Robert J. Fogelin - Hume's Skeptical Crisis - A Textual Study-Oxford University Press, USA (2009)

Hume’s Skeptical Crisis Z
This page intentionally left blank

A Textual Study
ROBERT J. FOGELIN
1
2009
1
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further
Oxford University’s objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education.
Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fogelin, Robert J.
Hume’s skeptical crisis : a textual study / Robert J. Fogelin.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-19-538739-1
1. Hume, David, 1711–1776. Skepticism in the treatise of human nature.
2. Skepticism. 3. Knowledge, theory of. I. Title.
B1489.F638 2009
128—dc22 2008049463
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Jane Lincoln Taylor
But what have I here said . . . ?
Preface Z
A few words about the provenance of this work may help explain
the form it takes. It concerns the same material that I examined
in the first eight chapters of Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of
Human Nature, published in 1985. The primary intention of that
work was to counter the tendency, common at the time, to play
down or simply ignore the skeptical themes in Hume’s Treatise in
favor of a thoroughgoing naturalistic reading in the style of Norman
Kemp Smith. Since the skeptical themes were being played down,
to provide a suitable counterweight, I played them up. This work
is intended to offer a more balanced account of the relationship
between Hume’s naturalism and his skepticism.
In 1990 I was given the opportunity to develop the central ideas of
that book as a lecturer in a National Endowment for the Humanities
seminar directed by David Fate Norton and Wade Robison. It con-
sisted of five lectures on book 1, part 4 of the Treatise, the locus
of Hume’s deepest skeptical reflections. I wrote careful notes and
corrected them in the light of the energetic discussions that greeted
these lectures. My intention at the time was to use these notes as
the basis for a second edition of Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise.
I then became involved in other projects and thought no more of
these notes until fifteen years later, when I received an invitation
from Livia Guimaraes to give a series of lectures on Hume at the
Universidade Federal de Minas Geraise in Brazil. I dug out the
x Preface
NEH notes, reread Hume, and produced an extensive revision of

the original NEH lectures. This work is based on those lectures.
Much has changed as a result of these multiple revisions. I have
corrected what I now take to be misreadings of particular texts.
I have given more prominence to the naturalistic themes in the
Treatise, in particular, to Hume’s attempts to give a naturalistic
account of the emergence of philosophical positions. On the other
side, I now lay more stress on the claim that Hume’s pursuit of a
science of human nature itself generates a skeptical challenge that
calls his naturalistic program into question. Hence the title: Hume’s
Skeptical Crisis. Rather than an analysis of Hume’s skepticism of
the kind presented in Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human
Nature, this work presents a narrative account of how this skepti-
cal crisis arises as Hume’s investigations penetrate more and more
deeply into the operations of the human understanding.
Over the years a number of books have played an important part
in shaping my thinking about Hume’s philosophy, both through
agreement and disagreement. These include Thomas Brown’s Cause
and Effect (1822), J. A. Passmore’s Hume’s Intentions, Terrence
Penelhum’s Hume, Barry Stroud’s Hume, Annette Baier’s Progress of
Sentiments, and Don Garrett’s Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s
Philosophy. I also have learned a great deal from an unpublished
paper by David Owen titled “Scepticism with regard to reason.”
It is available from the departmental website (philosophy.arizona.
edu).
The editorial comments in the Selby-Bigge and Nidditch edi-
tions of the Treatise of Human Nature and the two Enquiries have
been of invaluable help, as have the extensive comments in the new
David Norton and Mary Norton critical edition of the Treatise and
the new Thomas Beauchamp critical edition of the first Enquiry.
Preface xi
I owe a special debt to the two scholars who served as readers of

the manuscript for Oxford University Press: first for their generous
support, second for their editorial comments that at times strength-
ened my reading of the text, while at other times saved me from
embarrassing errors.
Beyond this, there are the articles I have read, talks I have attended,
comments I have received on papers I presented in various venues,
and, not of least importance, conversations that I have had at gather-
ings around the world with fellow Hume enthusiasts. I cannot name
them all, but some who have been particularly useful, often calling
texts to my attention either in support or in opposition to views I
hold, include: Annette Baier, Lewis White Beck, Simon Blackburn,
Janet Broughton, Thompson Clarke, Willis Doney, Julia Driver,
Harry Frankfurt, Don Garrett, Livia Guimaraes, Ted Honderich,
Christopher Hookway, Gary Mathews, Peter Millican, David
Norton, David Owen, Richard Popkin, Geoffrey Sayer-McCord,
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, David Stove, Barry Stroud, Meredith
Williams, Michael Williams, and Kenneth Winkler. I have surely
forgotten some, and to them I apologize.
I have received institutional support for this project from the
National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Study
Center at Bellagio, The Liguria Study Center for the Arts and
Humanities at Bogliasco, the Faculty Research Fund at Dartmouth
College, and a generous Emeritus Grant from the Mellon
Foundation.
I would also like to thank Peter Ohlin and Linda Donnelly of the
Oxford University press for their support and editorial help, and, as
before, thank Florence Fogelin and Jane Taylor for their patience
and skill in dealing with drafts of my work. In gratitude for her help
over many years, I have dedicated this work to Jane Taylor.
Contents Z
Texts and Citations xvii
Introduction: The Interpretive Problem 3

1 Of Knowledge and Probability 11
A Quick Tour of Part 3, Book 1 11
Section 1. Of knowledge 11
Section 2. Of probability; and of the idea of cause and effect 13
Section 3. Why a cause is always necessary 14
Section 4. Of the component parts of our reasonings
concerning causes and effects 15
Section 5. Of the impressions of the senses and memory 15
Section 6. Of the inference from the impression to the idea 16
Section 7. Of the nature of the idea, or belief 18
Section 8. Of the causes of belief 19
Section 9. Of the effects of other relations, and other habits 20
Section 10. Of the influence of belief 20
Section 11. Of the probability of chances 21
Section 12. Of the probability of causes 21
Section 13. Of unphilosophical probability 22
xiv Contents
Section 14. Of the idea of necessary connexion 22

Section 15. Rules by which to judge of causes and effects 27
Section 16. Of the reason of animals 28
2 Hume on Unphilosophical Probabilities 29
Unphilosophical as Opposed to Philosophical Probabilities 29
Sources of Unphilosophical Probabilities 30
The effect of the remoteness of the event 30
The effect of the remoteness of the observation 31
Reiterative diminution 31
Prejudice based on general rules 35
Conflicts within the Imagination and Skepticism 37
3 Hume’s Skepticism with Regard to Reason 39
The Turn to Skepticism 39
The Basic Argument 40
Reducing knowledge to probability 41
The regression argument 43
The principle of reiterative diminution 44
Hume’s Response to His Skeptical Argument 48
Peritrope 52
4 Of Skepticism with Regard to the Senses 55
Hume’s Turnabout with Regard to the Senses 55
The Organization of Section 2 57
The Causes of Our Belief in the Existence of Bodies 59
The senses not the source of this belief 60
Reason not the source of this belief 63
The Operations of the Imagination in Forming This Belief 65
Contents xv
Hume’s informal statement of his position 66

Hume’s systematic statement of his position 69
The Philosopher’s Double-Existence. Theory of Perception 78
The Pyrrhonian Moment 82
A Concluding Note 83
5 Of the Ancient and Modern Philosophy 85
Reasons for Examining Ancient and Modern
Philosophical Systems 85
Of the Ancient Philosophy (Section 3) 85
The false belief in the continued identity of changing objects 87
The fiction of underlying substance, or original first matter 89
The false belief in the simplicity of objects 90
The fiction of a unifying substance 93
The incomprehensibility of the peripatetic system 93
Skeptical implications 94
Of the Modern Philosophy (Section 4) 96
Against the distinction between primary and secondary qualities 97
Another Pyrrhonian moment 99
6 The Soul and the Self 101

Of the Immateriality of the Soul (Section 5) 101
Setting the dialectical stage 101
The soul as substance 102
The problem of local conjunction 104
Soul–body interaction 107
On proofs of immortality 108
Of Personal Identity (Section 6) 109
xvi Contents
Basic criticisms 110

Account of the fiction of personal identity 112
Disputes about identity as merely verbal 116
The reservations in the appendix 117
7 The Conclusion of Book 1 125
A Gloomy Summation of Skeptical Results 125
What Is to Be Done? 130
Being a Philosopher on Skeptical Principles 132
8 Two Openings and Two Closings 139
The Treatise and the Enquiry on Skepticism 139
The Opening of the Treatise 140
The Opening of the Enquiry 140
The Response to Skepticism in the Enquiry 144
The Science of Human Nature in the Enquiry 146
The Role of Skeptical Arguments in the Enquiry 149
Skepticism concerning the senses 149
Skepticism concerning reason 151
Skepticism concerning moral reasoning 152
Pyrrhonism and Mitigated Skepticism 155
Notes 159
Works Cited or Mentioned 165
Index 167
Texts and Citations Z
For the reader’s convenience, all citations to A Treatise of Human

Nature and to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding have
a double entry. The first is to the editions of these works that have
recently been published by Oxford University Press: the David
Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton critical edition of the Treatise
of Human Nature and Tom L. Beauchamp’s critical edition of the
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. The second entry is to
Selby-Bigge/Nidditch editions of the Treatise of Human Nature and
David Hume’s Enquiries. Citations to the Treatise contain only page
numbers. Citations to the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
are labeled EHU.
xvii
Introduction Z The Interpretive Problem
How does Hume’s naturalism—his attempt “to introduce the exper-

imental method of reasoning into moral subjects”—square with
what seem to be his strong skeptical commitments? On the face of
it, these two aspects of his philosophy appear to be at odds with one
another. For example, in a number of places Hume holds that there
are no rational grounds for believing that the regularities that have
held in the past will continue to hold in the future; that in turn
seems to show that the inductive inferences he employs in pursuit
of his science of human nature are themselves baseless. This conflict
is so obvious that even philosophically unsophisticated readers often
recognize it. Hume, however, does not seem particularly concerned
about this apparent conflict between his inductive skepticism and his
commitment to a science of human nature. In the Treatise of Human
Nature, a skeptical argument is used to reject reason (in a wide sense)
as the source of causal inferences, so that he can replace it with the
associative operations of the imagination. In the Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding, Hume celebrates this relocation, telling us
that “it is . . . conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure
so necessary an act of the mind, by some instinct or mechanical ten-
dency” (EHU, 45/55). As we shall see, skeptical doubts are the source
of deep disquietudes that emerge in the concluding section of the
first book of the Treatise, but his inductive skepticism—though it
has troubled many others—seems not to have troubled Hume.
3
4 Introduction
A dramatic way of presenting the tension between Hume’s natu-

ralism and his skepticism is to compare two passages: one from the
introduction to the Treatise, the other from the closing section of
book 1. Hume launches the Treatise with swagger:
’Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or

less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them
may seem to run from it, they still return back by one pas-
sage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and
Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the sci-
ence of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men,
and are judg’d of by their powers and faculties.
Here then is the only expedient, from which we can hope
for success in our philosophical researches, to leave the tedious
lingring method, which we have hitherto follow’d, and instead
of taking now and then a castle or village on the frontier, to
march up directly to the capital or center of these sciences,
to human nature itself; which being once masters of, we may
every where else hope for an easy victory. From this station we
may extend our conquests over all those sciences, which more
intimately concern human life, and may afterwards proceed
at leisure to discover more fully those, which are the objects
of pure curiosity. There is no question of importance, whose
decision is not compriz’d in the science of man; and there is
none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we
become acquainted with that science. In pretending there-
fore, to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect
propose a compleat system of the sciences, built on a founda-
tion almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they
can stand with any security. (4/xv)
Introduction 5
In sharp contrast to this brave beginning, in the closing section

of book 1 of the Treatise we find the following forlorn skeptical
plaint:
But what have I here said, that reflections very refin’d and
metaphysical have little or no influence upon us? This opin-
ion I can scarce forbear retracting, and condemning from my
present feeling and experience. The intense view of these man-
ifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has
so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to
reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion
even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I,
or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to
what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and
whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and
on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence
on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin
to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable,
inviron’d with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv’d of
the use of every member and faculty. (175/ 268–69)
This study is an attempt to answer two questions: First, how did

Hume’s pursuit of his “science of man,” so confidently begun at the
start of the Treatise, land him in philosophical despair? Second, how
does he attempt to extract himself from this melancholy state?
It is important not to write off Hume’s expressions of despair as
mere histrionics. As Hume comes to see, his pursuit of a science of
human nature has led him into a skepticism that subverts the entire
enterprise. Furthermore—though this will have to be shown—he
finds himself completely incapable of presenting arguments that
will refute the skeptical challenges he himself has produced. If he
6 Introduction
is going to find a way out of his intellectual impasse, it will have to

come from the nonrational side of human nature.
At the close of book 1 of the Treatise, Hume suggests that a reli-
ance on common (vulgar) opinions can provide a way out of his
difficulties. As we shall see, his suggestions in the Treatise seem ten-
tative and not obviously up to the job he assigns to them. Perhaps
reflecting dissatisfaction with his previous treatment of the threat
of radical skepticism, Hume returns to this topic in the opening
section of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, where he
confronts the challenge anew. Then, in the closing section of the
Enquiry, he offers a remarkable response to it: When the destructive
mechanisms of Pyrrhonism—Hume’s label for radical skepticism—
are counterbalanced by the mechanisms that produce common
(vulgar) belief, then the mind, as a result of a vector of these two
opposing forces, naturally settles into the standpoint of a mitigated
and moderate skepticism. This is Hume’s final response to the radi-
cal skepticism that seemed to overwhelm him in part 4, book 1 of
the Treatise.
Countering radical skepticism by replacing it with a more mod-
erate or mitigated skepticism is not, however, cost-free. Hume’s
new modesty carries with it a sharp curtailment in the pretensions
of his science of human nature. Where Hume previously spoke of
producing “a compleat system of the sciences, built on a founda-
tion almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can
stand with any security” (4/xv), he now speaks circumspectly of
producing “reflections of common life, methodized and corrected”
(EHU, 121/162)
As this development unfolds, there are four contrasting Humes,
or at least four contrasting voices of Hume, inhabiting Hume’s writ-
ing. The first is the confident Hume, projector of a complete science
of human nature. The second is the melancholy Hume, wracked
Introduction 7
with Pyrrhonian doubts he seems incapable of shaking. Third, we

have the chastened Hume, modest in his expectations and reason-
ably content with his lot. There is also a fourth voice or standpoint
found in Hume’s writings, important but easily overlooked. This is
the standpoint of the ordinary people engaged in the affairs of daily
life: the standpoint of the vulgar.
Which standpoint represents the real Hume? As I read the text,
all four standpoints are real in representing the way matters strike
Hume when operating at a particular level of reflection. At the start
of the Treatise, and well into it, Hume is an enthusiast for the new
science of human nature he is developing. Hume’s standpoint under-
goes a radical skeptical transformation in response to the appalling
things his pursuit of the science of human nature reveals to him.
This is full-throated skepticism. The third standpoint emerges from
Hume’s recognition that radical skepticism cannot be disposed of
by employing arguments against it. When matters are placed on
an argumentative basis, the Pyrrhonist always wins. For Hume, the
slide into radical skepticism can only be countered by yielding in
some measure to our vulgar propensity to believe things that are not
based on sound arguments and, more deeply, even things that run
counter to sound arguments.
The textual study that follows is intended to show the basis for
the broad claims sketched earlier. It largely takes the form of a nar-
rative. With very few exceptions, I present matters as they actually
unfold in the text. Given Hume’s shifts in standpoint, a narra-
tive approach seems virtually forced on us. It will operate at two
interrelated levels: one global, the other local. A global interpreta-
tion concentrates on major aspects of a philosophical position and
indicates how they are interrelated. Dealing with Hume’s writings
involves, among other things, keeping track of where Hume is in
the dialectical—dare I use the word?—unfolding of his position.
8 Introduction
Local interpretation involves a close reading of texts in an effort

to provide a check on the global interpretation, while at the same
time enriching its content. Grotesquely bad readings of a text usu-
ally arise from violations of the principle of global interpretation—
often made in an effort to square a position under examination
with contemporary philosophical fashions. Shallow readings usu-
ally result from neglecting the details of the text where, as it is said,
God—sometimes the Devil—is said to reside. To borrow phrasing
from Kant, global interpretation without local interpretation is
empty, local interpretation without global interpretation is blind.
Because I will be engaged in a close textual study, I will, for the
most part, stay within the margins of the text and cite it extensively.
I will not be much concerned with the sources of Hume’s ideas and
only occasionally compare Hume’s claims with those made by other
philosophers. I will make no effort to show that Hume’s writings
are relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. I think they
are, but it seems patronizing to Hume to insist on this. I will not
be much involved with the rich and impressive secondary litera-
ture on Hume that has appeared in recent decades. In dealing with
the secondary literature, one is again dealing with texts—texts that
often refer to other texts and often present interpretive problems
of their own. I have not become deeply involved in the secondary
literature because I do not see how this can be done in a fair and
accurate way without interrupting the flow of the narrative I am
presenting.
I would, however, suggest three works I find impressive that can
be read profitably in conjunction with this work. Barry Stroud’s
Hume, among its many virtues, will prove very helpful in filling
out my whirlwind account of book 3 of the Treatise that I pres-
ent in Chapter 1. David Owen’s essay “Scepticism with Regard to
Reason” offers a rich and scholarly examination of the subject that
Introduction 9
is in some ways similar to mine and in some ways different. Finally,

I recommend Don Garrett’s Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s
Philosophy for a treatment of Hume’s skepticism that differs in fun-
damental ways from my own.
In this work I make no claims for originality on particular points.
Perhaps there is some novelty in the way I tell the overall story.
Chapter 1 Z Of Knowledge and Probability
The central claim I will attempt to establish in this work is that

the skeptical Hume of part 4 of the Treatise emerges naturally
out of Hume’s unfettered pursuit of the naturalistic program of
part 3. To this end, I will offer a sketch, a précis, or a whirlwind
tour of what Hume thinks he has accomplished in part 3. I will
cite Hume’s conclusions and exert restraint—though not total
restraint—in commenting on the strength of the arguments he
presents in their behalf. With this broad sketch in hand, I will
then turn to part 4 and examine the skeptical consequences that
emerge when Hume applies his naturalistic account of belief-
formation to philosophical beliefs themselves. Part 3 is titled “Of
knowledge and probability.” One section is dedicated to a dis-
cussion of knowledge, the remaining fifteen to probability and
related topics.
Z
A Quick Tour of Part 3, Book 1
Section 1. Of knowledge
At the opening of this section, Hume repeats his list of what he calls
philosophical relations that he had originally presented and briefly
discussed in part 1, section 5. They are
11
12 Hume’s Skeptical Crisis
resemblance, identity, relations of time and place, proportion

in quantity or number, degrees in any quality, contrariety, and
causation. These relations may be divided into two classes;
into such as depend entirely on the ideas, which we compare
together, and such as may be chang’d without any change in
the ideas. (50/69)
He declares that “only four, which depending solely upon ideas,
can be the objects of knowledge and certainty. These four are resem-
blance, contrariety, degrees in any quality, and proportions in quantity
or number” (50/70). The four relations that “depend entirely on the
ideas, which we compare together,” are the basis for the domain of
knowledge; the remaining three (relations of time and place, iden-
tity, and causation), which do not have this feature, are the concern
of the domain of probability.
Hume makes quick work of the domain of knowledge. He says
that three of these relations—resemblance, contrariety, and degrees
in any quality—are matters of intuition rather than demonstration.
Whether they hold or not can be established by merely inspecting the
ideas themselves. Arithmetic contains intuitive truths, but contains
demonstrative truths as well. This is in virtue of what has come to
be known as Hume’s Law (one-to-one correlation), which provides
a “precise standard, by which we can judge . . . equality” (51/71). For
want of a similarly precise standard, geometry can provide nothing
better than what we might call damn-near demonstrative truths.
Given its importance for his project as a whole, this discussion
of intuitive and demonstrative knowledge is surprisingly brief and
underdeveloped. It is striking that Hume expresses no dissatisfaction
with it and gives no forewarning of the assault on both intuitive and
demonstrative knowledge that awaits the reader in the opening sec-
tion of book 1, part 4.
Of Knowledge and Probability 13
Section 2. Of probability; and of the idea

of cause and effect
Hume’s treatment of knowledge is almost peremptory; his treat-

ment of probability is elaborate and complex. There are, according
to Hume, three kinds of relations that do not generate knowledge,
that is, intuitive and demonstrative truths. They are identity, rela-
tions of time and place, and causation. Each gets a part of book 1
dedicated to it. Relations of time and place are examined in part 2;
causation is examined in part 3; and, setting aside its opening and
closing sections, identity is a central topic of part 4.1 I will quickly
run through the basic moves concerning causation and probability
as they unfold in book 1, part 3 of the Treatise.
Section 2 raises a question that will not be answered until sec-
tion 14: How are we to define the relationship between a cause and
an effect? This section initiates the quest for an answer and moves
through the following stages:
1. An examination of a particular instance of causation reveals
only two relationships: contiguity and priority.
2. But, according to Hume, these two relations by them-
selves do not provide an adequate account of causation:
“Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of
contiguity and succession, as affording a complete idea of
causation? . . . There is a necessary connexion to be taken
into consideration; and that relation is of much greater
importance, than any of the other two above mention’d”
(55/77).
3. But an inspection of the objects themselves reveals nothing
corresponding to the idea of a necessary connection, so
again an impasse has been reached.
4. At this stage of his investigations, Hume seems explicitly

committed to the idea that a necessary connection is an
essential component of a causal relation, but so far he has
been unable to give an adequate account of this idea. In an
attempt to find another way of approaching this problem,
Hume proposes to beat about in two neighboring fields,
asking:
First, for what reason we pronounce it necessary, that every thing

whose existence has a beginning, shou’d also have a cause?
Secondly, why we conclude, that such particular causes must
necessarily have such particular effects; and what is the nature
of that inference we draw from the one to the other, and of the
belief we repose in it? (55/78)
As a result of these two expeditions, Hume will reverse himself,
and instead of holding that the idea of a necessary connection is
an essential component of our idea of a causal relation, he will hold
that the idea of a necessary connection is an attendant product of
causal reasoning.
Section 3. Why a cause is always necessary
To state the question more fully, what is the basis for thinking that
everything whose existence has a beginning should also have a cause
for this beginning? Hume argues that this cannot be justified as either
a demonstrative or an intuitive truth for the following reason:
As all distinct ideas are separable from each other, and as
the ideas of cause and effect are evidently distinct, ’twill be
easy for us to conceive any object to be non-existent this
moment, and existent the next, without conjoining to it the

distinct idea of a cause or productive principle. The separa-
tion, therefore, of the idea of a cause from that of a begin-
ning of existence, is plainly possible for the imagination; and
consequently the actual separation of these objects is so far
possible, that it implies no contradiction nor absurdity; and
is therefore incapable of being refuted by any reasoning from
mere ideas; without which ’tis impossible to demonstrate the
necessity of a cause. (56/79)
With demonstrative and intuitive reasoning eliminated, it seems
that the belief in question must have its basis in experience. But
instead of pursuing this topic directly, Hume turns his attention to
the second neighboring field and asks “why we conclude, that such
particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects.”
Section 4. Of the component parts of our reasonings

concerning causes and effects
Hume argues that causal reasoning must have as its first component
some initial experience, for without an origin in an initial experi-
ence causal reasoning would be no more than hypothetical.
Section 5. Of the impressions of the senses

and memory
Hume lays out the component parts of his program:

Here . . . we have three things to explain, viz. first, The original
impression. Secondly, The transition to the idea of the con-
nected cause or effect. Thirdly, The nature and qualities of
that idea. (59/84)
The remainder of the section discusses the difference between

memory and imagination, with some qualifications, drawing the
distinction in terms of vivacity.
Section 6. Of the inference from the impression

to the idea
This section demands special attention because it contains, in a

complex form, a line of reasoning that will later emerge (in the
Abstract and the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) as
Hume’s skeptical argument concerning induction.
Earlier, Hume was stymied in his attempt to discover anything
corresponding to a necessary connection between causally related
events. All he could find of significance are the relations of priority
and contiguity. Now, however, when he turns his attention to the
specific assignment of causes and effects, he hits on the further idea
that events that are causally connected are constantly conjoined in
terms of priority and contiguity. This newly discovered notion of
constant conjunction will play a central role in Hume’s first defini-
tion of cause, but his initial reaction to it is negative.
To tell the truth, this new-discover’d relation of a constant
conjunction seems to advance us but very little in our way.
For it implies no more than this, that like objects have always
been plac’d in like relations of contiguity and succession; and
it seems evident, at least at first sight, that by this means we
can never discover any new idea, and can only multiply, but
not enlarge the objects of our mind. . . . From the mere rep-
etition of any past impression, even to infinity, there never
will arise any new original idea, such as that of a necessary
connexion; and the number of impressions has in this case
no more effect than if we confin’d ourselves to one only.
(62/88)
The expression “at first sight” suggests that Hume is not really
committed to the idea that nothing new can emerge from the mere
repetition of the same ideas, and, in fact, he will reject it. Hume also
drops a hint of even deeper significance for understanding his ultimate
position concerning the relationship between necessary connections
and causal inferences: “Perhaps ‘twill appear in the end, that the
necessary connexion depends on the inference, instead of the inference’s
depending on the necessary connexion” (62/88). This is just how things
will turn out, but it can only be shown after Hume gives his account of
the “transition to the idea of the connected cause or effect,” the second
component in the program announced in the previous section.
Hume first attempts to show that causal inferences are not the
product of our rational faculties. The initial move, and the key
move, is this:
[If reason produced causal inferences] it wou’d proceed upon
that principle, that instances, of which we have had no experience,
must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the
course of nature continues always uniformly the same. (62/89)
The question now becomes: How can the principle that the course of
nature continues always uniformly the same itself be justified? Given
the architecture of Hume’s position, there are only two options:
In order therefore to clear up this matter, let us consider
all the arguments upon which such a proposition may be
suppos’d to be founded; and as these must be deriv’d either
from knowledge or probability, let us cast our eye on each of
these degrees of evidence, and see whether they afford any
just conclusion of this nature. (62/89)
The first alternative is ruled out by the conceivability argument:
There can be no demonstrative arguments to prove, that those
instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those,
of which we have had experience. We can at least conceive a

change in the course of nature; which sufficiently proves, that
such a change is not absolutely impossible. To form a clear
idea of any thing, is an undeniable argument for its possibil-
ity, and is alone a refutation of any pretended demonstration
against it. (62/89)
The second alternative is eliminated by the argument from circularity:
According to this account of things, which is, I think, in
every point unquestionable, probability is founded on the
presumption of a resemblance betwixt those objects, of which
we have had experience, and those, of which we have had
none; and therefore ’tis impossible this presumption can arise
from probability. (63/90)
What we have, then, is a skeptical argument intended to show
that there can be no justification of the principle that the course of
nature continues always uniformly the same. For Hume, this pro-
vides a sufficient basis for saying that causal inferences are not the
product of our rational faculties.
When the mind, therefore, passes from the idea or impres-
sion of one object to the idea or belief of another, it is not
determin’d by reason, but by certain principles, which associ-
ate together the ideas of these objects, and unite them in the
imagination. (64/92)
Section 7. Of the nature of the idea, or belief
In section 5, Hume lays out a three-part program. The third compo-

nent concerns “the nature and qualities of that idea” that is the prod-
uct of a causal inference. For his purposes, it is important to draw a
distinction between merely entertaining an idea and having a belief.

He does so by invoking the notion of vivacity. Beliefs are distinguished
from mere ideas in virtue of their superior vivacity. With others,
I find Hume’s appeal to vivacity, if taken in any reasonably literal sense,
unconvincing, almost unintelligible. I believe that Bismarck is the cap-
ital of North Dakota; I can also entertain the idea that Bismarck is the
capital of South Dakota. Is the first thought more vivacious (lively,
vivid) than the second? Not to me. Degrees of vivacity might better be
taken as a metaphor for degree of belief instead of its basis.
Hume uses the notion of vivacity in an effort to give a causal
account of belief-formation. For Hume, belief-formation is a suit-
able topic for his science of human nature—indeed, it is a central
topic. Beliefs, according to Hume, arise, are strengthened, weak-
ened, augmented, revised, rejected, and so on, all in accordance
with causal laws. This is an important idea—more important than
his use of vivacity to implement it. In what follows, however, I will
simply accede to Hume’s references to vivacity and treat them as
placeholders for a causal account of belief-formation. Taken as a
metaphor, vivacity is not all that bad.
Section 8. Of the causes of belief
This section presents what we might call Hume’s theory of vivacity

transfer. It is of central importance to Hume’s naturalistic account
of operations of the human mind.
I wou’d willingly establish it as a general maxim in the science
of human nature, that 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. (69/98)
In a causal inference there is a twofold movement: When an event is

experienced, the mind immediately envisages another event of the
kind constantly conjoined with it. But the triggered idea does not
simply pop into one’s mind; it also inherits a portion of the vivacity
of the triggering event.
In this section, Hume also invokes the notion of custom as an apt way
of referring to the manner in which causal inferences are grounded:
[From observation] I conclude, that the belief, which attends
the present impression, and is produc’d by a number of past
impressions and conjunctions; that this belief, I say, arises
immediately, without any new operation of the reason or
imagination. Of this I can be certain, because I never am
conscious of any such operation, and find nothing in the sub-
ject, on which it can be founded. Now as we call every thing
custom, which proceeds from a past repetition, without any
new reasoning or conclusion, we may establish it as a cer-
tain truth, that all the belief, which follows upon any present
impression, is deriv’d solely from that origin. (71–72/102)
Section 9. Of the effects of other relations,

and other habits
This section examines the lesser influence of the other two prin-
ciples of association—resemblance and contiguity—in transferring
belief. It provides an account of why causal associations are, in gen-
eral, stronger than the other two modes of association.
Section 10. Of the influence of belief
This complex and interesting section contains a series of reflections

on the following fact:
Pain and pleasure have two ways of making their appearance

in the mind; of which the one has effects very different from
the other. They may either appear in impression to the actual
feeling and experience, or only in idea, as at present when
I mention them. ’Tis evident the influence of these upon our
actions is far from being equal. Impressions always actuate
the soul, and that in the highest degree; but ’tis not every idea
which has the same effect. (81/118)
Though it contains important material, most of what Hume says here
bears more directly on topics discussed in books 2 and 3 of the Treatise
than on our present topic, the character of causal reasoning.
Section 11. Of the probability of chances
In this section Hume uses the notion of dispersed vivacity to explain

a priori probabilities. A crude example: We fully believe that, when
cast, a six-sided die will come to rest on one of its six sides—not on
an edge. We can say that the vivacity level for this claim is effectively 1.
On the assumption that the die is not loaded, there are six equally
likely outcomes from casting the die, so the vivacity level for each
face of the die coming up on top is 1/6. This is the probability we will
naturally assign to the possibility that the die will come up, say, 4.
This may not sound particularly plausible, but, as I have suggested
elsewhere, the notion of vivacity transfer can be used to underwrite
a standard probability calculus (Fogelin 1985, pp. 59–60).2
Section 12. Of the probability of causes
An application of the notion of dispersed vivacity is used to explain

what we would call statistical probabilities. Very roughly, the distri-
bution of vivacity reflects the relative frequency of the occurrence
of an event in a given setting. The more often A is followed by B,

the greater the vivacity handed over by A to B, thus generating a
greater degree of subjective probability that B will follow upon an
occurrence of A.
Section 13. Of unphilosophical probability
Having completed his discussion of the probability of chances and

the probability of causes, both of which, Hume tells us, “are receiv’d
by philosophers, and allow’d to be reasonable foundations of belief
and opinion” (97/143), he turns his attention to other kinds of prob-
ability that have not “had the good fortune to obtain the same sanc-
tion” (97/143). This section is important for seeing a fundamental
feature of Hume’s science of human nature: All beliefs, including
the ill-formed, the fiction-ridden, and the just plain nutty, fall
under its purview. Hume takes it to be one of the chief strengths of
his position that it can explain the sources both of beliefs that are
“respectable” and of those that are not. Included in the second cat-
egory are many beliefs of philosophers—both ancient and modern.
This, as we will see, is a central theme of part 4 of book 1. Given
the importance of this section to this later part of the Treatise, I will
dedicate a separate chapter to it.
Section 14. Of the idea of necessary connexion
After an eleven-section excursion through neighboring fields,

Hume returns to the problem posed in section 2 concerning the
status of a necessary connection. His line of march, as I understand
it, runs as follows. In section 2 Hume takes it for granted that a
necessary connection is an essential component of a causal relation.
Presumably it serves to connect the cause with its effect and in that
way underwrites an inference from one to the other. Having shown

(in section 6) that the inference from cause to effect cannot be the
product of the operations of our rational faculties, the notion of a
necessary connection is no longer burdened with the task of under-
writing this inference. Hume is therefore free to treat the idea of a
necessary connection as a product of this inference rather than as its
basis. This is precisely what he concludes in the opening paragraph
of section 14:
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. (105/156)
The text exhibits what has come to be known as a Euthyphro choice:
Do we draw inferences from cause to effect because we think they
are necessarily connected, or do we think that they are necessarily
connected because we draw inferences from one to the other? For
what I take to be dialectical reasons, Hume starts out (seemingly)
adopting the first option, then ends up adopting the second, more
daring, option. In the Treatise, Hume is fond of such reversals. We
will encounter other striking instances of it.
Having settled the status of the idea of a necessary connection,
Hume then expresses his concern that his argument, being so obviously
correct, might not be appreciated for its depth and importance.
This evidence both in the first principles, and in the deduc-
tions, may seduce us unwarily into the conclusion, and make
us imagine it contains nothing extraordinary, nor worthy of
our curiosity. But tho’ such an inadvertence may facilitate the
reception of this reasoning, ‘twill make it be the more easily
forgot; for which reason I think it proper to give warning,

that I have just now examin’d one of the most sublime ques-
tions in philosophy. (105/156)
Hume therefore allots another thirteen pages to an expansion of
his basic argument concerning our idea of a necessary connection.
There is some interesting material in these pages, including:
Thus as the necessity, which makes two times two equal to
four, or three angles of a triangle equal to two right ones,
lies only in the act of the understanding, by which we con-
sider and compare these ideas; in like manner the necessity or
power, which unites causes and effects, lies in the determina-
tion of the mind to pass from the one to the other. (112/166)
For Hume, the feeling of necessity that one has in thinking that
2 × 2 = 4 is the same feeling that one has that a heavy object will
fall if it is released from a height. By modern standards—perhaps
by the standards of Hume’s time—this is a curious notion of
necessity, but the text shows unambiguously that he is commit-
ted to it.
Hume’s additional remarks on necessary connections also con-
tain an important summary passage that confirms the interpretation
of the text I have presented:
’Tis now time to collect all the different parts of this reason-
ing, and by joining them together form an exact definition of
the relation of cause and effect, which makes the subject of
the present enquiry. This order wou’d not have been excus-
able, of first examining our inference from the relation before
we had explain’d the relation itself, had it been possible to
proceed in a different method. But as the nature of the rela-
tion depends so much on that of the inference, we have been
oblig’d to advance in this seemingly preposterous manner,

and make use of terms before we were able exactly to define
them, or fix their meaning. We shall now correct this fault by
giving a precise definition of cause and effect. (114/169)
With the idea of a necessary connection now properly put in its
place, Hume next proceeds to offer two definitions of cause, one
treating causation as a philosophical relation, the other treating it as
a natural relation.
There may two definitions be given of this relation, which are
only different, by their presenting a different view of the same
object, and making us consider it either as a philosophical or as
a natural relation; either as a comparison of two ideas, or as an
association betwixt them. We may define a cause to be “[a]n
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.” If this definition be esteem’d defective, because
drawn from objects foreign to the cause, we may substitute
this other definition in its place, viz. “[a] cause is an object
precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it,
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.” (114/169–70)
In case the reader has somehow missed it, Hume adds a paragraph
driving home the point that neither definition makes reference to a
necessary connection—thus reversing his original claim that a nec-
essary connection is an essential element of a causal relation.
If we define a cause to be, 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 latter; we may easily conceive, that there is no
absolute nor metaphysical necessity, that every beginning of
existence shou’d be attended with such an object. If we define
a cause to be, an object precedent and contiguous to another, and
so united with it in the imagination, that the idea of the one deter-
mines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression
of the one to form a more lively idea of the other; we shall make
still less difficulty of assenting to this opinion. (115–16/172)
These two definitions are not without difficulties. The second,
which treats causation as a natural relation, seems circular in
employing the transparently causal term “determines” as part of the
definition of a cause. This criticism can be avoided by treating the
second definition (so-called) as a causal statement concerning causal
belief-formation. There is nothing circular in that.
The first definition, where causation is treated as a philosophical
relation, faces a more serious challenge. Some, and not merely a few,
have taken Hume to be presenting a regularity definition of a causal
law. On this reading—I’ll call it the causal law reading—Hume’s
first definition is taken to mean:
If every event of type B is uniquely paired with an event of
type A that is prior to it and contiguous with it, then events
of type A cause events of type B.
Thomas Reid interpreted Hume in this manner and produced the
following counterexample to it:
It follows from this definition of cause, that night is the cause
of day, and day the cause of night. For no two things have
more constantly followed each other since the beginning of
the world. (Reid 334)
In fact, Hume’s first definition is not correctly represented by the

causal law reading and does not imply it. Hume’s first definition
concerns a singular causal statement of the form “a is the cause of
b,” and can be represented as follows:
a is the cause of b if and only if a is contiguous and prior to b,
and any object resembling a is similarly paired with an object
resembling b, and any object resembling b is paired with an
object resembling a that is contiguous and prior to it.
Hume’s first definition, taken in this, the correct, way, is not sub-
ject to Reid’s criticism. The point is this: Predicates used to pick
out the cause and to pick out the effect need not fix the appro-
priate resemblance classes.3 The definition may be subject to other
criticisms—in particular, concerning the specification of the proper
resemblance classes—but I will not go into this matter here.
Section 15. Rules by which to judge of causes

and effects
Proponents of a naturalistic reading of Hume’s Treatise point to this

section as confirmation of their approach. They are right to do so. It
opens with the following declaration:
According to the precedent doctrine, there are no objects,
which by the mere survey, without consulting experience, we
can determine to be the causes of any other; and no objects,
which we can certainly determine in the same manner not
to be the causes. Any thing may produce any thing. . . . Since
therefore ’tis possible for all objects to become causes or effects
to each other, it may be proper to fix some general rules, by
which we may know when they really are so. (116/173)
He then lays down eight rules that will serve as guides to empirical
inquiry, telling his reader that they are of much more use than the
elaborate systems put forward by “our scholastic head-pieces and
logicians [who] show no such superiority above the mere vulgar in
their reason and ability” (117/175). It is hard to see, as naturalistic
interpreters point out, why Hume would find it useful to present
such a system of rules for empirical inquiry if he harbored serious
doubts about the very possibility of such inquiry.
Section 16. Of the reason of animals
Hume holds that higher animals are capable of reasoning of the

same kind employed by human beings. The dog that “avoids fire
and precipices, that shuns strangers, and caresses his master,” he
tells us, proceeds “from a reasoning, that is not in itself different, nor
founded on different principles, from that which appears in human
nature” (119/177). He thus claims that his theory can account for
both human and animal reasoning and challenges those who reject
it to attempt to do likewise:
Let any philosopher make a trial, and endeavour to explain that
act of the mind, which we call belief, and give an account of the
principles, from which it is deriv’d, independent of the influ-
ence of custom on the imagination, and let his hypothesis be
equally applicable to beasts as to the human species; and after
he has done this, I promise to embrace his opinion. (119/178)
Passages like this, and many others of the same kind, seem to
settle the interpretive dispute in favor of naturalism—unless, that
is, we turn pages and enter the skeptical realm of part 4. In fact, as
briefly noted, the skepticism that emerges in part 4 is anticipated in
part 3 itself, in section 13, under the heading “Of unphilosophical
probability.” This is the subject of the next chapter.
Chapter 2 Z Hume on Unphilosophical
Probabilities
Z
Unphilosophical as Opposed to Philosophical
Probabilities
In sections 11 and 12 of part 3, Hume examines what he calls the

probability of chances and the probability of causes. At the start of
section 13, he tells us that both “are receiv’d by philosophers, and
allow’d to be reasonable foundations of belief and opinion.” He then
continues: “But there are [other kinds of probability], that are deriv’d
from the same principles, tho’ they have not had the good fortune to
obtain the same sanction” (97/143). Hume dubs these other kinds of
probability—those not sanctioned by philosophers—unphilosophical
probabilities. In sections 11 and 12, Hume argues that philosophical
probabilities are grounded in the operations of the imagination. In
section 13, he makes the same claim with respect to unphilosophical
probabilities. The upshot is that both philosophical and unphilo-
sophical probabilities spring from the same principles: the opera-
tions of the imagination. Furthermore, philosophical probabilities
and unphilosophical probabilities can come into conflict with one
another, and that, on Hume’s theory, amounts to saying that the
imagination can come into conflict with itself. As we shall see, expos-
ing conflicts within the imagination is a central theme of part 4, and
their discovery is the primary source of Hume’s skeptical jitters.
29
Z
Sources of Unphilosophical Probabilities
Hume examines four sources, or kinds, of unphilosophical prob-

ability: the effect of the remoteness of an event, the effect of the
remoteness of an observation, reiterative diminution, and prejudice
based on general rules.
The effect of the remoteness of the event
Hume’s discussion of this kind of unphilosophical probability pro-

vides his first example of how a clash can arise between the deliver-
ances of philosophical and unphilosophical probabilities.
The argument, which we found on any matter of fact we
remember, is more or less convincing, according as the fact is
recent or remote; and tho’ the difference in these degrees of
evidence be not receiv’d by philosophy as solid and legitimate;
because in that case an argument must have a different force to-
day, from what it shall have a month hence; yet notwithstand-
ing the opposition of philosophy, ’tis certain, this circumstance
has a considerable influence on the understanding, and secretly
changes the authority of the same argument, according to the
different times, in which it is propos’d to us. (97–98/143)
Here Hume speaks of an argument that appeals to events remote in
time and claims that, as a matter of fact, the more remote an event
is, the less authority it will carry. This psychological fact cannot be
explained by appealing to principles of received philosophy, since it
runs counter to them. It can, Hume thinks, be explained by the
fact that, in general, events remote in time have less impact on the
imagination than those that have occurred more recently.
Hume on Unphilosophical Probabilities 31
It is worth asking why Hume should be interested in what seems

to be an unsound, actually quite stupid, mode of probabilistic rea-
soning. Part of the answer is that this phenomenon provides an
opportunity for him to show off the power of his own position. He
thinks that on his principles he can give an explanation of why such
a mode of reasoning takes place, whereas other theories cannot.
More deeply, in his science of human nature, Hume is attempting
to give a causal account of the ways in which human beings actually
think and act. Beliefs as they are actually formed will play a central
role in this project. Hume’s scientific investigations will be governed
by philosophical rules of probabilistic reasoning (see part 3, section 15),
but, as he sees, it would be a mistake to suppose that common
human belief-formation is equally governed by such rules.
The effect of the remoteness of the observation
The second kind of unphilosophical probability Hume examines is

similar to the first, except that now it is the remoteness of the obser-
vation, and not of the event, that diminishes vivacity. “An experi-
ment, that is recent and fresh in the memory,” he tells us, “affects us
more than one that is in some measure obliterated” (98/143).
Reiterative diminution
Because of its close connection with Hume’s skepticism with regard

to reason, Hume’s discussion of his third kind of unphilosophical
probability is worth careful examination.
I add, as a third instance of this kind, that tho’ our reasonings
from proofs and from probabilities be considerably different
from each other, yet the former species of reasoning often
degenerates insensibly into the latter, by nothing but the
multitude of connected arguments. ’Tis certain, that when an

inference is drawn immediately from an object, without any
intermediate cause or effect, the conviction is much stronger,
and the perswasion more lively, than when the imagination
is carry’d thro’ a long chain of connected arguments, how-
ever infallible the connexion of each link may be esteem’d.
(98/144)
The point Hume is making is clear: Long chains of reasoning can
lose their force simply in virtue of their length. The reason for this
is that “vivacity must gradually decay in proportion to the distance,
and must lose somewhat in each transition.” Here various analogies
spring to mind: The friction involved in each transition rubs off
some of the vivacity’s luster, or, here, as elsewhere, entropy takes its
toll. None of these analogies seems adequate. Then again, Hume’s
talk about vivacity is not without problems of its own. In any case,
the important idea here is that “re-iterated diminutions,” to use
Hume’s phrase (99/145), will reduce the doxastic force of a series of
inferences in direct proportion to its length.
At this point, Hume goes off into a neighboring field to respond
to the criticism that the principle of reiterated diminutions, if true,
would have the effect of destroying our knowledge of the ancient
past.
’Tis evident there is no point of antient history, of which
we can have any assurance, but by passing thro’ many mil-
lions of causes and effects, and thro’ a chain of arguments
of almost an immeasurable length. Before the knowledge of
the fact cou’d come to the first historian, it must be convey’d
thro’ many mouths; and after it is committed to writing,
each new copy is a new object, of which the connexion with
the foregoing is known only by experience and observation.
Perhaps, therefore, it may be concluded from the precedent

reasoning, that the evidence of all antient history must
now be lost; or at least, will be lost in time, as the chain of
causes encreases, and runs on to a greater length. . . . This
may be consider’d as an objection to the present system.
If belief consisted only in a certain vivacity, convey’d from
an original impression, it wou’d decay by the length of the
transition, and must at last be utterly extinguish’d: And vice
versa, if belief on some occasions be not capable of such an
extinction; it must be something different from that vivacity.
(98/144–45)
Hume’s response to this criticism is quite remarkable. In essence

it comes to this: Whether reiterative diminution will destroy our
beliefs concerning the ancient past depends on the manner in which
we view the sequence of transitions—an idea of central importance
in part 4. Looked at in one way, reiterative diminution would
indeed have the effect of destroying all beliefs handed down to us
from the past:
If all the long chain of causes and effects, which connect any
past event with any volume of history, were compos’d of parts
different from each other, and which ’twere necessary for the
mind distinctly to conceive, ’tis impossible we shou’d preserve
to the end any belief or evidence. (99/146)
That is, if we look at the matter sequentially, we would recognize

that each time information about the remote past is transmitted,
some vivacity (hence assurance) is lost.1 With a sufficient number of
reiterations, belief in the past events would be annihilated. But we
do have strong beliefs concerning the remote past. How, on Hume’s
theory, is this possible?
Hume’s answer is that, in fact, and fortunately, we do not view

the matter sequentially:
Let us consider, that tho’ the links are innumerable, that con-
nect any original fact with the present impression, which is
the foundation of belief; yet they are all of the same kind, and
depend on the fidelity of printers and copists. One edition
passes into another, and that into a third, and so on, till we
come to that volume we peruse at present. There is no varia-
tion in the steps. After we know one, we know all of them;
and after we have made one, we can have no scruple as to
the rest. This circumstance alone preserves the evidence of
history. (99/146)
Then this crucial move:

But as most of these proofs [that make up the long chain
of inferences] are perfectly resembling, the mind runs easily
along them, jumps from one part to another with facility, and
forms but a confus’d and general notion of each link. (99/146,
emphasis added)
What are we to make of Hume’s claim that we have a confused
notion of each link in the chain of inferences? For Hume, having
a confused notion of these links contrasts with having a distinct
notion of them, that is, recognizing them as distinct entities. This
may seem a bit shifty in its use of the notion of being distinct, but
it is just what Hume says:
By this means a long chain of argument, has as little effect in
diminishing the original vivacity, as a much shorter wou’d have,
if compos’d of parts, which were different from each other, and
of which each requir’d a distinct consideration. (99/146)
It seems, then, that beliefs in remote past events are preserved only
because we become fuddled when we think of how they have been
handed down to us. This idea that a limitation or weakness in the
human intellect can protect us from an unanswerable skeptical chal-
lenge will reappear in part 4, section 1.
Prejudice based on general rules
Hume calls his fourth species of unphilosophical probability

“prejudice”:
A fourth unphilosophical species of probability is that deriv’d
from general rules, which we rashly form to ourselves, and
which are the source of what we properly call prejudice.
An Irishman cannot have wit, and a Frenchman cannot have
solidity; for which reason, tho’ the conversation of the former
in any instance be visibly very agreeable, and of the latter very
judicious, we have entertain’d such a prejudice against them,
that they must be dunces or fops in spite of sense and reason.
Human nature is very subject to errors of this kind; and per-
haps this nation as much as any other. (99–100/146–47)
With respect to prejudice, the general rules that govern our judgment
are rashly formed and stand in contrast to those that proceed from
“more general and authentic operations of the understanding.”
Following the pattern found in his discussion of the first three
forms of unphilosophical probability, Hume proceeds to offer an
account of why human beings reason in this unreasonable way:
Shou’d it be demanded why men form general rules, and
allow them to influence their judgment, even contrary to
present observation and experience, I shou’d reply, that in my
opinion it proceeds from those very principles, on which all

judgments concerning causes and effects depend. Our judg-
ments concerning cause and effect are deriv’d from habit and
experience; and when we have been accustom’d to see one
object united to another, our imagination passes from the
first to the second, by a natural transition, which precedes
reflection, and which cannot be prevented by it. (100/147)
The text here is not altogether transparent. It seems that Hume is
attributing a double capacity to the imagination. After experiencing
a customary union of objects of type A with objects of type B, on the
appearance of A we are disposed to infer the forthcoming presence
of B, but not only that, we are also disposed to accept a general rule
to the effect that As are sure indicators of the associated Bs. Suppose,
for example, that Nigel believes that a Frenchman cannot have solid-
ity. He might have absorbed this belief from his cultural heritage,
but let us suppose that his belief is based on his own encounters
with the French. Having encountered a series of Frenchmen lacking
in solidity, his imagination performs two operations. First, on again
encountering a Frenchman he will immediately take it for granted
that he is dealing with someone lacking solidity. Along with this,
under the influence of the imagination, he will also adopt a general
rule to the effect that all Frenchmen lack solidity. Now suppose he
encounters a Frenchman of unquestionable depth and probity. If he
recognizes this, then, from the standpoint of philosophical prob-
ability, he should resist automatically assuming that this particular
person lacks solidity. Similarly, he should relax his general rule that
all Frenchmen lack solidity. However, the grip of the general rule
can be tenacious, preventing Nigel from recognizing the depth and
probity of the Frenchman before him. General rules, tenaciously
held, can blind Nigel to contrary evidence. He may even see the
Frenchman’s actions as foppish when they are not. All in all, not a
bad start for an account of the nature of prejudice.
Z
Conflicts within the Imagination
and Skepticism
It is easy to read this examination of the nature and sources of preju-

dice as no more than a cautionary tale concerning the dangers of
rash generalizations as opposed to the security provided by general-
izations that are broader and more authentic. That, however, is not
how Hume proceeds. Instead, he treats the conflict between general
rules that are grounded in philosophical probabilities and those that
are grounded in unphilosophical probabilities as a challenge to his
theory:
According to my system, all reasonings are nothing but the
effects of custom; and custom has no influence, but by enliv-
ening the imagination, and giving us a strong conception of
any object. It may, therefore, be concluded, that our judg-
ment and imagination can never be contrary, and that cus-
tom cannot operate on the latter faculty after such a manner,
as to render it opposite to the former. (101/149)
The fact is, however, that general rules derived from unphilosophi-
cal probabilities sometimes do clash with those having a philosophi-
cally more proper heritage.
Thus our general rules are in a manner set in opposition to
each other. When an object appears, that resembles any cause
in very considerable circumstances, the imagination naturally
carries us to a lively conception of the usual effect, tho’ the
object be different in the most material and most efficacious

circumstances from that cause. Here is the first influence of
general rules. But when we take a review of this act of the
mind, and compare it with the more general and authen-
tic operations of the understanding, we find it to be of an
irregular nature, and destructive of all the most establish’d
principles of reasoning; which is the cause of our rejecting it.
This is a second influence of general rules, and implies the
condemnation of the former. Sometimes the one, sometimes
the other prevails, according to the disposition and character
of the person. The vulgar are commonly guided by the first,
and wise men by the second. (101–2/149–50)
It seems, then, that the operations of the associative principles of
the imagination are not highly discriminate in the beliefs that they
entrench.
These reflections lead Hume to make his first reference to skepti-
cism in the Treatise:
Meanwhile the sceptics may here have the pleasure of observ-
ing a new and signal contradiction in our reason, and of seeing
all philosophy ready to be subverted by a principle of human
nature, and again sav’d by a new direction of the very same
principle. The following of general rules is a very unphilo-
sophical species of probability; and yet ’tis only by following
them that we can correct this, and all other unphilosophical
probabilities. (102/150)
This passage is a harbinger of things to come in part 4, where con-
flicts within the operations of the mind—and the skeptical conse-
quences that flow from them—become a central concern.
Chapter 3 Z Hume’s Skepticism with
Regard to Reason
Z
The Turn to Skepticism
Part 4 of book 1 of the Treatise represents the outer limit of Hume’s

critical reflections on the philosophical enterprise. To borrow a
phrase from Immanuel Kant, it represents Hume’s attempt to delin-
eate the fate of reason when its demands are pursued in an unre-
stricted manner. The result, as both Hume and Kant portray it, is
intellectual disaster. There is, however, an important difference in
the scope of their critiques. Kant’s primary target is the attempt
to produce substantive (synthetic) a priori knowledge that reaches
beyond the phenomenal world. Roughly speaking, his critique con-
cerns metaphysics as traditionally pursued. Hume’s critique is more
radical and more far-reaching, for it calls into question both the
understanding and the senses in their modest and natural employ-
ments, not just their misemployment in a priori metaphysics. The
opening sections (1 and 2) of part 4 taken together yield the sweep-
ing negative conclusion that
’[t]is impossible upon any system to defend either our under-
standing 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
39
on those subjects, it always encreases, the farther we carry

our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to it.
(144/218)
Hume seems to leave no areas protected from radical doubt except,
perhaps, immediate subjective reports.
I think this result comes as a shock to the reader after the con-
fident development of Hume’s science of human nature in the first
three parts of book 1. Earlier, in Hume’s discussion of unphilosophi-
cal probabilities, there were some indications that the operations of
the imagination can have problematic results, but nothing prepares
the reader for the radical change of direction that seems to occur
when we pass from part 3 to part 4.
Z
The Basic Argument
This much is clear from the text: Section 1, part 4, book 1 of the
Treatise opens with a skeptical examination of the demonstrative
sciences (Hume’s words), that is, of beliefs based on demonstration
and intuition. Given his own nomenclature, both intuitive and
demonstrative truths are in the domain of knowledge as opposed
to the domain of probability. It is also clear that Hume’s skep-
ticism is not limited to the domain of knowledge, but includes
the domain of probability as well. The moral that Hume draws
from his skeptical reflections is that our intellectual faculties, when
allowed to follow their own principles without restraint, are wholly
destructive of beliefs based on reasoning. So the scope of Hume’s
argument is unrestricted: It is not limited to those beliefs that are
the product of demonstrative and intuitive reasoning, though it
includes them.
Hume’s Skepticism with Regard to Reason 41
It is also clear from the text that Hume’s skepticism concerning

demonstrative reasoning is based on probabilistic reasoning. This
contrasts with traditional skeptical attacks on demonstrative reason-
ing that usually point to such things as the circularity of demonstra-
tive proofs, the threat of an infinite regress, the lack of probity, the
appearance of paradoxes, and the like. Hume’s challenge is quite
different and, to the best of my knowledge, without precedent. In
effect, he starts by raising the question: How do we establish the
appropriate level of assurance that we should assign to any piece of
demonstrative reasoning? That, for Hume, is a matter of assessing
the probability of error.
Reducing knowledge to probability
The first step in Hume’s skeptical argument is an attempt to show

that, under the critical eye of proper reasoning, knowledge degener-
ates into probability. The key move involves what Hume will later
refer to as “a reflex act of the mind” (122/182).
In all demonstrative sciences the rules are certain and infal-
lible; but when we apply them, our fallible and uncertain fac-
ulties are very apt to depart from them, and fall into error.
We must, therefore, in every reasoning form a new judgment,
as a check or controul on our first judgment or belief; and
must enlarge our view to comprehend a kind of history of
all the instances, wherein our understanding has deceiv’d us,
compar’d with those, wherein its testimony [emphasis added]
was just and true. Our reason must be consider’d as a kind of
cause, of which truth is the natural effect; but such-a-one as
by the irruption of other causes, and by the inconstancy of our
mental powers, may frequently be prevented. By this means
all knowledge degenerates into probability; and this probabil-

ity is greater or less, according to our experience of the verac-
ity or deceitfulness of our understanding, and according to
the simplicity or intricacy of the question. (121/180)
Before getting into details of the skeptical argument concerning
reason, we should note that Hume presents his argument using the
metaphor of “testimony.” Our reason, he tells us, provides us with
testimony that is sometimes “just and true”; at other times it “deceives
us.” In order to assess the reliability of this testimony, we should
shift our attention away from the immediate object of our judgment
and examine the reliability of our faculties in dealing with the mat-
ter at hand. We should consider the ratio of the testimony that has
deceived us relative to the testimony that is just and true. Ideally, the
veracity should fully outweigh the deceitfulness, leaving us fully (or
at least highly) confident. If not, our level of confidence should be
adjusted accordingly. This sounds quite sensible and in line with the
discussion in section 12, “Of the probability of causes.”1
Hume may be wrong in saying “knowledge degenerates into
probability”—we will look at his arguments for this shortly—but at
least he is saying this: Establishing a claim to demonstrative knowl-
edge always involves establishing a prior claim of probability. That
is an arresting idea in itself, and not altogether implausible.2
Hume adds another reason for holding that the evaluation of
demonstrative reasoning reduces to or is at least dependent on prob-
abilistic reasoning.
There is no algebraist nor mathematician so expert in his
science, as to place entire confidence in any truth immedi-
ately upon his discovery of it, or regard it as any thing but
a mere probability. Every time he runs over his proofs, his
confidence increases; but still more by the approbation of his
friends; and is rais’d to its utmost perfection by the universal

assent and applauses of the learned world. Now, ’tis evident,
that this gradual increase of assurance is nothing but the addi-
tion of new probabilities, and is derived from the constant
union of causes and effects, according to past experience and
observation. (121/180–81)
Here it will help to contrast a horizontal with a vertical perspective
for evaluating the soundness of a proof. The wise algebraist runs
over his proofs a number of times to make sure they are free of error.
Similarly, in adding up a long column of figures, it is prudent to
check the result a number of times, perhaps adding from top to bot-
tom one time, from bottom to top the next. One can also ask others
to check the result—or use a calculator. If the sums consistently
come out the same, this increases one’s confidence that the sum is
correct. On the horizontal approach, justification, as we might put
it, remains on the same level: We check a computation relative to
further computations. If a general agreement results, even if coun-
terbalanced by a few disagreements, this can place the correctness of
the computation beyond doubt.
The regression argument
Instead of resting content with a horizontal perspective for the assess-

ment of arguments, Hume insists that the canons of reason demand
that arguments be evaluated from a vertical perspective as well:
In every judgment, which we can form concerning probabil-
ity, as well as concerning knowledge, we ought always to cor-
rect the first judgment, deriv’d from the nature of the object,
by another judgment, deriv’d from the nature of the under-
standing. (122/181–82)
Here we are not concerned with finding further confirming evi-

dence, but, instead, we step up a level and reflect on our ability to
carry out conformational procedures correctly. As Hume points out,
this principle applies not only to the assessment of demonstrative
arguments, but also to the assessment of probabilities themselves:
As demonstration is subject to the controul of probability,
so is probability liable to a new correction by a reflex act of
the mind, wherein the nature of our understanding, and
our reasoning from the first probability become our objects.
(122/182)
This claim has two important implications. The first is that an argu-
ment that began with demonstrative reasoning as its target is now,
as Hume explicitly states, made equally applicable to probabilistic
reasoning. Second—and this is crucial to Hume’s argument—the
reflex act of judging our own capacities will, of itself, add a new
uncertainty into our considerations.
Having thus found in every probability, beside the original
uncertainty inherent in the subject, a new uncertainty deriv’d
from the weakness of that faculty, which judges, and having
adjusted these two together, we are oblig’d by our reason to
add a new doubt deriv’d from the possibility of error in the
estimation we make of the truth and fidelity of our faculties.
(122/182)
The principle of reiterative diminution
Hume’s regression argument yields the traditional skeptical trope

of infinite regress, and that, it would seem, would be sufficient to
achieve Hume’s skeptical purposes. However, an infinite-regress
argument is usually intended to show that some claim cannot be

justified because the demand for justification keeps repeating itself.
Hume’s central focus is on beliefs: how they are formed, how they
can be strengthened, and here, how they can be extinguished by
the relentless application of what he takes to be a canon of proper
reasoning. It is, I think, for this reason that he appeals to the notion
of reiterated diminutions—an idea that, as we saw, made its first
appearance in his discussion of unphilosophical probabilities. Here
is how Hume exploits this principle in the present context:
No finite object can subsist under a decrease repeated in infi-
nitum; and even the vastest quantity, which can enter into
human imagination, must in this manner be reduc’d to nothing.
(122/182)
[Thus] all the rules of logic require a continual diminu-
tion, and at last a total extinction of belief and evidence.
(122/183)
In order to show that Hume’s reasoning is not wholly artificial, it
will be helpful to consider an example of a situation where human
beings would actually engage in such reasoning, at least up to a
point. A cognitive psychologist is conducting the following experi-
ment: Computations are flashed fairly briefly on a screen. (We will
assume that there is no difficulty in reading them correctly.) Subjects
viewing them are asked to record whether the computation is cor-
rect or not. If they answer correctly, they are awarded one point; if
they answer incorrectly, they lose two points. They can also take a
bye and not win or lose any points. A handsome prize is awarded to
the subject who accumulates the most points.
This game reflects the structure of Hume’s argument reasonably
well. The players’ willingness to bet reflects the level of their confi-
dence. There are two factors at work: The chance of being wrong is
a function of the complexity of the computation presented but also

a function of the players’ ability to do arithmetic in their heads. In
this situation, the players could, in fact, begin an ascent of the kind
that Hume speaks of. Faced with a long division that strikes her
as correct, a particular player first thinks she should bet that it is.
That is level one. She might, however, recall that she has often lost
bets on long divisions that struck her as right. Because of this, her
confidence in her original decision is shaken and she now thinks she
should take a bye instead. That is level two. But the regress can be
pursued a step higher, for here again, she is relying on the testimony
of her fallible understanding, which, if she is judicious, should
become the subject of “a new correction by a reflex act of the mind,
wherein the nature of our understanding, and our reasoning from
the first probability become our objects.” And so on indefinitely.
What are we to say about Hume’s argument and its counter-
part game? They both depend on the endless nesting of confidence
assessments inside confidence assessments. The stack of assessments
of assessments goes endlessly high and in the process the nesting
becomes endlessly complex. That is a bad thing, but does not, in
itself, yield the diminution in confidence that Hume insists on. All
sorts of patterns might emerge. Suppose that the subjects are told
whether their answers are correct immediately after they record
each decision. In this setting, another subject may be struck by her
uncanny ability to get things right. She therefore sees (and has) no
good reason to correct her original first-level decisions and no dimi-
nution of assurance takes place. What this shows is that a “reflex act
of the mind, wherein the nature of our understanding, and our rea-
soning from the first probability become our objects” need not, of
itself, produce the diminution in confidence required, as Hume puts
it, by “all the rules of logic.” Whether such a correction is necessary
depends on a contingent matter of fact.3
So I think that Hume is simply wrong in thinking that the appli-

cation of the reflex principle automatically introduces a diminu-
tion in assurance demanded by the laws of logic or rationality. We
might better consider the reflex act of self-examination a useful aid
for epistemic (or doxastic) prudence. There are occasions where it
is prudent to take into consideration our mental abilities for deal-
ing with a complex or unfamiliar matter. One way to do this is to
take the vertical approach and consider how well we have done in
the past in dealing with matters of the kind at hand. The reflex-
ive move has, however, a fundamental shortcoming: As we ascend
higher and higher in levels of probability assessments of probabil-
ity assessments, we almost immediately run out of data concerning
how well we have performed tasks of this kind. We have no idea, for
example, how well we do in making fourth-level assessments since,
in all likelihood, we have never attempted to perform one. Isn’t this
lack of adequate data enough to yield Hume’s skeptical conclusion?
No. What it shows is that the vertical method has a use, but a very
limited use, in evaluating one’s own cognitive capacities. This result
would carry skeptical consequences only if there were no alternative
way of guarding against cognitive errors.
What I have called the horizontal method provides an alterna-
tive to the vertical method. To repeat an example, if the result that
I get in adding up a column of figures coincides with the results
that others get, that increases my confidence that my result is cor-
rect. Beyond this—and this is important—it also increases my con-
fidence that I am reliable in performing tasks of this particular kind.
Doesn’t this ignore the possibility that something everyone agrees
on might be wrong? It does ignore this possibility. Relying on this
point would, however, subvert Hume’s attempt to show that can-
ons of rationality, pursued without constraint, ultimately destroy
all beliefs. Transforming Hume’s skeptical argument into a general
worry about human fallibility misses the specific point Hume is try-
ing to establish.
If I am right, Hume’s skepticism with regard to reason suffers
from two serious shortcomings. The first is that he has not shown
that making the reflexive move will, in virtue of principles of logic
or rationality, diminish levels of assurance. The second is that he
has not shown that the vertical approach is the sole and demanded
method for establishing the reliability of one’s cognitive faculties. In
sum, neither epistemic nor doxastic prudence forces us to adopt the
vertical approach, and even if we do, principles of logic or rational-
ity do not, of themselves, yield diminution of assurance.4
Z
Hume’s Response to His Skeptical Argument
It seems, then, that Hume’s skeptical argument with regard to reason

does not work. Hume, however, thought it did, and his response to
this skeptical argument is worth examining. The skeptical argument
has three central components:
1. The Reflexive Principle
2. An Infinite Regress
3. The Principle of Reiterative Diminution
All three principles are, for him, demands of rationality. Intellectually,
he embraces them without reservation. Hume also holds that, taken
together, these demands of reason lead to the annihilation of both
knowledge and probability. Given this, is Hume a skeptic or not?
Hume poses this question himself:
Shou’d it here be ask’d me, whether I sincerely assent to this
argument, which I seem to take such pains to inculcate, and
whether I be really one of those sceptics, who hold that all
is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing pos-

sessed of any measures of truth and falsehood; I shou’d reply,
that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I,
nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that
opinion. Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable neces-
sity, has determin’d us to judge as well as to breathe and feel.
(123/183)
Hume asks two questions, not one: “Do I assent to the argument?”
and “Am I one of those skeptics who holds that all is uncertain?”
He does not answer the first question directly, but instead calls it
superfluous. Why is it superfluous? Because he, like everyone else in
the world, is incapable—psychologically incapable—of total skepti-
cism or total suspension of belief. But still, does he accept the argu-
ment or not? The answer to this question is yes, he does accept it,
for he thinks that he has presented an argument that is theoretically
irrefutable. What may seem odd is that he accepts an argument that
establishes the groundlessness of our believing, yet he cannot cease
believing. In Fogelin (1985) I tried to capture these dual aspects of
Hume’s position by drawing a distinction between theoretical skep-
ticism and belief or doxastic skepticism. A theoretical skeptic puts
forward arguments intended to show that beliefs of a certain kind
(perhaps all beliefs) lack adequate warrant. Hume, as I read him, is
a radical, if not quite unmitigated, theoretical skeptic.5 The notion
of a doxastic skeptic comes closer to the common understanding of
a skeptic: The doxastic skeptic suspends judgments concerning vari-
ous kinds of beliefs or perhaps all beliefs. She may do so on the basis
of theoretical skepticism, or she may not. Using this terminology,
Hume is a mitigated doxastic skeptic, though, as we shall see, the
degree of mitigation varies with context. The upshot of this discus-
sion is that Hume actually has two reasons for thinking that attacks
on his skeptical argument will fail: From a theoretical perspective,
the argument is irrefutable; from the doxastic perspective, there is

no one to attack.
A further question remains for Hume to answer:
But here, perhaps, it may be demanded, how it happens, even
upon my hypothesis, that these arguments above-explain’d
produce not a total suspense of judgment, and after what
manner the mind ever retains a degree of assurance in any
subject? (123/184)
Of course, most people have never heard of Hume’s argument, but
Hume has and so have we. How, on the face of it, can any of us in
the know (as it were) sustain any of our beliefs?
I answer, that after the first and second decision; as the action
of the mind becomes forc’d and unnatural, and the ideas faint
and obscure; tho’ the principles of judgment, and the bal-
lancing of opposite causes be the same as at the very begin-
ning; yet their influence on the imagination, and the vigour
they add to, or diminish from the thought, is by no means
equal. . . . The posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits
being diverted from their natural course, are not govern’d in
their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same
degree, as when they flow in their usual channel. (124/185)
I think that this aptly describes what happens in the game introduced
above. We can ascend the ladder of reflexive evaluations a few rungs,
but soon things go fuzzy, then blank.6 It seems that if we could sustain
our commitments to the three principles of rationality, or maintain our
stance in the reflective mode, then all our beliefs would be destroyed.
Fortunately a nonrational principle—that we enter with difficulty
into remote views of things—overrides these rational principles and
thereby stays the hand of the principle of reiterated diminutions.
I think it is important to note that in section 1, Hume exhibits

no jitters as a result of his skepticism with regard to reason—that
will come later. His purpose in presenting this skeptical argument,
he tells us, is to illustrate the correctness of his own account of cause
and effect and, more deeply, his account of belief-formation.
My intention then in displaying so carefully the arguments
of that fantastic sect, 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 cogita-
tive part of our natures. (123/183)
In contrast:
If belief, therefore, were a simple act of the thought, without
any peculiar manner of conception, or the addition of a force
and vivacity, it must infallibly destroy itself, and in every case
terminate in a total suspense of judgment. (123/184)
These passages clearly support a naturalistic reading of the text.
Hume has, to his satisfaction, eliminated a rival intellectualist theory
by presenting a skeptical argument that refutes it, and, beyond this,
has shown, again to his satisfaction, that the intellectualist standards
are the source of this skeptical argument. Using his own theory, he
has given an explanation to how this skeptical impasse necessarily
arises when rational principles are relentlessly pursued, and has fur-
ther shown how the operations of our nonrational faculties provide
the only way of avoiding this disaster.
This reading is borne out by the structure of the text itself. Part 3
of book 1 is titled “Of knowledge and probability.” There Hume
argues that an adequate account of probability can be derived from
the nonrational faculty of the imagination. In the opening section
of part 4, book 1, Hume argues that, under governance of rational

(as opposed to natural) principles, knowledge reduces to probabil-
ity, and probability, under reiterative diminution, reduces to “noth-
ing.” That, for Hume, is where we wind up if we take reason to be
the foundation for the fixation of belief. It is hard to find a stronger
basis for a naturalistic reading of the text than this. There is, how-
ever, more to come.
Z
Peritrope
It is important to keep in mind that, for Hume’s purposes, it is

essential that the skeptical argument he has propounded be theo-
retically irrefutable. For this reason he is called upon to defend it. A
standard ploy, dating back to antiquity, is to argue that skepticism
can be shown to be self-refuting by turning skeptical arguments
back upon themselves (peritrope). How, it is asked, can rational
arguments be used to undercut rationality itself without thereby
undercutting themselves? Hume offers the following response to
this challenge.
This argument is not just; because the sceptical reason-
ings . . . wou’d be successively both strong and weak, according
to the successive dispositions of the mind. . . . The sceptical
and dogmatical reasons are of the same kind, tho’ contrary
in their operation and tendency; so that where the latter
is strong, it has an enemy of equal force in the former to
encounter; and as their forces were at first equal, they still
continue so, as long as either of them subsists; nor does one
of them lose any force in the contest, without taking as much
from its antagonist. ’Tis happy, therefore, that nature breaks
the force of all sceptical arguments in time, and keeps them

from having any considerable influence on the understand-
ing. Were we to trust entirely to their self-destruction, that
can never take place, till they have first subverted all convic-
tion, and have totally destroy’d human reason. (125/186–87)
This is certainly ingenious, but it is not responsive to a primitive
uneasiness. Hume, if his reasoning is correct, has produced an argu-
ment using probabilistic considerations that shows that probabi-
listic reasoning, systematically pursued, will be destructive of all
beliefs. Turning the table on this reasoning, we apply it to Hume’s
probabilistic reasoning and ask whether it undercuts itself. Hume’s
answer—and as far as I can see, his only possible answer—would
have to go something like this: “Not to worry, human beings are
incapable of pursuing this probabilistic reasoning far enough down
(actually up) this path of reiterative evaluations to reach skepti-
cism.” This hardly provides solace, for, thanks to Hume’s argument,
we know in advance where the successive applications of probability
assessments will lead: to total skepticism. We do not actually have
to perform these assessments to see this.
It seems then that Hume’s position is dialectically unstable. His
skeptical argument has to be sound in order to promote his skepti-
cism with regard to reason. Yet when applied to itself, the argument
does seem self-defeating. Hume can explain why this skeptical argu-
ment causes no difficulties for the vulgar. They know nothing of it,
and if, for some reason, they set out on the path of making higher-
order probability assessments, they will quickly tire and give up.
The combination of ignorance and weakness of the intellect shields
them from danger. The learned—at least those among them who are
familiar with Hume’s skeptical argument—have no like protection.
If they accept Hume’s argument, as Hume thinks they must, they
will agree that the successive application of the reflexive method will
lead to a total destruction of belief—and they will agree without so
much as making a serious try at applying this method. The igno-
rance and weakness of mind that protects the vulgar provides no
protection to the learned, including Hume himself.
In his section concerning skepticism with regard to reason,
Hume shows no signs of recognizing the precarious character of his
own position relative to his own skeptical argument. Hume seems
to see himself as standing above the fray while the skeptic and the
dogmatist engage in mortal combat that inevitably leads to their
mutual destruction. It doesn’t seem to cross his mind that he him-
self could be swept up in the combat with a similar outcome. Later
he will confront this possibility—with dramatic results.
Chapter 4 Z Of Skepticism with Regard
to the Senses
Z
Hume’s Turnabout with Regard to the Senses
The transition from skepticism with regard to reason to skepticism

with regard to the senses is made in these words:
Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even
tho’ he asserts, that he cannot defend his reason by rea-
son; 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 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 must take for granted in all our reason-
ings. (124/187)
Thirty pages later, quite a different voice is heard:
Having thus given an account of all the systems both popular
and philosophical, with regard to external existences, I cannot
forbear giving vent to a certain sentiment, which arises upon
55
reviewing those systems. 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 a quite contrary sentiment, and am more inclin’d to repose
no faith at all in my senses, or rather imagination [empha-
sis added], than to place in it such an implicit confidence.
(143–44/217)
The closing sentence of the second passage represents a funda-
mental shift in Hume’s attitude concerning the relationship between
our rational faculties and the nonrational operations of the imagina-
tion. Previously, for the most part, Hume has held that the opera-
tions of the imagination dominate the operations of the intellect,
so that on those occasions when our intellect leads us into skeptical
doubt, the imagination steps in and saves our beliefs. We have seen
two instances of this. In part 3 we saw that reason can provide no
justification for our causal inferences because it cannot provide a
proof that nature is uniform—the principle on which our causal
inferences rest. Happily for us, a bountiful nature has implanted in
us an instinct that compels us to make these inferences even so. The
opening passage of section 2 is written in much the same spirit.
The imagination saves the day with respect to skepticism with
regard to reason in a different, indeed negative, way. As we saw, it
is the inability of the imagination to preserve vivacity that saves us
from a total loss of belief. As Hume puts it: “The Attention is on
the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy” (124/185). This is not
nature being bountiful in her gifts, but being prudent in distribut-
ing them.
We have also examined one case where the mechanisms of the
imagination bequeathed to us are themselves the source of a skeptical
Of Skepticism with Regard to the Senses 57
crisis. That was in the discussion of prejudice in the section on

unphilosophical probability, where Hume tells us:
Sceptics may here have the pleasure of . . . seeing all philoso-
phy ready to be subverted by a principle of human nature,
and again saved by a new direction of the very same principle.
(102/150)
The beleaguered tone of this passage is strikingly similar to the one

adopted by Hume in the closing paragraphs of section 2.
Given their past service in Hume’s science of human nature, the
principles of the imagination could be expected to play an impor-
tant role in the explanation of the formation of our beliefs concern-
ing external objects. In fact they do. Furthermore, I do not think
Hume has any serious reservations concerning the correctness of his
explanation. What he attempted to accomplish he thought he had
accomplished: to give a causal account of the implicit faith that the
vulgar repose in our senses, and further to give an account of the
mechanism that generates philosophers’ commitment to a so-called
double-existence theory of perception. The upshot of this inves-
tigation, however, is that Hume finds his own faith in his senses
slipping away, and slipping away as a natural consequence of apply-
ing his science of human nature to the formation of our perceptual
beliefs. The text is, I think, quite straightforward on this matter,
something I will try to show in detail.
Z
The Organization of Section 2
The organization of section 2 may seem peculiar, for it takes some

time before we can see why Hume speaks of skepticism with regard to
the senses. In the first twenty-plus pages of the section, he attempts

to provide a descriptive account of how the vulgar—all of us most of
the time—come to believe that the objects of perception have a con-
tinued and distinct existence, even when not perceived. Throughout
this discussion, Hume largely takes it for granted that the vulgar
view is simply false. Earlier in the Treatise Hume remarks, almost
in passing, that it is “allow’d by philosophers, and … besides pretty
obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but
its perceptions or impressions and ideas” (49/67, emphasis added).
Hume’s challenge, then, is to give a causal account of the emergence
of a deeply engrained and almost universally accepted falsehood.
Though a commitment to what is commonly called the way of ideas
shapes Hume’s discussion, he does not get around to defending it until
near the close of section 2, and there very casually. Here it is in toto:
’Twill first be proper to observe a few of those experiments,

which convince us, that our perceptions are not possest of any
independent existence. 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. But as we do not attribute a continu’d exis-
tence to both these perceptions, and as they are both of the
same nature, we clearly perceive, that all our perceptions are
dependent on our organs, and the disposition of our nerves
and animal spirits. This opinion is confirm’d by the seem-
ing encrease and diminution of objects, according to their
distance; by the apparent alterations in their figure; by the
changes in their colour and other qualities from our sickness
and distempers; and by an infinite number of other experi-
ments of the same kind; from all which we learn, that our
sensible perceptions are not possest of any distinct or inde-
pendent existence. (140/210–11)
Far from being an argument showing that our sensible perceptions

are not possessed of any distinct or independent existence, this is little
more than a gesture in the direction of an argument. Hume’s casual-
ness in presenting it can be taken as a sign of his complacency in
thinking that it will not meet with serious objections.1 I think, how-
ever, that there is a good and dialectically subtle reason why Hume
proceeds as he does. The presentation of this argument appears pre-
cisely at the point where Hume completes his examination of the
beliefs of the vulgar and turns his attention to the alternative views of
the learned. It is at this point, and not before, that his radical skepti-
cism emerges.
Z
The Causes of Our Belief in the Existence of Bodies
Hume tells us that “the subject, then, of our present enquiry is

concerning . . . the causes which induce us to believe in the existence
of body” (125/187–88). This question is transposed into two
questions:
Why we attribute a continu’d existence to objects, even
when they are not present to the senses; and why we suppose
them to have an existence distinct from the mind and per-
ception? (125–26/188)
Hume holds that continued and distinct existences are “intimately
connected,” indeed mutually imply each another. It does seem right
that something that continues to exist unobserved must have a dis-
tinct existence. But distinctness does not seem to imply continued
existence. Perhaps things distinct from the mind pop in and out of
existence on their own, but I will ignore this possibility.
Having presented these two (interrelated) questions, Hume goes
on to make a very strong claim concerning them:
These are the only questions, that are intelligible on the pres-
ent subject. For as to the notion of external existence, when
taken for something specifically different from our percep-
tions, we have already shown its absurdity. (126/188)
In defense of this claim, Hume refers the reader to a passage earlier
in the Treatise:
Now since nothing is ever present to the mind but percep-

tions, and since all ideas are deriv’d from something anteced-
ently present to the mind; it follows, that ’tis impossible for us
so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifi-
cally different from ideas and impressions. . . .
The furthest we can go towards a conception of external
objects, when suppos’d specifically different from our percep-
tions, is to form a relative idea of them, without pretend-
ing to comprehend the related objects. Generally speaking
we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attri-
bute to them different relations, connexions and durations.
(49/67–68)
Hume’s point, I take it, is this: To have merely a relative notion—
perhaps relational notion would be better—of an external object
would be to understand it only as the cause of our perception with-
out attributing any other properties to it. The entity would amount
to an x that is the cause of a perception, where this x is not charac-
terized in any other way.
The senses not the source of this belief
Hume is now in a position to raise his basic question. It mimics

his previous treatment of causality. Which faculty, he asks, leads us
to believe in the continued and distinct existence of objects: sense,

reason, or imagination (126/188)?
The possibility that the senses give us the idea of the continued
existence of an unsensed object is eliminated out of hand.
For that is a contradiction in terms, and supposes that the

senses continue to operate, even after they have ceas’d all
manner of operation. (126/188)
If continued existence and distinct existence, as Hume suggests,

mutually imply each other, then the dismissal of the senses giving
us an idea of a distinct existence should be equally brisk. In fact,
Hume’s treatment of the topic is more elaborate:
That our senses offer not their impressions as the images of
something distinct, or independent, and external, is evident;
because they convey to us nothing but a single perception,
and never give us the least intimation of any thing beyond.
A single perception can never produce the idea of a double
existence, but by some inference either of the reason or imagi-
nation. (126/189)
The reference to double existence anticipates Hume’s discussion of
a philosophical view commonly called representational realism,
examined toward the end of the section. The plain man, according
to Hume, entertains no such idea. The point here is that the senses
are not capable of generating the illusion of something, so to speak,
in back of what is sensed.
Since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to
us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every
particular what they are, and be what they appear. Every
thing that enters the mind, being in reality a perception, ’Tis
impossible any thing shou’d to feeling appear different. This

were to suppose, that even where we are most intimately con-
scious, we might be mistaken. (127/190)
After making some cursory remarks about personal identity,

Hume turns his attention to what we can call the naive view of
external existence, or the “outness” of the things we perceive.
In casting my eye towards the window, I perceive a great extent

of fields and buildings beyond my chamber. From all this it may
be infer’d, that no other faculty is requir’d, beside the senses, to
convince us of the external existence of body. (127/190–91)
Hume offers three responses to this claim. The first is that, “prop-
erly speaking, ’[t]is not our body we perceive, when we regard our
limbs and members, but certain impressions, which enter by the
senses, [etc.]” (127/191). This claim, however, is something Hume
has yet to establish. Hume’s second consideration is genuinely
arcane: “Sounds, and tastes, and smells, tho’ commonly regarded
by the mind as continu’d independent qualities, appear not to have
any existence in extension, and consequently cannot appear to the
senses as situated externally to the body” (127/191). Here, Hume
refers his reader to his later defense of the claim that something can
exist, but exist nowhere, presented in part 4, section 5. In his third
consideration Hume tells us that “even our sight informs us not of
distance or outness (so to speak) immediately and without a certain
reasoning and experience, as is acknowledg’d by the most rational
philosophers” (127–28/191). Given the doctrine itself and given the
use of the curious Berkelean word “outness,” Hume is almost cer-
tainly referring to Berkeley’s problematic New Theory of Vision.2
In what seems to be an exercise in overkill, Hume adds a number
of other considerations intended to show that sense cannot be the
source of our belief in external existents, including a brief discussion

of primary, secondary, and what we might call, just to keep the num-
ber sequence going, tertiary properties. Showing the inadequacies of
these notions does not, however, show the inadequacies of represen-
tational realism, even if it does embarrass particular versions of it.
I will not go into this here,3 but instead proceed directly to Hume’s
summary passage:
Thus to resume what I have said concerning the senses; they
give us no notion of continu’d existence, because they cannot
operate beyond the extent, in which they really operate. They
as little produce the opinion of a distinct existence, because
they neither can offer it to the mind as represented, nor as
original. To offer it as represented, they must present both an
object and an image. To make it appear as original, they must
convey a falsehood. (128/191–92)
Reason not the source of this belief
To his satisfaction, Hume has eliminated the senses as the source

of the plain man’s belief in the continued and distinct existence of
perceptions. He turns next to reason as a possible source of these
beliefs and says:
We can attribute a distinct continu’d existence to objects
without ever consulting reason, or weighing our opinions
by any philosophical principles. And indeed, whatever con-
vincing arguments philosophers may fancy they can produce
to establish the belief of objects independent of the mind, ’tis
obvious these arguments are known but to very few, and that
’Tis not by them, that children, peasants, and the greatest
part of mankind are induc’d to attribute objects to some

impressions, and deny them to others. (129/193)
While true enough, isn’t this irrelevant? Suppose savants could pro-
duce an argument showing that the plain man’s belief that objects
of perception have a continued and distinct existence is true.
Wouldn’t that vindicate the plain man’s belief, even if the proof
was wholly unknown to him? Actually, as we shall see, the savants
are united in rejecting the view of the vulgar. That, however, is
not the main point to stress. Hume’s project is to explain how the
vulgar acquire a belief in the external existence of bodies, and he
will spend considerable time trying to explain how the imagination
accomplishes this feat. It is a plain matter of fact that the vulgar do
not arrive at this belief by a process of ratiocination. Hume might
have left it at that.
Hume, however, does not rest his case on this plain matter of
fact but, as is his wont, adds further considerations to his argument.
He argues in addition that our belief in the distinct and continued
existence of unperceived objects cannot come from reason because
the belief is itself unreasonable.
For philosophy informs us, that every thing, which appears

to the mind, is nothing but a perception, and is interrupted,
and dependent on the mind; whereas the vulgar confound
perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct continu’d
existence to the very things they feel or see. This sentiment,
then, as it is entirely unreasonable, must proceed from some
other faculty than the understanding. (129/193)
Once more, Hume simply invokes the way of ideas as grounds for
rejecting the view of the vulgar who confound, Hume says, percep-
tions and objects.
Hume completes his rejection of the idea that reason can serve as
the basis of the vulgar belief in the continued and distinct existence
of perceptions by appealing to his analysis of causal relations:
To which we may add, that as long as we take our perceptions
and objects to be the same, we can never infer the existence of
the one from that of the other, nor form any argument from
the relation of cause and effect; which is the only one that
can assure us of matter of fact. Even after we distinguish our
perceptions from our objects, ’twill appear presently, that we
are still incapable of reasoning from the existence of one to
that of the other. (129/193)
It seems that if we “take our perceptions and objects to be the
same,” as the vulgar do, then there is no place for a causal relation
to apply, for no object can be the cause of itself. If we distinguish
the perceptions from the objects, as the double-existence theorists
do, we would then have two things that could enter into causal
relations, but, as we shall see, an unanswerable skeptical argument
then arises.
Z
The Operations of the Imagination in Forming
This Belief
With both sense and reason eliminated, we are left with the imagi-
nation as the source of the belief that the objects we are aware of can
enjoy a continued and distinct existence.
So that upon the whole our reason neither does, nor is it pos-
sible it ever shou’d, upon any supposition, give us an assur-
ance of the continu’d and distinct existence of body. That
opinion must be entirely owing to the imagination; which

must now be the subject of our enquiry. (129/193)
Hume’s task is to show how the imagination generates the false
belief in the continued distinct existence of perceptions implicitly
held by the vulgar. Furthermore, he has to do this without endow-
ing the vulgar with capacities that would allow them to recognize
the error involved in their naive beliefs. What follows is an extraor-
dinarily complex explanation of how the imagination can accom-
plish this. Perhaps recognizing the demands his theory will make on
the reader, Hume begins by offering a broad, informal sketch of his
position before going into technical details.
Hume’s informal statement of his position
Hume first argues that the belief in the continued and distinct exis-
tence of bodies cannot be based on either involuntariness or on
force and violence. (Feelings of pain can be used as counterexamples
to both suggestions.) He then considers constancy and coherence in
our train of ideas as the basis of our belief in the existence of body.
He gives homey examples of each. With respect to constancy, Hume
sees before him a desk with books and other objects on it. He closes
his eyes for a few moments, opens them again, and finds things just
as they were before he closed his eyes. With respect to coherence, he
leaves his room where a fire is blazing. Returning sometime later, he
finds that the fire has burned down an amount appropriate to the
time he has been absent.
Hume examines coherence, first comparing it with everyday
causal reasoning.
[Seated in my study] I hear on a sudden a noise as of a door
turning upon its hinges; and a little after see a porter, who
advances towards me. This gives occasion to many new reflec-

tions and reasonings. First, I never have observ’d, that this
noise cou’d proceed from any thing but the motion of a door;
and therefore conclude, that the present phaenomenon is a
contradiction to all past experience, unless the door, which I
remember on the other side of the chamber, be still in being.
(130–31/196)
In this passage, Hume employs what has now come to be known as

an inference to the best explanation. The existence of a door (now
unperceived) is the most reasonable way of making sense of the
sound heard and of the porter’s appearance before him. Hume then
adds:
There is scarce a moment of my life, wherein there is not a

similar instance presented to me, and I have not occasion to
suppose the continu’d existence of objects, in order to con-
nect their past and present appearances, and give them such
an union with each other, as I have found by experience to be
suitable to their particular natures and circumstances. Here
then I am naturally led to regard the world, as something real
and durable, and as preserving its existence, even when it is
no longer present to my perception. (131/197)
What are we to make of this passage? Is Hume actually presenting

a proof of the existence of the external world? That cannot be right,
so we have to assume that the passage is written from the vulgar per-
spective where we often make inferences to the existence of things
that we are not perceiving in order to make sense of things that we
are perceiving. Hume is suggesting that a parallel pattern of reason-
ing takes place when we infer continued existence from coherence.
He notes, however, an important difference between the two cases:
But ’tis evident, that, whenever we infer the continu’d exis-

tence of the objects of sense from their coherence, and the
frequency of their union, ’tis in order to bestow on the objects
a greater regularity than what is observ’d in our mere percep-
tions. (131/197)
That is, taken at face value, our actual experience is interrupted
(fragmented, fleeting, etc.), yet imagination somehow contrives to
disguise this gappiness.
Having shown how the maintenance of coherence can be a factor
supporting the vulgar view concerning the status of objects of per-
ception, Hume largely sets it aside in favor of the influence of con-
stancy “of all external bodies; and that we must join the constancy
of their appearance to the coherence, in order to give a satisfactory
account of that opinion” (132/198–99).
Hume’s homey example of the influence of constancy concerned,
as we saw, his looking at his desk, closing his eyes for a bit, and upon
opening them finding the objects on his desk arranged in the same
way as they were before he closed his eyes. The constancy in this
experience naturally leads him to believe that the objects he observes
after reopening his eyes are the selfsame things that he saw before he
closed them. Now speaking of the reappearance of the perception
of the sun or ocean, Hume provides a more elaborate sketch of the
mechanisms that bring about the belief that we are experiencing the
very same thing again, when, in fact, we are not.
When we have been accustom’d to observe a constancy in cer-
tain impressions, and have found, that the perception of the
sun or ocean, for instance, returns upon us after an absence
or annihilation with like parts and in a like order, as at its first
appearance, we are not apt to regard these interrupted percep-
tions as different, (which they really are) but on the contrary
consider them as individually the same, upon account of their

resemblance. But as this interruption of their existence is con-
trary to their perfect identity, and makes us regard the first
impression as annihilated, and the second as newly created,
we find ourselves somewhat at a loss, and are involv’d in a
kind of contradiction. In order to free ourselves from this dif-
ficulty, 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. (132–33/199)
As Hume makes clear, his broad, informal sketch of his position is
of a piece with his earlier accounts of mental phenomena:
This supposition, or idea of continu’d existence, acquires a
force and vivacity from the memory of these broken impres-
sions, and from that propensity, which they give us to suppose
them the same; and according to the precedent reasoning, the
very essence of belief consists in the force and vivacity of the
conception. (133/199)
So far there are no signs of danger. Things change, however, when
Hume attempts to go deeper in an effort to justify what he calls his
system.
Hume’s systematic statement of his position
Hume provides a road map for his more difficult systematic elabora-
tion of his position:
In order to justify this system, there are four things requisite.
First, To explain the principium individuationis, or principle of
identity. Secondly, Give a reason, why the resemblance of our
broken and interrupted perceptions induces us to attribute an

identity to them. Thirdly, Account for that propensity, which this
illusion gives, to unite these broken appearances by a continu’d
existence. Fourthly and lastly, Explain that force and vivacity of
conception, which arises from the propensity. (133/199–200)
The principle of identity
It is clear, though still worth stating, that Hume is concerned with

identity over time—a concept that will play a central role in sub-
sequent sections of part 4. This notion of identity over time is dif-
ferent from what we might call the bare self-identity that a single
object bears to itself at a particular time. Nor can identity over time
be explained in terms of self-identity at a given time. This is what
Hume is saying—or at least what I think he is saying—in the fol-
lowing, not altogether transparent, passage:
As to the principle of individuation; we may observe, that the
view of any one object is not sufficient to convey the idea of
identity. For in that proposition, an object is the same with itself, if
the idea 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. One single object con-
veys the idea of unity, not that of identity. (133/200)
Appealing to a multiplicity of objects will not give us the notion of
identity over time either, for
a multiplicity of objects can never convey this idea, however
resembling they may be suppos’d. The mind always pronounces
the one not to be the other, and considers them as forming
two, three, or any determinate number of objects, whose exis-

tences are entirely distinct and independent. (133/200)
Hence a dilemma:
Since then both number and unity are incompatible with the
relation of identity, it must lie in something that is neither
of them. But to tell the truth, at first sight this seems utterly
impossible. (133/200)
Hume attempts to show how the imagination solves—or rather
submerges—this dilemma, using time as the vehicle. There is, how-
ever, a difficulty with invoking time to deal with the problem of
identity. In part 2, section 3, Hume states that “time cannot make
its appearance to the mind, either alone or attended with a steady
unchangeable object, but is always discovered by some perceivable
succession of changeable objects” (28/35). If that is true, then an
attribution of duration to an unchanging object is a falsehood—a
falsehood, Hume adds, that is “the common opinion of philoso-
phers as well of the vulgar” (29/37).
In part 4, section 2, Hume repeats this account of the fictitious
temporality of unchanging objects. Specifically citing part 2, section 5,
he tells us:
I have already observ’d, that time, in a strict sense, implies
succession, and that when we apply its idea to any unchange-
able object, ’tis only by a fiction of the imagination, by which
the unchangeable object is suppos’d to participate of the
changes of the co-existent objects, and in particular of that of
our perceptions. (133/200–201)
Hume attempts to explain this fiction of an unchanging object
existing in time by using one of his favorite devices: placing things
in different lights, or viewing them from different perspectives.
For when we consider any two points of this time, we may

place them in different lights: We may either survey them at
the very same instant; in which case they give us the idea of
number, both by themselves and by the object; which must
be multiply’d, in order to be conceiv’d at once, as existent in
these two different points of time: Or on the other hand, we
may trace the succession of time by a like succession of ideas,
and conceiving first one moment, along with the object then
existent, imagine afterwards a change in the time without any
variation or interruption in the object; in which case it gives
us the idea of unity. Here then is an idea, which is a medium
betwixt unity and number; or more properly speaking, is
either of them, according to the view, in which we take it:
And this idea we call that of identity. (133–34/201)
To see how this works, consider the following changing sequence
of six events:
JKLMNO
Such a sequence involves multiple changes. On Hume’s theory, this

gives us the notion of time. Next, consider a sequence that does not
involve change:
AAAAAA
This gives us the notion of unity. Now juxtapose the two:
J K L M N O (Number)
A A A A A A (Unity)
There are, as I read Hume, two ways that we can view this juxta-
position. We can view the second (unchanging) sequence in the
light of the transition from J to O. Taken that way, the unchang-

ing sequence seems to share the temporality exhibited in the first
sequence. On the other hand, we can view the second sequence
stepwise in terms of single moments and in that way preserve the
unity of the unchanging sequence. The fiction of identity over
time is the result of flip-flopping back and forth between these two
perspectives.
It is worth noting that Hume qualifies his account of the fiction
of identity over time in an important way:
Here then is an idea, which is a medium betwixt unity and
number; or more properly speaking, is either of them, according
to the view, in which we take it: And this idea we call that of
identity. (134/201, emphasis added)
In this passage Hume says something quite remarkable: Speaking
properly he is not offering an account of how a fictitious idea of
identity emerges; instead, he is offering an account of how the fic-
tion that we have such an idea arises. To put the matter another way,
he has not offered an account of how a fictitious complex idea—like
that of griffin—is formed. Hume is saying something stronger and
more interesting: We think that we have an idea of identity, but are
wrong in this. We are conceptually addled.4
Gap filling
The second task that Hume sets for himself is to explain “why the
resemblance of our broken and interrupted perceptions induces us
to attribute an identity to them.”
I now proceed to explain the second part of my system, and
show why the constancy of our perceptions makes us ascribe
to them a perfect numerical identity, tho’ there be very

long intervals betwixt their appearance, and they have only
one of the essential qualities of identity, viz. invariableness.
(134/201–2)
Hume begins this discussion by reminding his reader that his
first concern is to explain how the vulgar, who, unlike philosophers,
do not distinguish between perceptions and objects can come to
believe in the continued existence of objects when the objects are
unperceived. In fact, their experience of what they take to be a sin-
gle unchanging object may actually have the form:
(a) A_ A_A_A_A
Yet they ascribe to the object of their perception a career of the fol-
lowing kind:
(b) AAAAAAAAA
Because of the similarity between these two series, we are inclined to
assimilate them, but because of the gaps in (a) we also are inclined
to distinguish them. Hume attempts to explain the assimilation by
using the notion of the association of dispositions:
Nothing is more apt to make us mistake one idea for another,
than any relation betwixt them, which associates them together
in the imagination, and makes it pass with facility from one to
the other. Of all relations, that of resemblance is in this respect
the most efficacious; and that because it not only causes an
association of ideas, but also of dispositions, and makes us
conceive the one idea by an act or operation of the mind, simi-
lar to that by which we conceive the other. This circumstance
I have observ’d to be of great moment; and we may establish
it for a general rule, that whatever ideas place the mind in the
same disposition or in similar ones, are very apt to be con-

founded. The mind readily passes from one to the other, and
perceives not the change without a strict attention, of which,
generally speaking, ’tis wholly incapable. (135/203–4)
Hume spends a number of pages elaborating and illustrating the

contents of this passage. I will not go into the details of this discus-
sion except to note that Hume’s appeal to dispositions working (as it
were) behind the scenes does seem to compromise the assumption,
cited earlier, that “all actions and sensations of the mind are known
to us by consciousness, [and] must necessarily appear in every par-
ticular what they are, and be what they appear” (127/190). Mental
dispositions need not be transparent to us.
The idea of continued existence
In virtue of the association of dispositions, we have a strong tendency

to take gappy sequences as non-gappy. At times, however, interrup-
tions are too long to make this possible; despite this, we continue
to attribute an identity over time to the entities in the interrupted
sequence. This brings Hume to his third task: to “account for that
propensity, which this illusion [i.e., the illusion of identity] gives, to
unite these broken appearances by a continu’d existence” (133/200).
His answer is this:
The smooth passage of the imagination along the ideas of the
resembling perceptions makes us ascribe to them a perfect
identity. The interrupted manner of their appearance makes
us consider them as so many resembling, but still distinct
beings, which appear after certain intervals. The perplexity
arising from this contradiction produces a propension to
unite these broken appearances by the fiction of a continu’d

existence, which is the third part of that hypothesis I propos’d
to explain. (136/206)
According to Hume:
Almost all mankind, and even philosophers themselves, for

the greatest part of their lives, take their perceptions to be
their only objects, and suppose, that the very being, which is
intimately present to the mind, is the real body or material
existence. ’Tis also certain, that this very perception or object
is suppos’d to have a continu’d uninterrupted being, and nei-
ther to be annihilated by our absence, nor to be brought into
existence by our presence. (137/206–7)
To return to the familiar example, a person looking at his table

thinks that it is the very table he is perceiving, not an image or
representation of a table. He further thinks that the very thing he
perceives continues to exist when he closes his eyes, and does not
spring back into existence only on the occasion of his opening his
eyes. However deeply engrained this belief may be, as philosophers
tell us, it is false. But now a new problem confronts Hume: The
point of view of the vulgar seems worse than being simply false;
it seems flatly self-contradictory. “It may be doubted,” Hume tells
us, “whether we can ever assent to so palpable a contradiction, and
suppose a perception to exist without being present to the mind”
(137/206, emphasis added). Here is Hume’s quite remarkable
response to this deep difficulty:
What we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of

different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and
suppos’d, tho’ falsely, to be endow’d with a perfect simplicity
and identity. Now as every perception is distinguishable from

another, and may be consider’d as separately existent; it evi-
dently 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. (137–38/207)
Analogically, let apples in a heap stand for perceptions in the mind.
Just as there is no contradiction in thinking that an apple can remain
in existence when separated from the heap, there is no contradiction in
thinking of a perception remaining in existence when separated from
the heap of perceptions that constitute a mind. Similarly, just as there
is no contradiction involved in putting the apple back in the heap,
there is no contradiction in a perception rejoining the heap of percep-
tions. Is this analogy apt for describing Hume’s position? I think it is.
In passing, we can note that Hume might have tried to extract
himself from his difficulties with unperceived perceptions by
drawing a distinction between believing that a perception can
exist unperceived and believing of something that is a perception
that it can exist unperceived. The second option best character-
izes the beliefs of the vulgar as Hume himself describes them.5
The belief in continued existence
The fourth and final part of Hume’s program is to explain why

the vulgar “not only feign but believe” (138/208) that an object can
continue to exist even when it is no longer perceived. Here Hume
invokes his familiar doctrine of vivacity transfer. Not only does the
imagination create the fiction of continued and distinct existence,
it also transfers vivacity to this fiction, thus giving it the status of a
belief.
Hume concludes his examination of the vulgar view of percep-

tion with an elegant summary passage that he believes the intel-
ligent reader will find wholly convincing:
’Tis indeed evident, that as the vulgar suppose their perceptions

to be their only objects, and at the same time believe the
continu’d existence of matter, we must account for the origin of
the belief upon that supposition. Now upon that supposition,
’tis a false opinion that any of our objects, or perceptions, are
identically the same after an interruption; and consequently
the opinion of their identity can never arise from reason, but
must arise from the imagination. The imagination is seduc’d
into such an opinion only by means of the resemblance of
certain perceptions; since we find they are only our resem-
bling perceptions, which we have a propension to suppose the
same. This propension to bestow an identity on our resem-
bling perceptions, produces the fiction of a continu’d exis-
tence; since that fiction, as well as the identity, is really false,
as is acknowledg’d by all philosophers, and has no other effect
than to remedy the interruption of our perceptions, which is
the only circumstance that is contrary to their identity. In the
last place this propension causes belief by means of the present
impressions of the memory; since without the remembrance
of former sensations, ’tis plain we never shou’d have any belief
of the continu’d existence of body. (139/209–10)
Z
The Philosopher’s Double-Existence
Theory of Perception
Having completed his account of the origins of the vulgar view of

perception, Hume turns his attention to the views of philosophers
on the topic. Philosophers have been led to reject the views of the
vulgar because they think there are convincing grounds for holding
that “our perceptions are not possest of any independent existence.”
Hume then thinks it “proper to observe a few of those experiments,
which convince us, that our perceptions are not possest of any inde-
pendent existence” (140/210). As I noted at the start of this chap-
ter, given the importance of these arguments—or experiments, as
Hume calls them—it is surprising how brief and underdeveloped
they are. It never seems to cross his mind to view them critically,
not to say skeptically.
Hume’s leading idea is that adopting the way of ideas first
drives philosophers out of the common standpoint, but, under
the influence of everyday beliefs that they cannot fully shake, they
are naturally led to adopt what Hume calls a double-existence the-
ory of perception. This theory, which has come to be known as
representational realism, can come in a variety of forms, but the
primitive idea is to draw a distinction between ideas (perceptions,
and the like) that are mind-dependent and material objects that
exist independently of minds. An idea is said to be true of a mate-
rial object if it properly represents it. This is merely a protothe-
ory—a mere sketch that demands elaboration and defense—but
I will not develop it further because I think it is this prototheory,
not simply some specific realization of it, that Hume targets for
investigation.
Hume holds, in the first place, that this theory seems to provide
a way of accommodating our previous natural (though false) belief
in the continued and distinct existence of what we perceive with a
philosophical commitment to the way of ideas. We might think of
it as a vector of these two influences. But, according to Hume, far
from making things better, this new, double-existence theory makes
them worse. The theory is, he tells us, “only a palliative remedy,
[that] contains all the difficulties of the vulgar system, with some
others, that are peculiar to itself ” (140/211). To establish this, Hume

attempts to show that the double-existence theory “has no primary
recommendation either to reason or the imagination, but acquires all its
influence on the imagination from the former [i.e., the vulgar system]”
(140/211).
The argument intended to show that the double-existence the-
ory has no primary appeal to reason is a standard skeptical argu-
ment that takes Hume only a paragraph to state.
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 shows, 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 deriv’d from past experience,
by which we find, that two beings are constantly conjoin’d
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 conjunction or a relation of
cause and effect betwixt different perceptions, but can never
observe it betwixt perceptions and objects. ’Tis 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 par-
ticular. (140–41/212)
Hume then sets aside the idea that the double-existence theory
could be the direct product of the imagination, because he can-
not think of any plausible argument that might be produced along
these lines. He is content to leave the matter as a challenge to any-
one who would ground the belief in double existence on the opera-
tions of imagination to provide a satisfactory account of how it is
able to do so.
Hume’s refutation of the double-existence theory is brief. He

spends considerably more time giving a naturalistic account of how
the acceptance of the double-existence theory (despite its inherent
difficulties) naturally emerges from the predicament in which the
philosopher finds himself. In the study, the philosopher adopts the
way of ideas, but in the street he returns to the standpoint of the
vulgar. However, and this is important, the influence of nature can-
not be fully curbed, even in the study:
Nay she has sometimes such an influence, that she can stop
our progress, even in the midst of our most profound reflec-
tions, and keep us from running on with all the consequences
of any philosophical opinion. Thus though we clearly per-
ceive the dependence and interruption of our perceptions, we
stop short in our career, and never upon that account reject
the notion of an independent and continu’d existence. That
opinion has taken such deep root in the imagination, that ’tis
impossible ever to eradicate it, nor will any strain’d metaphysi-
cal conviction of the dependence of our perceptions be suf-
ficient for that purpose. (142/214, emphasis added)
This important passage offers a partial explanation of the staying

power—the perennial attraction—of variants of representational
realism: It has deep roots in the imagination. That, however, is only
half the story:
This hypothesis . . . of the double existence of perceptions
and objects; . . . pleases our reason, in allowing, that our
dependent perceptions are interrupted and different; and at
the same time is agreeable to the imagination, in attribut-
ing a continu’d existence to something else, which we call
objects. This philosophical system, therefore, is the monstrous
offspring of two principles, which are contrary to each other,

which are both at once embrac’d by the mind, and which are
unable mutually to destroy each other. (142/215)
We thus arrive at the deeply paradoxical result that a philosophical
position can gain support, indeed robust support, from an irrecon-
cilable conflict within the operations of the human mind itself.
Z
The Pyrrhonian Moment
This brings us to the second passage cited at the start of this chapter:
I begun this subject with premising, that we ought to have an
implicit faith in our senses, and that this wou’d be the con-
clusion, I shou’d draw from the whole of my reasoning. But
to be ingenuous, I feel myself at present of a quite 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. I cannot conceive how such trivial quali-
ties of the fancy, conducted by such false suppositions, can
ever lead to any solid and rational system. . . . What then can
we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordi-
nary opinions but error and falsehood? And how can we justify
to ourselves any belief we repose in them? (143–44/217–18)
Hume goes further, and retroactively includes the operations of rea-
son in his gloomy assessment:
This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the
senses, 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. ’Tis
impossible upon any system to defend either our under-
standing 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 encreases, the further we carry
our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to it.
(144/218)
It should be clear what is troubling Hume. He recognizes with full
force that his account of the operations of the human mind applies
to the operations of his own mind—a mind incapable of leading us
“to any solid and rational system,” including, it seems, the develop-
ment of his own “science of man.” It doesn’t help to suggest that
Hume’s “science of man” is not intended to be a rational system,
but an empirical system instead. Hume is not restricting his claims
to the systems of rationalist philosophers. The passage just cited
makes it clear that his skeptical worries are a consequence of his own
philosophizing and that his own philosophizing falls under their
scope. We will revisit this self-referential crisis as it appears in the
final section of book 1.
Z
A Concluding Note
Hume’s readers may, perhaps should, find the development of sec-

tion 2 perplexing. Hume starts out expressing an implicit faith in
the senses. He then proceeds to give an account of how this faith
in the senses emerges. His tacit assumption seems to be that this
faith is built into us as a gift of a provident nature who “doubt-
less esteem’d it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to
our uncertain reasonings and speculations” (125/187). Hume tells an

upbeat story along these lines with respect to our causal reasoning.
By the end of the section, however, his own reflections have thor-
oughly shaken this implicit faith. Did he realize where he was going
to end up from the start? Who knows, but when he completed the
section he understood exactly what had taken place. Why, then,
didn’t he revise the section in a way that would bring the opening
passages into conformity with the closing passages? The answer—
and I think this is important—is that the section reenacts the men-
tal processes that take us from one standpoint to another. Hume is
engaged in something like a phenomenology of mind with, how-
ever, a downward trajectory.
Chapter 5 Z Of the Ancient and Modern
Philosophy
Z
Reasons for Examining the Ancient and Modern
Philosophical Systems
At the close of section 2, Hume tells his readers that he will “exam-
ine some general systems both ancient and modern” that have been
proposed concerning the external and internal worlds. “This will
not,” he tells us, “in the end be found foreign to our present pur-
pose” (144/218). What we will get, in fact, is a further demonstration
of how Hume’s “science of man” can be used to give an account
of how philosophical systems arise naturally at various stages of
philosophical inquiry. We have already seen such an investigation
with respect to the double-existence theory of perception. We will
now see how Hume’s science of human nature can similarly be used
with respect to both ancient and modern (i.e., seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century) notions of substance.
Z
Of the Ancient Philosophy (Section 3)
Reflecting the spirit of his times, Hume’s attitude toward the ancient
notion of substance and the concepts related to it is patronizing
throughout.
85
I am perswaded, there might be several useful discoveries made

from a criticism of the fictions of the antient philosophy, con-
cerning substances, and substantial forms, and accidents, and
occult qualities; which, however unreasonable and capricious,
have a very intimate connexion with the principles of human
nature. (145/219)
Presumably, the study of the unreasonable and capricious employ-

ment of our mental faculties will be useful by exhibiting these facul-
ties in a setting where they go haywire. Asking the question “How
could presumably intelligent people come to believe such incredible
things?” can, in its own way, shed light on the actual—as opposed
to the idealized—way that human beings form concepts and acquire
beliefs.
We saw in the previous chapter how Hume used the fiction
involved in ascribing duration to an unchanging object to explain
the further fiction of identity over time. The fiction of identity over
time was then used to give an account of the vulgar belief in the
continued and distinct existence of perceptions despite the existence
of interruptions or gaps in experience. In section 3, “Of the antient
philosophy,” Hume tells a parallel story concerning identity over
time, but this time in the face of change rather than interruption. He
also tells an interestingly different story about our belief in the sim-
plicity of objects in the face of their evident complexity. Mirroring
the structure of the previous section, the discussion moves at two
levels: First, an account is given of the common opinion; then an
account is given of a philosophical opinion that naturally evolves
in an effort to save as much of the common opinion as possible,
even after philosophy discovers its untenability. Hume begins by
contrasting the views of the most judicious philosophers with those
of the common lot of mankind.
Of the Ancient and Modern Philosophy 87
’Tis confest by the most judicious philosophers, that our ideas

of bodies are nothing but collections form’d by the mind of
the ideas of the several distinct sensible qualities, of which
objects are compos’d, and which we find to have a constant
union with each other. But however these qualities may in
themselves be entirely distinct, ’tis certain we commonly
regard the compound, which they form, as ONE thing, and
as continuing the SAME under very considerable alterations.
The acknowledg’d composition is evidently contrary to this
suppos’d simplicity, and the variation to the identity. It may,
therefore, be worth while to consider the causes, which make
us almost universally fall into such evident contradictions, as
well as the means by which we endeavour to conceal them.
(145/219)1
The false belief in the continued identity

of changing objects
Given Hume’s strict understanding of identity, objects that dif-

fer in any qualities cannot be the same objects, and for this rea-
son it makes no sense to speak of an object undergoing change.
In fact, however, provided that a sufficient degree of similarity is
maintained, the mind will treat a sequence of qualitatively differing
perceptions in the same way that it treats a sequence of qualitatively
unchanging perceptions. By association, it will attribute identity
over time not only to unchanging sequence, but also to a slightly
changing sequence.
The smooth and uninterrupted progress of the thought, being
alike in both cases, readily deceives the mind, and makes us
ascribe an identity to the changeable succession of connected

qualities. (145/220)
But a shift in perspective can overthrow this:
But when we alter our method of considering the succession,
and instead of tracing it gradually thro’ the successive points
of time, survey at once any two distinct periods of its dura-
tion, and compare the different conditions of the successive
qualities; in that case the variations, which were insensible
when they arose gradually, do now appear of consequence,
and seem entirely to destroy the identity. (145/220)
Here, as before, Hume invokes the notion of two different
ways of viewing a sequence. We can represent the situation with a
diagram rather like one used before, this time, however, reflecting
gradual change. Column I represents, as a foil, an unchanging
object. Column II represents a four-propertied object undergoing
gradual change.
I II
ABCD BCDE
ABCD CDEF
ABCD DEFG
ABCD EFGH
ABCD FGHI
Here each step in column II preserves three qualities, so, taken step-
by-step, a strong degree of resemblance is preserved, and because
of this it maintains some degree of resemblance to the unchang-
ing sequence in column I as well. Yet, if we shift our perspective
and compare the initial step in column II with its final step, we
find ourselves comparing BCDE with FGHI where no similarity
remains. Admittedly this diagrammatic representation looks artifi-

cial, even simpleminded, but it does, I think, capture the essence of
what Hume has in mind when he speaks of a contradiction arising
from competing perspectives.
The fiction of underlying substance, or original

first matter
The scholastic rule was: When one encounters a contradiction, draw

a distinction! The imagination, according to Hume, follows a differ-
ent rule: When one encounters a contradiction, create a fiction!
In order to reconcile which contradictions the imagination
is apt to feign something unknown and invisible, which it
supposes to continue the same under all these variations; and
this unintelligible something it calls a substance, or original
and first matter. (146/220)
So, despite surface appearance, the imagination posits something
that remains constant in sequence II. It is not, however, some other
property that has hitherto gone unnoticed. It is something of a
wholly different order—as Hume tendentiously puts it, something
that is unknown, invisible, and unintelligible. Taken this way, the
imagination does not provide us with a fictitious idea of substance
or original first matter but, instead, creates the fiction that we have
such an idea. As with the notion of identity over time, it is a mis-
understanding to think that Hume is speaking of a fiction in the
sense that a centaur or a griffin is a fictitious being. The “idea” of
substance, unlike the idea of a griffin, is not an idea at all. It is,
we might say, an empty placeholder for a solution to a problem
masquerading as a solution. If that is right, then Hume’s treatment
of substance is of a piece with his previous treatment of the fiction
involved in attributing duration to an unchanging object. There too

we encountered an attribution of a contentless fiction.
The false belief in the simplicity of objects
Hume’s examination of simplicity also involves a double perspec-

tive, but in an interestingly different way. In daily life we treat, say,
a peach as a single thing possessing various qualities.
The colour, taste, figure, solidity, and other qualities, combin’d
in a peach or melon, are conceiv’d to form one thing; and
that on account of their close relation, which makes them
affect the thought in the same manner, as if perfectly uncom-
pounded. (146/221)
I’m not sure, as Hume suggests, that we treat such objects as perfectly
uncompounded, since for various practical purposes we do distin-
guish parts of such objects (peels, pits, and so on). Yet, there is a
general cohesiveness in the characteristics of this object that leads us
to think of it as a single object. When I push the peach away from
me, its colors do not become detached and trail behind.
In a remarkable passage, Hume challenges even this level of
togetherness.
But the mind rests not here. Whenever it views the object
in another light, it finds that all these qualities are different,
and distinguishable, and separable from each other; which
view of things [is] destructive of its primary and more natural
notions. (146/221)
I have broken the passage here to call attention to this notion of
“viewing the object in another light.” Hume explains what he
means on the next page:
But philosophers, who abstract from the effects of custom,

and compare the ideas of objects, immediately perceive the
falsehood of these vulgar sentiments, and discover that there
is no known connexion among objects. Every different object
appears to them entirely distinct and separate; and they per-
ceive, that ’tis not from a view of the nature and qualities of
objects we infer one from another, but only when in several
instances we observe them to have been constantly conjoin’d.
(147/223)
When we adopt this philosophical perspective, we push aside all

connections imposed on our perceptions by our associative mecha-
nisms and absorb ourselves in the immediate content of experience.
Here we can speak of adopting a phenomenalist stance. From the
phenomenalist stance things strike us as “entirely distinct and sepa-
rate.” They also strike us as “fleeting and perishing” (130/195), or as
Hume puts it in the Enquiry, “loose and separate” (EHU 144/74).
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Furthermore, a commit-
ment to the way of ideas can be an immediate product of adopting
the phenomenalist stance, for from that perspective, it is “univer-
sally allowed by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself,
that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions
or impressions and ideas” (49/67, emphasis added).2
For Hume, what I am calling the phenomenalist stance is the
privileged perspective, the perspective that reveals how things really
are when all artificial impositions are suppressed. It is a realm of per-
ceptions (impressions and ideas) and nothing more. It is also a radi-
cally fractured and pluralistic world where perceptions are entirely
distinct and separate, fleeting and perishing, and loose and separate.
Hume could have added, following Berkeley, that these perceptions
are “visibly inactive,” for, in effect, Hume holds this too.3 This is
not the perspective from which the vulgar view the world. Indeed,
the two perspectives are radically opposed to one another. For the
most part, this is not the perspective of past philosophers either. For
Hume, however, any departure from this standpoint will generate
falsehoods, fictions, or plain nonsense.
The situation now becomes dialectically complex. The previous
clashes between viewpoints took place within our common—as
opposed to philosophical—understanding. To repeat a previous
example, our belief in the identity of an object changing over time
arises when the changes preserve a suitable level of resemblance and
are viewed sequentially. We are jolted out of this belief when we
note the lack of resemblance between an object as it appears to us
now and how it appeared to us in the distant past. Two common
ways of viewing matters come into conflict: how they seemed liv-
ing through them, and how they seem looking back. The present
case is quite different: Here we have a global clash between frame-
works for viewing the world. From the philosophical standpoint,
the common standpoint is challenged in toto. This is precisely how
Hume proceeds in pursuing his philosophical program. Adopting
the standpoint of those he calls the most judicious philosophers, he
dismisses as errors the beliefs of the vulgar. He then attempts to pro-
vide a naturalistic account of how these errors arise. He next offers
an account of how those who operate from within the philosophical
standpoint go on to introduce a philosophical fiction—something
plain folks know nothing of—in an effort to provide a surrogate
for the common beliefs they have demolished, yet still hanker after.
For Hume, piling a philosophical fiction on the prior fictions of the
vulgar only makes matters worse.
Where is Hume himself in all this? He is a member of the philo-
sophical party in rejecting the beliefs of the vulgar. He never, so far as
I know, rejects the standpoint of the “most judicious philosophers,”
even if he does reject the palliatives they offer under the lingering
influence of their vulgar upbringing.
The fiction of a unifying substance
Returning to Hume’s treatment of simplicity, having invoked the

philosophical perspective to reject the standpoint of the vulgar,
Hume finishes off the philosophical position in the same way he
dealt with the philosophical account of the identity of an object
changing over time. Here, in full, is the passage interrupted above:
Whenever [the mind] views the object in another light, it
finds that all these qualities are different, and distinguishable,
and separable from each other; which view of things being
destructive of its primary and more natural notions, obliges
the imagination to feign an unknown something, or origi-
nal substance and matter, as a principle of union or cohesion
among these qualities, and as what may give the compound
object a title to be call’d one thing, notwithstanding its diver-
sity and composition. (146/221)
The incomprehensibility of the peripatetic system
Hume’s summary conclusion is that “the whole [peripatetic] system,

therefore, is entirely incomprehensible, and yet is deriv’d from prin-
ciples as natural as any of those above-explain’d” (147/222). But how
can discourse that is entirely incomprehensible be of any service to
anyone? Hume’s answer, though ironic, is important:
But as nature seems to have observ’d a kind of justice and com-
pensation in every thing, she has not neglected philosophers
more than the rest of the creation; but has reserv’d them a con-
solation amidst all their disappointments and afflictions. This
consolation principally consists in their invention of the words
faculty and occult quality. For it being usual, after the frequent
use of terms, which are really significant and intelligible, to
omit the idea, which we wou’d express by them, and to preserve
only the custom, by which we recal the idea at pleasure; so it
naturally happens, that after the frequent use of terms, which
are wholly insignificant and unintelligible, we fancy them to be
on the same footing with the precedent, and to have a secret
meaning, which we might discover by reflection. (147–48/224)
Words such as “incomprehensible,” “insignificant,” and “unintel-
ligible” have both a broad and a narrow use. Used broadly, they
indicate foolishness or unsupportability. We say, for example, that
it is incomprehensible that some people still object to fluoridating
drinking water. Taking incomprehensibility this way, Hume’s pas-
sage amounts to a broad, abusive condemnation of the peripatetic
position. Taken more narrowly, it can indicate that the peripatetic
vocabulary lacks meaning or semantic content. Hume, I think,
would have no reservations about using this expression in both
ways, but I am inclined to take his criticism in the second way, for
that squares with the notion I have pressed that the fictions Hume
attributes to philosophers are not ideas with a fictitious content but,
instead, the fiction that a term is being used with a content.
Skeptical implications
Before closing the discussion of this section, I wish to return to the

question raised above, “What is Hume’s standpoint in this discus-
sion?” In two places Hume hints at an answer. Both appear in a

specific context, but have a more general significance.
In considering this subject [occult qualities and related mat-
ters], we may observe a gradation of three opinions, that rise
above each other, according as the persons, who form them,
acquire new degrees of reason and knowledge. These opin-
ions are that of the vulgar, that of a false philosophy, and that
of the true; where we shall find upon enquiry, that the true
philosophy approaches nearer to the sentiments of the vulgar,
than to those of a mistaken knowledge. (147/222–23)
The second passage is slightly more forthcoming in introducing the
notion of moderate skepticism.
By this means [i.e., by employing terms that are wholly insig-
nificant and unintelligible] these philosophers set them-
selves at ease, and arrive at last, by an illusion, at the same
indifference, which the people attain by their stupidity,
and true philosophers by their moderate ÿscepticism.
(148/224)
Hume concludes this section with a sally:
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature,
to bestow on external objects the same emotions, which it
observes in itself; and to find every where those ideas, which
are most present to it. . . . We must pardon children, because
of their age; poets, because they profess to follow implic-
itly the suggestions of their fancy: But what excuse shall
we find to justify our philosophers in so signal a weakness?
(148/224–25)
Z
Of the Modern Philosophy (Section 4)
Before examining the modern notion of material substance, Hume

makes some prefatory remarks that are worth close attention.
He opens section 4 with a response to someone who might object
to his selectively rough treatment of the ancient philosophers.
But here 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 antient philoso-
phers, for making use of that faculty, and allowing themselves
to be entirely guided by it in their reasonings. In order to jus-
tify myself, I must distinguish in the imagination betwixt the
principles which are permanent, irresistible, and universal;
such as the customary transition from causes to effects, and
from effects to causes: And the principles, which are change-
able, weak, and irregular; such as those I have just now taken
notice of. The former are the foundation of all our thoughts
and actions, so that upon their removal human nature must
immediately perish and go to ruin. The latter are neither
unavoidable to mankind, nor necessary, or so much as useful
in the conduct of life; but on the contrary, are observ’d only
to take place in weak minds, and being opposite to the other
principles of custom and reasoning, may easily be subverted
by a due contrast and opposition. For this reason, the former
are receiv’d by philosophy, and the latter rejected. (148/225)
It is essential to take this paragraph in the specific context in which it
appears. Obviously, it is aimed at what Hume takes to be the extrav-
agances of the ancient philosophers—extravagances that would not
have occurred if the philosophers had constrained their thought by
using only principles that are “permanent, irresistible, and universal;

such as the customary transition from causes to effects, and from
effects to causes: and the principles.” There is, I think, a temptation
to think that Hume is saying something much stronger, namely,
that principles of the imagination that are permanent, irresistible,
and universal will not yield skeptical consequences. That reading
of the text will not hold up, for Hume’s skepticism with regard to
reason and his skepticism with regard to the senses are products
of reasoning governed by just those principles that are permanent,
irresistible, and universal. It is this fact that generates Hume’s deep
skeptical crisis. Hume’s skeptical attack on the modern conception
of material substance has the same status.
A second feature of this opening paragraph is that it sets the
stage for a rhetorical ploy. After contemptuously dismissing the
ancient philosophers’ views on substance and related matters, we
might expect Hume to treat the supposedly more enlightened views
of modern philosophers more generously. He does not. For Hume,
the views of ancient philosophers on these topics are ridiculous; the
views of modern philosophers, no better.
Against the distinction between primary

and secondary qualities
Echoing—perhaps “appropriating” is a better word—arguments

presented by Berkeley, Hume calls into question the modern notion
of material substance by attacking one of its central components:
the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. In brief,
Hume’s core argument runs as follows:
The fundamental principle of that philosophy is the opin-
ion concerning colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold;
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. (149/225)
From which it follows that
[u]pon the removal of sounds, colours, heat, cold, and other
sensible qualities, from the rank of continu’d independent
existences, we are reduc’d merely to what are call’d primary
qualities, as the only real ones. (150/227)
This, according to Hume, leads to disaster.
I believe many objections might be made to this system: But
at present I shall confine myself to one, which is in my opin-
ion very decisive. I assert, that instead of explaining the oper-
ations of external objects by its means, we utterly annihilate
all these objects, and reduce ourselves to the opinions of the
most extravagant scepticism concerning them. (150/227–28)
Canvassing various possibilities, Hume comes to the conclusion
that solidity is a primary feature of material objects. Then, after
going through an elaborate argument, he comes to the further con-
clusion that we cannot attribute solidity to an object possessing no
secondary qualities. If that is right, it makes no sense—it is unin-
telligible—to speak of material objects possessing primary qualities
without their also possessing some secondary qualities. We are thus
forced to the conclusion that
[o]ur modern philosophy, therefore, leaves us no just nor satis-
factory idea of solidity; nor consequently of matter. (151/229)
Berkeley arrived at the same conclusion more expeditiously.
I desire any one to reflect and try, whether he can by any

abstraction of thought, conceive the extension and motion
of a body, without all other sensible qualities. For my own
part, I see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an
idea of a body extended and moved, but I must withal give it
some colour or other sensible quality which is acknowledged
to exist only in the mind. In short, extension, figure, and
motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable.
(Principles, part 1, section 10)
Another Pyrrhonian moment
Section 4 ends on a Pyrrhonian note of the same tenor as the con-

clusion of section 2.
Thus there is a direct and total opposition betwixt our rea-
son and our senses; or more properly speaking, betwixt those
conclusions we form from cause and effect, and those that
perswade us of the continu’d and independent existence of
body. When we reason from cause and effect, we conclude,
that neither colour, sound, taste, nor smell have a continu’d
and independent existence. When we exclude these sensible
qualities there remains nothing in the universe, which has
such an existence. (152/231)
The opening paragraphs of section 4 should be read in the light of
this, its closing paragraph, for once again we encounter a reversal.
Hume begins by comparing ancient philosophy—which was thor-
oughly abused in the preceding section—with modern philosophy.
Of the former, he tells us that
the opinions of the antient philosophers, their fictions of

substance and accident, and their reasonings concerning sub-
stantial forms and occult qualities, are like the spectres in the
dark, and are deriv’d from principles, which, however com-
mon, are neither universal nor unavoidable in human nature.
(149/226)
In contrast:
The modern philosophy pretends to be entirely free from this
defect, and to arise only from the solid, permanent, and con-
sistent principles of the imagination. Upon what grounds
this pretension is founded must now be the subject of our
enquiry. (149/226)
What Hume’s further enquiry yields is the discovery that modern
philosophy, relying on principles of the imagination that are per-
manent, irresistible, and universal, is no more intelligible than the
doctrines of the ancients.
Chapter 6 Z The Soul and the Self
Z
Of the Immateriality of the Soul (Section 5)
This is the second-longest section of part 4 of the Treatise. Only

Hume’s “Of skepticism with regard to the senses” is longer. It is
irreligious, in places ironic and smart-alecky, sometimes obscure. It
also contains material that is, I believe, important for understand-
ing Hume’s problematic and difficult discussion of personal identity
that follows it.
Setting the dialectical stage
Hume begins by telling us that the examination of our internal per-

ceptions will be free of the sorts of contradictions that arose when
dealing with external objects.
The intellectual world, tho’ involv’d in infinite obscurities, is
not perplex’d with any such contradictions, as those we have
discover’d in the natural. What is known concerning it, agrees
with itself; and what is unknown, we must be contented to
leave so. (152/232)
Hume lays full blame for the contradictions that do emerge in the
examination of the intellectual world at the feet of philosophers.
101
’Tis true, wou’d we hearken to certain philosophers, they

promise to diminish our ignorance; but I am afraid ’tis at the
hazard of running us into contradictions, from which the sub-
ject is of itself exempted. These philosophers are the curious
reasoners concerning the material or immaterial substances, in
which they suppose our perceptions to inhere. (152–53/232)
The soul as substance
Given what Hume has said about our (supposed) idea of substance
in sections 3 and 4 of part 4, it should be clear in advance what he
is going to say about the dispute between those who treat the soul
as an immaterial substance and those who treat it as a material sub-
stance. He will dismiss both views as nonsensical.
Neither by considering the first origin of ideas, nor by means
of a definition are we able to arrive at any satisfactory notion
of substance; which seems to me a sufficient reason for aban-
doning utterly that dispute concerning the materiality and
immateriality of the soul, and makes me absolutely condemn
even the question itself. (153/234)
This passage invokes two objections to any theory that treats
the soul as a substance, be it immaterial or material. One concerns
the origin of the idea of substance, the other, the definition of sub-
stance. His opening move combines them:
As every idea is deriv’d from a precedent impression, had we
any idea of the substance of our minds, we must also have
an impression of it; which is very difficult, if not impos-
sible, to be conceiv’d. For how can an impression represent
a substance, otherwise than by resembling it? And how can
The Soul and the Self 103
an impression resemble a substance, since, according to this

philosophy, it is not a substance, and has none of the peculiar
qualities or characteristics of a substance? (153/232–33)
After this ingenious move, Hume raises his familiar challenge con-
cerning the supposed origin of an idea.
I desire those philosophers, who pretend that we have an idea
of the substance of our minds, to point out the impression
that produces it, and tell distinctly after what manner that
impression operates, and from what object it is deriv’d. Is it
an impression of sensation or of reflection? Is it pleasant, or
painful, or indifferent? (153/233)
The strength of this argument depends on the adequacy of Hume’s
theory of the origin of ideas—something that I do not wish to con-
sider here.
The argument based on the definition of substance is more inter-
esting and will, I think, have important repercussions for the later
discussion of personal identity. Hume imagines someone attempt-
ing to evade the demand to point out the impression that gives rise
to our idea of substance by offering a definition instead: A substance
is something that may exist by itself. To this Hume replies:
Shou’d this be said, I shou’d observe, that this definition agrees
to every thing, that can possibly be conceiv’d; and never will
serve to distinguish substance from accident, or the soul from
its perceptions. For thus I reason. Whatever is clearly conceiv’d
may exist; and whatever is clearly conceiv’d, after any man-
ner, may exist after the same manner. This is one principle,
which has been already acknowledged. Again, every thing,
which is different, is distinguishable, and every thing which
is distinguishable, is separable by the imagination. This is
another principle. My conclusion from both is, that since all

our perceptions are different from each other, and from every
thing else in the universe, they are also 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. They are, therefore, substances, as far as this defini-
tion explains a substance. (153/233)
Hume’s point here is that under the proposed definition, the con-
cept of a substance carries no explanatory power because it com-
prehends “every thing that can possibly be conceived,” including
perceptions.
If we rely on this definition of substance, we get a picture of
the mind, not simply as a bundle of perceptions, but—strictly
speaking—as a bundle of substances. But what could constitute
the unity of such a bundle at one time, or its identity over time?
On the traditional view of substance, the members of a collection
of substances cannot be unified either through inherence in one
another or through causal connections. Is it possible that Hume
came to recognize that his ingenious argument against treating the
soul as a substance raised a parallel difficulty with his own account
of personal identity? I’ll come back to this in the second half of this
chapter.
The problem of local conjunction
Having produced what seems to be a complete argument establish-

ing the unintelligibility of any account of the soul that treats it as a
substance, Hume goes on, as is his normal practice, to add further
considerations to the topic. They concern the possibility of the local
conjunction of the extended entities with nonextended entities. The
first argument he considers is supposed to favor the immateriality

of the soul.
Whatever is extended consists of parts; and whatever consists
of parts is divisible, if not in reality, at least in the imagina-
tion. But ’tis impossible any thing divisible can be conjoin’d to
a thought or perception, which is a being altogether insepara-
ble and indivisible. For supposing such a conjunction, wou’d
the indivisible thought exist on the left or on the right hand
of this extended divisible body? (154/234)
Hume continues in this vein, and then concludes:
Thought, therefore, and extension are qualities wholly incom-
patible, and never can incorporate together into one subject.
(154/234–35)
Hume is so taken with the idea of local conjunction that he enters a
five-page digression, considering in general “what objects are, or are not
susceptible of a local conjunction” (154/235). There is some interesting
material in this digression, including a discussion of the relationship of
a fig to its taste. Is the taste coextensive with the fig? If so, does the taste
itself have a shape—in particular, the shape of the fig, or at least the
shape of its tasty parts? Since assigning a shape to a taste seems absurd,
we seem to be forced to say that though the taste exists, it must exist
nowhere. Hume then offers an account of how the mechanisms of the
imagination lead us (falsely) to locate the taste in the fig itself.
After his long discussion of the problem of locally conjoining
something that exists, but exists nowhere with that which is extended—
the supposed problem for the materialist—Hume notices that the
materialist, now referred to as the free-thinker, can run a reverse argu-
ment against the immaterialist. This argument depends on the claim
that some of our perceptions are themselves extended:
That table, which just now appears to me, is only a percep-

tion, and all its qualities are qualities of a perception. Now
the most obvious of all its qualities is extension. . . . And to cut
short all disputes, the very idea of extension is copy’d from
nothing but an impression, and consequently must perfectly
agree to it. To say the idea of extension agrees to any thing, is
to say it is extended. (157/239–40)
Does this mean that our idea of a table has a certain length—say,
five feet? I do not think so, but I must confess that I find this dis-
cussion baffling. In any case, for Hume the local conjunction of
the extended with the nonextended now raises the problem of local
conjunction for the immaterialist as well.
The free-thinker may now triumph in his turn; and having
found there are impressions and ideas really extended, may
ask his antagonists, how they can incorporate a simple and
indivisible subject with an extended perception? (157/240)
Thus, with respect to the problem of local conjunction, we wind up
precisely where Hume wants us to wind up: with a standoff of an
absurdity facing an equal (but opposite) absurdity.
So far, Hume has been evenhanded in his treatment of materi-
alist and immaterialist conceptions of the soul, but now, showing
where his true animus lies, he singles out the immaterialist for an
extraordinary ad hominem attack.
I assert, that the doctrine of the immateriality, simplicity, and
indivisibility of a thinking substance is a true atheism, and
will serve to justify all those sentiments, for which Spinoza is
so universally infamous. (157/240)
Hume claims to see a clear analogy between the doctrine of the
immateriality, simplicity, and indivisibility of a thinking substance
and the materiality, simplicity, and indivisibility of Spinoza’s single,

all-encompassing substance. Hume, perhaps tactically, adopts the
common view that Spinoza’s system amounts to materialism and
hence atheism. He then attempts to show that any arguments that
theologians can bring against Spinozism can be transposed into an
equally powerful argument against their own doctrine of the imma-
teriality of the soul. I will not go into this.
Soul–body interaction
Hume offers a further consideration that he thinks also favors mate-

rialism. The materialist has been challenged to explain how matter
can effect thought.
’Tis absurd to imagine, that motion in a circle, for instance,
shou’d be nothing but merely motion in a circle; while motion
in another direction, as in an ellipse, shou’d also be a passion or
moral reflection: That the shocking of two globular particles
shou’d become a sensation of pain, and that the meeting of two
triangular ones shou’d afford a pleasure. Now as these different
shocks, and variations, and mixtures are the only changes, of
which matter is susceptible, and as these never afford us any
idea of thought or perception, ’tis concluded to be impossible,
that thought can ever be caus’d by matter. (161/246)
This passage as stated looks more like a mind–body identity theory
than like a causal-interaction theory. Nonetheless, Hume treats it as a
matter of causal interaction, sketches his own account of causal rela-
tions, and then dismisses the objection to materialism as follows:
Now as all objects, which are not contrary, are susceptible of
a constant conjunction, and as no real objects are contrary; it
follows, that for aught we can determine by the mere ideas,

any thing may be the cause or effect of any thing; which
evidently gives the advantage to the materialists above their
antagonists. (163/249–50)
Hume does not seem to notice that his account of causality could
also help the immaterialists (if they chose to use it) explain the
reverse causal operations from mind to body. It is not likely that an
immaterialist would feel comfortable accepting Hume’s account of
causal relations, but that is a different matter.
On proofs of immortality
Hume seemingly concludes his discussion in these words:

To pronounce, then, the final decision upon the whole; the
question concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely
unintelligible. (163/250)
Hume cannot, however, resist one final sally aimed at religion. He
is wonderfully outrageous:
There is only one occasion, when philosophy will think it
necessary and even honourable to justify herself, and that is,
when religion may seem to be in the least offended; whose
rights are as dear to her as her own, and are indeed the same.
If any one, therefore, should imagine that the foregoing argu-
ments are any ways dangerous to religion, I hope the follow-
ing apology will remove his apprehensions. (163–64/250)
One of the reasons theologians have been attracted to the idea that
the soul is a spiritual substance is that this seems to provide the
basis for establishing the immortality of the soul. Again appealing
to his own account of causality, Hume dismisses this suggestion out

of hand:
There is no foundation for any conclusion a priori, either
concerning the operations or duration of any object, of which
’tis possible for the human mind to form a conception. Any
object may be imagin’d to become entirely inactive, or to be
annihilated in a moment; and ’tis an evident principle, that
whatever we can imagine, is possible. Now this is no more true
of matter, than of spirit; of an extended compounded sub-
stance, than of a simple and unextended. In both cases the
metaphysical arguments for the immortality of the soul are
equally inconclusive. (164/250)
I will let the final sentence of the section speak for itself:
If my philosophy, therefore, makes no addition to the argu-
ments for religion, I have at least the satisfaction to think it
takes nothing from them, but that every thing remains pre-
cisely as before. (164/250–51)
Z
Of Personal Identity (Section 6)
Though the topic is different, to a large extent Hume’s examina-

tion of personal identity is a replay of arguments that he previ-
ously employed in his treatment of the immateriality of the soul.
He begins by giving a vigorous statement of the position he will
attack:
There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every
moment intimately conscious of what we call our self;
that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence;

and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration,
both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest
sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of dis-
tracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely,
and make us consider their influence on self either by their
pain or pleasure. To attempt a further proof of this were to
weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv’d from any
fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there
any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this.
(164/251)
Basic criticisms
It takes Hume only a few pages to dispose of this position. His first
response goes by so quickly that it may be easy to miss.
From what impression cou’d this idea be deriv’d? This ques-
tion ’tis impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction
and absurdity; and yet ’tis a question, which must necessarily
be answer’d, if we wou’d have the idea of self pass for clear and
intelligible. It must be some one impression, that gives rise
to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impres-
sion, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are
suppos’d to have a reference. (164/251)
It is not entirely clear what Hume has in mind in saying that the
self is not any one impression to which our several impressions
are “supposed to have a reference,” but the claim seems similar to the
definitional move Hume made near the start of his discussion of the
immateriality of the soul, where he asked:
How can an impression resemble a substance, since, according

to this philosophy, it is not a substance, and has none of the
peculiar qualities or characteristics of a substance? (153/233)
Hume then interpolates a straightforward introspective claim:
If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression
must continue invariably the same, thro’ the whole course of
our lives; since self is suppos’d to exist after that manner. But
there is no impression constant and invariable. (164/251)
He concludes his criticisms by repeating, almost verbatim, a claim
made in the previous section (see 153/233):
All these are different, and distinguishable, and separable
from each other, and may be separately consider’d, and may
exist separately, and have no need of any thing to support
their existence. (164/252)
Hume gives the discussion a vivid Epicurean turn by declaring:
Were all my perceptions remov’d by death, and cou’d I neither
think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolu-
tion of my body, I shou’d be entirely annihilated, nor do I
conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-
entity. (165/252)
He closes his criticism of the view of the mind sketched at the opening
of the section with a striking—actually, strikingly inapt—metaphor:
The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions suc-
cessively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and
mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There
is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in dif-
ferent; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine
that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre

must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions
only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant
notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of
the materials, of which it is compos’d. (165/252)
I originally thought that Hume’s theater metaphor is intended to
invoke an audience as perceivers of the perceptions in the mind,
and then go on to reject it. But as one of the readers for Oxford
University Press pointed out, this is not what Hume says. Hume is
not here denying the existence of a perceiver of perceptions; he is
denying that we have a notion of the place where our perceptions
exist. His target is substantival conceptions of the self.
Account of the fiction of personal identity
Following his standard practice, Hume goes on to give an account

of how the fictions of personal identity and personal unity come
about. The basic explanation is a further development of the domi-
nant theme of the four previous sections. The imagination has a
strong tendency to confound two distinct kinds of sequences: iden-
tity over time and the diversity exhibited by “several different objects
existing in succession, and connected together by a close relation”
(165/253). When we focus on (or are struck by) the close relation-
ships between the diverse objects, we tend to assimilate the two
kinds of sequences. When we are struck by the diversity exhibited in
the second sort of sequence, we separate them.
Our propensity to this mistake [of assimilation] is so great
from the resemblance above-mention’d, that we fall into it
before we are aware; and tho’ we incessantly correct our-
selves by reflection, and return to a more accurate method
of thinking, yet we cannot long sustain our philosophy, or

take off this biass from the imagination. Our last resource
is to yield to it, and boldly assert that these different related
objects are in effect the same, however interrupted and vari-
able. In order to justify to ourselves this absurdity, we often
feign some new and unintelligible principle, that connects
the objects together, and prevents their interruption or varia-
tion. Thus we feign the continu’d existence of the perceptions
of our senses, to remove the interruption; and run into the
notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the varia-
tion. (166/254)
Hume’s task, then, is to provide an account of how relatedness

in a sequence of diverse objects can be transmuted into the fiction
of identity over time.
Our chief business, then, must be to prove, that all objects,

to which we [falsely] ascribe identity, without observing their
invariableness and uninterruptedness, are such as consist of a
succession of related objects. (167/255)
Adopting a tactic employed previously by Locke, Hume sneaks up
on the problem of personal identity by examining the notion of
identity as it concerns other types of entities, including material
objects, artifacts, plants, and animals. I’ll run through this quickly.
For Hume, strictly speaking, a mass of matter becomes a new and
distinct entity with the loss or addition of a single atom, yet we con-
tinue to think of it as the selfsame thing if the matter lost or gained
is small or, more precisely, proportionally small. We also have a ten-
dency to think that identity is preserved if the changes are gradual
or insensible. Artifacts can undergo total material change and still
be thought to remain the same thing in virtue of a common end or
purpose, for example—not Hume’s example—the axe that has been

in the family for three generations, having had eight handles and
three heads. We think that animals and vegetables can preserve their
identity through total material change in virtue of the “sympathy
of [their] parts to their common end, and suppose that they bear
to each other, the reciprocal relation of cause and effect in all their
actions and operations” (168/257).
Hume thinks that his discussion of these various ways in which
the fiction of identity gets ascribed to objects undergoing change
creates a strong presumption in favor of offering a similar account
of personal identity.
Here ’tis evident, the same method of reasoning must be
continu’d, which has so successfully explain’d the identity
of plants, and animals, and ships, and houses, and of all the
compounded and changeable productions either of art or
nature. The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man,
is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that which we
ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies. It cannot, therefore,
have a different origin, but must proceed from a like opera-
tion of the imagination upon like objects. (169/259)
Having declared the matter settled, Hume adds more. He recurs
to first principles and poses the problem of personal identity in the
most fundamental form. “’Tis evident,” he tells us, “that the iden-
tity, which we attribute to the human mind, however perfect we
may imagine it to be, is not able to run the several different percep-
tions into one, and make them lose their characters of distinction
and difference, which are essential to them” (169/259). Hume’s next
argument is of central importance for understanding the deep reser-
vations that he expresses in an appendix concerning his treatment of
personal identity. I will set it aside until I turn to that topic.
Having shown to his satisfaction that personal identity has to

be treated as a fiction, Hume is surprisingly brief in his account
of how this fiction arises. With others, Locke for example, Hume
holds that memory plays a fundamental role in generating the belief
in personal identity. Memory, after all, provides the main access to
our previous lives—though, with age, CVs can help as well. One
difficulty with memory, however, is that it supplies us with only a
gappy past.
Who can tell me, for instance, what were his thoughts and
actions on the first of January 1715, the 11th of March 1719,
and the 3d of August 1733? Or will he affirm, because he has
entirely forgot the incidents of these days, that the present
self is not the same person with the self of that time; and by
that means overturn all the most establis’ed notions of per-
sonal identity? In this view, therefore, memory does not so
much produce as discover personal identity, by showing us the
relation of cause and effect among our different perceptions.
(171/262)
When Hume speaks of “the most established notions of personal

identity,” he is, if speaking strictly, referring to the established fiction
of personal identity.
Hume, however, is not always punctilious in adhering to the
strict way of expressing things and often mixes it with expressions
drawn from the vulgar perspective. This is true of the following
extraordinary passage, where Hume gives a metaphorical account of
the origins of the fiction of personal identity:
As to causation; we may observe that the true idea of the human
mind, is to consider it as a system of different perceptions or
different existences, which are link’d together by the relation
of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence,

and modify each other. Our impressions give rise to their cor-
respondent ideas; and these ideas in their turn produce other
impressions. One thought chaces another, and draws after
it a third, by which it is expell’d in its turn. In this respect,
I cannot compare the soul more properly to any thing than to
a republic or commonwealth, in which the several members
are united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordina-
tion, and give rise to other persons, who propagate the same
republic in the incessant changes of its parts. And as the same
individual republic may not only change its members, but also
its laws and constitutions; in like manner the same person may
vary his character and disposition, as well as his impressions
and ideas, without losing his identity. (170/261)
Throughout this passage, causation is taken as the vulgar take it, as
a connecting link, nexus, productive principle, and so on. We know
from part 3 that this is the view of causation that Hume attempted to
undermine. In fact, Hume had explicitly rejected it a few pages earlier
when he reminded us of what “has been already prov’d at large, that
the understanding never observes any real connexion among objects,
and that even the union of cause and effect, when strictly examin’d,
resolves itself into a customary association of ideas” (169/259–60).
He will reject it again in the discussion of personal identity in the
appendix. By his own lights, the political metaphor in this passage is
bad—as bad as the earlier metaphor of the mind as a theater.
Disputes about identity as merely verbal
Hume concludes his discussion of personal identity by declaring

all disputes concerning identity—not simply disputes concerning
personal identity—merely grammatical or verbal.
All the nice and subtile questions, concerning personal identity

can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as
grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity depends
on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity,
by means of that easy transition they occasion. But as the rela-
tions, and the easiness of the transition may diminish by insen-
sible degrees, we have no just standard, by which we can decide
any dispute concerning the time, when they acquire or lose a
title to the name of identity. All the disputes concerning the
identity of connected objects are merely verbal, except so far
as the relation of parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary
principle of union, as we have already observ’d. (171/262)
For Hume, as we have seen, strictly speaking, any alteration in an
object from one moment to the next is sufficient to destroy its iden-
tity over time. A tree, in losing a single leaf, is no longer the same
tree. For that matter, the slightest flutter of a leaf is sufficient to have
this effect. Of course, as Hume recognizes, in daily life we (including
Hume) do not employ the notion of identity in this strict manner.
But once we abandon a strict notion of identity, there is no way,
according to Hume, to objectively settle the question whether the
object remains the same object under change or not. A difference of
opinion here is nothing more than a disagreement on how we will
decide to use a word, and hence is purely grammatical, that is, verbal.
On the other hand, an attempt to give an account of the mechanisms
that give rise to the fiction of identity over time is a substantive mat-
ter that Hume, to his present satisfaction, has been able to resolve.
The reservations in the appendix
As we read the text of section 6, Hume seems much at his ease

in disposing of both the vulgar and the learned understandings of
personal identity, and putting his own account in their place. It

should thus come as a surprise when we turn to the appendix and
encounter the following passage:
I had entertain’d some hopes, that however deficient our the-
ory of the intellectual world might be, it wou’d be free from
those contradictions, and absurdities, which seem to attend
every explication, that human reason can give of the material
world. But upon a more strict review of the section concern-
ing personal identity, I find myself involv’d in such a labyrinth,
that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former
opinions, nor how to render them consistent. (398–9/633)
The hopes that Hume refers to were expressed in the opening pas-
sage of section 5, “Of the immateriality of the soul.” So once more
we have an example of a brave and promising beginning ending in
disappointment. As before, Hume gives vent to the skeptical feel-
ings that this reversal calls forth.
If this be not a good general reason for scepticism, ’tis at least a
sufficient one (if I were not already abundantly suppli’d) for me to
entertain a diffidence and modesty in all my decisions. (399/633)
Hume’s sardonic “if I were not already abundantly supplied” should
be taken at face value. As if things were not bad enough already—
recall the strong skeptical conclusions found in sections 1, 2, and
4—his account of personal identity, which he plainly viewed as a
triumph, has, under strict review, fallen apart.
Hume’s picture of the mind
Hume first lays out the original reasons that induced him to deny
“the strict and proper identity and simplicity of a self or thinking
being.” They fall into two categories: those that concern substance
and those that concern necessary connections.
Hume quickly summarizes his reasons for rejecting the idea that
personal identity can be explained by treating the mind as a mental
substance. The simplest involves a direct appeal to introspection:
When I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive this
self without some one or more perceptions; nor can I ever
perceive any thing but the perceptions. ‘Tis the composition
of these, therefore, which forms the self. (399/634)
Another argument turns on the intelligibility of something existing
without inhering in a substance.
But ’tis intelligible and consistent to say, that objects exist
distinct and independent, without any common simple sub-
stance or subject of inhesion. This proposition, therefore, can
never be absurd with regard to perceptions. (399/634)
Then, in a remarkable passage, Hume goes beyond the suggestion
that an individual perception satisfies the definition of an individual
substance to claim that an individual perception can, by itself, con-
stitute an individual mind:
We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or
few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduc’d even below
the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one perception,
as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you
conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any
notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other per-
ceptions can never give you that notion. (399/634)
Turning next to necessary connections, if perceptions are not uni-
fied at a given time and do not preserve identity over time through
inhesion in a substance, they must, it seems, be grounded through

connections among the perceptions themselves. Hume explicitly
closes off this option in a passage in section 6 not previously cited:
A question naturally arises concerning this relation of iden-
tity; whether it be something that really binds our several
perceptions together, or only associates their ideas in the
imagination? That is, in other words, whether, in pronounc-
ing concerning the identity of a person, we observe some
real bond among his perceptions, or only feel one among the
ideas we form of them? This question we might easily decide,
if we wou’d recollect what has been already prov’d at large,
that the understanding never observes any real connexion
among objects, and that even the union of cause and effect,
when strictly examin’d resolves itself into a customary associa-
tion of ideas. For from thence it evidently follows, that iden-
tity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions,
and uniting them together; but is merely a quality, which we
attribute to them, because of the union of their ideas in the
imagination, when we reflect upon them. (169/259–60)
In the appendix he puts it this way:
If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only
by being connected together. But no connexions among dis-
tinct existences are ever discoverable by human understand-
ing. (400/635)
This claim, of course, reflects the central development of part 3.
There Hume begins with the notion that a causal relation contains
as an essential element the idea of a necessary connection. As we
have seen, in the end, he rejects this notion and treats necessary
connectedness as a feeling that is the product of drawing a causal
inference rather than as a connecting link that validates the infer-

ence. As he puts it: “We only feel a connexion or a determination to
pass from one object to another” (400/635). That feeling, like any
perception, is simply another member of the heap of perceptions.
Here, then, is the picture of the mind that has emerged. The mind
is a bundle of perceptions with no contents other than perceptions.
These perceptions are not related to one another by inhering in a com-
mon substance. In fact, strictly speaking, each perception is itself an
individual substance. In this respect, the mind is a bundle of substances.
Beyond this, each perception may be viewed as an individual mind, so
the mind is not simply a bundle of perceptions, it is a bundle of minds.
Finally, there can be no real connections among individual perceptions,
so no perception can apprehend other perceptions. In Hume’s audi-
ence-free theater, nothing exists that can apprehend the bundle, so the
bundle of perceptions exhibits no mechanism for bundling. For that
matter, it does not seem to contain any mechanism that accounts for
the feeling of connectedness of perceptions within the bundle. If this is
what Hume’s theory of the human mind comes to, it is not altogether
remarkable that he came to have misgivings concerning it.
Hume’s declaration of failure
Most philosophers seem inclin’d to think, that personal iden-

tity arises from consciousness; and consciousness is nothing
but a reflected thought or perception. The present philoso-
phy, therefore, has so far a promising aspect. All my hopes
vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our
successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I can-
not discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this
head. (400/635–36)
It is, I think, important to see that Hume’s concerns go beyond his

disappointment with his account of personal identity. What par-
ticularly disturbs him is that his difficulties seem to flow directly
from two principles central to his philosophical position:
In short there are two principles, which I cannot render

consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them
(emphasis added), viz. that all our distinct perceptions are dis-
tinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real con-
nexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either
inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind
perceive some real connexion among them, there wou’d be no
difficulty in the case. (400/636)
Hume cannot be saying that his two principles are inconsistent with
each another. They are not. What I think he is saying is that accept-
ing these two principles—principles that he has relied on through-
out the Treatise—forecloses the possibility of giving an account of
the fiction of personal identity. Why is this? Commentators have
made all sorts of suggestions concerning what must be bothering
Hume. Some of these suggestions point to difficulties that should
have concerned him. It is difficult, however, to find textual evidence
supporting these suggestions, because Hume does not point to a
specific problem in his treatment of personal identity. Instead, he
speaks of being involved in a “labyrinth” (399/633).
To get a sense of this labyrinth, we can consider what it would
be like to give an account of the fiction of personal identity under
the following constraints. The first two concern the two principles
Hume finds impossible to renounce:
1. Allow no reference to relations of interdependence among
perceptions. Taken in itself, the presence or absence of any
one perception has no bearing on the presence or absence

of any other.
2. Allow no reference to substance as an underlying substrate
or as a principle of unity.
The third constraint flows from his account of perceptions.
3. Allow no reference, including tacit reference, to a spectator.

For Berkeley, the being of a perception is to be perceived
and, correlated with this, the being of a mind is to be a
perceiver. Hume specifically denies the existence of any
such perceiving mind, and, by implication, he must deny
that the being of a perception is to be perceived. Reference
to perceptions cannot be used as a cover for sneaking in a
perceiver.
I believe that these are constraints Hume accepts in attempting to

offer an account of the fiction of personal identity. I think he came
to see that every attempt he made to carry out his program within
them failed. But if that is Hume’s problem, why didn’t he say so?
Well, I think he pretty much did say so when he described himself
as being involved in a labyrinth. He doesn’t say anything more spe-
cific than this.
One last question: If they are raising profound difficulties,
why doesn’t Hume abandon at least one of the constraints that
has trapped him in his labyrinth? Doing so would, in fact, entail
a wholesale revision of central arguments of the Treatise, includ-
ing his prized treatment of causation. With respect to the first two
constraints, Hume tells us that it is not “in [his] power to renounce
either of them.” I think that the third constraint has a similar hold
on him. The vulgar seem to reject these constraints, as do many phi-
losophers. Why is Hume seemingly locked into them? The answer,
I believe, is that Hume’s commitment to these principles flows from

his acceptance of what I have called the phenomenalist stance as the
proper, fiction-free perspective for developing his science of human
nature. Given his commitment to this perspective, Hume finds
these constraints forced upon him.
Chapter 7 Z The Conclusion of Book 1
Z
A Gloomy Summation of Skeptical Results
At the start of the seventh, and concluding, section of part 4, Hume

pauses to take stock of where his reflections have led him.
Before I launch out into those immense depths of philoso-
phy, which lie before me, I find myself inclin’d to stop a
moment in my present station, and to ponder that voyage,
which I have undertaken, and which undoubtedly requires
the utmost art and industry to be brought to a happy con-
clusion. . . . My memory of past errors and perplexities,
makes me diffident for the future. The wretched condition,
weakness, and disorder of the faculties, I must employ in
my enquiries, encrease my apprehensions. And the impos-
sibility of amending or correcting these faculties, reduces
me almost to despair, and makes me resolve to perish on
the barren rock, on which I am at present. (171–72/263–64,
emphasis added)
I take this passage to be an unfeigned expression of the melancholy
generated by a series of disasters unanticipated in the brave open-
ing pages of the Treatise. Others have found it overdone, John
Passmore, for example:
125
The bewilderment that Hume displays at the end of Book I

of the Treatise is genuine enough, although, unable to resist
the opportunity skepticism offers him for self-dramatization,
he lapses into a stagey melodramatic tone. . . . By the time he
came to write the Enquires and the Dialogues on Natural
Religion, his feelings, his ideas, and his “literary” impulses
were under better control.
To this he adds:
We shall understand his skeptical intentions more clearly if
we make these later writings our point of departure, referring
back, as the need arises, to the more detailed arguments of the
Treatise. (Passmore 1952, p. 133)
In this work I have been proceeding in the opposite direction, tak-
ing the Treatise as the central text for understanding Hume’s rela-
tionship to skepticism. The skeptical intentions (as Passmore calls
them) of the Enquiry and the Dialogues on Natural Religion grow
naturally out of the skeptical crisis found in the Treatise and cannot
be fully understood without recognizing this relationship.
In any case, in the passage cited above, Hume reviews the devel-
opment of his thought from what he calls his present station. He
refers to his own past errors and perplexities, but his central concern
is the “wretched condition, weakness, and disorder” of the human
mental faculties that his pursuit of the science of human nature has
laid bare. Hume is quite precise in locating the primary source of
his difficulties: his doctrine that all beliefs are (at least ultimately)
grounded in the operations of the imagination.
For with what confidence can I venture upon . . . bold enter-
prizes, when beside those numberless infirmities peculiar to
myself, I find so many which are common to human nature?
The Conclusion of Book 1 127
Can I be sure, that in leaving all establish’d opinions, I am

following truth; and by what criterion shall I distinguish
her, even if fortune shou’d at last guide me on her foot-steps?
After the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can
give no reason why I should assent to it; and feel nothing but
a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view,
under which they appear to me (emphasis added). . . . Without
this quality, by which the mind enlivens some ideas beyond
others (which seemingly is so trivial, and so little founded
on reason) we cou’d never assent to any argument, nor carry
our view beyond those few objects, which are present to our
senses. . . . The memory, senses, and understanding are . . . all
of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our
ideas. (172–73/265)
Hume goes on to catalog the various ways in which reliance on
the imagination can generate profound difficulties. One is that the
imagination in its operations can yield beliefs incompatible with
one another. Hume’s first recognition of the imagination’s capac-
ity to come into conflict with itself occurs in section 13 of part 3
(“Of unphilosophical probability”). This, as we saw, is also the first
place that Hume explicitly recognizes the skeptical consequences
that emerge from the operations of the imagination.1 Hume does
not refer to this discussion in section 7, but he does explicitly cite a
parallel line of reasoning in the concluding paragraph of section 4 of
part 4 (“Of the modern philosophy”). He paraphrases it as follows:
No wonder a principle so inconstant and fallacious shou’d
lead us into errors, when implicitly follow’d (as it must be)
in all its variations. ’Tis this principle, which makes us reason
from causes and effects; and ’tis the same principle, which
convinces us of the continu’d existence of external objects,
when absent from the senses. But tho’ these two operations
be equally natural and necessary in the human mind, yet in
some circumstances they are directly contrary [here Hume
refers the reader to section 4 of part 4], nor is it possible for
us to reason justly and regularly from causes and effects, and
at the same time believe the continu’d existence of matter.
(173/265–66)
The specific circumstance that Hume refers to in this passage con-
cerns the skeptical consequences that follow from his critique of the
distinction between primary and secondary qualities. It is worth
repeating.
There is a direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and
our senses; or more properly speaking, betwixt those conclu-
sions we form from cause and effect, and those that perswade us
of the continu’d and independent existence of body. When we
reason from cause and effect, we conclude, that neither colour,
sound, taste, nor smell have a continu’d and independent exis-
tence. When we exclude these sensible qualities there remains
nothing in the universe, which has such an existence. (152/231)
Hume’s first cause for concern, then, is that an implicit reli-
ance on the imagination can yield irreconcilable conflicts generated
within the imagination itself. His second concern—and this seems
to affect him at least as deeply—is that enquiring into the opera-
tions of this faculty has brought to light its arbitrary, weak, and
capricious character.
When we trace up the human understanding to its first prin-
ciples, we find it to lead us into such sentiments, as seem
to turn into ridicule all our past pains and industry, and to
discourage us from future enquiries. (173/266)2
These difficulties with the products of the imagination suggest that

the careful reasoner should abandon all reliance on so weak a fac-
ulty. This, however, is not an option open to Hume, for it would
leave him with no way of dealing with the skepticism with regard
to reason presented in the opening section of part 4. His task there
was not to find a way of refuting his skeptical argument concerning
reason—correctly or not, he thought it irrefutable. His task was
to give an account of the undeniable fact that people continue to
believe a great many things even when apprised of this argument.
Looking back on this previous discussion, Hume described the situ-
ation this way:
I have already shown [in section 1 of part 4], that the under-
standing, when it acts alone, and according to its most general
principles, entirely subverts itself, and leaves not the lowest
degree of evidence in any proposition, either in philosophy
or common life. We save ourselves from this total scepticism
only by means of that singular and seemingly trivial property
of the fancy, by which we enter with difficulty into remote
views of things, and are not able to accompany them with so
sensible an impression, as we do those, which are more easy
and natural. (174/267–68)
If we are suitably struck by the arbitrariness of the nonrational

mechanism that saves understanding from destroying itself, we may
be tempted to abandon reason altogether and place full reliance on
the imagination, obediently accepting whatever it sends our way.
That, however, yields a deep dilemma of its own.
Shall we, then, establish it for a general maxim, that no refin’d
or elaborate reasoning is ever to be receiv’d? Consider well the
consequences of such a principle. By this means you cut off
entirely all science and philosophy: You proceed upon one

singular quality of the imagination, and by a parity of rea-
son must embrace all of them: And you expressly contradict
yourself; since this maxim must be built on the preceding
reasoning, which will be allow’d to be sufficiently refin’d and
metaphysical. What party, then, shall we choose among these
difficulties? If we embrace this principle, and condemn all
refin’d reasoning, we run into the most manifest absurdities.
If we reject it in favour of these reasonings, we subvert entirely
the human understanding. We have, therefore, no choice left
but betwixt a false reason and none at all. (174/268)
In this passage Hume reflects on the position that he finds himself in

and provides a narrative describing how he got there. “The intense
view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human
reason,” Hume tells us, “has so wrought upon me, and heated my
brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look
upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another”
(175/268–69). Isn’t this all, as Passmore suggests, a bit overdramatic,
overwrought? No. From the perspective that Hume has reached, the
crisis is genuine, unavoidable, and destructive of the entire project
of developing his science of human nature.
Z
What Is to Be Done?
Hume needs a way of exiting from his dismal situation, but for him
there is no way of thinking his way out of his crisis. “Reason,” he
tells us, “is incapable of dispelling these clouds” (175/269). One has
to abandon the study and reenter the affairs of daily life. In doing
so, he tells us,
I find myself absolutely and necessarily determin’d to live,

and talk, and act like other people in the common affairs of
life. But notwithstanding that my natural propensity, and the
course of my animal spirits and passions reduce me to this
indolent belief in the general maxims of the world, I still feel
such remains of my former disposition, that I am ready to
throw all my books and papers into the fire, and resolve never
more to renounce the pleasures of life for the sake of reason-
ing and philosophy. For these are my sentiments in that sple-
netic humour, which governs me at present. I may, nay I must
yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my senses
and understanding; and in this blind submission I show most
perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles. (175/269,
emphasis added)
So Hume, when he returns to daily occupations, yields to the cur-
rent of nature and blindly submits to the deliverances of sense and
understanding—the very faculties he was forced to reject in his
study. It is the blindness of the submission—accepting something
without having, or even seeking, justificatory grounds—that shows
most perfectly his skeptical dispositions and principles.
Even if, for the moment at least, this maneuver frees Hume of
philosophical melancholy, doesn’t he still stand under the obligation
to stop frittering away his time in agreeable company and get back
to work in his study? When in agreeable company, he is inclined to
say no.
[Must I] strive against the current of nature, which leads
me to indolence and pleasure; that I must seclude myself, in
some measure, from the commerce and society of men, which
is so agreeable; and that I must torture my brain with sub-
tilities and sophistries, at the very time that I cannot satisfy
myself concerning the reasonableness of so painful an appli-

cation. . . . No: If I must be a fool, as all those who reason
or believe any thing certainly are, my follies shall at least be
natural and agreeable. (175/269–70)
Z
Being a Philosopher on Skeptical Principles
Hume finds, however, that he is not fully content with this way out
of his difficulties. Despite the trouble it has brought him, Hume
finds that he has not completely lost his desire to lead the life of the
mind. His ingenious answer is that we should pursue philosophy in
the same skeptical manner that, in daily life, we accept the deliver-
ances of understanding, namely, blindly.
If we are philosophers, it ought only to be upon sceptical
principles, and from an inclination, which we feel to the
employing ourselves after that manner. Where reason is lively,
and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented
to. (176/270)
These two sentences, I take it, specify the skeptical principles Hume
thinks we should abide by in philosophizing. Skeptics, in this sense,
restrict their reflections to matters that naturally attract their atten-
tion, and assent to things that they find naturally compelling.
Skeptics, in this sense, live in accordance with how things strike
them in the situation they are in—and nothing more.
With respect to our motive for pursuing philosophy, on this
approach, it is the same as our motive for playing backgammon or
conversing with merry friends: In appropriate circumstances and
carried out in the appropriate way, it can be fun. In Hume’s more
dignified language:
At the time, therefore, that I am tir’d with amusement and

company, and have indulg’d a reverie in my chamber, or in
a solitary walk by a river-side, I feel my mind all collected
within itself. . . . I [then] feel an ambition to arise in me of
contributing to the instruction of mankind, and of acquir-
ing a name by my inventions and discoveries. These senti-
ments spring up naturally in my present disposition; and
shou’d I endeavour to banish them, by attaching myself to
any other business or diversion, I feel I shou’d be a loser in
point of pleasure; and this is the origin of my philosophy.
(176/270–71)
Here we have Hume’s skeptical grounds for reentering his study,
but with his previous skeptical calamity still echoing in his brain,
and still chastened, he returns to the philosophical arena diffi-
dently. In what might first seem no more than a passing remark
he tells us:
There are in England, in particular, many honest gentle-
men, who being always employ’d in their domestic affairs,
or amusing themselves in common recreations, have carry’d
their thoughts very little beyond those objects, which are
every day 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 these researches or auditors
of these discoveries. They do well to keep themselves in their
present situation; and instead of refining them into philoso-
phers, I wish we cou’d communicate to our founders of sys-
tems, 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. (177/272)3
This may seem like a pro forma tip-of-the-hat to England’s honest

gentlemen, but, in fact, Hume goes on to give their “earthy” opin-
ions special philosophical entitlement.
While a warm imagination is allow’d to enter into philoso-

phy, 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 expe-
rience. 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 examination. (177/272)
In this passage, the word “specious” has the meaning of “attrac-

tive,” not “falsely attractive.” What Hume seems to be saying is this:
When engaged in philosophizing, we should not accept a hypoth-
esis simply because it is attractive and agreeable from within the
philosophical perspective. It must meet another criterion—actually
two other criteria. The first is that it must “suit with common prac-
tice and experience,” and by this I take Hume to mean that the
hypotheses cannot clash with common practice and experience. The
second criterion is that the hypothesis must stand up under the
critical examination of the learned. The first criterion protects us
from drowning in skepticism by barring us from deep waters; the
second criterion provides intellectual respectability.
By the end of book 1, the swagger of Hume’s introduction is
gone, and his science of human nature has been transformed into a
modest, diffident, and piecemeal activity:
For my part, my only hope is, that I may contribute a little to
the advancement of knowledge, by giving in some particulars
a different turn to the speculations of philosophers, and

pointing out to them more distinctly those subjects, where
alone they can expect assurance and conviction. (177/273)
Hume recommends pursuing philosophy in what he calls this care-
less manner because it is more truly skeptical:
The conduct of a man, who studies philosophy in this care-
less manner, is more truly sceptical than that of one, who
feeling in himself an inclination to it, is yet so over-whelm’d
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. (177/273)
By “careless,” Hume does not mean “not giving sufficient atten-
tion or thought to avoid error.” The expression “free of care”
comes closer to Hume’s eighteenth-century use of the term. One
pursues a philosophical topic for the intrinsic pleasure it gives.
One accepts things and perhaps reports them to others when they
strike one as right and lets it go at that.
True skeptics, as Hume portrays them, are not barred from
engaging in philosophical activity, provided they pursue it with
proper modesty and diffidence. In light of this proviso, a further
dispensation seems surprising indeed: In expressing the results of
their investigations, the true skeptics are not barred from making
strong, unqualified epistemic claims. For Hume, employing such
language need not be indicative of a dogmatic spirit.
We [as skeptics] 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.
… 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, ’tis evident, ’tis certain, ’tis 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 offer’d 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 (some emphasis added).
(178/273–74)
In this passage, the opposite of skepticism is dogmatism, and the

point Hume is making is that one can speak like a dogmatist with-
out thereby becoming one. We might think of these natural and
spontaneous uses of ’tis evident, ’tis certain, ’tis undeniable as emo-
tive or expressive in character—cousins of “Eureka,” “aha,” “bingo,”
“I get it,” and “now I can go on.” In fact, it might be possible to
develop an epistemic-sense theory to give an account of epistemic
normativity in a way that parallels Hume’s moral-sense account of
moral normativity. In a Humean spirit, we could treat the objective
certainty that we ascribe, say, to a demonstration as a projection
of our subjective certitude regarding it. Hume says something very
like this in his claim that the necessity we ascribe to causal rela-
tions is the same in kind as that which we find in mathematics (see
112/166).
Book 1 of the Treatise closes with the passage just cited. Yet
Hume’s situation still seems fragile. His appeal to the “gross earthy
mixture” of attitudes and beliefs of “honest gentlemen” bears a
heavy burden in protecting Hume from radical skepticism, and it
is not clear how (or if ) it can bear this burden. It is also unclear
how human faculties can be disciplined to stay within the modest
bounds that Hume, in his calmer moments, prescribes. Given the
seriousness of the skeptical challenges Hume has raised against his
own system, his responses to them seem, to borrow one of his own
phrases, little more than palliative remedies.
All the same, when we turn the page to the beginning of book 2,
Of the Passions, we find Hume in fine fettle. As one of the readers
for the Press puts it, we find Hume “presenting a long and steady
and boring account of the passions, resuming the science of man as
though there was never a crisis about it.” I agree that the transition
from part 4 of book 1 to the opening part of book 2 is at least as
surprising as the transition from part 3 to part 4 in book 1. The sud-
den appearance of radical skepticism and its sudden disappearance
are equally perplexing.
What are we to make of this? Perhaps when Hume reined in his
ambitions, his good spirits returned and he found that he could
again conduct his philosophical studies in a careless (i.e., carefree)
manner with the reasonable hope that he could at least “contribute
a little to the advancement of knowledge.” The closing remarks of
book 1, part 4, section 7 of the Treatise are not, however, Hume’s
final words on the relationship between skepticism and the legiti-
macy of his philosophical enterprise. Hume addresses the prob-
lem anew in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and
attempts to resolve it in an interestingly different manner. We can
look at this next.
Chapter 8 Z Two Openings and Two
Closings
Z
The Treatise and the Enquiry on Skepticism
Hume placed the following “advertisement” in the front matter of

his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:
most of the principles, and reasonings, contained in this
volume, were published in a work in three volumes, called
A Treatise of Human Nature: A work which the Author had
projected before he left College, and which he wrote and
published not long after. But not finding it successful, he was
sensible of his error in going to the press too early, and he
cast the whole anew in the following pieces, where some neg-
ligences in his former reasoning and more in the expression,
are, he hopes, corrected. . . . Henceforth, the Author desires,
that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing
his philosophical sentiments and principles. (EHU 1/2)
In this work I have willfully disregarded Hume’s injunction by
making only passing references to the Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding and concentrating almost exclusively on Hume’s
Treatise. Nor do I propose to examine the Enquiry in detail here.
I will, however, spend some time comparing the opening and clos-
ing parts of book 1 of the Treatise with the opening and closing
139
sections of the Enquiry. The relationship is interestingly complex

and sheds light, I believe, on how Hume came to see the relation-
ship between his philosophical work and skepticism.
Z
The Opening of the Treatise
As we have seen, in the introduction to the Treatise Hume presents a

prospectus extolling the new “science of man” that he is about to pursue.
His claims in its behalf are hardly modest. His ambition is to produce
an account of human nature with the scope and power achieved by
Newton and others with respect to the physical world. In fact, he claims
to outdo Newton by proposing a complete system of the sciences.
There is no question of importance, whose decision is not
compris’d in the science of man; and there is none, which can
be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted
with that science. In pretending therefore to explain the
principles of human nature, we in effect propose a compleat
system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely
new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any
security. (4/xvi)
At the end of book 1, Hume came to the disappointing conclu-
sion that he had not fulfilled this systematic project and seemed to
despair of the possibility of doing so.
Z
The Opening of the Enquiry
The first section of the Enquiry is titled “Of the different species of
philosophy.” Hume begins by distinguishing two perspectives that
Two Openings and Two Closings 141
we can adopt with respect to the study of human nature. One, the
popular or easy approach, “considers man chiefly as born for action;
and as influenced in his measures by taste and sentiment” (EHU 5/5).
The other, abstruse, approach considers “man in the light of a reason-
able rather than an active being, and endeavours to form his under-
standing more than cultivate his manners” (EHU 5/6). The popular
approach to human nature, which both entertains and elevates its
readers, needs no apology, but why, Hume asks, should anyone
engage in abstruse philosophy? This question is motivated, in part at
least, by the poor reception the Treatise received. That, however, is
not the whole story—and, to my mind, not the most important part
of the story. The developments in the Treatise—a work in abstruse
philosophy—seem to undercut the possibility of abstruse philoso-
phy, so if Hume is going to salvage any of the “principles and rea-
sonings” of that work, a defense, if only limited defense, of abstruse
reasoning is in order. What we get at the start of the Enquiry is a
popular essay in defense of engaging in abstruse philosophy.
Hume begins by presenting what amounts to a balance sheet of
reasons for and against engaging in abstruse philosophy. He first
presents the reasons against doing so:
1. Abstruse philosophy seems to have little influence on daily
life.
Abstruse philosophy, being founded on a turn of mind, which
cannot enter into business and action, vanishes when the phi-
losopher leaves the shade, and comes into open day; nor can
its principles easily retain any influence over our conduct and
behaviour. (EHU 6/7)
2. The enterprise is inherently prone to error.
It is easy for a profound philosopher to commit a mistake in
his subtile reasonings; and one mistake is the necessary parent
of another, while he pushes on his consequences, and is not

deterred from embracing any conclusion, by its unusual appear-
ance, or its contradiction to popular opinion. (EHU 6/7)
3. The human mind is unsuited for this activity.
Man is a reasonable being; and as such, receives from sci-

ence his proper food and nourishment: But so narrow are
the bounds of human understanding, that little satisfaction
can be hoped for in this particular, either from the extent or
security of his acquisitions. (EHU 7/8)
4. Nature personified warns us that engaging in abstruse phi-

losophizing can, as Hume will testify, make one feel miserable.
Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and

will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they
introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve
you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discov-
eries will meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher;
but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. (EHU 7/9)
Hume next turns his attention to the reasons for engaging in

abstruse philosophy.
1. With respect to the claimed uselessness of abstruse philoso-
phy, Hume responds that the spirit of accuracy it engenders benefits
“every art and profession.”
We may observe, in every art or profession, even those which

most concern life or action, that a spirit of accuracy, however
acquired, carries all of them nearer their perfection, and renders
them more subservient to the interests of society. And though
a philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of
philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually

diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a simi-
lar correctness on every art and calling. (EHU 8/10)
2. In response to Nature’s warning that the pursuit of abstruse

philosophy will make one miserable, Hume takes the same line that
he took in the Treatise: Sometimes—at least when rightly pursued—
examining abstruse questions can bring pleasure.
Were there no advantage to be reaped from these studies,
beyond the gratification of an innocent curiosity, yet ought
not even this to be despised; as being one accession to those
few safe and harmless pleasures, which are bestowed on human
race. . . . Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to
the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour,
must needs be delightful and rejoicing. (EHU 8–9/11)1
3. More deeply, a study of our mental faculties, though abstruse,
provides us with the only way of freeing ourselves from the delu-
sions of false metaphysics.
The only method of freeing learning, at once, from these
abstruse questions, is to enquire seriously into the nature of
human understanding, and show, from an exact analysis of
its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such
remote and abstruse subjects. We must submit to this fatigue,
in order to live at ease ever after. . . . Accurate and just reasoning
is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dis-
positions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philoso-
phy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with
popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to
careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.
(EHU 9–10/12–13, emphasis added)
We can think of this as the therapeutic (even cathartic) employment

of Hume’s science of human nature.
On the whole—though the victory is by no means overwhelm-
ing—for Hume, the reasons in favor of pursuing abstruse philoso-
phy outweigh the reasons for rejecting it. The task of the Enquiry is
to make good on this assessment.
Z
The Response to Skepticism in the Enquiry
Turning to the concluding section of the Enquiry, we can compare

the way Hume attempts to meet the challenge of skepticism there
with his response in the closing section of book 1 of the Treatise. In
the Enquiry Hume understands skepticism in much the same way
that he understood it in the Treatise:
The Sceptic . . . provokes the indignation of all divines and
graver philosophers; though it is certain, that no man ever met
with any such absurd creature, or conversed with a man, who
had no opinion or principle concerning any subject, either
of action or speculation. This begets a very natural question;
What is meant by a sceptic? And how far it is possible to
push these philosophical principles of doubt and uncertainty?
(EHU 112/149)
To understand this passage and others like it, it is important to
keep in mind the distinction drawn earlier between two senses of
skepticism. In one sense, a person is skeptical concerning a par-
ticular matter if he doubts its truth or suspends judgment concern-
ing it. I have labeled this form of skepticism doxastic skepticism.
We can also speak of arguments as being skeptical. An argument is
skeptical if it calls into question the justification or basis of beliefs
or systems of beliefs. I have called this theoretical skepticism. The

skeptic whom Hume alludes to, who has “no opinion or principle
concerning any subject,” is an example of an extreme doxastic skep-
tic. Hume associates this kind of skepticism—in fact, incorrectly—
with Pyrrhonism.2
In the Enquiry, Hume himself draws a distinction between kinds
of skepticism along quite different lines: antecedent versus consequent
skepticism. Hume associates antecedent skepticism with Descartes:
It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our for-

mer 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 . . . that [is] self-evident and con-
vincing: 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. (EHU 112/150)
Hume also speaks of a skepticism that is “consequent to science and

enquiry”:
There is another species of scepticism, consequent to science
and enquiry, when men are supposed to have discovered,
either the absolute fallaciousness of their mental faculties, or
their unfitness to reach any fixed determination in all those
curious subjects of speculation, about which they are com-
monly employed. (EHU 113/150)
Though Hume does not explicitly say so, this is the kind of skepti-
cism that emerges in part 4 of book 1 of the Treatise.
Notice that consequent skepticism, as I will awkwardly call it,
may yield two quite different results: It can reveal the absolute fal-
laciousness of our mental faculties, or it can show their unfitness for
curious subjects of speculation. These options determine Hume’s
strategy in the Enquiry for dealing with skepticism. The first result,
a specter that haunts the Treatise, must be avoided because it
destroys all motives for pursuing philosophical enquiry. The sec-
ond outcome will be embraced because it fences off just those areas
where skeptical disasters occur—or so it is hoped.
Z
The Science of Human Nature in the Enquiry
In the opening sentence of the Enquiry, Hume speaks of the “sci-

ence of human nature.” If the science of human nature is taken to
be the presentation of detailed associationalist accounts of mental
phenomena, then it is striking how little of this activity, central to
the Treatise, is found in the Enquiry. In the Treatise Hume has an
insatiable lust for producing elaborate associationalist accounts of
mental phenomena, often going off on digressions in order to pur-
sue this passion. He almost seems to be saying: “Throw any problem
concerning the operations of the human mind my way, and I will
take care of it.” Not only is this aspect of the Treatise reduced in the
Enquiry, there is a wholesale deletion—“purge” might be a better
word—of the most elaborate and important applications of associa-
tionalist methods found in the Treatise. Consider section 2, part 4,
“Of skepticism with regard to the senses.” The primary task of this
section is to accomplish two things: first, to offer an account of how
the vulgar come to accept the false belief that objects of perception
can have a continued and distinct existence when unperceived; and

second, to offer an account of how the learned arrive at the unintel-
ligible theory of double existence. In the Treatise, a skeptical argu-
ment is aimed at the double-existence theory of perception as one
component in a larger project in the science of human nature. In the
Enquiry, only the skeptical argument remains (EHU 113–16/150–55),
and the accounts of the origins of the vulgar and learned views of
perception are simply gone. Sections 3–6 of part 4, with their own
elaborate causal accounts of the formation of philosophical beliefs,
suffer a worse fate: They are deleted altogether.3 These deletions
take with them Hume’s previous discussion of philosophical fic-
tions, that is, the fictions of seeming to refer to something where no
referent is picked out.
How are we to explain this extraordinary shift in emphasis from
the Treatise to the Enquiry? In his autobiographical work, My Own
Life, Hume suggests that it may have been the style of the Treatise
that accounted for its poor reception:
I had always entertained a notion, that my want of success
in publishing the Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded
more from the manner than the matter, and that I had been
guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in going to the press too
early. I, therefore, cast the first part of that work anew in the
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. (Letters 3)
When Hume speaks of the manner, not the matter, of the Treatise,
he may have had these complex—often hard to follow—associa-
tionalist explanations in mind.
There is, I think, a better explanation for the removal or severe
shortening of these sections: Each contributes to the consequent
skepticism that emerges in part 4 of book 1. There we discover that
the capacity of the imagination to vivify ideas on the basis of its
associationalist principles is responsible for a wide range of false

beliefs shared almost universally by the vulgar. It is responsible for
the empty fictions of philosophers. It is responsible for internal
clashes within the understanding, Finally, when the true character
of its operations is revealed by the science of human nature, all con-
fidence in them disappears.
Through erasure, things become much sunnier in the Enquiry,
as, for example, in this famous celebratory passage:
Though the powers and forces, by which [the course of nature]
is governed, be wholly unknown to us; yet our thoughts and
conceptions have still, we find, gone on in the same train with
the other works of nature. Custom is that principle, by which
this correspondence has been effected; so necessary to the sub-
sistence of our species, and the regulation of our conduct, in
every circumstance and occurrence of human life. Had not the
presence of an object instantly excited the idea of those objects,
commonly conjoined with it, all our knowledge must have been
limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and senses. . . .
As this operation of the mind, by which we infer like effects
from like causes, and vice versa, is so essential to the subsis-
tence of all human creatures, it is not probable, that it could
be trusted to the fallacious deductions of our reason, which is
slow in its operations; appears not, in any degree, during the
first years of infancy; and at best is, in every age and period of
human life, extremely liable to error and mistake. It is more
conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so
necessary an act of the mind, by some instinct or mechanical
tendency. . . . (EHU 44–45/54–55)
I take this radical shift in the treatment of the imagination from the
Treatise to the Enquiry to be the most basic difference between them.
Z
The Role of Skeptical Arguments in the Enquiry
In the Enquiry Hume presents a series of skeptical arguments that

deal, in turn, with the senses, reason, and what he calls moral
reasoning.
Skepticism concerning the senses
Hume begins his skeptical arguments directed against the senses

by dismissing as “trite” some common reasons for impugning the
senses: perceptual variability, illusions (bent oars in water, double
images), and so on:
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. (EHU 113/151)
Hume actually underestimates the force of these supposedly trite argu-

ments. Their point is this: The appearance of things varies with settings
and circumstances, and we have no reasoned grounds for favoring any
one of these perspectives over any other.
Having brushed aside supposedly trite arguments, Hume
replaces them with one he considers both profound and unanswer-
able. Though perceptual variability of itself does not yield skepti-
cal consequences, its recognition does lead a thoughtful person to
adopt the way of ideas:
It seems . . . evident, that, when men follow this blind and

powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very
images, presented by the senses, to be the external objects,
and never entertain any suspicion, that the one are nothing
but representations of the other. . . .
But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon
destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that
nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or per-
ception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which
these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any
immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. The
table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther
from it: But the real table, which exists independent of us,
suffers no alteration: It was, therefore, nothing but its image,
which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dic-
tates of reason; and no man, who reflects, ever doubted, that
the existences, which we consider, when we say, this house
and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the mind, and
fleeting copies or representations of other existences, which
remain uniform and independent. (EHU 113–14/152)
This argument is no better than its counterpart found in the
Treatise, and, as before, I will not pause to rehearse the standard
criticism that has been brought against it.
Given his commitment to the way of ideas, it takes only a short
paragraph for Hume to dismiss this representationalist (or double-
existence) account of perception.
It is a question of fact, whether the perceptions of the senses
be produced by external objects, resembling them: How shall
this question be determined? By experience surely; as all other
questions of a like nature. But here experience is, and must be
entirely silent. The mind has never any thing present to it but
the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of
their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a con-
nexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning.
(EHU 115/153)
On the basis of this argument, Hume draws a conclusion as robust
as any found in the Treatise: “This is a topic, therefore, in which
the profounder and more philosophical sceptics will always tri-
umph, when they endeavour to introduce an universal doubt into
all subjects of human knowledge and enquiry” (EHU 115/153).
For good measure, Hume throws in an argument against the
modern notion of primary and secondary qualities along the lines
he employed in book 1, part 4, section 4 of the Treatise. I will not
repeat that argument here, but simply note the strong skeptical con-
clusion that he draws from it.
Bereave matter of all its intelligible qualities, both pri-
mary 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.
(EHU 116/155)
In a footnote, Hume explicitly attributes this argument to Berkeley.
Skepticism concerning reason
Hume presents a vigorous restatement of skepticism with regard to

the senses. The same cannot be said for his presentation of skepti-
cism with regard to reason. The argument in the Treatise is not
repeated. Perhaps Hume had second thoughts concerning it. He
may have found its results too much to contend with. In any case,
this argument that deeply troubled him in the Treatise is simply
gone. What we get instead is a curious discussion of the paradoxes
that seem to arise from the mathematical notion of infinite divisibil-
ity. In order to present a skeptical challenge to reason, Hume would
have to produce an argument of the following form:
Reason commits one to the doctrine of infinite divisibility.
The doctrine of infinite divisibility leads to absurdities and
contradictions.
Therefore, reason commits one to absurdities and contra-
dictions.
Hume accepts the second premise but in a footnote seems to reject
the first premise:
It seems to me not impossible to avoid these absurdities and
contradictions, if it be admitted, that there is no such thing as
abstract or general ideas, properly speaking. (118n./158n.)
Hume goes on to sketch a Berkeleyan critique of infinite divisibility.
But if Hume is right in saying that the doctrine of infinite divisibil-
ity is avoidable, then the first premise of the above argument is false
and no general skepticism with regard to reason is forthcoming.
Skepticism concerning moral reasoning
Hume turns next to moral reasoning, not in the sense of ethical reason-
ing, but rather nondemonstrative or probabilistic reasoning concerning
matters of fact.4 He tells us that the skeptical objections to reasoning
concerning matters of fact are either popular or philosophical. He dis-
misses the popular objections to moral reason in the same way that he
dismissed the popular skeptical arguments directed at the senses:
The popular objections are derived from the natural weakness of

human understanding; the contradictory opinions, which have
been entertained in different ages and nations; the variations of
our judgment in sickness and health, youth and old age, prosper-
ity and adversity; the perpetual contradiction of each particular
man’s opinions and sentiments; with many other topics of that
kind. It is needless to insist farther on this head. These objections
are but weak. For as, in common life, we reason every moment
concerning fact and existence, and cannot possibly subsist, with-
out continually employing this species of argument, any popular
objections, derived from thence, must be insufficient to destroy
that evidence. The great subverter of pyrrhonism or the exces-
sive principles of scepticism, is action, and employment, and the
occupations of common life. (EHU 118/158–59)
This is the first explicit reference to Pyrrhonism in the Enquiry and

is somewhat perplexing. Hume starts out by giving a list of what he
calls “popular” skeptical objections to reasoning concerning matters
of fact. He seems to identify Pyrrhonists as purveyors of such popu-
lar objections. He dismisses these objections as weak. Later, how-
ever, Hume insists on the strength of the Pyrrhonists’ arguments:
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. (EHU 121/162)
There is also the following remark, directed at Berkeley:

That all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in
reality, merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of
no answer and produce no conviction. (EHU 116n/155n)
These two passages indicate the senses in which, for Hume,

Pyrrhonian arguments can be successively strong and weak. Taken
theoretically, they are strong—indeed, unanswerably strong; taken
doxastically, that is, with respect to their power to produce and main-
tain suspension of belief, “their only effect is to cause . . . momentary
amazement and irresolution and confusion” (EHU 116n/155n).
Hume turns next to what he calls the philosophical arguments
concerning moral reasoning. Here in the concluding section of the
Enquiry, he offers a brief, elegant, and uncluttered summary of his
own skeptical argument concerning the operations of the under-
standing, presented earlier in section 4 of the Enquiry:
Here [the sceptic] seems to have ample matter of triumph; while

he justly insists, that all our evidence for any matter of fact,
which lies beyond the testimony of sense or memory, is derived
entirely from the relation of cause and effect; that we have no
other idea of this relation than that of two objects, which have
been frequently conjoined together; that we have no argument
to convince us, that objects, which have, in our experience,
been frequently conjoined, will likewise, in other instances, be
conjoined in the same manner. (EHU 118–19/159)
Having completed the skeptical argument, Hume then shifts to

a discussion of the weakness of human faculties:
Nothing leads us to this inference but custom or a certain
instinct of our nature; which is indeed difficult to resist, but
which, like other instincts, may be fallacious and deceitful.
While the sceptic insists upon these topics, he shows his force,
or rather, indeed, his own and our weakness; and seems, for
the time at least, to destroy all assurance and conviction.
(EHU 119/159)
The claim that the skeptical argument shows the weakness of our,
and not just the skeptic’s, mental faculties is reminiscent of claims
made in the Treatise. But there is a puzzle here. Hume’s reference
to the weakness of our faculties suggests that stronger mental facul-
ties might not face like difficulties. Hume’s skeptical argument is,
however, intended to establish that no reasoning can show “that
objects, which have, in our experience, been frequently conjoined,
will likewise, in other instances, be conjoined in the same manner.”
The weakness or strength of our faculties does not bear on this mat-
ter. Hume does not seem to be altogether clear about this.
To return to a point already made, there is a fundamental differ-
ence between the employment of skeptical arguments in the Treatise
and Enquiry. In the Treatise, having presented a skeptical argument,
Hume goes on to ask questions of the following kind: “How it hap-
pens, that even after all we retain a degree of belief, which is sufficient
for our purpose, either in philosophy or common life” (124/185). It is
the pursuit of such questions that leads Hume into a skeptical cri-
sis. In the Enquiry he largely avoids questions of this kind and thus
avoids the consequent skepticism that attempts to answer them can
generate.
Z
Pyrrhonism and Mitigated Skepticism
Rightly or wrongly—I think wrongly—Hume identifies Pyrrhonism

with an extreme form of doxastic skepticism, and on this basis pro-
duces a number of standard arguments against it:
For here is the chief and most confounding objection to exces-
sive scepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it;
while it remains in its full force and vigour. (EHU 119/159)
And this:
And though a pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into
a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound
reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to
flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in
every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers
of every other sect, or with those who never concerned them-
selves in any philosophical researches. (EHU 119/160)
This may be comforting, but it provides no answer to the ques-

tion Hume raised in the opening section of the Enquiry: Given the
multitude of dangers involved and the small rewards to be expected,
why pursue philosophical inquiry at all? How, that is, can philoso-
phy be pursued in a manner that minimizes its dangers and gives
at least some prospect of reasonable reward? Hume’s answer at the
close of book 1 of the Treatise is, as we have seen, that we keep
ourselves out of trouble by keeping our heads low and doing our
philosophizing within the boundaries of gentlemanly constraints.
In the Enquiry, Hume makes a more remarkable and systematically
more interesting suggestion: We should use Pyrrhonian doubt to
police our philosophical efforts. It is in this way that we arrive at
what Hume calls a mitigated skepticism.
The first form of mitigated skepticism generates modesty and
reserve. Hume associates it with the probabilism of ancient aca-
demic skepticism. His exact wording is important:
There is, indeed, a more mitigated skepticism, or academical
philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which
may, in part, be the result of this pyrrhonism, or excessive scep-
ticism, when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure,
corrected by common sense and reflection. (EHU 120/161)
Hume really has in mind mutual correction. Human beings, both

the learned and the vulgar, have a strong tendency to become dog-
matic in their beliefs. Pyrrhonism can serve as a check on this ten-
dency. Pyrrhonism, as Hume understands it, left to itself, destroys
all belief. Common sense and reflection, in their turn, can serve to
curb Pyrrhonism’s destructive tendencies. We thus reencounter one
of the central themes of the Treatise: A durable philosophical posi-
tion can emerge when competing forces are brought into balance.
In this case, the competition between Pyrrhonism on one side and
common sense and reflection on the other yields a durable and use-
ful state of mitigated skepticism with respect to the degree of our
assent.
The second form of mitigated skepticism concerns the scope of
our inquires:
Another species of mitigated scepticism, which may be

of advantage to mankind, and which may be the natural
result of the pyrrhonian doubts and scruples, is the limi-
tation of our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted
to the narrow capacity of human understanding. . . . A cor-
rect Judgment . . . 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 service-
able, 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.
Those who have a propensity to philosophy, will still continue
their researches; because they reflect, that, besides the imme-
diate pleasure, attending such an occupation, philosophical
decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life,

methodized and corrected. (EHU 120–21/162)
Hume’s declaration at the start of the Treatise that he would produce

a “compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost
entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any
security” (4/xv) is now a distant memory.
It is important to recognize that the mitigated skepticism of the
Enquiry is not the result of reasoning. Reason, left to itself, pro-
vides no response to Pyrrhonian arguments. Mitigated skepticism
results from the interaction of two forces: a departure from common
instinctive belief, counteracted by the persistence of common instinc-
tive belief. Taken this way, the emergence of mitigated skepticism
is like the emergence of other philosophical positions, for example,
the double-existence theory of perception involves an equilibrium
between competing forces. The double-existence theory, in its vari-
ous incarnations, has exhibited remarkable durability because, if
Hume is right, of the balancing of the persistent forces that gener-
ate it. Hume’s mitigated skepticism has a similar status. Whereas the
double-existence theory arises from an interplay between the way of
ideas and the vulgar view of perception, Hume’s mitigated skepti-
cism is the product of an interaction between Pyrrhonian doubt on
one side and the persistence of our common modes of believing on
the other. Viewed this way, the emergence of mitigated skepticism is
an explicable event in the natural history of philosophy.5
Z Notes
Chapter 1
1. I’m not thinking just of section 6 of part 4, “Of personal identity.”
The notion of identity also plays a central role in Hume’s discussion
of skepticism with regard to the senses and in his discussion of the
metaphysical notion of substance.
2. Hume is particularly proud of his treatment of probability in the Treatise.
He brags about it (in a feigned third person) in his anonymously pub-
lished Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature (408/646–47).
3. I first encountered a defense of Hume against Reid’s criticism along
these lines in a work published by the late-eighteenth-century/early-
nineteenth-century Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown:
That darkness and light mutually produce each other, they [i.e.,
common people] do not believe: and if they did believe it, their
belief, instead of confirming the truth of Mr. Hume’s theory,
would prove it to be false; since it would prove the relation of
Cause and Effect to be supposed where there is no customary
connection. How often, during a long and sleepless night, does
the sensation of darkness exist, without being followed by the
sensation of light? (Brown 1822, 170ff.).
Donald Davidson adopts a similar line in “Causal Relations”
(Davidson 1967).
159
160 Notes to Pages 33–42
Chapter 2
1. Notice that Hume does not seem to be talking about the degradation
of the content of the information transmitted, but rather its vivacity.
Chapter 3
1. It also corresponds to Hume’s treatment of miracles in section 10 of
the Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, where, in effect,
he uses causal principles to evaluate the trustworthiness of eyewitness
testimony. For more on this, see Fogelin (2003).
2. In an attempt to show that intuitive knowledge also degenerates into prob-
ability, Hume argues that some probability of error exists in the addition
of even very small numbers. Hume does not employ the reflexive move
central to this treatment of demonstrative reasoning, but instead engages
in two slippery-slope arguments I have labeled [1] and [2].
[1] For ’tis easily possible, by gradually diminishing the numbers,
to reduce the longest series of addition to the most simple ques-
tion, which can be form’d, to an addition of two single numbers;
and upon this supposition we shall find it impracticable to show
the precise limits of knowledge and of probability, or discover
that particular number, at which the one ends and the other
begins. But knowledge and probability are of such contrary
and disagreeing natures, that they cannot well run insensibly
into each other, and that because they will not divide, but must
be either entirely present, or entirely absent. [2] Besides, if any
single addition were certain, every one wou’d be so, and conse-
quently the whole or total sum; unless the whole can be different
from all its parts. I had almost said, that this was certain; but
I reflect, that it must reduce itself, as well as every other reasoning,
and from knowledge degenerate into probability. (121–22/181)
Neither of these arguments is persuasive. With respect to [1], we can
note that, even if it is “impracticable to shew the precise limits of
knowledge and of probability,” this does not show there is no precise
limit. More simply, even if there is no precise limit, that does not rule
Notes to Pages 46–62 161
out the possibility that some simple arithmetic sums fall paradigmati-
cally into the category of intuitive truths. 1 + 1 = 2 can be counted as
an intuitive truth even if we cannot specify the precise place where
one’s intuitive powers dim. Argument [2] is no better. We can make
errors in adding a long column of numbers without at some point
mistakenly believing that, say, 2 + 3 = 7. We know that 2 + 3 = 5
but, distracted, write down the wrong number, or read a number
incorrectly.
3. Here is a more exotic example. Suppose one of the subjects just hap-
pens to be omniscient, something, being omniscient, she, he, or it
would know. No diminution of assurance would take place in this
case. It is, however, not clear to me whether it makes sense to speak
of a being who (or that) just happens to be omniscient. Perhaps omni-
scient beings must be necessarily omniscient, but I don’t see why.
4. Previously I have argued that Hume’s skeptical argument fails because
he has not ruled out the possibility that the series of diminutions may
approximate a limit—perhaps a high limit (Fogelin 1985, note 4,
p. 174). That criticism, though fair enough, now strikes me as shallow
in conceding too much to Hume’s argument.
5. As already noted, Hume seems to exempt reports of subjective states
from his skepticism.
6. Hume used quite a different tactic in dealing with the threat of the
loss of all belief in the remote past through reiterative diminutions
in part 3, section 13. There he says that the imagination avoids this
result by forming “a confused and general notion of each link” that
disguises the multiplicity of transitions. In both cases, however,
the day is saved by what seems to be a defect in our intellectual
apparatus.
Chapter 4
1. There are objections aplenty that can be brought against it, but I will
not rehearse them here.
2. Incidentally, in the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley deals
with the phenomenon of outness—the fact that we seem to perceive
things at a distance from ourselves—much more simply by noting

that this phenomenon also occurs in dreams (part 1, section 42).
3. I will examine Hume’s treatment of primary and secondary properties
in Chapter 5.
4. Hume’s discussion of identity in some ways parallels his earlier discus-
sion of how beliefs concerning the remote past go through multiple
transitions without being destroyed by the influence of reiterative
diminution. There, as we saw, Hume invoked the notion of a “con-
fused and general notion of each link” as a way of explaining how
beliefs in the remote past are preserved. To work, it is essential that
this general notion be confused.
5. It is worth noting that this is the first occurrence in Hume’s writings
of the notion that the mind is “nothing but a heap, collection, [or,
later, a bundle] of perceptions.” In Fogelin (1985) I suggested that
this passage provides the key to understanding Hume’s reservations,
expressed in his appendix to the Treatise, concerning his treatment
of personal identity. I later thought better of this. Now I am again
inclined to think that there might be something to the idea. In any
case, I will postpone further discussion of Hume’s notion of sepa-
rating a particular perception from the bundle of perceptions until
I examine his discussion of personal identity.
Chapter 5
1. There does seem to be an element of historical displacement in this
passage. The topic of the section is ancient philosophy, but the views
of the “judicious philosophers” that Hume refers to are characteristic
of early-modern philosophy.
2. We find a number of similar direct appeals to intuition in Berkeley’s
writings:
Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that
a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this
important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and
furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose
Notes to Pages 91–145 163
the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without
a mind. (Principles, part 1, section 6)
3. “All our ideas, sensations, or the things which we perceive, by whatsoever
names they may be distinguished, are visibly inactive, there is nothing of
power or agency included in them” (Principles, part 1, section 25).
Chapter 7
1. See the discussion of this topic in Chapter 2.
2. In book 3, part 2, section 10 of the Treatise, Hume makes a parallel
claim concerning the dangers involved in inquiring “too curiously”
into the origins of governments.
No maxim is more conformable, both to prudence and mor-
als, than to submit quietly to the government, which we find
establish’d in the country where we happen to live, without
enquiring too curiously into its origin and first establishment. Few
governments will bear being examin’d so rigorously. (357/558)
3. I should confess to having some difficulty appreciating Hume’s appeal
to eighteenth-century English gentlemen, since my own understand-
ing of them largely comes from the plays of Sir John Vanbrugh and
the novels of Henry Fielding.
Chapter 8
1. In the Treatise Hume cited this as his sole reason for pursuing phi-
losophy (see 176/271).
2. For Hume, “Pyrrhonism” seems be no more than a code word for radi-
cal doxastic skepticism. In fact, Hume’s references to the Pyrrhonists
nowhere reveal an informed understanding of their position. This is sur-
prising for someone who was surely a reader of Bayle’s Dictionary. Among
other things he could have learned from Bayle is that the Pyrrhonists did
not call for the suspension of everyday, non-dogmatically held beliefs.
For more on the character of Pyrrhonism, see the first chapter of Fogelin
(1993).
3. So is the discussion of unphilosophical probability in part 3, where, as

we saw, the threat of radical skepticism makes its first appearance in
the Treatise.
4. The use of “moral” survives in the expression “moral certainty,” which
indicates a degree of probability so great as to admit of no reasonable
doubt.
5. Because it is one of the most famous passages in Hume’s writings, I
should say something about the closing paragraph of the Enquiry. In
effect, Hume invents the central argument of Language, Truth, and
Logic not quite 200 years before A. J. Ayer produced it. Though he does
not employ the exact terminology, Hume’s denunciation of divinity
and school metaphysics depends on the distinction between relations
of ideas and matters of fact introduced in section 4 of the Enquiry.
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. (EHU 123/165)
This is too heady and swift. The distinction between relations of ideas
and matters of fact as drawn in section 4 of the Enquiry is too under-
developed and too prone to objections to bear so heavy a burden. In
anticipating Ayer’s positivism, Hume also buys futures in many of its
problems. This is not the place to go into such matters in detail, but
it is worth inquiring into the status of Hume’s distinction itself. How
should we treat the following passage?
All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be
divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of
Fact. (EHU 24/25)
Should it be committed to the flames?
Z Works Cited or Mentioned
Baier, Annette. 1991. Progress of Sentiments. Cambridge: Harvard University

Press.
Berkeley, George. 1949. Principles of Human Knowledge. In The Works of
George Berkeley, Vol. II. Edited by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop. London:
Thomas Nelson & Sons.
Brown, Thomas. 1822. Cause and Effect. 3rd ed. Andover, MA: Mark
Newman.
Davidson, Donald. 1967. Causal Relations. Journal of Philosophy lxiv:
691–703.
Fogelin, Robert J. 1985. Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
———. 1993. Hume’s Skepticism. In The Cambridge Companion to
Hume. Edited by D. F. Norton. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press.
———. 2003. A Defense of Hume on Miracles. Princeton, NJ and Oxford:
Princeton University Press.
Garrett, Don. 1997. Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy.
New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hume, David. 1932. The Letters of David Hume, Vol. 1. Edited by J. Y. T. Greig.
2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1975. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning
the Principles of Morals. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch,
3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 1978. A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd ed. Edited by L. A. Selby-
Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
165
166 Works Cited or Mentioned
———. 2000. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

A Critical Edition. Edited by T. L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
———. 2007. A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition, Vol. 1.
Edited by D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Owen, David. Unpublished. “Scepticism with Regard to Reason.”
Available from the departmental Web site (philosophy.arizona.edu) at
the University of Arizona.
Passmore, John Arthur. 1952. Hume’s Intentions. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Penelhum, Terence. 1975. Hume. New York: St. Martin’s.
Reid, Thomas. 1969. Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Z Index
abstruse philosophy, reasons for and as products of causal inferences, 18–19

against engaging in, 141–144 threat of the loss of all, 161 n.6
academical philosophy, 156–157 vulgar, 63–64, 65, 76–77, 92
ancient philosophy, 85–87, 94–95, See also continued and distinct
95–96, 99–100 existence: belief in
antecedent skepticism, 145 Berkeley, George, 62, 97–99, 123,
a priori probabilities, dispersed vivacity 153–154, 162–163 n.2
and, 21 body, existence of, as a given, 55
association, principles of, in Brown, Thomas, 159 n.3
transferring belief, 20
association of dispositions, and Cartesian doubt, 145
assimilation, 74–75 causal inferences
association of dispositions, and idea of associative operations of the
continued existence, 75–77 imagination as source of, 3
associationalist principles, capacity of feeling of necessary connection as
the imagination to vivify ideas product of, 120–121
based on, 147–148 grounding of, and notion
Ayer, A. J., 164 n.5 of custom, 20
ideas and beliefs as products of, 18–19
beliefs as not the product of rational
ability to sustain, 50 faculties, 17–18
causes of, 19–20 reason rejected as source of, 3
in external existence, causes of, 59–65 relationship between necessary
imagination and formation of, connections and, 17
concerning external objects, 57 causal laws, beliefs and, 19
in object simplicity, 86, 90–93 causal reasoning, origins of, 15
167
168 Index
causal relations belief in, 65–78: gap filling, 73–75;

and idea of necessary imagination as source of, 65–66;
connection, 120–121 informal statement of Hume’s
necessary connection as attendant position, 66–69; reason as
product of, 13–14 not the source of, 63–64; senses
necessary connection as essential as not the source of, 61–62;
component of, 22–23 systematic statement of Hume’s
necessary connection as not an position, 69–70
essential element of, 25–26 idea of, 75–77
causation custom, notion of, 20, 51
as natural relation, 26
as philosophical relation, 12, 26 Davidson, Donald, 159 n.3
and philosophical relations of demonstrative knowledge, 12
contiguity and priority, 13–14 demonstrative reasoning, 41, 42–43
vulgar perspective on, 115–116 Descartes, 145
cause, definition of, 16–17, 25–27 dispositions, association of, 74–77
cause, necessity of, 14–15 dogmatism, 136
circularity argument, 18 double-existence theory of perception,
Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s 78–82, 147, 150–151, 158
Philosophy (Garrett), 9 double perspective, in
coherence, as basis of belief in external Hume’s examination of
existence, 66–68 simplicity, 90–91
common sense and reflection, as doxastic skepticism, 49, 144–145
curb to Pyrrhonism’s destructive
tendencies, 157 earthy opinions of honest gentlemen,
conceivability argument, 17–18 133–134, 136–137
conjunction, constant, in definition of empirical inquiry, rules for, 28
cause, 16–17 Enquiry Concerning Human
conjunction, local, and immateriality of Understanding (Hume)
the soul, 104–107 associative operations of the
consequent skepticism, 145–146 imagination as source of causal
constancy, as basis of belief in external inferences, 3
existence, 66, 68 concluding section of, 144–146,
constant conjunction, in definition of 164 n.5
cause, 16–17 imagination in, compared to
contiguity, and transfer of beliefs, 20 Treatise, 148–149
continued and distinct existence science of human nature in, 146–148
Index 169
shift in emphasis from the Treatise, 147 exit from his dismal situation,
skeptical arguments: concerning 130–132
moral reasoning, 152–155; expressions of despair, 5–6
concerning reason, 151–152; expressions of melancholy, 125–126
concerning the senses, 149–151; as mitigated doxastic skeptic, 49
in Treatise compared to, 154 self-referential crisis of, 83
on skepticism, 139–140 skeptical crisis, source of, 56–57
Euthyphro choice, 23 skeptical doubts as source of deep
existence. See continued and distinct disquietudes, 3
existence; double-existence standpoints of, regarding radical
theory of perception; skepticism, 6–7
external existence turn to skepticism by, 39–40
experience, initial, in origins of causal voices of, contrasting, 6–7
reasoning, 15 Hume’s Law, 12
external existence, 59–65, 66–68 Hume (Stroud), 8
See also continued and distinct
existence ideas
external objects, 57, 60 capacity of the imagination to vivify,
147–148
faculties and definition of substance,
human, weakness of, 154–155 102–103
free-thinkers. See materialists inferences from impressions and,
16–18
gap filling, in operations of the as products of causal inferences, 18–19
imagination, 73–75 See also way of ideas, the
Garrett, Don, 9 identity
governments, examination of origins attribution of, and idea of continued
of, 163 n.2 (chap. 7) existence, 75–77
disputes about, as merely verbal,
horizontal method, in evaluating 116–117
soundness of proof, 43, 47 false belief in continued, of changing
human mind. See mind, the objects, 87–89
human nature, approaches to fiction of, over time, 73, 86,
study of, 140–141 112–113
Hume Hume’s denial of, 118–121
defense of, against Reid’s as it concerns non-human
criticism, 159 n.3 entities, 113–114
170 Index
ideas (continued) Kant, Immanuel, 39

and perceptions of constancy, knowledge
73–74 degeneration of, into probability, 41–42
principle of, in operations of the domain of, 11–12
imagination, 69, 70–73 intuitive, 160–161 n.2
self-identity compared to, 70 reason, and annihilation of, 48
See also personal identity
imagination local conjunction, and immateriality
associative operations of, as source of the soul, 104–107
of causal inferences, 3
capacity of, to vivify ideas based materialists, and argument against
on associationalist principles, immaterialist, 105
147–148 material substance, modern
difficulties in implicit reliance on, notion of, 97–98
126–129 memory, and belief in personal
and the fiction of personal identity, identity, 115
112–113 memory, impressions of, 15–16
mechanisms of, as source of Hume’s mind, the
skeptical crisis, 56–57 as bundle of minds, 121
as source of belief in continued as bundle of perceptions, 121
and distinct existence, 65–66 Hume’s picture of, 118–121
treatment of, in the Enquiry compared as mental substance, 119
to in the Treatise, 148–149 perceptions, exclusive presence in, 60
undiscriminating operations reflex acts of, 41, 44, 46, 47–48
of the associative principles theater metaphor and, 111–112
of, 38 See also imagination
immateriality of the soul, 101–102, miracles, Hume’s treatment of, 160 n.1
104–107 mitigated skepticism, 6, 155–158
immortality, proofs of, 108–109 moderate skepticism, 95
impressions, 15–16, 16–18 modern philosophy, 85, 96–97, 97–99,
incomprehensibility, broad and narrow 99–100
meanings of, 94 moral certainty, 164 n.4
inductive skepticism, 3 moral reasoning, 152–155
infinite divisibility, paradoxes arising
from notion of, 152 naturalism, tension between skepticism
infinite regress, 44–45, 48 and, 4
intuitive knowledge, 12, 160–161 n.2 natural relation, and definition of cause, 25
Index 171
necessary connection outness, the phenomenon of, 62,

as attendant product of causal 161–162 n.2
relation, 13–14 Owen, David, 8–9
as essential component of causal
relation, 22–23 Passmore, John, 125–126
feeling of, as product of causal perception
inference, 120–121 double-existence theory of, 78–82,
as not an essential element of causal 147, 150–151, 158
relation, 25–26 individual, as individual
as product of inference from cause substance, 119
to effect, 23 representationalist account of, 78–82,
New Theory of Vision (Berkeley), 62 147, 150–151, 158
perceptions
objects the mind as bundle of, 121
changing, false belief in continued reappearance of, 68–69
identity of, 87–89 visibly inactive, 91–92
external, 60 perceptual variability, recognition of,
false belief in simplicity of, 86, and adoption of the way of ideas,
90–93 149–150
imagination, role in formation of peripatetic system, incomprehensibility
beliefs concerning, 57 of, 93–94
solidity as primary feature of, 98 peritrope, defined, 52
occult qualities, 94, 95 personal identity
operations of the imagination basic criticisms, 110–112
gap filling, 73–77 disputes about, as merely
grounding of beliefs in, verbal, 116–117
as source of Hume’s fiction of, 112–116
difficulties, 126–127 Hume’s declaration of failure
and identity, principle of, 70–73 regarding his account of, 121–124
philosophical and unphilosophical Hume’s examination of, 109–112
probability and, 29 Hume’s reservations on, 117–118
skeptical consequences that emerge memory, and belief in, 115
from, 127–128 See also identity
as source of causal inferences, 3 phenomenalist stance, 91–92
See also continued and distinct philosophical and unphilosophical
existence: belief in probability, 29, 37–38
original first matter, 89–90 See also unphilosophical probability
172 Index
philosophical arguments concerning Pyrrhonian moments, 82–83, 99–100

moral reasoning, 154 Pyrrhonism, 6, 153, 154–155, 155–158,
philosophical fiction, 92 163 n.2 (chap. 8)
philosophical inquiry, approaches to See also radical skepticism
pursuit of, 132–137, 156
philosophical opinion, common radical doxastic skepticism, 163 n.2
opinion compared to, 86–87 (chap. 8)
philosophical positions, durable, 157 radical skepticism, 6–7, 59, 137
philosophical relations, 11–12, See also Pyrrhonism
13–14, 25 rational arguments, used to undercut
philosophy rationality, 52–53
abstruse, 141–144 reason
academical, 156–157 regression argument with
ancient, 85–87, 94–95, 95–96, regard to, 43–44
99–100 rejection of, as basis of vulgar
modern, 85, 96–97, 97–99, 99–100 belief, 65
prejudice based on general rules, rejection of, as source of causal
as source of unphilosophical inferences, 3
probabilties, 35–37 skeptical arguments in Enquiry
primary and secondary qualities, concerning, 151–152
distinction between, 97–99, 128, 151 See also skeptical arguments with
privileged perspective, phenomenalist regard to reason
stance as, 91–92 reasoning
probabilistic reasoning, 152 capacity for, in humans
probability and animals, 28
of causes, 21–22 long chains of, and diminution of
of chances, 21 vivacity, 32–33
degeneration of knowledge long chains of, and nondiminution
into, 41–42 of vivacity, 34–35
and the idea of cause and effect, moral, skeptical arguments
13–14, 57–59, 71 concerning, 152–155
knowledge and, 11 and transformation of inferences into
and operations of the general rule, 36–37
imagination, 29 in unreasonable ways, 35–36
reason, and annihilation of, 48 reflex acts of the mind, 41, 44, 46, 47–48
and vivacity, distribution of, 21–22 reflexive principle, as demand of
See also unphilosophical probability rationality, 48
Index 173
regression argument, and skepticism See also skeptical arguments with

with regard to reason, 43–44 regard to the senses
Reid, Thomas, 26–27, 159 n.3 sensory impressions, 15–16
reiterative diminution, principle sequence of perceptions, the mind’s
of, 31–35, 44–48 treatment of, 87–89
relations simplicity of objects, false belief
causal, 13–14, 22–23, 25–26, 108, in, 90–93
120–121 skeptical arguments
natural, 25 and ability to sustain beliefs, 50
philosophical, 11–12, 13–14, 25 central components of, 48
remoteness of the event, effect dialectical instability of, 53–54
of, 30–31 purpose of presentation, 51
remoteness of the observation, skeptical arguments in the Enquiry
effect of, 31 concerning moral reasoning, 152–155
representational realism, staying concerning reason, 151–152
power of, 81 concerning the senses, 149–151
representationalist account of perception, differences between Treatise
78–82, 147, 150–151, 158 and, 154
resemblance, 12, 20, 27 skeptical arguments with regard to
reason, 39–54
“Scepticism with Regard to Reason” Hume’s response to his own, 48–52
(Owen), 8–9 peritrope, 52–54
science of human nature regression argument, 43–44
in the Enquiry, 146–148 reiterative diminution, principle
transformation of, into modest of, 44–48
activity, 134–135 skeptical arguments with regard to the
senses, the senses, 55–84
faith in, 55–57 belief in continued existence, 77–78
Hume’s turnabout with regard a concluding note, 83–84
to, 55–57 introduction, 59–60
implicit faith in, 82 primary task of, 146–147
implicit faith shaken, 83–84 reason not the source of belief in the
as not the source of belief in existence of bodies, 63–65
continued and distinct the senses not the source of belief in
existence, 61–62 the existence of bodies, 60–63
skeptical doubts about, 82–83 skeptical principles for philosophizing,
of skepticism, distinctions between, 144 132–137
174 Index
skepticism time, and the problem of

antecedent, 145 identity, 71
consequent, 145–146 Treatise of Human Nature (Hume)
distinctions between senses of, 144 naturalistic reading of, 27, 51–52
doxastic, 49, 144–145 opening of, 140
in the Enquiry, 139–140, 144–146 underlying substance, the fiction
first reference to, in the Treatise, 38 of, 89–90
Hume’s turn to, 39–40 unifying substance, the fiction of, 93
inductive, 3 unphilosophical probability
mitigated, 6, 155–158 general rules derived from, 37–38
moderate, 95 philosophical probability as
radical, 6–7, 59, 137 (see also opposed to, 29
Pyrrhonism) sources of: prejudice based on
results of, a gloomy summation, 125–130 general rules, 35–37; remoteness
tension between naturalism and, 4 of the event, effect of, 30–31;
theoretical, 49, 145 remoteness of the observation,
and universal doubt, 151 effect of, 31
solidity, as primary feature of material
objects, 98 vertical method in evaluating soundness
soul, the of proof, 43–44, 47
immateriality of, 101–102, 104–107 visibly inactive perceptions, 91–92
spiritual substance of, as basis for vivacity
immortality of the soul, 108–109 distribution of, and probability, 21–22
as substance, 102–104 inability of imagination to preserve, 56
soul-body interaction, 107–108 long chains of reasoning: and
standpoints of Hume regarding radical diminution of, 32–33; and
skepticism, 6–7 nondiminution of, 34–35
Stroud, Barry, 8 voices of Hume, contrasting, 6–7
substance, notion of, 85–86, 89–90, vulgar system, 58, 76–77,
102–103, 103–104 78, 79–81
testimony, metaphor of, 42 way of ideas, the, 58, 64, 79, 81, 91–92,
theoretical skepticism, 49, 145 149–150

Robert J. Fogelin - Hume's Skeptical Crisis - A Textual Study-Oxford University Press, USA (2009)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Robert J. Fogelin - Hume's Skeptical Crisis - A Textual Study-Oxford University Press, USA (2009)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Hume’s Skeptical Crisis Z

This page intentionally left blank

Oxford New York

Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

NEH notes, reread Hume, and produced an extensive revision of

I owe a special debt to the two scholars who served as readers of

Texts and Citations xvii

Introduction: The Interpretive Problem 3

Section 14. Of the idea of necessary connexion 22

Hume’s informal statement of his position 66

6 The Soul and the Self 101

Basic criticisms 110

For the reader’s convenience, all citations to A Treatise of Human

How does Hume’s naturalism—his attempt “to introduce the exper-

A dramatic way of presenting the tension between Hume’s natu-

’Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or

In sharp contrast to this brave beginning, in the closing section

This study is an attempt to answer two questions: First, how did

is going to ﬁnd a way out of his intellectual impasse, it will have to

with Pyrrhonian doubts he seems incapable of shaking. Third, we

Local interpretation involves a close reading of texts in an effort

is in some ways similar to mine and in some ways different. Finally,

The central claim I will attempt to establish in this work is that

resemblance, identity, relations of time and place, proportion

Section 2. Of probability; and of the idea

Hume’s treatment of knowledge is almost peremptory; his treat-

4. At this stage of his investigations, Hume seems explicitly

First, for what reason we pronounce it necessary, that every thing

Section 3. Why a cause is always necessary

moment, and existent the next, without conjoining to it the

Section 4. Of the component parts of our reasonings

Section 5. Of the impressions of the senses

Hume lays out the component parts of his program:

The remainder of the section discusses the difference between

Section 6. Of the inference from the impression

This section demands special attention because it contains, in a

of which we have had experience. We can at least conceive a

Section 7. Of the nature of the idea, or belief

In section 5, Hume lays out a three-part program. The third compo-

distinction between merely entertaining an idea and having a belief.

Section 8. Of the causes of belief

This section presents what we might call Hume’s theory of vivacity

In a causal inference there is a twofold movement: When an event is

Section 9. Of the effects of other relations,

Section 10. Of the inﬂuence of belief

This complex and interesting section contains a series of reﬂections

Pain and pleasure have two ways of making their appearance

Section 11. Of the probability of chances

In this section Hume uses the notion of dispersed vivacity to explain

Section 12. Of the probability of causes

An application of the notion of dispersed vivacity is used to explain

of an event in a given setting. The more often A is followed by B,

Section 13. Of unphilosophical probability

Having completed his discussion of the probability of chances and

Section 14. Of the idea of necessary connexion

After an eleven-section excursion through neighboring ﬁelds,

way underwrites an inference from one to the other. Having shown

forgot; for which reason I think it proper to give warning,

oblig’d to advance in this seemingly preposterous manner,

plac’d in a like relation of priority and contiguity to those objects,

In fact, Hume’s ﬁrst deﬁnition is not correctly represented by the