are other particulars of this system [of the philosophers], wherein we may remark its dependence on the fancy in a very conspicuous manner’ (216).

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Now, the use of ‘fancy’ here may suggest playfulness or whim, the very contrary of reason. It may thereby tend to support the sceptical reading of Hume. It is true that the fancy may indeed, for Hume, produce false beliefs. In speaking of the miser who receives delight from his money, Hume explains that what motivates him is the pleasure of its use – not its actual use, however, but its imagined use: ‘Since he cannot form any such conclusion in a way of reasoning concerning the nearer approach of the pleasure, ’tis certain he imagines it to approach nearer, whenever all external obstacles are remov’d, along with the more powerful motives of interest and danger, which oppose it’ (314; his italics). Here reason and imagination are contrasted, with the latter producing a belief that the former cannot support. Hume, moreover, goes on to ascribe the belief or judgment to the fancy: ‘We judge from an illusion of the fancy, that the pleasure is still closer and more immediate’ (314–15; his italics). Here fancy and imagination are equated and are taken to be the source of an illusion that reason cannot support. Yet as we know, for Hume causal reason is also at times characterized as a species of imagination, when, for example, it is contrasted to the a priori reason of mathematics (97); thus to characterize an inference as a product of the imagination is not necessarily to condemn it as unsound or irrational from the point of view of satisfying our curiosity – that is, achieving, so far as we can, the discovery of matter-of-fact truth. Moreover, Hume has earlier, in discussing ‘the probability of causes’ (I, iii, 13), attempted a psychological explanation, in terms of associationism, of how the mind comes to form the contrary hypotheses that constitute probability estimates of causes and that are the basis on which the rules of eliminative induction go to work in order to discover which among the possible alternatives is the true cause (133–40). So Hume is here giving a psychological description of the mind’s working when causes are inferred in conformity with Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’; that is to say, Hume is here giving an explanation of what he argues is sound causal reasoning. At the same time, Hume also ascribes the inference here to the fancy. In cases where causes are only probable, an A is followed sometimes by a B and sometimes by a C, and here, ‘our past experience presents no determinate object; and as our belief, however faint, fixes itself on a determinate object, ’tis evident that the belief arises not merely from the transference of past to future, but from some operation of the fancy conjoin’d with it’ (140; his italics). Thus, for Hume, inferences of the fancy need not be unsound; some in

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fact constitute the best causal reasoning there is! And when Hume ascribes certain features of the system of the philosophers to the fancy, we cannot conclude that those inferences are irrational. We must read Hume’s comments at the end of section 2 on the system of the philosophers with this caution in mind. Hume has now argued for the system of the philosophers, and at this point proceeds to make two brief comments (216–17) that address this question: What, in detail, do we know about the nature of the objects that the system of the philosophers asserts to be there? The two comments Hume makes are relatively brief, but he has in fact commented on the subject throughout earlier portions of the Treatise, and the texts that we are now considering from Book I, Part iv, Section 2, must be looked at in the light of these earlier remarks – and also, one should add, in the light of later remarks. Perhaps the most important point to be recalled is that any idea we form of objects as described in the system of the philosophers must conform to Hume’s theory of ideas; or, to put it more accurately, any concept of such unperceived objects must conform to the Principle of Acquaintance (PA), that we can have no (simple) idea without an antecedent impression. It does not follow, however, that for every idea we must be acquainted with the object to which it applies. Moreover, we might have a general idea of the object without having an idea of the object in all its specificity. The general idea would be inadequate to the object, of course, but it would not be false of the object. Thus, knowing that all men have fathers, we can form the relative idea, ‘the father of Jones.’ This is a general idea. It is also a relative idea; it refers to an individual by means of the relation in which the individual stands to another. Moreover, it is an idea that applies to exactly one individual. At the same time, it is not an idea of that individual as the specific person that he is: from this general idea of Jones’s father we can infer only that he has the properties mentioned in the idea, and from it alone we can learn nothing of the other properties Jones’s father might have. To that extent, the general and relative idea we have formed of Jones’s father is abstract when compared to the concrete ideas we form of those persons with whom we are acquainted; the latter, unlike the former, are ideas that are specifically adequate to the objects. Hume has made it clear earlier in the Treatise that we can form such general and relative ideas of unperceived objects, without our having any idea of what specifically those entities are like. Hume lays down this general rule:

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Since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are deriv’d from something antecedently present to the mind; it follows, that ’tis impossible for us so much to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible: Let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appear’d in the narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produc’d. (67–8).

But to this he hastens to add a qualification: The farthest we can go towards a conception of external objects, when suppos’d specifically different from our perceptions, is to form a relative idea of them, without pretending to comprehend the related objects. Generally speaking we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attribute to them different relations, connexions and durations. But of this more fully hereafter. (68; his italics)

And then Hume gives a reference to Part iv, Section 2, the section we are now examining in detail. This qualification to the general rule about our ideas therefore applies to the external objects of the systems of the vulgar and of the philosophers. The external objects of the vulgar are, of course, not supposed to be specifically different from our perceptions. But the external objects of the philosophers are supposed to differ specifically from our perceptions. What Hume argues is that we can form ideas of the external objects of the philosophers, but that these ideas are relative and as such do not enable us to comprehend the related objects – that is (I take it), comprehend them in their own full specificity. Hume makes the same point again later on in the Treatise, explicitly referring in a footnote to the passage just quoted: ‘Remember, ’tis impossible our idea of a perception, and that of an object or external existence can ever represent what are specifically different from each other. Whatever difference we may suppose betwixt them, ’tis still incomprehensible to us; and we are oblig’d either to conceive an external object merely as a relation without a relative, or to make it the very same with a perception or impression’ (241). Hume here speaks of ‘relations’ and ‘relatives’ rather than of ‘relative ideas,’ though the latter clearly refer to what ‘relations’ refer to in this

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second passage. This is helpful, for Hume says little indeed about ‘relative ideas’ and rather more about ‘relations.’ We must infer from his discussion of ‘relations’ what he means by ‘relative ideas.’ The ‘relations’ and ‘relatives’ terminology of such philosophers as Locke, and Hume’s remarks, fit in with the latter’s discussion. The Port Royal Logic is of little help in illuminating Hume: it gives two brief references to relations, neither of which are relevant to Hume’s discussion. Watts and Crousaz have rather more to say, though neither addresses himself in detail directly to ‘relative ideas.’ Both their accounts derive largely from Locke. Hume’s own account is complicated by his special doctrine of abstraction. It suffices to recognize that the standard account of relatives, or relative ideas, found in Watts and Crousaz, and deriving from Locke, finds its place in the Humean analysis of ideas.109 The relative idea of a father thus finds a perfectly natural place within the Humean framework, which thereby recognizes the possibility of one’s having knowledge by description even when knowledge by acquaintance is absent. Knowledge by description is possible by means of relative ideas. Moreover, these relative ideas conform to Hume’s basic PA. Of course, if we have no acquaintance with the object, if it is not actually perceived, then we will have no adequate idea of it. Nonetheless, it does not follow that we can have no idea of it: for we can form a relative idea. In particular, we have the relation of cause and effect. Using the relative idea of cause, and given a certain perception, call it Jones, we can form the idea of the (external) cause of Jones, where ‘Jones’ names the impression; and in just the same way, we can form the less generic idea of the father of Jones. Because the generic notion of cause is derived from experience, from perception, the external causes of perception will not be conceived as generically different from the objects perceived. But given this generic sameness, it does not follow that the two must be, or be conceived as, specifically the same. Or, of course, there is the missing shade of colour (discussed earlier in this chapter). It is a relative idea we form of this shade: it is the colour between the shades with which we are acquainted. The missing shade is generically the same as the shades we know – they are all colours – but it is specifically different. We therefore have no adequate idea of it. Yet we do have a relative idea of it. And, just as Hume admitted this obvious point, while also recognizing the difficulties that confronted him as he attempted to analyse this idea within his nominalistic and associationist framework, so also Hume admits the relative idea of the (external) cause of an impression, along with whatever further difficulties might confront him in the analysis of this idea.

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It is in the light of these considerations that we must interpret Hume’s two comments on particular features of the system of the philosophers. The first of these comments is this: We suppose external objects to resemble internal perceptions. I have already shown, that the relation of cause and effect can never afford us any just conclusion from the existence of external continu’d objects: And I shall further add, that even tho’ they cou’d afford such a conclusion, we shou’d never have any reason to infer, that our objects resemble our perceptions. That opinion, therefore, is deriv’d from nothing but the quality of the fancy above explain’d, that it borrows all its ideas from some precedent perception. We can never conceive anything but perceptions, and therefore must make everything resemble them. (216)

We can, I propose, explain this comment as follows. The habits of cause–effect inference arise from our regularly experiencing one sort of perceived object to be followed by perceived objects of another sort. But ex hypothesi, we do not experience the external objects. This much we have seen previously, though we also recall that this conclusion is qualified so as to admit that an inference to external objects can still be justified, as Hume put it earlier, by ‘an inference [which] arises from the understanding, and from custom in an indirect and oblique manner’ (197); or, as Hume puts it later, ‘by an irregular kind of reasoning from experience,’ such as reasoning ‘from the coherence of our perceptions’ (242). Imagination or the fancy must supplement the simple cause– effect inference habits if we are to arrive at the hypothesis of the external objects of the system of the philosophers. In the passage we are now considering, Hume is adding the further point that, even if we do get to external objects, then the same qualities of simple causal inference that prevent them from justifying the existential hypothesis also prevent them from justifying any claim that the hypothesized external objects resemble our perceptions. It is, therefore, the imaginative processes involved in the inference from the coherence of our perceptions that give rise to the opinion that external objects resemble perceptions – even for resemblance of the most generic sort. Moreover, we cannot but think of external objects as somehow or in some respect (even if it be only the most generic) resembling our perceptions, for the imagination can form only such ideas as conform to PA: ‘The fancy ... borrows all its ideas from some precedent perception.’ Note, however, that such suppositions of resemblance need not be unjustified simply because they are not justi-

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fied by simple cause–effect inferences: the suppositions can be justified by reasoning from the coherence of our perceptions. Moreover, we may suppose that these external objects which resemble our perceptions also cause those perceptions; it does not follow that the entities, once imagination leads us to suppose they exist, cannot then also be supposed to stand in cause–effect relations with our perceptions. So much for Hume’s first comment. Hume’s second comment on the system of the philosophers is this: As we suppose our objects in general to resemble our perceptions, so we take it for granted, that every particular object resembles that perception which it causes. The relation of cause and effect determines us to join the other of resemblance: and the ideas of these existences being already united together in the fancy by the former relation, we naturally add the latter to complete the union. We have a strong propensity to complete every union by joining new relations to those which we have before observ’d betwixt any ideas, as we shall have occasion to observe presently. (217)

And here Hume adds a reference to Book I, Part iv, Section 5 (237ff.), which is – it is clear when we turn to the latter – a reference to his discussion of the taste of a fig. In the comment we are now examining, Hume attributes a certain tendency of the mind to conceive the external causes of our perceptions not only as resembling in general those perceptions which they cause, but also in another way – namely, as specifically similar to the perceptions they cause. The mind does not rest content with a relative idea of those external causes; rather it tends to form an absolute idea of them. Now, the ‘indirect and oblique’ reasoning that leads us to ascribe existence and a resemblance in general to the external causes of perception is justified; but Hume does not say that this further tendency to replace a relative with an absolute idea is justified. This may indeed be a characteristic of our thinking about the external objects that the system of the philosophers believes to exist, as Hume here suggests. But such a characteristic movement of thought may well be contrary to reason, and one that reason ought to resist. Hume does not assert that this natural movement of thought is a rationally justified movement of thought. It may well be that rationally, but we ought to rest content with the relative idea of external objects and to resist the tendency to substitute for that relative idea an absolute idea, however natural is the tendency of thought to make that substitution.

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And in fact, when we turn to his later discussion of the taste of the fig to which he refers us, we can see clearly that he judges such a movement of thought as not reasonable. The taste of a fig cannot be said to be in only one part of the fig, nor can it be said to be in every part (238). Not the former, since experience convinces us that every part has that taste. But if the taste is in every part, then it, like colour, will have to be figured and extended, which is also contrary to experience. So the second alternative is also excluded. In order to reconcile these two options, we rely on the supposition summarized in the scholastic dictum totum in toto & totum in quaelibet parte (238), that the taste exists within the body, but whole and entire in every part. This, however, does not eliminate the difficulty; this only obscures it, for it ‘is much the same, as if we shou’d say, that a thing is in a certain place, and yet is not there’ (238). The problem arises because we are attempting to locate the taste in a place – specifically, in the place where the fig is: ‘This absurdity proceeds from our endeavouring to bestow a place on what is utterly incapable of it’ (238). Why do we thus endeavour to locate the taste in the fig? To answer this we might glance at a discussion that Hume has elsewhere of the example of taste;110 only here, he discusses the taste of wine, which he compares to the feelings that mark aesthetic taste. About these, Hume tells us that ‘though it be certain that beauty and deformity, more than sweet and bitter, are not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or external, it must be allowed, that there are certain qualities in objects which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings.’111 Both feelings of beauty and such tastes as those of bitter and sweet are not qualities of the objects to which they are attributed; rather, they are caused by qualities in those objects. The mind recognizes this causal connection but then adds to it a conjunction in place: ‘’tis a quality which I shall often have occasion to remark in human nature ... that when objects are united by any relation, we have a strong propensity to add some new relation to them, in order to complete the union’ (237). What Hume’s discussion of taste makes clear is that this propensity is one that sometimes goes contrary to reason, and is therefore one that reason at times ought to resist. Now, reasoning from coherence justifies the inference to the unsensed entities that, in the system of the philosophers, are the external causes of our sensible experiences. But to this relation of cause and effect, human nature tends to add the relation of resemblance. We will thus tend to suppose that the external object that causes our perception resembles the perception. And the tendency will

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be to suppose not merely a generic resemblance but also a specific resemblance. And, as he has said earlier, when discussing ‘the effects of other relations and other habits [on belief]’ (Book I, Part iii, Section 9), ‘resemblance, when conjoin’d with causation, fortifies our reasonings’ (113). The fig causes the taste; we then suppose it is by virtue of a quality resembling the taste that the fig causes that perception in us, and moreover, we suppose that this quality is not merely conjoined with the other qualities of the fig but that it is both everywhere within the fig and wholly in every part. To what extent is one justified in supposing that an external object resembles the perception it causes? Not necessarily as far as the mind tends to think. And in fact, only so far as is justified by reasoning from experience – that is, the ‘irregular reasoning from experience’ based on considerations of causal coherence that we have already examined. The point is that this reasoning may well lead, and indeed does lead, to conclusions contrary to those which result from the human tendency to sometimes attribute a greater resemblance than such reasoning can justify. The ‘irregular reasoning from experience,’ – that is, from coherence – concludes with the attribution of some, at least generic, resemblance between the external object and the perception it causes. At the same time, the same sort of reasoning leads us also to conclude that the specific kinds of entities we perceive (tastes, smells, colours, etc.) all exist dependently upon our sense organs. The latter means that no external object can have any specific resemblance to any perception it causes. Reason must therefore resist the mind’s tendency to attribute such specific qualities to the external objects. A natural tendency of the mind leads us to move from a relative idea of external objects to an absolute idea; but reason does not justify this move and in fact ought to resist it. The system of the philosophers as Hume has now described and defended it, is, we recognize, of a piece with the world view proposed later by the critical realists. The physical object causes our perceptions, but so far as we know – that is, so far as legitimate causal inference will take us – the physical object lacks the secondary qualities that we experience in perception. As with critical realism, so in Hume’s system of the philosophers: ‘the physical world cannot be like our ideas,’ and the acceptance of that system therefore ‘involves a relinquishment of all attempts to picture the physical world.’112 Even so, says Hume, there is still a tendency to try so to picture the physical object, though no causal inference produces that conclusion, and though it is opposite to the

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conclusion that legitimate causal inference justifies – that is, the conclusion that entities exemplifying the secondary qualities are causally dependent on the state of our sense organs. The critical realists made the same point: ‘We usually take it [ = the datum or percept, which exemplifies the secondary qualities] to be physical, since its qualities are what we usually mean by physical qualities, and we inevitably feel that they belong to our object.’113 This is not, however, for them, as for Hume, the final judgment at which reason arrives: ‘Common sense may indeed give a snap judgment upon it and insist upon identifying the datum with the object; but there is no reason why common sense, which is merely primitive philosophy, should have the final decision.’114 So reason should resist, or at least discount when it cannot wholly resist, the tendency of common sense and the vulgar to identify the causes of our perceptions with objects that have the secondary qualities of those perceptions. Nor do we have here one of those contradictions which Popkin, and others who offer the sceptical reading, love to find Hume believing we are committed to. The suggestion would be that the best causal reasoning leads to the conclusion that physical objects lack secondary qualities, but that there is also a natural tendency of the imagination to attribute such qualities to physical objects. There is thus a conflict between causal reason and the imagination, the inevitability of which entails a scepticism from which nature alone and not reason permits an escape. This tale will not do, however. For it works only if the influence of the imagination is either sound or at least natural in the sense of inevitable. But it is not. The inference is unsound according to what Hume has argued are the canons of the best causal reasoning; and furthermore, there is no reason why the disciplined understanding cannot, when it pays attention, avoid the inference. It is only the inattentive and indolent mind that slips into the error of the imagination that physical objects resemble perceptions. The erroneous inference of the imagination is indeed natural, but only in the sense in which a disease is natural (226). Once again the sceptical reading simply is not implied by the texts. Once again we arrive at the conclusion that Hume is defending critical realism. This, I suggest, without being able to deal with many other relevant aspects of the text, is the main thrust of Hume’s argument in the section ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses.’ If so, then at this point Hume has arrived at a position that is more akin to that of the critical realists

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than it is to scepticism. But almost at once, Hume begins to raise doubts, and it is to these we shall turn, after a careful look at the conclusions at which Hume, and we ourselves, have arrived. H. A Tentative First Conclusion Livingston has argued for the unsoundness of the case that the causal argument of Section 2 of Part iv of Book I, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the senses,’ which leads to the system of the philosophers, is an argument that establishes the critical realistic position of the mechanical philosophy. He concedes that the case we have just made would succeed were Hume to have available an account of thought that would enable him to pass beyond the deliverances of sense impressions. I have suggested that Hume does in fact have such an account: our ideas of the unperceived entities that cause our sense impressions are what Hume called ‘relative ideas.’115 Livingston makes two central points: (1) Hume does not appeal to this notion in the crucial argument in I, iv, 2; if it were as crucial as I suggest, then we would expect Hume to mention the notion. (2) In the passage where Hume introduces the notion of a relative idea, he does not propose it as a means by which to solve problems that are created by his maxim that ideas must copy impressions. Let us deal with (2) first. Hume introduces the notion of a relative idea when he lays down the general rule that: (*) Since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are deriv’d from something antecedently present to the mind; it follows, that 'tis impossible for us so much to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible: Let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appear’d in the narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produc’d. (67–8)

But to this he hastens to add a qualification: (+) The farthest we can go towards a conception of external objects, when suppos’d specifically different from our perceptions, is to form a rela-

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tive idea of them, without pretending to comprehend the related objects. Generally speaking we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attribute to them different relations, connexions and durations. But of this more fully hereafter. (I, ii, 6, p. 68; his italics)

And then Hume gives a reference to I, iv, 2, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses’; this is the ‘hereafter’ to which he is referring. Livingston points out that Hume asserts in the latter section that ‘as to the notion of external existence, when taken for something specifically different from our perceptions, we have already shown its absurdity’ (188), with a footnote referring us back to the passage from I, ii, 6, just quoted. Livingston contends that this latter comment shows that Hume is not prepared to accept that the notion of a relative idea provides him with the means he needs to claim that we can think about unperceivable entities. To the contrary, I submit that Hume’s later point refers to the comment in paragraph (*), and is quite compatible with using the next sentence (+) to indicate a qualification of the claim that we cannot think the unperceived causes of our impressions. The qualification to the general rule about our ideas therefore applies, I suggest, to the external objects of the system of the vulgar and of the philosophers; at least, Livingston has not shown that it does not. The external objects of the vulgar are, of course, not supposed to be specifically different from our perceptions. But the external objects of the philosophers are supposed to differ specifically from our perceptions. What Hume is saying is that we can form ideas of the external objects of the philosophers, but that these ideas are relative and as such do not enable us to comprehend the related objects – that is (I take it), comprehend them in their own full specificity. Hume makes the same point again later on in the Treatise, again explicitly referring in a footnote to the passage from I, ii, 6, just quoted: Remember, ’tis impossible our idea of a perception, and that of an object or external existence can ever represent what are specifically different from each other. Whatever difference we may suppose betwixt them, ’tis still incomprehensible to us; and we are oblig’d either to conceive an external object merely as a relation without a relative, or to make it the very same with a perception or impression (I, ii, 5, p. 241)

We may therefore conclude that Livingston’s point (2) is unsound. Turn now to Livingston’s point (1), that there is no evidence that

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Hume uses the notion of a relative idea in his argument of I, iv, 2, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses.’ First, we must recognize that Hume uses several notions concerning ideas without fully discussing them and without warning us that he is using them. Thus, for one example, Hume does not spend a lot of time elaborating his impression/idea distinction; he merely takes it over as part of the common currency of philosophy and assumes that his readers will grasp his point. This may have created problems for later interpreters – especially those who regret that Hume never read the later Wittgenstein – but it was still a reasonable position for Hume to take, so that he could get on to where he disagreed with his contemporaries. As a second example, consider abstract ideas. Hume regularly states positions that require that he have a doctrine of abstract ideas, even though he does not warn us that he is invoking such a doctrine. Thus, when Hume states that ‘there must be a constant union betwixt the cause and effect’ (173), since there cannot be a constant conjunction between individual events, he must be referring to a constant conjunction between kinds of events. It follows that in order to state his claim about causation, Hume needs a doctrine of abstract ideas. But he does not stop at this point to tell us that that is what he needs; he assumes that his reader will be astute enough to realize it. What Hume has done earlier, as we know, is defend a certain doctrine of abstract ideas (I, i, 7). This doctrine is based on his associationist psychology. One may find it wanting, but Hume has recognized what he must do early on in the Treatise if he is to defend the later doctrine of causation that he develops – and also, if I am right, the critical realism that he later develops.116 However, he quite reasonably does not find it necessary to keep reminding us that he has a doctrine of abstract ideas. It is not implausible, then, contrary to Livingston, that Hume introduced a doctrine of abstract ideas and then presupposed it in developing other positions without explicitly telling us that he is presupposing it. Second, Hume does show us by way of example how we infer, by principles of causal reasoning, the existence of unperceived causes of our impressions – that is, the ‘vast variety of springs and principles, which are hid, by reason of their minuteness or remoteness’ (132). Indeed, we should by now be familiar with the example: ‘A peasant can give no better reason for the stopping of any clock or watch than to say, that commonly it does not go right: But an artizan easily perceives, that the same force in the spring or pendulum has always the same influ-

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ence on the wheels; but fails of its usual effect, perhaps by reason of a grain of dust, which puts a stop to the whole movement’ (132). In this case, of course, the unperceived cause may or may not be specifically different from the entities of which we have impressions; but it does have a generic resemblance: it is a grain of dust. And it is unperceived. We therefore have no impression of it. Our idea of it is, rather, on the one hand, general or abstract, since it is known only as a kind and not as the concrete object that it is and not even as it specifically is; and is also, on the other hand, relative, since it is inferred as the entity that stands as cause to the non-working of the watch as effect. So, when Hume describes how we infer to unperceived causes that are specifically unlike the entities of which we have impressions, he makes use of the notion of relative ideas, and also the notion of abstract ideas, even though he fails to signal to us his use of either. But then, he has no need to: we, as readers, should be perceptive enough to grasp the obvious. As Hume goes on to indicate, the causal reasoning that the artisan employs is generalized by the philosopher: ‘From the observation of several parallel instances, philosophers form a maxim, that the connexion betwixt all causes and effects is equally necessary, and that its seeming uncertainty in some instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary causes’ (132). The discovery of causes leads us to form the generalization that all events have causes and that like causes have like effects, and conversely (rule four for ‘judging of causes and effects’ [173]), and we can then use this to infer that where there are different effects then there are unobserved causes at work. We then, as we saw in greater detail in the preceding section of this chapter, use this pattern of reasoning to fill in the gaps in the series of our impressions; this gives us the continued existences of the system of the vulgar (197).117 But there are also the cases of the double images that arise when we press one eyeball while looking at a candle (210). These cases will not worry the vulgar; they will attribute them to chance. And the average person, moved only by the ‘sentiments of spleen and indolence’ (270), will inquire no further. But the philosopher, moved only by curiosity, will inquire into the causes of the double existences; he will apply the same reasoning here as he does in the case of the watch – that is, the rules by which to judge of causes and effects. These rules now lead him to the system of the philosophers, where, contrary to what happens ‘generally speaking’ (cf. [+] above), we are led to ‘suppose’ that the cause of our impressions is ‘specifically different’ from those impressions, that is, that we have only

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an idea of it that is abstract or generic and relative. Livingston is correct: Hume does not mention relative ideas when he goes through this account. But surely he does not need to: if we have understood the story of the watch then we understand what is going on with the double image. Hume need no more mention relative ideas here than he need mention abstract ideas, even though his discussion presupposes both. I conclude that Hume’s discussion of ‘scepticism with regard to the senses,’ often cited in support of a subjectivist or sceptical reading of Hume, does not support such a reading, but rather supports, to the contrary, the thesis that was later to become ‘critical realism.’ We have found, in fact, that Hume defends each of the eight propositions that we earlier suggested could be taken as a characterization of critical realism: 1 Perceptual data and other contents of consciousness are not ontologically dependent on consciousness – the bundle view of the mind that is part of the system of the philosophers guarantees this (207). 2 The consciousness of contents is caused by ‘physical’ objects – for Hume impressions are ‘conveyed’ to the senses from the object perceived, which may be, for example, a hat, a shoe, or a stone (202). 3 In perception the contents of consciousness are attributed to the ‘physical’ objects that cause the perception; in the system of the vulgar, impressions from the object perceived are identically the object and the perception of it (202). (Critical realism shares the first three propositions with the new realism, and to all intents, the Berkeleyan realistic system of the vulgar is the system of the new realists.) 4 ‘Physical’ things exist ontologically and causally independently of being known. For Hume this holds for objects as described in the system of the philosophers (211). 5 ‘Physical’ things are the objects of our perceptions, but they are never our mental contents. In the system of the philosophers, objects and perceptions are sharply distinguished and only the latter are ever impressions (211). 6 ‘Physical’ things lack qualities that perceptions have. In the system of the philosophers, ‘physical’ things lack secondary qualities (216).

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7 ‘Physical’ things stand in such causal relations to our perceptions that it is possible for science to investigate some of these relations and some of the relations among physical things, and thus to gain trustworthy knowledge concerning laws of their action. The system of the philosophers is arrived at by a causal argument (210–11, 215), and Hume regularly tells us of the capacity of science to investigate the ‘springs and principles [of nature], which are hid, by reason of their minuteness of remoteness’ (132). 8 We lack exhaustive knowledge and remain ignorant of the inner and ultimate nature of ‘physical’ things. The complexity of nature makes it difficult for science to progress (175); progress is not impossible, however, and one can begin to explain, for example – at least tentatively – such things as the association of ideas through recourse to physiology and hypothetical entities like ‘animal spirits’ (60–1); but in the end, these external objects are supposed to be specifically different from our sensations and we can form no absolute idea of the specific nature, only a relative one (60). Such, then, is Hume’s critical realism, a far cry indeed from either subjectivism or Pyrrhonism. We may add some further points to make the position as clear as possible. Points (4) through (8) have the following consequences. First: – the objects of ordinary perception exist within the Berkeleyan or new realistic framework, and the commonsense view of the world, as far as it goes, is rationally justified. But – the objects of ordinary perceptual knowledge do not exist, or, equivalently, perceptual objects as patterns of sensed and unsensed particulars do not exist; there are no unsensed particulars that have the qualities had by our immediate sense impressions.118 And – the scientific counterparts of the objects of ordinary perceptual experience do exist in the system of the philosophers, which, of the two systems, is the one that is rationally acceptable according to the canons of causal reason.

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As for our knowledge of things, – judgments about perceptual objects made within the framework of such objects – within, in other words, the system of the vulgar – can be true or false within that framework. However, – the patterns of inference that lead us to conclude that ordinary perceptual objects exist are all unjustified according to the best canons of causal reason, while – the patterns of the best causal inferences lead us to the acceptance of the scientific model of the world in the system of the philosophers. At the same time, – the ordinary framework of perceptual knowledge is epistemologically primary in relation to the system of the philosophers, while – the perceptual judgments of the ordinary framework, though unjustified by the best causal reasoning, are nonetheless inescapable for ordinary purposes of getting on in the world. But – other features of the commonsense view of the world – for example, that the world has existed for many years in the past – remain true when applied to the scientific picture of the world in the system of the philosophers. Moreover, – the existence of our awareness of sense impressions – and indeed, all our mental states – is, in the system of the vulgar, (causally) dependent on the states of our organs, or, more generally, of our nervous system,

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while – in the system of the philosophers, not only our awareness of sense impressions but also the impressions themselves are (causally) dependent on the states of our organs. However, – the essential juncture of knower and known, in both the world of common sense and the scientific world, is made by the sensible facts that are unavoidably impressed on us. This is Hume’s critical realism. This critical realistic system is the upshot of Hume’s argument in Book I, Part iv, section 2. Had Hume ended his argument at this point in section 2, the conclusion to be drawn would simply be that Hume was a critical realist. But in point of fact, he does not end his discussion here. He goes on almost immediately to raise certain sceptical doubts; and then later, in his discussion of what he calls the ‘modern philosophy,’ he apparently draws sceptical conclusions about the system of the philosophers. To these issues we turn in our next section. But let me here point out that the doubts raised at the end of section 2 are later resolved by Hume in section 7 (the ‘Conclusion to this Book’). In particular, the system of the modern philosophy is not to be identified with the system of the philosophers; from this it follows that the sceptical implications of the former are not implied by the latter. The conclusion, once again, is that the system defended in Book I, Part iv, section 2 – namely, critical realism – is the non-subjectivist and non-sceptical or at least non-Pyrrhonist position that Hume aims to defend. Thus, our final conclusion will be that our tentative first conclusion stands: Hume is indeed a critical realist. I. Hume’s Doubts At the very end of Book I, Part iv, Section 2, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses,’ Hume summarizes his discussion. He then comments on it: ‘Having thus given an account of all the systems both popular and philosophical, with regard to external existences, I cannot forebear giving vent to a certain sentiment, which arises upon reviewing those systems’ (217). The phrase ‘having ... given an account of all the systems’

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clearly indicates that Hume has at this point completed his discussion of the systems dealing with the external world. It follows that strictly speaking, nothing further need be said by way of justifying our belief in the external world: the justification has come to an end. As we have argued, Hume does in fact conclude that the system of the philosophers is a rationally justified system of beliefs about the external world, and, furthermore, that within limits, the system of the vulgar also provides a rationally justified system of beliefs. Now, in the next two sections of Book I, Part iv – namely, Section 3, ‘Of the ancient philosophy,’ and Section 4, ‘Of the modern philosophy,’ Hume goes on to raise other matters. The reader does not yet know what the significance of these succeeding sections is, but whatever it is, he or she must conclude that, since Hume just told him that he has already completed his account of the systems of the external world, these later sections are not to be construed as continuing in a direct way the discussion of the Section 2 we have just examined. In Section 4, Hume elaborates the views of ‘the modern philosophy’ and argues that the position thus elaborated generates irremedably sceptical consequences. But this elaboration is of ‘the modern philosophy’ and not of the system of the philosophers, the discussion and elaboration of which we know by Hume’s own statement to have been completed in Section 2. Moreover, the sceptical consequences derived in Section 4 from ‘the modern philosophy’ should not be construed as following from the system of the philosophers as the latter is presented in Section 2. Thus, Hume himself is here telling us that, although Section 2 is titled ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses,’ its conclusion is not sceptical, but rather that the critical realistic system of the philosophers is rationally justified. In spite of that title, then, we should not see the sceptical conclusions of Section 4 as an elaboration of sceptical conclusions that are supposed by Popkin and others to be found in Section 2. Hume’s point about our having completed the systems of the external world implies that the sceptical consequences laid out in Section 4 will be found to follow from premises external to the system of the philosophers presented in Section 2. The appearance of those sceptical conclusions cannot therefore not be construed as implying that Hume is sceptical about the system of the philosophers as presented in Section 2, nor as implying that Hume withdraws from the conclusion of Section 2, that the system of the philosophers is rationally justified. But if these later sections do not elaborate Hume’s views on the system of the philosophers, why are they there? The answer I shall now

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propose is that they respond to a certain sentiment, which Hume proceeds to discuss directly after telling us that his discussion of the systems of the external world has been completed. This sentiment arises when Hume reviews the systems of Section 2, and he cannot forebear giving vent to it as the section closes: ‘I begun this subject with premising, that we ought to have an implicit faith in our senses, and that this wou’d be the conclusion, I shou’d draw from the whole of my reasoning. But to be ingenuous, I feel myself at present of quite a contrary sentiment, and am more inclin’d to repose no faith at all in my senses, or rather imagination, than to place in it such an implicit confidence’ (217; his italics). Note the ‘at present,’ which Hume italicizes. He indicates how he began by arguing we ought to rely on our senses or, rather, imagination – that is, the imagination that leads us, inevitably and of necessity, to believe in body and external existence. The conclusion at which he has arrived in Section 2 is that the system of the philosophers is rationally justified, and that the system of the vulgar is also justified, albeit within certain limits. He has now arrived at the conclusion he promised. Yet at present his sentiments incline him to reject this conclusion. The ‘at present,’ while not saying so explicitly, leaves open the possibility – and, indeed, given that he has the conclusion that he should draw, it clearly implies – that ultimately Hume is not going to reject the conclusion that he should draw (i.e., rationally ought to draw). But to do that he must ask from where arises the sentiment he presently has, and ask whether that sentiment is or is not justified. What I shall suggest is that in Section 7 of this part of the Treatise Hume brings to a close his analysis of whether the sentiment to reject his senses is justified, and that he concludes that it is not justified. Thus, Hume will have defended the conclusion of Section 2 against the immediate impulse to reject it. The issue clearly turns on the answers to these questions: To what extent ought sentiments to guide thought? And, even more basically, which sentiments ought to guide thought? Ought one to submit to the immediate impulse (the one that Hume is recognizing), or ought one to submit to other sentiments? If the former, then one ought to reject the system of the philosophers; if the latter, then one need not reject that system. These questions, about the sentiments to which we ought to submit, receive answers not in Section 2, but only later, at the end of Section 7. And I shall further suggest that rather than being taken as elaborating Section 2, the succeeding sections – Sections 3 and 4, and also 5 and 6 – should be construed as propaedeutic to the discussion of Section 7.

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So, what gives rise to Hume’s sentiment inclining him at present to reject putting any faith in his senses? ‘I cannot conceive,’ Hume tells us, ‘how such trivial qualities of the fancy, conducted by any false suppositions, can ever lead to any solid rational system’ (217; italics added). These trivial qualities are, he proceeds, ‘the constancy and coherence of our perceptions’ (217). But why ‘trivial’? Do they not have the most momentous effect? Of course, but nonetheless they remain trivial when compared to the grand a priori principles and structures of the mind that philosophers such as Descartes held must be invoked if we are to arrive at a rationally justified belief in a world external to our perceptions. Thus, precisely because they appear trivial, the mind is caused to feel the sentiment that they ought not to be relied on, that they ought to be doubted. But the latter scepticism does not follow: appearances can be deceiving. It is Hume’s task, we shall see, to dispel those false appearances and so remove the sentiment that scepticism is in order.119 However, there is more yet that generates the sentiment in favour of scepticism. The ‘trivial’ qualities of our perceptions, their constancy and coherence, ‘produce the opinion of their continu’d existence; tho’ these qualities of perceptions have no perceivable connexion with such an existence’ (217). The inference is not a priori but based on inference habits formed in the light of our experience of contingent connections. And what are the false suppositions that play a role in arriving at the rationally defensible system of the philosophers? These are the suppositions of continuing particulars that arise from the illusion that our resembling perceptions are the same (217). Two points must be made about this illusion. These lead to two further points. First, constancy leads us to feign – that is, to suppose – uninterrupted existence; and this hypothesis can, on the basis of reasoning – to be sure, reasoning of an irregular kind – from experience, be justified as opinion or belief. The hypothesized entities that we believe to fill the gaps in the series of our perceptions, together with the perceptions at the beginning and the end of the gap, form a continuous series that enables us to speak intelligently, though somewhat misleadingly, of identity through change. Second, Hume can make sense of the hypothesized continuity only if he introduces a particular that literally persists through the series. This particular is incompatible with the antisubstantialist consequences of his Principle of Acquaintance. So, on the one hand, it really is a ‘gross illusion,’ but on the other hand, this particular problem, while important and in certain respects crucial, is one that we have argued can be put aside. Russell showed us how to develop a more adequate empiri-

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cist response to the problems that Hume is trying to address. Perhaps we should simply note that, third, this difficulty – if, contrary to what we have argued, it really is such – is a difficulty that infects only a minor part of Hume’s account of the external world and our belief in it. The general thrust of Hume’s account of our belief in body still stands, even though details required by his theory of concept formation are fraught with severe problems. Nonetheless, fourth – and this is what is crucial for present purposes – the system of beliefs in the external world proceeds by means of hypotheses and inevitably uncertain inferences from experience, and one can still rightly wonder, as Hume wonders, about how all this ‘can ever lead to any solid and rational system.’ The sentiment inclining him to place no faith in his senses cannot be removed simply by removing a defect (that of the continuing particular) in the details of Hume’s account. So much for the popular system, the system of the vulgar. As for the philosophical system, it has all the same difficulties, ‘and is over-andabove loaded with this [additional] absurdity, that it at once denies and establishes the vulgar supposition. Philosophers deny our resembling perceptions to be identically the same, and uninterrupted; and yet have so great a propensity to believe them such, that they arbitrarily invent a new set of perceptions, to which they attribute these qualities’ (218). Here, the ‘arbitrarily’ must be taken in context. There is no reason to suppose that Hume withdraws here from his view that the philosophers’ system really is rationally justified. Rather, the ‘arbitrarily’ gets its focus only from the immediate context, in which Hume is recounting his present inability to ‘conceive how ... trivial qualities of the fancy, conducted by ... false suppositions, can ever lead to any solid and rational system.’ The problem is compounded by our tendency to conceive the hypothesized objects of the philosophical system as specifically resembling our perceptions. Hume goes on: ‘I say, [the philosophers invent] a new set of perceptions: For we may well suppose in general but ’tis impossible for us distinctly to conceive, objects to be in their nature any thing but exactly the same with perceptions’ (218). The general supposition is, of course, all that reason permits, and rationally we cannot aim to distinctly or adequately conceive the external causes of our perceptions; we can form only an abstract generic and relative idea of them. But it is a further property of our imagination that it tends to say of objects related as cause and effect that they are also related as resembling. And in Hume’s present state of confusion, how can he exclude this additional trivial property of the fancy as contributing to our

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beliefs in external objects? This really states the problem, of course: How do we separate the qualities of the fancy yielding justified beliefs from those yielding unjustified beliefs? And if even the most justified beliefs turn out to rest on principles that are uncertain, how do we convince ourselves that it is reasonable to accept these rational but unsolid beliefs? But, though these be the problems, Hume at this point sees no answers to them. The philosophical system, even more so than the vulgar, seems to have little solidity and therefore contributes to the sentiment Hume at present feels, that he ought to place no faith at all in his senses: ‘What then can we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinions but error and falsehood? And how can we justify to ourselves any belief we repose in them?’ (218). However, in his emphasis on the ‘at present,’ Hume warns us that he will be returning to this point and, one presumes, will be offering reasons why the sentiment is less well founded than it ‘at present’ appears to be. Nonetheless, Hume goes on to indicate, no absolute faith in the senses (nor, he adds, in reason) will ever be forthcoming; in that sense, sceptical doubts remain unavoidable: ‘This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the sense, is a malady, which can never be radically cur’d, but must return upon us every moment, however we may chase it away, and sometimes may seem entirely free from it’ (218). The doubt can never be removed by any philosophical system. For, that system will involve giving reasons, and the more we feel the need to give reasons and strengthen the system, just to that same extent we will be wondering about that which we are supposed to be defending – that is, doubting what we are defending: ‘’Tis impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses: and we but expose them farther when we endeavour to justify them in that manner. As the sceptical doubt arises naturally from a profound and intense reflection on those subjects, it always increases, the farther we carry our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to it’ (218). It is not pure reason or an a priori system which yields faith in our senses and which destroys the sentiment that no faith should there be reposed. Rather, it is life which leads us to such a faith: ‘Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy’ (218). What is this carelessness and inattention? In the context, it is clearly nothing more than the mind ceasing from ‘intense reflection upon these subjects’ and turning to other things. In attending to the latter, and not attending to the former, one finds that one does have faith in one’s senses and that one can have faith in one’s senses: for, one finds that one does and can get on in the world. Alston

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is correct, along with other recent epistemologists: it is a fact that the principles of common sense, our standard cognitive practices, really do work. But Hume had already made the point, or at least, so we are arguing. It is the fact that we do and can get on in the world that Hume is going to rely on in order to remove the sentiment he at present feels, the sentiment of the radical Cartesian sceptic, that no faith ought to be placed in one’s senses. At this point, however, at the end of this Section 2, Hume does not proceed with the details of this defence of his senses. That is delayed for several sections, until Section 7 (‘The conclusion of this book’). He delays in this way in order, as I have suggested, to show that radically sceptical doubts arising with respect to both the ancient and modern philosophies do not arise with his. Sceptical doubts can never be removed, but radically sceptical doubts can. But in the meantime, though it is true that his defence of the senses remains incomplete, Hume can in fact rely on the truth that, whatever sceptical doubts his readers may theoretically entertain, nonetheless they will in practice grant him the premise that the senses are reliable. Since carelessness and inattention are the only remedy for overcoming Cartesian scruples, ‘for this reason I rely entirely upon them; and take it for granted, whatever may be the reader’s opinion at this present moment, that an hour hence he will be persuaded there is both an external and an internal world; and going upon that supposition, I intend to examine some general systems both ancient and modern, which have been propos’d of both, before I proceed to a more particular enquiry concerning our impressions. This will not, perhaps, in the end be found foreign to our present purpose’ (218). His ‘present purpose’ can only be that of resolving the issue of the conflict between, on the one hand, his reasoned defence of both the system of the vulgar and that of the philosophers, and, on the other hand, his sentiment, which he has at present, that no faith ought to be placed in the senses. This present purpose is to finally justify the idea or ‘premiss’ with which Section 2, concerning the senses, began – namely, ‘that we ought to have an implicit faith in our senses’ (217), or, as he expressed it at the beginning of Section 2, ‘the sceptic ... must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho’ he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem’d it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ’tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we

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must take for granted in all our reasonings’ (187). The purpose of finally justifying this point is, it can be presumed, something that is to be carried out when Hume proceeds ‘to a more particular enquiry concerning our impressions.’ This, as he says, is after his discussion of systems, ancient and modern, of the external world and of the self. He thus points to the section, namely 7, that succeeds this discussion of the systems of others, as that in which we shall find the final justification of the faith we place in our senses. At that point we shall find – we shall perhaps find, Hume notes with a touch of irony – that the discussion of the other systems will have contributed to our recognizing the strength of Hume’s defence of our senses – that is, the real strength that does, in fact, lie in the ‘carelessness and in-attention’ to which Hume has referred and on which he proposes to ‘rely entirely.’ J. The Resolution of Hume’s Doubts I have argued that Part iv, Book I, Section 2, of the Treatise, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses,’ has as its upshot a reasoned defence of the scientific world view, but also, in the context of that world view, a defence of the world presented to us in our everyday perceptual experience. If this is so, then this section must be kept separate in both aims and conclusion from the sections on the ancient and modern philosophy that follow it. We must now show how the later sections really do have aims and conclusions that do not challenge but rather support the non-sceptical conclusions of Section 2. Hume first discusses the ancient philosophy. The main point here is to attack once again the notion of power (224); and so most of the discussion can, for our present purposes, safely be bypassed. But towards the end of the section, Hume takes up the point that the suppositions of the ancient philosophy are the work of the imagination. The ancient philosophy is explicitly contrasted by Hume (222–3) with the system of the vulgar. The ancient philosophy is not to be identified with the latter – Aristotle is not common sense – but rather is a version of the system of the philosophers. To that extent, it is justified in a way that the system of the vulgar is not. Still, it contains grave errors; it attributes to external objects a hylomorphic structure and causal powers, neither of which reason can justify. The suppositions here are logically of a kind with those suppositions which assert that external objects specifically resemble the impressions they cause. But all such

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suppositions arise from the imagination. It is just that such causes do not serve to justify the suppositions: ‘But it may be objected, that the imagination, according to my own confession, being the ultimate judge of all systems of philosophy, I am unjust in blaming the ancient philosophers for making use of that faculty, and allowing themselves to be entirely guided by it in their reasonings’ (225). The reply is that the principles of the imagination to which the ancient philosophy appeals are principles ‘which are changeable, weak, and irregular.’ The suppositions of our imagination are well founded and rational only if they arise from principles ‘which are permanent, irresistible, and universal’ (225; cf. pp. 214–15). Only inferences of the latter sort can yield rational grounds for why we ought to accept the beliefs arising from the action of our imaginations (226).120 So Hume now turns (Book 1, Part iv, Section 4) to the ‘modern philosophy,’ which, he says, ‘pretends to be entirely free from this defect and to arise only from the solid, permanent, and consistent principles of the imagination’ (226; italics added). Note the term ‘pretends.’ This system of the modern philosophy is essentially that of Locke. It is like the ancient philosophy in being in some respects – though not others – a version of the system of the philosophers. For this modern philosophy, the fundamental principle ‘is the opinion concerning colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold; concerning which it asserts to be nothing but impressions in the mind, deriv’d from the operation of external objects, and without any resemblance to the qualities of the objects’ (226). Hume then advances the argument from sense variation as the justification for this fundamental principle (226–7). This argument is in many respects the same argument Hume himself previously used in Section 2 (210–11) to establish ‘that our sensible perceptions are not possest of any distinct or independent existence’ (211). But as we saw, in Section 2 he interprets this to mean that ‘all our perceptions are dependent on our organs, and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits’ (211; italics added). This is rather different from the fundamental principle of modern philosophy. The latter, as Hume states it in the passage quoted just above, is the principle that the sensible impressions of the so-called secondary qualities are all ‘impressions in the mind.’ This ‘in the mind’ is crucial. To be dependent on our sense organs and to be in the mind are not, I suggest, the same thing. For dependence on sense organs is merely causal dependence, and is compatible with a non-substantialist account of mind; whereas but dependence on the mind can only be understood, given the Lockean context, as depen-

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dence on a mental substance. And, as Hume puts the point later on in the Treatise: ‘We must separate the question concerning the substance of the mind from that concerning the cause of its thought’ (248). The difference is, to repeat, crucial. Once it is recognized that there is this difference, it becomes clear that the modern philosophy has within it the seeds of a radical scepticism completely avoided by the system of the philosophers. The latter is, of course, the system whose rationality Hume wants to defend. Associated with the system of the philosophers is a fallibilist account of causal inference, which can perhaps be called a mitigated or moderate scepticism, but if it be a scepticism it is still the case that within that framework it is reasonable to form and accept certain views about the external causes of our perceptions. This mitigated scepticism is academic and not Pyrrhonian scepticism. This moderate scepticism must be distinguished from the radical, or Pyrrhonian – or, for that matter, Cartesian – scepticism implicit in the modern philosophy. If Hume is to defend his own system, this distinction must be made, and the modern philosophy criticized. Hume, I suggest, follows this strategy. In Section 4, ‘Of the modern philosophy,’ he demonstrates the radical scepticism implicit in the modern philosophy, and in Section 5, ‘Of the immateriality of the soul,’ he attacks the substantialist account of mind on which that scepticism rests. As we argued before, Hume’s remarks at the end of ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses’ preclude our interpreting the radical scepticism of the later Section 4 as deriving from the system of the philosophers that is defended in Section 2. We now see how this reading of Section 2 is confirmed by a careful reading of Section 4: the radical scepticism of this latter section is a feature of the modern philosophy with its substantialist account of mind rather than of the system of the philosophers. And the drawing out of the radically sceptical consequences of the modern philosophy is part of Hume’s defence of the rationality of the system of the philosophers. With this is mind, let us look more closely at Hume’s analysis of the modern philosophy. Once the ideas of secondary qualities are in the mind, the modern philosophy is left with the doctrine that what are called primary qualities – ‘extension and solidity, with their different mixtures and modifications; figure, motion, gravity, and cohesion’ – are ‘the only real ones, of which we have any adequate notion’ (227). The term ‘real’ Hume takes to mean ‘independent’ (191), and, since the contrast is to ideas of secondary qualities, ‘real’ must mean ‘independent of the substantial mind.’ Hume now argues that with this system we ‘reduce ourselves to the opinion of

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the most extravagant scepticism concerning [external objects]’: ‘If colours, sounds, tastes, and smells be merely perceptions, nothing we can conceive is possest of a real, continu’d, and independent existence; not even motion, extension and solidity, which are the primary qualities chiefly insisted on (228; italics added). It is clear that this does not apply to Hume’s own system, since if it did, it would contradict what Hume says elsewhere, both before (68) and after (241) in the Treatise: that we can conceive – to be sure, only inadequately and by means of a relative idea, but nonetheless can conceive – an independent external existence. Nor does it apply to the system of the philosophers, since according to it, as we noted earlier, particulars can be conceived apart from minds (207). When Hume draws the stronger conclusion – that they cannot be so conceived – it applies only to what he refers to as the modern philosophy and derives from its principles, not Hume’s. How does this radical or extravagant scepticism arise? Hume examines our ideas of primary qualities, beginning with motion. He points out that all philosophers analyse this into the ideas of extension and perhaps others, all of which, however, turn on extension. But extension presupposes either colour (visual extension) or solidity (tactile extension). Since colour is excluded from real existence, solidity alone remains. But ‘the idea of solidity is that of two objects, which cannot penetrate each other’ (228). It is a relational idea. It therefore presupposes foundations in the bodies said to be solid. That requires one to be able to form an idea of those bodies apart from those foundations, as we can form the idea of Jones apart from the idea of his being a father, where the latter is the foundation in Jones of the relation of his being father of Peter. This means that solidity cannot by itself constitute those bodies. Colour is excluded. Therefore so is (sensible) extension. ‘Our modern philosophy, then, leaves us no just nor satisfactory idea of solidity; nor consequently of matter’ (229): ‘Thus there is a direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and our senses; or more properly speaking, betwixt those conclusions we form from cause and effect, and those that persuade us of the continued and independent existence of body. When we reason from cause and effect, we conclude, that neither colour, sound, taste, nor smell have a continued and independent existence. When we exclude these sensible qualities there remains nothing in the universe which has such an existence’ (231). Now, this is one of the texts crucial to Popkin. I want to argue that the opposition Hume here brings out is not as total as Popkin suggests.

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Quite obviously, the opposition is indeed total in the context of the modern philosophy. But one must also note that the contradiction arises only if one adopts the premise that there is a substantial mind, which the modern philosophy accepts, but which is not part of either the system of the vulgar or the system of the philosophers of the earlier Section 2.121 To see that the substantialist premise is crucial, note that the argument that solidity can have no foundation in a body presupposes that we cannot form an idea of a body by means of the idea of a quality independent of mind. Now, we cannot form the idea of such a quality because, the modern philosophy holds, all so-called secondary qualities such as colour and taste, are inseparable from minds. As Berkeley would put it, their esse is percipi.122 And as Berkeley and Hume both argue, the primary qualities cannot be conceived apart from the secondary. These are the qualities of sensible extension – that is, visible extension and tangible extension. It follows that we can conceive no (sensible) quality apart from minds. But for Hume, and for the systems of both the vulgar and the philosophers, there is no substantial mind. To the contrary, the mind is a bundle of perceptions. So the esse of qualities is not percipi: they can, as Hume insists (207), be conceived as existing independently. This being so, we can form the abstract generic idea of quality separate from the idea of mind dependence. And this enables us to form in turn the relative idea of a body that is the cause of our impressions: this is the idea of something qualified that causes our impression of such and such. As we saw, it is just such relative ideas that we use when we characterize the objects which cause the perceptions in the system of the philosophers. In the systems of Section 2, then, the opposition that Hume here points out at the end of Section 4 simply does not exist.123 If we now pass on to Section 5, ‘Of the immateriality of the soul,’ we find Hume drawing even more radical consequences from the thesis that there is a substantial mind. It leads, he argues, to a radical scepticism. It leads in fact to both Spinozism and idealism, which turn out on reflection simply to be different instances of the same scepticism. From this, Hume concludes that ‘the question concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely unintelligible’ (250). But once we recognize that, we recognize the problem is insoluble and no longer desire to solve it: ‘When we see, that we have arrived at the utmost extent of human reason, we sit down contented’ (xviii). Section 6, ‘Of Personal Identity,’ then goes on to show how an empir-

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ically adequate non-substantialist or bundle account of mind can be developed. (We looked at Hume’s discussion of these topics in chapter 2.) In particular, the problem of personal identity that immaterial substantial souls purport to solve can in fact be solved using other criteria of identity. Hume has thus shown that a radical scepticism results from the system of both ancient and modern philosophies. It is a scepticism that is parasitic on the metaphysical thesis of the substantial mind. But the latter can be exorcised if we restrict ourselves to the realm delimited by the Principle of Acquaintance. That means we restrict ourselves to causal reasoning, which assigns new causes to the phenomena of the world as it is given to us in experience (271). Here alone can we ‘expect assurance and conviction’ (273). K. The Reasonableness of the System of the Philosophers As we have noted, at the end of Part iv, Section 2, following his discussion of the system of the philosophers, Hume asserts that ‘at present’ his sentiment inclines him to reject placing any faith in his senses. This sentiment derives from his inability to conceive how ‘trivial’ properties of the imagination can lead to any ‘solid rational system’ (217). In Sections 3 to 6 he has placed this sentiment in a reasonable context. It turns out that metaphysics such as that of the new philosophy is in fact much less stable in its results than the supposedly trivial properties of the imagination: it, unlike the latter, leads to an extravagant scepticism. In fact, precisely because the ‘trivial’ properties operate as natural and universal causes, they can give rise to a ‘solid’ system – as a priori metaphysics cannot – a point that we have seen Hume emphasize right at the beginning of Section 2: ‘We may well ask, What causes induce us the believe in the evidence of body? but ’tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings’ (187; his italics). But if it is ‘solid,’ is it also, as Hume demands, ‘rational’? Or does scepticism arise inevitably here also, as Popkin suggests? Perhaps the contradiction between the system of the vulgar (which we must accept but which our best causal reasoning tells us is false) and that of the philosophers (which our best causal reasoning tells us we ought to accept) undermines all rationality, once more implying a radical scepticism. It is these themes (among others) that Hume takes up in Section 7 of Part iv.

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Hume refers back (266) to the contradiction that arises between the system of the vulgar and that of the modern philosophy of Section 4. This would not be so bad, or difficult to handle, if causal reasoning were solidly based (266); but the latter is only a matter of custom and habit (Part iii, Section 14). At this point Hume introduces the further problem of ‘Scepticism with regard to reason,’ which was posed in Section 1 of Part iv and has yet to be resolved.124 The argument of section 1 goes as follows. Consider some piece of reasoning – the adding up of a column of numbers, for example. This is a process. Sometimes such a process yields the truth, sometimes it does not. Since the process is sometimes wrong in its upshot, there is always a bit of uncertainty whether the result at which one arrives is the correct result. Since we do not know whether the cause of error is present or not, we must reduce the certainty with which we affirm the conclusion. Thus, I first arrive at a certain conclusion. But then ‘I examine the judgment itself, and observing from experience, that ’tis sometimes just and sometimes erroneous, I consider it as regulated by contrary principles or causes, of which some lead to truth, and some to error; and in balancing these contrary causes, I diminish by a new probability the assurance of my first decision’ (184–5). But the reasoning that leads to this diminution of certainty is also a case of reasoning, and sometimes reasoning goes right while sometimes it does not. Since we do not know whether the cause of error is present or not, the reasoning that leads to the diminution of certainty itself requires a further diminution of certainty. But this reasoning too is subject to the possibility of error. It therefore requires a further diminution of certainty. And so on. The upshot is that the degree of certainty eventually goes to zero. Thus, all reasoning is totally uncertain, even the reasoning that leads to this conclusion: any affirmation based on reasoning will therefore be unacceptable. Nothing can be affirmed, not even the proposition that nothing can be affirmed. Since it is ‘contradictory to reason, it gradually diminishes the force of that governing power, and its own at the same time, till at last they both vanish away into nothing, by a regular and just diminution’ (187). It would seem, therefore, that we fall inevitably into the deepest scepticism. Needless to say, this is one of the favourite texts of those who argue, like Popkin, that Hume is a radical sceptic. Hume goes on to suggest that such reasoning to undercut all reasoning, including itself, could never actually bring it about that we lose all belief: ‘’Tis happy ... that nature breaks the force of all sceptical arguments in time, and

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keeps them from having any considerable influence on the understanding. Were we to trust entirely to their self-destruction, that can never take place, ’till they have first subverted all conviction, and have totally destroy’d human reason’ (187). Now, it is important to see that Hume has a certain specific aim in introducing this example: ‘My intention ... in displaying so carefully the arguments of that fantastic sect [the Pyrrhonians], is only to make the reader sensible of the truth of my hypothesis. that all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are deriv’d from nothing but custom; and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the cognitive part of our natures’ (183). Since this is Hume’s intention, we may take it for granted that it is not his intention to himself argue for the Pyrrhonist conclusion. That is, Hume here makes clear that, contrary to Popkin, the display of the argument against reason is not so much to yield the conclusion that reason cannot be defended, as to show that reason and reasonable belief must be understood as involving the ‘sensitive’ part of our nature as well as the cognitive part. The argument against reason involves the cognitive part of our faculties, and involves that alone. So Hume is showing that reasonable conclusions cannot be drawn when reason – that is, our cognitive faculties – acts alone. Reason must not act alone if reasonable conclusions are to be obtained. One can see what is wrong with the reasoning against reason. It is a causal argument on a par with the argument discussed earlier. This earlier argument is that about the wound watch that sometimes works and sometimes does not. The causal principle that ‘like effects have like causes’ yields the conclusion that there is a difference that accounts for the watch sometimes working, sometimes not. This is parallel to reason sometimes working (i.e., yielding truth), and sometimes not (i.e., yielding error). In the latter case, reason goes on reflecting on itself. But in the former case, there is a quite different response. What one aims to do is discover the factor that makes the difference – that is, that is what one aims to do if one is guided by the aim of filling in the gaps in one’s knowledge and discovering the truth about what the causes are. In the case of the argument or series of arguments that undermine reason, there is simply a repetition of the same mode of inferring, but no attempt to actually locate a cause that would determine whether the reasoning was valid or erroneous. In the one case, reason acts alone; in the other case, reason is guided by the passion of curiosity or love of

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truth. Only in the latter case is reason productive of conclusions worthy of acceptance, that is, acceptance as true. The challenge to any sort of reason occurs, Hume says, when the understanding ‘acts alone’ (267). This implies a contrast, he tells us shortly, to reason mixed with a propensity: ‘Where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us’ (270; italics added).125 Exactly the relevance of this scepticism with regard to reason, we can put to one side.126 What concerns us here is its relevance to the issue of scepticism with regard to the senses. Whatever problems sceptical arguments might get us into, we cannot perpetually suspend judgment. Nature causes us to make causal inferences, even if it is not clear to us that such beliefs are rational (269). The Cartesian ethics of belief, which requires us to suspend all judgment, is humanly impossible, and therefore irrational to attempt. Conversely, since we must make causal inferences, then, as we saw in chapter 4, and also chapter 6, it cannot but be reasonable to do so. When (causal) reason acts alone, it leads to scepticism, arguing that it is unreasonable to make causal inferences. So we must reject the conclusions of reason when it acts alone. But it does not follow that all reason must be rejected. When we mix it with some propensity, so that its conclusions do not conflict with the natural tendency of persons to make causal inferences, then it is not irrational to assent to the results of causal reasoning. Specifically, Hume mentions two propensities or inclinations with which the understanding may be mixed. One is the sentiment of a splenetic humour (269), which is the sentiment of one who aims to participate ‘like other people in the common affairs of life’ (269). Insofar as causal reason is an effective guide to life, its conclusions may be assented to. Causal reason is most effective in finding causes, and therefore most effective as a guide to life, when (Hume has argued in Part iii of Book I)127 it is in accordance with the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ Causal reasoning guided by this sentiment of one who aims to participate in the common affairs of life leads to the Berkeleyan system of the vulgar, which, as we saw, is consistent as a picture of the world adequate for the ordinary affairs of life. Hume will not strive against this ‘inclination’ (270) that guides reason unless he has a good reason to do so. This good reason can only be another inclination. Now, there is in fact another relevant inclination: besides the propensity to participate in the affairs of common life, there

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is a second inclination or propensity that Hume allows can be mixed with the understanding. This second inclination or propensity that Hume mentions is the disinterested love of truth (271). In this case, reason is guided by the love of truth or idle curiosity. This is the motive that moves the academic sceptic, and as one of the passions of the soul it is later discussed in detail by Hume in Book II of the Treatise, in Part ii, Section 10.128 The first inclination is not wrong, it is simply a bit lazy. It applies the causal rules, but only to the extent necessary for ordinary life. But so applied, there are causal anomalies that go unexplained. For example, there is the double image when one presses one’s eyeball. These escape the causal net, but nothing of any great consequence happens if we neglect to search for explanations of these events. The second inclination, however, the love of truth, seeks out the causes of even these events. In the case of this inclination, it turns out that there are two options. On the first of these options, one is to restrict one’s search for causes to natural causes; on the second, one is to allow the search to extend to supernatural causes. On the first option (271–2), reason restricts itself to philosophy, which contents itself with assigning new causes, but only those which are within the world of experience. On the second option, causal reason may move into superstition, which introduces mysterious spiritual beings as causes; or, more to our point, it may move into metaphysics, which introduces entities, like substantial minds, that transcend and are utterly distinct from the world of experience (unlike the objects of the system of the philosophers, of which, in contrast to substances, we can at least form relative ideas). Now this end of curiosity that justifies science as reasonable is the only end or propensity that moves the academic sceptic.129 This end by itself defines the first option; it alone yields results that genuinely satisfy our curiosity about matters of fact. But of course we are in fact moved by many other ends or propensities, too. Thus we want to feel comfortable in the face of natural terrors,130 and we wish to have a stable social order.131 In order to achieve either of these, it may well be that we should cultivate religious beliefs, which, however, are not justified by scientific evidence. When these other desires are added to that of curiosity,132 it may well be that strategies of belief formation other than the scientific may be more reasonable to adopt. These other ends or propensities, when they are added to the love of truth as a motive for assigning causes, define the second option. It is these that lead one beyond science (and critical realism)

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towards the systems of superstition and metaphysics (e.g., into religious explanations in terms of gods or spirits, or metaphysical explanations in terms of substances, as in the ‘modern philosophy’). But superstition and metaphysics are dangerous: ‘The errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous’ (272). For example, as Hume has argued, substances lead inevitably to the inhuman error of extravagant scepticism. In fact, that is inevitably true of any system that seeks to introduce entities that transcend all human experience. Reason ought, therefore, to restrict itself to philosophy – that is, philosophy in the sense of natural science: this is the reason of the academic sceptic: While a warm imagination is allow’d to enter into philosophy, and hypotheses embrac’d merely for being specious and agreeable, we can never have any steady principles, nor any sentiments, which will suit with common practice and experience. But were these hypotheses once removed, we might hope to establish a system or set of opinions, which if not true (for that, perhaps, is too much to be hoped for) might at least be satisfactory to the human mind, and might stand the test of the most critical examination. (272; italics added)

The systems of superstition and metaphysics do not stand the test of critical examination – how could they, when they introduce entities beyond what we can experience? The system which restricts itself to entities within the world of experience can be tested by a critical reason. The system which survives that test of critical reason is, of course, the system of the philosophers of Section 2, the system to which the mind, when motivated by the disinterested search for matter-of-fact truth, is led when it applies the rules by which to judge of causes and effects to the world of perceptual experience. Rejected are those hypotheses, such as the ones concerning substances, or other mysterious entities such as gods, which lead to the conflicts and scepticism Hume had mentioned at the beginning of this argument (266).133 Reason, if it is to be a human reason, a reasonable reason, must restrict itself to the world of experience, to the natural world delineated by the Principle of Acquaintance. When it is, and when it is guided by the broadest cognitive interest – by the disinterested love of matter-of-fact truth, rather than narrow pragmatic interests in only some truths about the world – then it leads to the system of the philosophers. It is, to be sure, still a natural propensity of the mind that it make the perceptual judgments that the world is as described in the system of the vulgar.

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This mode of association is a natural tendency of the mind; causal reasoning is another natural tendency; but objectively speaking, they amount to the same. Both involve inferring from constancy and coherence consistently with the rules by which to judge of causes, to unobserved entities that fill in the gaps of our perceptual experience, that render it more causally coherent (as described by the principle of determinism) than it otherwise would be. We thus recognize that the best causal reasoning that leads us to the system of the philosophers judges that the system of the vulgar is, in all strictness, false; and that the natural judgments that present the world as if the system of the vulgar were true, however natural those judgments may be, are in fact all unjustified. We cannot stop making such perceptual judgments. Equally, though, we also recognize that causal reasoning according to the rules for judging of causes is the reasonable sort of reason to follow, and that this reason judges the inferences implicit in those perceptual judgments – by their own standard of coherence – to be compulsive rather than (fully) rational. On the other hand, it also judges those judgments to be sound within the limits of our practical life, so that it is unreasonable to struggle against the compulsive inclination to accept those perceptual judgments.134 L. Four Objections In this section I propose to deal in a little more detail with four criticisms of my reading of Hume as a critical realist. Each of the four touches in a different way on the inference from the world of the vulgar to the world of the philosophers – that is, the inference to the non-sensible causes of our sense impressions. I. Inferring Unperceived Causes The objection that I wish first to consider takes up Hume’s point that the only conclusion we can draw from the existence of one thing to that of another, is by means of the relation of cause and effect, which shews that there is a connexion betwixt them, and that the existence of one is dependent on that of the other. The idea of this relation is derived from past experience, by which we find that two beings are constantly conjoined together, and are always present at once to the mind. But as no beings are ever present to the mind but perceptions, it follows that we may observe a

634 External World and Our Knowledge of It conjunction or a relation of cause and effect between different perceptions, but can never observe it between perceptions and objects. It is impossible, therefore, that from the existence or any of the qualities of the former, we can ever form any conclusion concerning the existence of the latter, or ever satisfy our reason in this particular. (212)

Since we never observe the entities in the world of the philosophers, there can be no experience of their being constantly conjoined to entities in the world of the vulgar, and we can therefore never come to a casual judgment leading from the one world to the other. So we cannot after all infer the world of the philosophers from the world of the vulgar. It is concluded that Hume is not after all a critical realist but is in fact a sceptic. Now Hume does say, at the beginning of the passage which contains the reasoning just quoted, that ‘this philosophical hypothesis [the inference to the world of the philosophers] has no primary recommendation, either to reason or the imagination’ (212; emphasis added). Notice the reference to ‘primary.’ As previously noted, this implies that there is a recommendation that is less than or other than primary – one that is secondary, if you wish. The inferences to the world of the philosophers are indeed not based on directly experienced regularity. It follows that what recommends them is not of the primary sort. This inference is, rather, to use terms Hume himself uses, ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique.’ We have already examined this inference, but I wish here to show as clearly as I can that it is perfectly reasonable and logically in order. There are two inferences that Hume makes to unobserved entities. One is the inference that fills in gaps in a series of gappy sense impressions. The other is the inference from the world of the vulgar to that of the philosophers. We should look at both. We can do so by attending to some of the argument of H.H. Price in his study on Hume’s Theory of the External World.135 This study has stood the test of time. It stands as a defence of Hume and as a contribution to philosophy in its own right. It came out at an awkward time, during the war, in 1940, but that hardly explains why it has largely been ignored. For another example, Norman Kemp Smith’s Philosophy of David Hume also came out during the war, in 1941, but has had a much more enduring impact on philosophy and on Hume studies in particular. But Kemp Smith reads Hume as a sceptic in the tradition of Reid, Coleridge, and Green. Price, in contrast, reads Hume as

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providing a positive account of our knowledge of the external world. If we are to locate Price in any tradition, it is that of logical atomism: Price’s Hume is closest to Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World. And by the end of the war, that sort of philosophy and that sort of ontology had fallen far out of fashion. Price’s Hume was lost with the demise of logical atomist accounts of the way the world is. This is to be regretted, both in terms of Hume’s philosophy and in terms of philosophy in general. As for Hume, Price shows, contrary to the sceptical reading, that Hume’s account of the external world, the ‘system of the vulgar,’ is more than just another part of the Humean attempt to show that we have no knowledge of the external world. As for philosophy in general, a closer look at Price shows that a Humean– Russellian logical atomist account of the external world has more to be said for it than its critics after the war were prepared to allow. Certainly, when those who came later took up both the issue of the ‘external world,’ on the one hand, and the treatment of Hume, on the other, they clearly had failed to learn the lessons they ought to have learned from Price. Let us look at the inferences that fill in gaps in our sensory experience of the world. Price is, it seems to me, correct in his reading of Hume on this matter. Others are not. As one well-known instance of the latter, let me take one that we have looked at before, A. Quinton’s essay on ‘The Problem of Perception.’136 Quinton begins by alluding to the motivation for ‘theories’ of the external world: ‘If our beliefs about objects are to have any secure foundation, it must consist in what we know directly, by acquaintance, about sense-data’ (p. 28). The point, as Quinton sees it, is to find a secure foundation for empirical knowledge. This is alleged to be the problem that Hume (among others) is trying to solve. But as Price makes clear, this is not what Hume was about, nor was it what he conceived himself to be about. Quinton simply ignores Hume’s clear statement137 that ‘’tis in vain to ask, whether there be body or not’ (187). The problem of the ‘external world,’ whatever it is, is not one of providing a foundation for our knowledge of bodies by making them inferences from the secure, or more secure, judgments about our sense impressions: ’tis vain to ask for such grounding for judgments about body that is more secure than our ordinary judgments about bodies. The Cartesian project, for example, however grand its metaphysics may be, is a failure: far from securing our beliefs about material things,

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it leads to a radical scepticism. The world of ordinary things is as secure as one could want or, at least, reasonably expect. But, if the problem is not that of finding a foundation for empirical knowledge, it does not follow that there is no problem. An example that Hume himself uses makes clear what that problem is. We are looking at a fire. There is a knock on the door, we turn away, and the porter enters. Our attention then turns back to the fire. It is the same fire that we are now experiencing. But in our sensible awareness of the fire, there is a gap, an interrupted series. But the sense impressions are the impressions of a body, a material object, a continuing thing. Hume’s question is this: ‘What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body?’ (187). The gappiness is, as Price points out (p. 22), something that is perfectly obvious. It may be difficult to describe the sense impressions, as Price indicates and as Quinton emphasizes; in other words, our reflective judgments about sense impressions may in fact be less certain than our judgments about body. For all that, our experience of the world is that there are gaps in patterns of sense impressions that we experience in our perceptual judgings about bodies. We fill in these gaps, and the issue is this: By what principles do we as it were fill in those gaps so as to provide a unity among those sense impressions by taking them to be the impressions of a body that exists gaplessly, whether sensibly experienced or not? Quinton takes for granted that we do perceive bodies, material objects, and that these continue to exist gaplessly. But he ignores the real problem of how those judgments with regard to bodies relate to our sense awareness of them. By what principles do our perceptual judgments fill the gaps in our sensible awareness of the bodies that are the objects of those perceptual judgments? Price correctly sees Hume as attempting to answer this question. Quinton is correct in arguing that our perceptual judgments are not in themselves inferences. It does not follow that there are no principles that relate those judgments to our sensible experience of the world. It is compatible with perceptual judgments being immediate and unanalysable that the object judged to be there involves a complex pattern of the ways in which it sensibly appears.138 Those patterns are objectively there in the world; in perceiving an object of body, we in fact attribute to the appearances given in sense a patterned unity that is confirmed in our further experience of things in the world. As Price says (p. 64), gap filling is a fact. Objectively, the perceptual judgment attributes a pattern to the way in which we are appeared to. Subjectively, the judgment is not an inference; but objectively, since it attributes a pattern or regularity to

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appearances, it has the logical form of an inference. Quinton focuses on the subjective feature of perceptual judgments, but he ignores the objective aspect. In fact, Quinton, like Reid, seems to assume that since the judgment is simple, therefore the object is simple. But we have rejected this principle in Reid, and if this be Quinton’s reasoning, then it too is to be rejected. We can clearly see that Quinton simply does not address the issue of the principles in conformity to which our perceptual judgments attribute patterns to the sensible world. Quinton objects to making perceptual judgments about sense data or appearances. But as Price points out, appearances reasonably can be construed as things, taking that term in a sufficiently broad sense. Certainly they are things in the sense that properties are predicated of them: we say, for example, of this expanse that is appearing to me that it is red. Price makes this point clearly. As he says, contrary to Quinton: ‘They [appearances]are perfectly familiar to everyone’ (Price, p. 22). Sense data, or, as Hume speaks, impressions, are of course not substantial, nor are they hard and impenetrable. But neither are they penetrable, just as neither are they soluble or insoluble. In themselves they are not material objects, and they lack many of the properties that we predicate of material objects or bodies. But these things just are the ways in which the world and things in it, including bodies, appear to us; and a thing has a variety of appearances, some of which come to us on one occasion and others on other occasions, with our perceptual judgments locating these within a pattern characteristic of some perceptual object. As Price says, they form gappy series, where perception fills in the gaps. Moreover, as we have noted, Quinton seems to follow Reid and infer that, because the perceptual judgments are immediate and simple, they therefore have a simple object that endures through change. But there is no basis for such an inference: the simplicity or non-inferential nature of the judgment does not require the simplicity of the object judged. (We saw this in detail in our discussion of Reid in chapter 7.) From the fact that our perceptual judgments are simple judgments, lacking the psychological complexity of inferences, it does not follow that the objects of those judgments are simple substances.139 This is compatible with the claim – the correct claim – that our perceptual judgments are immediate and non-inferential, that the unity of the sensible impressions is the unity of a pattern and not the unity of a simple substance. The argument against substances is the same as the argument against objective necessary connections: we are not presented with such entities in experience. It is the appeal to PA. We have no impression of an

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entity with a continued existence – that is, a continuant (191–2); the only entities with which we are acquainted are ‘perishing’ (194). Locke agreed with this; the substance or continuant was something that we ‘supposed’ was there – that is, inferred was there. But since he had (he thought) reason to suppose that it was in fact there, Locke could continue to hold that ordinary perceptual objects consist of properties inhering in a substance. For Locke, then, predication represented what it did for Aristotle, the tie of inherence. But for Hume, since we have no acquaintance in experience with substances, then from his basic principle that we have no (simple) idea without an antecedent impression, it follows that ordinary bodies are what they appear to be – namely, collections consisting of appearances which come in patterns defining the properties or attributes that are predicated of them. As Hume puts it in the Treatise: ‘The idea of a substance ... is nothing but a collection of simple ideas’ (16). Or, as he puts it in the Abstract:140 ‘Our idea of any body, a peach, for instance, is only that of a particular taste, colour, figure, size, consistence, etc.’ (658). One can therefore dismiss with Hume and Price the notion of Aristotle, Reid, and Quinton, that a material object, a body, is a simple continuant that endures through change. The world does not consist of things, substances, that we can never know by means of our senses; rather the world is what it sensibly appears to be. Thus there is no simple continuant. Nonetheless, ordinary objects or bodies are, Hume tells us (188), commonsensically objects that have a continued existence, even when not perceived, and an existence distinct from the perceiver, and therefore distinct from the perceiving of them – where he includes in the notion of ‘distinctness’ both the external position (i.e., as he soon explains [190]) and their externality to or distance from our body, as well as their independence. Both independence and externality are, logically, matters of inference based on perceived patterns (191); impressions are therefore perishing (194), and furthermore have no intrinsic sign of independence. This does not mean that they are intrinsically mental, ontologically dependent on the mind, as many have suggested – though not Price. Hume’s ontology of mind is crucial here. For, as the mind is but a bundle of perceptions, ‘there is no absurdity in separating any particular perceptions from the mind’; hence ‘we can satisfy ourselves in supposing a perception to be absent from the mind without being annihilated’ (207). Externality is therefore a matter of relations to other impressions. Equally, an impression is not intrinsically mental; it becomes such only when bundled in a certain way with other impressions. ‘Internality’ is also a matter of the relations of an

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impression to other impressions. (Quinton [p. 31] makes the mistake of suggesting that sense data are intrinsically private.) Hume recognizes the contextual nature of the internal/external distinction when he speaks of ‘objects or perceptions’ (302). Among the sensible appearances of things are many of which we are not sensibly aware. The patterns that are objects like bodies or like rainbows thus include, Hume argues, impressions – that is, sensible ways in which a thing presents itself to the world, that are there objectively but do not enter into our sense experience of the world. In our perceptual judgments we suppose these unexperienced impressions and non-mental impressions to be there as among the ways in which the world presents itself to the world. (If they are private, then of course there cannot be any that exist unperceived; that is why Quinton’s mistake is important as a misunderstanding of a Humean account of perception.) So an ordinary thing or body is an object that, like rainbows and shadows, is an entity that is the ways it appears to be, and we take for granted that it appears in certain ways even when not perceived. Even its substantiality, its hardness and impenetrability, are not marks of traditional substances; these are simply other ways in which the ordinary object is in the world and presents itself, at times, to observers. The continuity of these objects, consisting of those parts of the objects that exist unperceived, is something we judge to be there, in the world. Here we fill in the gaps in our sensible experience of the world by supposing that there are no gaps to break the objective patterns; it is just that during the gaps; we are not experiencing any of the ways in which an object presents itself to the world. The problem Price addresses is that of the principles which, Hume argues, we use to form the suppositions we make about the ways an object such as a chair or a rainbow presents itself when it is not perceived. There is one point that Price misses, but which Hume makes clear, and it concerns how we make predications of the material objects or bodies that we perceive. How, among all the ways in which an object presents itself to world, among all those patterns of appearances, do we single out certain ones as defining the way an object really is? The object really and objectively does appear in all the ways in which it appears, but among those ways in which it really does appear, there are certain patterns that we take to be objective, or rather more objective than others. For a philosopher such as Locke, this is a distinction between some observed qualities, which are real, and the rest, which are not. Those

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which are real are those which directly express the real essences of things. For the rest, they are the mere appearances of things in consciousness. For Hume, in contrast, all sensible qualities are equally real in the sense that none can be distinguished from any of the others by reference to substances and their real essences. The distinction between those observed qualities which are somehow the ‘real’ properties of things and those which are ‘mere appearances’ is simply that some cohere as parts of those patterns which constitute material objects, whereas others do not, and since material objects are important to us in our lives and in our capacities to communicate with others, these objects (not substances) are singled out by convention as defining ‘reality.’141 We adopt a certain standpoint in assessing the perceptible qualities we experience because this has a certain utility in communication. This is parallel, as Hume points out (582), to what he called the artificial virtues, those virtues which arise only because certain behaviour is generally coordinated by convention (e.g., justice). In each case we have a convention. This convention is explained by showing that it arises from self-interest in a context of constrained benevolence. In the case of justice, it is an interest in establishing the property rights that are essential to peaceful living together. In the case of perception, it is an interest in communication and action: we pick out from among all the patterns of sensible events that we experience those with respect to which we can most readily come to intersubjective agreement: ‘Corrections are common with regard to all the senses; and indeed ’twere impossible we cou’d ever make use of language, or communicate our sentiments to one another, did we not correct the momentary appearances of things, and overlook our present situation’ (582). Assessments of the qualities of mind and character (i.e., recognition of virtues and vices), and of the public qualities of material objects, are extremely important in action, both in society and in the natural world. The convention therefore develops that certain among all the qualities we experience are to count as real. The distinctions among sensible qualities of the real and the unreal in terms of coherence are thus artificial, but does not follow that they are arbitrary. And, of course, once the conventions of reality have developed, and we begin to talk about real colours, size, hardness, tastes, and so forth, then we come in turn to approve morally of conformity to these conventions for the same reason that we approve morally of the artificial virtues – namely, because of their utility and because of our sense of sympathy, which leads us to be concerned with the needs and concerns of others.

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There is an important sense in which material objects and material object predications are the result of social agreements. The world of ordinary things is a complex social construction. The other person does not respond as a third person to the material object as the ego constructs it. Rather, the object is jointly constructed by ego and other. Price does provide an account of why we single out certain patterns of appearances as defining the reality of a thing, but he does so purely in terms of the ways in which the world appears to us, and he omits the social factor – that is, he fails to bring out how the perceptual world is for Hume not only a world of patterned appearances, but also a social construct. So the world consists of bodies, ordinary things, which are as they appear to be. One thing should again be emphasized. Hume does not prohibit inferences to unobserved and perhaps unobservable entities. As we have seen, using an example with which we are by now familiar, he explains to us how the vulgar are content to say that a watch sometimes works and sometimes does not. So far as the vulgar are concerned this is a matter of chance. But the artisan knows better. From his experience in discovering causes, that is, Hume argues, patterns, the artizan can infer that when the watch stops working there is an unobserved cause for why it stops; it is, perhaps, a speck of dust; the vulgar attribute it to chance. The philosopher generalizes from this experience to the more general conclusion that every event has a cause, and that like effects have like causes (rule four): ‘From the observation of several parallel instances, philosophers form a maxim, that the connexion betwixt all causes and effects is equally necessary, and that its seeming uncertainty in some instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary causes’ (132). Of course, such inferences to unknown causes cannot arise from the repeated experience of the cause being succeeded by the effect, for, ex hypothesi, the cause is not known. It is, rather, a case where certain more general rules control the inferences that we make with less general rules (149–50), a case where higher-level habits control the formation of lower-level habits (137–8). As we have seen, Hume puts it this way: ‘Our reasonings of this kind arise not directly from the habit, but in an oblique manner’ (133). Since these reasonings fully conform to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes’ (149), their conclusions that certain unknown causes exist are fully rational. What Hume excludes as unreasonable are not inferences to unobserved events but only inferences to entities of which we can form no idea – in particular, inferences to substances and to real essences and to objective necessary connections (and

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to deities). Note in particular the terms Hume uses to describe these reasonings: ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique.’ Now, Chisholm, as we know,142 has argued against the Humean position, proposing that ‘it is very difficult to think of any proposition about the ‘external world’ which is probable – more probable than not – in relation to any set of propositions about the way in which one is appeared to’ (p. 729). He uses this as an argument against what he calls ‘empiricism,’ – the view, as he characterizes it, that all judgments about bodies are based solely on the evidence of the ways in which we are appeared to, together with inductive inferences from these. (Quinton, p. 30, makes a similar point.) This is certainly not the view of Hume or Price, both of whom allow that perceptual judgments about bodies can be evidentially basic: ’tis vain to think otherwise. But notice that this is compatible with holding also – as Chisholm seems not to hold, but as Hume and Price do hold – that the object of the perceptual judgment is a complex pattern of the ways in which the thing presents itself. In any case, Chisholm himself concludes, with Price and Hume, that perceptual judgments as well as judgments about how we are appeared to are, like the latter, evidentially basic. These evidentially basic judgments are perceptual ‘takings,’ where for someone to take something – some way in which we are being appeared to, to be, say, a cat – is for it to be the case that ‘first of all ... [such a one] believes that the thing is a cat. Secondly, the thing is appearing to him [or her] in a certain way. Thirdly, he [or she] believes (or assumes, or ‘takes for granted’) with respect to one of the ways he [or she] is being appeared to, that he [or she] would not now be appeared to in just that way if the thing were not a cat’ (p. 730). So, the person is being appeared to in a certain way by some ordinary thing (second point). This appearance is taken to be the appearance of a cat (first point), and moreover, it is taken for granted that he or she, the perceiver, would not be appeared to in that way unless there were a cat that is so appearing (third point). Hume and Price can accept this. For the appearance to be the appearance of a cat, this appearance must be fit into a pattern of other appearances, not just present, past, and future experiences but including unexperienced appearances. There is a catish correlation of experienced appearances with other experienced appearances and with unexperienced ways of appearing. To take for granted that the appearance is that of a cat and that one would not be so appeared to unless there were a cat is, first, to suppose that there are many ways in which the thing appears to the world – and, in particular,

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to suppose that there any many unexperienced ways in which the thing appears to the world – and second, to take it that these experiences jointly exemplify a certain pattern, the pattern that appearances must form if they are to be the appearances of a cat. The point is that to take the appearance to be of a cat is to locate the appearance as part of a pattern. It is a pattern that is assumed, and not (as Chisholm seems to suggest) an entity, perhaps a simple substance, which is different in kind from the way in which the substance appears. The question is not whether there is a substance; the question, rather, is this: What are the patterns with which we fill in the gaps in the ways we are being appeared to, to make of those ways the appearances of a cat? The inference may not be inductive, in the sense of being based on a simple enumeration; and as we have said, it certainly is not subjectively an inductive inference; but that does not imply that the object of the perceptual judgment – the cat that we take for granted – is what is appearing to us in the way in which we are being appeared to. To say that perceptual judgments involve such a taking, as Chisholm does, is correct, but it does not face up to the deeper philosophical issue of why we take the pattern we do take as the pattern into which the appearance fits, rather than some other pattern. We do so take; such takings are, in terms of the edifice of knowledge, basic; but why in this or that particular case do we take them as being tied to other appearances in this pattern rather than that one? This is the issue that Hume and Price take up, and that Chisholm ignores (see Price, p. 64). Moreover, once it is recognized that in perceptual takings we are coordinating into patterns the sensible appearances of things, then we perforce have to recognize, contrary to Chisholm, that the evidence provided by sense appearances is in fact relevant – predictively relevant – to our judgments regarding bodies. Chisholm’s claim that what he calls empiricism is false is thus shown by Price’s Hume to be in its own right mistaken. Empiricism stands. Price argues that for Hume, the fitting of the appearance into a projected pattern is not a matter of inductive inference (Price, p. 85), nor of causal reasons (p. 51), though it is a matter of the imagination. It is not inductive, rather it is a matter of the ‘inertia’ of the imagination (Price, pp. 54, 198). Causal inference, though not inductive inference strictly speaking, begins only after we have organized appearances, impressions, into bodies. Here I think Price is wrong both in principle and with respect to Hume. To be sure, subjectively, the filling in of the gaps is not a matter

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of inductive inference; this is what distinguishes perceptual judgments from inductive inferences. But it does not follow that we cannot reflect on the patterns with which we as it were choose to fill in the gaps and realize that the selection of these patterns rather than those can be justified on inductive grounds. That is, our perceptual judgments can be psychologically basic and unanalysable, but in attributing a pattern to appearances, they are also judgments that logically speaking can and ought to be justified in the way that inductive inferences are justified. That is, by reason as summarized in the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ It is important to realize that if it be reason which can justify our ordinary perceptual judgments, then it is ordinary causal reason which is at work and which gives us that knowledge of body that ‘we must take for granted in all our reasoning’ (187). Importantly, this is a matter of Hume’s commitment to empiricism. The suppositions that form our complex ideas of continuing objects do not arise from (the sort of) reason that proceeds a priori from metaphysical principles (193), since it is perfectly evident that the vulgar conceive of objects as continuing and distinct, but have not gone through metaphysical proofs of the continuing and distinct existence of body (e.g., of the kind proposed by Descartes). The source of the ideas, then, must be the imagination (193), though we must not forget that this does not condemn them as contrary to reason, since the imagination also includes the ‘understanding’ as ‘the more general and established principles of the imagination’ (267), which are the best habits of causal inference (150, 170, 173–6). What is it, then, if it is not a substance, not a continuant, that distinguishes those impressions ‘to which we attribute a continu’d existence’? What sort of reasoning is it – or rather, what sorts of acts of the imagination are they – that induce us to believe in body? Now, what distinguishes those impressions which we attribute to bodies is, Hume argues (and as Price also argues), peculiar constancy, which distinguishes them from the impressions, whose existence depends upon our perception. Those mountains, and houses, and trees, which lie at present under my eye, have always appear’d to me in the same order; and when I lose sight of them by shutting my eyes or turning my head, I soon after find them return upon me without the least alteration. My bed and table, my books and papers, present themselves in the same uniform manner, and change not upon account of any interruption in my seeing or perceiving them. (194–5)

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To be sure, the constancy is not perfect, but even though objects do change position and quality, those impressions which are reckoned external have a coherence that others do not (195). If I do notice an alteration of an object after an interruption – for example, the fire in my fireplace after leaving and returning to the room – I may still attribute the sort of externality that ‘I am accustomed in other instances to see a like alteration produc’d in a like time, whether I am present or absent, near or remote’ (195). And if constancy is not perfect, then at least there is coherence. Hume then proceeds to examine in detail how these inferences go (195–7).143 We have looked at it before, but another look is in order. We shall use certain sorts of symbolism, drawn from more recent logic, to help us explain Hume’s ideas here. The aim is to make it clear that even by the standards of our own day, Hume’s reasoning – far from being a tissue of contradictions and far from implying a subjectivistic scepticism – is in fact, even by our more sophisticated standards, reasonable. Hume’s inference to fill in the gaps goes like this, as we have seen. We have a series of sensible particulars a1, b1, c1 with qualities F, G, H. We have, in other words, the sequence of facts or events (a)

Fa1, Ra1b1, Gb1, Rb1c1, Hc1

where ‘R’ represents that these particulars are in a continuous series. F, G, and H are fire stages: we are looking at the fire in the fireplace. The pattern of properties is continued in other series that we observe: (b)

Fa2, Ra2b2, Gb2, Rb2c2, Hc2

(c)

Fa3, Ra3b3, Gb3, Rb3c3, Hc3.

But we now observe a ‘gappy’ series of two particulars a4 and c4, which

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have the F and H properties, but for which there is no intervening particular of sort G: (d)

Fa4 .............................. Hc4.

The understanding ( = imagination = habit of inference) ‘fills’ in the ‘gap’ by forming the idea of a particular that is G and is R-ed by a4 and R’s c4. Let us call this particular, of which we have no impression, only an idea, E. Then the series (d), as (re)constructed by the mind, is (e)

Fa4, Ra4E, GE, REc4, Hc4.

(a), (b) and (c) are the other instances that have accustomed me to expect a G to be in a continuous series with an F and an H; this custom or habit leads me to attribute the same continuity or coherence to the gappy pattern (d); and the result is (e), which now fits the pattern (a)–(c). In somewhat more detail, we can infer from (a) and (b) that (1)

(x) [Fx Š (!y)( Rxy & Gy)]

and that (2)

(x) [ Gx Š (!z)(Rxz & Hz) ].

From (1) and (3)

Fa4

we can infer that (4)

(!y)(Ra4y & Gy).

We can introduce the definite description (,y)(Ra4y & Gy) and define E = Df (,y)(Ra4y & Gy). Nota bene: ‘E’ is a definite description and not a name. We have not ob-

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served the individual that comes in the gap, so we cannot name it, all we can do is give a description of it: we know it not by acquaintance but by description, as James would later put it, followed by Russell. But in any reasonable sense, we do know that it exists, that it is there in the series. From the fact that it exists, there in the series, it follows that (5)

GE

is a justified assertion. From this and (2) we infer that (!z)(REz & Hz). We discover that (6)

Hc4

and conclude that (7)

c4 = (,z)(REz & Hz).

(3) and (4) in effect predictively confirm the laws of sequence that (1) and that (2). The failure to observe E does not falsify (1), since the prediction is to (5), which is existentially quantified and which therefore is logically such that the failure to observe a G does not falsify the statement. Some have suggested that this move on Hume’s part, the filling in of the gap, is simply wrong. Or, if it is not, then it is evidence that Hume is secretly some sort of ur-Kantian.144 The suggestion is that Hume is an ur-Kantian because he does not allow generalizations to be falsified by counterexamples, and must therefore be treating the casual principle as a necessary truth, a Kantian a priori. But Hume’s moves are fully consistent with his empiricist principles: he is no ur-Kantian. Specifically, the inference to unobserved particulars that fit a certain pattern into which experienced appearances also fall is in fact easily seen to be acceptable on empiricist principles. This inference is justified according to the Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes.’ By these rules or principles, the experienced gappy pattern permits the introduction of suppositions about unobserved appearances that as it were preserve certain patterns or regularities. These patterns do not derive from causal inferences about bodies – there is no ‘primary recommen-

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dation’ for these inferences. But this does not mean that they derive from a Kantian faculty of the a priori. Hume’s ‘rules,’ the rules of the experimental method of the new science of Galileo and Newton, are rooted in experience and are not a priori, but the way in which they are rooted is more complicated than the rooting of simple generalizations. These principles are in fact more complex in their logic than the induction by simple enumeration allowed in any ‘primary recommendation.’ This more complex logic, once it is made explicit, enables us to see that Hume’s moves to fill in the gaps are in fact perfectly legitimate, according to his empiricist requirements, and according to our more sophisticated standards for the logical analysis of inferences. This more complex logical structure, into which we are now analysing Hume’s inferences, enables us to see, in other words, why the failure to observe a particular way of appearing does not call into question the supposition that such a way of appearing is there, as a way in which the thing presents itself to the world. The failure to observe does not falsify the regularity: the existential quantifier protects the regularity against falsification. So Hume is not being somehow Kantian when he holds that the experience of the gap does not falsify the regularity. At the same time, however, it must be granted that the experience of the gap does indeed call that regularity into question. At least, if that alone were the way the world is, then that gap would lend suspicion that the regularity is false. But Hume does not allow that. However, this too is reasonable on Hume’s part. We can understand this provided we make the example more complicated by being a bit more realistic and then apply once again the ‘rules by which to judge of causes.’ We have to note that instead of sequence (d) simply with a gap, we have rather (e)

Fa4 ... Dd ........ Hc4.

Instead of noticing a non-gappy sequence of fire stages, we have a gappy sequence of fire stages with a porter stage in the middle. The question is, what makes the difference that accounts for us having first the pattern in the first three sequences (a) to (c) and then the pattern (e). To see this, we have to note that the situation is still more complicated. For every sequence of visual impressions of such a thing as a fire there is a parallel set of impressions of one’s own body, situated in a parallel sequence in certain definite ways. (a) is too simple a description

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of the sequence of sensible impressions of which I am aware. There is a sequence of fire stages, but there is also a sequence of body stages that runs parallel to the sequence of fire stages. Instead of (a), we actually have (a’)

Fa1, Ra1b1, Gb1, Rb1c1, Hc1 Sa’1, R’a’1b’1, Sb’1, R’b’1c’1, Sc’1

where the second sequence in the pair is a sequence of stages of our body. Each body stage is characterized by the property S of looking towards a fire situated here, relative to the body. We have similar sequences (b’) and (c’) for (b) and (c). However, for (e) we have a stage with property S followed by a stage with property T instead of property S, which is followed once again by a body stage with property S. Schematically, we have the sequence (e’)

Fa4 ... Dd ....... Hc4 Sa’4 R’a’4b’4, Tb’4, R’b’4c’4, Sc’4

where D is the property of being a porter stage and where T is the property of the body looking towards a porter situated over there and not here. In other words, my attention is grabbed by the porter entering the room, and I turn and look towards where he is at, and away from the fire. Then shortly afterwards, my attention is drawn back to the fire and I return my body to position S, once again being presented with a fire stage, the way in which a fire sensibly appears to me and indeed to the world. It is this property T of my body – the property of looking away from where the fire is to where the porter is – that one can infer, using the method of difference (rule six), is the property the presence of which accounts for the difference between sequences (a) to (c), that is, (a’) to (c’), on the one hand and the sequence (d), that is, (e) = (e’), on the other.145 The relevant points are two. First, the gap-filling rules of inference (1) and (2) predict the presence of particulars by each yielding a definite description of a particular. The prediction is confirmed if we find a particular that satisfies the description. But it is not falsified if we fail to observe a particular that satisfies the description. This inference is justified by the rule ‘same cause/same effect,’ the fourth of Hume’s ‘rules

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by which to judge of causes and effects.’ Second, we have explained why we observe a gap in the sequence of fire stages and the occurrence of a porter stage instead by the fact that one’s head was turned in a different direction. This inference is justified by the method of difference, the sixth of Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causses and effects.’ Both these two inferences in the gap-filling process are logically correct, justified by the principles of inductive inference, the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ And these rules, we may recall from chapter 4, Hume has argued are rationally justified; they are rules that are acceptable to the reasonable person. Now, Hume, I suggest, sees things more or less in this way. He admits that it would seem on the face of it that (d) falsifies the pattern that has been inferred from (a) to (c). More generally, he acknowledges, gappy series cannot support customary inference, inference based on mere habit; in fact, those gappy series imply that those inferences very often ought to be rejected. This is why some take him to be an ur-Kantian. Here is what he says: ‘Any degree, therefore, of regularity in our perceptions, can never be a foundation for us to infer a greater degree of regularity in some objects, which are not perceiv’d; since this supposes a contradiction, viz. a habit acquir’d by what was never present to the mind’ (197). Nonetheless, instead of permitting (d) to falsify the inference, we to the contrary wish to maintain the inference and judge that our observations are at fault, that the series really is complete. We are, therefore, ‘involv’d in a kind of contradiction’: ‘In order to free ourselves from this difficulty, we disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, or rather remove it entirely, by supposing that these interrupted perceptions are connected by a real existence, of which we are insensible’ (199). Thus, instead of letting (d) falsify the inference based on the observational data of series (a) to (c), we to the contrary maintain the inference and judge that our observations are at fault, that the series really is complete only we don’t know it, and that there is in fact a G, though we’ve not observed it, between the F and the H of (d) (Price, p. 52) The filling is due to the ‘inertia’ of the imagination: it continues where it has been into where it will be, and fills in the gap, thereby avoiding the contradiction (Price, p. 58). But this inference, while not based on induction by simple enumeration or on simple associative principles, is nonetheless logically satisfactory, proceeding in conformity to rationally acceptable principles (rules four and six), in an ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique’ manner.

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The idea ß of this particular supplied by the gap-filling inference constitutes the ‘idea of continu’d existence,’ which is essential to our ideas of bodies – that is, of material objects like tables or chairs or rainbows.146 Price suggests that Hume as it were drops the argument at this point. On this view, Hume is implying that the mind, contrary to the requirements of causal reason, infers or supposes that there are unsensed sensible appearances that fill in the gaps in our perceptions. Price argues that Hume needs another principle besides that of inductive inference to yield the unsensed sensibles that fill the gaps in what we perceive. This principle is that of mental inertia. But this does not have the rational acceptability that we have in inductive inference. Hume is thus charged with scepticism about ordinary objects in the system of the vulgar: we think that they are there, and that they continue to exist unperceived, but we have no good scientific or inductive reason for that belief, and, indeed, it is charged that such a belief is contrary to ordinary causal reason. Here I disagree: this is not fair to Hume. It is true that simple causal inference will not do, as Hume himself indicates. That is, the gap-filling inference is not a case of inferring, through the simple associative mechanisms, from all observed A are B to all A are B – it has no ‘primary recommendation.’ This is not, however, the end of the story. The existence of the unsensed sensibles is a ‘supposition’ (199) – that is, an existential hypothesis that has not been verified by observation. It is, however, a supposition or hypothesis which is believed (199); and, indeed, I want to say, it is one which Hume argues is made worthy of belief by customary inferences derived from past experiences (199). It is true, to repeat, that ordinary simple models of causal inferences are unsatisfactory. Induction by simple enumeration will not do. But Hume goes on to indicate that there are other forms of justified causal inference. This is what Price fails to note; he suggests that at this point Hume gives up on any causal analysis of these inferences, and that the inference therefore cannot be rational. In fact, as we have just seen, these inferences, objectively understood, to unobserved sensible particulars are parallel to other such inferences to unobserved entities that fill gaps in our perceptual life; inferences of this sort arise ‘from the understanding, and from custom in an indirect and oblique manner’ (197; emphasis added). This is not to abandon the aim of justifying the inference to unsensed sensibles by causal inference; it is merely to indicate that these inferences are not of a simple form: they are ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique.’

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Hume does not here, in the section (I, iv, 2) that deals with our knowledge of the external world, explain what he means by this description, what the form is of this pattern of ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique’ inference. But he does not need to do this: he has done so previously, just where one might expect to find it discussed, in the section of Part iii titled ‘Of the Probability of Causes.’ It is here in this earlier section describing how the ‘rules by which to judge of causes’ work that Hume has given a similar example of such reasoning, where the failure to observe a cause we believe to be there is not taken as grounds for rejecting the inference to its presence. We have already noted the example: a watch sometimes works, and sometimes does not, where the philosopher, relying on the ‘rules by which to judge of causes’ attributes to one of the processes a factor that makes a causal difference. In such reasoning as this, we have a more general rule (the principle of determinism) correcting a less general rule (150); and, Hume tells us – this is the way he describes inferences of this sort – ‘our reasonings of this kind arise not directly from the habit, but in an oblique manner’ (133). The gap-filling inference is after all inductive, in conformity to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes.’ Price concludes that Hume must be relying on a non-inductive principle of inference when he denies that the filling in of gaps proceeds by simple associative inferences. But as we now see, Price is wrong: the reason that leads us to the causes of things is the reason that leads us to the external world. Turn now to the inferences to the system of the philosophers. Attending to Price will again prove helpful. Price in fact, having more or less sided with Hume on the external world and the system of the vulgar, disagrees with him on the move he makes towards the ‘system of the philosophers.’147 Indeed, Price takes Hume’s argument on this point to be an argument for a sceptical account of our knowledge of the external world, and raises some serious objections to it when it is so construed (Price, pp. 106ff.). But, I would suggest, it need not be so construed. Indeed, if Price’s Hume’s system of the vulgar finds a close ally in Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World, so Hume’s case for the system of the philosophers finds more recent parallels in the American critical realists, such as Roy Wood Sellars, to whom we have already compared Hume,148 and in Russell’s Analysis of Matter. If Price had attended to these latter, he might have located a Hume that is even more firmly tied to more recent theories of the external world.

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Hume’s argument that leads to the system of the philosophers is that, in the search for constancy, casual reasoning leads us to this system. Causal reasoning, like the mental inertia that yields perceptual judgments, leads us to impose uniformity on nature. It turns out that it yields greater uniformity than does perceptual experience. This search for uniformity leads to the system of the philosophers that contradicts the system of the vulgar as it is given to us in our ordinary perceptual judgments. Hume’s argument is from such events as double vision, perspectival variation, and so on. Price argues that from cases of this sort, one cannot infer – as Hume and the critical realists and Russell of the Analysis of Matter all do – that there is a causal dependence of sense impressions on our organs of sense. All that the evidence cited shows, Price suggests, is that, when a piece of white paper appears under yellow light to be yellow, the yellow impression is dependent on the presence of yellow light. Similarly, the existence of perspectival distortions does not establish dependence on the sense organs; it shows only that they are dependent on spatial position: ‘The flat and perspectivally distorted shape which I see when I look at a distant mountain could still continue in existence – for all that has been shown – when I go away and shut my eyes. But it would only exist from a certain place, not from other places.’ (Price, p. 107). One would have a realism of perspectives and appearances of the sort proposed by Berkeley and by the American new realists. In Hume’s presentation of the experiments, the reference to perspectival variation only comes second, after the reference to double vision. Of the latter Hume says that ‘we do not attribute a continu’d existence to both these perceptions’ (211). Thus, this first case at least is taken by Hume to establish that the existence of some sense impressions is dependent on our sense organs and bodily processes. But Price also questions whether the example establishes even this much (pp. 108– 12). If I am looking at a chair and press my eyeball, then I am presented with two impressions of the chair; but if I am looking at a tree and press my eyeball, then I am presented with two impressions of the tree. Thus, double-vision phenomena are causally dependent, it seems, not only on sense organs but also on the external cause. Hence, as Price puts it, ‘the phenomena of Double Vision has no tendency to prove that any of our sense impression are totally dependent on “our organs and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits” [Treatise, p. 211], as Hume thinks they have, and still less that all are’ (p. 112). On Price’s view, Hume’s argument for the dependent existence of sensible particulars is fallacious.

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We may take up this case in Price’s order, and attempt to see, first, whether double vision entails any conclusion about whether some sense impressions are totally dependent on our bodily state; and then, second, to see whether it entails that all are totally dependent. As for the first, we have been over it before in the present chapter. It is clear that what is crucial is the meaning of ‘totally dependent’ (Price’s phrase). Hume cannot have ignored that when double vision occurs, then in order to explain the impressions I have, reference must be made not only to the state of my organs but also to the physical objects that confront me and with which I, or my body, causally interacts in the perceptual situation. After all, even Hume specifically tells us that, ‘all the objects ... become double,’ referring here to the objects of perception rather than to the perceptions = perceivings themselves. The point, simply put, is that the laws that causally explain the existence of the two impressions make reference to certain physical objects as initial conditions. Now, in the system of the vulgar, the case of veridical perception of a piece of white paper, reference to the white impression occurs in the initial conditions. The white impression is part of the physical object; and what the laws of perception do is show how this object, with this part, related thus and so to me who is in such and such a bodily state, has as its effect my awareness of the white impression. But the second image in the phenomenon of double vision is not included in the initial conditions. Rather, it is one of the effects. Hume’s point is not to deny the causal relevance of external objects in producing the doubled impressions I experience. In that sense, the second image is, of course, only partially dependent on my organs. What Hume is concerned with is locating the event that the second impression is in the total causal process of perceiving. And what he does establish is that this event is not among the events that appear in the initial conditions as constituting the physical object that provides the perceptual stimulus. As he puts this point: ‘We do not attribute a continu’d existence to both these perceptions’ (211). The existence of the second impression is not explained by its being part of the series of sensible particulars that constitute the physical object mentioned in the initial conditions. The event, which the second impression is, appears only elsewhere in the process, at the point where the awareness of the impression also occurs, as the immediate causal upshot of my bodily state. Its existence is explained not in terms of its being part of a physical object but in terms of its being the immediate effect, like the awareness of it, of my bodily state. This is all Hume means when he uses the example of double vision to establish

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that some perceptions are ‘dependent on our organs.’149 Price takes Hume to be arguing for a stronger thesis than he actually argues for. Both see that this stronger thesis is indeed not entailed by Hume’s premises, and Price therefore rejects Hume’s case. But this misses the point that Hume was actually trying to make, and that actually is valid. As for why Price attributes the stronger thesis to Hume, this is simply another aspect of common tendency to misconstrue Hume in these passages as arguing for some form of subjectivism.150 But even if the existence of some impressions is, in Hume’s sense, dependent on our bodily state, can we conclude that all are so dependent? Clearly, again as we have pointed out previously, not without additional premises. Hume explicitly introduces a second premise: the two impressions in double vision are, he says, ‘both of the same nature’ (211). How are we to interpret this? I think its context makes this clear enough. The context is that of a causal argument – an experiment, as Hume himself describes it. The premise that all experimental reasoning relies on comes immediately to mind: rule four of the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ the rule which states that like events have like effects and that like events have like causes, or, as Hume puts it, ‘the same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises but from the same cause’ (173). The two impressions are of the same nature; they are like events. Sound causal reasoning – that is, as Hume has argued, reasoning in accord with the rules by which to judge of causes, including rule four that like effects (causes) have like causes (effects) – should therefore assign like causes to the two impressions that occur in double vision, and locate them at like points in the causal process of perceiving. The vulgar, or the new realists – or, one presumes, Quinton or Chisholm – may be able to offer an explanation in which one of the impressions in the double image is located as part of the object that causes the process. But it cannot do so for both. Since the two images are like, and must therefore have like causes, it follows that, if one cannot be located as part of the physical cause, then neither can. But the one is located not as part of the object perceived but rather as the immediate upshot of our bodily state. The other impression should be given the same location in the perceptual process. So both should be so located in the process as to have as the immediate cause of their existence the state of our sense organs – though, of course, the mediate or distal cause is the physical object. But furthermore, these impressions are of the same nature as all other impressions. So all impressions should be located at the same point in the perceptual process. None should be

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treated as part of the physical objects perceived; all should be treated as immediate upshots of our bodily state. Hume therefore concludes that ‘all our perceptions are dependent [in his, not Price’s sense] on our organs, and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits.’ Causal reasoning has thus led Hume to develop a theory of the perceptual process in which all impressions are causally dependent on our bodily states. The facts of variation of size in perspective, the facts of apparent colours changing according to the conditions of illumination, the fact that objects appear differently when we have jaundice or when we are dizzy, and so on, can all be easily accounted for by this theory. As Hume says: ‘This opinion [i.e., his theory of perception] is confirm’d’ by all these other facts about perception. From all this ‘we learn, that our sensible perceptions are not possest of any distinct or independent existence.’ That is, we have justified the hypothesis of the system of the philosophers. And, contrary to what Price and others151 have argued, Hume’s reasoning here is sound causal reasoning, at least if we presuppose that, as Hume argued, his ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ are the best rules for causal inference. Hume’s point is that the coordination of the sensible appearances effected by our perceptual judgments, when pursued by causal reasoning on minor exceptions to constancy such as double images, leads us to impose a very different constancy of pattern on the world. The correlation now proceeds, not through a series of supposed but unsensed sensible appearances, but rather through a set of supposedly unsensed scientific objects, all of which lack the sensible qualities of appearances. All we can know about these objects that bring about the correlation, and that impose a constancy of pattern on sensible appearances, is by means of the relative idea that such objects are the objects that cause the sensible appearances that we do experience.152 All we can know of these objects that we suppose to be there is their structure, not their qualitative features. (On this point, more later, in the next subsection.) Hume is here of one mind with the critical realists and with the Russell of the Analysis of Matter. When Price takes Hume to be using the appeal to such phenomena as double images as an argument for scepticism about the unsensed objects in the world, he is falling back into the Reid–Coleridge–Green tradition that makes Hume to be a sceptic. A closer look reveals, I think, that Price is wrong on this point. He has given us a good account of Hume the logical atomist, but he misses Hume the critical realist. It will be useful, however, to make more explicit the logical form of

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the inference that Hume makes to the unsensed particulars of the system of the philosophers. To make this form explicit, I shall use a different example, one that will share the logical form of the Humean inferences but will (I hope) have a more modern ring to it. Certainly, I hope the example will exhibit a logical form that, on the one hand, also (I shall argue) fits the Humean inferences, and that, on the other hand, is logically sound, thereby demonstrating the soundness of those Humean inferences. We can provide a simple model of the sort of theory that guides inquiry. Suppose that we have a series of diseases D1, D2, D3, of genus D, and that these are caused, respectively, by the presence of germs of species G1, G2, G3, all within the genus G. We thus have the laws: For all x, x is G1 if and only if x is D1. (a)

For all x, x is G2 if and only if x is D2. For all x, x is G3 if and only if x is D3.

These correspond to the specific laws that Newton first cites, such as the motion of freely falling bodies or spinning tops. Together with the data that eliminate other possible causes, these specific laws entail respectively: There is a unique species g such that g is of genus G and such that for all x, x is g if and only if x is D1. (b)

There is a unique species g such that g is of genus G and such that for all x, x is g if and only if x is D2. There is a unique species g such that g is of genus G and such that for all x, x is g if and only if x is D3.

Given that the Di are all D, we can now generalize again to a law about laws – as John Stuart Mill put it, it states that ‘it is a law that there is a law for everything’153 – to the effect that: (c)

For any species f, if f is of genus D then there is a unique species g such that g is of genus G and such that for all x, x is g if and only if x is f.

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This corresponds to the fourth of Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes’: ‘the same cause always produces the same effect and the same effect never arises but from the same cause’ (173). In the logic of experimentation – that is, of eliminative induction – (c), like Hume’s fourth rule, plays the role of a Principle of Determinism and a Principle of Limited Variety. To continue with our example, suppose that having arrived at the generic law (c), we now run across a new species of disease of the same sort, – for example, D4. Since D4 is D we can deduce from (c) the existential hypothesis: (d)

There is a unique species g such that g is of genus G and such that for all x, x is g if and only if x is D4.

This asserts that there is a species of germs that causes disease D4. We have observational data that justify the law-assertion of each of (a). These law-assertions justify the law-assertion of the generalities (b). Since we have in the past succeeded in finding data that justify these laws – or, rather, law-assertions – we may reasonably infer that in the future we shall find data that confirm analogous laws in analogous cases; that is, our successes in confirming the laws (b) justify our law-asserting a generalization about such generalizations, namely, (c). This lawassertion in turn justifies our law-asserting the existential hypothesis (d). The inference proceeds from what we have found in parallel cases to what we may reasonably expect in the present case. The result is a justified assertion of an existential hypothesis which asserts that a certain sort of cause is there to be discovered – or, what is the same, that a certain sort or form of law obtains, without, however, asserting specifically what that cause or law is. The hypothesis thus presents a research problem; we know that there is a law there to be discovered, and the task is to discover it. In this example, the principle (c) functions as a principle of determinism – it asserts that for any causal factor of the relevant sort, then there is another factor that explains its presence. And as a principle of limited variety, it asserts that the possible conditioning factors are limited to the range determined by the genus G. It is, as we said, a law about laws. It achieves this status because it abstracts from the specific laws a certain generic form. The fact that theories can take on an abstractive, generic

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form is of crucial importance to any adequate empiricist account of science. We should note how evidence travels up and down the hierarchy of laws in apparent conformity with the principle that confirmation is transmitted via the consequence and converse consequence relations. We should also note that in using successful prediction to confirm the specific laws, we also thereby confirm the generic laws of which they are instances: a specific prediction is also a generic prediction. Once we have the law (d) to guide us, we know what kind of hypothesis to propose; it must be of the logical form (f)

g is G and for all x, x is g if and only if x is D4,

a logical form which it shares with other laws unified by the same generic theory (c). Given that the theory (c) is empirical, then so is any hypothesis of the form (f). Any such hypothesis will, moreover, be falsifiable. As well, it will be consistent with the background theory. And it will yield predictions that can put it to the test. So if we propose, as a solution to our problem, some hypothesis of the form (f), we shall have proposed a solution to our problem that satisfies the sort of criteria usually laid down for being a good hypothesis. And even if the hypothesis that we proposed fails to pass the test and thus turns out to be false, we still know that some other hypothesis of the same form will turn out to be correct: after all, that is what is asserted by the law (d), which we are reasonably using to guide our research. Let us suppose that we have a relatively narrow range of alternatives, say three. Let us say that we have (g)

g is of genus G if and only if either g = G’ or g = G’’ or g = G’’’.

If this is so, then what (d) asserts is that exactly one of the following possibilities is true: for all x, x is G’ if and only if x is D4, (h)

for all x, x is G’’ if and only if x is D4, for all x, x is G’’’ if and only if x is D4.

Until these are put to the test, we do not know which of them is true. But, given (g) and (d), then we know that one of them is true. The task

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of the inquiry, the research task, is to find out which one is the one that is true. (d) asserts that one of these is true and only one, so the research task is to find the observational data that will enable us to decide which among this set of possibilities is the hypothesis that is actually true. These points can be put in another way. The law (d) There is a unique species g such that g is of genus G and such that for all x, x is g if and only if x is D4 states that there is exactly one G such that it is necessary and sufficient for D4. Since it asserts both existence and uniqueness, we can form the definite description (r)

the species of genus G that is necessary and sufficient for D4.

If we think of disease D4 as ‘the flu’ of a certain specific sort, then the definite description (r) corresponds to the phrase ‘the flu bug.’ And just as we can say that the flu bug causes the flu, so we can say that the property denoted by (r) is necessary and sufficient for D4. If we abbreviate (r) to (r’)

the species of genus G that is necessary and sufficient for D4 = Df G^

then we can infer that (d) is logically equivalent to (j)

for all x, x is G^ if and only if D4.

Just as (d) is an empirical generalization, so is (j).154 We are now in a position where we can explain the presence of D4 in some individual, say a, by appeal to the presence of G^. Of course, we cannot know beforehand that G^ is present in an individual, since we have no way of identifying the presence of G^ save through its effect. But suppose we know that a is D4 that is, suppose that we know that the effect has occurred. Then we can infer the presence of the cause. Which is to say that, from (j) we can deductively infer that

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a is G^ which in turn yields the deductive-nomological or causal explanation for all x, x is G^ if and only if x is D4 (E)

a is G^ so,

a is D4

This asserts something to the effect that Jones has the flu because he has been infected by the flu bug. Notice the pattern with which we are by now familiar: owing to the existential quantifier in both the major and minor premises in (E), this argument form could not have been used for prediction. But we can use it to explain. The point is that the explanation is ex post facto. This is a mark of the gappiness of the explanation. Which is another way of saying that (d) = (j) is a gappy law. But this should be evident. It asserts that there is a generalization that is a solution to our problem, and it describes that generalization in generic terms, but it does not say specifically what the law is. The gappiness of our knowledge will be remedied when we have discovered precisely which among the possible alternatives that it allows really is the true statement of law. The cognitive interest that motivates the inquiry is to discover the specific law that describes a certain area. We are guided by an abstract generic theory that gives a generic description of the specific law without stating that law in its specific detail. Since we know that there is a specific law that holds but do not know specifically what it is, our knowledge is gappy. Thus, in the context of theory-guided research aimed at discovering specific laws, the cognitive interest that moves us is the elimination of gaps in our knowledge of laws. Now for Hume’s inference to the unsensed particulars. We are moved by the very special, and often ignored, anomalies such as the doubling effect when the eyeball is pressed. We are led by the causal principle to hypothesize that there is a cause for these sensible events. This inference corresponds to (c) leading to (d). We can then refer to these hypothesized entities, in effect by a definite description. This definite description corresponds to ‘G^.’ We then explain the sensible events by appeal to these unsensed particulars. This explanation is always ex post facto: the presence of the explaining cause is always inferred from the existence of the event, its effect, that is being explained.

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Notice that we explain the presence of the disease from the presence of its cause G^. We do this without ever observing a constant conjunction between the cause and the effect. Since we do not observe such a constant conjunction, there is no ‘primary recommendation’ for this inference. It does not follow that it is incorrect or erroneous. To the contrary, there is plenty of secondary recommendation. This comes from the law about laws (c), Hume’s rule of ‘same cause same effect, and same effect same cause.’ This principle itself, as Hume says, ‘we derive from experience’ (173). As a law about laws, it is a generalization from patterns that have been directly confirmed in experience. In our model, these directly confirmed laws are the specific laws (a); (c) is a generalization from these specific laws. As such, the data that confirm these specific laws also confirm the abstract generic law (c). This addresses the objection based on Hume’s remark, noted earlier, that as no beings are ever present to the mind but perceptions, it follows that we may observe a conjunction or a relation of cause and effect between different perceptions, but can never observe it between perceptions and objects. It is impossible, therefore, that from the existence or any of the qualities of the former, we can ever form any conclusion concerning the existence of the latter, or ever satisfy our reason in this particular. (212)

The objection goes something like this: We can draw causal inferences only in those cases where we have in the past witnessed two species of object follow in a similar pattern. Where only one species of object is experienced, no inference to the cause is possible, except in the case where that species of effect is analogous to some other species of effect, and the cause of that other species has been experienced in the past. Hume takes this to mean [it is suggested] that in the case of doubling I can infer perceptions of pressure on the side of an eyeball. But we can never draw inferences to causes we have never experienced.

Or, more simply, ‘If the parts of the material objects that cause impressions, supposedly, are never given to us [in sense experience], then how can we infer it is the cause of our impressions?’ The question is rhetorical; the answer that is expected, and that is expected to be obvious, is that we can’t. And so Hume, it is concluded, rejects as illegitimate any inference to the system of the philosophers. He is after all, a sceptic.

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We now see, however, that this objection is simply wrong. The inference to the unperceived and never perceived causes is perfectly legitimate. It is based on the causal principle that like effects have like causes, on a law about laws, on a regularity about regularities, which is itself confirmed in experience. It justifies inferences to unperceived causes, and it also justifies our appealing to these unobserved events to provide ex post facto explanations about their effects. Hume finds impossible inferences to unobserved causes when those inferences are based on laws supposedly confirmed directly in experience. That is correct: on this point Hume is right. But that does not imply scepticism. For there may be other ways, which are legitimate, for the inferences to the unseen causes of sensible events such as the doubling – and indeed, of all sensible events – as required by the system of the philosophers. The other rules that legitimate such inferences are the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ Hume qualifies his remark about our incapacity to infer the unsensed causses to attempts to make such inferences based on principles for which there is a ‘primary recommendation.’ He does not thereby exclude another basis for such inferences. This other basis is to be found in his ‘rules by which to judge of causes’ – rules that (1) he has argued are rational, and to which (2) he actually does appeal to when he makes his ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique’ inferences to the entities of the system of the philosophers. Once again we see how wrong it is to try to find in Hume’s case for the system of the philosophers an argument for scepticism. It is, we once again find, a perfectly reasonable argument for critical realism. II. Cleanthes Here the objection to our proposal that Hume is defending a form of Critical Realism is that, if inferences to the system of the philosophers are as we have argued, then ‘one would have to explain why the same considerations could not as well be pressed into service to justify Cleanthes’ argument (in the Dialogues on Natural Religion) for the existence and being of a God as the unperceived cause of the order of things, and, in particular, of the adaptation of organisms to the ends of survival and reproduction. The cases in fact appear to be very similar. • In both cases we have only ever had experience of the effects (our impressions in the one case and the parts of the universe in the other) and we are trying to draw an inference to a cause we have never experienced.

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• In both cases we are trying to say something more about this case than simply that it exists and produces all the effects (in the one case, that it consists of a number of material things, in the other, that it possesses something like human intelligence). • In both cases we are drawing an analogy with other cases we have experienced. But taking for granted that Hume is to be identified with Cleanthes’ opponent Philo, then, if Hume = Philo rejects Cleanthes’ argument, as he does, how then can Hume accept the same argument in the inference to the system of the philosophers? Since Hume rejects Cleanthes’ argument, he must also reject the other argument. So goes the objection. It follows that Hume is after all sceptical with regard to the objects of the system of the philosophers. In short, once again, he is a sceptic, not a critical realist. Let us see. It must be granted to the opponent of our reading that the mentioned parallels are there. Cleanthes’ introduction of the argument from design for the existence of an intelligent creator occurs in Part Two of the Dialogues on Natural Religion. Cleanthes cites the order of the organic realm, the adaptation of animals and plants for the end of survival and reproduction. He tells us that there is ‘the economy of final causes,’ and ‘the order, proportion, and arrangement of every part’ (D 144). Just as the ‘steps of a stair are plainly contrived, that human legs may use them in mounting,’ so also ‘human legs are also contrived for walking and mounting’ (ibid.). And these facts of order in nature, by analogy, yield the conclusion that there is for the natural contrivances an intelligent designer as a cause, just as there is an intelligent designer as the cause of the human contrivances: ‘Experience, therefore, proves, that there is an original principle of order in mind, not in matter’ (D 146). So the cause of the natural order is similar, an intelligent designer. The inference itself is based on the principle that like causes have like effects, that is, rule four of the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ As Cleanthes argues: ‘From similar effects we infer similar causes. The adjustment of means to ends is alike in the universe, as in a machine of human contrivance. The causes, therefore, must be resembling’ (D 146). Given the law about laws, which itself we ‘derive from experience’ (Treatise, 173), we can infer that there is a causal relation for the natural order as an effect, with this causal order being similar to the causal order

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for human contrivances as effects. So, though we have of course not observed the cause of the or a natural order at work, we can infer its existence, and that it has the property of being an intelligent designer. Of course, Cleanthes allows, ‘this inference [to a designer of the natural order] ... is not altogether so certain [as the inference to a designer for human contrivances], because of the dissimilarity which you remark; but does it, therefore, deserve the name only of presumption or conjecture?’ (D 144). The pattern of inference is that of the model of the previous section. Hume himself uses the example of inferences about the orbits of planets – itself recognized as a good scientific inference. The general principle is that all inferences ... concerning fact, are founded on experience; and that all experimental reasonings are founded on the supposition that similar causes prove similar effects, and similar effects similar causes (D 147)

For the cause of the earth by intelligent designer, Hume first raises this objection: ‘Have you other earths ... which you have seen to move?’ To which the answer is given immediately that Yes! ... we have other earths. Is not the moon another earth, which we see to turn round its centre? Is not Venus another earth, where we observe the same phenomenon? Are not the revolutions of the sun also a confirmation, from analogy, of the same theory? All the planets, are they not earths, which revolve about the sun? Are not the satellites moons, which move round Jupiter and Saturn, and along with these primary planets round the sun? These analogies and resemblances, with others which I have not mentioned, are the sole proofs of the Copernican system; and to you it belongs to consider, whether you have any analogies of the same kind to support your theory. (D 150)

Hume points out that scientists had to argue that the various planets resembled one another in being planets, each typically like the others. Galileo had to eliminate the distinction between things terrestrial and things celestial before the Copernican system could be established. Then, ‘After many instances of this kind, with regard to all the planets, men plainly saw that these bodies became proper objects of experience; and that the similarity of their nature enabled us to extend the same arguments and phenomena from one to the other’ (D 150). Others have noted the role of analogies among laws as the root of our

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inferences in the astronomy of the solar system. Thus, N.R. Hanson, in ‘Is There a Logic of Scientific Discovery?’155 distinguishes (1)

reasons for accepting an hypothesis H

from (2)

reasons for suggesting H in the first place.

But he then rephrases this in a more guarded way, as a distinction between (1c)

reasons for accepting a particular, minutely specified hypothesis H

and (2c)

reasons for suggesting that, whatever specific claim the successful H will make, it will, nonetheless, be a hypothesis of one kind rather than another.

With this notion of kind, we notice the introduction of the idea that what is important is analogy. Hanson uses the example of the form of Jupiter’s orbit, as anticipated by Kepler. What Kepler did first was to discover a law for Mars’s orbit, a law that goes something like this: (*)

Any place p such that Mars is located at p is also such that it is situated on a path the form of which is an ellipse with eccentricity e1, and with the sun at one focus.

This is a generalization about the places at which Mars is located, a law about the positions of that particular planet. Kepler immediately generalized. If the orbit of Mars were an ellipse, then, since Mars is a typical planet, other planets, too, must have elliptical orbits: (**)

For any planet there is a form f that is an ellipse with the sun at one focus such that, for any place p such that the planet is located at p is also such that it is situated on a path the form of which is f.

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This latter law states that any planetary orbit will have a certain form – specifically it will have the form of an ellipse. It asserts that there is a common logical form that is shared by the laws for planetary orbits for all planets. This shared logical form makes them analogous to one another, analogous in respect of this form. This law is Kepler’s First Law. This law about laws or regularity about regularities enables Kepler to predict that the law for Jupiter’s orbit will be of this kind. That is, from (**) and the assumption that Jupiter is a planet we can deduce that (***)

There is a form f that is an ellipse with the sun at one focus such that, for any place p such that Jupiter is located at p is also such that it is situated on a path the form of which is f.

The law (***) asserts that there is an elliptical orbit for the planet Jupiter; it states that there is a law of a certain kind or generic form, though it does not say specifically what ellipse it is – that is, what specifically the law is that it asserts is there. (***) asserts that there is for Jupiter a law like that of (*) for Mars, a law of the same generic form. It is clear that the law (*) is the minutely specified law that Hanson mentions in his (1c), whereas (***) provides a reason for supposing, as Hanson says in his (2c), that there is a law of a certain kind. But, of course, we have reason to suppose that (***) is true only because we deduced it from the generic theory (**). Thus, laws of the sort (**) – that is, laws about laws, or, more exactly, laws about the forms that laws exemplify – provide the sorts of reasons that Hanson mentions in his (2c). A law such as (*) is his minutely specified or specific hypothesis H, and the reasons for accepting (*) have to do with its confirmation by observational data. Why suggest a similar law for Jupiter, one that is analogous or of the same kind? The suggestion comes from the law (**), which is a generalization from (*). The reasons that justify the inference that Jupiter’s orbit will have an elliptical form thus lie in the theoretical and generic generalization (**), and, beyond that, the observational evidence that supports the generalization (**). The logic is essentially that of eliminative induction. Observational data lead us to accept as correct the one uneliminated hypothesis from a previously given range within which we previously accept that there is one that is true. Kepler, as Hanson says, used these inferences. So also did Newton, in his discovery of the inverse square law of attraction (excluding inverse cube, inverse 2.5, and so on and so on). What Newton uses in addition to the simple logic of the eliminative mechanisms,

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however, is a sophisticated mathematical apparatus that enables him to eliminate all alternatives but one by deducing that if we accept certain well-supported inferences from the observational data – namely, Kepler’s laws – then we must accept one specific hypothesis from the infinite range and reject all others as false. Newton does not proceed to collect data that exclude seriatim one hypothesis after another from the range; rather, he uses data to draw inferences that then enable him to deduce the one hypothesis that must be accepted and whose acceptance entails the rejection of all others in the range. Given the deduction, the one set of data serve simultaneously to determine the acceptable hypothesis and to reject the remainder. The logic is that of eliminative induction; the mathematics makes the processes of elimination proceed in a highly efficient manner. But the point remains: the logic is the Baconian and Humean logic of eliminative induction. Newton’s great inference conforms to the rules of the experimental method of the new science – that is, the rules of eliminative induction; and it has as its product a process law – that is, a law that provides the best explanation of the sort that forms the cognitive aim of the new science. In these Newtonian inferences, one has to assume what in effect are principles of determinism and limited variety. These are the assumptions, first, that there are forces, and, second, that these forces satisfy certain conditions. These assumptions are given by the basic laws or axioms of mechanics. In effect, they are given by what we have come to know as Newton’s three laws, together with the law for the vector addition of forces. The first law states that ‘Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.’ Newton has defined the notion of ‘motion’ in his ‘Definition II’: ‘The quantity of motion is the measure of the same, arising from the velocity and quantity of matter conjointly.’ Motion is thus defined as what we now call ‘momentum’: m3v The ‘change of motion’ mentioned in the first law, then, is the product of the mass and the change of velocity: m 3 dv = m 3 d2s It is clear that the ‘forces’ mentioned are the momentary forces that are

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required to introduce the instantaneous change of state, that is, change of motion (= momentum). This is clear also from Newton’s ‘Definition IV,’ where we learn that ‘an impressed force is an action exerted upon a body, in order to change its state, either of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line.’ The reference, therefore, is to what we would represent by F 3 dt. Thus, what the first law, the so-called ‘Law of Inertia,’ asserts is that Whenever there is a change of state m 3 dv then there is an external force F 3 dt which provides a necessary and sufficient condition for each successive state in that process of change though it does not say specifically exactly how the external force determines that change – that is, exactly what is the functional relation between the force and the change of motion. The first law thus asserts that there are certain laws, without asserting specifically what those laws are. But it does lay down certain restrictions on these laws: these laws satisfy the condition of relating accelerations to circumstances. The first law states that for any object there is in the external circumstances in which it is situated a necessary and sufficient condition for any acceleration and therefore for any change of motion. Contrary to what Aristotle had held, it is accelerations and not velocities that are correlated to circumstances. The second and third laws that Newton provides are similar in their mixed-quantificational form; they provide further generic constraints on the nature of force functions, serving as, in effect, principles of limited variety. Newton used these laws to assure himself that there are forces that explain the motions of the planets, and he used them to pick out a range of possible hypotheses. Then, using data obtained by observation, he eliminated all but one of these hypotheses, which he then accepted as the law that correctly describes the motions of the solar system. What he deduced was that the relevant force is gravitational. Then, knowing this specific law for interactions in the solar system, he was able to obtain the process law that was so to impress the world that no one since has ever been able to challenge the notion that – so far at least as the inanimate world is concerned – it is the new science alone that yields knowledge. In eliminating alternatives, Newton eliminated the

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conjectures of Descartes, though he also devoted a special argument in Book II to show that the Cartesian suppositions must be false if we accept, on the one hand, the Newtonian laws of motion, and, on the other hand, the data that require the orbits of planets to be elliptical. We see that Newton’s method was that of eliminative induction, aided by some sophisticated mathematics. We now see that what we now call Newton’s Laws of Motion constitute the principles of determinism and limited variety that are essential if the eliminative mechanisms are to work. This is, in effect, the logical form Hume’s rule four, ‘like causes have like effects and conversely.’ For us the point is simple. Kepler’s First Law, as a law about laws, enables us to infer that there is an orbit for Jupiter which we know further is generically elliptical in form without knowing specifically what that form is; and we can infer this conclusion about such an orbit even though we have not confirmed such an orbit through direct observation. Similar inferences can be made with Newton’s Axioms for Mechanics, which are also abstract generic laws about laws. This sort of inference is just the inference that Cleanthes makes to the cause for natural order in the biological realm. We use the ‘like effects have like causses’ to infer the existence of a cause and that this cause has certain generic features, without knowing specifically what those characteristics are. And of course, there is the inference with which we are concerned: Hume’s inference to the objects of the system of the philosophers. Here, too, we infer in just this manner that there are causes of our impressions without knowing specifically what sorts of things those causes are, and we can infer this and accept it as a reasonable belief even though we have not observed such causes. But we are considering the argument of the Dialogues as a challenge to Hume’s inference to critical realism. The thought is that since Hume = Philo rejects Cleanthes’ argument, he must also reject the other argument. It follows that he is after all sceptical with regard to the objects of the system of the philosophers. In short, once again, Hume is a sceptic, not a critical realist. The objection rests on the prior assumption that Hume = Philo rejects Cleanthes’ argument. This in fact is an incorrect assumption. Hume’s acceptance of the inference is made clear from the analogy he makes to inferences in astronomy. The latter are taken to be sound, and so therefore is the former. And so, too, in turn is the inference to

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critical realism. Hume’s arguments do not after all lead to scepticism: the inference to critical realism is once again is not reduced to scepticism. The notion that Philo rejects Cleanthes’ conclusion is an erroneous reading of Hume’s discussion. In fact, Philo clearly accepts Cleanthes’ conclusion. He does this explicitly in Part Twelve of the Dialogues. The conclusion that Philo and therefore Hume accepts is that human intelligence and the cause of order in the biological realm, ‘probably bear some remote analogy to each other’ (D 217); and, more exactly, that ‘the principle which first arranged, and still maintains order in this universe, bears ... also some remote inconceivable analogy to the other operations of nature, and, among the rest, to the economy of human mind and thought’ (D 217). One who looks at the argument carefully, must accept this conclusion: ‘However reluctant, he must give his assent’ (D 217). That at least is the rational thing to do. This is, of course, far from the conclusion Cleanthes had hoped to achieve. He at first suggested that the analogy between the cause of natural order and human intelligence was a strong analogy. What Philo does is make it clear that, while there is such an analogy, it is remote. The appeal to Philo’s reasoning to call into question the claim that Hume accepts as reasonable the inference to the system of the philosophers, requires that Philo call into question Cleanthes’ argument. Cleanthes supposes that there is a stronger conclusion than the evidence warrants. Here we see that Hume is sceptical about Cleanthes’ conclusion. But this becomes an objection to the claim that the reasoning to critical realism is sound only if Cleanthes’ claim is warranted by the argument. To argue that it is not warranted is not to reject the argument itself. We may conclude that Hume = Philo does not challenge the soundness of Cleanthes’ argument from design. Nor, therefore, can we infer that his discussion of the argument to unseen causes in the Dialogues calls into question the parallel argument that leads to critical realism. note: As it turns out, research in empirical science has vindicated Cleanthes’ conclusion, which historically is also the argument of such thinkers as Boyle and Paley. This argument infers from the fact that organisms are well adapted to survive and reproduce in their normal environments, on ordinary scientific grounds, that there is a designer which caused and explains these facts of adap-

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tation. This conclusion, suitably qualified, was expressed by Hume as the proposition that ‘the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence’ (D 227). To see what this conclusion means, or implies, we must ask: What is it that is characteristic of human intelligence? It is human intelligence that designed the well-known watch. What is characteristic, then, of human intelligence is that it can solve problems – in particular, problems of design, how to shape a mechanism that can fulfil a certain function. Now, organisms are in fact well designed, in the sense that they do have within themselves mechanisms that enable them to survive and reproduce in their normal environments. This point can be expressed as the thesis: ‘The members of any species S are well-adapted to achieving their goals of survival and reproduction in their normal environments.’ We have come to see, as a result of Darwin’s researches, and his theory – his highly confirmed theory – of the origin of species by natural selection that the explanation of this fact is natural selection. It is therefore natural selection that is the cause of adaptation. But to say that it is the cause of adaptation is to say that it has solved the problem of adapting mechanisms so that they ensure that in organisms various functions are efficiently performed. But if natural selection has the capacity to solve problems of design, then it does share something with human intelligence – namely, precisely this capacity. Natural selection is, in Hume’s terms, ‘the cause or causes of order in the universe.’ We now see that this cause does ‘bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.’ Boyle, Paley, Cleanthes, and Hume are thus quite correct in their argument. The argument from design, as based on the scientific causal principle, Hume’s fourth rule, that like effects have like causes, is in fact a sound argument, its conclusion one that can reasonably be affirmed. That is, we now know what is the cause of order in the universe, or at least in the biological realm – that the conclusion of the argument asserts to be there, but that conclusion does not say specifically what it is. It describes it only generically, and, as Hume emphasized, very generically indeed. We have succeeded, through Darwin, in identifying that cause, and have thereby confirmed the theory by discovering that what it predicts to be there really is there. We have identified the predicted cause to be natural selection. And this does satisfy the generic description provided

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by the theory: as a mechanism that provides a solution to problems, it does bear a remote analogy to human intelligence. This is not the traditional God whose existence Boyle, Paley, and Cleanthes – but not Hume – hoped to prove by the argument. But we know from Hume that this conclusion that Cleanthes and the others hoped to derive was unreasonable anyway. As Hume says, the analogy has to be remote. It is indeed. This shows that Hume was right to accept Cleanthes’ argument, given the suitably qualified conclusion. He is also right in accepting as sound the parallel argument to the external causes of our impressions in the system of the philosophers. To be sure, the nature of these entities, and the nature of our perceptual apparatus, imply that these causes, unlike the cause in the conclusion of Cleanthes’ argument, lack all sensible qualities and therefore cannot be observed. For all that, the argument to their existence is perfectly sound. [It is perhaps worth noting further one important difference between natural selection and human intelligence. In the case of humans, when we go about solving a problem, we can in effect retreat and start over. If it seems to our advantage, we can retreat one step in order to go forward two steps. If you bend a nail while hammering it, you can pull it out and start with a new one. This is not true of natural selection: all it can do is go forward. Natural selection would be stuck with the bent nail: it could not pull it out and start over. Thus, although natural selection is, like human intelligence, a problem-solving mechanism, it is one that is not as efficient as human intelligence.] III. Lending a Hand to Hylas Roy Wood Sellars is the twentieth-century critical realist to whom we have been comparing Hume. He wrote a little book, Lending a Hand to Hylas,156 in which he undertook to reply to the Berkeleyan inference to idealism. Berkeley, in his Three Dialogues, argues that idealism is the only conclusion to be drawn from such Humean experiments as the pressing of the eyeball. Hylas undertakes to defend the view that there are, for our sense impressions, causes outside the sensible realm. Hylas’ world, though like Hume’s world of the vulgar, is in fact what Hume refers to as the world of modern thinkers. It is in effect Locke’s world. It is soundly

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defeated by Philonous, who represents the idealist position. Sellars undertakes to help Hylas, and to reply to Philonous = Berkeley. Sellars concludes that Berkeley does not make a case against critical realism. But this world of the critical realist is not quite that of Locke, and rather more like that described by Hume as the world of the philosophers. It is often held that Hume, in his argument regarding the system of the philosophers, falls into a Berkeleyan subjectivism and therefore a sort of scepticism about the ‘external world.’ This reading of Hume is contrary to the reading of Hume as a critical realist that we are developing. The former reading can be developed into an objection against the latter. We can imagine such an objection to the position we are defending going something like this: In the inference we are attributing to Hume, the supposed external causes have never been seen. So (i) why infer that the cause must have primary qualities? (ii) If we give up on that and allow that these causes cannot be characterized in any way other than ‘relative’ and ‘only a certain unknown inexplicable something’ then we have produced ‘a notion so imperfect that no sceptic will think it worth while to contend against it’ (E 155). (iii) If we come up with some way to infer that the cause must possess primary qualities, even though no causes of like events (that is, no causes of perceptions) have been experienced, then we will be hard pressed to deny Cleanthes’ claims. Indeed, why not allow the Berkeleyan conclusion that these unknown, and only imperfectly conceived external causes, are really immaterial things, something like the will of God. Re (i): Hume does not claim that the external objects have primary qualities in the sense of sensible extension. Sensible extension, like secondary qualities such as colours and tones, is present in sensed particulars, our impressions, and in nothing else; in that sense, the primary and secondary qualities are inseparable, and the primary qualities in this sense cannot be exemplified by the unsensed external causes. Hume only claims that the unsensed entities have a structure which is similar to or resembles the structure defined by the primary qualities. Re (ii): Our idea of the external causes as characterized in the system of the philosophers is in fact both abstract and relative, and therefore, as the critic says, quoting Hume himself, ‘imperfect.’ Not even a sceptic would contend against it. The ‘imperfection’ must be granted. And the person who is sceptical about religion will certainly not bother to contend against it: it carries no implications that would lead us to some notion of a deity, let alone superstition. Only someone who calls into

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question the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ would have a problem, but any attempt to call them into question would not be reasonable. Assuming that the sceptic, as a reasonable person, adopts these rules, then he or she will of course find nothing in this imperfect concept to contend against. That is, the mitigated sceptic though not the Pyrrhonian sceptic will find no reason to reject the supposition of these causes. Re (iii): Well, as we have seen, one who adopts the causal inference to unsensed external causes will in fact have to accept Cleanthes’ conclusion, not of course in the exaggerated form in which Cleanthes first presents it, but in the attenuated form that Philo successfully argues is alone rationally acceptable. It does not follow, however, that we must allow the Berkeleyan conclusion that the external causes are the volitions of God rather than material things. To the contrary, these entities have the structures had by their effects, and this shared structure is hardly analogous to human intelligence. What Berkeley defends is not just a sort of realism but more strongly a form of idealism. He argues is that there are no qualities of things that are not mind dependent, where the dependence is ontological dependence. The argument goes like this. Pain is mind dependent, we all agree. But the pain of being burned in a fire is inseparable from the heat of the fire. So the latter, too, must be mind dependent. But heat is a secondary quality, so all secondary qualities must be mind dependent. (Here we are assuming what is reasonable – that if one entity in an ontological category stands in certain ontological relations to other entities of other categories, then every entity in that category stands in similar ontological relations.157) But primary qualities are inseparable from secondary qualities, so they, too, are mind dependent. There are no other qualities. So the external causes that Hylas, following Locke, supposes must be there turn out to be nothings. And so the system of the modern philosophers is reduced to Berkeleyan idealism.158 But for Hume the system of the philosophers is not to be identified with the system of Locke, the system of the modern philosophy. Recall Hume’s characterization of the external objects. Since every sensory input depends for its existence on the state of our sense organs, it follows that the causes of those impressions lack any of the qualities we sense. They lack colours and tones and smells and tastes, and they lack extension – that is, sensible extension, visible and tangible. We have an idea of such entities: it is an abstract idea. This abstract idea consists of the idea of an event (taking ‘event’ to be a

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genus), the idea of being qualified (taking ‘being qualified’ to be a genus), and more specifically, the idea that the quality, whatever it is, is not sensible – that is, not a colour and not a tone and not a smell, and so on. And furthermore, the idea of such events or particulars includes the relative idea that they are the events that cause the sensible impressions that we experience. We do not attribute to these external causes any of the qualities we attribute to sensible objets. They lack colours, tones, and so forth. And they further lack visible extension, which is inseparable (Hume and Berkeley agree) from colours, and tangible extension, which is inseparable from tactile qualities. But Hume does argue that these unperceivable events the presence of which we infer do stand in relations to one another. Thus, we may recall, he tells us with regard to these ‘external objects’ that we posit or, in his terms, are ‘suppos’d’ to exist that ‘generally speaking, we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attribute to them different relations, connexions, and durations’ (68). And so, when one experiences a coloured impression in which the parts, all coloured, are ‘disposed in a certain manner’ (31), then the events that we infer to be the cause of this impression will also have parts ‘disposed’ in a similar ‘manner.’ As we would now speak, the sensible event and the inferred cause share the same or a similar structure. We do not know how external objects are qualified; what we know of such objects is their structure. Hume’s critical realism, we again emphasize, is a structural realism. And again to emphasize, this distinguishes the external world as characterized by Hume from the Lockean system of the modern philosophers. Thus, the Berkeleyan argument that material things must be mind dependent because primary qualities are inseparable from the secondary qualities does not go through as an objection to Hume. Hume allows that sensible extension is inseparable from the secondary qualities, and in that sense agrees with Berkeley that the system of the modern philosophers (i.e., Locke’s system) falls into idealism. Or else Spinozism. (See Treatise, Book I, Part iv, section 5, pp. 240ff) But the system of the philosophers that Hume is defending is not subject to that objection. Berkeley’s argument is clear. He rightly indicates that ‘general reasoning’ on these matters ‘which includes all other sensible qualities [must] ... also include extension.’ Then, taking his ‘idea’ to mean ‘sense impression,’

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if it be allowed that no idea nor any thing like an idea can exist in an unperceiving substance, then surely it follows, that no figure or mode of extension, which we can either perceive or imagine, or have any idea of, can be really inherent in matter; not to mention the peculiar difficulty there must be, in conceiving a material substance, prior to and distinct from extension, to be the substratum of extension. Be the sensible quality what it will, figure, or sound, or colour; it seems alike impossible it should subsist in that which doth not perceive it.159

It might in fact be argued, against our reading of Hume, that Berkeley’s point holds whether we are speaking of dependence on a mental substance, as Berkeley intends, or dependence on the state of our sense organs, as Hume intends. The argument would be this: It does not matter whether we take sensible qualities to be dependent on our sense organs or to be inherent in mind. Either way the primary cannot exist apart from them, so in whatever way the sensible qualities are dependent, the primary are dependent in that way as well. By this argument, you cannot ascribe primary qualities to external objects without investing them with sensible qualities as well. The response is that Hume allows primary and secondary qualities to be inseparable, and holds that since the secondary are dependent on the state of our sense organs, then so are the primary. But this is the primary qualities in the sense of sensible and tangible extension. However, what is attributed to the causes of our sense impressions are not primary qualities in this sense. What is attributed to the external causes are certain structures. These are not inseparable from sensible qualities, and can therefore consistently be held to characterize the external causes of our sense impressions. This of course helps Hylas. Berkeley’s Hylas wishes to have as causes of our sense impressions material objects which lack those qualities. He wishes to have the world of the critical realists. He would in fact like to be the Hume of the world of the philosophers. He doesn’t make it. Berkeley saddles him with premises that trap him in the system of the modern philosophy. With these premises, Philonous = Berkeley is easily able to show that Hylas’ view won’t work and that it is Berkeley’s idealism that ought to be accepted – a view that Hume and others read as a form of subjectivism and scepticism. Hylas needs help in escaping from the problematic premises that force him out of where he wants to be, critical realism, to where Berkeley wants him to be, idealism. We have just seen one of the things that will help him. This is to insist

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that the account of ideas which they have allows, as Hume suggests it allows, for us to form an abstract idea of structure that can be applied to objects that lack sensible qualities. Sellars makes this point, having his Hylas assert against Berkeley’s Philonous that one must distinguish ‘heat as a measurable activity in external things and heat as a sensation in a percipient.’ (Sellars, p. 12). We have the idea of heat as a way in which things are structured, and the idea of heat as the felt sensation. The distinction applies as well to other sensations. We therefore can form ideas of external things that are independent of felt sensations; they are imperfect ideas – abstract and relative – but for all that ideas. Contrary to Berkeley, the external objects can in fact be thought, and thought of as independent of sensible qualities. Another argument that Berkeley advances is that his Hylas’ material objects are inert, and how can anything inert cause the sensible objects that we experience? How, indeed, can it cause anything? It is ‘extravagant to say, a thing which is inert, operates on the mind, and which is unperceiving, is the cause of our perceptions.’ (Three Dialogues, p. 257). Sellars makes the necessary point: ‘We no longer think of matter as inactive but as dynamic’ (Sellars, p. 55). There is no reason not to allow a reasonable notion of causal power to the external objects. Hume of course does that also. (But ‘power’ and ‘activity’ are not being used in the Aristotelian sense, the sense that the Megarians and Molière criticized, but only in the sense that Hume allows.) Then there is the starting point of Berkeley’s argument for idealism, the identification of sensible qualities with pain. ‘Is not,’ Sellars’s Philonous asks, following Berkeley’s argument, ‘bitterness some kind of uneasiness or pain?’ His Hylas replies: ‘I grant it. Feelings accompany it’ (p. 15). Hume makes the same point: the variations in the sensible impressions we have of objects, he is arguing (in Book I, Part iv, section 4), depend on ‘varying circumstances,’ and he gives as one example, that varying impressions depend ‘upon the different situations of our health: a man in a malady feels a disagreeable taste in meats, which before pleased him the most’ (256). So he is here making Sellars’s point, that since the same taste is once accompanied by the feeling of pleasure and elsewhen by the feeling of pain, those feelings cannot therefore be identical with the impression, and must therefore be separable from those impressions. Pain accompanies the sense impression, it is not identical with it. Berkeley’s premise is false: the threat of idealism is ended. Sellars has his Hylas make the same point again, later in the discussion, in response to Sellars’s Philonous, who asks, as Berkeley would

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ask, whether ‘you can conceive a vehement sensation to be without pain or pleasure.’ His Hylas replies: ‘Yes, I think it as a feeling tone.’ But really, Berkeley’s Philonous goes on, ‘can you frame to yourself an idea of sensible pain or pleasure in general, abstracted from every particular idea of heat, cold, tastes, smells, etc.’ Hylas affirms, what Philonous is resisting, that he can in fact form such ideas. He replies to Philonous’ question: ‘I believe that I can distinguish them. But I tend to leave such questions to experimental, introspective psychology’ (Sellars, p. 13). So Berkeley’s argument loses its necessary premise. Another help up for Hylas. Then there is the central assumption of Berkeley’s thought, that the mind as a perceiver is a simple substance and that our awareness of sensible particulars is intuitive and understood as their inhering in this simple substance. Hume sees this as the central feature of the modern philosophy that leads it to fall into subjectivism and scepticism. And since this sort of entity and those sorts of accounts of sensory awareness are absent from the system of the philosophers, the latter does not fall into subjectivism and scepticism. Sellars has his Hylas resist this ontology of the substantial mind: in effect it does not conform to the Principle of Acquaintance that Berkeley professes to accept: ‘You [Berkeley] appeal to Spirit and Mind without telling us what these words name. I fear you are not living up to your presumed anti-speculative standards’ (Sellars, p. 54). As a consequence, Sellars’s Hylas ‘[does] not think of perceiving as an affair of intuition’ (ibid., p. 15). So Sellars helps Hylas by giving him the Humean tools (though Sellars does not see them as Humean) that are needed to reach the system of the philosophers – the critical realism that both Hume and Sellars aim at defending – and to avoid falling into the abyss of subjectivism and scepticism, the consequences of what Hume calls the modern philosophy, the philosophy with which Berkeley’s Hylas is unfortunately burdened. One other point should be made. This concerns Sellars’s account of perception. Perception, Sellars argues, is not merely sensation. Perception has material objects as its referents, and sensation is but a part of a sort of unconscious inferential process through which such reference comes to be made. Perceiving is a ‘complex operation resting on a fromand-to mechanism in which sensations are aroused in the percipient and are used in a disclosing way as appearings of the object’ (Sellars, p. 11). Perception is not ‘immediate,’ as sensation is for Berkeley, but ‘a

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mediated operation’ (ibid.). We perceive locations and distances, but this capacity so to perceive is learned: such awareness is an ‘attainment’ (p. 40), or, as he says elsewhere, it is ‘an achievement’ (ibid.). Sellars is here making in effect the point that Hume makes when he insists that we have a natural belief in body, that is, in material objects such as tables, chairs, and cherry trees, and rainbows and shadows. Sellars further allows such perceptual judgments to be epistemically basic. So Sellars, like Reid and Moore, is prepared to join Hume in a defence of common sense. IV. The Enquiry Version I have paid little attention to the presentation in the first Enquiry of the issue with which we have been concerned. The suggestion of the argument that I have been developing would be that in the simplified version of the discussion in Part Twelve of the first Enquiry, Hume makes clear his commitment to a scepticism about the external world; that the Treatise account should be read in the light of the account in the Enquiry; and that Hume should therefore be read as a sceptic. We shall, however, now give a detailed discussion of the relevant material in Part Twelve, and this will show, I think, that there is no difference between the conclusion of the Treatise regarding our knowledge of the external world, and the corresponding conclusion of the Enquiry. In both, Hume provides a defence of critical realism as the view of the world that is acceptable to the reasonable person. (In the following discussion, unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from Part Twelve of the first Enquiry.) We should be clear about a point with which our discussion all began back in the Introduction – namely, Hume’s dramatic commitment to the rationality of empirical science with which the first Enquiry closes: ‘When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.’ What the reasonable person saves from the flames are the books that involve ‘experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence.’ It is these books that are cognitively virtuous, not those which

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attempt to take the intellect into realms beyond those of ordinary matters of fact. Hume makes clear in this passage that he is defending scientific reason, that it and not Pyrrhonian scepticism is what the reasonable person accepts. This makes it clear, too, that we must interpret the argument of the Enquiry in the light of this endorsement of the rationality of scientific reason. We cannot interpret the argument in such a way that it leads to the denial of this conclusion that Hume so neatly endorses. But he has argued that this reason which he is prepared to defend as rational is of a certain sort. It is a reason that deals with the causes and effects of things. It is not a priori: ‘If we reason a priori, any thing may appear able to produce any thing. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun; or the wish of a man controul the planets in their orbits.’ A priori reasoning can determine possible causes, but not those which are actual. What actually are the causes and effects of ordinary things and events can only be determined by looking at the world, the actual world; it is to experience of that world that we must turn if we are to attain knowledge of causes and effects: ‘It is only experience, which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another.’ Hence, ‘the existence ... of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effect; and these arguments are founded entirely on experience.’ This is what we find in ‘disquisitions in history, chronology, geography, and astronomy’ and in ‘the sciences, which treat of general facts, [such as] politics, natural philosophy, physic, chymistry, &c.’ But not theology, not school metaphysics. The former sort of inquiry is rational, the latter not. He argues that ‘proofs’ of propositions in, say, morality, propositions such as ‘No injustice without property’ are more true by definition than they are substantive truths subject to demonstration. This holds for most of what passes as ‘syllogistic reasoning’ in such areas. There is genuine demonstrative knowledge only in arithmetic and mathematics. Thus, ‘the only objects of the abstract sciences or of demonstration are quantity and number, and that all attempts to extend this more perfect species of knowledge beyond these bounds are mere sophistry and illusion.’ Or, as he also puts it, giving it the emphasis of repetition: ‘The sciences of quantity and number ... may safely, I think, be pronounced the only proper objects of knowledge and demonstration.’

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These are ‘the only proper objects of knowledge and demonstration’: this means that here alone one can give reasons sufficient to yield what can rightly be called knowledge (scientia). It follows that in areas such as astronomy and chemistry there is no knowledge and there are no such reasons, that is, demonstrative reasons. So, if our aim is knowledge (scientia), if our aim is full rational justification that yields knowledge (scientia), then we must come away dissatisfied. It is here that Hume goes on to point out that our inferences in sciences like astronomy are based on the relation of cause and effect. Such inferences are rooted in experience. These inferences, then, are contrasted with those which are demonstrative and which yield knowledge. In the sciences, then, that deal with natural causes of ordinary things in the world of ordinary experience, our conclusions have no basis in reason – that is, the reason that yields knowledge. There is no scientia; we can give reasons for nothing. But of course, Hume goes on immediately to qualify this claim, arguing that we can give reasons for things, reasons short of scientia, but reasons all the same, reasons that are acceptable to the rational person. Thus, Hume, having limited claims to knowledge and reasons that yield demonstrations to mathematics, goes on to recommend the study of cause–effect relations in the ordinary world. Such study is the proper pursuit of a reasonable person, it is the reasonable thing to do – the study of theology and school metaphysics is not. We ought to limit our studies to the empirical, and accept as our cognitive goal the more restricted aim of knowledge in the sense of justified true belief, where justification is by way of the norms of empirical science. And in particular, if we undertake the empirical study of the human mind, we shall not only discover its limitations but also more accurately see what it is possible for it to achieve: ‘This narrow limitation, indeed, of our enquiries, is, in every respect, so reasonable, that it suffices to make the slightest examination into the natural powers of the human mind and to compare them with their objects, in order to recommend it to us. We shall then find what are the proper subjects of science and enquiry.’ So, in a different sense of ‘reasonable,’ such study, while not based in reason and not yielding knowledge (scientia), is nonetheless justified as reasonable. Once we recognize where our cognitive capacities lie – in our experience of ordinary things, and not in theology and metaphysics – then, while it is true that we can give no reasons in such areas (i.e., reasons that yield demonstrative knowledge), we can undertake such studies

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with hopes of at least modest success: ‘They [philosophers] will never be tempted to go beyond common life, so long as they consider the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their narrow reach, and their inaccurate operations. While we cannot give a satisfactory reason, why we believe, after a thousand experiments, that a stone will fall, or fire burn; can we ever satisfy ourselves concerning any determination, which we may form, with regard to the origin of worlds, and the situation of nature, from, and to eternity?’ To be sure, we cannot give reasons why the stone falls (reasons of the sort demanded by scientia), but it is nonetheless reasonable to undertake study in such areas, and reasonable if we limit our study to the empirical investigation of these areas. What can guard us against the temptation to go beyond these ‘narrow’ confines is a good dose of Pyrrhonian scepticism. This will suffice to establish that we can never give reasons for anything – that is, that we can give no demonstrations for anything – and that in general, knowledge (scientia) is impossible – save in the areas of arithmetic and mathematics. The inquiry of a rational person, the study that he or she undertakes, ‘avoiding all distant and high enquiries, confines itself to common life, and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience; leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators, or to the arts of priests and politicians.’ Serious sceptical reflections are the means to bring us to the realization that here, in the events of our common life, are the proper objects of study ‘To bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable, than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the Pyrrhonian doubt, and of the impossibility, that any thing, but the strong power of natural instinct, could free us from it.’ What limits the impact of the doubt, of the knowledge that there are no reasons for anything, not even for why the stone falls, is the fact that we are inevitably brought to our senses, if you wish, by the world into which we are thrown and to which we are irrevocably tied. We can give no reasons for things, but we can act and we can study this ordinary world; we have the tools for such study in the rules of empirical and experimental science: ‘Those who have a propensity to philosophy, will still continue their researches; because they reflect, that, besides the immediate pleasure, attending such an occupation, philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected. But they will never be tempted to go beyond common life.’ Moved by curiosity about the world of our common life, we can

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study it using the methods of empirical science, and discover what cause-and-effect relations hold in this world of ours. It is in this context that we must place Hume’s discussion of our knowledge of the external world. That is how, at least, we tend to speak: ‘knowledge of the external world.’ Except that we must immediately recognize that it is not, and never can be, knowledge in the sense of demonstrative knowledge, scientia. It is simply judgments of cause and effect, rooted in experience – common sense ‘methodized and corrected’ by the methods of science, but for all that still not knowledge, still not scientia, still not a study where there are reasons (demonstrative reasons) for its conclusions. Hume provides the following account of our knowledge of the external world, or, rather, our lack thereof: This is a topic, therefore, in which the profounder and more philosophical sceptics will always triumph, when they endeavour to introduce an universal doubt into all subjects of human knowledge and enquiry. Do you follow the instincts and propensities of nature, may they say, in assenting to the veracity of sense? But these lead you to believe, that the very perception or sensible image is the external object. Do you disclaim this principle, in order to embrace a more rational opinion, that the perceptions are only representations of something external? You here depart from your natural propensities and more obvious sentiments; and yet are not able to satisfy your reason, which can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove, that the perceptions are connected with any external objects.

‘The sceptic will always triumph’: Why? Well, if you follow your natural inferences, then an impression is the external cause of my awareness of it; but this conflicts with the opinion at which reflection arrives, namely, that the impression is not the external cause but only represents the latter. We arrive at a contradiction. This is not a problem if the contradiction can be resolved. But it cannot. Reason leads you to doubt the natural propensities; and at the same time reason cannot support the alternative: ‘Reason ... can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove, that the perceptions are connected with any external objects.’ ‘Reason,’ we have seen, is being used in this context to mean demonstrative reason, scientia. The inference to the view that the impression is only representative of the external cause is one based on experience. From the standpoint of reason in the sense of scientia no argument from experience can ever amount to proof. Compare Descartes. For the

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latter, reason leads us to doubt our ordinary view. But reason is also able to provide demonstrative evidence that the alternative is true. For Hume, in contrast, there is no grand metaphysical scheme, no argument a priori, that will justify accepting the alternative. One is led by reason to doubt the ordinary, but cannot secure the alternative. All one has for our belief that there are external causes for our impressions is an argument based on experience, and such an argument can never satisfy reason (scientia). And thus, as Hume says a little later, our opinion regarding the external world ‘if rested on natural instinct, is contrary to reason, and if referred to reason, is contrary to natural instinct, and at the same time carries no rational evidence with it, to convince an impartial enquirer.’ Having said this, Hume subsequently goes on, as we have seen, to argue for the rejection of grand metaphysical schemes – ‘to the flames’ – and for the rejection of the notion of reason, scientia, in terms of which alone such schemes make sense. He recommends instead argument based on experience – that is, on our ordinary ways of getting on in the world, as ‘methodized’ by the rules, found in the Treatise, by which to judge of causes and effects. It is these inferences based on experience that lead to the opinion regarding the external causes of our impressions. These inferences, while never satisfying to reason, are for all that, and in spite of Cartesian doubts, acceptable to the reasonable person: they are saved from the flames. So, there is after all a resolution of the contradiction. We have our natural instincts, but reflection based on experience leads us to recognize their limitations. Such reflection, based on experience, leads us to conclude that our impressions have external causes of which those impressions are representative. Although neither the Pyrrhonian nor the Cartesian can accept such a position, the reasonable person can. The objection is a ‘philosophical objection to the evidence of sense,’ but is to be rejected because for the reasonable person arguments based on sense and rooted in experience are acceptable. Hume has a further point to make. This is that the external causes of our impressions lack all qualities that the impressions might have. The external causes are quite unlike the impressions of which they are the effects. The secondary qualities, sounds, feels, colours, and so on, all are agreed, exist only in the awareness of them, and in this sense only in the mind of the perceiver, not in the external cause: It is universally allowed by modern enquirers, that all the sensible qualities of objects, such as hard, soft, hot, cold, white, black, &c. are merely sec-

686 External World and Our Knowledge of It ondary, and exist not in the objects themselves, but are perceptions of the mind, without any external archetype or model, which they represent.

But the same considerations apply to extension, that is, to visible extension and tangible extension: these, too, do not qualify the objects that are their causes: The idea of extension is entirely acquired from the senses of sight and feeling; and if all the qualities, perceived by the senses, be in the mind, not in the object, the same conclusion must reach the idea of extension, which is wholly dependent on the sensible ideas or the ideas of secondary qualities.

This, it is suggested, takes the sceptical objection to a deeper level. The sceptical conclusion is that there is no evidence that can prove to reason that there are external causes. The present argument is that not only are there no reasons for the hypothesis but also the hypothesis itself is devoid of sense: [This argument] represents this opinion [concerning the nature of the external cases] as contrary to reason: at least, if it be a principle of reason, that all sensible qualities are in the mind, not in the object.

What we have here is a causal inference, one based on experience. It is in fact rooted in good causal inferences. The conclusion is warranted by common sense ‘methodized’ according to the rules of empirical science. The conclusion in fact states that the correct view of the world is that of the critical realist. The sceptic, however, suggests otherwise. He or she rejects that notion that argument establishes the correctness of critical realism. The suggestion of the sceptic is that the argument shows that the conclusion – that there are external causes but that they are devoid of all sensible qualities, and are quite unlike the impressions which are their effects – is something contrary to reason. Inferences rooted in experience may indicate that the conclusion ought to be accepted, but in fact, the conclusion is contrary to reason and ought to be rejected. This is another effort on the part of the sceptic to try to show that there is an inevitable conflict between our natural instincts, on the one hand, and, on the other, our best cause-and-effect judgments. The latter pattern of inference and judgment in particular undermines itself since, instead of leading to a conclusion that one might have hoped to be acceptable,

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it instead leads one to a conclusion that is contrary to reason and ought therefore to be rejected. This is how the sceptic ‘represents’ that conclusion. One apparently does not find support here for critical realism. To the contrary, the upshot seems to be scepticism. For causal inference thus undermines the inferences of our natural instincts, and then in turn undermines itself. All coherence gone: the sceptic triumphs. Or, is this so? Is it just the way in which the sceptic represents the conclusion? Is it correct? Hardly, Hume points out. The premise itself is based on inferences rooted in experience, and such inferences cannot satisfy reason – at least, cannot satisfy reason in the sense of the term being used here, scientia – but they are useful. These inferences should therefore be allowed, at least so far as the reasonable person is concerned. The sceptic’s point is that the conclusion to which they lead is devoid of sense, and is therefore unacceptable: because it is meaningless, it is to be rejected. The conclusion is devoid of sense, meaningless, because it contains what is in effect a meaningless concept, one that is empty of cognitive content. This is the position of the sceptic: ‘Bereave matter of all its intelligible qualities, both primary and secondary, you in a manner annihilate it, and leave only a certain unknown, inexplicable something, as the cause of our perceptions; a notion so imperfect, that no sceptic will think it worth while to contend against it.’ What must be noted, however, is that Hume does not agree that the concept of the cause is devoid of cognitive content. To be sure, that content is small. But it is not non-existent. Our idea of such a cause is imperfect. But ‘nearly empty’ is not the same as ‘totally empty,’ and ‘imperfect’ is not the same as ‘incoherent.’ And you cannot eliminate critical realism unless you establish the latter. Hume himself draws attention to the ‘imperfection’ of the concept of the external cause of our impressions. But when he so characterizes the concept, he allows that it is not cognitively empty. What he allows is that the concept that we use – ‘the object, qualified but not sensibly, that is the cause of our sense impression’ – is ‘imperfect’ – which it is: this concept is generic and relative, which is ‘imperfect’ in the knowledge it conveys when compared to a specific concept like ‘red’ or ‘square.’ Its cognitive content is ‘close to empty’ – but (to repeat) not ‘completely empty.’ So the conclusion represented by the sceptic as implying scepticism because it

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is empty and therefore meaningless is incorrectly represented: we are, after all, not given a reason for rejecting that conclusion. The conclusion may well be to the effect that next to nothing is known of the external causes. Nor does this surprise us As we earlier saw, what we know of the external causes is their structure, not their content. The sceptic is after bigger game – for example, the magnificent metaphysics that Descartes constructs, or the imaginary worlds of the superstitious. So ‘no sceptic will think it worth while to contend against it.’ But he or she thereby allows just enough room as it were for critical realism to get in the door. We may conclude, I think, that the presentation of the issues in the Enquiry does not conflict with the presentations of those that we have argued are to be found in the Treatise. Both are arguments in favour of critical realism. M. Conclusion. David Hume: Critical Realist [During the reign of Charles II] there arose in England some men of superior genius who ... drew on themselves and on their native country the regard and attention of Europe. Besides Wilkins, Wren, Wallis, eminent mathematicians, Hooke, an accurate observer by microscopes, and Sydenham, the restorer of true physic; there flourished during this period a Boyle and a Newton; men who trod with cautious, and therefore the more secure steps, the only road which leads to true philosophy. Boyle improved the pneumatic engine invented by Otto Guericke, and was thereby enabled to make several new and curious experiments on the air, as well as on other bodies: His chemistry is much admired by those who are acquainted with that art: His hydrostatics contain a greater mixture of reasoning and invention with experiment than any other of his works; but his reasoning is still remote from that boldness and temerity which had led astray so many philosophers. Boyle was a great partisan of the mechanical philosophy; a theory which, by discovering some of the secrets of nature, and allowing us to imagine the rest, is so agreeable to the natural vanity and curiosity of man.160

My own sense is that a statement such as this could not have been written by someone who rejected as unworthy of belief the framework of the new mechanical philosophy of Boyle, Locke, and Newton. To be sure, Hume does not accept the account dogmatically – the mechanical philosophy has led us to the discovery of ‘some of the secrets of nature,’

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for the rest it only ‘allows us to imagine.’ But he clearly does accept it. Now, the standard reading of Hume as a sceptic does not make this possible. This reading, of Kemp Smith and Popkin, divides Hume against himself. On the one hand, Hume is a sceptic; there are no rational foundations for our beliefs, and therefore, rationally, we ought to reject all belief, suspend judgment. On the other hand, as natural, animal beings we cannot suspend all judgment – we must believe – and so, irrationally, we believe. In particular, then, Hume’s commitment to the scientific world picture of the new mechanical philosophy must be irrational, and in no way superior, rationally, to the superstition and false philosophy that he thought and hoped it was replacing. Although this may fit the outdated picture of Hume as a person aiming, no matter the cost, at fame and literary reputation, it fits ill with the picture that we now accept of a person dedicated to the pursuit of truth in both philosophy and history. I have argued that the standard account of Hume as a sceptic redeemed only by his irrational naturalism is mistaken; he attempts, to the contrary, to offer a rational defence of naturalism and natural science.161 In particular, I have argued that, in the famous discussion of ‘scepticism with regard to the senses,’ Hume is not defending a sceptical view of reason but rather a form of critical realism – that is, the position that, details aside, had been developed by the mechanical philosophy of Locke, Boyle, and Newton.162 Livingston has challenged this reading of these texts, arguing that the main thrust of the more traditional account is correct.163 The traditional reading gains much of its force by selectively quoting out of context, or – perhaps more charitably – by ignoring the context in which some well-known Humean comments arise. Thus, Livingston suggests that Hume accepts none of the philosophical theories that he (Hume) examines, neither the system of the vulgar nor that of the philosophers, nor any other – this rejection of all philosophical theories is Hume’s scepticism, according to Livingston; and he cites the passage in which Hume asserts that ‘’Tis impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses ...’ (218). But what comes after Livingston’s ellipsis? The whole sentence goes like this: ‘’Tis impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses; and we but expose them farther when we endeavour to justify them in that manner.’ Note what Hume goes on to say after the portion quoted by Livingston: we get into more and more trouble if we attempt to defend either

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our understanding or our senses when we attempt to justify them ‘in that manner’ – that is, in the way indicated in the first part of the sentence, by appeal to a system. This does not preclude some other sort of justification, and, indeed, the force of the passage is to suggest that another way of justifying either our understanding or our senses might well be available. Livingston simply ignores this clear indication that another sort of justification will be advanced. This other sort of justification will not be one based on a system; it will not be anything of the sort that Descartes might have attempted. For such a justification just leads to a deeper and deeper scepticism. Not that anyone was ever genuinely a sceptic; nature provides a remedy. ‘Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy’ (218). Taking scepticism seriously would lead inevitably to ‘melancholy and delirium,’ but ‘nature ... cures me’ (269). Livingston also refers to this passage, and takes it as further textual justification that reason cannot escape the destruction that leads to Pyrrhonnism. But once again, like so many other commentators, he fails to note that there is a context in which this occurs. Hume does not end here, but goes on to argue that, while nature inclines me to accept the system of the vulgar, to acquiesce in this is a matter of ‘the sentiments of my spleen and indolence’ (270). To these sentiments he contrasts ‘curiosity’ (270), which passion he discusses in further detail in Book II of the Treatise (Part iii, section 10). This is the passion that Boyle and the other defenders of the mechanical philosophy attempted to satisfy. It is also a passion that motivates the philosopher to go beyond what satisfies the sentiments of the spleen and indolence. Thus led, the philosopher passes beyond the system of the vulgar to that of the philosophers (271). The justification for this system is not a priori, as Descartes insisted it must be, but pragmatic – that system is a means to an end. The end is that provided by the motive of curiosity; philosophy is justified by virtue of the fact that it is, so far as we can tell, the best way to satisfy our disinterested concern to discover matter-of-fact truth. Livingston, like other defenders of the sceptical Hume, fails to give Hume’s text the careful reading that it deserves. We may therefore conclude, I think, that Hume’s view of body – or what is the same, of material objects – is not a form of scepticism but rather a critical realism, which at once in affirming the validity of the scientific picture of the world denies the validity of our ordinary perceptual experience and yet also rationally locates the world of common sense within the world of science. But the picture of the world that sci-

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ence, the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects,’ yields is one that is rooted in the world of the vulgar, and more specifically in the way or ways in which that world imposes itself on us. The truth of the scientific picture of the world is rooted in the truth of being – rooted, that is, in the way in which the world anchors us to its reality.

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Notes

Introduction 1 H. Popkin, ‘David Hume: His Pyrrhonism and His Critique of Pyrrhonism,’ has the best statement of this view. See also N. Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume, which presents much the same case for the sceptical reading. Popkin and Kemp Smith have been followed by interpreters such as Norton, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician, and Fogelin, Hume’s Scepticism in the ‘Treatise of Human Nature.’ Stroud, in Hume, argues the case for the same reading of Hume, but he seems more than most to find the Scottish philosopher to be remarkably confused. In finding confusion, he follows Passmore, Hume’s Intentions, and, of course, much earlier, Green, ‘Introduction to Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature.’ Green set the modern pattern for finding Hume to be a negative sceptic, full of fallacies, but Reid had preceded him. Kemp Smith originally presented his ideas in an essay ‘The Naturalism of Hume,’ which appeared as a two-part article in Mind (1905). There, as in the book, he allowed that Hume was a sceptic, but that it was his naturalism that provided him with a reply to the sceptic. The 1905 publication put this reading of Hume ‘in the air,’ but it was only with the 1941 book that it had any real impact. I would like to think that it is now the standard view. For an appreciation of Kemp Smith’s contribution to Hume studies, see Norton, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician, pp. 5–10. 2 The eighteenth century was much more lax in these things than are we. Hume in fact uses ‘reason’ in a variety of senses. There is the sense of ‘reason’ we have just indicated. Or there is the sense of ‘reason’ in which it is necessary truth – arithmetic or, in another context, the demonstrative rea-

694 Notes to page 3 son of the Aristotelians and the rationalists – that is the object of reason. Hume is arguing that some cases of the latter concept of reason are unreasonable – specifically, those which require reason to grasp objective necessary connections among matters of fact, where one has a reasonable sense of ‘reason’ in the sense in which it is reason that grasps causes as described by matter-of-fact regularities. Norton has usefully described the variety of ways in which Hume uses the term ‘reason’; see his David Hume, pp. 96n–97; see also pp. 222–3, pp. 126ff., and pp. 96–131 passim. For reason in the sense of ‘reflective reason’ – reason as the capacity one has to reflect upon and critically assess reason’s own operations – see Norton, David Hume, pp. 209–10. Reason in this sense of reflective reason is central to the discussion of Annette Baier, A Progress of Sentiments. For the present study, the reason that reflects upon the world and the reason that reflects upon itself are essentially the same: to understand the self and oneself, one must use the same tools as Newton used, that is, the rules of empirical science – the self is the product of forces acting in conformity to certain matter of-fact regularities; and self-reflection, the attempt to understand oneself, is the attempt to grasp these laws and to see how the self is a product of these laws. Since the self is not a central topic of the present study, there will not be much explicit reference in this volume to reason as the capacity of the self to reflect upon its own activities, and this notion of reason will receive no explicit analysis. That said, the notion that reason can reflect upon itself and its own operations will be ubiquitous, and throughout we shall simply presuppose that reason does have this power of self-reflection. Again, for this notion of reason, see Baier, A Progress of Sentiments. For yet another approach to thinking about Hume’s reason, see Owen, Hume’s Reason, passim, but pp. 1–4 in particular. Finally, in this context one should also mention reason in the sense of something being reasonable. Árdal has argued cogently for the central role played by reason in this sense in Hume’s thought and in particular with regard to his argument that some cognitive norms are more reasonable than others; see his ‘Some Implications of the Virtue of Reasonableness in Hume’s Treatise’ (1976). (Baier, A Progress of Sentiments [1991], follows Árdal in making the same case.) The point is that if Hume argues that some norms are more reasonable than others (as Árdal contends he does), then it is wrong to characterize Hume as a sceptic who calls into question all appeals to reason: it shows that Hume does not reject all appeals to reason and that Hume is therefore not a sceptic. I

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made this point myself in my essay ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity’ (1970). In my view, the doctrines of Hume’s earlier Treatise are for the most part identical with the doctrines of the Enquiries: there is little developmental difference in philosophical substance between the two texts. To argue this in detail would take more time than would be useful; but with specific reference to the issue of Hume’s account of the external world and knowledge of it, we take up the differences (if any) between the Treatise and the first Enquiry in Section (L), subsection IV, in chap. 8. It is worth noting here, however, the difference in tone of the exposition of the two works: the Treatise is defiant, the Enquiries accommodating. In the terminology made common by Wilfrid Sellars (Sellars fils), the ‘system of the vulgar’ corresponds to the ‘manifest image’ of the world, and the ‘system of the philosophers’ corresponds to the ‘scientific image’ of the world. Dicker, Hume’s Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Introduction. Cf. Wilson, ‘Empiricism: Principles and Problems,’ 265–302. It is not mentioned, for example, in Beauchamp’s annotations to his recent (and for all that, excellent) edition of the Enquiries. Hume, History of England, 6 vols. (1854), 5: 526.

Chapter 1. Abstract Ideas and Other Linguistic Rules in Hume 1 It is perhaps worth noting that Hume argues that money – the value of gold – has a similar origin in conventions rooted in human need: ‘In like manner do gold and silver become the common measures of exchange, and are esteem’d sufficient payment for what is of a hundred times their value’ (490). 2 Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, suggests that Book I of the Treatise is a treatise on cognitive science. There is some point to this, but it should not lead one to play down the central role played by Hume’s associationist theory of learning. Associationism, understood behaviouristically, is nothing other than classical conditioning. For a careful analysis of the logic of associationist theory, see Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill; see also Wilson, ‘Some Controversies about Method in Nineteenth-Century Psychology.’ For some remarks on the relations among associationism, cognitive science, and Hume, see the appendix to this chapter. On a slightly different point, Garrett argues that Book I of the Treatise aims primarily at descriptions – akin to those of current cognitive science –

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of how the mind works, and only secondarily aims to draw normative conclusions. But surely, while the former is no doubt true, the latter is not entirely correct: Would anyone who devotes a separate section to introducing a set of ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ not be intending norms about how we ought to reason? Or could someone who devotes a section to developing criticisms of various forms of ‘unphilosophical probability’ not intend to hold that they are patterns of thought that we ought not to follow? Garrett would have the emphasis be Hume’s naturalism rather than his defence of (causal) reason. On some of these issues, see Falkenstein, ‘Naturalism, Normativity, and Scepticism in Hume’s Account of Belief.’ Yolton, ‘Hume’s Ideas.’ In his essays ‘Ought We to Keep Contracts because They Are Promises?’ and ‘Implied Promises as Paradigms.’ both in his Passions, Promises, and Punishment, Árdal is critically responding to some claims of Atiyah, in Promises, Morals, and Law and An Introduction to the Law of Contract. See Woolman, Contract (in the series Green’s Concise Scots Law), ch. 3. Stair, Institutions of the Scottish Law, book I, Title x, Section 4 (‘Promise’). And also the conventions determining the values of currency, as Hume also emphasizes in this passage. This point about conventions in the economic realm is also extremely important, albeit not in the present context. Compare Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘one has already to know (or be able to do) something in order to be capable of asking a thing’s name,’ (Philosophical Investigations, ¶30). Or again, his remark concerning ostensive definition, that ‘here we may indeed fancy naming to be some remarkable act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object’ (ibid., ¶38). The point is that when a linguistic convention of naming is created, it is not created simply by willing that it be. A convention that a name names something or other comes into being because there are conventions for the conferring of names and one has conformed to those conventions. Similarly, baptizing confers a name only because baptizing is itself an institution governed by conventions. That is Hume’s point about language. The conventions of language cannot be created by an act of promising or by an act of contracting because those acts themselves presuppose conventions that define them. Similarly, the conventions of language – the semantic rules of designation that give the referents of words – cannot be created by an act of ostensively defining or by an act of baptizing because those acts themselves presuppose conventions that define them. Willing that there be a convention to which all conform, be it a conven-

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tion of justice or one of language, cannot by itself make it so. Such a convention will succeed only if it occurs as part of a conventionally defined process – a conventionally defined institution for instituting conventions. Most of what Wittgenstein says about language can already be found in Hume. Of course, Hume’s prose is often more pellucid. See the important studies of Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy; and Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, to name but two. Kemp Smith’s study of Hume, The Philosophy of David Hume, paved the way as it were for Árdal’s, as it did for such studies as those of Garrett and Baier – and the present chapter. But that does not detract from the historic importance of Árdal’s study. We shall discuss the Aristotelian metaphysics and compare it with that of Hume in greater detail in chapter 2. See also Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, especially Study One. For discussion of the critics of Hobbes, see Bowle, Hobbes and His Critics. Bramhall, The Catching of the Leviathan [1658], p. 544. Ibid., p. 567. Lawson, An Examination of the Political part of Mr Hobbs his Leviathan [1657], p. 83. Ibid., p. 3. Lucy, An Answer to Mr Hobbes his Leviathan with Observations, Censures, and Refutations of Divers Errours [1673], p. 138. Lowde, A Discourse concerning the Nature of Man [1694], p. 3. Donne, ‘An Anatomie of the World ...,’ ll. 205–29, in The Complete English Poems, p. 276. Letter of Shaftesbury, in Rand. ed., The Life, p. 403. Ibid., p. 269. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, 1: 125. Ibid., 2: 83. Ibid., 2: 135. Ibid., 1: 262. Ibid. Ibid., 1: 261. Claggett, Of the Humanity and Charity of Christians. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid. Barrow, Theological Works, 2: 79. Ibid, 2: 140. Árdal, ‘Another Look at Hume’s Account of Moral Evaluation,’ in Passions, Promises, and Punishment.

698 Notes to pages 41–9 33 Of which, more later. 34 In his important essay on ‘Hume on “Is” and “Ought,”’ in Passions, Promises, and Punishment, p. 204. 35 Árdal, ‘Of Sympathetic Imagination,’ in ibid. 36 Árdal, ‘Another Look at Hume’s Account of Moral Evaluation,’ ibid., p. 221. 37 For a detailed discussion of the history and nature of introspective psychology, with special reference to John Stuart Mill’s contribution, see Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill. 38 We discuss this principle and its logical/epistemological/psychological status in further detail in chapter 7. 39 For a discussion of the ‘missing shade of blue’ and whether it is to count against the copy principle, see chapter 8. 40 Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity.’ Moreover, not only would Hume make these claims, but the claims are also true, as I have argued in Explanation, Causation, and Deduction and Laws and Other Worlds. 41 The motive of curiosity – this passion, in Hume’s terms – plays a central role in Hume’s thought regarding the conditions for the exercise of (causal) reason. Hume discusses it in Book II, Part iii, Section 10, and it plays an important role in his overcoming the threat of scepticism in I, iv, 7. Loeb has suggested that there is an end other than curiosity or love of truth which Hume takes to be the end at which reason aims. Loeb has proposed a reading of Hume in which ‘Hume ... delimits the class of beliefs we ought to accept in naturalistic terms.’ – in contrast here to Garrett, who proposes in Cognition and Commitment that Hume is proceeding purely descriptively in Book I of the Treatise, and not with the aim of justifying norms for belief formation. Then Loeb adds that Hume ‘also provides a positive account of our epistemic obligation to accept them.’ So far we are in agreement. However, Loeb then proceeds to suggest that Hume justifies these norms ‘with reference to the desire to relieve uneasiness.’ Loeb, Stability and Justification in Hume’s ‘Treatise,’ p. 22. We disagree with Loeb regarding the end that Hume proposes for inquiry – for us, it is the goal of the Academic sceptic, truth: we are moved to inquiry by the passion of curiosity, the love of truth. Stability, the relief of the uneasiness of doubt, is secured not as an end in itself, but rather as something that is consequent upon the achievement of truth, the satisfaction of our curiosity. To settle for stability is to give in to our ‘sentiments of [one’s] spleen and indolence’ (Treatise, 270). But what is of concern to the philosopher is not simply stability; rather, his or her aim is the stability that comes from satisfying our curiosity. ‘I cannot forbear having a curiosity to be acquainted with the principles of moral

Notes to pages 49–58

42 43 44 45

46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

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good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of those several passions and inclinations which actuate and govern me. I am uneasy to think I approve of one object, and disapprove of another; call one thing beautiful, and another deformed; decide concerning truth and falsehood, reason and folly, without knowing upon what principles I proceed’ (ibid., p. 270; italics added). Cf. Wilson, ‘Is There a Prussian Hume?’ J.S. Mill, note 108 to Chapter XI of James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 1: 402ff. Cf. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, p. 224. For a detailed discussion of this notion of imperfect knowledge, cf. Bergmann, Philosophy of Science, chapter 2; and Wilson, Explanation, Causation, and Deduction. Cf. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, pp. 228–9. Cf. Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill. See also Bergmann, ‘The Problem of Relations in Classical Psychology,’ in Metaphysics of Logical Positivism. Cf. J.S. Mill, Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, p. 259. Tooke, The Diversions of Purley, pp. 47ff. It was introduced by Brentano, Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt (Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint). In chapter 7. Cf. Bergmann, ‘Intentionality,’ in Meaning and Existence. Butler, ‘Hume’s Impressions.’ The same point is argued in Yolton, ‘Hume’s Ideas.’ Cf. Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference; Wilson, ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with Regard to Reason?’ Cf. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, chapter 12; Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, chapter 8. Passmore, Hume’s Intentions, p. 96. Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, p. 224. Ibid., p. 224. Cf. Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, in which the views of Kames and Reid as critics of associationism are discussed. These philosophers argued from the phenomenological simplicity of thoughts – for example, perceivings – to their being unlearned or innate. This is precisely the sort of inference that we find in Passmore and Bennett. John Stuart Mill showed once and for all that this is a fallacious inference and that the phenomenological simplicity of a mental state is compatible with its having come to be through learning and, more specifically, through

700 Notes to pages 58–70

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81 82

a process of association. This in fact was the major contribution of the younger Mill to the development of psychology. For details, see ibid. Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume. Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité, 1: 329. Ibid., 1: 326. Ibid., 1: 275. Descartes, Oeuvres, 11: 177–8. Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, p. 216. Ibid., p. 189. On this point in a more recent context, see Wilson, ‘Dispositions Defined: Harré and Madden on Analyzing Disposition Concepts.’ Cf. Bergmann, Philosophy of Science, chapter 2. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, ch. 4 and 8. Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, p. 216. Ibid., p. 207. Ibid., pp. 68ff, 216. Ibid., p. 68. For the logic of these inferences, see Wilson, ‘Is There a Prussian Hume?’ and Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference. Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity.’ There are many, many problems that the tradition simply did not explore; for details, cf. Bergmann, Realism. There are particular problems with the syntax of judgments. As Wollaston insisted in The Religion of Nature Delineated [1721] (p. 122), ‘there can be no images’ of ‘grammatical inflexions, particles, and other additions necessary to modify and connect the ideas.’ This is to raise the question of the ontological status of logic; to argue as Wollaston does is to insist that logic is there in the world. Cf. Bergmann, ‘Ineffability, Ontology, and Method,’ in Logic and Reality. The phrase is Brown’s, but it was popularized by J.S. Mill. For some other aspects of this issue, cf. Wilson, ‘Hume and Derrida on Language and Meaning.’ For other aspects of this part of Plato’s doctrine, see Wilson, Socrates, Lucretius, Camus, ch. 3 See also Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, especially Study One. Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter xxiii, Section 4; and II, xxxi, 2. Ibid., II, xi, 9; III, iii, 1; IV, vii, 9. Cf. Weinberg, ‘The Nominalism of Berkeley and Hume.’

Notes to pages 71–3 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

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Locke, II, xii, 1. Ibid., II, xii, 1–2. Ibid., III, ii, 1. Ibid., III, ii, 1; III, iii, 3; III, x, 4. Ibid., III, ii, 5. Cf. III, ii, 1. Arnauld and Nicole, La logique. Ibid., p. 94. Ibid. Lancelot and Arnauld, Grammaire générale et raisonnée. Ibid., p. 27. Arnauld and Nicole, La logique, p. 164. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., p. 38. ‘Des tropes ou des diférens sens,’ in vol. 3 of Chesneau du Marais, Oeuvres. Cf. Jones, Hume’s Sentiments, p. 141. Ibid, p. 216. Ibid., pp. 240–1. Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., pp. 32–4. Crousaz, A New Treatise on the Art of Thinking, 1: 7–8. Locke, Essay, III, ii, 1. Ibid., 3. Frain du Tremblay, Traité des langues, pp. 8–9. Ibid., pp. 3, 25. Ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid., pp. 42, 46. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., pp. 21–2. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 18. Jones, Hume’s Sentiments, p. 141. Lamy, De l’art de parler. Ibid., Book. I, chapter iv, para. 2. Ibid., II, ii, 2. Ibid., IV, iv, 4, p. 268. Ibid., pp. 267, 266. S. von Pufendorf, De officio hominis et civis juxta legem naturalem libri duo. Ibid., Book I, chapter v, para. 1.

703 Notes to pages 73–7 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

130 131 132 133

134 135 136 137

Ibid. Ibid., I, ix, 1. Ibid., I, ix, 3. Ibid., I, ix, 2. Ibid., I, ix, 22. Ibid., I, x, 2. That is, a person’s social being is prior to his or her rationality. The newer and more accurate way of speaking lacks at many points the rhetorical force conferred by tradition and by syntactic rhythms – a force that is enjoyed by the older form of discourse. Moreover, the older forms fit with the discourse of earlier authors who are being discussed. I hope the occasional use of these earlier forms will be pardonned. Jones, Hume’s Sentiments, p. 139. Ibid., p. 141. Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 191. This is the central argument of Berkeley’s well-known discussion in the Introduction to his Principles of Human Knowledge; see chapter 3 of this volume. Weinberg, ‘The Nominalism of Berkeley and Hume,’ in Abstraction, Relation, and Induction. Meinong, ‘Hume Studies I.’ Ibid. Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, notes (p. 25) the importance of the general term in constituting abstract ideas. He is less clear on the significance of this for interpreting Hume. For it means that persons are social beings prior to their being rational animals. Their reason involves abstract ideas, and abstract ideas are (for Hume) matters of language, so like all conventions of language they are social conventions; thus reason does not exist outside of a social context. With this sort of primacy of sociality over rationality, it is hard indeed to think of Hume as a subjectivist. Since it is wrong to construe Hume as a sort of subjectivist, then it is also wrong to rely on the alleged subjectivism as grounds for holding that Hume is a sceptic. A correct understanding of Hume’s account of abstract ideas thus removes one of the foundation stones for the traditional reading of Hume as a sceptic. Garrett is sympathetic to reading Hume as a non-sceptic, but his failure to be as clear as is necessary about abstract ideas and their being constituted by social conventions of language means that he has failed to block one of the routes that lead to the sceptical reading.

Notes to pages 78–83

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138 Garrett, ibid. (p. 24), notes how an abstract idea for Hume involves habitual connections among resembling images, which are the members of what he refers to as the ‘retrieval class’ of the abstract idea. But he misses the connection with the associationist theory of learning, which Hume develops both here and again later in connection with his analysis of causal judgments. 139 Regarding the intentionality of imageless thoughts, we will say more in chapter 2. The account of intentionality we shall find there is a Humean account, one that roots intentionality in language. 140 Cf. Wilson, ‘Marras on Sellars on Thought and Language’ and ‘Effability, Ontology, and Method.’ 141 Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy (pp. 20ff.), notes that Humean abstract ideas are not Lockean abstract ideas and are not somehow indeterminate images. They are, rather (so Garrett argues), determinate images from among the class of associated resembling ideas, which Garrett refers to as the ‘retrieval class.’ He is not incorrect in so arguing – this is Hume’s ‘official’ doctrine. But he misses the slide that Hume makes to treating abstract ideas as imageless thoughts. This is perhaps owing to his failure to place Hume’s account of abstract ideas in the context of the associationist theory of learning that Hume is developing, and to a failure to note (something that later associationists such as John Stuart Mill were to make clear) – that associational processes proceed by a sort of mental chemistry in which the product (here, the abstract idea as an imageless thought) need not have properties similar to those of its genetic antecedents (images, sensory contents). 142 Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, pp. 77ff. 143 Ibid., p. 78. 144 Ibid., p. 77. 145 Ibid., pp. 78–9. 146 Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, p. 37. 147 Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, p. 222. 148 Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 158n. 149 Cf. Wilson, ‘Why I Do Not Experience Your Pain.’ 150 But cf. Wilson, Laws and Other Worlds, for conditions relevant to determining certain special uses of language – specifically, those concerning the assertion and denial of contrary-to-fact conditionals. 151 Garrett, in Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, notes that abstract ideas involve resemblance classes of images. But as we have already noted, he fails to recognize that the class is formed through a pro-

704 Notes to pages 84–8

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154 155 156 157 158 159 160

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cess of association. Moreover, he fails to note that the habit which the association forms is a social convention; as part of this, he fails to note the normative or semantic nature of this convention. This is a consequence of a failure to take into account Book III of the Treatise, in particular its account of language and of linguistic convention. The result is a general failure to recognize that for Hume our thought is inseparable from our nature as social or political beings. It is safe to say that the epistemology and ontology of Book I cannot be fully or correctly understood without going on to the account of social conventions and norms of Book III, and then bringing the latter back to add to and interpret the discussions of Book I. This point has been vigorously defended by Sellars; see, for example, his ‘Some Reflections on Language Games.’ Hume’s position, as just explicated, is clear enough for what we are here about. However, we will return to this issue. For more on this aspect of language, see below chapter 5 concerning testimony and chapters 2 and 6 concerning the language-entry (world-word) transitions that have to do with the assertibility conditions of fact-stating sentences. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life. Hume, Letters, 1: 201. Jones, Hume’s Sentiments, p. 146. Ibid., ch. 4. Ibid., p. 146. Ibid., p. 144. Cf. Sellars, ‘Some Reflections on Language Games,’ in Science, Perception, and Reality, and ‘Notes on Intentionality.’ See also Wilson, ‘Marras on Sellars on Thought and Language’ and ‘Effability, Ontology, and Method.’ The ‘new Hume’ is one that allows objective necessary connections as parts of the ontological structure of the world. It might seem more reasonable to place our discussion of this Hume later in the chapter below, when we discuss Hume’s critical realism. As it happens, however, our objections to the ‘new Hume’ turn for the most part on the issue of the meaningfulness of the discourse about objective necessary connections, given Hume’s views on language and on abstract ideas. This means that the present chapter is in fact the most reasonable place for our discussion of the ‘new Hume.’ Locating it here has the additional virtue of as it were ‘clearing the air’: in what follows we will be able simply to take for granted that the standard reading of Hume – that is, the ‘old Hume’ – is correct, that for him all there is objectively to causation is regularity.

Notes to pages 89–102

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To be sure, at various points we shall have to discuss Hume’s two definitions of ‘cause,’ as indeed we have already. But we shall be able to take for granted throughout that the case has been made that there are no objective necessary connections. See especially Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume and ‘Hume’s Causal Realism’; and Strawson, ‘David Hume: Objects and Power.’ Also Strawson, The Secret Connexion. In our treatment of these issues, we shall deal only with those points which have a relevance for our other discussions – in particular, for our discussion of Hume’s critical realism. For an excellent and detailed criticism of the arguments advanced by the mentioned commentators and others, see Winkler, ‘The New Hume.’ See also Blackburn, ‘Hume and the Thick Connexions.’ See Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume. James, Principles of Psychology, I: 221. For greater detail see Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study One; see also Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience, ch. 3. Contrast to our more recent and more scientific notion of gravity; in the latter there is no notion of self-movement. Cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought: Seven Studies, Study One; see also Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference. It is worth noting that when one ascribes, in the Aristotelian system, a nature or essence to a substance, one is not merely describing it but also making a normative claim about how it ought to be. On this scheme the ontological structure of the universe is also a normative structure. See F. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study One. See also Wilson, Socrates, Lucretius, Camus, ch. 3 and passim. Sergeant, Method to Science. References are to Locke, Essay. Cf. Wilson, ‘Acquaintance, Ontology and Knowledge’; idem, ‘Moore’s Refutation of Idealism.’ Cf. Wilson, ‘The Lockean Revolution in the Theory of Science.’ Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 63. This pattern is discussed in Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, pp. 32–3. Cf. Wilson, ‘Dispositions: Defined or Reduced?’ Cf. Strawson, ‘David Hume: Objects and Powers,’ p. 33. Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 73n; cf. Strawson, ‘David Hume: Objects and Powers,’ p. 44.

706 Notes to pages 102–3 178 Contrary to what Strawson argues in ‘David Hume: Objects and Powers,’ (p. 34), Hume is not a sceptic about objective necessary connections; he knows that they do not exist. 179 Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, Section 20. 180 Strawson, in ‘David Hume: Objects and Powers,’ pp. 36–7, misunderstands this passage. He suggests that it implies that it is Hume’s view that one can ‘refer to it [causation] while having no descriptively contentful conception of its nature on the terms of the theory of ideas’ (p. 37). But, in the first place, Hume is talking in this passage about objects and reference to objects, not reference to any supposed objective necessary connection. In the second place, how could an empiricist refer to something without an idea of that thing? And if there is an idea, then there is content – namely, whatever it is that the idea refers to. Strawson wants to allow a way of thinking about things even when we have no ideas of those things. That is how he proposes to make sense of Hume’s ‘sceptical realism’ – realist about objective necessary connections, sceptical because we have no ideas of such connections, but coherent since one can refer to these entities of which we have no idea. But in Hume’s view, ideas are the things that carry reference – in Hume’s account of ideas and of the workings of the mind, we refer to any object or impression by way of the idea that derives from it. That, at least, is the primary form which referring takes. One can also refer to objects by means of definite descriptions based on what Hume calls relative ideas – but (some details aside) there is no relative idea that is not derived from our senses. 181 It is often said that Hume’s impressions are mental and that he adopts right from the start of the Treatise a phenomenalist position. Thus, Strawson (‘David Hume: Objects and Powers,’ p. 36) speaks of an ‘essentially mental thing like an impression.’ Hume’s example of a hat indicates that at this point in his discussion there is nothing mental about an impression: an impression is just an ordinary thing insofar as it is perceived. One is bound to get a mixed-up Hume if one tries to locate objective necessary connections among the furniture of the mind. The idea is that the impression is mental and caused by an external object that is non-mental, and that objective necessary connections hold among ordinary things, that is, the external objects that cause our impressions. Since our ideas derive from impressions, it is concluded by the ‘new Humeans’ who give a phenomenalist reading to the Treatise that we can have no idea of an objective necessary connection, while they also hold that such connections do exist among the external causes of our impressions (cf. ibid.). This cannot be a correct reading of Hume’s position. This reading depends upon taking

Notes to pages 104–16

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184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

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Hume to be a phenomenalist, but at this point in his discussion, where Hume is treating of objective necessary connections, the phenomenalist reading is not possible since he (Hume) takes impressions to be things like hats, which are clearly not mental. Hume is therefore arguing here that it is among external, non-mental objects that objective necessary connections are not to be found. Strawson’s suggestion is that Hume holds that (a) such connections do not exist among impressions, but also that (b) they hold among external objects, only (c) we do not know that these connections exist among external objects because we have no impression of them. It is clear that, since the impressions are non-mental objects like hats, this suggestion simply won’t do. Here is another passage worth noting: ‘The table, which just now appears to me, is only a perception, and all its qualities are qualities of a perception’ (Treatise, p. 239). The table perceived is the perception: the perception can therefore hardly be mental or subjective. At least not at this point in Hume’s discussion. Yolton, in Thinking Matter, p. 53, has argued that we are not to take this passage seriously, that Hume intended it as satire. He is not convincing. For comment, see Falkenstein, ‘Hume and Reid on the Simplicity of the Soul,’ pp. 25–45, esp. n12. This is the fourth of Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ Frasca-Spada, in Space and Self in Hume’s ‘Treatise,’ p. 14, wrongly attributes to me the view that we can form relative ideas of objective necessary connections. She thus equates my interpretation of Hume with those of Strawson and Wright. She refers to my ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with Regard to the Senses?’ But there is nothing in that essay that implies we can form a relative idea of an entity (like an objective connection) with which we are not acquainted or of a kind with which we are not acquainted. Regarding what the relative ideas do refer to as causes of our sense impressions, see my later discussion of Hume’s critical realism. Wright, ‘Hume’s Causal Realism,’ p. 90. Strawson, The Secret Connection, p. 122. Ibid., p. 124. For further criticism of Strawson for using relative ideas to refer to nonHumean causal ties, see Flage, ‘Relative Ideas Re-viewed.’ Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, p. 9. Brook, Kant and the Mind. Thagard, ‘Cognitive Science.’ The italics are Thagard’s. The history of this period cannot be written without reference to the

708 Notes to page 116

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important contribution of Bergmann, ‘The Contribution of John B. Watson.’ Thagard fails to note this important discussion. Watson, ‘Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It.’ Watson, ‘Image and Affection in Psychology.’ Hartley, Observations on Man. Hartley’s Observations, at least in vol. 1, is clearly recognizable as a book on psychology and not, like Hume’s Treatise, a book on philosophy that incorporates a psychological theory of learning. A contemporary psychologist, behaviourist, or cognitive scientist would recognize Hartley’s as a book on psychology, something in the pattern of Hebb, The Organization of Behavior, whereas he or she would not fail to see Hume’s as a treatise on philosophy. Hartley presents his associationist theory of learning in the context of a speculative Newtonian physiology of the central nervous system. This material would appear to a contemporary psychologist as a dated version of the sorts of speculations one can find in the writings of Hebb. Hartley’s vol. 2 is more puzzling; it is a rather odd attempt to wed associationism with a Newtonian theology. Coleridge and Wordsworth both accepted – indeed, almost rejoiced in – Hartley’s psychology, Coleridge so much so that he named his son Hartley. They both came to reject associationism as a theory of psychology when the French Revolution, as they saw it, spurred on by such ideas, descended into terrorism. (However, the young Hartley retained his name.) But Coleridge continued to accept much of the theology of Hartley’s vol. 2, in fact continuing to praise it, but coming to clothe it in the language of German idealism as derived from (some would say plagiarized from) Schelling. When Joseph Priestly, scientist and Unitarian, required a textbook in psychology for the Warrington Academy – the dissenting school where he taught – he used Hartley in an edition that he had edited himself. In his editing, he did two things. First, he purged vol. 2 and the odd theology: he accepted what Coleridge rejected, and conversely. Second, he eliminated the speculative physiology. The result was a text on associationism as a theory of the mind based on introspectively derived empirical data. It incorporated such clear results as Berkeley’s new theory of vision. It was quite successful as a text. It was used to combat the innatist theories of Kames and Reid regarding perception. As a text it was used in the education of John Stuart Mill, and constituted the theory of mind of the radical utilitarians until James Mill published his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind in 1829. ‘By a “silly” theory I mean one which may be held at the time when one is

Notes to page 117

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talking or writing professionally, but which only an inmate of a lunatic asylum would think of carrying into daily life. I should count [Metaphysical] Behaviourism, taken quite strictly, and certain forms of Idealism as “silly” in this sense. No one in his senses can in practice regard himself or his friends or enemies simply as ingenious machines produced by other machines, or can regard his arm-chair or his poker as being literally societies of spirits or thoughts in the mind of God. It must not be supposed that men who maintain these theories and believe them are “silly” people. Only very acute and learned men could have thought of anything so preposterous against the protests of common-sense’ (Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, pp. 5–6). 197 As Broad points out (ibid., pp. 622ff.), ‘it is reasonable to ask about an awareness of a red patch whether it is a clear or confused awareness; but it is nonsense to ask of a molecular movement [in a brain state] whether it is a clear or a confused movement.’ Similarly it is reasonable to ask of a molecular movement whether it is quick or slow, straight or circular, and so on, but ‘about the awareness of a red patch it is nonsensical to ask whether it is quick or slow awareness, a straight or circular awareness, and so on.’ The point is, of course, that mental events and brain states have, and are presented as having, different characteristics. 198 Cf. Stevenson, ‘Sensations and Brain Processes: A Reply to J.J.C. Smart.’ 199 This was emphasized by Bergmann in his methodological writings. Parallelism now appears in philosophy as the view that mental properties or events ‘supervene’ on the physical and chemical properties of brain states. These newer versions are jargon ridden and are often needlessly expressed in terms of ‘possible world’ metaphysics, but the basic point remains the same: given parallelism, then the aim of the methodological behaviourist of developing an objective science of human behaviour is rendered possible. One form of parallelism is what is ‘epiphenomenalism.’ This is the view that there is a two-way correlation – that is, a parallelism – between mental states and bodily states, but that there is only a one-way causation from body to mind (that is, not conversely). But epiphenomenalism clearly presupposes a non-Humean account of causation. For on the Humean account, a correlation just is causation. Thus, for what we are about, epipehomenalism and parallelism amount to the same thing. Moreover, it is clear that if there is a correlation between mind and body – for example, between my willing my arm to rise and my arm rising – then there is causation from mind to body. With the Humean account of causation, then, there is two-way causation between mind and

710 Notes to pages 117–19

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204

205

206

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body: body affects mind (i.e., causes mental events) and mind affects body (i.e., causes bodily events). And so we note that, given that parallelism holds, one can consistently hold – as the methodological behaviourist does – that bodily events can be explained in terms of antecedent mental events and also that the behavioural event can be completely explained in terms of behavioural, physiological, and environmental variables. For greater detail on these points, see Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, ch. 8. Harltey, Observations on Man, in particular Book I. See Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, ch. 8. See Addis, The Logic of Society. As we have seen, interpreting Hume as the ‘new Hume’ – that is, as a realist about objective causal connections, as in the reading of John Wright – often exploits Hume’s references to hypothesized physiological connections. This same point with regard to another thinker who aims to ‘identify’ mental states with bodily states has been forcefully made in Stevenson, ‘Sensations and Brain Processes.’ Stevenson is discussing the argument for materialism to be found in Smart, ‘Sensations and Brain Processes.’ For a similar argument for materialism, similarly susceptible to Stevenson’s critique, see also Armstrong, ‘The Nature of Mind.’ It is hard to understand how the fashion for materialism has managed to ignore Stevenson’s incisive critique. As Broad points out (The Mind and Its Place in Nature, p. 612), most who call themselves ‘behaviourist’ are epiphenomenalists – that is, parallelists – and thus are methodological behaviourists rather than metaphysical behaviourists. This social progressivism and accompanying ideological emphasis on the idea that cognitive processes are located on the periphery of the nervous system are the two (not unrelated) things that link Watson with Dewey, who otherwise had a perspective and a philosophy very different from Watson’s. If one wants to be critical, as perhaps one should be, Watson and Dewey, in emphasizing peripheral processes, both denied the cognitive significance of reason. Both would no doubt deny the charge, but equally without doubt reason is a process of the central nervous system. In affirming this, the proponents of cognitive science are undoubtedly correct. Cf. Tolman, Collected Papers in Psychology. See also his Purposive Behavior in Animals and Man.

Notes to pages 120–6

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208 Watson, ‘Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,’ p. 172. 209 Ibid., p. 172n1. 210 The sequence was emphasized by Dewey in ‘The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.’ Dewey’s essay is redolent of the holism and teleology deriving from his anti-empiricist background in Hegel. These latter features, contrary to the development of a truly scientific psychology of human being, soon disappeared from the practice of psychology; but the idea that psychology studies a process that leads from the environment, the stimulus, through the organism to the response remained. This idea, which derives as much from Darwin as from Hegel, was in fact highly critical of the concerns of traditional introspectionist psychology such as that of Wundt and even that of Hume, and was significant in psychology as it moved from introspective associationism to behaviourism. For much of this history, see Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology. See also Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, ch. 8. 211 http://www.bcp.psych.ualberta.ca/~mike/Pearl_Street/Dictionary/ dictionary.html. 212 Unfortunately, one has the impression that some cognitive scientists think that by calling thoughts ‘representations’ they have solved the problem of intentionality. Would that it were so easy. Alas, relabelling something doesn’t usually solve any problem. 213 It shares this feature with Chomskyan linguistics. 214 This of course is the ideal of process knowledge. See Bergmann, Philosophy of Science, ch. 2; Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience, ch. 3; and Brodbeck, ‘Explanation, Prediction, and “Imperfect” Knowledge.’ 215 It should be emphasized that this is not part of the reading of Hume in light of recent cognitive science that is given by Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy. 216 See Brook, Kant and the Mind. It was argued by Wolff, in ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity,’ that contrary to his official doctrine, in which (Wolff supposes) the mind is passive, Hume implicitly has a very active mind, and insofar as he does have that he anticipates the views of Kant, which are of course thought to be philosophically more adequate. I have commented on Wolff’s views in Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity,’ in which I argue that Hume does in fact have an active mind, but that activity does not make of Hume any sort of ur-Kantian. Many would argue, of course, that to be a Kantian is no virtue and

712 Notes to pages 126–33 indeed that Kant was, as Russell once said, the greatest disaster to hit philosophy. The only problem with so characterizing Kant is that, as Broad commented, it leaves no superlative for Hegel. 217 Leibniz, Theodicy. 218 Concerning Kant, one must always keep in mind Nietzsche’s remark in Beyond Good and Evil that the transcendental self is simply an illusion of grammar. On his matter of the so-called subject of experience, Nietzsche agrees with many others from Hume on, that ‘as for the superstitions of the logicians [that is, the metaphysicians], I shall never tire of emphasizing a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit – namely, that a thought comes when “it” wants, not when “I” want, so that it is a falsification of the facts to say: the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “thinks”’ (¶17). Nietzsche rightly points out (¶11) that the Kantian appeal to the spontaneity of mind functioning according to certain (onto-)logical categories is no more explanatory than an appeal to dormitive powers. He goes on to indicate how it became fashionable to find faculties for discerning things transcendental. ‘It is enough ... one grew older – and the dream disappeared’ (¶11). He has already remarked that ‘the tartuffery, as stiff as it is virtuous, of old Kant as he lures us along the dialectical bypaths which lead, more correctly mislead us to his “categorical imperative” – this spectacle makes us smile, we who are fastidious and find no little amusement in observing the subtle tricks of old moralists and moral-preachers’ (¶5). Chapter 2. The Waning of Scientia 1 For a more complete discussion of these points, see Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study One. 2 References will be to Plato, The Phaedo. 3 I start with Plato since I agree with Whitehead that all philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. At least, that is what it is until Locke, Berkeley, and Hume come along. Besides, I like the metaphor of the divided line. 4 It is worth noting that temporal priority does not follow. So nothing follows about the pre-existence of the soul. What does follow is that in knowing things in this world, the soul must turn to the timeless world of the forms. That is, what follows is that the soul in knowing the timeless forms becomes to that extent immortal. It is immortality in the sense of eternal that is implied, and not anything that touches on immortality in the sense of omnitemporality. See Wilson, Socrates, Lucretius, Camus, ch. 3.

Notes to pages 139–52

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5 Cf. the epistemological principles J, K, and L laid out by Watson, The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics, pp. 51–2. 6 Cf. Watson’s principle M, ibid., p. 52. 7 Price, Thinking and Experience, pp. 44–52. 8 Cf. Addis, Natural Signs, pp. 51ff. 9 Ibid., pp. 48ff. 10 Russell, Theory of Knowledge, p. 43. 11 Cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, especially Study One. 12 There is far more to this dialectic than we can deal with here; see of course, ibid. but also in particular the excellent study of Lennon, The Battle of the Gods and the Giants. 13 As Popkin points out, Montaigne took many of his arguments from Sextus Empiricus; see Popkin, History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes. 14 Ibid. 15 Montaigne, Apology for Raimond Sebond, p. 90. 16 Ibid., p. 186. 17 Montaigne, ‘On Physiognomy,’ in his Essays, p. 338. 18 Ibid., p. 336. 19 Montaigne, ‘On Experience,’ in his Essays, p. 354. 20 Ibid., pp. 343–4. 21 Ibid., p. 354. 22 Ibid., p. 400. 23 Ibid., p. 403. 24 Consider Aquinas on transubstantiation. He asks (Summa Theologica, Third Part, Q. 75, Q. 76): ‘Whether the accidents of the bread and wine remain in this sacrament after the change’ (Q. 75). Furthermore: ‘The substantial form of bread is of the substance of bread. But the substance of the bread is changed into the body of Christ ... Therefore the substantial form of the bread does not remain’ (Q. 76). He raises the objection (Q. 75, Objection 2): ‘There ought not to be any deception in a sacrament of truth. But we judge of substance by accidents. It seems, then, that human judgment is deceived, if, while the accidents remain, the substance of the bread does not. Consequently this is unbecoming to this sacrament.’ He replies: ‘There is no deception in this sacrament; for the accidents which are discerned by the senses are truly present. But the intellect, whose proper object is substance as is said in De Anima iii, is preserved by faith from deception.’ God changes the essence but leaves the sensible appearances unchanged, just like the evil genius is supposed to do. But this is in a sense contrary to reason. For the sensible appearances remain unchanged and so therefore

714 Notes to pages 153–7

25 26 27

28

does the form that the mind or reason abstracts from them. But that form abstracted is in fact not the reason why these appearances are there: God has changed the form. It seems that reason is deceived about the reasons for these appearances being there and as they are. However, there is no deception in the case of the sacrament because by our faith in God we know the truth of the matter: in truth what appears to be bread and wine is in fact the body and blood of Christ. Unlike Descartes’s supposal of an evil genius, who can cause us to be deceived about the form that causes what sensibly appears to us, God is no deceiver. Indeed, it is to our benefit that sensible appearances do not change in the case of the sacrament. As Aquinas says (Q. 75): ‘It is evident to sense that all the accidents of the bread and wine remain after the consecration’: ‘This is reasonably done by Divine providence. First of all, because it is not customary, but horrible, for men to eat human flesh, and to drink blood. And therefore Christ’s flesh and blood are set before us to be partaken of under the species of those things which are the more commonly used by men, namely, bread and wine. Secondly, lest this sacrament might be derided by unbelievers, if we were to eat our Lord under His own species. Thirdly, that while we receive our Lord’s body and blood invisibly, this may redound to the merit of faith.’ What seems to be the case is contrary to reason, yet we are not deceived, and, moreover, that sensible appearances could be, but are not, deceptive, is something that is for our own good. Any good Catholic knows this. Descartes knew this. It is little wonder that he could easily conceive that there could be an evil genius with great power to deceive us about the way in which the world is in contrast to how it appears. What is to be wondered is why no one before Descartes thought about the possibility of such a genius. That he did think of this unthought thought, obvious as it may be, is the mark of Descartes’s greatness as a philosopher. Descartes, Discourse on Method, in Philosophical Essays, p. 120. Ibid., p. 122. O.K. Bouwsma disagrees; see his ‘Descartes’ Evil Genius’ and ‘On Many Times I Have in Sleep Been Deceived,’ both in his Philosophical Papers. But his argument is unfair to Descartes, whose metaphysics provides him with a reply to Bouwsma. For discussion of the arguments and a defence of Descartes, see Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study Seven. See, for example, Popkin, The History of Scepticism, ch. 7 and 8.

Notes to pages 157–71

715

29 Descartes, Meditations, in Philosophical Essays, p. 93. 30 Recall Socrates’ argument regarding equality in the Phaedo. 31 In the substance ontology, this inference is valid. Cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Studies Six and Seven. 32 For discussion of these Cartesian notions, see ibid., Study Seven, ‘Descartes’ Defence of the Traditional Metaphysics.’ 33 Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding. 34 Cf. Wilson, ‘Acquaintance, Ontology and Knowledge’; and also ‘Moore’s Refutation of Idealism.’ 35 Descartes, Meditations, in Philosophical Essays, p. 134. 36 Foucher, Critique de la recherche de la vérité. 37 Bayle, Dictionary Historical and Critical, vol. IV, pp. 655ff. 38 Arnauld and Nicole, La logique de Port-Royal. References are by part and chapter. 39 Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge. References are by paragraph. 40 Weinberg has drawn our attention to this logical argument against abstraction; see his ‘The Nominalism of Berkeley and Hume,’ in Abstraction Relesion, and Induction. 41 Descartes, Objections and Replies to the Meditations, in his Philosophical Writings, vol. 1. References are to the pages of this volume. 42 On associationism in general, see Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill. 43 Hume’s associationist account of abstract ideas is discussed in detail in ch. 1. 44 For a discussion of the Lockean critique, see Wilson, ‘The Lockean Revolution in the Theory of Science,’ pp. 65–97. 45 Note, by the way, that in the passage we have just quoted, Hume does not deny that we have an idea of existence, that is, an abstract idea of existence. All he is saying is that in the judgment that God is, this abstract idea is not represented in consciousness by a particular idea that is distinct from the idea of God. Pears simply misunderstands this passage; see his Hume’s System, pp. 34, 57. 46 This not entirely fair to Descartes. If the ontological argument is placed in the substance tradition, then it is not such a bad argument – as we have in effect noted above. See Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, especially Study Seven. But of course, Hume has rejected that tradition. 47 A fuller account would of course have to refer to the role of language; see chapter 1 above. For the radical nature of Hume’s break with the tradition, see Wilson, ‘Critical Review of P. Jones, Hume’s Sentiments’ and ‘Hume and Derrida on Language and Meaning.’

716 Notes to pages 172–212 48 Cf. the criticism in Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, that Hume’s account of mind and of reason (and those of Berkekey and Locke also) suffers from being ‘imagistic’ – that is, one in which all our ideas are simple sensory images or where, if the idea does have parts, they are metaphysical parts, explicitly there in the complex idea. 49 Or arithmetic and mathematics – but these do not concern matters of (empirical) fact. 50 Cf. Popkin, ‘Berkeley and Pyrrohnism.’ 51 See Woodbridge, ‘Berkeley’s Realism.’ See also Luce, Berkeley’s Immaterialism. 52 There is in the background, however, the logic of Petrus Ramus; see Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study Three. 53 James, Principles of Psychology, 2: 306. 54 Cf. Russell, ‘The Ultimate Constituents of Matter.’ 55 Technically, the topological features of the perspectives are invariant. 56 Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, p. 8. 57 Quinton, ‘The Problem of Perception.’ 58 Ibid., p. 31. 59 Ibid., pp. 33ff. 60 Ibid., p. 39. 61 Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, p. 9. 62 This is why Russell’s expression, that bodies are ‘logical constructions’ out of sense data, is misleading: it suggests that there is someone doing the constructing. 63 Quinton, ‘The Problem of Perception,’ p. 29f. 64 Chisholm, ‘The Concept of Empirical Evidence: I. “Appear,” “Take,” and “Evident,”’ p. 729. 65 Ibid., p. 730. 66 Firth, ‘The Concept of Empirical Evidence: II. Ultimate Evidence,’ p. 737f. 67 James, Principles of Psychology, 2: 299. 68 Ibid., p. 301. 69 Ibid., p. 300. 70 Descartes, Meditations, in Philosophical Essays, p. 143. 71 Russell, ‘The Ultimate Constituents of Matter,’ p. 140. 72 This phrase comes from Moore; see his ‘Proof of the External World.’ 73 Cf. Allaire, ‘Berkeley’s Idealism,’ in his Essays in Ontology. 74 There is more to be said about Berkeley’s notion of notion, however. See Wilson, ‘On the Hausmans’ “New Approach to Berkeley’s Ideal Reality,”’ pp. 67–87. 75 This is one of the main points of Moore in his famous ‘Refutation of Idealism.’

Notes to pages 212–20

76

77 78 79

80

81 82 83

717

For discussion of Moore’s argument, see Lewis, ‘Moore’s Realism’; and Wilson, ‘Moore’s Refutation of Idealism.’ Locke and Hume share Locke’s view that the concept of a person is a ‘forensic’ concept. Beyond this, the two have different views of personal identity, Locke basing his analysis on memory, Hume providing, as we have said, a more complex account. Compare, on the one hand, the feeling of weariness after a long day of hard work, and, on the other, the pleasure of a good orgasm. Russell, Theory of Knowledge, p. 22. Evans, in Varieties of Reference, p. 229, suggests of states of direct sensory or perceptual awareness that they are ‘informational states which a subject acquires through perception.’ This may be true – indeed, it undoubtedly is true that perceptual experiences are states of an informational system – but this does not make it philosophically relevant. To the contrary, it misses the most important feature of perceptual awareness, namely, that it is a species of mental act that is given to us in our experience in states of consciousness, and as different in kind or species from other sorts of mental act. Compare Goldman: ‘[Consider] the case of thinking about x or attending to x. In the process of thinking about x there is already an implicit awareness that one is thinking about x. There is no need for reflection here, for taking a step back from thinking about x in order to examine it ... When we are thinking about x, the mind is focussed on x, not on our thinking of x. Nevertheless, the presence of thinking about x carries with it a non-reflective selfawareness’ (Theory of Human Action, his italics). It is reasonable for one familiar with the relevant literature to suppose that Goldman picked up this account of a consciousness state from the perceptive discussion in Bergmann, ‘Acts,’ in his Logic and Reality. James, ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ in his Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 2. Cf. Russell, Theory of Knowledge, p. 35: ‘A can experience his experiencing of O without logically requiring any other experience.’ Compare Wittgenstein’s notion that the subject which makes the world present in consciousness is not itself present in that consciousness: ‘The subject does not belong to the world: rather it is a limit of the world’ (Tractatus, ¶5.632) He continues: Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But you really do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye. (Tractatus, ¶5.633)

718 Notes to pages 220–5 84 Cf. Lewis, ‘Moore’s Realism,’ chs. 3 and 4; Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, ch. 5. 85 This point made by Bracken, in Berkeley, ch. 9, esp. pp. 95–6, where he emphasizes that the perceptual object, being extended in time, is not wholly presented to one, and that, if Berkeley did succeed in eliminating the scepticism implicit in the representationalist’s veil of ideas, he did not succeed in eliminating the possibility of error that arises from the veil of time. 86 See Hausman and Hausman, ‘A New Approach to Berkeley’s Ideal Reality.’ 87 Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists. 88 See Watson, The Downfall of Cartesianism. 89 Cf. Wilson, ‘Weinberg’s Refutation of Nominalism.’ 90 Weinberg, ‘The Concept of Relation,’ p. 126. 91 See Dennett, Brainstorms. 92 ‘The only psychology that could possibly succeed in explaining the complexities of human activity must posit internal representations’ (ibid., p. 119). 93 This way of speaking derives from Wilfrid Sellars. For a brief account, see Wilson, ‘Marras on Sellars on Thought and Language.’ 94 Thus, recall Dennett: ‘Nothing is intrinsically a representation of anything; something is a representation only for or to someone’ (Brainstorms, p. 122). 95 ‘Any representation of system of representations ... requires at least one user or interpreter of the representation who is external to it ... Such an interpreter is ... a sort of homunculus’ (ibid.). 96 ‘Psychology without homunculi is impossible. But psychology with homunculi is doomed to circularity or infinite regress, so psychology is impossible’ (ibid.). 97 ‘One is conscious only of the products of the producer, which one then consciously tests and chooses’ (ibid., p. 88). 98 ‘Hume’s internal representations were impressions and ideas, and he wisely shunned the notion of an inner self that would intelligently manipulate them’ (ibid., p. 122; see also p. 101). 99 Hume, Treatise, 252. 100 ‘Hume wisely shunned the notion of an inner self that would intelligently manipulate the ideas and impressions, but this left him with the necessity of getting the ideas to “think for themselves.” His associationistic couplings of ideas and impressions, his pseudo-chemical bonding of each idea to its predecessor and successor, is a notorious non-solution to the problem’ (Dennett, Brainstorms, p. 101).

Notes to pages 225–36

101 102

103 104 105 106 107 108

109

110 111 112

113

719

Abolishing the self that could intelligently manipulate ideas ‘left [Hume] with the necessity of the ideas and impressions to “think for themselves.” The result was his theory of the self as a “bundle” of (nothing but) impressions and ideas. He attempted to set these impressions and ideas into dynamic interaction by positing various associationist links, so that each succeeding idea in the stream of consciousness dragged its successor onto the stage according to one or another principle, all without the benefit of intelligent supervision. It didn’t work, of course. It couldn’t conceivably work, and Hume’s failure is plausibly viewed as the harbinger of doom for any remotely analogous enterprise’ (ibid., p. 122). Hausman and Hausman, Descartes’ Legacy. Cf. Wilson, ‘Marras on Sellars’; following Sellars, ‘Some Reflections on Language Games,’ in his Science, Perception, and Reality, and ‘Notes on Intentionality.’ Cf. chapter 1, above. Hume, Treatise, I, iii, 15. Cf. chapter 7, below. Russell, Problems of Philosophy, ch. xii. Montague, ‘A Realistic Theory of Truth and Error,’ p. 252. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, ch. xi. The discussion in Theory of Knowledge is rather more complicated, but the point is the same. And they both are subject to the same, Wittgensteinian, criticism. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: ‘The correct explanation of the form of the proposition, “A makes the judgement p,” must show that it is impossible for a judgement to be a piece of nonsense. (Russell’s theory does not satisfy this requirement.)’ (Tractatus, 5.5422). Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Ibid., pp. 175–6. Cf. Humphrey, Thinking, ch. 1, for the story of the Wurzburg school and the entrance of imageless thoughts into introspective psychology. The work of the Wurzburgers is located in the history of psychology in Wilson, Psychological Analysis, ch. 8. See also Bergmann, ‘Intentionality,’ in his Meaning and Existence. Findlay has correctly pointed out that one of Wittgenstein’s main discoveries that led from the account of mind in the Tractatus to the philosophy of the Philosophical Investigations was the discovery of imageless thoughts; see his ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.’ Cf. Bergmann, ‘Intentionality,’ in his Meaning and Existence. See also Bergmann, ‘Body, Minds, and Acts’ and ‘Logical Positivism, Language, and the Reconstruction of Metaphysics,’ both in Metaphysics of Logical Positivism.

720 Notes to pages 236–9

114 115

116 117 118 119 120 121 122

123

For discussion of Bergmann’s views and his philosophical development, see H. Hochberg, The Positivist and the Ontologist: Bergmann, Carnap and Logical Positivism. See also Wilson, ‘Placing Bergmann.’ Bergmann, ‘Acts,’ in Logic and Reality. Searle, Intentionality, p. 22. For discussion of Searle, see Hochberg, The Positivist and the Ontologist, pp. 32ff. Why Searle adopted a different terminology is not clear. Searle, Intentionality, p. 23. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 265; his emphasis. Cf. Bergmann, ‘Notes on the Ontology of Minds.’ Watson, Representational Ideas: From Plato to Patricia Churchland, p. 17. These dispositions must themselves receive a Human analysis, upon which (very roughly speaking) dispositions are nothing apart from their regular exercise. For an account of Hume’s Humean treatment of dispositions, see Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, ch. 1. The Humean account there discussed makes use of the sense of ‘if–then’ that is given by the logician’s ‘Š’ (‘material implication’). In a review of Hume’s Defence, Saul Traiger is critical of this (see his ‘Review’: The book adopts the view that disposition predicates can be analysed along these lines: ‘Sx Š Rx,’ where ‘Š’ represents material implication; in fact, it argues that this makes sense of what Hume says about dispositions. This suggestion is then dismissed by Traiger as incorrect because of ‘well known difficulties.’ Those difficulties are indeed well known, but the criticism does not apply. The book argues that it is one thing to predicate ‘Sx Š Rx’ of an individual and another to predicate it as a disposition: there are further conditions (which are in fact suggested by Hume’s own account of dispositions in the Treatise) to be imposed before that latter is reasonable. It is argued that once these further conditions are added, the solution to the problem of the nature of dispositions does not fall prey to the well-known difficulties. The issue was discussed in detail elsewhere, some years ago. See Wilson, ‘Dispositions: Defined or Reduced?’ Traiger seems unaware of this literature; certainly, he does not refer to it (though the book he is reviewing does refer to it). This clearly presupposes some sort of psychophysical parallelism, and therefore the possibility of a purely behaviouristic reconstruction of human behaviour, including verbal behaviour. But mind remains mind, and is there as part of the world as we experience it. For a discussion of parallelism, see Wilson, Psychological Analysis, ch. 8.

Notes to pages 239–50

721

124 For further discussion, see Wilson, ‘Effability, Ontology, and Method.’ 125 Mind of course is itself unique, but on the present analysis the category of thought belongs to the ontological kind of property; thoughts are unique insofar as they are all thoughts, just as colours are unique insofar as they are all colours. 126 Searle, Intentionality, p. 180. 127 Ibid., p. 167. 128 For Hume’s philosophy on this point, see Wilson, ‘Árdal’s Contribution to Philosophy.’ 129 Addis, Natural Signs, p. 57. 130 For more on this point in a slightly different context, see Wilson, Critical Review of R. Grossmann, The Categorial Structure of the World. 131 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt. I, Q. 16, art. 1. 132 Moore, Lectures on Philosophy, p. 144. 133 Ibid., p. 147. 134 Russell (Theory of Knowledge, p. 115) also includes among the relata the logical form of the fact that the act of understanding intends or is ‘about,’ but this detail, while important for Russell in that work, need not concern us here. Russell uses ‘U’ (for ‘understands’) where we have used ‘M.’ But the point is the same. 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid. 137 Russell, Problems of Philosophy, p. 98. 138 Ibid., p. 108. 139 Ibid. 140 Ibid. 141 Russell, Theory of Knowledge, p. 37; his italics. 142 Cf. Grossmann, ‘Conceptualism.’ 143 Russell, Problems of Philosophy, p. 136. 144 Russell, Theory of Knowledge, pp. 154–5. 145 Ibid., p. 149. 146 Russell, ‘On Propositions,’ p. 296. 147 Ibid., p. 290; italics added. 148 Ibid. p. 301. 149 Ibid., p. 303. 150 Ibid., p, 309. 151 For more on this point, see Allaire, ‘Truth,’ 261–76. 152 Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, p. 269.

722 Notes to pages 255–61 Chapter 3. Geometry as Scientia and as Applied Science 1 As Adam discovered. Of course, it was at the behest of Eve that Adam discovered his imperfection. 2 Zabeeh, Hume: Precursor of Modern Empiricism, p. 143. 3 Flew, David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science, pp. 43–4. 4 Zabeeh, Hume, p. 142. But note that Hume also says in the Treatise that ‘’Tis from the idea of a triangle, that we discover the relation of equality, which its three angles bear to two right ones; and this relation is invariable, as long as our idea remains the same’ (69). This comment occurs on the first page of Treatise, Book I, Part iii, immediately following the discussion of space in Part ii. 5 Zabeeh, Hume, p. 138. 6 Euclid, The Elements, Book I, Proposition 10, describes how to bisect any given straight line. Take any line, bisect it, then bisect one of the two halves, then bisect one of the two halves which that produces, and so on: there’s no end to it. So infinite divisibility follows. For Euclid’s proof, see The Elements, ed. Heath, pp. 267–8. Heath notes that Proclus’ Commentary on Book 1 of The Elements makes it clear that already for the Greeks this theorem raised the issue of infinite divisibility and contrasted it with the view that a line consists of indivisible points. 7 Broad, in his usual careful, but often odd, way, finds no merit in Hume’s views on space; see his Dawes Hicks Lecture, ‘Hume’s Doctrine of Space’: it is ‘queer stuff,’ Broad comments. In contrast, Donald Baxter argues for the soundness of Hume’s arguments concerning infinite divisibility; see his ‘Hume on Infinite Divisibility.’ See also Dale Jacquette, ‘Hume on Infinite Divisibility and Sensible Extensionless Indivisibles,’ who argues for the soundness of Hume’s case for the finite divisibility of phenomena or sensible extension; he does not allow, however, that Hume might also be able to accommodate within his account of abstract ideas, an idea of extension as infinitely divisible. For discussion of some other connections, see P. Cummins, ‘Bayle, Leibniz, Hume and Reid on Extension, Composites and Simples.’ 8 We shall more or less ignore Hume’s discussion of time, which is even more complicated than his discussion of space, but which, as it turns out, has little bearing on the issues that touch on the arguments for his critical realism. 9 The following objection can be raised to the attribution to Hume of the view that spatial relations are to be reduced to non-relations, as Locke proposes for all relations. The thought begins with Hume’s apparent acceptance of the notion that spatial relations are all ‘extrinsic.’

Notes to page 261

723

Here is the argument. Early in the Treatise (I, i, 5), Hume introduces seven kinds of relations, and then later (I, iii, 1) he divides this set into two subclasses. In the earlier discussion Hume makes it clear that he thinks of all relations as objectively reducible to their foundations, on the one hand, and then subjectively, on the other hand, as united by an act of comparison – in just the way Locke argued all relations ought to be treated. The former is the relation considered philosophically, the latter the relation considered naturally. In the latter discussion, however, Hume divides relations into two classes ‘such as depend entirely on the ideas, which we compare together, and such as may be chang’d without any change in the ideas’ (69). The relations in the first class (resemblance, difference, degrees of quality, degrees of quantity) are clearly intended by Hume to be reducible to their foundations: they are relations that ‘depend on the ideas, which we compare together.’ Regarding the other class (identity, contiguity [in space and time], and cause), these ‘may be chang’d without any change in the ideas’ (69). In these cases, it would seem, changing the relation in which the object stands to others does not change the object Our argument was this: We have Rab; b ceases to exist, we suppose. When that happens, a ceases to have the property of being R to b. So a has changed. But a and b are separable; they are always separable for Hume. That means that b can cease to exist and a remains unchanged. Hence we cannot have genuinely relational facts like Rab. Thus, since a and b are always separable, any relational fact Rab must be reducible, objectively speaking, to two non-relational facts. However, the objection replies: If R is a spatial relation, then: if b ceases to exist, then so does Rab, But this does not mean that a changes. Indeed, to the contrary, Hume asserts that it does not: it ‘may be chang’d without any change in the ideas.’ It follows that for Hume, spatial relations are not subject to the criticisms we had of Locke’s account of relations. Weinberg, whose opinion is always to be respected, has suggested that there is a contradiction here in Hume, and argues that Hume’s commitment to the reducibility account in general takes precedence (Abstraction, Relation, and Induction, p. 115). But even if we follow Weinberg in this, it still leaves it that Hume can offer an account of space in which there are genuine relations – which undercuts right at the start our discussion of Hume on geometry, since this is based on the assumption that the Lockean account of relations governs all kinds of relations, including spatial relations. So at least goes the criticism of the argument that we are developing.

724 Notes to page 261 However, one ought not be so quick In the first place, Hume clearly insists that spatial relations are reducible to their foundations. If we have (*)

a is to the left of b

then Hume holds that this is reducible to a pair of statements about places – a change of relations is an ‘alteration of place’ (69), where being at a place is taken to be a non-relational predication. Thus, (*) will be analysed into a is in left place & b is in right place or, more generally, a is in p1 & b is in p2. Second, suppose there is a person a, who stands in relation R to b. Now let b cease to exist. If R is a genuine relation then a will cease to have the property that it R’s b, or, to use our example, the property of being to the left of b. But a and b are separable. Hence, a can exist unchanged even if b ceases to exist. So separability implies no change in being, that is, in the way in which the person is, in who the person is. And there is no change of being – what was predicated of a remains predicated of a and what was denied of a continues to be denied of a. It follows that the spatial relation R must reducible to non-relational predicates. The critic is therefore wrong. Third, but, the critic continues, Hume says of a that it/he/she can continue to exist unchanged, even if its spatial relations change: does not Hume say that ‘two objects may be chang’d merely by an alteration of their place, without any change on the objects themselves or on their ideas’? (69). So objects can change spatial position, according to Hume, without changing, that is, while remaining as objects the same in what they are. It would seem to follow that spatial relations can be genuine relations on Hume’s account of relations. Now, there is a problem of consistency, as Weinberg noted. But in any case, what can (does) Hume say about the identity of a, in this case, let us suppose, as a person? Suppose, then, that we have Rab, where R is a spatial relation, where b also exists, but where b then ceases to exist, and where a is a person who remains identical as a person through the changes, that is, identical by the criteria of personal identity – an identity that he or she retains through other changes (e.g., change of spatial relation). In this sense, a and b can be separable even if spatial relations are real relations, which, when they obtain, make the objects related inseparable. Hume clearly intends the (Lockean) account of relations of Treatise I, i, 5 to apply to all relations, including spatial relations. This seems inconsistent

Notes to pages 262–7

10

11

12 13 14 15

725

with what is said in Treatise I, iii, 1. But the inconsistency is only apparent: the sense in which objects exist unchanged in I, iii, 1 is narrower than that of I, i, 5. We may therefore conclude that the objection we are considering is mistaken and that it is reasonable to attribute to Hume the claim of Treatise I, i, 5, that spatial relations are reducible to non-relational foundations. With regard to this sort of reduction of spatial relations to non-relations e.g., places, the following might be mentioned: Goodman, The Structure of Appearance; Bergmann, ‘Russell on Particulars,’ in Metaphysics of Logical Positivism; Hausman, ‘Goodman’s Ontology’; and Falkenstein, ‘Is Perceptual Space Monadic?’ Casullo has argued that visual space is not relational but rather is based on such monadic spatial properties as those he calls ‘dexter,’ ‘central,’ ‘superior,’ and so on. He argues that only by virtue of possessing these properties do things in visual space stand in relations to one another. See his ‘The Spatial Structure of Perceptual Space.’ Casullo’s monadic properties can be understood as foundations for spatial relations, in the sense that Locke and Hume have for the notion of a ‘foundation’ of a relation. But in themselves, they are clearly suspect on empiricist grounds: as properties they do not seem to satisfy the Principle of Acquaintance – they are not as properties presented to us in experience, and are therefore to be excluded from an empiricist ontology. These ‘properties’ are simply not presented as properties; they are, rather, really relations disguised as properties – the very characterization of these ‘properties’ as ‘dexter,’ and so on, shows that they are not what they purport to be – namely, monadic properties, but are rather implicitly relational. For criticism of Casullo’s views, see Falkenstein, ‘Is Perceptual Space Monadic?’ Falkenstein argues effectively for the position that Hume views space as a relational array of points ‘disposed’ in a certain ‘manner.’ See his ‘Hume on Manners of Disposition and the Ideas of Space and Time.’ But he largely ignores the other Humean view that space consists of separable parts, and therefore of parts that are objectively unrelated. He regards it to be a mistake to attribute this view to Hume – the reducibility thesis applies to some relations but not to spatial relations. For discussion of some aspects of this issue, see note 9, above. For a discussion of these issues, see Wilson, ‘Empiricism: Principles and Problems.’ See note 9, above. I. Barrow, The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, p. 152. Ibid.

726 Notes to pages 267–80 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39

Ibid., p. 162. Flew, David Hume, p. 41. Ibid. Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Barrow, The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, p. 152. Arnauld and Nichole, The Art of Thinking, p. 324. This translates Arnauld’s ‘Il est de la nature d’un esprit fini de ne pouvoir comprendre l’infini’; see idem, La logique de Port-Royal. This ‘axiom’ occurs in a chapter titled ‘Quelques axiomes importants et qui peuvent de principes à de grandes vérités’ (Some important axioms which can serve as the basis for great truths). That is, these are ‘clear and indubitable’ truths that can be used ‘for obtaining knowledge of the less obvious’ (The Art of Thinking, p. 323). ‘Nostre ame, estant finie, ne peut comprendre l’infiny.’ Letter to Mersenne, Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. III: 234. Descartes, The Philosophical Writings, II: 81. Ibid. Ibid., p. 98. Ibid., p. 88. See Cantor, ‘Über die verschiedenen Standpunkte in bezug auf das aktuelle Unendliche,’ in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp. 370–7. In this essay, Cantor mentions both Aquinas and Arnauld. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, p. 261. Recall Euclid, Book I, Proposition 10, how any straight line (and therefore any part of any straight line, no matter how small) can be divided into two equal parts. Kemp Smith made this clear. Bayle, The Dictionary Historical and Critical. Descartes, Principles of Philosoophy, p. 256. Ibid., p. 201. Ibid., p. 230. Barrow, The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, p. 154. Hume, Treatise, p. 46n. Barrow, The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, pp. 156–7. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, p. 230. This is the basis of the famous Cartesian argument, cogito, ergo sum: I think (= Here is my thinking, that is, Here is the thinking that is before me), therefore (based on the self-evident principle that every attribute must be in a substance) I am (that is, I, a substance, do exist). Nothing can’t even noth, in spite of what Heidegger claims. But, since nothing does noth for Heidegger, it means that nothing ain’t nothing.

Notes to pages 281–9

727

40 Recall from the preceding chapter that this was a point that Foucher developed against Descartes’s attempt to prove the existence of the objects that cause our perceptions. 41 For Leibniz’s struggles with infinite divisibility and the continuum, see hisLabyrinth of the Continuum. For background to Leibniz, see Brown, ‘The Seventeenth Century Intellectual Background.’ 42 Leibniz, ‘Primary Truths’ (1686), in his Philosophical Essays, p. 34. 43 Ibid. 44 Leibniz, ‘New System of Nature’ (1695), in ibid., p. 146. 45 Compare the discussion of equality in Marina Frasca-Spada, Space and Self in Hume’s ‘Treatise,’ Ch. 3. 46 And, the Phaedo gives it to understand, a form of perfect human virtue. 47 But only the English would measure things with one stone as a standard. 48 Locke is more clear on these topics than is allowed by Woolhouse, ‘Locke’s Idea of Spatial Extension.’ 49 Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, ‘Introduction,’ ¶7–10. 50 Hume, Treatise, pp. 18–19. 51 Ibid., p. 20; cf. Wilson, ‘Hume on the Abstract Idea of Existence.’ John Stuart Mill puts it this way: ‘We may say that objects are formed into classes on account of their resemblance. It is natural to think of like objects together; which is, indeed, one of the two fundamental laws of association’ (‘Notes’ to James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 1: 287). He accepts his father’s point that ‘words become significant purely by association. A word is pronounced in conjunction with an idea; it is pronounced again and again; and, by degrees, the idea and the word become so associated, that the one can never occur without the other’ (Analysis, 1: 262). The term is associated with a class of resembling particular impressions and ideas: ‘Thus I apply the word sweet, first to the lump of sugar in my mouth, next to honey, next to grapes, and so on. It thus becomes associated with numerous modifications of the sensation sweet; and when the association is sufficiently strengthened by repetition, calls them up in such close succession, that they are converted into one complex idea. We are also to remember, that the idea and the name have a mutual power over one another. As the word black calls up the complex idea, so every modification of black calls up the name; and in this, as in other cases, the name actually forms a part of the complex idea’ (1: 298). James Mill suggested that one might be able to reduce association by resemblance to association by contiguity (1: 110–11), but the younger Mill argued for the implausibility of this (‘Notes,’ 1: 111ff.): it is, he said, ‘per-

728 Notes to pages 289–306

52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60

haps the least successful attempt at a generalisation and simplification of the laws of mental phenomena, to be found in the work’ (1: 111). See note 9, above. See also ch. 1, above. Plato, Phaedo, 74d3–e2. And so, for Socrates, the form of perfect human virtue, and for Descartes the form or essence of a perfect cognizer. Flew, David Hume, p. 44. Ibid. The same point holds for Socrates’ moral forms of ideal human virtue: the same mechanism will makes them more substantial and real than they are. They come to have a special sort of reality as standards of action when in fact they are useless and incomprehensible. Hume can thus dismiss the Calvinist ideal of human virtue. Flew, David Hume, p. 44. See note 4, above.

Chapter 4. Hume’s Defence of Empirical Science 1 Wilson, ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with Regard to Reason?’; ‘The Origins of Hume’s Sceptical Argument against Reason’; ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with Regard to the Senses?’ 2 Cf. Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference. 3 Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ are the rules of eliminative induction, that is, what we now refer to as ‘Mill’s Methods.’ Thus, Rule Five is the Method of Difference. Rule Four is a clear statement of the Principle of Determinism, which, as Hume recognizes, is needed as a premise if the Method of Difference and the other eliminative methods are to justify their conclusions. Hume’s statement of these rules is neat, precise, and clear – in fact, it is the first clear statement of those rules; cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study Five, ‘The “Rules by which to Judge of Causes” before Hume.’ One should perhaps note that Hume is less clear on the need for a Principle of Limited Variety alongside the Principle of Determinism. Hume shares this haziness with Mill. Bacon, on the other hand, is perfectly clear on the need for a Principle of Limited Variety, but less clear on the Principle of Determinism. See the study just noted. Many commentators, otherwise very good, fail to note that Hume’s ‘rules’ are the rules of eliminative induction. Thus, for example, Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, recognizes the importance

Notes to page 306

4 5 6

7 8 9

729

of the rules (p. 226), but fails to recognize that they state the eliminative rules of experimental science. He fails to recognize, for example, that Rule Five is the Method of Difference. For our later concern below, in ch. 8, about how Hume justifies his critical realism, we shall see that part of his argument turns on the use of Rule Five, the Method of Difference. If one fails to recognize Rule Five as the valid Method of Difference, as Garrett here fails, then we will not be surprised that such a one also fails to see that Hume’s inference to critical realism, what he calls the ‘system of the philosophers’ – is a reasonable and valid inference, one that fits the best canons of the scientific method – so we will not be surprised to discover that Garrett also misreads Hume on the nature of this inference. See chapter 8, below. For a careful exposition of these rules as part of the logic of science, see Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience. Hume discusses the motive of curiosity in detail, Treatise, Book II, Part iii, Section 10. For details, see Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference. One ignores the role of curiosity in Hume’s philosophy at one’s peril. It is important for the justification of the rules of the scientific method as the rules to which the reasonable person conforms his or her inferences. This we are now arguing. We shall see later that this same motive plays an important role in Hume’s argument justifying critical realism as the reasonable position to adopt. Or so we shall argue in chapter 8, below. Curiosity or the love of truth is discussed at length in Book II of the Treatise. Insofar as it is relevant to the justification of the ‘rules by which to judge of causes,’ this discussion in Book II is relevant to the argument of Book I. We are also suggesting that the discussion of Book II is relevant to the argument of Book I for critical realism. This is why Book I of the Treatise should not be read apart from Book II. And this is why focusing, as so many do, on Book I while ignoring Book II leads to misunderstandings of Book I, as is also true of so many. As I have throughout emphasized, we are indebted to Árdal for bringing to our attention the significance of Book II, for its own sake as well as for our understanding of Book I and, one should also add, of Book III. Indeed, it was his achievement to enable us to see that the Treatise as a whole is a unified work, and that one Part of one book cannot be fully understood apart from the other parts and books and from the whole. Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Section III, Part I. Cf. Hume, The Natural History of Religion, pp. 27, 29. Cf. Cleanthes’ remark that ‘religion, however corrupted, is still better than

730 Notes to pages 307–8

10 11 12 13

no religion at all’; for ‘the proper office of religion is to regulate the hearts of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order and obedience; its operation ... only enforces the motives of morality and conduct.’ Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, pp. 219–20. Jones, Hume’s Sentiments. I have discussed some aspects of Jones’s book in a critical review of it. Cicero, Academica; De Finibus; De Natura Deorum, in Cicero, Works. Árdal, ‘Some Implications of the Virtue of Reasonableness in Hume’s Treatise.’ This notion of reason is, as Árdal insists, only implicit in Hume. For Hume, reason, in its most general sense, is ‘the discovery of truth or falsehood’ (Treatise, p. 458). More specifically, it is identified with the use and deployment of arguments ‘from cause and effect’ (pp. 231, 266). That is, reason is a strategy for the discovery of truth or falsehood. And yet more specifically it is contrasted to superstition (Treatise, pp. 110–11, pp. 271–2), so that reason is a strategy that is good or efficient in the discovery of truth. It is a strategy that is reasonable to adopt relative to the goal of discovery of truth or falsehood. It is this which makes judgments of virtue fundamental to Hume’s philosophy. Árdal takes up this theme, but while he emphasizes the role of reason as a strategy, he makes Hume more a pragmatist than I think he is just by deemphasizing the role of truth – that is, the discovery of truth or falsehood. John Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, in contrast emphasizes reason as that which aims to grasp truth in the sense of objective necessary connections (which is a misreading of Hume), but mysteriously also holds that Hume claims we do not observe necessary connections (which is incorrect). The result is an incoherent Hume, who cannot even think about what he aims to know (cf. Wilson, ‘Wright’s Enquiry concerning Humean Understanding’) and who is a sort of rationalist with a pre-established harmony between human reason and its intended but unthinkable objects (cf. Árdal, ‘Critical Notice of Wright’s The Sceptical Realism of David Hume’). Wright is correct in emphasizing against Árdal that reason aims at truth in the sense of a correspondence between our ideas and reality, but is incorrect in failing to recognize that this reality consists only of the world which we know through sense experience – though, of course, we also have good reason to believe that world we experience contains unexperienced parts (Treatise, p. 132). The point is that these parts are like (generically at least, if not specifically [ibid., p. 68]) the impressions we experience, whereas the objective necessities of the rationalists are not among nor are they like anything among the entities we experience. On some of these points, see also Wilson, ‘Acquaintance, Ontology, and

Notes to pages 308–10

14 15 16 17 18

19

20 21

22 23

731

Knowledge’ and ‘Effability, Ontology and Method’; and, on Hume specifically, Wilson, ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with regard to the Senses?’ In the context it is perhaps also worth mentioning that reason is sometimes identified by Hume with a priori reason (Treatise, pp. 97, 157) which proceeds by demonstration, and is then contrasted (p. 170) to causal reason, which proceeds by ‘proofs and probabilities’ (p. 124). In this sense it is reason, and reason alone, that (p. 70) yields the sort of knowledge that in infallible and that has that absolute certainty which causal reason, being fallible, cannot attain (pp. 79–80, 165–6). This use of ‘reason’ ties in with the traditional idea – deriving from Aristotle and passing down to and through Descartes – that knowledge must be scientia, and infallible. It was the effect of Locke’s work to untie the connection between reason and infallible certainty and thereby make room for (what is contradictory in traditional terms) fallible knowledge or probable knowledge. Cf. Hacking, The Emergence of Probability (London, 1975); and Wilson, ‘Critical Notice of Hacking’s The Emergence of Probability.’ And also, of course, chapter 2, above. If this note has a moral, it is that one must try to keep Hume’s various uses of ‘reason’ distinct. Most ‘Philosophy 100’–type discussions of Hume apparently do not do this, and take ‘reason’ to be the reason of the traditional rationalist scientia. As a consequence, the traditional misreading of Hume as a Pyrrhonist is easily perpetuated. Jones (Hume’s Sentiments, p. 174), like Árdal, emphasizes the role of moderation in Hume’s philosophy, both in morals and politics and in epistemology. Hume, Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, p. 127. Ibid., p. 130. Cf. Wilson, ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with Regard to Reason?’ Popkin, ‘David Hume: His Pyrrhonism and His Critique of Pyrrhonism’; J. Passmore, Hume’s Intentions; N. Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume. Cf. Wilson, ‘Mill’s Proof That Happiness Is the Criterion of Morality,’ for a proof that this principle is indeed the converse of ought implies can. I have also shown in detail how Hume defends accepting this principle in Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, chapter 2. Cf. Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference. Jones does not appeal explicitly to the must implies ought principle, but as I read the passages cited, they jointly and cumulatively make the relevant points. Lenz, ‘Hume’s Defense of Causal Inference’; N. Capaldi, David Hume; Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity.’ Cf. Wilson, ‘Mill’s Proof That Happiness Is the Criterion of Morality.’

732 Notes to pages 310–13 24 Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity’ and Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, chapter 1. 25 Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity.’ 26 Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité. 27 Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, also emphasizes the connection of Hume to Malebranche. 28 Arnauld and Nicole, The Art of Thinking. 29 Cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought: Seven Studies, Study One. 30 Cf. Wilson, ‘Critical Notice of Hacking.’ 31 Cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study One. 32 Cf. Wilson, ‘Acquaintance, Ontology, and Knowledge.’ 33 I have defended this account of causation in detail in Wilson, Laws and Other Worlds; see also Wilson, Explanation, Causation and Deduction. 34 Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity.’ 35 Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy (p. 106), draws a useful parallel to Hume’s discussion of virtue. There are two definitions of virtue. There is, on the one hand, a first definition, one based on objective features in the world: ‘Personal Merit consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities, useful or agreeable to the person himself, or to others’ (Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, §226). Then there is, on the other hand, the subjective definition: ‘The hypothesis which we embrace is plain ... It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation (Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, §239). We have, then, in the case of value judgments, an objective quality of things that evokes a certain characteristic subjective psychological response, one of moral approbation or approval (or disapprobation or disapproval). This is, of course, precisely why Hume is correctly characterized as defending an emotive theory of ethics. The case of causation is parallel. There is an objective feature of the world, namely, a constant conjunction. Where such an objective feature evokes a certain subjective attitude, there we have a causal necessity. It was because of this resemblance of Hume’s account of causation with an emotive theory of ethics that I have elsewhere spoken of Hume’s ‘emotive theory of causation.’ See Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity.’ Garrett seems unaware of this discussion. [Having mentioned Hume’s emotivism, one feature of it should perhaps be noted. The point is that Hume’s is of course not a crude emotivism of the

Notes to page 313

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sort proposed by A.J. Ayer or C.L. Stevenson. For these latter, what is evoked is simple feelings of pleasure or, at best, attitudes of liking. Hume, in contrast, recognizes that the attitude evoked must be specifically moral: it is the attitude of moral approbation (or moral disapprobation). Hume can thus capture the distinction between interest and duty where Ayer and Stevenson cannot.] 36 Fogelin in his Hume’s Scepticism, after presenting the two definitions, takes up a number of issues and a number of other passages from Hume, then throws up his hands, and says that ‘I confess that I do not know how bring these passages into adjustment’ (p. 40). When he later comes to state Hume’s account of causation (p. 50), he takes it as given by Hume’s first definition alone. Fogelin does not recognize that Hume needs both definitions if he is to distinguish causal regularities from accidental generalities. Interestingly, Traiger, in his review of Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, argues that Hume’s Defence misconstrues Fogelin’s Hume’s Scepticism. Traiger contends that Fogelin, contrary to what Hume’s Defence asserts, does take seriously both of Hume’s two definitions of ‘cause.’ But it is Traiger who misreads Fogelin: the latter rests content with saying that he cannot make sense of the two definitions and goes on in his discussion of Hume on causation to ignore the second. That is not taking seriously the second definition. Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, does rather better than Fogelin: he does notice the significance of the subjective side of causation captured in Hume’s second definition. However, he fails to note (pp. 107ff) that Hume is specific regarding the features of the subjective attitude that are important, viz., prediction and the assertion of subjunctive conditionals – that is, precisely those things which more recent philosophers have said are characteristic of lawful or causal regularities. See, for example, Chisholm, ‘Law Statements and Counterfactual Inference.’ If Hume is to be of more than historical interest – as say Aldrich, for example, is not – and if Hume is going to have more than the dubious distinction of being the (mere) awakener of Kant, then it is necessary to show how his works can stand alongside more recent discussions. Garrett does not always see those features which make Hume’s work of continuing philosophical relevance and which make his positions still candidates for the solutions of the problems he was attempting to confront. 37 Hume distinguishes a natural tendency as something essential or necessary (Treatise, p. 484) and would have it that a tendency is natural as a malady is natural (pp. 225–6). It is natural tendencies in the former sense that constitute Hume’s naturalism – that is, the naturalism that provides the reply to

734 Notes to pages 318–19

38 39 40

41

42 43 44 45

the sceptic; tendencies that are natural in this sense of ‘necessary’ provide the starting point of the must implies ought inference we havealready discussed (and will return to below). The rationalist idea of cause or of necessary connection is not natural in this sense. But it is natural in the other sense. The clear thinker can, in principle at least, keep the two definitions of ‘cause’ distinct and not fall into the illusion of the existence of an objective necessary connection (p. 170); but there are tendencies in thought that lead the inattentive mind (which is what most of us are, most of the time) to fuse – that is, confuse – the two distinct ideas of ‘cause’ (pp. 168–9). That most of us most of the time speak as if there were objective necessary connections – even Hume acknowledges that he so speaks (pp. 273–4) – is thus understandable in naturalistic terms. It is natural as diseases are natural. Recall Malebranche’s jugements naturels that ‘se font en nous, sans nous, et même malgré nous’ (Recherche 1: 52; italics added). For greater detail, cf. Wilson. Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, ch. 2. Others have proposed that Hume accepts causal inference to be rationally justified. Often enough, however, they do not proceed beyond this. Thus, for example, consider Beauchamp and Rosenberg, Hume and the Problem of Causation. Traiger, in his review of Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, argues contrary to the suggestion in Hume’s Defence that Beauchamp and Rosenberg do attempt to justify Hume’s rules for rational evaluation of causal judgments. Beauchamp and Rosenberg do state that ‘Hume distinguishes between experimentally well-grounded beliefs and those that are purely artificial or associational’ (Hume and the Problem of Causation, p. 54). But they also state that Hume does not ‘demand a rational justification of the entire institution of inductive procedures’ (p. 41). Hume’s Defence, as the title indicates, argues that Hume does provide such a justification. The closest that Beauchamp and Rosenberg come to justifying Hume’s rules as opposed to other possible inductive procedures is this: ‘The reflective life of wide experience enables one to test customs and displace then with more adequately grounded beliefs’ (p. 54; their italics). This is satisfactory as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. Traiger doesn’t see this point. Wittgenstein puts it this way: ‘I might also put it like this: the “law of induction” can no more be grounded than certain particular propositions concerning the material of experience’ (On Certainty, ¶499). Malebranche, however, does discuss the passion of curiosity; cf. Recherche 2: 14ff. Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, ch. 2. Stroud, Hume, p. 91. See Treatise, I, iii, 15, pp. 173–4. For discussion, see Wilson, Hume’s Defence of

Notes to pages 319–20

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Causal Inference, ch. 2, section 2; and The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience, ch. 3. 46 Cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study Five, ‘The “Rules by which to Judge of Causes” Before Hume.’ 47 See Bergmann, Philosophy of Science, ch. 2; Brodbeck, ‘Explanation, Prediction, and “Imperfect” Knowledge’; Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience, ch. 3. For the importance of this ideal in understanding scientific explanation, see Wilson, Explanation, Causation, and Deduction. 48 This existence claim means that the principle is not falsifiable (by a single experiment). Contrary to Popper, it does not follow that it is non-scientific; cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience, ch. 3. Nor does it follow that the principle is somehow a priori, as asserted by Lewis White Beck, ‘A Prussian Hume and a Scottish Kant,’ who suggests that Hume is somehow an ur-Kantian; see Wilson, ‘Is There a Prussian Hume?’ The confirmation of the principle by observational data is discussed in Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, ch. 2, section 4. There is an issue at this point that should be mentioned. Hume does seem to be in a bit of a conflict with himself here. On the one hand, in the section of the Treatise on ‘Unphilosophical Probability’ (I, iii, 13), he objects (pp. 146f.) to induction by simple enumeration as an unsound rule of inference. On the other hand, when he comes to state the fourth of his ‘rules by which to judge of causes’ – the same cause, same effect, and same effect, same cause rule – he appears to suggest that it is based on induction by simple enumeration. Hume, it would seem, cannot have it both ways. He does recognize the difference, however. When he objects to simple enumeration (in the way Bacon objects to it), he does so on the grounds that at the level of specific hypotheses one must eliminate competing hypotheses, and not rely only on positive instances. But in the case of the casual principle, ‘same cause, same effect ...,’ one is at a very generic level of hypotheses, and at the most generic level occupied by the causal principle the only competing hypothesis is its denial. So the grounds for rejecting the simple enumeration rule at the specific level do not apply at this generic level, and hence the reliance on simple enumeration at this level is sound. John Stuart Mill sees these points perhaps a bit more clearly than does Hume; certainly, he is more explicit in his discussion. I have therefore tried to use Mill to shed light on Hume’s case in Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference. Traiger, in his review of Hume’s Defence, objects to this attempt to clarify Hume’s discussion by appeal to John Stuart Mill. But by referring to Mill, Hume’s Defence argues that Hume’s two discussions concerning simple

736 Notes to pages 321–6

49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

enumeration can be reconciled, along the lines we have indicated just above and that can be found also in Mill. If one is trying to see what exactly Hume’s defence of causal inference comes to, an appeal to Mill to help clarify issues would not seem to be out of place. It is not clear why Traiger finds this objectionable. Traiger argues, critically, in his review of Wilson’s Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, that Hume’s Defence ignores certain aspects of Ducasse’s discussion, Nature, Mind, and Death, of Hume’s account of causation. Specifically, with regard to Ducasse, Hume’s Defence deals with the latter’s claim that Hume’s regularity account of causation cannot account for our making causal judgments based on a single case. But we often make such judgments – Ducasse gives an example – and then draws the conclusion that the regularity view cannot be correct, since there has been no observed repetition on which to base a judgment of regularity. Hume’s Defence argues, contrary to Ducasse, that one can in fact see how Hume can legitimately argue (as he does in the Treatise, p. 104) that we infer causal relations based on a single experiment provided that we allow the background use of his ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ (See also Wilson, ‘Hume and Ducasse on Causal Inference from a Single Experiment.’) When Ducasse discusses the point (Nature, Mind, and Death, p. 96, section 4) he does not refer to the possible use of Hume’s rules to avoid the difficulty that he raises. Traiger argues that Ducasse does indeed refer to Hume’s rules. This is true; Ducasse does deal with them in his section 5. But he does not refer to these rules when he discusses inferring causes from a single experiment in section 4. In any case, when Ducasse does look at Hume’s rules in section 5, he does not recognize that they are a statement of the rules of eliminative induction. Traiger’s criticism is unwarranted. Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity.’ Jones (Hume’s Sentiments, p. 79) does discuss this essay, but he does not take up the points we shall be making. Hume, History of England, 10 vols. (London, 1808–10). Hume, ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm,’ p. 146. Ibid. p. 147. Ibid. p. 149. Cf. n8, above. Hume, ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm,’ p. 149. Hume, ‘Of the Original Contact,’ in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, p. 464. Cf. Wilson, ‘Review of Jay Newman, Foundations of Religious Tolerance.

Notes to pages 326–7

737

60 For some excellent discussion of reason as a virtue, see Code, Epistemic Responsibility; see especially pp. 50ff. 61 Code, Epistemic Responsibility, looks back to Aristotle for the notion of an intellectual virtue (see pp. 51ff.), rather than to Hume. She dismisses the latter on grounds that he construes a person as a bundle of perceptions (cf. p. 111n), as if Hume could not also hold that a person is an organized bundle, and in particular, a bundle that includes various passions which in turn yield for the bundle various teleological organizations. Among those passions is that of curiosity which shapes how the bundle organizes itself cognitively. Code does recognize, however, with Hume, that virtues are ‘beneficial human qualities’ (p. 59). They benefit both oneself and others, though as she does remark, it is ‘not always clear whom they [the virtues] benefit’ (p. 59). In locating benefits as the mark of a virtue, Code is locating her view in the tradition of Hume as much as in the tradition of Aristotle. She misses this point about Hume. In her view, to characterize the self or person as a ‘bundle’ is to ‘dissolve’ the self (p. 111n), not noticing that that characterization of the self as a ‘bundle’ is meant to dissolve the Cartesian position according to which the self is a simple substance. It is not meant to deny that the bundle can have a structure (as we have seen in chapter 2). It is just that the structure is not that of the Cartesian (or Kantian) ego. Hume does allow, quite clearly, that among the parts of the bundle are the passions. These provide the ends that determine a teleological structure or structures for the bundle. These structures include the cognitive structures shaped by the love of truth, that is, the pattern of curiosity. Code too readily infers that, since we have no idea of the self as a simple substance, then there is nothing more to a Humean self than a mere heap or bundle; here, she is ignoring the comments on the idea of the self that Hume makes in Book II of the Treatise. Like too many critics of Hume, Code looks only at Book I of the Treatise and ignores the fact that there is also a Book II and a Book III. She is led to infer that since the self is not Cartesian, there is no self, and thus misses the fact that our idea of the self can be a complex idea that includes a structure or pattern. In discussing the self as a bundle in Book I, Hume, as we noted in chapter 2, does mention that the bundle could have the unity of a teleological structure, as plants and animals have unity given by their teleological structures, but he does not there develop that notion. For that development requires a discussion of the passions as determining the ends towards which a person strives, and the discussion of the passions comes only in Book II. By ignoring Book II, Code falls into the traditional reading of Hume as a sceptic about the self. This is

738 Notes to page 327 unfortunate, since her position is much more Humean than it is either Aristotelian (which is how, with certain qualifications, she identifies herself [see pp. 59ff.]) or Kantian (whose position she also, again unfortunately, suggests is better than Hume’s – unfortunate because not only is Kant the worst disaster to hit logic, as John Venn said, but he is also, as Russell once said, the worst disaster to hit philosophy). The thought which Code shares and which is all too common – that Kant is superior to Hume in allowing for mental activity, for a mind that is active and reflective on its own activities – is shown to be spurious in Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity’ and ‘Is There a Prussian Hume?’ Baier has subsequently argued in detail that the alleged superiority of Kant is simply not there: a Humean mind is an active mind, and self-reflective; see her A Progress of Sentiments. In fact, of course, in making the source of mental activity the transcendental or noumenal self, Kant is retreating to the Cartesian position that the active self is something outside the empirical or sensible world that is the world of everyday life. Such a self violates the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance. It moreover is secure to carry on its activities, whatever they are, free from criticism derived from actual practice in the world of everyday experience. Once one conjures up an activity for the transcendental self, one will no longer be worried that mere practice could challenge the appropriateness of that activity. The Kantian self is there for those who would like to secure their idea of reason as one that we supposedly can know a priori to be the right reason. One’s decision that such and such is the concept of reason is rendered immune from criticism. That may be a good thing, in the eyes at least of those who would defend that concept of reason, but for those who think reflection and criticism to be a good thing, this is hardly a virtue. The whole point of empiricism is to bring reason under the critical control of itself as rooted in our experience of the everyday world; a reason rooted in a self that transcends that world is immune from such criticism The critical philosophy is simply not in this sense critical: that, in fact, should be seen as the whole point of the Kantian critical philosophy, and should be seen as the real basis for the common preference of Kant to Hume. Putting one’s favoured ideology into Kantian clothes protects it from criticism: that is a common ploy, but hardly to be recommended to those would aim to be cognitively virtuous. Reflective criticism is available, as it were, only if one adopts the Humean philosophy. Since Code’s aim is to critically evaluate notions of reason, she would therefore be better to look to Hume for inspiration rather than Kant. Unfortunately, Code accepts – uncritically – the common but mistaken line

Notes to pages 327–31

62 63 64 65

739

of thought, deriving from Reid and Green, which makes the Humean mind passive and which takes that as ground for reckoning Kant superior to Hume. There is in fact rather less philosophical substance in Kant than in Hume. Kant’s appeal is the capacity to render one’s favourite notion of reason immune from criticism grounded in our everyday experience of the everyday world. That is good for ideology, but hardly good for those moved by the passion of curiosity; it is good for superstition but hardly for philosophy. And remember, the errors of religion are dangerous, those of philosophy only ridiculous. See also the ‘Appendix’ to chapter 1, above. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, p. 278. Ibid., p. 279. Ibid., p. 287. The inference is clearly reasonable. If ‘Pp’ means ‘p is permitted,’ ‘Op’ means ‘p is obligatory,’ and ‘N’ represents necessity, then the reasonable person conforms his moral discourse to the principle that (*)

~[Np & (O~p v P~p)].

For if p is necessary, then to make ~p obligatory would be futile, as indeed it would be even just to allow that ~p is permitted: to allow ~p when it cannot be is to court frustration, and to make ~p obligatory when it cannot be done is to make frustration obligatory. So principle (*) is one that a reasonable person would adopt. But by the usual rules of logic, (*) is logically equivalent to Np —> (Pp & Op). But, given that Op —> Pp this last is logically equivalent to Np —> Op which asserts that ‘must implies ought.’ We may conclude, then, that the reasonable person will conform his normative discourse to the principle that must implies ought. For greater detail, see Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, ch. 2, section 5.

740 Notes to pages 333–53 Chapter 5. Hume on Testimony and Its Epistemological Problems 1 Compare the discussion of these topics, and in particular the reliance on the chain of testimony, in Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, ch. 3. 2 Coady, Testimony: A Philosophical Study. For other sorts of criticism, see Hribek, ‘Against Coady on Hume on Testimony.’ 3 Salmon, Logic. 4 We have seen this example before and we will see it again; understanding it is of central importance in understanding Hume’s views on rational scientific inference. 5 Inferences of this sort we have discussed in ch. 4, and we shall find in ch. 8 that these same sorts of inference are central to Hume’s defence of his critical realism. 6 Descartes, Discourse on Method, in Philosophical Essays, p. 12. 7 Hribek, ‘Against Coady on Hume on Testimony’ (p. 192), draws our attention to this passage. 8 But Hume argues that the effects of education are often perverse. Thus, ‘as education is an artificial and not a natural cause, and as its maxims are frequently contrary to reason, and even to themselves in different times and places, it is never upon that account recognized by philosophers; though in reality it be built almost on the same foundation of custom and repetition as our reasonings from causes and effects’ (Treatise, Book I, Part iii, Section 5, ‘Of the effects of other relations,’ p. 117). This is why, in the Dialogues on Natural Religion, Pamphilus, the student of Cleanthes, and educated by him, can so perversely hold and continue to hold that Cleanthes wins the argument against Philo, when it is clear to everyone – that is, the reader – that it is Philo who has the sounder argument. Education is an art, but not always an art used for the end of truth: its product is too often simple conformity to the beliefs of one’s teacher – as in the case of Pamphilus. By the way, the case of Pamphilus shows why Loeb is wrong when he argues, Stability and Justification in Hume’s Treatise, that for Hume the cognitive goal of the philosopher is simply stability of belief: Pamphilus’ belief is certainly stable but nonetheless unjustified – it does not stand up to scrutiny by one who is moved by the goal of curiosity, the love of truth. 9 Compare Fricker, ‘Telling and Trusting: Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony.’ 10 Thomas Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, in his Works, Chapter VI, section xxiv, ‘Of the Analogy between Perception and Human Testimony.’ 11 Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ¶509.

Notes to pages 355–63

741

12 Ibid., ¶170. First italics added, second italics Wittgenstein’s. 13 For the following formulations, see Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, pp. 364f. 14 Cf. Burge, ‘Content Preservation.’ 15 Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, places the principles (a)–(c) in the context of educational practices; see his pp. 364ff. 16 Coady seems unaware of the essay by Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity’ which makes the point strongly that it is simply incorrect to suggest that the Humean mind is merely passive and argues that one cannot do justice to Hume if one ignores the fact that for him, scientific reasoning – thinking like a philosopher and not like the vulgar – is something that presupposes the active engagement of the mind with the world about which it is reasoning. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments (1991), takes up a number of the themes of ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity,’ also arguing that the Humean mind or person is actively engaged in the process of coming to know. 17 Compare Bonjour: What makes us cognitive beings at all is our capacity for belief, and the goal of our distinctly cognitive endeavours is truth; we want our beliefs to correctly and accurately depict the world ... [Unlike God] we have no immediate and unproblematic access to truth, and it is for this reason that justification comes into the picture. The basic role of justification is that of a means to truth, a more directly attainable goal. We cannot, in most cases at least, bring it about directly that our beliefs are true, but we can presumably bring it about directly ... that they are epistemically justified. It follows that one’s cognitive ends are epistemically justified only if and to the extent that they are aimed at this goal, which means, very roughly that one accepts all and only those beliefs which one has good reason to think are true. To accept a belief in the absence of such a reason, however appealing or even mandatory from some other standpoint, is to neglect the pursuit of truth; such acceptance is, one might say, epistemically irresponsible. My contention here is that the idea of avoiding such irresponsibility, of being epistemically responsible in one’s believings, is the core of the notion of epistemic justification. (Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, pp. 7–8) It is this notion that we must use when thinking about Hume’s account of our knowledge of the external world. It does not follow that we must accept Bonjour’s coherence account of

742 Notes to pages 365–7 justification. For discussion of this account of justification and of its relevance to Hume’s account of our knowledge of the external world, see ch. 6. 18 Cf. Code, Epistemic Responsibility, p. 62. Code goes on to wonder whether we would reckon someone epistemically virtuous if they were such in their professional life – for example, as a scientist or a teacher – but were otherwise dogmatic, or regularly careless with the evidence, or shallow in reasoning, or less than forthcoming with relevant data (see ibid., p. 63). 19 Coady is not alone in attributing a narrow sort of atomistic individualism to Hume. Lorraine Code notes that ‘there is a long epistemological tradition for which knowledge-seeking is essentially individualistic’ (ibid., p. 60). But in fact, Code argues, the benefit should also be to others. Coady no doubt would agree. But contrary to what they both seem to suppose, so would Hume. As the latter makes clear, forms of behaviour that are virtuous are beneficial to oneself and to others. This is hardly the atomism, social and cognitive – the isolated atomism, where atoms do not bind together into molecules and into more complex structures, but are closed to other atoms, merely bumping into them and bouncing off – the atomism that both Code and Coady attribute to Hume. 20 One should note that Hume as a Tory (of sorts) clearly rejects any sort of position that would, like Rawls’s, have us reason ourselves into a political order from an ‘original position’ behind a ‘veil of ignorance,’ where it is assumed one knows nothing of the sort of person one will become in the new social order into which one, with others, contracts. One enters into a political order just as one enters into a cognitive order, with a set of beliefs and passions and habits of behaviour. I wish to enter society, not devoid of all being and sense of who I am, but as a Canadian, in a (Humean) sort of contract with other Canadians: that is who I am as a political person. There is no a priori politics, no more than there is an a priori cognitive order. Hume saw through both. I often disagree with Don Livingston, but on this matter I think we agree. The social atomism created by Rawls with his veil of ignorance is as devoid of real humanity as is the Cartesian ego made devoid of knowledge by the method of doubt. In both cases the result is the same: one can’t stay where one is but one can’t get anywhere else. In both cases, Hume saw clearly the inhumanity of the atomism that was being advocated. Chapter 6. Knowledge 1 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book II, chapter 4. 2 Ibid., I, 13. 3 Ibid., VI, 6.

Notes to pages 373–84 4 5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12

13

14 15 16 17 18

743

Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, p. 31; emphasis added. Ibid., p. 268. Ibid., p. 271. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge, p. 34. Ayer’s definition was subsequently taken up by Chisholm; see the latter’s Perceiving: A Philosophical Study, p. 15. Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, p. 113. Russell, Problems of Philosophy, p. 76. Gettier, ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’ Oddly, Gettier makes no reference to Russell’s earlier but more perspicuous argument. The puzzle that Gettier presents was in fact dissolved/resolved by Russell. A lot of ink was spilled in response to Gettier’s example; it might have been saved had Russell’s work been known or acknowledged. Those who don’t know their history are condemned to repeat it, here as elsewhere. This is standardly a basic inference pattern in systems of (formal) logic. For a history of this industry, see Shope, The Analysis of Knowledge. No doubt it was largely driven by the need for doctoral candidates to find topics for their theses. The search for counter-examples to counter-examples to counter-examples and so on was a style made popular by Chisholm: it was easy, so it became popular. Unfortunately it is not philosophically very fruitful, no doubt it is the least welcome part of Chisholm’s heritage. The common usage of the term ‘Chisholming’ as applied to working out a definition reflects this common judgment. ‘~p’ represents ‘not-p.’ It is defined by the following truth table: p

~p

T F

F T

These conditions were first articulated by Johnson; see his Logic, 1: 30ff. Cf. Moore, Ethics. Unger, ‘Our Knowledge of the Material World,’ p. 48. Mackie, ‘The Possibility of Innate Knowledge,’ p. 249. Mackie introduces this term in his ‘Causes and Conditions.’ It is the same as the notion of ‘imperfect knowledge,’ which was earlier delineated by Bergmann; see his Philosophy of Science, ch. 2. For the importance of this notion for various aspects of the philosophy of science, see Wilson, Explanation, Causation, and Deduction and Empiricism and Darwin’s Science. Also for some applications of these notions, see Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience.

744 Notes to pages 384–95 19 Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition, p. 51. See also his ‘Reliablism: What Is Justified Belief?’ 20 Cf. Armstrong, Belief, Truth, and Knowledge; Goldman, ‘Reliablism: What Is Justified Belief?’ and Epistemology and Cognition. 21 Cf. Fumerton, ‘The Internalism/Externalism Controversy.’ 22 Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume and Ducasse on Causal Inference from a Single Experiment.’ 23 Sosa, ‘Philosophical Scepticism,’ p. 289. 24 Ibid., p. 273. 25 Ibid., p. 282. 26 Ibid., p. 284. 27 Stroud, ‘Philosophical Scepticism,’ p. 305. 28 Alston, The Reliability of Sense Perception, p. 16. 29 Ibid., p. 17. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., p. 125. 32 Ibid., p. 126. 33 Note that this is an ‘inference to the best explanation,’ in Harman’s sense; cf. his discussion in his Thought. See also note 36, below. 34 They can! 35 Davidson, ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Interpretation,’ pp. 310, 311. 36 Something like this ideal of coherence as explanation was proposed by Harman, Thought, who spoke of acceptance being justified insofar as it involves ‘inference to the best explanation.’ Unfortunately, he never clearly stated what was to count as one explanation being better than another. On this point, he would have done well to consult Bergmann, Philosophy of Science, ch. 2. The idea was already present, though in somewhat different form, in Ewing, Idealism, pp. 228ff. Harman does not note such antecedents. 37 Bergmann, Philosophy of Science, ch. 2. See also Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience, ch. 3. 38 Cf. Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience, ch. 3. 39 For a careful use of the idea, though without reference to Bergmann’s work, and without reference to the idea of the unification of specific laws by abstract generic theories, see Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, pp. 96ff. 40 This sort of subjectivism is now called ‘internal realism.’ Putnam is one of its advocates; see, for example, his The Many Faces of Realism. The rule for choosing among the different internally realistic systems might be to the effect that one ought to choose the system that makes one happiest. It is a rule that Sextus would likely have found acceptable. Hume considers such

Notes to pages 395–407

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

745

a philosophic choice to be based on the ‘spleen and indolence’ of the chooser (Treatise, p. 270), and for Hume that is not to make it a reasonable principle for choosing (272). On Hume’s way of choosing, more in ch. 8. Cf. Fumerton, ‘A Critique of Coherentism.’ Cf. ibid., p. 242. Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, p. 105. Fumerton, ‘A Critique of Coherentism,’ p. 243. Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, pp. 11, 26, 117. Ibid. p. 121. Ibid., p. 122. Lehrer, ‘Reply to My Critics,’ p. 274. Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, pp. 123f. Ibid. Cf. Everitt and Fisher, Modern Epistemology, p. 121. Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, p. 117. (The terminology of ‘language-entry transition’ derives from Wilfrid Sellars.) Ibid. Ibid., p. 140. Ibid., p. 141. Bonjour is not the only coherentist to appeal to something like spontaneity to bridge the gap that confronts the coherentist between subjective and objective justification; cf. Davidson, ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,’ p. 318. Ibid., p. 104. Ibid., p. 127; his italics. Ibid., p. 130. Ibid., p. 113. Cf. Goldman, ‘The Internalist Conception of Justification,’ p. 34; Sosa, ‘Philosophical Scepticism and Epistemic Circularity,’ p. 273. James, Principles of Psychology, 2: 296–7. This is one of the main points of Moore’s ‘Refutation of Idealism,’ in his Philosophical Studies. See Lewis, ‘Moore’s Realism,’ ch. 1. See also Wilson, ‘Moore’s Refutation of Idealism.’ James, Principles of Psychology, 2: 206; his italics. Ibid., p. 205. Ibid., p. 287. Quinton, ‘The Problem of Perception,’ p. 31; italics added. Everitt and Fisher, Modern Epistemology: An Introduction, p. 75. Ibid., pp. 84–5. Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, p. 32. Ibid., p. 33.

746 Notes to pages 407–26 71 72 73 74

We have argued this point in ch. 2. Moore, ‘Proof of an External World,’ Philosophical Papers, p. 135. Ibid., p. 133. Prichard, ‘History of the Theory of Knowledge: Hume,’ in his Knowledge and Perception, p. 196. 75 Prichard, ‘Mr. Bertrand Russell on Our Knowledge of the External World,’ in ibid., p. 17. 76 Ibid., p. 18. 77 Ibid., p. 27. 78 Ibid., p. 31. 79 Ibid., p. 33. 80 Prichard, ‘The Sense Datum Fallacy,’ in ibid., pp. 200–14. 81 Prichard, ‘History of the Theory of Knowledge: Descartes’s Meditations,’ in ibid., pp. 87f. 82 Ibid., p. 63. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., p. 66. 85 Chisholm, ‘A Version of Foundationalism,’ p. 297. 86 Ibid., p. 298. 87 Ibid. There are details into which it is not necessary to go. 88 Ibid. 89 Sellars, ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,’ pp. 298–9. 90 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1112b12. 91 See Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study One. 92 We have seen this inference already in our discussion of Hume’s justification of inductive inference, in ch. 4, above. 93 Russell, Theory of Knowledge. p. 160; referring to A. Meinong, Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens, p. 32. 94 Russell, Theory of Knowledge, p. 161. 95 Ibid., pp. 161–2. 96 Ibid., p. 163. 97 Ibid., p. 166. 98 Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, p. 273. 99 Alston, ‘Concepts of Epistemic Justification,’ in Epistemic Justification, p. 111. See also his ‘The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification,’ in ibid., p. 152. 100 Chisholm, ‘Freedom and Action,’ p. 12. 101 For greater detail on Spinoza’s treatment of the issue, locating that treat-

Notes to pages 428–49

102 103 104

105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

747

ment in a more Spinozistic context, see Wilson, Socrates, Lucretius, Camus, chapter 4. References are to Spinoza, The Ethics, located by Book followed by Proposition or Corollary or Definition. Weston La Barre, The Human Animal, quoted in Kai Nielson, ‘Linguistic Philosophy and “The Meaning of Life,”’ p. 197. Assuming that A is the only sufficient condition for B – in which case, if we assume that every event has a cause (i.e., that a necessary condition for an event to occur that it have a sufficient condition) – then A is also necessary for B. If there are other sufficient conditions or other necessary conditions, it becomes more complicated but not significantly different. Waxman, Hume’s Theory of Consciousness, pp. 6–7. Ibid., p. 272. Chisholm, ‘The Concept of Empirical Evidence,’ p. 730. Ibid., p. 731. Malcolm, ‘Knowledge and Belief.’ Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., his italics. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 21; his italics. Wittgenstein, On Certainty. References are by numbered paragraph. Moore, ‘Proof of the External World,’ in Philosophical Papers. Moore, Philosophical Papers, p. 250. Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, p. 125.

Chapter 7. Naturalism and Scepticism 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Moore, ‘A Defence of Common Sense,’ in his Philosophical Papers. This list is the initial part of the list that Moore gives; see ibid., pp. 33–4. Ibid., pp. 38ff. Ibid., pp. 37–8. Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 131. Moore, ‘A Defence of Common Sense,’ Philosophical Papers, 37–8. Hume extols the virtue of the Englishman: ‘There are in England, in particular, many honest gentlemen, who being alway’s employ’d in their domestic affairs, or amusing themselves in common recreations, have carried their thoughts very little beyond those objects, which are everyday expos’d to their senses. And indeed, of such as these I pretend not to make philosophers, nor do I expect them either to be associates in their researches or

748 Notes to pages 449–61

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

auditors of these discoveries. They do well to keep themselves in their present situation; and instead of refining them into philosophers, I wish we cou’d communicate to our founders of systems, a share of this gross earthy mixture, as an ingredient, which they commonly stand much in need of, and which wou’d serve to temper those fiery particles, of which they are compos’d. While a warm imagination is allow’d to enter into philosophy, and hypotheses embrac’d merely for being specious and agreeable, we can never have any steady principles, nor any sentiments, which will suit with common practice and experience. But were these hypotheses once remov’d, we might hope to establish a system or set of opinions, which, if not true (for that, perhaps, is too much to be hop’d for) might at least be satisfactory to the human mind, and might stand the test of the most critical examinations’ (Hume, Treatise, p. 272). Broad, in his obituary of Moore, suggests that Moore has the virtues of both the philosopher and the Englishman, without their vices: ‘Apart from his immense analytic power Moore’s most noticeable characteristic was his absolutely single-minded desire to discover truth and avoid error and confusion. Fundamentally he was a man of simple tastes and character, absolutely devoid of all affectation, pose and flummery. He throughly enjoyed the simple human pleasures of eating and drinking, walking, gardening, talking to his friends, playing with his children, and so on. It is because ordinary unpretending Englishmen are so often muddle-headed, and intellectuals so often cracked and conceited, that Moore, who combined the virtues of both and had the vices of neither, was so exceptional a character and lovable personality’ (‘G.E. Moore,’ reprinted in Moore’s Philosophical Papers, p. 12). Moore, ‘A Defence of Common Sense,’ in ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 43; his italics, save on ‘betray.’ Ibid., p. 55. Reid, Works. Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., p. 438. Ibid., p. 432. Moore, ‘A Defence of Common Sense,’ in Philosophical Papers, p. 52. Sextus Empiricus, Works, II: 267. Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 93. Ibid. We shall return to this discussion in chapter 8. Prichard, Knowledge and Perception, p. 177. Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, p. 30. See Lewis and Langford, Symbolic Logic, pp. 372ff., 423ff.

Notes to pages 461–74 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

749

Cf. Butler, ‘Hume’s Impressions,’ p. 131. Ibid., p. 127. Ibid., p. 129. Ibid., pp. 128–9. Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, p. 29. For a careful analysis of this notion and its place in psychology, see Wilson, ‘Some Controversies about Method in Nineteenth-Century Psychology.’ Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, p. 23. Cf. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, chapters 14 to 19. Also Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, chapter 8. Cf. Humphrey, Thinking, chapter 1. Also Bergmann, ‘Intentionality.’ Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief, p. 22. Butler, ‘Hume’s Impressions,’ p. 129. Waxman, Hume’s Theory of Consciousness, pp. 6–7. We discussed Waxman’s reading of Hume towards the end of the preceding chapter 6. Basson, Hume, p. 37. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 26. Flew, Hume’s Theory of Belief, p. 25. Ibid., p. 26. Ibid. Noxon, Hume’s Philosophical Development, pp. 14–15. In Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, tautologies and contradictions are sinnlos, while ill-formed strings of marks are unsinnig. Cf. Wilson, ‘Logical Necessity in Carnap’s Later Philosophy,’ Section 1.3; and also F. Wilson, ‘The World and Reality in the Tractatus.’ Cf. Wilson, ‘Logical Necessity in Carnap’s Later Philosophy,’ Section 1.3. Cf. Ibid. Moore, ‘External and Internal Relations,’ in Philosophical Papers. Cf. Moore, Lectures on Philosophy, pp. 55–7. Cf. Moore, ‘A Defence of Common Sense,’ Philosophical Papers, p. 34. Cf. Bergmann, ‘Remarks on Realism,’ in his Metaphysics of Logical Positivism, and Lewis, ‘Moore’s Realism.’ Moore, ‘Some Judgments of Perception,’ in Philosophical Studies, pp. 250–1. Ibid., p. 251. Ibid., p. 250. At this point, and elsewhere, I am indebted to the discussion of Lewis in his ‘Moore’s Realism.’

750 Notes to pages 475–94 56 Moore, ‘A Defence of Common Sense,’ Philosophical Papers, pp. 54–5; his italics. 57 Idem, ‘Some Judgments of Perception,’ in his Philosophical Studies, p. 229; his italics. 58 Cf. Lewis, ‘Moore’s Realism,’ pp. 140ff. 59 Cf. Hall, Our Knowledge of Fact and Value, pp. 94, 95, 108. 60 Moore, ‘The Nature of Sensible Appearances.’ 61 Moore, ‘Some Judgments of Perception,’ Philosophical Studies, pp. 231–2. 62 Cited by notes 54 and 55. 63 Moore, ‘Some Judgments of Perception,’ Philosophical Studies, p. 226. 64 Cf. Lewis, ‘Moore’s Realism,’ pp. 139–40, 171–2. 65 Pascal, Pensées, no. 131, p. 64. 66 In chapter 8, below. 67 In a symposium with Johnson et al., ‘Are the Materials of Sense Affections of the Mind?’ 68 Moore, ‘Some Judgments of Perception,’ Philosophical Studies, p. 240. 69 Reid, Works, p. 100. 70 Ibid., p. 183. 71 Ibid., p. 359. 72 Reid thus has affinities with those who at present defend what is called ‘cognitive psychology’; see the discussion in the Appendix to chapter 1, above. 73 Reid, Works, p. 107. 74 In an interesting paper, Keith Lehrer, ‘Beyond Impressions and Ideas: Hume vs Reid,’ argues correctly that Reid is concerned to establish that thoughts are the sort of entity that have objects, are intentional, in a way that impressions or ideas in the sense of images do not. But he wrongly infers that there is something that cuts to the core of Hume’s empiricism. 75 Reid, Works, p. 108. 76 Ibid., p. 109. 77 Ibid., p. 105. 78 Ibid., p. 454. 79 Ibid., p. 117. 80 Ibid., p. 111. 81 We have, of course, looked at this pattern in detail in chapter 1, above. 82 Reid, Works, p. 121. 83 Ibid., p. 188. 84 Ibid., p. 183. 85 Ibid., p. 293. 86 Ibid., p. 294.

Notes to pages 494–507 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

751

Ibid., p. 388. This has been explained in detail in chapter 1, above. Reid, Works, p. 397. Ibid., p. 470. Ibid., p. 250 Ibid., p. 237. Ibid., p. 323. Ibid., p. 344. Ibid., p. 210. Ibid., p. 322. For a somewhat different location of this principle in Reid’s philosophy, see Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, p. 66. Reid’s arguments are there connected to those of another critic of Hume, Henry Home, Lord Kames. For the importance of this principle, and other features of this second, phenomenologically based, tradition of empiricism, see Wilson, ‘Wordsworth and the Culture of Science.’ Reid, Works, p. 122. Ibid., p. 409. Ibid., p. 412. Moore, ‘Are the Characteristics of Things Universal or Particular?’ in his Philosophical Papers. Cf. Wilson, ‘The Role of a Principle of Acquaintance in Ontology.’ Cf. Bradley, ‘Relations,’ p. 663. Ibid., p. 662. Ibid., pp. 635–6. Cf. Bradley, ‘Terminal Essays: On Judgment,’ in his Principles of Logic, pp. 634ff. Cf. Bradley, ‘Terminal Essays: The “This,”’ in ibid. Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 231. Cf. Weinberg, ‘The Concept of Relation.’ Cf. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, ch. 26. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 125. Ibid., p. 125. John Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding. Cf. Wilson, ‘The Lockean Revolution in the Theory of Science.’ Cf. Wilson, ‘Burgersdijck, Bradley, Russell, Bergmann.’ Russell refers to Moore’s essay ‘On the Nature of Judgment’ (1898). Compare also Bergmann, ‘The Revolt against Logical Atomism,’ in his Meaning and Existence.

752 Notes to pages 507–30 118 Loux, ‘Kinds and the Dilemma of Individuation.’ 119 Cf. Wilson, ‘The Rationalist Response to Aristotle in Descartes and Arnauld’ and The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study One. 120 Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. 2, Pt. VII, Ch. XI, ‘The Universal Postulate,’ 406–27. 121 John Stuart Mill, System of Logic, vol. I, Bk. II, Ch. vi, secs. 1–4, pp. 262–75. 122 Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, p. 273. 123 Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ¶231. 124 Ibid., ¶404. 125 Ibid., ¶636. 126 Popkin, ‘David Hume: His Pyrrhonism and His Critique of Pyrrhonism,’ pp. 53–98. 127 Mounce, Hume’s Naturalism, p. 131. 128 Ibid., p. 2, quoting Sir William Hamilton in Hamilton, ed., The Works of Thomas Reid, 2: 760. 129 Dreyfus and Dreyfus, ‘Introduction’ to Merleau-Ponty, Sense and NonSense, p. xiii. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid., p. xi. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid., p. xiii. 135 Ibid. 136 James, Principles of Psychology, 2: 300. 137 Spinoza, Ethics, Bk. II, Prop. 49, Scholium, p. 489. 138 Descartes, Discourse on Method, in Philosophical Essays, p. 77. 139 This is Descartes’s French. The verb ‘tromper’ certainly implies error, but also carries the further implication of being deceived. John Veitch translates it as ‘I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions.’ (Descartes, The Method, Meditations and Philosophy, trans. John Veitch). ‘I [Descartes] ... remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep’ is how John Cottingham translates the passage (The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham et al., II: 13). ‘On many occasions I have in my sleep been deceived’ from Haldane and Ross is still the best translation (Descartes, The Philosophical Works, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross) – though this is not to endorse this translation as equally good throughout. 140 Bouwsma, ‘On Many Occasions I Have in Sleep Been Deceived.’

Notes to pages 530–42

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141 Ibid., p. 170. 142 Descartes, Meditations, in Philosophical Essays, p. 77. 143 This is the point, as I understand it, of Norman Malcolm, in his discussion of the issue, ‘Do I Know I Am Awake?’ in his Dreaming, pp. 121–5. 144 Descartes, Meditations, p. 143. 145 Ibid. Chapter 8. Hume’s Critical Realism 1 Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, ch. 3. 2 Ibid., p. 121. 3 Popkin, ‘David Hume: His Pyrrhonism and His Critique of Pyrrhonism.’ Many, of course, hold that Hume is a sceptic, but Popkin’s case for such an interpretation is by far the best. In spite of giving Hume a fairly sympathetic reading, Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, pp. 15, 27, accepts Popkin’s case for Hume being a Pyrrhonist. 4 Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, ch. 3. 5 Cf. Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World, pp. 44ff., 132–3. 6 Hume does, however, sometimes use the term ‘imagination’ to cover both faculties; particularly when he wishes to contrast imagination and reason, that is, demonstrative and a priori reason. And of course, he sometimes refers to the capacity to make causal inferences as reason, ‘reason’ now covering both demonstrative reason and empirical science. The context usually makes it clear. Thus, if he is contrasting the fallibility of empirical science with the certainty of demonstration, then he will use ‘reason’ in the narrow sense. When he wishes to contrast acceptable judgments from superstition, then he will use ‘reason’ in the broader sense. 7 Russell, Analysis of Matter. 8 Maxwell, ‘The Later Bertrand Russell: Philosophical Revolutionary.’ 9 Sellars, ‘The Refutation of Phenomenalism,’ in his Science, Perception, and Reality. 10 Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, pp. 123ff. 11 Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume. 12 See Wilson, ‘Wright’s Enquiry concerning Humean Understanding.’ Wright has responded in his ‘Ignorance and Evidence in Hume Scholarship.’ The assessment in ‘Wright’s Enquiry’ is of a piece with that of Árdal, ‘Critical Notice of Wright’s The Sceptical Realism of David Hume.’ In his response to ‘Wright’s Enquiry,’ Wright notes that he arrived at his interpretation of Hume by reading the latter to see if he really was a phenomenalist after the fashion of Price (Hume’s Theory of the External World).

754 Notes to pages 542–6

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

The phenomenalist reading Wright found to be falsified by the texts, so he concludes that his own reading is correct and that my criticisms are wrong. This argument presupposes that I interpret Hume as a phenomenalist; the present study attempts to refute that, though there is nothing in what I have said elsewhere that would lead one to suppose that I thought Hume to be a phenomenalist. Wright’s argument also presupposes that the only alternative to the phenomenalist interpretation is Wright’s; the present study attempts to refute that also. So does the work of Livingston and Árdal. But more generally, on Wright’s reading, see the discussion of the ‘new Hume’ in chapter 1, above. For example, Beauchamp and Rosenberg, Hume and the Problem of Causation. Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume’s Cognitive Stoicism’ and Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, ch. 2. Also chapter 5, above. Cf. Holt et al., ‘The Program and First Platform of Six Realists,’ in Schneider, ed., Sources. Ibid., pp. 36, 39. Ibid., pp. 38, 39. Ibid., p. 41 (Perry). Ibid., p. 42 (Pitkin). Ibid. Drake et al., Essays in Critical Realism. It bothered some New Realists, too; cf. Montague, ‘The Story of American Realism.’ Laird, Hume’s Philosophy of Human Nature, characterizes this view as ‘neutral monism’ – thereby referring back to similar views of James and Russell. Pratt, ‘Critical Realism and the Possibility of Knowledge,’ p. 89. Ibid, p. 98. Ibid, p. 91. Ibid. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid. There is a canvas of the full battery of these arguments in Sellars, Critical Realism, ch. 1. Ibid., p. vii. Pratt, ‘Critical Realism and the Possibility of Knowledge,’ pp. 95, 109. Sellars, Critical Realism, p. v. This is the system that Laird, Hume’s Philosophy of Human Nature, ch. 5, following James and Russell, refers to as ‘neutral monism.’

Notes to pages 546–59

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36 This view of Hume’s world of the vulgar has been developed and extended in Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World. 37 Ibid. 38 As the New Realists put it, ‘consciousness selects from a field of emotion which it does not create’ (in Schneider, Sources, p. 41). 39 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. 40 Ibid., p. 89. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., p. 85. 44 Besides the usual listing of the five senses, the tactile (touch), gustatory (taste), olfactory (smell), visual, and auditory senses, one can distinguish the thermoceptive sense (warmth) as an additional source for information about the world about me, and then further distinguish the equilibrioceptive (balance), proprioceptive (movement), and nociceptive (sense of pain and wellness) senses, as sources of information about one’s own body. 45 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, pp. 26–8. 46 Ibid., p. 88. 47 Ibid., pp. 42–3. 48 Hume, Letter to Hugh Blair, July 1762, published by Wood, ‘David Hume on Thomas Reid’s Inquiry ...,’ Mind, n.s. 95 (1986). We are indebted to Professor Wood for recovering this letter from the Reid archives in Aberdeen and publishing it. 49 Ibid., p. 416. It is worth recalling from chapter 2 that it was Foucher’s central argument against Descartes that we do perceive sensible qualities as qualities of the object perceived. 50 Hume, Letter to Hugh Blair, p. 416. 51 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, pp. 89–90. 52 ’Wacky,’ ibid., p. 85; ‘preposterous,’ ibid., p. 87. 53 Falkenstein has commented appropriately: ‘At the outset of this passage Wolterstorff declares three times over that no sensory experience or sense datum has the quality of hardness. He then goes on to say that the reason that none of them does have this quality is that none of them could have it. But why not? In answer to this question he simply repeats two times over that this is impossible.’ (‘Hume and Reid on the Perception of Hardness,’ p. 32.) Falkenstein’s discussion in this essay (which is really an essay on Wolterstorff) is masterful. 54 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, p. 89. 55 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 124.

756 Notes to pages 559–78 56 J. Passmore, Hume’s Intentions, pp. 70–1, makes just this invalid inference, and makes much of it as he develops his charge that Hume is not only a sceptic but is in fact thoroughly confused. That Hume is confused, and that his arguments are full of inconsistencies, is a common view; Passmore shares it with many. What we are arguing, of course, is that a careful reading of the Humean texts reveals that this is largely mythology. 57 Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World, pp. 44ff., 132–3. 58 Using ‘fiction’ in both the eighteenth-century sense, of an idea made by the mind, and in our sense, of an idea that is made by the mind and that is false. 59 Cf. chapter 5. 60 It is reasonable to suppose that Hume might have had in mind the sort of inferences concerning distance that Berkeley argued for in his New Theory of Vision. 61 Concerning senses of ‘reason’ in Hume, see Norton, David Hume: Sceptical Philosopher, Commonsense Moralist, ch. 5, n11. 62 This account of relations, allowing for different accounts of the mind, is of a piece with Locke’s, and has the same problems and defects; cf. Wilson, ‘Weinberg’s Refutation of Nominalism.’ 63 Hume also invokes (p. 203) his doctrine of abstract ideas (pp. 17ff). For discussions of latter, cf. Wilson, ‘Hume and Derrida on Language and Meaning,’ and ‘Critical Review of P. Jones’ Hume’s Sentiments’; as well as chapter 1, above. 64 Cf. Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference. 65 There are still other senses of ‘nature’ or ‘natural’ in Hume, for example, when it is contrasted to ‘artificial’ (pp. 117, 475, 489), when it is contrasted to ‘original’ (p. 280), when it is identified with ‘original’ (pp. 368, 493), and so on. 66 Cf. chapter 5. 67 Wilson, ‘Wright’s Enquiry concerning Humean Understanding.’ 68 Cf. chapter 5. 69 Cf. Wilson, ‘Weinberg’s Refutation of Nominalism.’ 70 Cf. J. Weinberg, ‘The Concept of Relation,’ in his Abstraction, Relation, and Induction.’ 71 Cf. Wilson, ‘Review of M. Mandelbaum’s The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge.’ 72 Prichard, Knowledge and Perception. 73 Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity.’ 74 Compare Hume’s discussion of degree (15), and of our knowledge of it (70); but it won’t work. Cf. Wilson, ‘Weinberg’s Refutation of Nominalism.’

Notes to pages 579–82

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75 Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume and Derrida on Language and Meaning,’ and ‘Critical Review of P. Jones’ Hume’s Sentiments.’ 76 Meinong struggled with these distinctions with some success, but he was very late; cf. his ‘Hume Studies I.’ 77 Recall the discussion of Chisholm and Firth in chapter 6. 78 We noted this in our discussion of the dream problem at the end of chapter 7. 79 The notion of a ‘wild’ sensible particular comes from James. 80 Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World. 81 Laird, Hume’s Philosophy of Human Nature, puts it this way: ‘Hume himself argued that “experience” itself demolished neutral monism [the system of the vulgar]’ (p. 151). 82 Note that Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy (p. 211), reads Hume incorrectly at this point, attributing a subjectivism to Hume that is unwarranted by the text. ‘Such experiments [as pressing the finger on the eyeball] show that our impressions are causally dependent for their existence and operation on the mind’ (p. 211). Hume does not say this. Interestingly, Garrett provides a gloss on this passage, with the parenthetical remark that ‘or rather, they [the experiments] show our impressions to be causally dependent on the sensory system affecting the mind ...,’ which is correct: this is what Hume says. But Garrett goes on with this remark, ‘... from which [that is, from the fact of causal dependence on the sensory apparatus] we presumably infer that they are also dependent on the mind’ – which is not something that Hume says, and for which Garrett gives us no reason why we should presume that we are to make this inference. And this illegitimate inference is unfortunate indeed: it has the unfortunate effect of transforming Hume from a defender of science and Critical Realism to a subjective idealist and sceptic – that is, it has the effect of transforming Hume from a defender of science and reason into a sceptic and critic of reason. It is therefore essential that this inference not be made, as tempting as it may be. This inference that Garrett makes in his reading of Hume makes of Hume a subjectivist: it is a common reading indeed – Garrett is one of a line that extends from Reid to Popkin so to read Hume – it is part of the more general reading that would make of Hume a sceptic, but like the more general reading, it is one that is unwarranted by the text. 83 Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of the Common Life, pp. 13, 14, misreads the causal argument as one that has phenomenalism and subjectivism as its conclusion. 84 Livingston, ibid., p. 19, on the basis of passages such as this, argues that for Hume causal reason must limit itself to the popular system or system of the

758 Notes to pages 582–6

85 86

87 88 89 90

vulgar on pain of not being able to understand experience itself. In fact, Livingston holds (p. 25) that the structure of common life is the a priori structure of philosophy. If philosophy does not so restrict itself, it ends up in Pyrrhonism, and such Pyrrhonism is the mark of any attempt to reason to transcend its own a priori structure. This reading makes sense, however, only if one construes the causal argument Hume employs as leading to phenomenalism. But if we are correct, the causal argument has no such paradoxical consequences. If this is so, then there are no grounds for reason to limit itself to the world of ordinary experience; it can after all attempt to understand the latter by appealing, on the basis of sound inference, to the causal role of entities that lie outside the world of ordinary experience. Since no paradox results, common life need place no a priori constraints on reason, so the latter can transcend its origins and lead us to the world of science that lies outside our ordinary experiences. But, though we do not experience the entities that science says are there as the causes of our impressions, they are nonetheless conceptually coherent and the supposition of their existence is rationally justified. Here the contrast in both these things is to the systems of the theologians and the superstitious. Cf. Sellars, Critical Realism, ch. 1; or Pratt, ‘Critical Realism and the Possibility of Knowledge,’ p. 96. Loeb, equally mistakenly, makes the same sort of claim. He holds that Hume, having argued for the mind independence of impressions, cannot then argue for the mind dependence of those same impressions (cf. Stability and Justification in Hume’s Treatise, p. 211). But the independence is in the system of the vulgar, the dependence in the system of the philosophers. In any case, the independence is independence from minds, the dependence is dependence on the state of our sense organs. Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World, p. 107. Ibid., pp. 108–13. Ibid., p. 112. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (p. 14), finds three systems in Hume: the popular system or that of the vulgar; a phenomenalistic system; and the system of double existence or that of the philosophers. He arrives at this by simply assuming that one stage of the causal argument has phenomenalism as its conclusion. But, as we have seen, this assumption is erroneous. (He also confuses the system of the philosophers of Section 2 with the modern philosophy of Section 4, which Hume argues does, unlike the system of the philosophers, have Berkeleian phenomenalism as its inevitable upshot; cf. Livingston, p. 18.)

Notes to pages 588–93

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91 Recall our discussion of this passage in chapter 3. 92 Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World, p. 120; Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, pp. 121, 123, 134ff.; Passmore, Hume’s Intentions, p. 137; Stroud, Hume, p. 111. 93 Sellars, Critical Realism, pp. 10–11. 94 Ibid., p. 10. 95 Ibid., p. 14. 96 That is, justifies after the manner of Russell’s analysis of the use of definite descriptions as denoting or referring singular terms. For the logic of this, see Wilson, Laws and Other Worlds, chapter 1, section 2, and Explanation, Causation, and Deduction. 97 Hume makes this clear in the tale of the watch (132), already much discussed, where an ‘artizan’ or philosopher can through discovery confirm the hypotheses, justified by the causal principle, that there exists a minute cause which prevents the watch from working. 98 Hume clearly recognizes the non-falsifiability of the causal principle. Thus, in the discussion of miracles, a miracle must lack a naturalistic cause. But one cannot conclude, contrary to the causal principle, that a failure to observe a cause implies that there is no cause. As Hume puts it, where one has ‘extra-ordinary’ events for which no cause is discernible, such events, while not ‘conformable’ to one’s experience, are ‘not contrary’ to it (see Hume, Enquiry, p. 114 and p. 114n). The logic of such mixed quantificational principles is discussed in detail in Wilson, Laws and Other Worlds, chapter 1, section 2; and its connection with explanation is discussed in Wilson, Explanation, Causation, and Deduction. See also Wilson, The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience. 99 Cf. Wilson, ‘Mill on the Operation of Discovering and Proving General Propositions’; ‘Kuhn and Goodman: Revolutionary vs Conservative Science’; The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought, Study Two; and Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, chapter 2. 100 Both the system of the vulgar and the system of the philosophers involved inferentially filling in the gaps in our perceptual experience of things. The unification or coherence achieved in the system of the philosophers is greater than that achieved in the system of the vulgar. It is Hume’s argument that the system of the philosophers is the only system rationally acceptable to one moved by curiosity – that is, a love for matter-of-fact truth. It is rationally acceptable by virtue of its conforming to the rules of the scientific method – that is, Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes.’ Accepting it implies rejecting the system of the vulgar as rationally unacceptable by those rules. Yet those same rules also justify adhering to the

760 Note to page 593 system of the vulgar for practical purposes. Moreover, in our perception of the world, there are at work associational processes that make it inevitable that we perceive the objects of the system of the vulgar: we could not stop having those perceptual judgments even if we tried, even though we know that strictly speaking that they are all false. We need to note also that (1), Hume’s gap-filling inferences can be construed as if made using inductive reason; these are not made by a simplistic induction by simple enumeration, but rather in an ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique’ manner by the ‘rules by which to judge of causes,’ the rules of eliminative induction – that is, the rules of the experimental method of Newton and of natural science. We need also to note (2) that Hume unnecessarily introduces a continuing particular in his account of the unity of perceptual objects; this part of his account must be rejected on grounds made clear by the Principle of Acquaintance. Otherwise Hume does become involved, through this introduction of a transcendent entity (unnecessarily involved), in scepticism about the external object. We also need to note (3) that neither the objects of the system of the vulgar nor the objects of the system of the philosophers involve substances in the metaphysical sense. No such transcendent entities are required in order to fill in the perceptual gaps in either system – scientific reason alone can fill in the gaps. There is therefore (once again we note) none of the scepticism inevitably implied through the introduction of such transcendent entities. Finally, we need to note that Hume goes out of his way to insist that in neither system is there a substantial mind, and in particular that in the system of the philosophers ordinary sense impressions are dependent causally on the state of our sense organs and not ontologically dependent on a substantial mind. Hume makes clear that his discussion of these systems takes for granted his later conclusion that the mind is not a substances but a mere, albeit ordered, bundle of impressions, ideas, passions, and so on. He is also clear that the system of the philosophers is unlike the system he is going to later refer to as the ‘modern philosophy.’ The latter does involve substances and in particular a substantial mind. This latter leads to a subjectivistic scepticism. In contrast, no such scepticism is implied by the system of the philosophers, which is, to the contrary, acceptable rationally according to the best canons of scientific reason. Perhaps we should also recall that, while the gap-filling and unifying inferences made in either the system of the vulgar or the system of the philosophers are open, and therefore subject to revision if further information

Note to page 593

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requires it, this does not imply any radical scepticism (as would be implied by any violation of PA): it only implies the commonsense position that scientific reason, since it is inductive, is, in our contingent world, fallible. Failure to be clear on these things quickly turns Hume into the radical sceptic described by commentators from Reid to Popkin. Thus, consider Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, who sees many of these points but not with sufficient clarity and whose Hume is therefore a kind of sceptic rather than, as we have argued, a critical realist. Garrett (p. 210f.) distinguishes induction by simple enumeration and the mode of association that aims at continuity in the objects of perception and fills in gaps to yield the gapless objects that we perceive. But he identifies scientific reason with induction by simple enumeration, so the filling in of the gaps is not something that proceeds on the basis of reason: and since it is not a rational process, the way is open for the charge that Hume is a sceptic about our knowledge of the external world. It is of course true, as Garrett insists, that the gaps are not filled by a ‘direct’ inference based on induction by simple enumeration. But it does not follow that the inference is not inductive: as we have suggested, it is based on the ‘rules by which to judge of causes,’ which are the rules for eliminative induction. It proceeds, in other words, on the basis of reason working in an ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique’ manner. It is also true that our perceptions with regard to the objects of the world of the vulgar are the product of an associational process over which we have no control. We agree with Garrett on this point. But from this alone it does not follow that the gap-filling inferences are irrational. To the contrary, so long as one restricts oneself to the world of the vulgar, then those inferences can be justified as rational by the ‘rules by which to judge of causes.’ What judges those inferences to be erroneous are those very same ‘rules’ that lead the rational person to the system of the philosophers. But, though we accept rationally the system of the philosophers, we nonetheless continue in our perceptions to make those inferences in the world of the vulgar. There is no reason to worry about this: though those judgments are, when things are taken strictly, not true, they remain workable for our practical affairs. They are wrong, they are inevitable, but doing what we do with them is not irrational. And certainly, no scepticism follows. Garrett’s way of reading the Treatise in effect follows the reading that is

762 Note to page 593 standard from Reid to Popkin, which sees Hume a sceptic because of a supposed irresolvable contradiction between the system of the vulgar (imposed on us by ‘nature’) and the system of the philosophers (imposed on us by ‘reason’), a contradiction between nature which imposes one system on us and causal reason which demands the other system. But notwithstanding Garrett and the tradition, the conflict between the two systems is resolved rationally in favour of the system of the philosophers, but the same reason declares it reasonable to follow nature in the practical affairs of life. One can see the importance of keeping the inferences clear – which Garrett unfortunately does not do. There are further problems with Garrett’s reading. For one thing, unlike Price, in his Hume’s Theory of the External World Garrett does not disentangle the issue of the unity of the perceptual object achieved through the gap-filling mechanisms with the unity achieved by having a single particular enduring through the history of the object. Unity of the former sort can be achieved by inductive inference (by Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes’), and is a rationally justified inference. Unity achieved by an enduring particular is not legitimate – such a particular is eliminated by PA; Hume falls into error here by an inadequate account of identity. For another problem, there is Garrett’s failure to distinguish the enduring particular from a substance in the metaphysical sense. This means that, as Garrett so reads Hume, the objects of the system of the vulgar are in effect Aristotelian substances, rather than, as we have argued, bundles of appearances as in a Berkeleyan realism. Finally, there is Garrett’s confusion of the system of the philosophers with the system of the modern philosophy: the latter, unlike the former, involves substances: it construes the real objects of perception as Lockean substances and also takes minds to be substances. These features of the modern philosophy lead it into a subjectivistic scepticism. The system of the philosophers, in contrast, as we have argued, is rationally justified by the rules of science and does not lead to any sort of scepticism. By confusing the system of the philosophers with that of the modern philosophy, Garrett is led, on the one hand, to impute to the former the scepticism implied by the latter, and is led, on the other hand, to miss Hume’s real inference and his scientific realism, that is, his critical realism. Garrett, in other words, in spite of the closeness of his reading and its many virtues, nonetheless, through a series of (what we have argued to be) fusions and confusions, gives a fairly standard reading of Hume as

Notes to pages 594–602

101 102 103 104

105

106

107 108

109

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essentially a sceptic. Certainly, his reading of Hume is one that fails to grasp clearly either the Berkeleyan realism of the world of the vulgar or the Critical Realism of the world of the philosophers, or the rational acceptability of both, or the opposition to scepticism implied by that rational acceptability. Garrett joins those philosophers from Reid through Green to Popkin who read Hume as a sceptic. It is fine company, but the reading of Hume is still wrong. Such at least is the conclusion implied by the reading we are arguing best fits the Humean texts. Passmore, Hume’s Intentions, p. 139. Sellars, Critical Realism, pp. viii, 20; Pratt, ‘Critical Realism and the Possibility of Knowledge,’ p. 98. Sellars, Critical Realism, p. 20. For the distinction between knowledge which is more, and knowledge which is less imperfect, cf. Bergmann, Philosophy of Science, ch. II; and Wilson, Explanation, Causation, and Deduction. Árdal, in his insightful discussion of reasonableness in Hume’s philosophy (‘Some Implications of the Virtue of Reasonableness in Hume’s Treatise’), proposes that Hume is not concerned about truth. Surely it is better to read Hume as we do, as concerned with the truth, as arguing to the truth of the system of the philosophers, and as also holding that the reason that leads to this system nonetheless justifies the reasonable man in accepting the system of the vulgar in all ordinary contexts. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, p. 25, holds that ‘true philosophy’ can correct common life but at the same time cannot go beyond it in any radical way. We now see that this is not Hume’s view: in attempting to correct common life, reason is led inevitably and justifiably to the system of the philosophers, which, in an important way, does conflict with and refute the system of common life. Still, we are justified in continuing, as we must, to use the latter. Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World, pp. 122, 136. Some of the background physiological thinking of the Cartesians that Hume takes for granted can be found discussed in Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume. Cf. Flage, ‘Locke’s Relative Ideas’ and ‘Hume’s Relative Ideas.’ Wright, though he knows of Flage’s work (cf. his ‘Ignorance and Evidence’), does not mention it in his The Sceptical Realism of David Hume. On Wright’s reading of Hume, external objects are the metaphysical substances of which Hume holds that we have no ideas. Since there are no ideas of these substances, Hume is a sceptic, but since Hume also holds (Wright suggests) that they exist, he is a realist. Wright’s reading lacks intrinsic plausibility.

764 Notes to pages 605–26

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119

120

121

What Wright fails to see is that Hume holds that there are external objects and that we do have ideas of these, namely, the relative ideas to which Flage has directed our attention. Wright’s dismissal (in ‘Ignorance and Evidence’) of Flage’s work as irrelevant to the issue of the plausibility of his interpretation is, perhaps, not the best of defences. Hume, ‘Of the Standard of Taste,’ pp. 10–11. Ibid., p. 11. Sellars, Critical Realism, p. vi. Pratt, ‘Critical Realism and the Possibility of Knowledge,’ p. 95. Ibid., p. 96. The central point has been developed by D. Flage, ‘Locke’s Relative Ideas’ and ‘Hume’s Relative Ideas.’ For a detailed discussion of Hume on abstract ideas, cf. chapter 1, above. For details, Wilson, see ‘Is There a Prussian Hume?’ If one wishes one could say that perceptual objects, while not real, do have phenomenal existence; but that would take one too close to the language of Kant – something best avoided if one hopes to achieve philosophical clarity. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (p. 15) – wrongly – takes the necessity of relying on ‘trivial’ principles and of proceeding ‘carelessly’ as signs that Hume is a sceptic. Hume attacks as irrational, that is, as cases of ‘unphilosophical probability,’ causal inferences that are based on the relation of resemblance (p. 148). It is true that Hume does not explicitly assert that by ‘mind’ in Section 4 he means ‘substantial mind.’ This perhaps casts some doubt on my interpretation, which insists on distinguishing the systems of Section 2 and of Section 4 in terms of the latter involving and the former not involving a substantial mind. I think, however, that such doubts are overwhelmed by the evidence that points to a substantial mind. For in the first place, the system of Section 4 is clearly Lockean, and Locke’s system involved a substantial mind. Second, Hume refers to dependence on the sense organs in Section 2 and to dependence on the mind in Section 4; the entities dependent in the first sense are conceivable apart from the mind, while those dependent in the second sense are not conceivable apart from the mind; and it is not mind as a sum of its parts but (so far as I can tell) only a substantial mind that could yield such ontological dependence. Hume’s claims, then, presuppose that he is treating minds in Section 4 as substantial. Finally, Berkeley has already made a similar inference to the mind dependence of all objects, crucially relying on the premise that minds are

Notes to pages 626–31

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125 126 127 128 129 130 131

765

substantial (cf. chapter 2, above). Hume could therefore expect a certain familiarity with the argument he uses and with the premise that I believe is necessary for its soundness but that Hume does not explicitly flag in Section 4. In any event, the case can be made fairly conclusively (though we shall not try to make it in detail here) that Hume did have Berkeley’s idealism in mind when writing the Treatise; see Raynor, ‘Hume and Berkeley’s Three Dialogues.’ Cf. Allaire, ‘Berkeley’s Idealism,’ in his Essays in Ontology; Cummins, ‘Perceptual Relativity and Ideas in the Mind.’ Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (p. 18), confuses the system of Section 4 with that of the system of philosophers. He does not notice the crucial difference, and as a result he, like Popkin, wrongly infers that the legitimate sceptical consequences of the modern philosophy apply to the system of the philosophers. Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, makes the same confusion (p. 215ff.), or rather, he largely ignores the system of the philosophers of Treatise, I, iv, 2, to concentrate on the system of the ‘modern philosophy,’ Treatise, I, iv, 4. He does not recognize that while, as he correctly says, the system of the modern philosophers of I, iv, 4 does lead to sceptical consequences, the system of the philosophers of I, iv, 2 does not. For an extended discussion of the problems of this section (Treatise, I, iv, 1), and argument to show it does not – and that Hume does not intend it to – lead to scepticism, see Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, chapter 3. This discussion also undermines the sceptical reading of Hume by Popkin; this argument and the one of the present essay supplement and support each other in challenging that sceptical reading. Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, refers to this as the ‘Title Principle’ (p. 234). Cf. Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference, chapter 3. We argued this in chapter 4, above. Once again we see the importance of Árdal’s point that we not divorce the reading of Book I of the Treatise from reading Books II and III. Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Section III, Part I. Cf. Hume, The Natural History of Religion, pp. 27, 29. Cf. Cleanthes’ remark that ‘religion, however corrupted, is still better than no religion at all’; for, ‘the proper office of religion is to regulate the hearts of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order and obedience; its operation ... only enforces the motives of morality and conduct.’ Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, pp. 219–20.

766 Notes to pages 631–2 132 Cf. Hume, The Natural History of Religion, p. 47. 133 Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, notes clearly (what many miss) that reason is to be accepted only if it is mixed with some ‘propensity’; only then are we entitled to accept its conclusions. This he calls, as we have noted, the ‘Title Principle.’ He also notices (p. 234f.) that Hume allows there to be different propensities, those of a splenetic humour and that of the love of truth. But he fails to recognize that the former leads the mind only so far, to the system of the vulgar; and that the other, when it restricts itself to natural causes, leads the mind to the system of the philosophers – that is, to the system which, unlike the system of the vulgar and unlike the systems of superstition and metaphysics, can survive the test of critical examination. Assuming that we aim at truth, and solely truth, the end of the Academic sceptic, then causal or inductive reason, the reason of science, is the best method for getting there (see our chapter 4, above). From this, the ‘Title Principle’ naturally follows. Garrett is misleading to suggest (p. 235) that this principle receives its own sort of inductive justification beyond that which can be given for the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects.’ But the assumption that we aim at truth, that this is the propensity that moves us, need not always hold. If what moves us is our splenetic humour, then we rest content with the system of the vulgar. But if we are genuinely concerned to find out the truth about things, insofar as reason can discover it, then we are led to the system of the philosophers. From the viewpoint of a concern for the truth, it is the latter alone that can satisfy us. Because Garrett does not clearly distinguish where the different propensities might lead us, he does not recognize that it is the system of the philosophers that turns out to be rationally acceptable to the person concerned with truth. He does not recognize that Hume’s aim, which is to escape scepticism and to find a reasonable view of the world as we experience it, is in the end satisfied: it is satisfied when one recognizes that the system of the philosophers survives the test of critical examination. This is the system that Hume can reasonably claim that he knows it to be true (knows it, that is, of course, knows it fallibly to the extent that human reason can know anything). The reasonable reason that best satisfies the love of truth leads Hume to his Critical Realism. Garrett goes further than most readers of Hume when he recognizes the role of the Title Principle in Hume’s overall argument. But, important though this is, it is not enough. Garrett’s failure to clarify the different pro-

Notes to pages 633–49

134

135 136 137 138

139

140 141 142 143 144

145

767

pensities and their different outcomes means that he misses Hume’s defence of the system of the philosophers. We have already noted that another problem for Garrett is his failure to distinguish the system of the philosophers – the system to which the causal reason of science leads – from the metaphysical system of the modern philosophy. As a consequence, Garrett’s Hume does not escape scepticism; his Hume is committed to reason, to science, no doubt, but the result is, as Garrett himself admits (p. 237), ‘science based on scepticism.’ In the end, Garrett fails to rescue Hume from the charge of those from Reid to Popkin who find Hume to be a sceptic. A somewhat similar defence of Hume can be found in Árdal, ‘Some Implications of the Virtue of Reasonableness in Hume’s Treatise.’ But Árdal suggests that the problem for Hume is that of reasonable belief rather than the correspondence of ideas to reality. As I see it, the two are not exclusive. To the contrary: while Hume’s problem is indeed one of reasonable belief, one can be reasonable in one’s beliefs only if those ideas do correspond to reality. Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World. Mind, n.s. 64 (1955): 28–51. Russell makes a similar point: he too is not searching for a foundation for empirical knowledge. See Our Knowledge of the External World, p. 56f. We saw, in our discussion of Reid in chapter 7, that it is illegitimate to infer from the simplicity of the judgment to the simplicity of the object of that judgment. This illegitimate inference goes back at least as far as Kames and Reid; see Wilson, Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill; see also Wilson, ‘William Wordsworth and the Culture of Science.’ Hume, Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature, in the Selby-Bigge/Nidditch edition of the Treatise. We discussed this aspect of a Berkeleyan realistic ontology in greater detail in the note appended to Part I of chapter 2, above. Chisholm, ‘The Concept of Empirical Evidence.’ Cf. Wilson, ‘Was There a Prussian Hume?’ Lewis White Beck has so argued; see his ‘A Prussian Hume.’ We shall see both that Hume is not wrong in his inferences and that there is no need to read him as being a sort of ur-Kantian – a dismal fate to which nobody should be condemned. Cf. Wilson, ‘Hume and Ducasse on Causal Inference from a Single Experiment.’

768 Notes to pages 651–60 146 To fit this in more detail into the argument of I, iv, 2 of the Treatise, see Wilson, ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with regard to the Senses?’ 147 Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World. As we have been insisting, the ‘system of the philosophers’ must not be confused with the system of the ‘modern philosophy,’ which he later discusses. In the former, there is no ontological dependence of impressions on minds; in the latter, the impressions are ontologically inseparable from minds. The former is science – empirical science; the latter is metaphysics. 148 Cf. Sellars, Critical Realism, ch. 1; or Pratt, ‘Critical Realism and the Possibility of Knowledge,’ p. 96. 149 It must be emphasized that the dependence here is causal and upon our organs; it is not an ontological dependence on a substantial mind. As we have repeatedly insisted, the latter occurs in the system of the modern philosophy, but it is only the former which occurs in the system of the philosophers. 150 Cf. Wilson, ‘Was Hume a Subjectivist?’ 151 Price, Hume’s Theory of the External World, p. 120; Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, pp. 121, 123, 134ff.; Passmore, Hume’s Intentions, p. 137; Stroud, Hume, p. 111. 152 Once again, for the notion of a relative idea, see Flage, ‘Hume’s Relative Ideas.’ 153 John Stuart Mill, System of Logic, Bk. III, ch. v, sec. 1. 154 What (j) asserts is that the G-ish cause of D4 is the cause of D4. This statement is not tautological, contrary to appearances, since it implies that there is a G which is the cause of D4, and that statement, i.e., (d), is an empirical matter-of-fact generalization. This is parallel to the point that the statement that (*)

the F is F

is not tautological, but rather matter-of-fact since it asserts that there is exactly one F, a clearly empirical statement. If we put (*) into Russell’s notation in the symbols of formal logic (**)

F(,x)(Fx)

and expand this according to the Russellian rule that I(,x)(\x) = Df (x)[\x & (y)(\y o x = y) & Ix] then we obtain (x)[Fx & (y)(Fy o x = y) & Fx]

Notes to pages 660–89

769

which is clearly logically equivalent to (***)

155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163

(x)[Fx & (y)(Fy o x = y)].

Thus, (*) = (**) is logically equivalent to (***). But (***), which asserts that there is exactly one F, is clearly an empirical truth. Therefore so is (*), which is logically equivalent to it. Hanson, ‘Is There a Logic of Scientific Discovery?’ Sellars, Lending a Hand to Hylas, privately published, 1968. After all, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Berkeley, Three Dialogues, pp. 176ff. Ibid., p. 189. Hume, History of England, 10: 133–4. Cf. Wilson, Hume’s Defence of Causal Inference. See also Wilson, ‘Hume, Scepticism, and Conservativism.’ Cf. Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science and Sense Perception. Livingston, ‘A Sellarsian Hume?’ Livingston is commenting on the discussion in Wilson, ‘Is Hume a Sceptic with Regard to the Senses?’

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Index

acquaintance, principle of (PA), 8, 91, 98, 100, 113, 145, 160, 164, 181ff, 244, 252f, 306ff, 369, 455f, 470ff, 484f, 492, 495, 505f, 511, 546, 600, 602, 618, 627, 679, 738; Berkeley and, 204ff, 220ff, 679; compatible with admitting non-presented entities, 456, 505; and concepts of properties of unsensed particulars, 600; contingency and necessity within world as defined by, 471, 509f; excludes non-empirical beliefs, e.g., religion; 469ff; Flew and, 466f; God and, 454, 468; Hume and, 455, 484ff, 492ff; as Hume’s ‘copy principle,’ 465f; Locke and, 505f; logical atomism and, 499ff, 656; Moore and, 472; more recent formulations via empiricist’s language, 456ff, 470ff (but not Carnap’s trivialization, 468); and necessity, limits on by, 471; not a definition, 465; not (simply) an inductive generalization, 465f, 494ff; Noxon and, 467f; a principle in epistemology, 456, 498ff (fallible, 456; veridical mentals acts and,

498ff); a principle in ontology, 454ff, 470ff, 484ff, 492, 495, 498, 505f, 510f; a principle, neither ‘necessary’ nor ‘contingent,’ 471; Sextus and, 455f; substances excluded by, 204ff, 220ff, 474f, 484ff, 563, 608, 627; and world of the vulgar, 546 activity, causal, 92ff, 133ff, 159f, 311; and necessary connection, 311; and powers, 99ff Adam, alleged first man, 722 Addis, L., 710, 713, 721; intentionality and, 240f Alberta, University of, 123 Alexandria, library of, 14; its books fuel for baths, 14 Allaire, E.B., 716, 721, 765 Alston, R., 401, 421, 425, 620f, 744, 746; and circular arguments to justify epistemic principles, 389ff; and reliabilism, 389ff analysis, introspective, 52ff, 263ff, 462, 491ff, 497ff; of ideas and of words, 79f Anaxagoras, 133f Apostles, the first, and miracles, 333 appearances, and sense organs, 4

788 Index Aquinas, St Thomas, 241ff, 713, 721; on transubstantiation, 713; and truth, 241ff Árdal, Páll, 26ff, 40ff, 307ff, 436, 694, 696, 697, 698, 721, 730, 731, 753, 763, 767; Austin and, 26f Arians, 15 Aristotle, 3ff, 32, 40, 70, 130, 131, 132ff, 173, 301, 329, 367, 502ff, 638, 678, 697, 705, 731, 742, 746, cognitive virtues and, 367f; vs Megarics, 678; vs Molière, 678; moral community and, 32; perception and, 144ff; Sergeant and, 502ff Armstrong, D., 710, 744 Arnauld, A., 71, 165, 701, 715, 726, 732; infinity and, 270 associationist psychology, 21ff, 48ff, 82f, 124ff, 168ff, 263ff, 492, 703, 708, 711, 715; and cognitive science, 115ff, 124ff; and denial of spontaneity, 126ff; and Flew dismissing as ‘armchair psychology,’ 466; and Hume, 21ff, 48ff, 64ff, 168ff, 263ff, 492, 569f, 703; introspection and, 48ff, 51ff, 263ff, 569f; mental chemistry in, 65f, 78ff, 264f, 490ff, 497ff, 703 (Garrett’s failure to note, 703); relations and, 50ff, 569f; Atiyah, J., 696 atomism, logical, 499ff, 635, 656; bare entities and, 507ff; Bradley and, 499ff; PA and, 499ff Augustine, 17; and tedious list of miracles, 17 Austin, J., 26f; Árdal and, 26f; Hume and, 26 Ayer, A.J., 736, 743 Bacon, F., 735

Baier, A., 329f, 694, 697, 738, 739, 741 bareness, characterizing certain entities, 507ff; disliked by Bradley, 507; disliked by Loux, 507; disliked by Sergeant, 507; ineffable, 508ff; logical atomism and, 507ff Barrow, I., critic of Hobbes and Locke, 39f, 697, 725, 726; extension and, 267ff, 378ff; Hume and, 268; infinity and, 270 Basson, A., 464, 749; on Hume on PA, 464ff, 472 Baxter, D., 722 Bayle, P., 715, 722, 726; Berkeley and, 179f; critic of Descartes, 162ff; his ‘Dictionary,’ 273; and extension, 273ff; on Foucher, 162ff; Hume and, 275ff Beck, Lewis White, 735, 767; on Hume an ur-Kantian, 735, 767 Beauchamp, T., 734, 754 behaviourism, 116ff, 130; and brain states, 117f; and denial of spontaneity, 127f; and inner events, 117f; metaphysical, 116ff, 709; methodological, 116ff, 710 Bennett, J., 699, 703, 716; on Hume, 57ff, 80 Bentley, R., 37f, 40f; follower of Newton, 37 Bergmann, G., 235ff, 250, 699, 700, 708, 709, 711, 717, 719, 720, 725, 735, 743, 744, 749, 751, 763; defence of parallelism, 709; imageless thought and, 250; imperfect knowledge (= gappy) and scientific explanation, 49, 341, 384, 661; intentionality and, 235ff; process ideal of scientific explanation (= non-gappy), 711; view adopted by

Index Searle, 236; Wittgenstein and, 235, 250 Berkeley, G., the mitred empiricist, 6, 105, 131, 220ff, 369, 404, 411, 414, 421, 488, 489, 533, 535, 638, 653, 703, 715, 716, 727, 755, 769; abstract ideas and, 76ff, 163ff, 288ff, 345f; and principle of acquaintance, 204ff, 220ff, 679; Bayle and, 179f; God and, 209ff; his antirepresentationalism, 178ff, 194, 221ff, 476, 489; his idealism, 204ff, 404ff, 675ff; his realism, 178ff, 189ff, 193ff, 412, 438, 483, 653; notions and, 211ff; reality of some sense impressions, 198ff; scepticism and, 178ff, 222ff body, 220ff; mind and, 222f, 404; distinction between mind and, 709 Bonjour, L., 395, 421, 741, 744, 745; coherence and, 395ff Boring, E.G., 699, 711, 749 Bosanquet, B., 8 Bouwsma, O.K., 530, 714, 752; dreaming and, 530f, 714 Boyle, R., 37; and Guericke’s air pump, 688; and Hume’s praise, 688 Bracken, H., 718 Bradley, F.H., 8, 499ff, 751; criticized by Russell, 506ff; follows Sergeant on atomism, 502; and holism, 508; logical atomism and, 499ff; reality ineffable, 508; relations and, 499ff; Russell and, 502 Bramhall, J., critic of Hobbes, 33f, 697 Broad, C.D., 477, 709, 710, 722, 748; on the distinction of mind and body, 709; on Hume’s views, 722; on sense impressions, 477 Brodbeck, M., 711, 735 Brook, A., 707, 711

789

Brown, S., 727 Burge, T., 741 Burgersdijck, H., 751 Butler, J., 44; on our social conscience, 44 Butler, Ronald J., 699, 749 Bryaxis, sculptor of image of Serapis, 14 Canadian, being one, 742 Cantor, G., his infinities, 256, 726 Capaldi, N., 310, 316, 731 Carnap, R., 468 Cassio, 231f cause, 10, 18; abstract ideas of, 313ff; activity and, 92ff, 311, 678f; alleged objective necessity of, 89ff, 92ff, 101ff, 311; alleged that God is only, 68, 311; coherence accounts of justification and, 386f, 394ff; definitions of, 63ff, 89, 109ff; dispositions and, 720; hidden, 102ff; and Hume and Spinoza, 429f; imagination and, 540; inference to system of philosophers, 584ff, 633 (the Enquiry version, 684ff); inference often indirect and oblique, 556ff, 560, 582, 603f, 634, 650, 657; judgments of are fallible, 18, 115, 438, 540, 619; knowledge justification and, 386ff; learned by experience, 355, 686; not discovered by pure reason (= not demonstrative), 18, 89ff, 330, 684f; no objective necessary connections, 18, 89ff, 101ff, 112ff, 311, 468, 704, 730; often gappy or imperfect, 49, 341, 384, 394f, 660; Mackie and, 384; regularity, 18, 89ff, 111, 312ff, 386ff, 429f; rules for, 10, 60, 85, 129, 306, 338f, 362,

790 Index 387ff, 420, 540; –, curiosity or love of truth and, 49, 306f, 316ff, 322, 343, 540, 596ff; –, spleen and indolence and, 596; –, and system of philosophers, 593, 600ff; substances and, 92ff, 311; testimony and, 339ff; unperceived, inferences to, 23, 58ff, 88ff, 633ff, 634ff; Chamber’s Cyclopeida, 59; and Hume, 59; Wright notes, 59 Chesneau du Marais, C., 72, 701 Chicago, 530; and Bouwsma, 530; deceived in, 530f; State Street, 530 Chisholm, R., 5f, 193ff, 414ff, 421, 426, 531, 655, 716, 733, 743, 746, 747, 757, 767; on Berkeleyan realism, 193ff, 476, 642; criticized by Firth, 195, 476; and foundationalism, 415ff; heritage of, 743; and nit-pickers, 414; and unjustified epistemic norms, 417f. See also ought Chomsky, N., 711; and linguistics, 711 Christianity, 13, 454; adherents, insouciant of destroying cultural heritage, 14; Arians and, 15; barbarism and religion, 17; fantastic and improbable nature of its claims, 332; Monophysites and, 15; not reasonable, 13, 332; based on miracles, 332f Cicero, 307ff, 316ff, 322, 324, 730 Claggett, W., on Hobbes and Locke, 39, 697; natural inclination to society, 39 Clarke, S., 37f, 40ff; follower of Newton, 37; and passions, 42 Cleanthes, 663ff, 729f, 740, 765; argument on God as cause of order, 663ff; –, Hume = Philo accepts this argument, 671f; –, Hume = Philo

apparently rejects, 664, 670; –, Hume = Philo objects to remoteness of analogy, 671f; –, parallel to that for critical realism, 663ff; –, the argument is sound but cause is natural selection, 672; –, scientifically sound, 666ff; and perverse effects of education, 740; and Darwin, 672f Coady, C.A.J., 740, 741, 742; on Hume, 334, 335ff; on Hume and Enlightenment, 336; and notion of necessity, 358f; and real necessary connections, 336; and social wholes, importance of, 336 Code, L., 737, 742; on Aristotle, 737; on Hume, 737 cogito, 139f, 156f, 244f cognitive science, 7, 115ff; and associationism, 125f; and behaviourism, 116ff coherence, 380f, 392ff, 528ff; causation and, 394ff, 529; sense impressions and, 196ff, 527ff. See also knowledge Coleridge, S.T., 8, 634, 656, 708 colour concepts: acquisition of, 79f; missing shade of, 459ff, 575ff; –, analogous to filling gaps in perceptual objects, 575ff; –, complex idea of a simple, 576f; –, definite descriptions and, 576f; –, a problematic case for Hume, 459ff; –, relations and, 577; –, simple idea vs simple idea, 576f common sense, 447ff, 524, 539, 621; and Hume as defender of, 447ff, 494ff, 498ff, 539, 621, 679f; and judgments of as fallible, 448f, 487f; and judgments of that work, 621;

Index justification by ‘must implies ought,’ 448; and Moore as defender of, 447ff, 485ff, 539, 680; principles of as contingent, 448f, 487f, 498; and Reid as defender of, 447, 452, 489ff, 539 447, 452, 489ff, 539, 680; and Wittgenstein, 498 consciousness, 236ff, 243f, 246ff, 544; awareness and, 219ff; homunculi and, 224ff; language and, 248ff; meaning and, 248ff; not a relation, 243f, 544; and proneness to snap judgments, 544 contingency, 369, 444, 470ff, 500ff; applies, like ‘necessity,’ only within world as defined by PA, 471ff, 509ff; common sense and, 448; contrasted to objective necessity, 369; and idealist account of syllogisms, 500ff; knowledge in a world pervaded by, 369ff, 413, 444ff; leads to doubts, 449; and logical atomism, 509ff continuant, 540, 562ff, 644; fictional, 540, 563ff; –, and Hume’s alleged scepticism, 563; and identity, 562ff. See also substance contract, 28f; contrasted to promising, 28; not basis of civil society, 28, 46f conventions: acquired habits, 83, 328f, 349, 640; and conditions of scarcity, 23, 30f, 43, 328, 348f; define some qualities to be real, 202ff, 640ff; linguistic, 30, 43, 45ff, 80, 82ff, 202ff, 345ff, 640ff, 696, 703; moral, 23, 43, 328; normative, 328f; and price of gold, 695, 696; –, these conventions analogous to those of justice, 695; –, these conventions

791

analogous to those of language, 695; reason and, 327ff; self love and, 25, 43, 83 copy principle, Hume’s. See acquaintance, principle of Crousaz, J.P., 22, 72, 701 Cummins, P., 722, 765 curiosity or love of truth, 49, 306f, 316ff, 322, 343, 540, 596f, 601, 698, 729, 734; academic scepticism and, 367, 373, 631; and end of science, 631, 698; and reason, 631 Cynics, 16 Cyril, St, 14; tortured Hypatia, 14 Darwin, C., 672f Davidson, D., 744, 745 Day, Stockwell , 328 definite descriptions, 84, 459, 461, 600, 602, 646f, 649, 759; Hume’s problems with, 459, 461; missing shade of blue and, 576ff; refer to causes of impressions, 590; relative ideas and, 303ff, 463, 590 definitions, 84; nominal, 72; real, 72, 94ff Dennett, D., 5f, 223ff, 718f; his misunderstanding of philosophical issues, 223ff; his reading of the Treatise, 228 Derrida, J., 715, 756, 757 Descartes, R., 5ff, 86, 131, 139ff, 151ff, 168f, 173, 207ff, 221, 223, 244f, 254, 298, 345, 349, 369f, 401, 404, 421, 439, 440, 449, 479ff, 489, 513, 529f, 533f, 565, 644, 700, 714, 715, 726, 731, 740, 752, 753, 755; abstract ideas of, 71f, 139ff, 168f, 345; and capacity for unthought thoughts, 714; and clarity, attempts at, 69;

792 Index cogito and, 139f, 157, 244f; criterion and, 139f, 157, 161ff, 480, 531ff; criticized by Foucher, 161ff; dreams and, 151ff, 197f, 531ff; evil genius and, 157f; –, and transubstantiation, 714; extension and, 273ff; external world and, 151ff, 404, 644, 684f; –, and metaphysical proof for, 151f, 160ff, 197ff, 531ff, 644, 685; God and, 151ff, 158f; infinity and, 270f, 303f, 726; and method of doubt, 349f; –, contrasted to Russell’s, 188f, 193; Montaigne and, 151ff, 480; opinion, not scientia, his guide, 371; and passions, 42; perception and, 139ff, 151ff, 156ff, 158ff, 479ff; and psychophysiology, 60ff description, definite, 558, 573ff; Hume and, 558; recovers identity without a continuant, 573ff; Russell’s analysis of, 558 Desdemona, 230ff Dewey, J., 710, 711; and Darwinism, 711; and Hegeliainism, 711 determinism, principle of, 49, 387f, 652, 658, 667ff, 728 Dicker, G., 7ff Diogenes the Cynic, 15; compared favourably to Pascal, 15 dispositions, 720; Aristotelian account of, 628f; Humean account of, 720 dithering, 363, 372 divisibility (see extension) dreams, problem of, 151ff, 531ff; transubstantiation and, 713 Donne, J., 697; and loss of objective moral order, 34f Doubt: method of, 349; as dithering,

363, 372; Russell’s and Descartes’s contrasted, 188f Drake, D., 754 Dreyfus, H. and P.A., 752 Ducasse, C. J., 736, 767 Enlightenment, the, 336 Enquiry version of Hume’s argument, 680ff, 695; similar to that of Treatise, 680, 695 enthusiasm, 16, 323 Epicureans, 316, 429 epiphenomenalism, 709; contrasted to parallelism, 709; and nonHumean account of causation, 709 Euclid, 256, 286, 301, 722 Evans, G., 717 Eve, alleged wife of first man, 722 Everitt, N., 745 Ewing, A. C., 744 experience: acquaintance and, 228ff; awareness and, 229ff; ordinary, 205f; source of knowledge, 205 explanation, scientific, 305, 657ff; applies to persons as well as stones, 344; contrasted to scientia, 305; often gappy or imperfect, 49, 341, 384, 661; Mackie and, 384; process ideal of (= non-gappy), 711; and regularities, 18, 48ff, 312ff, 657ff. See also method, scientific; science extension, 257ff; Barrow and, 267ff, 278ff; and Bayles’ argument concerning, 273ff; composition of, 257ff, 272ff; –, coloured points, 257ff; –, disposition of, 258ff; –, extensionless points, 272ff; divisibility of, 265ff, 301ff, 722; Hume and, 52, 289ff, 722; idea of, 257ff,

Index 266ff, 283ff; introspective analysis of, 52ff; sensible, 674; and sensible objects, 674 external world, 106ff facts: as complex, 250; as truth makers, 250ff Falkenstein, L., 696, 706, 725, 755 fancy, 599f Findlay, J. N., 719 Firth, R., 716, 757; criticizes Chisholm, 195f, 476 Fisher, A., 745 Flage, D., 707, 763, 764, 768; underestimates Wright, 763; on relative ideas in Hume, 707, 763; on relative ideas in Locke, 707 Flew, A., 268ff, 462ff, 722, 728, 748, 749; critic of Hume on geometry, 268ff, 294; unjust to Hume on acquaintance, 462f Fogelin, R., 693, 733 Frain du Tremblay, J., 72f, 701 forms: abstract ideas and, 164ff, 371; excluded by PA, 145, 371; globed onto by souls, 712; in the mind, 139ff; incorrigibly known, 136f, 158, 371; meaning and, 70ff; metaphysics of, 32, 69ff, 131ff, 712; objective roots of morality, 32, 134f; perception and, 137ff; rational intuition and, 138f; separation from souls, 134; unintelligible, 371f Foucher, S., 161ff, 715, 716, 755; Bayle give gist of, 162f; critic of Descartes, 162ff Frasca-Spada, G., 607, 627 Frege, G., 567 Fricker, E., 740 Fumerton, R., 744, 745

793

Galileo, G., 648 Garrett, D., 695, 697, 698, 703, 707, 711, 728f, 732, 733, 761ff; and definitions of cause and of virtue, 732; and Hume, 696, 702, 703f, 704, 733, 757, 762, 765–6; on Hume as a cognitive scientist, 115ff, 696; and perceptual gap filling, 761, 762; and Price, 762; on representations, 123f; and scientific inference, 761; on system of philosophers and modern philosophy, 762, 765f genius, evil, 156f geometry: abstract ideas (Humean) and, 288ff; abstract ideas (Platonic) and, 283ff; allegedly an a priori science, 254ff, 286ff; alleged exactitude, 277ff, 286f; as an applied science, 284ff, 301; Descartes and, 272ff; divisibility and, 255ff, 722; Hume and, 254ff, 278ff; Leibniz and, 281f;support for rationalism, 254ff, 277f, 286ff Gettier, E., 376; and Russell’s counterexample, 376ff Gibbon, E., 14f, 17 God, 14, 38, 41, 72f, 171, 210, 454, 458; alleged existence, 631f, 664ff, 715; as a dangerous belief, 632; as alleged foundation of knowledge, 158; as alleged foundation for morality, 38, 41; as alleged giver of language, 73, 353; as alleged intelligent designer, 665ff; 673; and his corporeal parts as bread and wine in transubstantiation, 714; and infinity, 270f, 303f; and Jesus, 332; and his mind as the place of all things, 709; and Moore, 455; and necessary connections, 95ff; and

794 Index other deities, 641f; 663ff; and perception, 151ff; scepticism about, 3, 38, 454, 641f; self-knowledge of, 270; and social conscience, 44; transubstantiation and, 713f, 714; trivial propositions and, 96ff; truth and, 242ff; and his veracity, 158, 161ff; and his will as cause of all things, 674 Goldman, I., 717, 741, 744, 745 Goodman, N., 725 Green, T.H., 8, 329, 634, 656, 693, 763 Grossmann, R., 721 Guericke, Otto, 688; and Boyle’s air pump, 688 Hacking, I., 731 Hall, E., 750 Hamilton, Sir W., 752 Harman, G., 744 Hanson, N. R., 666ff, 769 Harré, Rom, 700 Hartley, D., 117f, 708, 710 Hausman, A., 725 Hausmans, A. and D., 225ff, 716, 718, 719 Heath, T., 722 Heaven, 7, 39 Hebb, D.O., 708 Hegel, G.W.F., 712 Heidegger, M., 726 Hell, 7, 39 Hobbes, T., 31, 696, 755; contrasted to Hume, 31, 40; criticized, 33ff; –, by Barrow, 40; –, by Claggett, 39; –, by Shaftesbury, 38f Hochberg, H., 720 Holt, E.B., 754 Hooke, R., 688; Hume praises, 688 Hooker, R., 33

Hribeck, T., 740 Hull, C. L., 124 Hume, 131ff, 146, 252ff, 400, 411, 523, 535, 642, 722, 769, and passim and abstract ideas, 21ff, 69ff, 75ff, 146, 163ff, 167ff, 255ff, 283ff, 343ff, 609f, 676 as academic sceptic, 3, 102, 306, 371 associationism of, 48ff, 126ff, 262ff, 289ff, 403ff, 431, 492, 610, 703 and associationist psychology, 21, 263ff, 403f atomism of, 575, 656 and Barrow, 268f, 283ff and Basson, 464ff and Bayle, 275ff, 283ff and Bennett, 57f, 80 and Berkeleyan realism, 411, 453, 483ff, 535f and Butler, 44f Carnap, compared with, 468 and causation, 63ff, 84f, 99ff, 311ff and Chamber’s Cyclopeida, 59 and Chisholm, 438, 642 as a cognitive scientist, 115ff common sense, defender of, 447ff, 679f and contingency, 370ff, 413 and ‘Copy Principle’, 465ff critic of new realism, 554ff critical realist, 5, 19, 146f, 330, 400, 536ff, 579ff, 590ff, 606ff, 612ff, 643ff, 656, 688ff, 704, 757, 763; causal reasoning leads to, 582, 591ff, 608ff, 612, 643ff, 656, 686, 763; inference to indirect and oblique, 556ff, 560, 582, 603f, 643ff, 651; his doubts about, 615ff, 622ff, 632ff, 686ff; modern philosophy and, 616

Index Hume, continued Descartes, contrasted to, 86ff, 345, 369 on determinism, 49f doubts inevitable, 620; cartesian scruples lead to, 621, 684ff as economist, 695 and empiricism 455f, 457ff, 464ff, 521, 536, 647ff; mischaracterized by Mounce, 521 on Englishmen, 747f and Enlightenment ideal, 366 and extension, 52f, 255ff, 722 and Flew, 268ff, 294ff, 462f, 464, 466ff, 703 and geometry, 254ff as historian, 695 Hobbes, contrasted to, 31, 40 and identity, 567ff and impressions, 88ff, 104ff, 203ff, 408ff, 412ff, 421ff, 483ff; implying scepticism, 437; unavoidable, 421ff induction, eliminative, 667; Hume’s rules by which to judge of causes: 728 on induction by simple enumeration, 337f and introspective analysis, 52ff, 263ff on justifying norms, 310ff and Kant, alleged inferiority to, 126ff, 310, 711, 733, 738, 767, not an ur-Kantian: 647, 711, 735, 767 on language, 45ff Locke, compared with, 536ff, 638, 675, 703; contrasted with, 31, 40, 58f, 80, 86ff, 345, 370, 53 and his logic, 82, 84 and Malcolm, 440ff

795

and Malebranche, 58ff and Mandelbaum, 541ff on mechanical philosophy, 688 and Moore, 407ff, 483ff, 539, 570; compared with, 447, 449, 680 and moral conventions, 26ff; as basis of civil society: 27f and Mounce, 519ff and his naturalism (alleged), 369ff, 413, 444ff, 449, 519ff and necessity, objective, 89ff, 92ff, 101ff, 311, 572; versus continuant: 572 on the ‘new’: 88ff, 704 not a contractarian, 31 not a dogmatist, 465 not an idealist, 404f, 411, 537, 626, 676 not a phenomenalist, 551, 706, 707, 753f not a representationalist, 453 not a sceptic, 4, 13ff, 19, 57f, 88ff, 114f, 306ff, 329f, 371f, 400, 437ff, 453, 523, 537, 538ff, 563ff, 571, 582, 590, 592, 612, 625f, 645, 653, 675, 693, 694, 731, 756; on common sense, 447, 453, 539; on extension, 275ff; on induction, 18, 315, 318, 765 not a subjectivist, 536f, 541ff, 582, 590, 612, 645, 653ff, 674f, 703, 757 and Noxon, 464 and Passmore, 57f, 309f, 314f and perceptions, 104ff, 146ff, 403ff, 436ff, 591ff and Popkin, 537ff, 563ff, 582 and Prichard, 409ff, 460 Principle of Acquaintance and, 455f, 457ff, 464ff, 562; as his ‘Copy Principle’, 464ff

796 Index Hume, continued and promising, 26ff, 80 Pufendorf, compared with, 73, 80, 354 and Puritans, 17 and Quinton, 406 and Reid, 353ff, 377ff, 464, 489ff, 539; compared with, 447, 452ff, 680 relations, his analysis of, 259, 261ff, 509, 569, 573, 575, 723ff; a problem case, 459ff, 723ff and religion, 324f, 454, 680f and Russell, 84, 509, 561, 568f, 573ff, 656 science, defender of, 12, 680 and Sellars fils, 418, 695 and spontaneity, 126ff, 711 Strawson, Galen and, 107ff, 705, 706 and Stroud, 8, 318 and substances, 92f, 130, 131, 134ff, 164f, 182ff, 206ff, 244f, 404ff, 410ff, 483ff, 563ff, 570, 626ff and testimony, 331, 332ff; and reductive account of, 334ff theology, criticism of, 12, 680f as a Tory, 742 as utilitarian: 31 Voltaire, compared with, 17 and Wittgenstein, 610 and Wright, 58ff, 88ff, 753f and Waxman, 436ff, 463 Humphrey, G., 719, 749 Hypatia, 14 Hylas, 673ff idealism, 204ff, 404ff, 500ff, 542, 554; Hume denies, 554; refuted, 745; subjective and objective, 542 ideas, 400; adequate, inadequate,

incomprehensible, etc., 269f, 295ff, 600; assent to, 55ff, 350ff; associationist psychology and, 22ff, 50ff, 81f, 168f, 289ff, 346ff, 492ff, 610; as cognitive entities, 22, 54f, 78ff, 81f, 123ff, 687; content and, 142ff, 462, 492, 687; feigned, 558f; as fictions, 298ff; as images, 54f, 79ff, 172, 303f, 704; passions can enliven, 323; relative, 104f, 303ff, 463, 590, 600ff, 604, 608ff, 656, 687, 607, 768; –, and PA, 602; resemblance and, 50f, 77ff, 289ff, 292ff, 346ff, 603, 607; simple idea vs idea of a simple, 574ff; as social conventions, 75ff, 79ff, 86f, 345ff, 348ff, 703f; substances and, 163ff ideas, abstract, 21ff, 50ff, 69ff, 75ff, 81f, 86, 106, 163ff, 172f, 174ff, 194, 288ff, 303ff, 345ff, 463, 590f, 600, 610, 678, 687, 703, 715, 756; dispositional, 77ff, 168f, 172f, 289ff, 346f; as indeterminate images, 704; language norms and, 347ff, 703; of structure of external things, 678, 687; universals and, 497f identity, 564; assertions of sometimes vacuous, 567; continuants and, 564ff; Frege and, 567; of ordinary objects, 564ff, 618; Russell and, 567, 618; unity in multiplicity, 568ff; images: impressions and, 54f, 79ff, 172, 303f, 544; imageless thought and, 250, 462, 492ff imagination, causal reasoning and, 540, 590ff, 644, 753 impressions, sense, 88ff, 104ff, 135f, 140f, 180ff, 400, 461ff, 544, 549ff, 637ff, 706 acquaintance and, 461ff

Index impressions, sense, continued causes of, 104ff, 178ff, 545, 581ff, 654; unsensed, 555ff, 581ff and dependence on sense organs, 581ff, 653ff; and phenomenalism, 582, 706; and subjectivism, 582, 654; versus ontological dependence on minds, 582, 623f forced or imposed upon us, 196ff, 201f, 399f, 421ff, 523ff; norms justified by ‘must implies ought’, 421ff, 523ff gappy series of, 558ff, 634ff, 645ff; and perception, 560ff, 634, 644; and inference, 556ff, 559f, 560, 581ff, 636f, 644ff, 650 hardness and, 552 in conscious states, 404 located in space, 141, 186, 197f, 410 Locke and, 639f Moore and, 483ff not mind dependent, 403, 404ff, 408f, 410f, 412f, 482ff, 553f, 638, 706 perceptions and, 104f, 135ff, 140ff, 155ff, 180ff, 186ff, 196f, 408ff, 437f, 463f, 544 privacy and, 410f reality of, 197, 198ff, 201f, 639f; as defined by linguistic conventions, 202ff, 640ff tangible, 199ff, 552; define reality of, 199ff; invariability of, 202f visual, 199ff, 552 unsensed, 553ff, 641ff, 650ff; idea of, 558, 591, 646; inferences to, 55ff, 590ff, 641f, 645ff, 661ff, 663ff, 664; –, ‘indirect’ and ‘oblique’, 556ff, 641, 652, 663; –, justified by rules of science,

797

555ff, 590, 651; –, not falsified by failure to sense, 591, 648ff; –, rational, 556, 641f wild, 198, 757 Wolterstorff’s odd impression of, 550ff induction, 18, 114f, 406, 667; by simple enumeration, 336ff, 651, 648, , 650, 735; –, and empiricism, 337ff, 358f; –, and justification of law of universal causation, 735; eliminative, 667; eliminative, and Hume’s rules by which to judge of causes, 10, 60, 85, 129, 306, 338f, 387ff, 420, 540, 72; Hume not sceptical about, 18, 115; justified by ‘must implies ought,’ 315ff, 734; perception and, 406, 421ff, 532f. See also cause; ought ineffable, bareness and, 508; Bradley and, 508; Locke and, 507ff; logical atomism and, 508ff; Sergeant and, 508 infinity, 268f; Cartesians on, 270f, 303; Hume on, 290ff, 303ff; Locke on, 270f, 290f, 303; our idea of, 269ff, 291f, 303ff; – intelligibility of, 272f intentionality, 10, 54f, 78ff, 123f, 131, 146, 228ff, 240ff, 369f, 463f, 492, 554f; Addis and, 240ff; Bergmann and, 235ff; and continental philosophers, 228; functional analysis of, 232ff; isomorphism and, 238ff; 238ff; James and, 232f, linguistic account of, 233ff, 554f; M and, 236ff, 243ff; never guarantees existence of its object, 369ff, 422f, 498ff; and non-existent entities, 215f, 369, 463ff; relational account of, 236ff, 243ff, 369f, 554f; Russell and, 228ff,

798 Index 369ff, 422ff; Searle and, 236ff; takes one outside realm of ideas, 216f, 401, 410f; Watson, R. A., 238ff; Wittgenstein and, 231ff introspection, 22, 47ff, 51ff, 120ff, 403ff, 437, 463ff, 544, 711; abstract ideas and, 22ff, 51ff, 286ff; analysis, 52ff, 289ff, 403ff, 437, 462ff, 544; –, extension and, 52ff; yields R-R laws, 121 isomorphism, mind, 238ff; picture theory of language and, 238ff; Watson, R. A. and, 238ff Jacquette, D., 722 James, W., 91, 196ff, 218ff, 402, 534f, 647, 705, 716, 717, 745, 752, 754, 757; and sense impressions, 196f, 201f, 402f, 413f, 757; intentionality and, 232f; Russell and, 232ff, 647 Jesus, alleged filiation to God, 332; and miracles, 332f Johnson, W.E., 743, 750 Jones, P., 74ff, 86f, 308ff, 316, 322, 324, 700, 701, 703, 704, 715, 730, 731, 736, 756, 757 judgment, idealist account of, 501ff; feeling and, 501f; perception and, 501f; sensation and, 501f; teleology of, 501f Jupiter, inference to existence of, 666ff Kames, Lord H. Home, 699, 708, 751, 767 Kant. I., 330, 733; alleged superiority to Hume, 126ff, 310, 738; as disaster for philosophy, 712; and Hegel, 712; and Hume as not an ur-Kantian, 648, 711, 735, 767; and

Nietzsche , 712; a good guy, 127, 711f; not a good guy, 130 Kepler, J., 666f; his laws, 667ff knowledge, 367ff, 498ff, 510ff contingency and, 369ff, 445f, 502ff criterion of: 148ff, 416ff, 479ff; absence of leads to despair, 3, 341, 374, 481; and ‘accepting p entails p’, 479ff; arguments for existence of , 481; and Pascal, 481 dreams and, 151ff, 424ff experience and, 205f, 400ff, 739, 740 evidence and, 193ff, 414ff, 421, 423f, 441ff, 531ff; coerced assent and, 423ff, 527ff fallible, 3ff, 131, 149f, 173f, 185f, 322ff, 437, 456, 463ff, 532ff incorrigible, 3ff, 136f, 148ff, 158ff, 171, 215f, 251, 308f, 318ff, 367, 405, 463, 485f, 731; impossible standard, 163, 251, 308f, 371ff, 424, 436f, 449, 485f, 513; and ordinary language, 370f inseparability and, 135 justified true belief, 11, 163, 375ff, 421ff, 438ff, 522; accident and, 383ff; causation and, 386ff, 423ff; coerced assent and, 398ff, 421ff; coherence and, 378ff, 392ff, 418; externalism and:384ff; foundationalism and, 185ff, 189ff, 193ff, 406, 415ff, 436ff, 463ff, 479ff, 636; internalism and, 385ff, 400, 425f, 4335ff; objective and subjective justification, 381ff, 385ff, 421ff; -, linked by ‘must implies ought’, 399, 418ff, 425ff, 435f; reliablism and, 384ff, 516; Russell’s counterexample, 376ff, 392, 422ff;

Index knowledge, continued spontaneous ( = coerced) assent and, 398ff Malcolm and, 440ff; and Hume, 441ff; and Wittgenstein, 442 perceptual, 368ff, 438ff, 483ff, 683ff; and lack of defence by demonstrative reason, 684; and defence by reasonable sense of ‘reason’, 685; and inductions, 406, 437; ‘must implies ought’ and, 399ff, 522; spontaneous or coerced assent and, 398ff, 438ff, 510ff rational intuition and, 32, 145, 150, 470 scientia, 3, 69ff, 96ff, 131ff, 159ff, 177, 251, 373ff; God and, 151ff, 158f; and requirement of unity, 135ff, 159f self-evidence not sufficient for, 148ff, 152ff social wholes and, 336 transubstantiation and problem of, 713f; and evil genius, 714; and God, 714 knower, 10, 158; autonomous, 336, 340ff; –, Descartes accepts idea of, 340f; –, erroneous Enlightenment ideal, 336; –, erroneously attributed to Hume, 340f, 365f; –, leads to sceptical abyss, 341f; irresponsibility of Cartesian, 363; –, amounts to dithering, 363; responsible, 332, 360ff, 372f, 436, 446, 513ff, 522f, 740, 741; –, externalism and, 385f; –, internalism and, 385ff; –, requires reflective reason, 354ff, 361ff, 741; –, social context and, 364ff La Barre, W., 747

799

Laird, J., 754 Lamy, B., 73, 701 Lancelot, N., 701 Langford, C. H., 748 language, 205ff, 221ff, 224ff; conventions of, 30f, 43, 46f, 73ff, 227f, 346ff, 349, 704; –, normative, 227f, 347ff; intentionality and, 233ff; picture account of, 238ff; social contract and, 73ff; testimony and, 345ff Lawson, G., critic of Hobbes, 33f, 696, 697 Lehrer, K., 396, 401, 421, 745, 750; coherence and, 396ff; and misunderstanding of Hume, 750 Leibnitz, G.W.F., 126ff, 130, 712, 722, 727; defines spontaneity, 126; geometry and, 281f, 727 Lennon, T., 713 Lenz, J., 310, 316, 731 Lewis, C.I., 748 Lewis, D., 717, 745, 749, 750; limited variety, principle of, 658, 657f, 669, 728 Livingston, D., 79f, 608ff, 689, 700, 703, 742, 753, 757, 763, 769; on Hume as a critical realist, 608ff; on Hume as a phenomenalist, 757; on Hume and the world of the vulgar, 575f, 763; and system of the philosophers versus modern philosophy, 758, 765; on three systems in Hume, 758 Locke, J., 6, 37, 58, 70f, 72ff, 86, 105, 159ff, 167f, 226, 243, 329, 345, 412, 474, 638, 700, 701, 715, 717, 727, 731, 751, 756; abstract ideas of, 70f, 345, 703, 705; analysis of relations, 260f, 509, 723ff; associationism of, 58, 186f; contrasted to Hume, 31,

800 Index 80, 86, 474, 703; critic of Sergeant, 504f; –, similar to Russell on Bradley, 506f; criticized by Barrow, 40; criticized by Bennett, 80; criticized by Claggett, 39; criticized by Sergeant, 95; criticized by Shaftesbury, 38; infinity and, 269f, 303f; Moore and, 474f; praised by Hume, 688; truth and, 243ff Loeb, L., 698, 758; on end of science, 698; and systems of vulgar and of philosophers, 758 logic: Bradley and, 500ff; Hume’s, 82, 84; logical atomism and, 507ff Loux, M.J., 507ff, 752; and bareness, 507ff Lowde, J., critic of Hobbes, 34 Lucy, C., 697 M, 236ff, 243f, 246ff; Bergmann and, 235ff, 246f; not a relation, 243f Macbeth: character in the Scottish tragedy, 141, 195, 526, 534; and his dagger, 141f, 195, 526ff Mackie, J.L., 743; gappy laws and, 384; truth by accident and, 383ff Madden, E.H., 700 Malcolm, N., 440ff, 526f, 529, 747, 753; ‘must implies ought,’ 442; and sense of ‘logical,’ 442, 443 Malebranche, 221ff, 310f, 700, 732, 734, 735 Mandelbaum, M., 541, 589, 598, 753, 756, 759, 769; on Hume as a sceptic, 541ff, 598; on Hume as a subjectivist, 541ff material things. See body; objects, ordinary Maxwell, G., 541, 753; and critical realism, 541, 588

meaning: conventional, 73ff, 80; linguistic, 69ff, 81ff; real, 69ff megaric philosophers, 678 Meinong, A., 703, 746, 757 Merleau-Ponty, M., 752 Mersenne, A., 726 method, scientific, 306ff, 315ff, 319ff, 338f, 369; and experience, 318f, 320ff, 330f; and induction by simple enumeration, 336ff; and superstition, 369 Mill, James, 708, 727f Mill, J.S., 7, 49, 262f, 310, 657, 698, 699,700, 703, 708, 727f, 731, 735, 752, 768; and inconceivability as criterion of truth, 515ff; on laws about laws, 657; Spencer and, on truth, 514ff; truth as correspondence, 514ff minds: and body, 222ff, 403f; 709; bundles, 209ff, 218f, 623f; identity of, 212ff; language and, 239ff; not epiphenomena, 709; substantial, 208ff, 404ff; wither? 212ff; Wittgenstein and, 231ff. See also persons miracles, 16; and causal principles, 759; and Jesus, 332f; at Port Royal, 16f, 333; and religion, 16ff, 332f modern philosophy. See philosophy, modern Molière, 678 monophysites, 15 Montague, W.P., 719, 754 Montaigne, M., 131, 147ff, 153f, 156f, 371, 480, 489, 713; on opinion versus scientia, 371, 489 Moore, G.E., 11, 243ff, 407ff, 444, 447ff, 497f, 526, 529, 716, 721, 743, 745, 746, 747, 748, 749, 750, 751; and ‘accepting p entails p,’ 479ff; and

Index common sense, 447ff, 449, 526ff, 539, 680; and foundationalism, 479ff; and holism, 472; and nominalism, 472; Malcolm and, 444, 527, 529; and mind independence of ordinary objects, 407ff; as a sort of representationalist, 475f; Stout and, 472; substances and, 474f, 479ff; universals and, 497f; virtues as an Englishman, 748; virtues as a philosopher, 748; Wittgenstein and, 444 morality: alleged metaphysical roots, 24, 32; and basis in conventions, 23ff, 44f; and moral sentiments, 40, 44f; and science, 41; and self love, 39 Mounce, H.O., 519ff, 752; and Hume’s alleged naturalism, 519ff; and Hume’s empiricism, 521 must. See ought nature, naturalism, 4, 447ff, 489ff; contrasted to reason, 4, 439, 450, 489, 561, 604, 686; Descartes on, 154f, 173f, 439; and escape from scepticism, 4, 174f, 436, 447ff, 450, 489, 518ff, 523, 563, 689; foundation of morality, 39; Hume’s conception of, 41, 733f, 756; natural as sickness is natural, 571, 607, 733f; perception and, 593f, 604, 607 necessary connections, objective, 18, 89ff, 101ff, 112ff, 311, 369, 468, 502ff, 509, 730; Bradley and, 501f; contrasted to contingency, 369, 502, 509; and logical atomism, 510; no impression of, 145, 150, 469, 730; Sergeant and, 502ff; Russell and, 509; Wright and, 730

801

Neilson, K., 747 Newman, J., 736 Newton, I., 37, 327, 494, 648, 668ff, 688; and Bentley, 37; and Clarke, 37; and Hume’s praise, 688; his method, 60, 494, 668ff; his mechanics, 667ff Nicole, P., 71, 164, 701, 726, 732 Nietzsche, F., and his Humean stance on Kant, 712 norms, justification of, 310ff, 417ff Norton, David Fate, 689, 756; and his discussion of Hume’s use of ‘reason,’ 693f Noxon, J., 464, 749 objects, external. See ordinary objects and philosophers, world of Omar, the Caliph, 14 opinion, 136ff, 173ff, 185, 370, 375ff; fallible, 136, 173ff; as not second best, 371; separability and,136ff. See also knowledge ordinary objects, 10, 144, 164, 183, 194ff, 197f, 205ff, 403f, 407ff, 524ff, 536ff, 563ff, 642 atoms (or other wee objects) and, 452 bundles of appearances, 10, 183ff, 218ff, 403f, 408f, 438ff, 452, 464, 474f, 488f, 498, 525f, 547ff, 563, 638, 641ff; contingency of connection of defining parts, 548; and inference, 548f; and sensation, 406, 437, 464, 488f, 525; and Wolterstorff’s objections to, 547ff Chisholm and, 193ff, 438f, 642; follows Hume’s views, 438; continuity of: 563ff, 644ff gappy, 556ff, 575ff, 642, 645ff

802 Index ordinary objects, continued identity and, 566ff, 644ff minds and, 222ff, 403f, 483ff Moore and, 407ff, 452ff, 474ff, 483ff of perception, 136ff, 144ff, 191ff, 403ff, 408f, 438ff, 524ff, 564f Prichard and, 423ff qualities of, defined by convention, 640f Quinton and, 637ff, 642 Reid and, 491ff in space, 408f, 524, 674 substances and, 145, 213ff, 452, 482ff, 649. See also body; realism Othello, 230ff ought: implies can, 309f ought: must implies, 309ff, 316f, 399, 417f, 442ff, 731 acquiesence in the inevitable, 432ff and Hume accepting as reasonable, 421f, 425ff, 435; as reasonable, 739f as justification of common sense, 448 as justification of inductive inference, 315ff; and not of the norms of science, 319f, 321ff as justification of norms, 310, 316f, 399, 417ff, 435f, 448ff; Alston’s objection to, 425; and not coerced assent, 425ff; involuntary said unable to justify, 425ff and objective and subjective justification, 399, 418, 425f and reasonable persons on this principle, 419, 425ff and Spinoza, 426ff

Owen, D., 694 Oxford, naive dons at, 406 pain, 678ff parallelism, mind-body, 709f, 720; and a Humean account of causation, 709f; not epiphenomenalism, 709 Pascal, B., 15, 750; and alleged miracles, 333; his credulity and superstition, 16; and Diogenes, 15; and religious faith versus a criterion, 481; and transcendental entities, 481 passions, 42ff; and ideas, 323 Passmore, J., 309, 329, 693, 699, 755, 763; on Hume’s alleged confusion, 57f, 314f, 594, 755; and playful language, 594 Pears, D.F., 715 perception, 135ff, 138ff, 155f, 158ff, 178ff, 216ff, 436ff, 473ff, 484ff, 494ff, 524ff, 603f, 680ff ‘accepting p entails p’, 479ff caused by physiological process, 581 contents and, 142ff, 492f and not contributing order to bundle, 526 and critical realism, 561, 580 erroneous, and causal reasoning, 579ff evident when imposed or coerced: 439, 511f, 525ff, 642 fallible, 141, 187, 192, 217, 247ff, 484ff, 524ff forms and: 137ff, 147f generative theory of, 581 imagination and, 592ff and inability for defence by reason

Index perception, continued in sense of scientia, 684; as in Descartes, 684f induction, compared with, 144, 187, 192, 436f, 476, 524ff, 643f mental acts and, 368, 495f mental inertia and, 580, 603, 643 Moore and, 473ff, 484ff, 526 not an inference, 580, 636f, 643; but ampliative: 534ff, 580, 643 not an intuition, 679 object of, 140ff, 438ff; complexity, 494ff, 642; and Chisholm, 642; in space, 141ff, 524, 644; Moore on, as a substance, 476f; and constancy, 644; Reid on, as a substance, 494ff, 637 object of, often gappy, 556ff, 642 proprioception and, 549f Reid and, 493ff Russell and, 247ff scientia and, 369 selective theory of, 546f, Sellars’ (père) account of, 679ff sense impressions and, 135ff, 140ff, 180ff, 186ff, 401f, 435ff, 451ff, 473ff, 556ff, 679f; coerced, 401f, 438; Moore on relation between, 451, 476ff subordinate to knowledge, 594f substances and, 145, 147f, 473ff, 548, 555 Wolterstorff’s on, 547ff persons: a moral or forensic concept, 214ff; homunculi and, 224ff; identity and, 213ff phenomenalism, 551ff, 753; Hume’s rejection, 551; wrongly attributed to Hume by Reid and Wolterstorff, 551

803

phenomenologists, French, 524ff Philonous = Berkeley. See Hylas Philosophers, world of: a sort of critical realism, 542, 581, 588, 606, 656, 763; and Garrett, 763 abstract ideas of objects in, 586ff, 591, 600f, 610f; relative ideas and: 587f, 600, 608f, 611, 656 causal inference to, 579ff, 590ff, 603ff, 608ff, 655ff, 759f contradicts system of vulgar, 581, 592, 596f Hume on, 540, 598ff, 610ff, 619f, 656, 759f; defence of, 542, 592ff, 603ff, 656ff; doubts about, 615ff; doubts resolved, 622ff, 686 ideas in, meaningless, 687 minds are bundles, 623 minds not substances, 623, 760 monstrous, 594; and Passmore, 594 not inconsistent, 597ff not the modern philosophy, 617ff, 675 objects in, lack secondary qualities, 550ff, 586ff, 600ff, 674ff only system satisfying causal reason, 593, 596, 760 reasonable, 627ff, 759f satisfies PA, 760 = scientific image (of Sellars fils), 695 and structure of objects, 586ff, 603, 606, 674ff; abstract idea of: 677f; and sensible qualities: 604ff, 674 philosophy, ancient, 621, 622ff; and foundation on weak and changeable principles, 623 philosophy, mechanical, 688f; and Hume’s praise, 688

804 Index philosophy, modern, 540, 617, 675; and scepticism, 625f, 760; as the result of the substantial mind, 626, 760; minds substantial and not bundles, 623ff, 760, 763; –, grounds for so characterizing this system, 764f; not the system of philosophers, 617, 760; and sense impressions in system dependent ontologically on mind, 623ff Plato, 6, 40, 69, 74f, 132ff, 136f, 173f, 254, 292, 298, 700, 712, 728; divided line, his metaphor of, 712 porphyry, 503 Popkin, R., 309, 329, 519, 524, 537, 538ff, 563, 582, 592, 598, 607, 625, 628, 689, 693, 713, 714, 731, 752, 753, 761, 762, 763 Port Royal, 16; alleged miracles at, 16 Port Royal Logic, 22, 71, 165ff, 311, 314 powers: and activity, 101ff, 209f; and regularities, 100f; and their exercise, 100 Pratt, J.B., 754, 758, 763, 764, 768 predication, 182ff, 205ff, 208ff, 649f, 720; Aristotle and, 638; Berkeley and, 220ff; Bradley and, 501f; Hume and, 638; Locke and, 638; Sergeant and, 503 Presbyterians, 7, 325 Price, H.H., 142f, 185f, 546, 563, 584ff, 586, 589, 597, 634ff, 641ff, 650, 652, 713, 753, 755, 756, 759, 762, 767, 768 Prichard, H.A., 409ff, 746, 756; Descartes and, 413; and dislike of Hume, 409, 460; and contingency, 413; and ontological guarantee, 413; and perception, 409ff; and Russell, 410f pride, 351ff

Priestly, J., 708 promising: versus contract, 28; conventions and, 26, 46, 74ff, 328 speech acts and, 26, 75f propositions, trivial, 96ff, 471f proprioceptive feelings, 548ff; faculty for not located until nineteenth century, 550; Hume and, 550; perception and, 548ff; Wolterstorff’s misunderstanding of, 549f Pufendorf, S. von, 73ff, 701f; God grounds norms of language, 73ff; social contract for language, 73ff, 353 Putnam, H., 744; and subjectivism, 744f Quinton, A., 5f, 189ff, 406, 438, 477, 635ff, 655, 716, 745; and Berkeleyan realism, 189ff, 438; and Russell, 189ff Ramus, P., 716 Rawls, J., 742 Raynor, D., 765; his important note on Hume and Berkeley, 765 realism: Berkeleyan, 181ff, 189ff, 206ff, 483ff, 488ff, 543, 612, 653 critical, 5, 12, 19, 146f, 252f, 541, 579ff, 594f, 604, 612ff, 652, 670, 686ff; concepts in, meaningless, 687; Hume’s causal inference to, 579ff, 592ff, 604, 611, 652ff, 656, 670, 674ff, 680ff, 685ff; not subjectivist, 536f, 541ff, 582, 590, 612, 652ff, 674; and Cleanthes’ argument, 663ff, 670, 674 new, 543ff, 546ff, 589, 612, 653, 655, 755; and Berkeleyan realism,

Index realism, continued 543ff, 612, 653; and PA, 546; consciousness and, 543f; and Critical Realists, 543, 594; and system of the vulgar, 546 See also philosophers, world of reason, 58ff, 731, 737ff based on experience, 355, 456, 470ff, 498ff, 632f, 681f, 737f conformity to rules conducive to truth, 326ff, 367f, 631f indirect and oblique, 556ff, 560, 582 nature, contrast with, 4, 450, 689 PA and, 456, 470ff, 498ff, 632f, 738 rational intuition and, 32, 145, 150, 679 rationality of, 628f, 683f; and scepticism, 628f reasonableness, alone, 629ff; with a propensity, 630, 683; and Garrett, 766 reasonable sense of, 3, 11, 18, 150f, 174ff, 318ff, 435ff, 446, 681 redefined, 3, 18, 150ff, 435, 681 reflective, 318ff, 433f, 591f, 620, 694, 738; as unreasonable, 629ff senses of ‘reason’, 693f social being prior to, 74ff superstition, contrast with10, 316, 318, 321ff, 451, 455, 631 and system of philosophers, 632, 673ff, 684 traditional a priori concept of (scientia), 3, 69ff, 96ff, 131ff, 150ff, 681ff, 738; and immunizing one’s ideology, 738f; and scepticism, 684 as a virtue, 310f, 326ff, 364f See also knowledge reasonable, 3, 11, 174ff, 251, 307ff,

805

318, 372, 432ff, 446, 488ff, 513ff, 627ff, 681; Cartesian doubts unreasonable, 450, 488f, 514686f; epistemic justification and, 391ff, 434ff; and ‘must implies ought,’ 429ff, 434f; reliablism and, 390ff; and system of philosophers, 627ff; vulgar, system of, reasonable, 590ff Reid, T., 11, 447, 464, 489ff, 634, 637, 656, 693, 699, 722, 740, 748, 750, 751, 761, 762, 763, 767; abstract ideas and, 496f; critic of Berkeley, 496f; critic of Hume, 5f, 329, 353, 452, 489ff, 496f, 634f, 656; critic of Locke, 493; and defence of common sense, 447, 452, 489ff, 539, 680; norms of language innate, 353; perception and, 493f; sensory experience and, 493; on simples, 491ff, 495ff, 496ff; substances and, 491ff; testimony and, 353; use of conjuring in his philosophy, 496; and Wittgenstein, 353; Wolterstorff, compared with, 550 relations, 756; acquaintance and, 215ff, 228ff, 458, 464, 499ff; analysis of, 259ff, 499ff, 569, 723ff; association and, 50ff, 569; Bradley and, 499ff; causal, 50f; Hume’s problems with, 459, 569f, 723ff; idealist’s account of, 501ff; logic and, 500ff; relative ideas and, 104f, 303ff, 569, 586ff, 601; resemblance, 50f, 502, 569, 723; Russell and, 502, 506ff; spatial, 259ff, 723ff religion, 13; not rational, 13 representationalism, 204ff, 220ff, 476f; Berkeley and, 204ff, 220ff, 477; and scepticism, 204ff, 220ff, 477

806 Index resemblance, 313, 345, 501, 569; abstract ideas and, 50ff, 170ff, 292, 313, 345ff, 496ff, 704; association and, 50f, 170ff, 346, 496ff, 569, 704; as leading to confused ideas, 64ff; of sense impressions to their causes in system of philosophers, 603, 607, 623 Rosenberg, A., 734, 754 Russell, B., 8, 84, 143, 187f, 193, 198, 228ff, 369, 402, 412, 414, 524, 635, 647, 652, 656, 712, 713, 716, 717, 718, 721, 746, 751, 752, 754, 759, 767; on Kant as a disaster, 711; criticized by Quinton, 189ff; critic of Bradley on relations, 506f; definite descriptions and, 571ff, 588; and his Berkeleyan realism, 635, 652; his critical realism, 541, 588, 652, 656; his method of doubt, 188f, 193; identity and, 571ff; intentionality and, 228ff, 369f; justified true belief and, 376ff; Prichard and, 410f; relations and, 506f, 509ff, 573ff; Wittgenstein and, 231ff Salmon, W., 337, 740 and induction by simple enumeration, 337f scepticism: academic, 3, 306, 371, 631; –, and probability, 373; –, and truth, 367, 373, 631; Alston and, 389ff; autonomous knower leads to, 341; Berkeley and, 178ff, 222ff, 476f; Cartesianism and, 371ff, 374, 489, 624, 684ff; contingency and, 369ff, 413, 444ff, 449, 513, 518ff; and despair, 3, 341, 374, 481; –, remedied by religious faith, 481; –, remedied by social life, 3, 5, 372; and naturalism, 4, 174f, 436, 447ff, 450,

489, 518ff, 563, 684, 686; –, Mounce and, 519ff, 523; –, Popkin and, 519, 563; Pyrrhonian, 306, 371, 519, 523, 538ff, 563, 624, 675, 685, 731; representationalism and, 178ff, 476, 489; Sosa and, 388ff; Stroud and, 8, 318, 329, 374, 513 upshot of modern philosophy, 625 science, 12, 545; and common sense, 368; explanations by, 41, 306ff, 510; Hume as a defender of, 12, 680; as motivated by curiosity or love of truth, 596f, 611; versus scientia, 305; versus superstition, 12, 174, 306f, 317, 321ff, 451; world of = system of philosophers, 545. See also cause scientia. See knowledge Searle, J., 266ff, 239ff, 720, 721; and Addis, 240; and Bergmann, 236; and intentionality, 236 self, 7, 737; a bundle, 10, 205, 214ff, 244f, 626f, 737; Hume’s view misconstrued by Code, 737; release from bondage, 429ff; reasonable, 434; self-knowledge, 433ff; not a substance, 204ff, 244ff, 625ff, 737. See also mind self-love: and conventions, 25; and morality, 40 Sellars, R.W. (Sellars père), 754, 758, 759, 763, 764, 768; and his critical realism, 12, 54, 541, 588, 589, 652, 673ff; and his defence of common sense, 679f; and Hylas, 674ff, 769 Sellars, W. (Sellars fils), 695, 704, 745, 746, 753; coherence and, 418; his critical realism, 541; epistemic norms and, 418; and Hume, 418 sensations. See impressions sense experience, 206ff, 493ff

Index sentiments, moral, 39ff Serapeum, 14 Serapis, 14; image destroyed by Christians after five centuries, 14 Sergeant, J., 95ff, 502ff, 705, 718, 751; and his Aristotelianism, 502ff; versus Bradley, 502; versus Locke, 95ff, 504ff; and objective necessities, 95ff, 502ff; –, incompatible with PA, 505f; and trivial propositions, 504ff Sextus Empiricus, 455ff, 484ff, 488, 744f, 748; principle of acquaintance and, 455ff simples, 491ff, 495ff; as not implying unanalysability, 65f, 78ff, 264f, 490ff, 497 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of, 38ff, 697; critic of Hobbes and Locke, 38; natural inclination to society, 39 Shakespeare, W., 35; Ulysses’ speech and objective moral order, 35f Shope, R., 743 silly theories, 708f; examples of, 709 Smart, J.C.C., 709, 710 Smith, Norman Kemp, 309, 634, 688 , 693, 697, 726 social order, language norms and, 347ff, 703; prior to rationality, 703; religion a danger to, 324ff, 631f Socrates, 6, 69, 132ff, 136ff, 291f, 728 Sosa, J., 402, 744, 745; and scepticism, 388ff; on rejecting scepticism by begging the question, 389f soul, connected with forms, 712; and Plato, 712 speech acts, 143; Árdal on, 26; Austin on, 26 Spence, K.W., 124

807

Spencer, H., 7, 752; inconceivability as criterion of truth, 515ff; innate principles and, 515f; –, as a reliable method for belief formation, 516; Mill and, on truth, 514ff Spinoza, B., 426ff, 529, 626, 747, 752; and his view of human being, 429f; spirits as the place of all things, a silly theory, 709 spleen and indolence, 596, 611, 630; as end of science, 698 Spock, Mr, 237 spontaneity, 126ff Stair, A.D., Lord, 696 Stevenson, C.L., the emotivist, 736 Stevenson, J.T., the philosopher, 709, 710; refutation of mind–body identity, 709 Stoics, 310, 316, 431 Stout, G. F., 472, 743; and nominalism, 472 Strawson, G., 107ff, 705; on Hume, 706 Stroud, B., 8, 318, 329, 374, 445f, 450, 513, 734, 744, 745, 747, 759; and contingency, 374, 445; and world as illusion, 513 structure, abstract idea of, 677f ; as all that is known of external objects, 586ff, 603, 606, 674ff subsistent entities, 230 substances, 92f, 130, 131, 134ff, 164f, 182ff, 206ff, 244f, 404ff, 474f, 484ff, 492ff, 536f, 563, 569, 608, 627, 636f, 679f, 713f; active, 92, 208ff, 678; continuants and, 563, 569; excluded by PA, 204ff, 220ff, 474f, 484ff, 563, 608, 627, 631ff; illusory entities, 252, 632; minds not, 623, 679f; modern philosophy and,

808 Index 623ff, 679; Moore and, 474ff; perception and, 408ff, 410f, 473ff, 482ff, 548, 637; provide necessary connections, 92f, 371; and scepticism, 625f, 632, 679f; simple, 492ff; substrata, 207, 474; transubstantiation and, 713f; truth and, 241, 253 superstition, 10, 16., 306f, 321ff, 356, 420, 631f; as dangerous to social order, 632; versus reason, 10, 174, 306ff, 321ff, 420, 451, 632; and sympathy, 356 syllogisms, 94ff, 171, 500ff; Bradley and, 500; and idealist account of contingency, 500ff; and real definitions, 94; Sergeant and, 503; and substances, 84ff sympathy, 36ff, 41ff, 203f, 349, 351f, 430, 640; and conventions of language, 349, 351f, 640; and moral conventions, 36ff, 640; psychological mechanism of, 42, 430 testimony and, 252ff

on Hume’s justification of induction, 734, 735f; and misunderstanding of Beauchamp and Rosenberg, 734; and misunderstanding of Fogelin, 733 transubstantiation, 713; Aquinas and, 713f; and dream problem, 713f; and evil genius, 714; and God, 713f; problem of knowledge and, 713f truth, 241ff, 253, 401, 510ff; and Aquinas, 242ff, 253; of being, 401; accidentally connected to justifying reasons, 383; correspondence and, 401, 511ff, 522; as end aimed at by science, 367, 730, 741; and God, 242ff; and Locke, 243; and logical atomism, 510; maker, 247f, 383ff, 401, 511ff; and Moore, 243ff; –, prior to truth as correspondence, 401ff, 517ff; reason conducive to, 326ff, 367ff; substances and, 242ff, 253

testimony, 11, 331, 332ff; to alleged miracles, 333; discovery of error in, 343ff; language and, 345ff; responsible knower and, 332; sympathy and, 352ff Thagard, P., 118ff, 707 Theodosius, Patriarch, 14; zeal and bigotry of, 14 Theophilius, Patriarch, 14 thought, imageless, 462; Bergmann and, 250; Wittgenstein and, 250 Titchener, E.B., 462 Tolman, E.C., 119, 710 Tooke, J.H., 699 Traiger, S., 720, 733, 734, 735; on Ducasse’s criticism of Hume, 736;

Unger, P., 743; and truth by accident, 383ff universals, 497f; compatible with PA, 497f virtue, 326ff, 367f Voltaire, 15; versus Hume, 15 vulgar, system of, 546ff, 618f, 652; acceptance reasonable, 590ff; as a case of Berkeleyan realism, 546ff, 553, 583, 612, 763; and Garrett, 763; and unsensed parts, 553ff, 583ff, 610; and system of the philosophers, 582ff, 611ff; such inferences rational, 556ff; contradicted by system of philosophers, 581, 592,

Index 597ff, 612f; epistemological primacy of, 583; Hume on, 540, 553ff, 591, 592f, 597, 612; imposed upon us, 597; inevitable, 590ff; judged false if critical realism accepted, 561, 581, 590ff; = manifest image (of Sellars fils); not inconsistent, 597ff; and PA, 546, 618; = world of New Realism, 546 Wallis, J., 688; Hume praises, 688 Watson, J.B. (the psychologist), 116, 130, 708, 710, 711; his social progressivism, 710 Watson, R.A., 238ff, 713, 717, 720; intentionality and, 238ff; isomorphism and, 238ff Waxman, W., 436ff, 463f, 749; on Hume as a sceptic, 436 Weinberg, J., 700, 715, 717, 723, 751, 756 Wesley, J., and miracles, 333 Wilkins, J., 688 Whitehead, A.N., his wisdom, 6, 712 Winkler, K., 705 Wittgenstein, L., 231f, 250, 316, 696, 717, 719, 734, 740, 747, 749, 752; and common sense, 442ff, 498; and consciousness, 717; and Hume, 442ff, 498, 610; and Hume on conventions of language, 696; and imageless thought, 250; and intentionality and, 231ff; and ‘logical,’ 442; and Malcolm, 442f; and Reid, 353f; and Russell, 231f

809

Wolf, R., 711; alleges Hume an urKantian, 711, 767; wrongly prefers Kant to Hume, 711f Woolman, R., 696 Wolterstorf, N., 547ff, 755; and bundle account of things, 547ff; and Hume, 550; and impressions, 550ff; and Reid, 550 Wolaston, W., 700 Woodbridge, J. E. F., 716 Woolhouse, R., 727 Wordsworth, W., 751 world, external, 147ff, 151ff, 515f; non-existence of, 513; and perception, 158ff, 512ff; social and passionate, 329f Wren, C., 688 Wright, J., 23, 58ff, 88ff, 101f, 542, 700, 705, 707, 730, 731, 753f, 763f; on Hume as a phenomenalist, 753f; on Hume as a sceptic, 542, 730; on Hume’s physiological psychology, 58ff; on Hume’s thinking of things without using ideas, 706, 731, 763f; on relevance of Flage on relative ideas, 763 Wundt, W., 119, 462 Würzberg psychologists, 462; and imageless thought, 462; and introspective analysis, 462 Yolton, J., 123, 695, 696, 707 Zabeeh, F., 722 Zeno the Eleatic, 273f