Abstract
A comparison of Hume’s argument concerning reasoning generally (which I dealt with in the immediately preceding chapter) with his argument concerning the evidence of external sense reveals a rather striking parallel, which many Humain commentators seem to have failed to observe. For just as Hume thinks that it is a singular and seemingly trivial property of the imagination which prevents us from becoming Pyrrhonian sceptics with regard to reason, so he thinks that it is yet another trivial property (or natural propensity) of that faculty which prevents us from becoming Pyrrhonian sceptics with regard to our external sense.1 Let us see how Hume comes to draw this parallel conclusion and in particular what he takes the nature of this further trivial property to be. I shall begin by exhibiting the brief but clear argument which we find in Section XII of Enquiry I, and then show how this argument stands related to the lengthier and also considerably more complex and more obscure argument on the same subject in Part IV of Treatise I. My objective in doing this will be to show that apart from certain differences in detail and even in the over-all structure and order of the argument in the two cases, the central aim of both accounts is the same, viz., to establish the position of mitigated scepticism with regard to the evidence of external sense.
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References
Cf. Treatise I, pp. 210, 214, 217.
See ibid., p. 218.
See ibid., p. 189. The notion of continued existence seems to be self-explanatory. As far as the notion of distinct existence is concerned, Hume says that “under this... head I comprehend their situation as well as relations, their external position as well as the independence of their existence and operation” (ibid., p. 188).
I say “ordinarily” because, in Hume’s view, “the opinion of a continu’d and of a distinct existence never arises from the senses” (ibid., p. 192), but rather is “entirely owing to the imagination” (ibid., p. 193). Though these are Hume’s words, his actual position is not that our sense-experience plays no role whatsoever in the origin of our belief in the existence of an external world; rather, it is that our sense-experience (or certain features of it) and our imagination concur in the generation of this belief (see ibid., p. 194). Nonetheless, my comment about “ordinarily” still holds, for it is surely not ordinarily supposed that something more than our senses are involved.
Enquiry I, p. 151.
I have remained quite close to Hume’s own language in Enquiry I. My additions to his own explicit assertions are primarily expressions of what I take to be the unexpressed premises of his argument.
In Treatise I this is referred to as the vulgar view or system (see, e.g., Treatise I, p. 213).
In Treatise I this is referred to as the philosophical view or system (see, e.g., Treatise I, p. 213).
This is of course the crucial Pyrrhonistic premise and Hume offers several distinct arguments in support of the first of its two claims. The second claim rests on the premise that the principle that all sensible qualities are in the mind and not in the object itself is true and is a principle of reason (See Enquiry I, pp. 152–55). Practically all of these arguments and claims had been given or made in Treatise I.
See Smith, op. cit., p. 535, where it is asserted that in Enquiry I Hume is “no longer attempting to account by an associative mechanism for belief in an independently existing world. That belief he now treats as being, like the moral sentiments, in itself an ultimate — a natural belief which as little allows of being evaded in thought as in action.” This is obviously connected with Smith’s view about a material change in Hume’s theory of belief from Treatise I to Enquiry I. I have already given my grounds for rejecting this view (see my Chapter I, pp. 29–30).
Cf. Treatise I, pp. 206, 214, 216.
See ibid., p. 211.
Ibid., p. 232.
Ibid., p. 187.
I am referring to his discussion in Section ii.
Ibid., p. 217. I think that this passage gives as good a description as there is in Hume of what he means by the mental state resulting from a confrontation with Pyrrhonistic argumentation. Is not this what Hume has in mind when he speaks, in Enquiry I, of “that momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion, which is the result of scepticism” (Enquiry I, p. 155 [note])?
Treatise I, p. 218.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 187.
Ibid., pp. 214–15.
See ibid., p. 194. Hume thinks that this belief is demonstrably false because it involves the false assumption that our impressions themselves (or certain of them) have a continued and distinct existence. He thinks that “when we compare experiments, and reason a little upon them, we quickly perceive, that the doctrine of the independent existence of our sensible perceptions is contrary to the plainest experience” (ibid., p. 210). And given his definition of continued and distinct existence, it follows from this that our sensible perceptions (i.e., our impressions of sensation) do not have such an existence. This is the basis of Hume’s claim that “the vulgar confound perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct continu’d existence to the very things they feel or see” (ibid. p. 193). (Presumably, it is part of the very definition of an “object” that it has continued and distinct existence.) It is likewise the basis of his claim that the so-called philosophical system — a system which distinguishes between perceptions and objects, and attributes an internal, interrupted, perishing, existence to the former and a continued and distinct existence to the latter — is based on reason.
Ibid., pp. 194–95.
Ibid., p. 195.
Ibid., p. 211.
Hume thinks that the quality of coherence is of itself incapable of generating belief in the continued and distinct existence of all those impressions to which we ascribe it (see ibid., pp. 198–99). Apparently he feels the same way about the quality of constancy.
Treaties I, p. 197.
Ibid., p. 198.
Ibid., p. 197. s Ibid.
Ibid.; italics mine.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 196. This appeal to memory does not entail a role for this faculty in the actual supposition (of continued existence) itself, even though without the operation of this faculty we should surely never entertain the latter. As Hume says, “my memory, indeed, informs me of the existence of many objects; but then this information extends not beyond their past existence, nor do either my senses or memory give any testimony to the continuance of their being” (ibid., p. 196). I think that it is safe to say that, in Hume’s view, even the imagination, which alone is responsible for this supposition (i.e., for its being — though not its coming into being), does not give any testimony (in the sense of “evidence”) for its truth.
See Treatise I, p. 197.
Ibid., p. 199.
According to Hume, perfect (or numerical) identity “is nothing but the invariableness and uninterruptedness of any object, thro* a suppos’d variation of time, by which the mind can trace it in the different periods of its existence, without any break of the view, and without being oblig’d to form the idea of multiplicity or number” (ibid., p. 201). The occurrence of the word “supposed” in this definition is significant, inasmuch as Hume (in conformity with his view of time in Part II of Treatise I) maintains that “time, in a strict sense, implies succession, and… when we apply its idea to any unchangeable 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” (ibid,, pp. 200–01). Clearly, it follows from this that, strictly speaking, perfect (or numerical) identity is or involves a fiction of the imagination.
See Treatise I, p. 257.
Ibid., p. 205 (note).
Ibid., p. 204.
If it is not apparent, then see ibid., p. 203.
Treatise I, p. 209.
Ibid., p. 208.
Ibid., p. 209.
Ibid., p. 208.
Ibid., pp. 209–10.
Hume actually says, near the end of this Section, that he has “given an account of all the systems both popular and philosophical, with regard to external existences” (ibid., p. 217; italics mine). I infer from this that he thinks that the philosophical systems which are presented and criticized in Sections iii and iv are versions of, or in some sense presuppose, the philosophical system presented in Section ii.
Treatise I, p. 218. I should like to make three comments on this passage. (1) It should be observed that Hume does not specify what form the supposition regarding the external world is to take, even though earlier in his discussion (i.e., in Section ii) he announced — after having presented the evidence against the vulgar identification of perceptions and objects -that in the future he was going to distinguish between perceptions and objects (see ibid., p. 211). (2) In his reference to the general systems, both with regard to the external and internal worlds, Hume may well be suggesting that his discussion of the latter is also essentially supplementary in nature. (3) It should be observed that Hume is here clearly announcing that, in his ensuing discussions of these general systems, he is going to suppose or assume (albeit entirely without rational warrant) that there is both an external and an internal world.
Ibid., p. 225.
Ibid,, p. 221.
Hume also discusses the origins of the notions of substantial form, accident, and occult quality in the vocabulary of the ancient philosophers. His treatment is roughly analogous to his treatment of the notion of substance.
Treatise I, p. 231.
Hume seems to believe that the kind of dependence he establishes here is of a causal sort — a highly debatable point, I think.
See Treatise J, pp. 265–66.
I am using the expression “internal sense” in the Lockian sense of the power of reflexion.
The essay is to be found in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary by David Hume, ed. by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (London, 1898), Vol. II, p. 399ff. As far as the question of the nature of the self or mind is concerned, it offers nothing beyond what Hume had claimed in the Treatise.
Treatise I, p. 232. Substantially these same views are reiterated in a passage in Treatise II, where Hume says that “the essense and composition of external bodies are so obscure, that we must necessarily, in our reasonings, or rather conjectures concerning them, involve ourselves in contradictions and absurdities. But as the perceptions of the mind are perfectly known, and I have us’d all imaginable caution in forming conclusions concerning them, I have always hop’d to keep clear of those contradictions, which have attended every other system” (Treatise II, p. 366).
Treatise, p. xxi.
This will mean that I will be eliminating from consideration a discussion of Hume’s which directly involves his theory of imagination. I am referring to his attempting to account for our tendency to bestow a place (or location) upon such things as tastes and smells, even though they are in fact utterly incapable of having it (see Treatise I, pp. 237–39). Inasmuch as I think that his account is almost strictly analogous to his account of the fiction of the continued and distinct existence of objects, I do not see any harm in omitting it from consideration. Actually, I considered it very briefly in Chapter IV (see pp. 133–34).
It is plain that Hume thinks that all these reasoners share in common the so-called “substance” theory of mind.
Treatise I, p. 250.
Ibid., p. 234.
Ibid.
He seems to assume that it is quite sufficient for him to consider only this one definition.
Treatise I, p. 233.
Ibid., pp. 252–53.
See Ibid., pp. 253ff., 263.
There is no corresponding notion of an “imperfect” simplicity in Hume; it is hard to see how there could be.
Treatise I, p. 253.
Ibid., p. 207; italic of “perfect” was mine.
Ibid., p. 259.
Ibid.; italics mine.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 260.
Ibid., p. 259.
Appendix, p. 633.
Ibid., pp. 633–34.
Ibid., pp. 634–5.
Ibid., p. 635. 5 Ibid.
Ibid.
Treatise I, p. 260.
Appendix, p. 636.
Klibansky and Mossner, op. cit., p. 20.
A single-impression theory would be one which maintains that the human mind may correctly be said to have a perfect simplicity and identity, since there is, within the bundle which constitutes it, a single simple, invariable and uninterrupted impression. This is a theory which would allegedly do the job of substance, in the substance theory, but without invoking the latter. There are hints at the beginning of Hume’s Treatise account that he entertains this as a possible theory — though he rejects it almost out-of-hand as empirically false. See Treatise I, p. 251.
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© 1968 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Wilbanks, J. (1968). Hume’s Theory of Imagination in the Argument of His Philosophy of the Human Understanding (II): The Attack on Sense. In: Hume’s Theory of Imagination. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0709-7_6
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