Hume's True Scepticism

ISBN-13: 9780199593866 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 272 str.

Donald C. Ainslie

Opis

David Hume is famous as a skeptical philosopher but the nature of his skepticism 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 skeptical 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 skeptical 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.

Recenzje

this is one of the very most thought-provoking books yet written on Hume. It challenges many conventional assumptions about Hume, and gives him a new look. It is a look so different from what one is used to that I fear I may have fallen prey to some illusions both in reading Ainslie and in responding to him. I expect many rewarding re-readings and trust that these will correct my errors. Ainslie's is an indispensable contribution to the literature on Hume and on the history of the philosophy of mind and epistemology.

O autorze

Donald Ainslie is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, where he also serves as Principal of University College. He is interested in all aspects of Hume's philosophy, as well as in early modern philosophy more broadly; he is the co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Hume's Treatise. He also teaches and publishes in bioethics.