Hume's True Scepticism

Hume's True Scepticism
Author: Donald C. Ainslie
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015-09-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019106419X

Download Hume's True Scepticism Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

David Hume is famous as a sceptical philosopher but the nature of his scepticism is difficult to pin down. Hume's True Scepticism provides the first sustained interpretation of Part 4 of Book 1 of Hume's Treatise, his deepest engagement with sceptical arguments. Hume notes there that, while reason shows that we ought not to believe the verdicts of reason or the senses, we do so nonetheless. Donald C. Ainslie argues that Hume uses our reactions to the sceptical arguments as evidence in favour of his model of the mind. If we were self-conscious subjects, superintending our rational and sensory beliefs, nothing should stop us from embracing the sceptical conclusions. But instead our minds are bundles of perceptions with our beliefs being generated, not by reflective assent, but by the imagination's association of ideas. We are not forced into the sceptical quagmire. Nonetheless, we can reflect and philosophy uses this capacity to question whether we should believe our instinctive rational and sensory verdicts. It turns out that we cannot answer this question because the reflective investigation of the mind interferes with the associative processes involved in reason and sensation. We thus must accept our rational and sensory capacities without being able to vindicate or undermine them philosophically. Hume's True Scepticism addresses Hume's theory of representation; his criticisms of Locke, Descartes, and other predecessors; his account of the imagination; his understanding of perceptions and sensory belief; and his bundle theory of the mind and his later rejection of it.

Hume's Scepticism and the Science of Human Nature

Hume's Scepticism and the Science of Human Nature
Author: Paul Stanistreet
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351929399

Download Hume's Scepticism and the Science of Human Nature Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book explores the relationship between Hume's sceptical philosophy and his Newtonian ambition of founding a science of human nature. Assessing both received and 'new' readings of Hume's philosophy, Stanistreet offers a line of interpretation which, he argues, makes sense of many of the apparent conflicts and paradoxes in Hume's work and describes how well-known controversies concerning Hume's thinking about causation, induction and the external world can be resolved. Offering important new contributions to Hume scholarship, this book also surveys and assesses the new research responsible for the recent sea-change in thinking about Hume. It offers an accessible overview of these developments while suggesting significant revisions to current readings of Hume's philosophy.

Hume's Scepticism

Hume's Scepticism
Author: Fosl Peter S. Fosl
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2019-08-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1474451152

Download Hume's Scepticism Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Making a sharp break with dominant contemporary readings of David Hume's scepticism Peter S. Fosl offers an original and radical interpretation of Hume as a thoroughgoing sceptic on epistemological, metaphysical and doxastic grounds. He does this by first situating Hume's thought historically in the sceptical tradition and goes on to interpret the conceptual apparatus of his work - including the Treatise, Enquiries, Essays, History, Dialogues and letters.

Hume's Skeptical Crisis

Hume's Skeptical Crisis
Author: Robert J. Fogelin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2009-09-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0195387392

Download Hume's Skeptical Crisis Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In this book, the author provides a textual study of the changes in perspective that emerged as Hume pursued his attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects.

David Hume, Sceptic

David Hume, Sceptic
Author: Zuzana Parusniková
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2016-09-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319437941

Download David Hume, Sceptic Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book studies Hume’s scepticism and its roots, context, and role in the philosopher’s life. It relates how Hume wrote his philosophy in a time of tumult, as the millennia-old metaphysical tradition that placed humans and their cognitive abilities in an ontological framework collapsed and gave way to one that placed the autonomy of the individual in its center. It then discusses the birth of modernity that Descartes inaugurated and Kant completed with his Copernican revolution that moved philosophy from Being to the Self. It shows how modernity gave rise to a new kind of scepticism, involving doubt not just about the adequacy of our knowledge but about the very existence of a world independent of the self. The book then examines how Hume faced the sceptical implications and how his empiricism added yet another sceptical theme with the main question being how argument can legitimize key concepts of human understanding instinctively used in making sense of our perceptions. Placing it firmly in a historical context, the book shows how Hume was influenced by Pyrrhonian scepticism and how this becomes clear in Hume’s acceptance of the weakness of reason and in his emphasis on the practical role of philosophy. As the book argues, rather than serving as the foundation of science, in Hume’s hand, philosophy became a guide to a joyful, happy life, to a documentary of common life and to moderately educated, entertaining conversation. This way Hume stands in strong opposition to the (early) modern mainstream.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Author: David Hume
Publisher: e-artnow
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 8027303893

Download An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" is a book by David Hume created as a revision of an earlier work, Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature". The argument of the Enquiry proceeds by a series of incremental steps, separated into chapters which logically succeed one another. After expounding his epistemology, Hume explains how to apply his principles to specific topics. This book has proven highly influential, both in the years that would immediately follow and today. Immanuel Kant points to it as the book which woke him from his self-described "dogmatic slumber."

The External World and Our Knowledge of it

The External World and Our Knowledge of it
Author: Fred Wilson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 825
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0802097642

Download The External World and Our Knowledge of it Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

David Hume is often considered to have been a sceptic, particularly in his conception of the individual's knowledge of the external world. However, a closer examination of his works gives a much different impression of this aspect of Hume's philosophy, one that is due for a thorough scholarly analysis. This study argues that Hume was, in fact, a critical realist in the early twentieth-century sense, a period in which the term was used to describe the epistemological and ontological theories of such philosophers as Roy Wood Sellars and Bertrand Russell. Carefully situating Hume in his historical context, that is, relative to Aristotelian and rationalist traditions, Fred Wilson makes important and unique insights into Humean philosophy. Analyzing key sections of the Treatise, the Enquiry, and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Wilson offers a deeper understanding of Hume by taking into account the philosopher's theories of the external world. Such a reading, the author explains, is not only more faithful to the texts, but also reinforces the view of Hume as a critical realist in light of twentieth-century discussions between externalism and internalism, and between coherentists and foundationalists. Complete with original observations and ideas, this study is sure to generate debates about Humean philosophy, critical realism, and the limits of perceptual knowledge.

Hume's True Scepticism

Hume's True Scepticism
Author: Donald C. Ainslie
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015-09-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191064203

Download Hume's True Scepticism Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

David Hume is famous as a sceptical philosopher but the nature of his scepticism is difficult to pin down. Hume's True Scepticism provides the first sustained interpretation of Part 4 of Book 1 of Hume's Treatise, his deepest engagement with sceptical arguments. Hume notes there that, while reason shows that we ought not to believe the verdicts of reason or the senses, we do so nonetheless. Donald C. Ainslie argues that Hume uses our reactions to the sceptical arguments as evidence in favour of his model of the mind. If we were self-conscious subjects, superintending our rational and sensory beliefs, nothing should stop us from embracing the sceptical conclusions. But instead our minds are bundles of perceptions with our beliefs being generated, not by reflective assent, but by the imagination's association of ideas. We are not forced into the sceptical quagmire. Nonetheless, we can reflect and philosophy uses this capacity to question whether we should believe our instinctive rational and sensory verdicts. It turns out that we cannot answer this question because the reflective investigation of the mind interferes with the associative processes involved in reason and sensation. We thus must accept our rational and sensory capacities without being able to vindicate or undermine them philosophically. Hume's True Scepticism addresses Hume's theory of representation; his criticisms of Locke, Descartes, and other predecessors; his account of the imagination; his understanding of perceptions and sensory belief; and his bundle theory of the mind and his later rejection of it.

Knowledge, Reason, and Taste

Knowledge, Reason, and Taste
Author: Paul Guyer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2013-12-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691151172

Download Knowledge, Reason, and Taste Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Immanuel Kant famously said that he was awoken from his "dogmatic slumbers," and led to question the possibility of metaphysics, by David Hume's doubts about causation. Because of this, many philosophers have viewed Hume's influence on Kant as limited to metaphysics. More recently, some philosophers have questioned whether even Kant's metaphysics was really motivated by Hume. In Knowledge, Reason, and Taste, renowned Kant scholar Paul Guyer challenges both of these views. He argues that Kant's entire philosophy--including his moral philosophy, aesthetics, and teleology, as well as his metaphysics--can fruitfully be read as an engagement with Hume. In this book, the first to describe and assess Hume's influence throughout Kant's philosophy, Guyer shows where Kant agrees or disagrees with Hume, and where Kant does or doesn't appear to resolve Hume's doubts. In doing so, Guyer examines the progress both Kant and Hume made on enduring questions about causes, objects, selves, taste, moral principles and motivations, and purpose and design in nature. Finally, Guyer looks at questions Kant and Hume left open to their successors.