Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy

PROJECTION AND REALISM IN HUME’S PH ILOSOPHY

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Projection and Realism in Hume’s Philosophy P J E KAIL

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford   Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in 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 Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York  P J E Kail 2007

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 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, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–922950–5 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Sarah

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Contents Acknowledgements References to Hume’s Work Introduction

xviii xxi xxiii

PA RT I . R E L I G I O N A N D T H E E X T E R N A L WO R L D 1. Projection, Religion, and the External World

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2. The Senses, Reason and the Imagination

26

3. Realism, Meaning and Justification: The External World and Religious Belief

56

PA RT I I . M O D A L I T Y, P RO J E C T I O N A N D R E A L I S M 4. ‘Our Profound Ignorance’: Causal Realism and the Failure to Detect Necessity

77

5. Spreading The Mind: Projection, Necessity and Realism

103

6. Into the Labyrinth: Persons, Modality and Hume’s Undoing

125

PA RT I I I . VA LU E , P RO J E C T I O N A N D R E A L I S M 7. Gilding: Projection, Value and Secondary Qualities

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8. The Gold: Good, Evil, Belief and Desire

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9. The Golden: Relational Values, Realism and a Moral Sense

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Bibliography Index

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Detailed Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

xviii xxiii

PA RT I . R E L I G I O N A N D T H E E X T E R N A L WO R L D 1. Projection, Religion, and the External World 1.1 Projection: Initial Distinctions

3 3

Feature and explanatory projection; explanatory projection as non-detective explanation; questions to be asked of explanatory projective accounts 1.2 Projection and the Origins of Religion

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‘Invisible Intelligent Power’, the core content of religious belief; its emergence in polytheism; anthropomorphism; anxiety, passions and explanatory projection; motivated irrationality; the manifestation of a psychological disposition to relieve uneasiness 1.3 Digression: A Brief Comparison with Freud

12

Projection as ‘expulsion’ and motivated irrationality; the overlap with explanatory projection; the origin of malign spirits 1.4 Projection and the Origins of the External World Belief

14

The vulgar view; continued and distinct existence, the core content of external world belief; detection and the senses; constancy and coherence; constancy; the manifestation of a psychological disposition to relieve uneasiness; compared with the emergence of polytheism 1.5 The Transmutation of the Core Contents: Further Parallels

17

Polytheism and the vulgar view easily shown to be false; transmutation into monotheism and the philosophical view; not produced by reason but the same projective sources as the earlier views; both sophisticated versions have a tenuous grip on the imagination 1.6 Destabilization, Realism and Hume’s Projective Explanations

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Such explanations do not foreclose on realism; rational destabilization and the demand for justification 1.7 Summary

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Detailed Table of Contents 2. The Senses, Reason and the Imagination

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2.1 Introduction

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The senses and reason as detective sources, the former of basic contents, the latter of normative considerations 2.2 The Senses

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2.2.1 Impressions, Acquaintance and Detection

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Impressions, what they are; impressions as objects and input; detection as acquaintance; the ‘difference betwixt feeling and thinking’, a mitigation 2.2.2 Detection, Meaning and Meaninglessness

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The Copy Principle as a theory of meaning; senses in which Hume has no theory of meaning; meaninglessness and realism; meaning and Hume’s formulation of the Copy Principle; meaning as possible object of acquaintance; simple and complex perceptions; Hume’s approach; two senses of ‘meaninglessness’; summary

2.3 Reason

36

2.3.1 Preliminaries 36 ReasonF , reasonsN and reasoning I 2.3.2 Relations and Demonstrative Reason 37 Reasoning as comparison of relations; philosophical relations, constant and inconstant; intuition and demonstration; demonstration as awareness of necessitation relations grounded in analytic relations; demonstration not deduction 2.3.3 Probable Reason and Causal Inference

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Detection, projection and scepticism about probable reason; probable reason and the philosophical relation of causation; reasonF not the cause of probable reasoning I ; because reasonF cannot grasp reasonsN ; the UP; probable reason as having projective (non-detective basis); this not equivalent to showing that probable reason is not a detective source of belief

2.4 The Imagination 2.4.1 Ideas and the Imagination 48 Ideas as images fall under the imagination 2.4.2 Association and Power 48 Hume’s brief introduction of the principles; cause and effect and the association of ideas; Leibniz, Spinoza and Hobbes on association and the failure to grasp that which underpins manifest regularities 2.4.3 Resemblance, Association and Error 52 Resemblance and its background; the grounds for the dispositions behind the external world and religious belief; ‘outness’ and the three-dimensional trick

48

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3. Realism, Meaning and Justification: The External World and Religious Belief 3.1 Realism and Threats to Realism

56 56

Realism as justified belief in the external world/God; justificatory and semantic threats to realism 3.2 The ‘Absurdity’ of Monotheism and the Doctrine of Double Existence: A Threat to Realism Removed

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Monotheism and double existence both ‘monstrous’ and ‘absurd’; the absurdity in monotheism extrinsic to its content; the semantic threat and the doctrine of double existence; relative ideas; the supposition of resembling external objects coherent; the semantic threat met; the supposition of ‘specific difference’ 3.3 A Different Semantic Threat: Reason and the Evacuation of Content

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Consistent reasoning on the like effects, like causes principle leaves an ‘unknown’ something as the cause of order in the universe or the cause of perceptions; the relevance to realism 3.4 Realism and Justification: Religion and the External World Contrasted

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3.4.1 The Letter to Elliot 66 Hume’s differing attitudes to the propensity to our senses and religion 3.4.2 ‘Natural Belief ’, Justification and the External World

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Principles of the imagination, permanent and irresistible; practical justification; the propensity to believe our senses and experience; the doctrine of double existence as having authority 3.4.3 Double Existence and the Evacuation of Content

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Hume’s lack of enthusiasm for the doctrine of modern philosophy; the Title Principle and the worrisome argument 3.4.4 Religious Commitment 71 Religious belief and its practical consequences; only the vacuous form survives

3.5 Conclusion to Part I

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PA RT I I . M O D A L I T Y, P RO J E C T I O N A N D R E A L I S M 4. ‘Our Profound Ignorance’: Causal Realism and the Failure to Detect Necessity 77 4.1 Introduction

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Detailed Table of Contents 4.2 Causal Realism and Threats to Causal Realism

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4.2.1 What is Causal Realism? 78 The justificatory threat and the semantic threat; the meaning tension; deflationary approaches 4.2.2 Threats to Causal Realism 80

4.3 Meeting the Semantic Threat

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4.3.1 The Semantic Threat and the Realist Strategy

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Hume’s negative arguments as manifesting an understanding of causal power sufficiently rich to specify that of which we are ignorant; the Bare Thought meets the semantic threat 4.3.2 The Bare Thought of Necessity Articulated; Why We Cannot Detect Causal Power 83 The cognitive consequences of a genuine impression of power; a priori inference and inconceivability; this yields a way of specifying that which we cannot understand; Hume’s general negative strategy 4.3.3 Powers and Absolute Necessity

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Powers and absolute necessity; naturalism and occasionalism; Hume, Malebranche and why Hume’s strategy is not ad hominem 4.3.4 The Bare Thought and the Threat of Incoherence: The Short Argument 88 The threat of incoherence; the short argument for incoherence; an alternative reading; ignorance of essence 4.3.5 Powers as Essences

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Reason and the supposition of power; the switching argument; a causal nexus and a causal straightjacket; powers as essences explains the switching argument 4.3.6 The Short Argument Dismantled: Conceivability, Metaphysical Possibility and the Objects of Conceivability 92 Conceivability briefly introduced; conceivability and Hume’s restrictions; impressions cannot reveal modal properties of objects; essences and the epistemic possibility of a change in the course of nature 4.3.7 Summary, Another Objection and ‘Meaninglessness’ Reconsidered 98 Summary of this chapter; a final objection; the constitution of our faculties a contingent matter

5. Spreading The Mind: Projection, Necessity and Realism 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Hume’s Projective Account of Necessity 5.2.1 The Determination of the Mind: Hume’s Non-Detective Explanation of the Idea of Necessity 105

103 103 105

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The customary transition; Hume’s account of the idea thought to be hopeless; the immediacy of the transition and psychological inseparability as mimicking a priori inference and inconceivability 5.2.2 Spreading the Determination: Feature Projection and the Experience of Causation 108 The feature projective element; its perceptual nature; Hume on the vulgar epistemology of power; Malebranche and spreading the mind; singularists and the phenomenology of causation

5.3 Thought or Quasi Thought? Realism, the Idea of Necessity and the Bare Thought 110 A threat to realism; the idea does not represent; non-cognitivism; non-cognitivism and the Bare Thought 5.4 Realism Reconsidered

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5.4.1 Why Realism? 116 Hume’s references to powers; the Bare Thought and realism 5.4.2 Deflationary Strategies Rejected

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Deflationary readings of hidden connections and ignorance rejected; microregularities; expressivism; the Enquiry footnote; an alleged fallacy 5.4.3 The Character of the Supposition and the Justificatory Threat

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The general assumption and the customary transition; a minimal preference; agnosticism?

6. Into the Labyrinth: Persons, Modality and Hume’s Undoing 6.1 Introduction 6.2 The Projective Explanation of the Belief in a Substantial Self

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Hume’s primary concern the origin of the false belief in a substantial self; no impression that is ‘constant and invariable’; dissonance and the bias of the imagination; our yielding to the bias and feigning a self; the relations that trigger this projected belief 6.3 Sceptical Realism about Substantial Selves, and Denying the ‘proper identity and simplicity of a self’

129

Hume confident the self is a collection of perceptions; sceptical realism about self rejected; Hume’s reductio against the self as simple individual substance upon which perceptions depend; perceptions nevertheless dependent entities 6.4 The Labyrinth 6.4.1 A Causal Realist Reading of the Appendix Worry Outlined 131 Hume’s modal reasoning implies perceptions cannot be necessarily connected, and so not causally connected; this is inconsistent with his account of self

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Detailed Table of Contents 6.4.2 ‘Distinctness’

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Hume does not assume a notion of ‘distinct existence’ that analytically implies metaphysical independence; distinct existences as a phenomenal notion; avoids circularity and explains conceptual independence 6.4.3 Distinctness, Conceivability and the Reification of Experience: Why Hume Cannot Renounce His Principles and Escape the Labyrinth 136 Phenomenal distinctness as an intentional notion; representation and phenomenal distinctness; the reification of experiences and perceptions qua vehicles of resemblance and representation; separability applied to those objects entails that they cannot be necessarily connected; why Hume cannot renounce his principles 6.4.4 Summary, Objections and Replies

138

6.5 Summary Outline of the Argument 6.6 Conclusion to Part II

142 143

PA RT I I I . VA LU E , P RO J E C T I O N A N D R E A L I S M 7. Gilding: Projection, Value and Secondary Qualities

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7.1 Introduction 147 7.2 Hume and the Doctrine of Modern Philosophy: The View and its Background 151 7.2.1 Modern Philosophy and the Vulgar 151 Hume’s alleged confusion over the doctrine of modern philosophy; Malebranche, Bayle and Berkeley; the consequence of modern philosophy for the vulgar concept of colour as of irreducible, manifest phenomenal qualities; Hume’s response to Reid; the content of the vulgar view 7.2.2 Projection, Sensation and Experience

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‘In the mind’ intentional and non-intentional; the feature projection of sensation in Malebranche; feature and explanatory projection; colours as identical with sensations; Malebranche again

7.3 The Comparison 7.3.1 Introductory 162 7.3.2 The Explanandum 163 Essential value; a moderate internalism; dispositions and grounds 7.3.3 The Mechanism of Projection 167 Low phenomenal intensity and secondary qualities; Hume’s reasons for why we cannot detect essential value 7.3.4 Sentiment and Colour Sensation 170 The Comparison and the irreducibility of the response

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Detailed Table of Contents 7.4 Preliminary Conclusion: Questions and Issues

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Summary: too much error? Sentiments as desires or constituents? Why pleasure? Is the account really explanatory? 8. The Gold: Good, Evil, Belief and Desire 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Pleasure and Pain, Good and Evil, Desire and Aversion 8.2.1 The Identity Thesis

175 175 177

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Natural Good and Evil, pleasure and pain; Hume and others; the efficient causes reading of pleasure and pain unsatisfactory; pleasures and pains as providing ideas of good and evil that figure in complex judgments concerning the value of the objects of the passions; ideas of good and evil and belief 8.2.2 Why the Identity Thesis? Metaphysical Hedonism and the Sources of Content 182 The Identity Thesis and the acquisition of ideas of good and evil; metaphysical hedonism; convergence and explanation; pleasure and pain as states of consciousness with essential value 8.2.3 Hume and Metaphysical Hedonism: Initial Support and Strategy 187 Two initial points; the presence of the Identity Thesis and the regress of reasons in Appendix I EPM; reasons clearly not decisive; strategy; re-read ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’, offer an alternative target and integrated such a view in the account of moral motivation

8.3 Re-Reading ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’

189

8.3.1 The Standard Reading 189 The ‘Humean’ theory of motivation; its threat to metaphysical hedonism; Smith’s general strategy rejected 8.3.2 ‘Reason Alone’

192

What is meant be ‘reason alone’; the faculty of comparison and motivating contents 8.3.3 ‘Reason Cannot Oppose’

193

Reason alone, means, ends and false beliefs; three notorious passages 8.3.4 Calm Passions 196 General Appetite to good and evil not original but acquired 8.3.5 Cognition, Acquaintance and Belief

197

Belief and the manifestation of the power to actuate the will

8.4 Moral Rationalism and Morality Not a Matter of Fact Rationalism a thesis about what moral facts consist in and not moral cognitive internalism

199

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9. The Golden: Relational Values, Realism and A Moral Sense

204

9.1 Introduction 204 9.2 Perceptions of ‘of good or evil, of pleasure and pain’: The Indicator Function of Pleasure and Pain, and the Beneficial and the Harmful 206 Pleasure and pain as directing us toward the healthy and away from the harmful; Descartes, Malebranche, Berkeley and Hutcheson; animal nature, and the indication of relational goods; Malebranche and the function of projecting pleasure and pain; indication, awareness and the proper function of pleasure and pain 9.3 Modelling a Moral Sense: Hume in the Light of Hutcheson

213

9.3.1 Preliminaries 213 Hume’s awareness of the functional role of pleasure and pain; the letter to Hutcheson and the parallel between bodily pleasure and moral sentiments; proposal; a word on Hume and Hutcheson 9.3.2 Sentiments, Pleasure and Meaning 216 Peculiar pleasures and the phenomenology of morality; Hutcheson and Hume against Hobbes and Mandeville 9.3.3 The Relational Values and Projection 219 Hutcheson, uniformity amidst variety and benevolence; Hume, the useful and the agreeable 9.3.4 Reflex Sentiments & Sensitivity

222

Projection and the rendering relational values salient; reflective perceptions and an objection; the empirical discovery of the foundation of merit

9.4 The Correction of Sentiment: Sensitivity, Secondary Qualities and Realism 228 9.4.1 Realism, Identity and Correction

228

The identity of moral facts with relational values; standards of correction 9.4.2 Two Views of Power and Secondary Qualities Revisited 229 Causalism; causalism about virtues rejected; powers understood dispositionally; normal conditions and observers as partly constitutive 9.4.3 Dispositionalism Rejected: Hutcheson

233

What makes for normality? 9.4.4 Dispositionalism Rejected: Hume 235 For what are we correcting? 9.4.5 Sympathy and the Common Point of View 236 Correcting for sympathy; an apparent tension dissolved

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9.4.6 Providence versus Reflection: A Key Difference between Hutcheson and Hume 239

9.5 Conclusion to Chapter 9: Realism in Humean Morals 9.6 Conclusion to Part III 9.7 Appendix: A Puzzle about ‘Of the standard of taste’ Bibliography Index

241 242 243 245 255

Acknowledgements Some material in the present work appears, or is due to appear, in The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, the Philosophical Quarterly, and The New Hume Debate 2nd edition. I am grateful to the editors of each for their permission to reproduce some small portions of it here. This project began with a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship, held at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge and at Darwin and St Edmund’s College Cambridge. I am indebted to them for their help and support, as well as the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford, St Peter’s College Oxford and the Newberry Library Chicago. Many people have helped me in writing this book: my family with their moral support; Peter Momtchiloff and Rupert Cousens at Oxford University Press have been unfailingly helpful and supportive; the anonymous readers provided excellent critical feedback at every stage of the process, and it is no exaggeration to say that it would have been a worse book without it. I am extremely grateful. Zoe Payne proofread a version of the manuscript, no mean feat given my extraordinary ability to litter any piece of writing with typographical errors. Thanks must also go to my copy-editor, Virginia Masardo. Versions of the arguments given here have benefited from audiences and commentators at Hume Society meetings in Monterey and Cork. Audiences in Dubrovnik, Vienna, the APA in Chicago and New York, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Stirling, Aberdeen, Central Michigan, Bristol and Manchester Metropolitan have all helped me refine my thoughts. In no particular order, James Harris, Martin Bell, Rae Langton, Arif Ahmed, Richard Holton, Denis Walsh, Mike Ridge, Sandy Stewart, Galen Strawson, John Gaskin, Tim Mawson, the late Philip Lakelin, Matthew Nudds, Huw Price, Alexander Bird, Hugh Mellor, Barry Stroud, Peter Railton, Tito Magri, Louis Loeb, Alessio Vaccari, Lorenzo Greco, Jane McIntyre, Mike Green, Hallvard Lillehammer, Brooks Somerville, Jane Heal, Ken Winkler, Geoff Sayre-McCord, Tom Baldwin, Simon Blackburn, Ross Harrison, the late Ian Tipton and John Rogers have either read or heard versions of the present materials and have offered very useful comments—I have learned much from many people. Some nonphilosophical but equally necessary debts are owed for friendship. Sara Austin, Mike Green, Matthew Nudds, Russell Viner, Dasha Nichols, Carlo Caruso, Annalisa Cipollone, Peter Milne, Alessio Vaccari, Lorenzo Greco, Emma Griffin, Paul McGoay, Elisabetta Frontoni, Katherine Hawley and Jon Hesk, John Rogers and lately Tim Mawson fall under that category. Those deserving special mention I am proud to count among my friends. Edward Craig’s wisdom and friendliness were a help right from the beginning of

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my career as a graduate student. I have had many fruitful discussions with John Wright and enjoyed his sense of fun and humour in a world too often populated by the earnest. Marina Frasca-Spada has been a friend and a true Humean for years now, and helped me in many different ways aside from mere philosophy. Finally, thank you to Edmund and Sarah for making my world golden.

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References to Hume’s Works In light of the recent Oxford Editions of Hume’s works, references to Hume’s Treatise, the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals follow the conventions favoured by the journal Hume Studies. For the Treatise, I cite book, part, section, and paragraph number, followed by a page number to the Selby-Bigge/Nidditch (A Treatise of Human Nature (ed.) L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P. H. Nidditch (2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon, 1978)). Hence, for example: T 2.3.9.2; SBN 438. For the first Enquiry, reference is made by EHU, followed by section, part, paragraph and Selby-Bigge/Nidditch page number. The second Enquiry is abbreviated to EPM. The Selby-Bigge/Nidditch Enquiries is the 3rd edn, revised by Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). References to the essays are to Eugene F. Miller (ed.), David Hume: Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985), abbreviated to EMPL. References to the Natural History of Religion (NHR) and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (DNR) are by section and part respectively, with page numbers to J. C. A. Gaskin (ed.), Dialogues concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 1993). For the Dissertation of the Passions, I have used J. Immerwahr (ed.), Four Dissertations (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1995). Full referencing to other primary literature is given in the footnotes.

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Introduction T h e C o n t e x t o f t h e Di s c u s s i o n Hume wrote that the ‘mind has a great propensity to spread itself on external objects’ (T 1.3.14.25; SBN 167) and that we ‘gild and stain’ natural objects ‘with the colours borrowed from internal sentiment’ (EPM Appendix 1.19; SBN 294). These metaphors have invited a further one: that of ‘projection’ and its cognates. Though not Hume’s own, the projection metaphor is now so closely associated with him, both in exegetical¹ and non-exegetical contexts,² that the phrase ‘Humean projection’ is something of a clich´e in philosophical discourse. The metaphor’s exegetical use ranges from the casual (the vast majority) to the occasionally careful, considered and concerted. Here are some randomly selected samples. Anne Jaap Jacobson says that ‘Hume holds that our beliefs about causality in the objects are in large part the result of a projection of an internal impression’ (1989: 325). Anthony Flew entitled a chapter of a book on Hume ‘Values as Socially Projected’ (1986). Hume concludes that ‘causality is actually a projection’ according to Tom Costelloe (2004: 174). Paul Grice writes that ‘Hume attributes to us . . . the tendency of the mind . . . to project into the world items which, properly considered, are really features of our states of mind’ (1991: 146). In discussing Hume’s explanation of religious belief, Jane McIntyre writes of ‘the tendency of the imagination to project its own features onto the world’ (1999: 174—see also Bernard (1994: 226–7)). Dan Bennett writes that ‘the self is . . . a projection, a feigning of the imagination, by Hume’s account’ (1985: 91). Clearly something about Hume attracts the metaphor of projection. The present work explores the meanings of ‘projection’ in the company of Hume’s philosophy in order to illuminate both. As we said, the metaphor’s use remains relatively casual—with some exceptions. In the 1970s and 1980s, two different ways of understanding projection in Hume emerged. For both Barry Stroud (1977, 2000a), who did so much to focus matters on the concept of projection,³ and John Mackie (1977 and ¹ Uses of projection and its cognates in exegetical contexts include Ayer (1980: 165), Basson (1958: 76–7), J. Bennett (1971: 298), Craig (2000), Flew (1986: 140ff ), Fogelin (1985: 143), Goldman (1990: 74), Livingston (1984: 153), Noonan (1999: 146–8), Passmore (1952: 116), Pears (1990: 108), Radcliffe (2000: 26), Sainsbury (1998), G. Strawson (1989: 4) Williams (1998: 118) and J. P. Wright (1983: 154). This list is merely illustrative rather than exhaustive: it could be greatly extended. ² Boghossian and Velleman (1997a), Grice (1991), McDowell (1988a), A. Price (1992), P. Strawson (1992: 113). Again this list could be greatly extended. ³ Stroud was the first to introduce a focused notion of projection in connection with Hume, though the metaphor was applied to Hume prior to Stroud’s discussion. Thus Beatrice Rome writes

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1980), Hume’s talk of ‘spreading the mind’ and ‘gilding and staining’ gestures at an explanation of how thoughts about causal power and value are possible when there is no power or value in the world. In virtue of something ‘in here’ being spread or stained onto objects we come to think in terms of something ‘out there’. The product of the projection is the false thought of powers or values ‘out there’. This view of projection runs into an immediate exegetical difficulty (as projective readers like Stroud are perfectly aware). Hume indicates that necessity, vice and virtue impressions do not ‘represent’ anything ‘in the objects’, not in the sense that they represent something to be there when it is not but rather that they are incapable of representation. Instead, given Hume’s doctrine that the meaning of a term is given by an idea, and an idea represents an impression, we can mean by ‘necessity’ or ‘virtue’ these ‘subjective impressions’ or we mean nothing at all. This seems to saddle Hume with a very crude subjectivist view of necessity and virtue, a view bordering uncomfortably on the nonsensical. For Stroud such implied nonsense is symptomatic of an unfortunate attachment of Hume’s to the ‘theory of ideas’, a view which models thought on the contemplation of mental objects or ‘ideas’. In trying to explain our thoughts about necessity and virtue, Hume is forced to look for an impression or mental object that somehow provides the content of such thoughts. But because thoughts about virtue or necessity are not thoughts about such mental objects—they are thoughts about features of the world—Hume tries to exploit the notion of projection to transform these subjective impressions into thoughts about power or virtue. The problem is to see how this trick can be pulled. Alternatively one might try accommodate both Hume’s projective talk and his claim that the idea of necessity and the sentiments do not ‘represent’ by interpreting ‘projection’ as the expression of non-cognitive reactions to an inert and value-free world. This is the second way in which Hume’s projective metaphors have been understood. To say we project causal powers or values alludes to a way of explaining our use of a certain kind of distinctive vocabulary, our talk of ‘must’, ‘good’ and ‘ought’. More accurately, projecting consists in the use of such language to express states of mind the function of which is not to represent a distinct class of properties like causal powers or virtues, and where causal thoughts are ‘quasi-thoughts’. Causal and evaluative commitments are not beliefs but habits (in the case of necessity) or sentiments (in the evaluative case). This view of ‘projection’ is Simon Blackburn’s (see e.g. 1993a and 2000). We project an attitude or habit or other commitment which is not descriptive onto the world, when we speak and think as though there were a property of things which our sayings describe, which we can reason about, know about, and so on. Projecting is what Hume referred to when he talks of ‘gilding and staining all natural objects with the ‘For Hume minds engage in causal inference: we project our habits of necessity into nature’ (1963: 234). A. H. Basson (1958: 76–7) discusses some senses of projection.

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colours borrowed from internal sentiment’, or of the mind ‘spreading itself on the world’. (1984: 170–1)

Both ways of understanding ‘projection’, different though they are, share two features. First the metaphor of projection is supposed to be explanatory of a belief, of an idea or (more vaguely) of the subject’s taking the world to be a certain way. Second, both tie themselves to forms of anti-realism. For Stroud and Mackie, the anti-realism is equivalent to an error theory: our thoughts embodying systematic error because of some false referential presumption in the projected thoughts (we think there are real powers or values but there are none).⁴ Blackburn, by contrast, offers a different form of anti-realism, one that is not an error theory. For his Hume, the use of terms like ‘power’ and ‘virtue’ are perfectly legitimate, for we are not trying to represent something to be there which is not ‘really out there’. Instead we are expressing habits of inference or sentiments and even though we talk in certain ways, we never really thought there were such powers or values. The fact that there are no metaphysically heavyweight properties like causal powers or values does not make value and causal talk illegitimate. We can talk the causal talk without walking the metaphysical walk. The details of these two positions will be examined in due course. But these brief sketches suffice to raise the issues that inform the present work. The first is that of whether we can gain a deeper understanding of the projection metaphor, different from these. Second the anti-realism implicit in both these views of projection can be, and has been, challenged on independent grounds. Hume is held in certain quarters to be a ‘realist’ of some sort about causal powers or values. But how can these challenges be squared with the projective-sounding aspects of Hume’s thought? Realist readers of Hume on causation still use the metaphor of projection,⁵ and Galen Strawson, the strongest advocate for realism, writes that projection is ‘an important aspect of Hume’s philosophy’ (1989: 4). But if Hume is a realist about causal power, how are we to understand the projective-sounding metaphors and Hume’s talk of necessity being ‘in the mind’? Similarly, the anti-realist readings of Hume’s account of value face challenges from many different quarters. The theoretical meta-ethics implicit in the Stroud/Mackie reading—an error-theory—has been rejected, and the noncognitivism implicit in Blackburn’s interpretation of the metaphor is challenged from a number of different quarters. These challenges leave us with the issue of

⁴ Stroud writes that Hume’s considered view is that moral judgements are not literally true of anything in the action in question . . . but that does not imply that we do not tend to regard those statements as objectively true, and to put them forward as such. It is just that behaviour that Hume wants to explain. (1977: 182) ⁵ Livingston (1984: 153), J. P. Wright (1983: 154), Craig (2000).

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understanding those projective-sounding passages. Thus, Annette Baier, who has done much to further our understanding of Hume’s moral theory, writes: there is no good reason to see [Hume] as likening the status of virtues to that of ‘secondary qualities’ if these are seen as somehow less real than others . . . [t]here need be no illusion of something ‘out there’ when in fact it is really ‘in here’. (1991: 194–5)

But without prejudice to Baier’s reading, the texts seem to give quite the opposite impression. Thus, to take one example, Hume says ‘it be certain, that beauty and deformity, more than sweet or bitter, are not qualities in the objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment’ (‘Of the Standard of Taste’, EMPL 235). What, if Baier is right, does Hume mean here? This book therefore seeks to understand and reconcile the strands of thought in Hume that sound projective with those that sound realist in order to seek a balanced understanding of both the metaphor of projection and Hume’s own position.

Me t h o d o l o g i c a l Ap p ro a c h Most of the remainder of this introduction is a survey of the contents of the book, but first a few words are appropriate regarding the approach taken here and what sort of results it is supposed to yield. The work explores the strands in Hume’s thinking that attract terms such as projection, realism and anti-realism together in an effort to understand them in a mutually satisfactory way. In doing so I cast new light on central areas of Hume’s philosophy and further our understanding of the general idea of projection. But I do not assume one particular understanding of projection in this approach, nor do I assume that Hume is a ‘realist’ or an ‘anti-realist’ of some kind. Instead I explore the texts together that sound projective and those that prompt realist readings, and seek to understand why and in what sense they invite terms like ‘projective’, ‘realist’ or ‘anti-realist’. My reasons for doing so are as follows. The terms ‘realism’ and ‘projection’ and their cognates are hardly the most perspicuous of technical terms. Realism tends to be understood through its contrasts, and these can include reductionism, error theory, eliminativism, noncognitivism, quasi-realism and a host of others. One form of anti-realism may also be plausible in one area but not in another: non-cognitivism for ethics, say, and error theory for the self. There is not just one thing that is ‘realism’. The same is true for ‘projection’, perhaps even more so: outside of the technical uses introduced by Simon Blackburn, Barry Stroud and those in psychoanalysis, it can hardly be said that there is just one way to understand ‘projection’. It is sometimes a metaphor, sometimes merely a label, sometimes a term of art, a distilled version of which might trickle down into ordinary usage. To be convinced of this, one need only consider the following disparate list of its uses:

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necessity is a projection, God is a projection of our fears, colours are projected onto the world, value is a projection of desire, Edmund projects his anxiety. All sound the ring of sense, if slightly muffled: but the sense you hear in one may be different from the sense you hear from another. Our first difficulty then is that the terms ‘realism’ and ‘projection’ may be just too big to handle, as it were. A second is the simple and standing threat of anachronism. The ‘realism/anti-realism’ debate is a contemporary creature, not a native of the eighteenth century (cf. Winkler 1996: 3). There is a danger then that distinctions serving contemporary concerns may not only be inappropriate but might even obscure, by concentrating attention too much on issues and texts from which we cannot reasonably expect to extract a determinate answer. Put simply: Hume did not consider that kind of thing. So although it might seem that we can get past the first barrier of the slippage in the terms ‘realism’ and ‘projection’ by the simple expedient of defining our terms, we run into the danger that such definitions are poor fits for a philosopher of Hume’s period. Furthermore, ‘defining terms’ returns us to the first issue: it may seem to commit one to the idea that there is an easy, or at least uncontroversial, way of settling on definitions of ‘realism’ and ‘projection’, which then can be tested against a text. But of course how to understand ‘realism’ and ‘projection’, are difficult and live philosophical issues. To approach the text in such a manner is fraught with danger: one philosopher’s ‘realism’ may be another’s ‘anti-realism’.⁶ For these and other reasons our approach does not begin with definitions of ‘realism’ or ‘projection’ but takes matters dialectically. Something about Hume’s thought prompts the use of concepts like projection and realism: in exploring what that might be, topic by topic, and the sense in which something ‘realistic’ may or not be compatible with something ‘projective’ offers us a way of approaching what are still disputed issues in understanding Hume. The notion of projection is therefore introduced in the first chapter in terms of a set of schematic questions and distinctions with which to approach the projective sounding elements of Hume’s philosophy. The issue of ‘realism’ is discussed in the context of the area of concern. The overall aim though is to understand these difficult areas and to not answer a taxonomic question of whether Hume falls under some definition. A second point: this is a philosophical book about Hume. It strives for a philosophical understanding of what is projective in Hume, and in so striving I sometimes draw upon the work of our contemporaries. This should not, however, be mistaken for the anachronistic trap identified above: instead, it is in some ways the flipside of an old prejudice that the history of philosophy should be in the service of contemporary concerns. There is no evident reason why first-order philosophy cannot reveal an array in logical space of distinctions and positions ⁶ Example: reductionism—the thesis that statements about, say, the mental can be reduced to behavioural equivalents comes out as a ‘realist’ doctrine on Michael Dummett’s view of anti-realism since the truth of such statements is not evidence-transcendent.

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that can help us to understand the positions of earlier thinkers. So while there is plenty in the text that invites ‘projection’, to see quite what lies behind that invitation requires standing back from the text and asking some philosophical questions. And of course the traffic need not be one way: understanding Hume on his own terms can help us understand projection. There is a second way in which the book stands back from the texts in order to illuminate them, a way which is more historical. The meanings of Hume’s doctrines can be illuminated by comparing them with the ideas of philosophers with whom he was deeply engaged, together with a view of some general trends of the period. It seems to me to be patently obvious that understanding what, say, Hume means by ‘sentiment’ can be illuminated by the use of the term by others. This should not be confused with some form of historical reductionism, whereby understanding what Hume means reduces to understanding what his influences mean: Hume often appropriates material from other authors and puts it to his own use. Nevertheless paying attention to his context can help reveal things that one may otherwise miss, especially when we read Hume with contemporary concerns in our minds. Reading texts is a holistic matter: understanding what a particular passage means depends on how one understands the text as a whole, and that can naturally lead to a concern with how doctrines are understood in the wider intellectual climate. For example, Hume’s talk of pleasure and pain as natural good and evil, although simply announced in the Treatise, can be made sense of by looking at how other authors understood this doctrine, just as his view of secondary qualities as perceptions of the mind can be seen, not as a misreading of Locke, but as the adoption of a French view. Furthermore, trying to understand Hume’s targets can help us understand his arguments. Most conspicuously his campaign against the ‘ethical rationalists’ is often read against the assumption that what is distinctive of such rationalists is the thesis that moral belief alone can motivate action. I argue that it is actually unclear whether that is really so when one looks at authors like Malebranche. If, therefore, what is distinctive of ethical rationalism is something other than what it is standardly taken to be, we should look again at Hume’s arguments in the light of that understanding. Whether this combination of the analytic and historical is successful rests with the judgement of the reader. Note please that although I am critical of some fairly orthodox positions throughout, I hope that this will not be mistaken for an attempt to ‘prove’, once and for all, that such views are incorrect (or that my views are right, once and for all). I have no doubt that much of what I say can be rendered, with a little hard work and ingenuity, consistent with the orthodox positions against which my own view is articulated. But the most satisfactory way of reassessing an orthodoxy is to offer a fuller picture of the unorthodox, which is what I attempt to do here. There are no—though there often seem to be for many—fixed points in Hume’s thought around which everything must be placed. It is not obvious that he has a ‘theory of meaning’, subscribes to the

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‘Humean’ theory of motivation, sets up the ‘problem of induction’ or thinks there is no causal power in the world. If the present work has any value, it lies in the questions it raises for the orthodox as well as in its positive proposals. Finally, this is a Treatise-based book. I do however make use of other texts, including Hume’s two Enquiries, the Dialogues and the Natural History of Religion. That I do so should not I hope cause the reader to draw the quite invalid conclusion (as I fear sometimes happens) that I believe Hume’s philosophy to be static or that the Enquiries are nothing but watered down versions of the Treatise. The Treatise and the Enquiries are different works with a different agenda. The shift away from treating Hume’s writing as static can, like any movement, distort in the opposite direction. For there is considerable overlap and it is in these areas that material from the different works are compared: none of this entails that there are no differences or that the differences are not important to understanding Hume. The differences however are not relevant to the limited concerns of this work. Su r ve y o f C o n t e n t s The book is divided into three parts, the first concerning religious belief and the external world, the second concerning causal power and the self, the third concerning value. Pa r t I . Re l i g i o n a n d t h e E x t e r n a l Wo r l d Our discussion of projection and realism begins with a sustained comparison of Hume’s accounts of the origins of religion and the belief in the external world. The discussion also brings to the fore very significant and hitherto unnoticed parallels between Hume’s approach to these two areas. I argue that the causal accounts of each belief are exactly parallel and both projective and that a realist interpretation of each belief is subject to the same kinds of threat. However, Hume is ultimately a realist about the external world and not so about God. Chapter 1 introduces some fundamental distinctions that guide subsequent discussions of projection. The first is between feature projection and explanatory projection. In feature projection, features of our mentality become represented as features of some other object (I project my hate in thinking that someone else hates me). Something ‘in here’ is taken to be a feature of something ‘out there’. In explanatory projection, we need not represent some mental item as a feature of something else when ‘projecting’: instead it is rather that some feature of our mentality explains how the world appears to us. For example in saying value is a projection of desire, we do not mean the valued object has desires but instead it is because of our desires we think the world contains value. What is

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crucial to such explanations, however, is that they invoke an implicit contrast with reflection or detection. The thinker is not responsive to the world in a way whereby their beliefs, concepts and experiences reflect their objects. In a slogan: explanatory projection is non-detective explanation. The idea that explanatory projection is non-detective explanation is highly schematic and deliberately so. For the details of the explananda, the explanation, the view of detection with which the explanation is contrasted, and the aspect of mentality that explains the appearance, will of course vary significantly from topic to topic. The way that Alice’s belief that Edmund is faithful is a projection of her fear of loss will be significantly different from the way that modal commitment is a projection of imaginative failure. In the light of this we approach matters armed with this set of questions: 1. What is the privileged notion of ‘responsiveness’ or detection against which the projective explanation is articulated? 2. What is the explanandum? Are we trying to explain the presence of a belief? The presence of a distinct area of content? Of an experience? Or something else? 3. On what grounds is it thought that we are not so responsive? 4. Of what mental state is the projected appearance (the belief, the content, the experience) a projection? 5. What is the mechanism of projection? What kind of explanation is invoked to explain the appearance? In the light of these distinctions, we turn to Hume’s Natural History of Religion (NHR). Gerhard Streminger claimed in the NHR ‘God is the product of human projections’ (1989: 283). In NHR we see both feature and explanatory projection working in tandem. We anthropomorphize natural causes, which is a matter of feature projection. More fundamentally, the account is explanatorily projective. What explains the formation of original religious belief is a psychological anxiety and our attempt to remove it. The explanandum of the NHR is the original belief in deity, the notion of responsiveness or detection is that of being properly sensitive to evidence. The belief is a projection of our fear and anxiety, and the mechanism of projection is the biasing of our cognitive mechanisms to produce belief that removes that anxiety. It is because the psychological mechanism at work is such as to bias the belief against evidence, or its lack, that the account is non-detective. Hume’s view is briefly compared with Freud’s in order to reinforce the two different notions of projection at work. I then compare this account with ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’ and show how they mirror each other, and why we should regard the vulgar belief in objects as projective in the same sense. The parallel is continued when I show how the original versions of these beliefs—polytheism and the vulgar view—transmute themselves into sophisticated versions, the doctrine of double

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existence and monotheism. Both versions are ‘monstrous’, involve an ‘absurdity’, do not originate in reason, and have a weaker grip on the imagination than their original versions. Furthermore, Hume’s reflections on the causes of belief provide a reason to suspend them and the need for some further justification in order to restore confidence. This parallel, I argue, rests precisely in the character of the projective explanations Hume offers. Chapter 1 views projection as primarily a genetic thesis, a claim about what causally explains a belief. Such explanations are contrasted with detective explanations. In Chapter 2, I flesh out the notion of detection in Hume in order to understand better the contrast by examining relevant aspects of the senses, reason and the imagination. The materials here inform not only the discussion in Part I, but the discussion of the entire book. At a first approximation—and subject to due qualification—I argue that the senses and reason are detective sources of commitment. The senses yield acquaintance, and acquaintance yields content (ideas), so that our thinking involves contents which reflect their objects. In short there is detective explanation of content. Reason is a kind of cause that is detective by producing belief in a way that is responsive to epistemic considerations. The imagination by contrast is one non-detective source. This distinction is applied to Hume’s sceptical discussion of probable reason, the relation between association and imagination in Hume’s predecessors and its relevance to causation. Chapter 3 looks at realism. Realism about external objects and God should be understood as involving two components. First, that we can form genuine thoughts about ‘external objects’ or God in such a way that beliefs concerning the existence of them are capable of being true or false and, secondly, there is some justification available for those beliefs. This sense of realism is opposed to reductionism, non-cognitivism or error theory. The requirement for justification is partly motivated by the conclusion of Chapter 1. Hume suggests that if we consider the causes of these beliefs we are provided with reasons to suspend belief. But it is vital that this is not confused with a conclusion that either belief is false or that no ultimate justification can be offered. It is rather that if you look only at the belief’s cause, you are provided with a reason to suspend belief, unless and until you can offer some other justification for that belief. Awareness of cause destabilizes the belief. But I shall argue that despite this and other parallels between religious and external world beliefs, Hume thinks that the external world belief can be endorsed and justified, whereas this is not true for all but the most vacuous religious belief. This, I argue, makes for realism for external objects but not for religion. The reason for this asymmetry rests in the end in a new answer to an old issue. The external world belief is a natural belief in a way that is crucially different from religious belief. Central to this however is a discussion of the first and more fundamental threat to realism, namely that we cannot even manage to form genuine thoughts about either so-called ‘external objects’, or ‘God’. If such things are literally unthinkable,

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questions of their existence cannot be intelligibly raised, let alone answered in the affirmative. The threat comes in two forms. The first stems from a reading of Hume’s view of impressions and ideas that places severe restrictions on what we can think. Roughly, all that we can think is determined by impressions, and since we have no impression of ‘external objects’ we cannot even form a thought about them. The term ‘external object’ is meaningless. This prevents the very possibility of realism about ‘external objects’. I argue we can meet this threat by appeal to the notion of resemblance: we can mean something by ‘external object’ by appeal to resemblance, so that we can form thoughts about external objects. Hume allows the supposition of continuous and distinct external objects that resemble our perceptions to be coherent. The second and more subtle threat to the thinkability of the external world also threatens religious belief, and marks yet another point of contact between the two. Hume thinks that if we allow our beliefs to be determined solely by reason, on the maxim that like effects have like causes, we are left with an ‘unknown something’ as the cause of our perceptions or the cause of the universe. These notions are so vacuous that they are hardly recognizable as beliefs about objects or God, and certainly not realism about either. Again we have a substantial parallel between God and the external world. But the final twist in this tale is the extent to which we ought to follow reason on these matters. I argue that the notion of natural belief I have already mentioned, marks a crucial difference between the religious and external world beliefs that allows the latter, unlike the former, belief to be vindicated. Pa r t I I . Mo d a l i t y, Pro j e c t i o n a n d Re a l i s m Part II discusses projection and realism in connection with causal power. Here there are at once realist strands, talk of ‘hidden connections’ and ‘our profound ignorance’, together with projective strands, talk of necessity being ‘upon the whole . . . something, that exists in the mind, not in objects’, which we ‘spread’ onto external objects. I show that a proper understanding of Hume’s projective account of necessity is not merely compatible with realism but actually allows us to defeat some central objections to it. I then show what is projective about his account of the self, and how realism concerning causal necessity is supported through an understanding of why he thinks his account of self is ‘very defective’. Hume’s account of necessity is, in our sense, primarily explanatorily projective. We cannot detect genuine necessity, and our commitment to it is explained in terms of a ‘customary transition’ of which our commitment to necessity is a projection. The primary explanandum of the account is the very thought or idea of necessity, and secondarily our putative experience of causal necessity. The mechanism of projection—Hume’s positive account of our idea—is discussed in Chapter 5. We need first to know why it is that Hume thinks we cannot detect necessity.

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This feeds into the realism issue. Chapter 4 introduces the main thesis of causal realism, namely that Hume assumes the existence of causal powers that lie beyond our ken. Projection as non-detective explanation seems, at first sight, compatible with a realist position: the existence of causal power is one thing, the explanation of our idea of it is quite another (cf. Craig 2000).⁷ But when we turn to examine why Hume thinks we cannot detect power, it appears that we cannot form thoughts about putative powers, thus precluding realism. Hume’s negative arguments, that is, seem to imply that we cannot form the most anaemic thought about causal powers ‘out there’. Chapter 4 gets to grips with why we lack such an idea ‘drawn from the objects’, and why it neither implies meaninglessness nor incoherence, and hence why Hume’s negative arguments do not preclude realism. I show how Hume’s negative arguments here actually imply a certain anaemic grasp of causal powers (which I shall call the ‘Bare Thought’) which allows for the possibility of thoughts concerning genuine powers. Chapter 4 explains what the privileged notion of detection with respect to causal power is supposed to be and why it fails. It discusses, that is, why we have no idea of necessity ‘drawn from the objects’. Chapter 5 investigates Hume’s explanation of the idea of necessity we do have. Here I explain how the notorious ‘determination of the mind’, the impression of necessity, provides a modal content which mimics the cognitive abilities that acquaintance with—or detection of—genuine necessity would provide. Hume’s account, I argue, is far more successful than commentators have previously thought. Hume’s projective account of the idea of necessity furnishes the modal notions in the Bare Thought necessary for realism. Hume’s account also attempts to explain not merely the idea of necessity but a vulgar conception of its epistemology and phenomenology. Our ordinary or vulgar conception of causal relations is that particular causal transactions are observable: that we can perceive the manifestation of powers or a ‘bringing about’ holding between particulars. Hume, I argue, tries to account for this phenomenology and it is here that the tendency to ‘spread the mind’ plays its principal role. Here Hume’s explanatorily projective account is combined with feature projection, the idea of something ‘in here’ being attributed to external objects. I trace this tendency to spread the mind back to Malebranche: this notion will take on increasing importance throughout the remainder of this work. Properly understood, Hume’s projective account can explain how we arrive at the very notion of necessary connection when we cannot detect it. This allows the realist to meet the objection that we cannot mean anything by necessity ‘out there’: the realist can explain how, given Hume’s philosophy of mind, the very notion of necessity gets into circulation. This puts us in a position to ask: did Hume really assume the existence of causal powers? I stress first the fact that being in a position to see Hume as even agnostic on this issue is a considerable ⁷ See also Kail (2001a).

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achievement worthy of the term realism. I then review some of the evidence that Hume does assume the existence of genuine causal powers, and argue that we can understand the supposition of genuine power as ultimately sanctioned by the imagination and that there are no compelling reasons to reject his references to hidden powers. However, having said that, we reach something of a stalemate between realism and agnosticism. I attempt to break this stalemate, and tip the balance in favour of the realist in Chapter 6. In ‘Of personal identity’, Hume seeks to explain how we arrive at the idea of self as the ‘owner of perceptions’. He offers a projective account of this notion. To detect a self would be to be acquainted with a substance of which perceptions are modes, but he argues that we cannot detect such a thing. The belief instead is a projection of a dissonance caused by conflicting psychological dispositions. I reject the idea that Hume is a sceptical realist about the self, that is, that he assumes the existence of a substantial self. But realism is an important issue here for it helps us understand why Hume worries about his account of the self in the Appendix to the Treatise. I argue that if one agrees with the realist reading of Hume on necessary connection, then a very plausible solution to this long-standing exegetical puzzle emerges. The neatness of this reading is what breaks the stalemate between agnosticism and realism that ended Chapter 5. Pa r t I I I . Va l u e , Pro j e c t i o n a n d Re a l i s m Part III examines projection and realism in Hume’s account of evaluation. I argue that Hume believes we have beliefs, albeit false ones, that some objects are essentially valuable or aversion-worthy. These beliefs are given a projective explanation, one that involves feature projection, the attribution of features of minds to external objects. This, I argue, is the meaning of his comparison of values with secondary qualities. But I also argue that there are two forms of realism in Hume, both of which are compatible with his projective account. The first is a metaphysical hedonism: pleasure is essentially valuable and pain essentially aversion-worthy. The second is an identification of moral value with the useful and the agreeable, properties to which the moral sentiments are sensitive. The case for this reading is cumulative, resting on a reading of Hume’s context and how his moves inside the texts can be understood against this background. Although the discussion in Part III is broken into three chapters, the plausibility of the main thesis of each chapter depends on its meshing with the theses of the other two. A summary is offered at the end of Part III. There is something clearly ‘projective’ about Hume’s account of virtue, vice and beauty. He writes: Vice and virtue, therefore, maybe compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. ( T.3.1.1.26; SBN 469)

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and Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood: The latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation. (EPM Appendix 1.19; SBN 294)⁸

Chapter 7 argues for an interpretation of these and other passages as an attempt to explain how we come to experience and think of a range of objects as essentially valuable or desirable for their own sake. Hume’s account is explanatorily projective, and our thought and experience of things as essentially valuable is a projection of our sentiments. Since no external object is valuable or beautiful ‘in itself ’, we cannot explain our thought or experience of them as such by saying that we detect the essential value of objects. The explanation of why we think them such relies heavily on our second sense of projection, namely feature projection: the appearance of value is explained in virtue of features of mental states being attributed to external objects. This, I argue, is the point of Hume’s comparison of value with secondary qualities: as our experience of objects as coloured is determined by the projection of sensation, so our experience and thought about objects as essentially valuable is determined by the projection of sentiments. This reading is developed by paying careful attention to Hume’s predecessors, and their treatment of secondary qualities and the projection of pleasure and pain as well as Hume’s texts. Malebranche again is important to our understanding of Hume. The chapter concludes with a number of questions and a more general worry. The questions are exegetical. The general worry is philosophical and concerns the fundamental intelligibility of projection in both the case of value and colour. The exegetical questions set up the remainder of the book. Chapter 8 relates the conclusions of Chapter 7 to the issues of sentiment, belief, reason and passion. Chapters 7 and 8 treat sentiments as determining the distinct evaluative contents of moral beliefs. This goes against a standard reading (and alternative interpretation of projection) whereby moral commitments are not, for Hume, beliefs, but instead non-cognitive attitudes. I argue that the role of sentiments is more like the role of sensation in colour experience, namely in providing irreducible contents for experience and belief. In the light of this, I discuss the sense in which morality is not a ‘matter of fact’, the role of pleasure and pain in Hume’s account of evaluation and motivation, and offer a re-reading of his treatment of passion and reason in ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’. The position articulated in Chapters 7 and 8 shares much with the error theory of Mackie and Stroud. There is nothing essentially valuable in the world so we ⁸ The SBN edition has slightly different punctuation.

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do not detect value: instead our thoughts about essential value have a projective explanation. But reading Hume as an error theorist about value faces a number of problems. First its emphasis on error seems inimical to his generally friendly attitude to virtue. Secondly, Hume himself says his comparison of value with colour ‘takes off no more from the reality of the latter qualities [sc. virtue and vice], than from that of the former [sc. colour]; nor need it give any umbrage either to critics or moralists’ (‘The Sceptic’ EMPL 166n). Thirdly, Hume also speaks of virtues and vices as character dispositions, the useful and the agreeable. Chapter 9 addresses these worries. I argue that Hume’s talk of morality being the object of feeling and not of reason should be understood on a parallel with the relation of bodily pleasure and pain with that which contributes to, or is harmful to, the wellbeing of the body. The latter are relational values, features that derive their value from the contribution they make towards some end. Pleasure and pain function as signs for relational value in the sense of being systematically related to features conducive to, or harmful to, the wellbeing of the body, and play this role to make up for an absence of any understanding of what is, relationally speaking, good or bad. This model is transferred to moral evaluation, where the sentiments are the modes of experience standing to the useful and the agreeable as bodily pleasures and pains stand to what is good or bad for the body. The naturalistically characterizable goodness of a character is its relational value, its being fit to contribute to the wellbeing of its possessor and society at large, which is made salient to thinkers through the characteristic experience determined by the pleasure of virtue. We can reflect upon its causes and understand the function of such experiences, and arrive at normative standards for such judgements that become intelligible in the light of the relational values to which moral experiences are responsive. The model offers a naturalistic account of evaluation, not in the sense of a semantic reduction of the meanings of the concepts, but presenting a model of moral sensibility in terms of more familiar categories like pleasure and utility. As such, the functional nature of the moral sense mitigates against the error involved in projection.

PART I RELIGION AND THE EXTERNAL WO R LD Part I discusses projection and realism in the context of Hume’s treatments of religious and external world belief. Chapter 1 introduces projection by drawing some initial distinctions and posing key questions that serve as the backdrop for subsequent discussion throughout the present work. Chapter 3 examines whether, in what sense, and to what extent, Hume is realist about God and the external world. Chapter 2 discusses the senses, reason and the imagination: a proper grasp of these three features of Humean philosophy is essential to understand not only the arguments of Part I but also the remainder of the present work. A subsidiary aim of Part I is to show the (hitherto unnoticed) extent to which Hume’s views of the external world and religious belief are parallel and how this parallel illuminates his thought in both areas. To that end, Chapter 1 shows how structurally similar Hume’s 1757 Natural History of Religion (NHR) is to T 1.4.2 ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’ (SWRS). This discussion is extended in Chapter 3 where other parallels between SWRS and NHR are noted as well as one between T 1.4.4 ‘Of the modern philosophy’ and Part XII of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

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1 Projection, Religion, and the External World 1 . 1 P RO J E C T I O N : I N I T I A L D I S T I N C T I O N S ‘Projection’ and its cognates are metaphors with a wide variety of uses, featuring in both ordinary discourse and technical disciplines like philosophy and psychology. One might immediately wonder, therefore, whether there is anything that is both sufficiently general and sufficiently interesting to say about it. For even a brief look at a small catalogue of examples might make one despair of finding any interesting unity in the metaphor. Belief in God is a projection of our fear; values are projections of desire (Mackie 1977); necessity is a projection (Blackburn 1984); colours are projections of our sensations (Boghossian and Velleman 1997a); Edmund’s worry that Alice is unfaithful is a projection of his insecurity (pop psychology). Feuerbach claimed that God was a projection of our highest human values; Nietzsche tells us the self is ‘not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is’ (The Will to Power s. 481). That there are technical uses where a more precise notion of projection is in play further complicates matters: Freud’s use of projection differs greatly from Simon Blackburn’s. We approach the metaphor then, not with some definition, but begin to probe its uses by drawing some distinctions and asking questions about what might prompt its usage. Although the metaphor eludes a reductive definition, two dominant senses can be distinguished in its usage. One I shall call feature projection. Feature projection understands the metaphor as the attribution of what are features of minds to features of something else: something ‘in here’ is attributed to something ‘out there’. Its paradigms include the disposition to anthropomorphize nature, the Freudian notion of unwanted mental states being attributed to other subjects, and a view of secondary qualities where sensational properties of experience end up represented as properties of the object of the experience. The second sense of projection is what I shall call explanatory projection. Uses of the metaphor that are explanatorily projective are not guided by an implicit understanding of it as the attribution of something ‘in here’ to something ‘out there’ but rather that something in here—a feature of mentality—explains why the thinker takes the world to be the way she takes it. To say that Alice’s belief that Edmund is faithful is a projection of her fear of loss is to say that she so believes because of her fear, not that she attributes her

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fear to something ‘out there’. To say that value is a projection of our desire is to say that it is because of our desires we ‘find’ value in the world, not that valued objects have desires. In feature projection, the aptness of ‘projection’ lies in its spatial connotations, of ‘throwing forward’ something ‘in here’ ‘out there’. In explanatory projection the metaphor rests more with the fact that there is an appearance whose explanation lies not in the world being the way it seems but because of the mentality of the thinker. The world seems thus and so to a thinker, not because it is that way, but because of some feature of the subject’s mentality, of which the appearance is a projection. Feature and explanatory projection are not mutually exclusive, and we shall see uses of the metaphor where the two come together. Nevertheless the distinction is helpful inasmuch as the tendency to think of projection simply as feature projection can mislead. There are certainly Humean texts that suggest feature projection and we shall come to these in due course. Nevertheless much of what is projective in Hume is projective in the explanatory sense, and it is this notion of projection we examine first. Explanatory projection is a matter of explaining how the subject takes the world to be by appeal to some feature of their mind of which that appearance is a projection: in virtue of something ‘in here’, the world ‘out there’ appears to be a certain way. Evidently there are different ways in which the world can appear to the subject, different states of mind that explain that appearance and different ways in which such explanations might go. Believing that there is a god might be a projection of fear and the appearance of value might be a projection of desire, but the appearance, states and forms of explanation are different. The suggestion pursued here is that these otherwise disparate notions are united by an implicit contrast with detective or responsive explanations. In broadest outlines, we take a thinker’s beliefs, experiences and concepts to be properly responsive to the features that those beliefs, experiences and concepts purport to represent. We think of beliefs as responsive to truth, facts or evidence, experiences to the character of their objects, concepts to properties and rational linkages. In explanatory projection we think, for some reason, the way the subject takes the world to be cannot or should not be explained by appeal to the subject being correctly detective or responsive in the area. We then appeal to some other feature of the subject’s mental life, of which the appearance is a projection. In a slogan: explanatory projection is non-detective explanation. It might now be protested that the notion of detection or responsiveness against which projection is contrasted is hardly a perspicuous one. All we are told is that a detective explanation is one whereby the subject’s taking the world to be the way she does is explained by appeal to a certain responsiveness on her part. That seems too abstract and vague to do any work. But it would be a mistake to demand any more at this level of abstraction. The relevant detective contrast for, say, necessity will differ from that for aesthetic value, which in turn will

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differ from that for the objects of religious belief. Rather than trying to capture the notion of detection in the abstract, then, we should approach each particular area dubbed ‘projective’ and try to uncover the detective contrast appropriate to that area. To that end we approach matters armed with a set of questions rather than definitions. These schematic questions will serve to focus discussion when we turn to the text. They are not intended as an analysis of the metaphor or all its uses: nor is my division between feature and explanatory projection supposed to be exhaustive of all uses. Nevertheless approaching the text in these terms is illuminating, as we shall see. The first question to be asked of any explanatorily projective story is: •

What is the privileged notion of responsiveness or detection against which the projective explanation is articulated?

The answer to this question will obviously be informed by the explanandum. I have so far talked of the ‘subject taking the world to be a certain way’, but that admits a variety of different interpretations. For the ‘way the subject takes the world to be’ can mean perceptual appearance (Alice’s beautiful appearance is a projection of Edmund’s love), the subject’s belief (Alice’s belief that Edmund is faithful is a projection of her fear of loss), or more broadly the kinds of concepts subjects deploy (value is a projection of desire, necessity of the limits of our imagination) and more. Again this needs to be discussed in context and we approach matters with a second question. •

What is the explanandum? Are we trying to explain the presence of a belief? The presence of a distinct area of content? Of an experience? Or something else?

A third question to ask is why we cannot explain the subject’s taking the world to be thus and so by appeal to her being properly responsive. If what motivates a projective explanation is that we cannot think of the subject as a detector, then we need to know why this is so. Hence: •

On what grounds is it thought that the subject is not responsive in the relevant area?

Knowing the answer to this question in each case is important for deciding whether realism can be rendered compatible with projection. Now, there are some uses of the metaphor that are intended to signal simply that there is illusion or error, and so such uses are clearly inconsistent with realism. But this use of the metaphor is uninteresting. When we view the metaphor as alluding to an explanation of how the subject takes the world to be, then it need not follow a belief that has a projective—non-detective—explanation is false or unjustifiable. The explanation of how we come to believe in, say, causal powers is one thing, their existence quite another (cf. Craig 2000).

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But when we descend to the level of detail, things are hardly straightforward. For one thing, the reasons to reject detection in the area may constitute or presuppose a form of anti-realism. Crudely we might conclude that we are not detectors because there is not, or could not be, the kind of properties or facts we take there to be or we might think it impossible to represent the (alleged) facts and so a fortiori we cannot be responsive to them. But this need not be the case. The next thing to be asked of a feature projective account is what feature of our psychology enters into the explanation. Not being a detector is necessary for being a projector, but it is not sufficient. In explanatory projection the appearance—belief, practice, concept, experience—is supposed to be explained by some feature of our mental life, and so we shall need to be able to identify the mental feature of which that appearance is a projection. Hence our fourth question: •

Of what mental feature is the projected appearance (the belief, the content, the experience) a projection?

Again answers to this question depend on the explanandum. Candidate features included imaginative blocks or habits for modal thought, desires for evaluation, and sensations for colours. Understanding the projective story will be a matter of trying to understand how such mental features relate to what is to be explained. Which brings us to our final question: •

What is the mechanism or nature of the projection? What kind of explanation is invoked to explain the appearance?

There should be no need to say that answers again will vary considerably. If the use of moral distinctions is the explanandum, desire the mental state of which this is a projection, the projecting may be a matter of the language used to express such attitudes. Or if the explanandum is Alice’s belief that Edmund is faithful, her fear of loss the relevant mental state, the projecting involved is that of interfering with or distorting her evidence processing. But the state of mind and the explanation had better be such as to relate to the content of the explanandum. For consider the following, which is surely not a case of projection. Edmund is particularly angry and so careless while looking at his diary. He forms the belief that his appointment with Alice is at 3.30 today, but he had simply looked at the wrong page, and the appointment is tomorrow. We can appeal to his anger to explain his belief, but we would not say it was a projection of his anger. There is no particular link between the anger and the belief so explained, as the anger simply caused a general sloppiness: the content of the belief formed bears no interesting relation to the state of mind that indirectly brought the belief about. In projection cases we need to specify the explanatory relation in a way whereby just this state of mind explains just that product.

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1 . 2 P RO J E C T I O N A N D T H E O R I G I N S O F R E L I G I O N We begin with Hume’s account of the origin of religious belief given in the Natural History of Religion (NHR). The NHR is complex in both its strategies and its targets,¹ but its centre of gravity is an account of the origin of religion in human nature. The explanation prompts commentators to use the word ‘projection’. Thus the NHR ‘describes the tendency of the imagination to project its own features onto the world’ (McIntyre 1999: 174) and ‘[a]ccording to Hume, God is the product of human projections’ (Streminger 1989: 283)—see also Bernard (1994: 226–7). Why might one think that? We begin by asking the questions identified in the previous section. First, what is the explanandum of Hume’s account? The NHR seeks to explain the ‘origin in human nature’ of religion or religious belief (NHR 135), an account of the principles that ‘give rise to the original belief ’ (NHR 134). The term ‘belief ’ here has two senses. First, ‘belief’ here means the content distinctive of religious commitment and ‘origin’ means the emergence and employment of such a content in thinkers who previously lacked it. This ‘core content’ as I shall call it is the ‘belief of invisible intelligent power’ (NHR 134). The notion of invisible, intelligent power is treated as a necessary and sufficient² condition for any belief to be a religious belief. It is, Hume says, the ‘only point of theology, in which we shall find a consent of mankind almost universal’ (NHR VI 144). So although Hume distinguishes a number of different forms of religion—polytheism and monotheism in the NHR, and elsewhere between the false religions of superstition and enthusiasm and a ‘true religion’—all these different forms of religious belief are united by their employment of the idea of invisible intelligent power. Polytheistic belief is belief in multiple invisible intelligent powers, monotheistic a single invisible and intelligent power, superstition the conception of a malign invisible intelligent power, enthusiasm in a personal benevolent God.³ Hume’s ‘true religion’ involves the notion of invisible intelligent power, where that belief is sustained by reason. The fact that they all employ the notion of invisible intelligent power is what makes the NHR a natural history of religion and not a natural history of one form of religion: it explains the very presence of the content that is distinctive of any form of religious belief. ¹ For other discussions see Baier (1994), Falkenstein (2003), Herdt (1997: 171ff ), Malherbe (1995), Webb (1991), Yandell (1976) and (1990: Part I) and my ‘Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion’, Philosophical Quarterly 2007. ² There is a complication here on the sufficiency condition. In section IV of the NHR, Hume implies that, contrary to the suggestions elsewhere, polytheism is not a religious belief at all for the belief in elves and fairies seems to resemble atheism more that monotheism. This however is a rhetorical move on Hume’s part. For discussion see Baier (1994: 68–9). ³ On this distinction, see e.g. his essay ‘Of superstition and enthusiasm’.

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Secondly, ‘belief ’ here means the social presence of that core content. So one might call a body of doctrine ‘Christian belief’ and furthermore ask why such a doctrine took hold of the minds of many. For Hume, the question is how the core content emerged as a central aspect of human thought and concern. Qua content, the notion of ‘invisible intelligent power’ is a complex content or idea. It is readily intelligible in virtue of the intelligibility of its constituents⁴ and violates no restrictions on meaning. But the mind can combine ideas almost indefinitely and conjure up all kinds of combinations (guitar-playing cats, houses that walk etc.). And of course not each and every possible combination becomes embodied in belief, the object of denial, investigation, dispute, or faith. What is needed is an explanation not only of how the three notions of invisible intelligent power become combined in the imagination to form the core content, but how that core content takes on a central role in human thought. The explanandum then is the presence of the core content of religious belief. Let us now turn to some of the detail of his explanation. He begins with a conjecture about the environmental conditions in which pre-religious thinkers find themselves and some basic and highly plausible assumptions about human psychology. For early humans there is no Miltonian paradise wherein Adam has the leisure to wonder at the regularity of the universe and infer a designer. Early humans have more pressing concerns such as from where the next meal might come and when the drought will end. Resolving these practical concerns is sometimes literally a matter of life and death. Success depends on predicting and manipulating nature, but early humans are ignorant of the causes of the natural events upon which they pin their hopes and fears, making them impotent in the face of an intractable nature. These circumstances make for a psychologically intolerable situation. The passions ‘are kept in perpetual alarm by an anxious expectation of . . . events’ (NHR III 140), and We hang in perpetual suspence between life and death, health and sickness, plenty and want; which are distributed amongst the human species by secret and unknown causes, whose operation is oft unexpected, and always unaccountable. These unknown causes, then, become the constant object of our hope and fear . . . (NHR III 140)

In their anxiety, early thinkers seek an idea of the unknown causes which are the objects of their hopes and fears, and the imagination offers the idea of finite, powerful, invisible agents controlling natural events: the gods of polytheism. This, the first instance of the core content, owes itself to a standing, and independently established, disposition to anthropomorphize nature. There is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; ⁴ Hume’s scepticism about the idea of power plays no role in the NHR.

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and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good-will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us. (NHR III 141)⁵

What is it about this account that makes ‘projection’ appropriate? It might be thought that the answer is obvious. We attribute features of mentality to the unknown causes of events so the account invokes feature projection: we represent features of our minds to be features of something else. The particular form of projection here is anthropomorphism. That is a phenomenon that can take many forms, including simple poetic metaphor and the sentimental Disney-style representation of animals as human beings in animal shape as well as the attribution of mentality, of a certain kind, to non-human animals. Thus Stephen R. L. Clark writes ‘it is extraordinarily difficult to find out what animals are really like, to move beyond the stereotypes and projections and sentimental misapprehensions’ (1997: 47). Without doubt uses of the metaphor pick up on our disposition to anthropomorphize and it may not seem very puzzling. But it is important here that such an attribution is groundless. For conceivably we might attribute mentality sufficiently like ours to non-humans without, at the same time, feeling any temptation to think in terms of projection. We might attribute mindedness to chimps or to sophisticated computers. Presumably in the case of chimps or computers we think, in non-projective cases, of the attribution as appropriate or justified, and not so in projection cases.⁶ Part of what makes Hume’s account ‘projective’ is that there is a groundless attribution of human mentality to non-human objects. That, however, is only part of the story, and in some ways the least interesting. Such a groundless attribution requires an explanation, and although the standing disposition to anthropomorphize is necessary in Hume’s account it is certainly not sufficient to explain the emergence of polytheistic belief. A deeper look at the explanation reveals how the account is explanatorily projective. Recall that the early humans’ hopes and fears generate a deep anxiety: their lives depend on the ⁵ See also Hume’s letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, 10 March 1751. The tendency is also noted in the Treatise, and invoked to explain the ‘fictions’ of ‘antient philosophy’. 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. This inclination, ’tis true, is supress’d by a little reflection, and only takes place in children, poets, and the antient philosophers. It appears in children, by their desire of beating the stones, which hurt them: In poets, by their readiness to personify every thing: And in the antient philosophers, by these fictions of sympathy and antipathy. We must pardon children, because of their age; poets, because they profess to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy: But what excuse shall we find to justify our philosophers in so signal a weakness? ( T 1.4.3.11; SBN 224–5) The basis of this disposition in the imagination is discussed in section 2.4.3. That polytheism and the errors of ‘antient philosophers’ have the same root in this disposition is made explicit in the NHR. ⁶ This is to be distinguished from an exercise of imaginative projection, whereby we try to conceive of another from the ‘inside’. This is what simulationists think we do when we understand other minds. Here projection is a kind of imaginative activity. For this applied to Hume’s account of sympathy, see Gordon (1995).

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unknown causes they can neither predict nor manipulate. This anxiety conspires with the anthropomorphizing disposition in the following way: the view that the unknown powers are intelligent invisible powers appeals because adopting that belief ameliorates the anxiety the thinkers feel prior to the belief. The disposition then is triggered and sustained because it removes psychological discomfort. The belief offers a familiar model upon which to conceive the unknown causes, making natural events explicable, and importantly it promises a degree of control and prediction. The gods, being like humans, are open to flattery, bribery and persuasion, and so the anxiety generated by the combination of hope, fear and ignorance is palliated because the subject can take action appropriate to those causes. In a state of fear and anxiety,⁷ we seek ‘recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our misfortune is supposed entirely to depend’ (NHR III 143): As the causes, which bestow happiness or misery, are, in general very little known and very uncertain, our anxious concern endeavours to attain a determinate idea of them; and finds no better expedient than to represent them as intelligent voluntary agents like ourselves; only somewhat superior in power and wisdom. (NHR V 152)

Consider now the questions we set ourselves regarding explanatory projective accounts in section 1.1. The explanandum of the account is the emergence of the core content—of invisible intelligent power. The state of mind of which it is a projection is (a combination of) fear, anxiety and a disposition to anthropomorphize. We have the answer to the question of what the explanandum of the account is, and of what states the explanandum is a projection. We need now to know what the contrast ‘detective’ account is, why the explanation is not detective and what is the mechanism of projection. We approach these questions at once. Notice Hume reserves a key role for the passions in his explanation. In ‘Of the Immortality of the Soul’, he says all ‘doctrines are to be suspected which are favoured by our passions’, and cites hope and fear as the suspect passions which are conducive to that belief (EMPL: 598). We can reconstruct his grounds for suspicion by appeal to a phenomenon David Pears (1984) calls motivated irrationality. The general idea here is the operation of the passions on belief-fixation. The passion causes the thinker not to be appropriately responsive to evidence or reasons bearing on the relevant belief. The irrationality lies in a subject’s failure to be appropriately responsive, epistemically speaking, to what would otherwise be salient evidence for or against the belief. The irrationality is motivated inasmuch as the passions bias the epistemic mechanisms because, crudely, the subject strongly wanting something to be the case or wanting something strongly not to be the case. Alice believes that Edmund is faithful, despite what would otherwise be salient counter-evidence. ⁷ For Hume, anxiety is a species of the passion of fear—see T.2.3.10.31; SBN 447–8.

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Edmund ‘works late’ too often, takes mysterious phone calls, hides his credit card bill, often smells of perfume and still she believes that Edmund is faithful. She is blind to otherwise salient evidence to the contrary (she refuses to acknowledge the lipstick on his collar), fails to seek evidence to the contrary (she won’t look in his pockets), rationalizes (in the bad sense of the word) the evidence (‘I must have lipstick of that colour somewhere . . .’) or fails to draw inferences that the evidence would otherwise suggest. From the third-person standpoint, there is something puzzling about the belief that requires explanation, for Alice is not generally incompetent or stupid. Her failure to be appropriately responsive is explained by her fear. Her fear of loss is so great it biases her otherwise normal cognitive mechanisms in order to avoid a confrontation with the awful truth. Given that Edmund is unfaithful (and she can’t change that), she opts for the next best thing—the belief that he is not. She values this belief, and she maintains it by allowing her fear to bias her cognitive mechanisms. Her fear of loss explains her belief, and her belief that Edmund is faithful is a projection of that fear. We think she is not a detector because she is in this case not appropriately responsive to the evidence. Fred, in an even more pathological frame of mind, takes the mention of rain by a Manchester weather reporter, upon whom his desire is fixated, as a secret message of love to him. For him, his cognitive mechanisms are biased in such a way that what would not normally be conceived as evidence for a belief that p is taken as such. His interpretation of such statements is a projection of his desire. Such phenomena are real enough and can even affect the phenomenology of experience (one’s fear can make the dark clouds take on a dreadful countenance).⁸ Russell’s view that there is a Loch Ness monster is a projection of his desire for the world to contain mystery; Sarah’s fear of the bridge is a projection of her insecurity; and so on. Hume’s account of the fixation of the first form of religious belief—and hence the introduction of the core content—depends on that belief being ‘favoured by the passions’. The belief’s causal explanation—and consequently the causal explanation of the core content—is an instance of motivated irrationality. The belief is adopted because it removes the anxiety that the thinker’s ignorance, impotence, and investment in controlling nature engenders. By combining the notions of invisible intelligent power and fixing them in the attitude of belief, one is offered an intelligible conception of the world and the chance of manipulating the causes of natural events. The explanation of the fixation of this belief is non-detective. The relevant detective contrast for projection would have the belief ’s causal explanation resting in some epistemically reliable mechanism or process. That is to say, its emergence does not owe itself to a grasp of evidence in favour or some truth-sensitive process. ⁸ For a subtle view of the complexities of such phenomena and their relation to projection, see Wollheim (1984) and (1993).

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Now saying what those truth-sensitive processes are is a delicate matter. In the next chapter, we shall take a closer look at Hume’s account of the matter. For Hume, very roughly speaking, it is equivalent to the faculty called ‘reason’. ‘Reason’, he writes, is ‘a kind of cause, of which truth is the natural effect’ (T 1.4.1.1; SBN 180). For the moment however we can make two points. First, even outside the technicalities of Hume’s account of reason, it is quite clear that the emergence of the belief is not a product of a grasp of the evidence or some inference to the best explanation.⁹ Hume gives no indication in the NHR that early humans come to hold the belief because of any supposed epistemic virtue and every indication that they do not: he is quite explicit that the original belief does not emerge from reason (NHR introduction). Secondly, and more importantly, fixation by motivated irrationality is evidently non-detective in the sense that the belief ’s fixation works against the aim of belief: of accurately reflecting how the world stands. For the belief is fixated in the light of what the subject strongly values and that overrides the subject’s sensitivity to evidence against that belief. It can render the agent blind to facts and evidence which count against the belief that serves the subject’s evaluations. Because the belief makes the subject feel better, the belief is retained despite what would be otherwise salient evidence to the contrary. That makes such fixation manifestly unreliable, epistemically speaking. In summary: the explanandum of the projective explanation is the emergence of religious belief, construed as the presence of the core content. The explanation involves the manifestation of a disposition to anthropomorphize and in that sense involves feature projection. But that disposition becomes manifested in belief through the biasing of the passions, which fixate the belief in order to remove the anxiety generated in early thinkers. The mechanism of projection is motivated irrationality, the states of mind of which the belief is a projection comprise fear, anxiety and the disposition to anthropomorphize. The belief issues from a process that biases the subject against possible counter-evidence and is in that sense a non-detective explanation.

1 . 3 D I G R E S S I O N : A B R I E F C O M PA R I S O N W I T H F R E U D In ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Life’ Freud claims that ‘a large part of the mythological view of the world, which extends a long way into the most modern religions, is nothing but psychology projected into the external world ’ (1960: 258). This grand claim is given more concrete backing in Totem and Taboo (Freud’s own ‘natural history of religion’), where he explains why people come to believe in demons, invisible and malign agents. We have just seen that Hume ⁹ Something like this inference to the best explanation understanding can be found in Herdt (1997: 172ff ).

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explains the emergence of religion in a projective manner. Since both accounts are projective and Freud himself has much to say about ‘projection’ it is worth pausing to compare the two briefly.¹⁰ Freudian projection is the fixation of belief in an effort to remove or avoid some unwanted state of mind, and so is an instance of motivated irrationality. It is, that is to say, one of Freud’s defence mechanisms. However, whereas we have been allowing the term projection to apply to any instance of motivated irrationality, Freud reserves the term ‘projection’ for a particular form of it. In central cases the state causally responsible for the belief figures in its content: my hatred makes me think something else hates me. The state of mind generates psychological discomfort and in an effort to remove that discomfort the relevant state of mind is represented to be a state of someone—or something—else.¹¹ Liam’s belief that Noel hates him is a projection in that Liam’s negative evaluation of his own hatred towards Noel determines his belief that Noel hates him.¹² He cannot bear to acknowledge his hatred of Noel, and in an effort to remove the discomfort he attributes the hatred to someone else. So although an instance of motivated irrationality, Freud’s account involves an additional sense of projection, that of ‘expulsion’. Representing Noel as hating Liam, Liam ‘expels’ his negativelyvalued state, hence removing the anxiety generated by his acknowledgement that it is he who is the one filled with hatred. Such projection figures in Freud’s explanation of religious belief, construed as belief in malign spirits, in the following way. His starting point is a conjecture about the attitudes survivors take towards their dead loved ones, namely love and hostility. This latter attitude is partly fostered by a sense of abandonment but is also latent in all loving relationships anyway (for Freud love is never pure). The survivors find themselves in a psychologically unstable position because they cannot in good conscience acknowledge the hostility directed toward their dead loved ones. To rid themselves of the unwanted attitude of hostility they come to believe that something else is hostile towards them, namely the spirit of the departed supposed to continue to exist after death. This defence against the negatively-evaluated state ‘takes the form of displacing [the hostility] onto the object of the hostility . . . [t]his defensive procedure, which is a common one in normal and pathological mental life, is known as a ‘‘projection’’ ’ (1955: 61). By representing something else as hostile, the survivor disowns the state, and removes his own anxiety. Thus ‘the hostility, of which the survivors know nothing and moreover wish to know nothing, is ejected from internal perception into the external world, and thus detached from them and pushed onto someone ¹⁰ Another psychoanalyst who makes much of ‘projection’ is Melanie Klein. For discussion from a philosophical perspective, see A. Price (1992) and (2000). ¹¹ For discussions of projection in psychoanalysis, see Wollheim (1984), Wollheim (1993), and the relevant entries in Hinshelwood (1989). Juni (1979) plots a particularly useful path through what is a dense jungle. ¹² Wollheim (1993) dubs this ‘simple projection’.

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else’ (1955: 62–3). Like Hume, then, Freud thinks key religious notions emerge through motivated irrationality and, in our wider sense, both Hume and Freud’s accounts are explanatorily projective. The major difference is that for Freud the account is projective in the narrow, expulsive, sense of projection of which there is no trace in Hume. 1 . 4 P RO J E C T I O N A N D T H E O R I G I N S O F T H E E X T E R N A L WO R L D B E L I E F Having seen in what senses the NHR’s explanation of the emergence of religious belief is projective, we now turn to the first parallel between the NHR and ‘Of scepticism regard to the senses’ (SWRS). The first form of religious belief emerged through the manifestation of an independently identifiable psychological disposition that removes an anxiety generated by psychological discomfort. The belief is a projection of these states of mind. The origins of the external world belief are projective in just this sense: the belief emerges through the manifestation of a standing psychological disposition that removes a psychological discomfort. SWRS seeks to explain the causes of the belief in body. The core content of the belief involves the supposition that objects of experience continue to exist unperceived and are (spatially) distinct from us. That gives us the explanandum of our projective explanation. The original version of this belief is the vulgar view of perception, which has a distinctive view of our perceptual relation to such objects. On this view, the objects supposed to be distinct, and that continue to exist unperceived, are those with which we enjoy direct and unmediated acquaintance. When Hume says ‘the vulgar confound perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct continu’d existence to the very things they feel and see’ (T 1.4.2.14; SBN 193), he means that the objects with which the vulgar are directly acquainted are taken by them to be continuous and distinct. Those objects are not taken by the vulgar to be perceptions, but continuous and distinct items that are directly present to the mind. Hume suggests three candidate sources for this belief, the senses, reason and the imagination. The first two are rejected: it is these two sources which provide the detective contrast for the projective explanation, and we will not be in a position to understand fully these notions, and why they cannot be the source of the belief, until the next chapter. Nevertheless, an important point about the senses should be made here. Hume’s use of the ‘senses’ in this context is a technical one: the ‘senses’ are not construed in the humdrum way of touch, sight and hearing and so forth, but instead are understood as acquaintance with impressions. He takes it to be ‘pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas’ (T 1.2.6.7; SBN 67). In effect, the vulgar view of the perceptual relation to ‘external objects’—that the objects of perception are simply presented to the mind—is

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retained, but the objects are construed as sense impressions. This is made clear in the first Enquiry: This very table, which we see white, and which we feel hard, is believed to exist, independent of our perception, and to be something external to our mind, which perceives it . . . [but] the slightest philosophy . . . teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, 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. . . . this house and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the mind. (EHU 12.1.8–9; SBN 151–2 (emphasis original))¹³

The final sentence implies that the objects of acquaintance are perceptions, and the rest of the passage suggests that the ordinary view of the perceptual relation is that of unmediated acquaintance. To be the source of the belief, the senses—acquaintance—would have to reveal either that the objects of acquaintance continue to exist unperceived or are distinct (if you get one, the other comes for free, according to Hume). Acquaintance cannot reveal continued existence: to think so is ‘a contradiction in terms, and supposes that the senses continue to operate, even after they have ceas’d all manner of operation’ (T 1.4.2.3; SBN 188). Nor, for reasons the discussion of which we shall postpone, can acquaintance reveal such objects to be distinct. So the senses are not the source of the belief. This leaves us with the imagination. How does the imagination, whose input is sensory impressions that are neither distinct nor continuous, produce the belief of continued and distinct existence? Hume’s eye first falls on how we come to think that perceptions continue to exist unperceived. We do not conceive all perceptions so to exist. We do not, for example, think pains continue to exist unperceived. What feature is common to those conceived to be continuous? Hume first suggests what he calls constancy (T 1.4.2.18 et seq; SBN 194ff ) which is the phenomenological feature of qualitative indistinguishability. Perceptions can be interrupted (e.g. by briefly closing my eyes), but remain phenomenologically indistinguishable on either side of the interruption: upon opening my eyes, a qualitatively similar, though numerically distinct, set of perceptions greet me. Such constancy is rare. Even after a brief interruption the new set of perceptions is not qualitatively identical to the previous set, and the longer the interruption, the greater the qualitative difference. The constancy of perceptions is too limited a basis for attribution of continuity to perceptions. In any case, I attribute continuity to objects even when they change a great deal; I think the fire I left blazing in my study is the same object as the dimming embers I see on my return. ¹³ This wording is from the 1777 edition. The wording in the 1772 edition is as follows: 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 perception, 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. (EHU 12.1.9)

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But, thinks Hume, I know enough about general regularities for me to recognize a kind of coherence between the two sets of perceptions, allowing me to integrate these perceptual changes. The fire may have changed from its blazing state into dim embers, but ‘I am accustom’d in other instances to see a like alteration produc’d in a like time, whether I am present or absent, near or remote’ (T 1.4.2.19; SBN 195). Constancy and coherence are the features that lead the vulgar to attribute a distinct and continued existence to perceptions. It is crucial to recognize that Hume does not think the vulgar reason upon these features to arrive at the belief. To anticipate a little of the discussion of the next chapter, probable reason involves a grasp of observed conjunctions of observed causes with observed effects. To reason to the conclusion that constancy relates to continuity, we have to be in a position to observe the continued existence of objects: but ex hypothesi this is what we cannot do (T 1.4.2.21; SBN 198). Instead the belief ‘must arise from the co-operation of some other principles’ (T 1.4.2.21; SBN 198). The relevant principle is the ‘simple supposition’ of continued existence (T 1.4.2.22; SBN 198). This supposition greatly increases the coherence and constancy of the perceptions, allowing the belief-forming mechanism to over-extend itself ‘like a galley put in motion by the oars, carries on its course without any new impulse’ (T 1.4.2.22; SBN 198). This, in effect, returns us to square one: coherence, if it is to pull any real weight in the belief, presupposes the ‘simple supposition’ of the continued existence of perceptions. And to produce the supposition of continuity we return to constancy.¹⁴ Recall that constancy is (near) qualitative identity through interruption. Perceptions, however, are ‘fleeting existences’ so that the objects on one side of an interruption are numerically different from the qualitatively similar one on the other side. And it is here that we get our parallel with the projective explanation for religious contents. First, Hume makes appeal to a standing, identifiable psychological disposition. Secondly, the disposition’s manifestation owes itself to the subject’s effort to remove a psychological discomfort. The relevant disposition is that of ascribing numerical identity to what are really numerically distinct but resembling objects. Hume thinks he has independent grounds for such a disposition.¹⁵ The constancy of perceptions triggers this psychological disposition, producing the tendency to conceive the numerically distinct, but resembling, objects of experience as experiences of numerically identical objects. However, at the same time we are aware that these objects are ¹⁴ Barry Stroud (1977: 100) says constancy is the important relation and ‘ ‘‘coherence’’ plays only a supplementary role’ in Hume’s account. Constancy ‘is what is responsible for getting the belief in the continued and distinct existence of objects in the first place’. (ibid.) See also Pears (1990: 184ff ). ¹⁵ ‘We shall afterwards see many instances of this tendency’ ( T 1.4.2.35; SBN 204). The basis of this disposition in the imagination is discussed in s. 2.4.3. Its basis is the same as that responsible for anthropomorphism.

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not numerically identical. This awareness that the objects are numerically distinct is met by the pull of the disposition to view them as identical. This produces a Humean ‘contradiction’, an opposition of psychological forces whereby we are pulled to believe that resembling perceptions are identical, but are aware that they are not.¹⁶ This elicits in the thinker a ‘perplexity arising from this contradiction [which] produces a propension to unite these broken appearances by the fiction of a continu’d existence’ (T 1.4.2.36; SBN 205). This perplexity issues in an ‘uneasiness’ or psychological discomfort: to remove it, the disposition is given its head and we ‘feign’ the continued existence of sensible objects: Nothing is more certain from experience, than that any contradiction either to the sentiments or passions gives a sensible uneasiness, whether it proceeds from without or from within; from the opposition of external objects, or from the combat of internal principles. On the contrary, whatever strikes in with the natural propensities, and either externally forwards their satisfaction, or internally concurs with their movements, is sure to give a sensible pleasure. Now there being here an opposition betwixt the notion of the identity of resembling perceptions, and the interruption of their appearance, the mind must be uneasy in that situation, and will naturally seek relief from the uneasiness. Since the uneasiness arises from the opposition of two contrary principles, it must look for relief by sacrificing the one to the other. ( T 1.4.2.37; SBN 205–6 (my emphasis))

Here we have it: to remove a psychological discomfort or dissonance, the mind yields to a standing psychological disposition. This disposition, like the one to anthropomorphize, is the source for a content—continued existence—which is fixed, in virtue of its offering relief from psychological discomfort. The fact that such objects are known not to be continuous is completely disguised by the need to halt the uneasiness, which in turn biases the subject’s cognitive mechanisms. The account therefore is explanatory projective. Its explanandum is the core content of external world belief, the notion of continued and distinct existence.¹⁷ The mechanism of projection is the biasing of one’s cognitive processes. The belief is a projection of the uneasiness or dissonance. The account is non-detective in that the emergence of the belief does not owe itself to the senses or reason. In these respects the emergence of this belief parallels that of polytheism, except inasmuch as there is no hint of feature projection. 1 . 5 T H E T R A N S M U TAT I O N O F T H E C O R E C O N T E N TS : F U RT H E R PA R A L L E L S In both the religious and external world accounts there is a core content that emerges from the manifestation of a disposition to remove psychological ¹⁶ ‘But as the interruption of the appearance seems contrary to the identity, and naturally leads us to regard these resembling perceptions as different from each other, we here find ourselves at a loss how to reconcile such opposite opinions’ ( T 1.4.2.36; SBN 205). ¹⁷ Recall that distinctness falls out of continuity—for discussion see s. 2.4.3

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discomfort. But polytheism and the vulgar view of perception are early versions of their respective core contents. Both of these early versions are shown to be false by minimal reflection. When polytheists ‘discover, by a little reflection, that the course of nature is regular and uniform, their whole faith totters, and falls to ruin’ (NHR VI 154), and as for the vulgar perceptual belief, ‘very little reflection and philosophy is sufficient to make us perceive the fallacy of that opinion’ (T 1.4.2.44; SBN 210). Nevertheless each belief is capable of more sophisticated versions which are not so obviously false. The core content of invisible intelligent power becomes expressed in monotheistic form. There is a single invisible intelligent power. The core content of external world belief, that of continued and distinct existence, gains expression in the philosophical system of ‘double existence’. There are continued and distinct objects that both cause and resemble perceptions. Neither version, however, is produced by reason, but instead owes itself to the same projective sources responsible for the earlier versions. Hume declares that reason shows the vulgar view to be false. He further adds that were we fully convinced by reason we would simply abandon the notion of continued and distinct existence altogether: were we fully convinc’d, that our perceptions are dependent, and interrupted, and different, we shoul’d be as little inclin’d to embrace the opinion of a double existence; since in that case we shou’d clearly perceive the error of the first supposition of a continu’d existence, and wou’d never regard it any farther. ( T 1.4.2.52; SBN 215–16)

Instead the notion of continued and distinct existence gains its expression in the philosophical view. This version of the belief construes the perceptual relation as follows: in virtue of our direct awareness of, or acquaintance with, perceptions, we are, in veridical experience, indirectly aware of objects other than perceptions. These indirect objects of experience continue to exist when not perceived and are distinct from us. The direct objects of awareness—perceptions—resemble in re objects that continue to exist unperceived. The resemblance relation between perceptions and the external objects is supposed to secure a genuine notion of representation, and allow for the possibility of belief in a world external to our private experience.¹⁸ This belief cannot be the causal upshot of reason. To reason to a conclusion requires an experience of cause and effect, but ex hypothesi we do not have direct experience of the ‘external object’.¹⁹ Instead, like the vulgar version, ¹⁸ For further discussion, see s. 3.2. ¹⁹ ‘The only conclusion we can draw from the existence of one thing to that of another, is by means of the relation of cause and effect, which shews, that there is a connexion betwixt them, and that the existence of one is dependent on that of the other. The idea of this relation is 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,

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the belief emerges as a response to psychological discomfort. Philosophers are aware of the falsity of the vulgar system, but are still in its grip, psychologically speaking. If they were really guided by reason, they would rest content with acknowledging its falsity: but its psychological pull is too strong to escape. We have another ‘contradiction’, generating an uneasiness that the formation of a belief palliates: Nature is obstinate, and will not quit the field, however strongly attack’d by reason; and at the same time reason is so clear in the point, that there is no possibility of disguising her. Not being able to reconcile these two enemies, we endeavour to set ourselves at ease as much as possible, by successively granting to each whatever it demands, and by feigning a double existence, where each may find something, that has all the conditions it desires. ( T 1.4.2.52; SBN 215)

So the falsity is overcome with the fiction of double existence. By this means ‘we can humour our reason for a moment, when it becomes troublesome and sollicitous’ (T 1.4.2.53; SBN 216). As with the transition from the vulgar to the philosophical view, the emergence of the monotheistic version of invisible intelligent power from polytheism is explained by the same psychological processes responsible for that earlier version of it. Its emergence does not owe itself to a grasp of reasons in favour of the belief: ‘whoever thinks that it [monotheism] has owed its success to the prevalent force of those invincible reasons, on which it is undoubtedly founded, would show himself little acquainted with the ignorance and stupidity of the people, and their incurable prejudices in favour of their particular superstitions’ (NHR VI 153). Instead, Hume argues, the belief emerges in the following way. The pantheon is modelled on human social order, where one god is picked out as the prince or supreme magistrate. This god becomes the central target for the hopes and fears of the believers, and the more extreme the fear, the higher the degree of flattery. That means conceiving of the relevant god as increasingly powerful, knowing, intelligent, benevolent, and so on. The end point of this process is conceiving of a being infinitely powerful, all knowing, and perfectly benevolent. At this point believers’ views: coincide, by chance, with the principles of reason and true philosophy; though they are guided to that notion, not by reason, of which they are in great measure incapable, but by the adulation and fears of the most vulgar superstition. (NHR VI 155)

The causation of the belief is not reason; the emergence of the monotheistic version of the core content owes itself to the anxieties of the vulgar mind. So both sophisticated versions have similar projective sources to those of the earlier versions. Both sophisticated versions also have a far more tenuous grip on the imagination than their earlier counterparts. The philosophical belief is a but can never observe it betwixt perceptions and objects’ ( T 1.4.2.47; SBN 212). (For discussion see s. 2.3.3.)

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belief of the study only: outside it we ‘easily return to our vulgar and natural notions’ and we fall back on ‘those exploded opinions’. The philosophical view is too abstract to exert any sustained pull on the mind: as Hume writes, ‘I cannot forbear concluding, from the very abstractness and difficulty [of the view] that ’tis an improper subject for the fancy to work upon’ (T 1.4.2.48; SBN 213). In the religious case, monotheism is subject to a similar feature. ‘Such refined ideas’, he writes, ‘being somewhat disproportioned to vulgar comprehension, remain not long in their original purity; but require to be supported by the notion of inferior mediators or subordinate agents, which interpose between mankind and their supreme deity’ (NHR VIII 159). These become the ‘chief objects of devotion’, engendering a ‘continual flux and reflux of polytheism and theism’. Although these ‘objects’ are more easily understood by the vulgar, the natural propensity to elevation pushes them again in the direction of pure theism. There is an oscillation, or flux and reflux, between vulgar polytheism and theism. The easiness of the conception inclines one’s imagination in one direction, the propensity to elevation pulls in the other. 1 . 6 D E S TA B I L I Z AT I O N , R E A L I S M A N D H U M E ’ S P RO J E C T I V E E X P L A N AT I O N S The external world and religious beliefs are projective. In both cases Hume offers non-detective explanations of the emergence of the respective core contents of such belief, namely that of continuous and distinct existence and invisible intelligent power. These contents emerge in belief states that are the product of motivated irrationality, and it is this that makes the explanations relevantly non-detective. The beliefs emerge in the thinker’s mind not through a grasp of evidence or for epistemic reasons, but because they remove an anxiety or discomfort generated in the thinker. They are projections of that psychological discomfort. What does this tell us about whether Hume is a realist about God or the external world? We know that he declares that the original versions of each belief, polytheism and the vulgar belief, are false. But they are replaced by more sophisticated versions, monotheism and the doctrine of double existence, and Hume does not declare these beliefs to be false. That, of course, is very far from establishing that he is a realist about either the external world or God. To establish that, one would have to show (a) that the sophisticated versions are coherent, and (b) that Hume thinks that some justification can be given to beliefs employing those contents. This is discussed in Chapter 3. And there does not seem to be a threat to realism issuing from Hume’s causal accounts of beliefs in invisible, intelligent power or continued and distinct existence. Nothing about the aetiology of the sophisticated beliefs shows them to be false. The fact that

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neither belief, furthermore, has its origins in reason does not show that the beliefs cannot be justified. It is rather that any justification for the belief cannot owe itself to the nature of its aetiology.²⁰ Hume’s explanations however are not neutral on the normative standing of the respective beliefs, and this is reflected in a further commonalty to SWRS and the NHR. Both accounts of the emergence of the content rationally destabilize beliefs in which those contents figure. By ‘rational destabilization’ is meant the following: acknowledging that Hume’s account is the best explanation²¹ of the core contents provides a reason to suspend beliefs unless and until some further justification for those beliefs can be provided. Again, this does not mean that such beliefs are unjustifiable: it is rather that if you presently lack justification for those beliefs you should suspend them until that justification is provided. This feature is reflected in Hume’s tone at the end of his respective causal investigations. Early in SWRS we are told: 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 reasonings. The subject, then, of our present enquiry is concerning the causes which induce us to believe in the existence of body. ( T 1.4.2.1–2; SBN 187–8)

However, towards the end of SWRS Hume appears to reverse this claim: 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, than place in it such an implicit confidence . . . What then can we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinions but error and falshood? And how can we justify to ourselves any belief we repose in them? ( T 1.4.2.56; SBN 217–18)²²

Similarly, the NHR is advertised as an investigation into the ‘origin in human nature’ of religion, and not its ‘foundation in reason’ (NHR 135) but Hume says at the end of the investigation that the ‘whole is a riddle, an ænigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject’ (NHR XV 185). ²⁰ This is true for the external world belief even though in SWRS Hume says the belief has no ‘primary recommendation to reason’. See s. 3.4.2. ²¹ For reasons why Hume’s account of the origins of religion is better than its contemporary competition, see my ‘Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion’. ²² Hume’s change of tone in SWRS is not ignored by commentators. David Owen (1999: 210) tells us that ‘Hume finally realizes that, as he is trying to explain why we believe something, that is at best, not supported by reason, the status of belief is problematic’, because the belief ’s causation involves some ‘gross illusion’ and ‘absurdity’. Similarly, Don Garrett (1997: 214–15) implies that Hume’s change of tone is due to his realization that belief owes its provenance to some ‘trivial qualities of the imagination’. This seems correct as far as it goes. What is interesting, however, is that the parallel expression in the NHR gives us a clue about what it is causes the problem. Both destabilize and what is common to the accounts of causation is motivated irrationality.

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He goes on to to say that this doubt is ‘deliberate’ (op. cit). This implies that the ‘suspence of judgment’ is a normative consequence of knowledge of the causes of the belief (‘our most accurate scrutiny’). In both cases, Hume leads us to a state of awareness regarding the causes of the belief, which provides a reason to suspend them until further justification is found. How so? Let us distinguish between belief sources that are epistemically vindicatory, neutral and destabilizing. Vindicatory sources are those, awareness of which, can putatively justify belief. Neutral sources are those, awareness of which, neither add to nor detract from the epistemic standing of the beliefs they cause. Destabilizing sources are those, awareness of which, provide a reason to suspend beliefs thus sourced. ‘Awareness’ here signals both a grasp of the belief’s origins and a judgement concerning those origins’ epistemic credentials, which is linked, but not identical, to its reliability. In vindicatory accounts one’s awareness of a belief ’s cause issues in a judgement of its epistemic reliability that in turn constitutes a reason for that belief. Suppose I forget how I came to believe Atherton played for Cambridge and am reminded that Edmund, who is a cricket expert, told me. Independently of other considerations, awareness of the reliability of one’s belief ’s source—and not just its mere reliability—lends epistemic support to it. Neutral sources neither tell in favour nor against the belief: I learn Fred told me, and I have no idea whether he knows anything about cricket, so learning the origins of my belief does not affect my belief’s standing one way or the other. But learning that I acquired this belief from a habitual liar destabilizes my belief, for I come to learn that I acquired the belief from a source I have a strong reason to mistrust. I thereby have a reason to suspend belief if nothing else speaks in favour of it. The belief in invisible and intelligent power and continuous distinct existence both emerge from sources that provide reasons to mistrust their deliverances. For motivated irrationality is a matter of fixing belief in order to remove or avoid psychological discomfort, and as such, biases the thinker against a proper appreciation of evidence or its implications. Despite our awareness that perceptions are not continuous, we form the belief anyway to remove a conflict. Such processes are set against the epistemic aim of belief of correctly reflecting how things stand, and its normative ideal of being responsive to properties like evidence that are conducive to this function. A belief that has such a source inherits a reason for us to mistrust it from the fact that the source is unreliable.²³ We ²³ Some commentators see SWRS as giving an account of the construction of the ‘external world’. The construction account sees Hume’s psychology as invoking a nascent form of subpersonal and modular psychology (see e.g. Biro 1993: 45; Weller 2001: 276; and Collier 1999; for a discussion of the modularity of the mind in contemporary philosophy, see Fodor 1983). The causation of the belief is thus not something that is apt for normative criticism. Those who favour the constructive account see Hume’s sceptical swoon as owing itself to a conflation of a number of things: doxastic with sub-doxastic states, epistemic with causal issues, personallevel psychology with sub-personal level psychology. In projection however there is an implicit contrast with detection, but there is no such obvious contrast between detection and construction.

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should therefore suspend belief in the external world in light of our awareness of its cause until, and unless, we can find some justification for it.²⁴ Similar considerations apply to the NHR though matters require some careful handling. Hume thinks in the religious case that the ‘accurate scrutiny of this subject’ implies we should suspend belief concerning ‘this subject’. That he says the belief is ‘deliberate’ further supports the idea that the account provides a normative reason to suspend belief. Now, although the subject of the NHR is the cause of religious belief, it cannot be that Hume thinks we should suspend belief about his account of those causes. Hume goes on to say that the ‘deliberate doubt’ fostered by this scrutiny is undermined both by the ‘frailty of human reason’ and the ‘contagion of opinion’ (NHR XV 185). If reflection on the cause of religion meant that we should suspend judgement on Hume’s explanation, we are left with the absurd conclusion that frailty of reason and contagion of opinion would restore our confidence in a philosophical theory. Instead we should suspend beliefs involving the notion under investigation: beliefs involving invisible intelligent power. Since such contents are necessary and sufficient for religious belief, the accurate scrutiny of its causes provides a reason to suspend religious belief. This does not mean that we should suspend religious belief all things considered: it is rather that if you consider the causes of the content independently of the reason for the belief then you have a reason to suspend belief.²⁵ Notice, however, that the NHR concerns itself with the social presence of the distinctive content—the notion of invisible intelligent power—rather than what general kinds of causes infix religious belief qua psychological state in those who already have the concept. This marks a difference from SWRS, where not only is there an explanation of the core content—the supposition of continued and distinct existence—but also an exhaustive account of the mechanisms by which that content gets fixed in the psychological state of belief. So it is quite possible in the religious case that one’s belief state involving the core content is not caused by one’s own motivated irrationality. And my use of the core content depends on more immediate sources in the social environment—parents, teachers, books and so on—rather than the psychological

Why? Because it is consistent to see such construction processes as reliably issuing in true belief and so itself constituting a form of detection. In projection however the explanatory mechanism is not detective: indeed, its status as projection partly derives from its contrast with detection. ²⁴ Loeb (2002) sees Hume’s account as destabilizing, though for different reasons. Loeb also argues that none of the candidate ‘external world’ beliefs is stable under reflection. ²⁵ Why is this interesting? The NHR provides an attack on fideism, construed as the idea that it is permissible to hold religious belief even though there are no positive grounds in favour. Hume’s account provides a reason to suspend religious belief that does not rest on showing, as he shows elsewhere, that there are insufficient positive grounds for it. See my ‘Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion’.

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operations described from which it originated. All this is quite true, but nevertheless pointing out a proximate or immediate cause for my possession of the core content pushes the question back: from whence did our parents and teachers get the notion? Most people now acquire the notion of God from sources such as other persons, books and the like, but those sources transmit the idea rather than explain its existence. Unless some other originating explanation for the content can be found, we are returned to Hume’s. Our present beliefs therefore deploy a content originating in a source that no epistemically rational agent can endorse, and the requirement for justification is transferred to present beliefs via knowledge of the irrational origins of the content it deploys. 1 . 7 S U M M A RY This chapter introduced projection by distinguishing feature projection—the attribution of features of mentality to other objects—from explanatory projection, whereby the subject’s taking the world to be a certain way is explained by means of some feature of their mind of which that experience, belief or concept is a projection. We said such ‘projection’ should be understood as such by an implicit contrast with detection. Intuitively we think of a subject as a detector of how things stand, but in the case of projection we need to explain why the world seems thus and why we cannot explain it by saying she is a detector. All this was couched schematically in a set of questions with which to approach an explanatory projective story, since the detection/projection contrast only makes sense when we turn to particular areas of concern. We then examined Hume’s explanation of the first form of religious belief, polytheism. The explanandum was the emergence of the core notion of invisible intelligent power, which we saw as a projection of the anxiety of early humans. The belief came about because it palliated that anxiety. The mechanism of projection was motivated irrationality: the belief was formed not because of the subject’s grasp of evidence in favour of the belief but because the belief removed discomfort, and so sustained the manifestation of an anthropomorphizing disposition. The contrast term detection here was that of being properly sensitive to the evidence (or lack of it). This was then compared to the origin of the vulgar belief in the continued and distinct existence and we saw that a similar pattern was operative there: a psychological disposition was sustained in its manifestation by its capacity to relieve the uneasiness generated by a cognitive dissonance. We saw these (false) beliefs were transmuted into sophisticated versions, monotheism and the doctrine of double existence. These sophisticated versions were sourced in the same forms of motivated irrationality, but they were not yet shown to be false. Nevertheless calling such beliefs ‘projections’ is partly a normative assessment. We saw that awareness of those causes destabilized the

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beliefs they explained: awareness of their causes provided a reason to suspend belief unless and until some further justification could be found. In the next chapter we look closer at the key contrast term for explanatory projection, namely detection, by examining Hume’s notions of the senses, reason and the imagination. In Chapter 3 we decide whether Hume is a ‘realist’ about god or the external world.

2 The Senses, Reason and the Imagination 2 . 1 I N T RO D U C T I O N The last chapter introduced a sense of projection as non-detective explanation. The core contents for religious and external world beliefs were explained by appeal to states or processes of which those contents are projections, and the kind of explanations invoked were contrasted with alternative detective explanations. The thinker does not come to view the world as thus and so because she is properly responsive to something that constitutes evidence for the belief, but because of some attitude like desire, fear or anxiety. Now, the notion of projection as non-detective explanation is obviously—and deliberately—schematic. The relevant contrast between detective and projective explanation can only take determinate shape in the context of the particular area of concern. Reasons for thinking we cannot be detectors, say, of aesthetic value will be very different from those for thinking we are not detectors of causal necessity. The explananda vary: we could be trying to explain a belief, a content, an inference or the phenomenology of experience. And of course the aspect of the mental of which the explanandum is a projection will vary (desires, dispositions, sensations, habits). Although the projective/detective contrast can only be properly understood in context, it is nevertheless true that Hume has more general commitments in his epistemology and philosophy of mind that bear directly on the projection/detection contrast. In his treatment of the external world he asks ‘whether it be the senses, reason, or the imagination, that produces the opinion [in continued and distinct objects]’ (T 1.4.2.2; SBN 188). This suggests that senses and reason are kinds of causes. Furthermore, it suggests that the senses and reason are detective causes, standing in contrast to the imagination. This chapter explores these suggestions. In doing so we provide more detail for the detective/projective contrast operative in the last chapter’s discussion of religion and the external world and provide the background for subsequent discussion of explanatory projection.¹ ¹ Again this discussion will be based on the Treatise, but I will also make use of materials from the first Enquiry. Notwithstanding the evident differences between these two texts, those differences are not relevant to the points that concern us.

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2.2 THE SENSES

2.2.1 Impressions, Acquaintance and Detection As noted in section 1.4 Hume sometimes exploits a rather technical sense of ‘the senses’. The senses reveal objects to us directly, and those objects are impressions. We can extend this notion to comprehend not only impressions of sensation but also impressions of reflection (T 1.1.2.1; SBN 7). Impressions of sensation arise from ‘unknown causes’, and comprehend inner and outer sensation, whereas impressions of reflection are paradigmatically passions, that derive from reflection on ideas. The crucial point for our concerns is that impressions are centrally conceived as the mind’s input: ’Tis certain, that the mind, in its perceptions, must begin somewhere; and that since the impressions precede their correspondent ideas, there must be some impressions, which without any introduction make their appearance in the soul. ( T 2.1.1.2; SBN 275)

Impressions are the input, and it is from this input that our ideas are ultimately derived. The content for thought is copied from impressions. The thesis that ideas are derived from impressions is genetic, a claim about the sources of content. At first pass, the senses—construed in this liberal sense as impressions—explain the presence of contents detectively. It is because we have encountered an object in experience that we possess a concept of it. So we can form thoughts about things because we have detected them. Though clearly on the right lines, this claim needs more finessing to be plausible. Here are some complications. First, there is a standing question regarding how we are to understand the copy relation. This is something that Hume exploits more than explains. I shall not however pursue this matter in any depth, because what that relation is supposed to explain is clear enough: that content is derived from sensory experience. Secondly, the distinction between simple and complex perceptions obviously complicates the simple story of the previous paragraph. Thirdly, the explanatory side of the impressions/ideas is yoked to claims about meaning. Fourthly there are notorious problems in drawing the line between impressions and ideas. We shall come to these issues in due course. This section introduces the thought that impressions are objects of acquaintance, and in that sense detected. A full defence of this claim however is given in Chapter 6 where we examine some of the ramifications of the reification of experience. For now, we content ourselves with a brief statement of the thesis. The underlying intuition is that we acquire our concepts by confronting the objects of those concepts in experience. These objects are objects of acquaintance, a cognitive notion that admits of no further analysis. It is because acquaintance is a cognitive notion that the derivation of ideas from impressions can be understood as detective. Thoughts about necessity

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‘out there’ and the self are explained projectively partly because necessity and the self are not objects of acquaintance, and so our thought concerning them cannot be explained detectively. What though are the objects of acquaintance? What are impressions? We know that they are ‘feelings’ and not thoughts. In the case of impressions of sensation the emphasis is on phenomenology: impressions are appearances of a certain kind. But talk of appearances has enough slack in it to admit of an interpretation whereby impressions are not objects of acquaintance. For one might say that talk of impressions does not import some mistaken reification of experience but rather signals only that we have sensory experiences that represent the world to be thus and so. The ‘presence to the mind’ of impressions, on this view, John Yolton called (1984) ‘intentional’ rather than ‘ontic’ presence. Descartes and Arnauld, for example, take it that all there is to a perceptual experience is a mode of the soul (its material reality) that represents the world to be a certain way (its objective reality). There is no third item interposing itself between the mind and the world. What I am aware of when I am aware of a sensory experience is simply the world being thus and so. But, without prejudice to Yolton’s surely correct reading of other philosophers, this cannot be the case for Hume. He must reify perceptions rather that just treat them only as ways of glossing the intentional content of experience. A central claim of Hume’s is that the ‘supposition of the continu’d existence of sensible objects or perceptions involves no contradiction’ (T 1.4.2.40; SBN 208): that there could be unperceived perceptions. But if perceptions were identical to intentional contents (rather than the objects with which we are acquainted) then the supposition that perceptions could continue to exist unperceived would ‘involve a contradiction’: their esse would be percipi, and they could not exist unperceived.² It does not follow from the fact that impressions are not simply intentional contents that impressions do not represent external items. I shall argue in the next chapter that they represent external objects by resemblance (s. 3.2). Nevertheless the reification of experience means that impressions are not exhausted by any representational properties they may have, and, furthermore, any representational properties that they may have are not intrinsic: instead their representational properties depend on a relation of resemblance holding between the intrinsic properties of the impression and the supposed external object. If impressions are the objects of acquaintance, what constitutes such objects? Though clearly Hume has no explicit answer to that question, I shall assume for the time being that complex impressions are best viewed as constituted by ² We shall touch again on this issue in Chapter 6, since the supposition that perceptions are objects will be the source of deep problems for Hume. G. E. Moore objected to an act–object view of experience which takes the objects to be mental because, he claimed, it was impossible to secure the mind-dependency of objects that are metaphysically independent of acts of awareness. Some think that there can be mental objects which are causally dependent upon acts of awareness, but still logically distinct from them—see e.g. Maund (1995: 185–6).

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complexes or bundles of tropes. Simple impressions are single property instances, complex perceptions bundle them. Now, a trope is a modern term, in the theory of properties, and I am not maintaining that Hume had a theory of tropes. It is rather that Hume’s view of experiences as reified objects fits this account best. It is sometimes held that Hume is a nominalist about properties because he holds that everything that exists is particular. But the rejection of Platonism in properties does not entail nominalism. Nominalism takes individual objects as basic and sees properties as nothing but resemblances among those individuals. Trope theory also maintains that all that everything that exists is particular, but, unlike nominalism, takes property instances as basic, unstructured, and primary and individual objects as composites or bundles of tropes. Tropes are properties that can pertain to more than one individual. Jonathan Bennett puts the matter lucidly: A trope is a case or instance of a property: this hammer is a concrete particular which has hardness and other properties; hardness is an abstract universal which is possessed by this hammer and other particulars; and the hardness of this hammer is a trope, an abstract particular. (2001: 88)

Now given that complex perceptions are composites of simples, and that perceptions are not simply intentional items, Hume is committed to a view of objects that are constituted by such property instances or tropes. The resemblance between impression and idea is, furthermore, explicable in terms of trope sharing. There are (at least) two ways in which impressions figure as input into the mind. First there is a sense that is epistemologically neutral. Impressions enter as raw data and, crucially, operate on the mind at a level falling below the level of conscious awareness. Any manipulation of that data and its role in the explanation of ideas is conducted at what cognitive psychologists nowadays call the ‘sub-personal’ psychological level.³ Such manipulation is not something that the person qua intentional agent does, but rather is the upshot of discrete mental processes of which the subject has no introspective awareness or is not the object of volition or intention. Impressions are not the objects of attitudes like belief, nor the objects of reasoned inference but nevertheless play a role in explaining cognitive phenomena. The most conspicuous example of such a role from impressions and their production of ideas is the formation of abstract ideas from particular experiences. This is not something that the subject need do intentionally or consciously. Secondly, however, there is quite clearly a more epistemologically loaded way in which impressions figure in the mind. As objects of acquaintance, they can be the objects of knowledge: Every thing that enters the mind, being in reality a perception, ’tis impossible any thing to feeling appear different. This were to suppose, that even where we are most intimately conscious, we might be mistaken. ( T 1.4.2.7; SBN 190) ³ On this idea applied to Hume, see e.g. Biro (1993) and Weller (2001).

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Impressions therefore can be the objects of cognitive acquaintance or ‘immediate appearance’. This constitutes the most basic level of detection. Moving beyond such immediate objects of acquaintance must involve either reason or the imagination: When the mind looks farther than what immediately appears to it, its conclusions can never be put to the account of the senses; and it certainly looks farther, when from a single perception it infers a double existence, and supposes relations of resemblance and causation betwixt them. ( T 1.4.2.4; SBN 189)

Impressions then are objects. Impressions can also be the objects of acquaintance.⁴ A detective explanation of our conceptual repertoire is now in the offing: our capacity to form thoughts concerning F can be explained in terms in our encountering F -ness in impressions. We can explain our capacity to think of F by appeal to our detecting F -ness by acquaintance.⁵ Hume explains this in terms of ideas copying impressions. Whatever the copy relation is supposed to be, we know that it embodies a claim that our capacity to think of such and such—our ideas—can be derived from impressions. Ideas are copied from impressions and differ from them only in terms of their vivacity: they are nothing but ‘faint images’ (T 1.1.1.1; SBN 1) of impressions. If impressions cause ideas and therefore are supposed to explain our possession of them, Hume needs a criterion by which he can distinguish one class of perception from the other or distinguish ‘betwixt feeling and thinking’ (T 1.1.1.1; SBN 1). His central claim that impressions are distinguished from ideas in virtue of ‘force of vivacity’ has met with much attention and little approval. Its unsatisfactoriness should not distract us from the fact that he clearly wants impressions to be explanatory of ideas. But before we continue, it is worth pointing out that Hume’s lack of a thorough examination of this issue can be partly mitigated by the fact that something like this distinction was already in circulation. To anticipate a little the discussion of the imagination to come, ideas of the imagination, Hobbes wrote, are nothing but ‘decaying sense’, whereby the impact of physical objects on the senses leaves traces that decay into softer images. Leibniz too talks of vivid sensory impressions that leave fainter memories in the imagination. Sometimes sensation and imagination can become confused. Malebranche says that it sometimes happens that persons whose animal spirits are highly agitated by fasting, vigils, a high fever, or some violent passion have the internal fibres of their brain set in motion as ⁴ With due effort, according to Hume, the notion of acquaintance can be extended even to the most basic elements of impressions, those which are most plausible, processed at the ‘sub-personal’ level: minima sensibilia. It is coloured and tactile points and the manners in which they are so disposed to constitute the impressions ‘with which alone we are acquainted’ ( T 1.2.3.5; SBN 34). ⁵ Such experiences will be non-conceptual of course:—but it does not follow, at least without some controversial philosophy, that they cannot be objects of a basic form of cognition.

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forcefully as by external objects. Because of this such people sense what they should only imagine, and they think they see objects before their eyes, which are only in their imaginations. This shows with regard to what occurs in the body, the senses and the imagination differ only in degree.⁶

For Hume too, who sees the difference between impressions and imagination similarly, even ‘in sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any very violet emotions of the soul, our ideas may approach to our impressions’ (T 1.1.1.1; SBN 2). Hume tries to do without Malebranche’s psycho-physiology⁷ which leads to notorious and well-rehearsed problems for Hume’s attempts to draw the line ‘betwixt feeling and thinking’. But its unsatisfactoriness should not deflect us from the fact that he clearly wants impressions to be explanatory of ideas.

2.2.2 Detection, Meaning and Meaninglessness Impressions are the input to the mind, from which our ideas are derived. This genetic claim is limited to simple perceptions. Complex ideas need not be directly copied from their corresponding impressions, and we shall come to this complication presently. Nevertheless, this claim about the origin of simple ideas is Hume’s ‘first principle’ of the science of human nature. ‘[A]ll our simple ideas’, Hume writes, ‘in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent’ (T 1.1.1.7; SBN 4). Taking ‘simple’ to mean semantically irreducible, this Copy Principle implies that semantically irreducible concepts have a detective explanation: we acquire those concepts by confronting their objects in experience. This Copy Principle is further related to a claim about meaning, and more particularly, a negative claim. A term is ‘meaningless’ when there is no appropriate idea, and we determine whether there is such an idea by hunting for its impression. Thus: when he [the author of the Treatise] suspects that any philosophical term has no idea annexed to it (as is too common) he always asks from what impression that pretended idea is derived ? And if no impression can be produced, he concludes that the term is altogether insignificant. ( T Abstract 7; SBN 648–9)

How should we understand such remarks in the context of Hume’s claim about origins? Relating what Hume has to say about the origin of ideas and meaning will be crucial to understanding the issue of realism about power. For if we cannot detect power—have an impression of it—it seems as if we cannot form any thought at all and so uses of the word ‘power’ are mere noise. This, ⁶ Nicolas Malebranche The Search After Truth (trans.) T. Lennon and P. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997: 88). Henceforth: Search. ⁷ Cf. Hume’s footnote at T 1.1.1.1; SBN 2.

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some commentators think, is the conclusion to draw from the Copy Principle, for they see it as embodying a theory of meaning. Thus a recent commentator writes: According to Hume’s theory, since a term names an idea, the meaning of a term is ultimately given by a set of impressions that cause the idea it names, and terms without such a pedigree are meaningless noises. In effect this theory of meaning constitutes a criterion of cognitive significance indistinguishable from one of the positivists’ earliest attempts to frame a principle of verifiability. (Rosenberg 1993: 66)

Does Hume have a ‘theory of meaning’? Undeniably Hume says that if we have no appropriate impression then the relevant term is ‘meaningless’. What he means by this is quite another matter. Most importantly, his remarks about meaning should not be conflated with a ‘theory of meaning’, in a number of senses of that phrase. Hume’s talk of ‘meaning’ is not to be understood, for the most part, as alluding to a property of linguistic expressions but instead as the content for thoughts that may (or may not) be expressed linguistically. It is quite true he talks of ideas being ‘annex’d’ to terms, but these are scattered remarks, not a theory. If a ‘theory of meaning’ is a theory of how linguistic items acquire their representational powers, Hume has no such theory and, unlike Locke, shows virtually no interest in such questions. If there is any account of ‘meaning’, it is more a matter of mental representation, of the content of ideas, and their combination into meaningful complexes. Certainly the principles of association explain how ideas can come together. But there is no sustained discussion of the recombinatory powers of the mind: it is something more exploited than explained. Concerns over semantic structure, or operations like conjunction or negation, are hardly uppermost in his mind. If by ‘a theory of meaning’ is meant a theory about what gives mental contents their representational powers, we are again in the territory of the exploited rather than explained. At most we have a claim that x’s being a copy of y is that in virtue of which x can represent y. But there is absolutely no attempt to explain or justify this view, making it a statement of an assumption rather than a theory. The assumption has been heavily criticized of course, and quite right too: but an assumption is no theory of intentionality. Taken at face value Hume has little interest in matters semantic and still less in a theory of meaning. There are further issues for reading the Copy Principle as embodying a theory of meaning. The genetic/explanatory formulation of the Copy Principle is ill-suited to revealing that certain terms are meaningless, or providing a theory of thought content that is (somehow) related to experience.⁸ The Copy Principle is an a posteriori and contingent generalization.⁹ As such, it is unable to deal with possible counter-examples. To add to the fun, Hume admits a counter-example, that notorious pigment of the imagination,¹⁰ the missing ⁸ See e.g. Bennett (1971: s. 48) and (2001: s. 243), Dicker (1998: ch. 1) and Pears (1990: Pt I). ⁹ See Garrett (1997 ch. 3) for a convincing defence of this claim. ¹⁰ I owe this line to Gillian Craig.

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shade of blue. It is a genetic claim, a claim about the source of ideas, which is couched in terms of psychological fact: showing the origin of a thought, however, seems independent of its meaning. In the light of these shortcomings, it is suggested, we should abandon the Copy Principle’s genetic status and construe it as an a priori knowable analytic criterion of meaning. Any genuine content must be such that it can be analysed into statements about actual or possible experiences, and where no such analysis is possible, no genuine thought is expressed. Such a move would restore the edge to a weapon otherwise blunted upon the possibility of counter-examples, accommodate the missing shade of blue and avoid the objection that origins are irrelevant to meanings. And indeed it would—but at the cost of abandoning Hume’s explicitly genetic approach. This move is consciously revisionary: that is to say, we should make amendments to perceived weaknessess in Hume’s official statements in order to strengthen what the commentator takes to be the underlying thought of the author.¹¹ So on the assumption that Hume is interested in capturing the meanings of key terms, and disbarring some as meaningless, the revision is to be made: otherwise, as Jonathan Bennett wrote, the Copy Principle is ‘largely irrelevant to the matters [Hume] wants it illuminate’ (1971: 230). The fact that we need to make such revisions so that the Copy Principle can both serve as a theory and criterion of meaning can, however, cut both ways. The revision is guided by the assumption that Hume is really concerned with semantic matters because he uses the words ‘meaning’ and ‘meaningless’. But given that Hume’s concerns are genetic, then it seems equally plausible to attempt to understand what Hume means by ‘meaningless’ and such in light of the genetic nature of Hume’s Copy Principle. Such an approach is not unmotivated. Hume’s concerns elsewhere in the Treatise and outside it are dominated by genetic issues, turning on questions about the origin of religious belief, the origin of justice, or the rise of the arts and sciences and so on. If Hume is primarily interested in the sources of ideas, then let us try to understand meaning and meaninglessness in light of that fact. In the previous section we suggested that the senses constituted a basic form of detection, where detection is understood as acquaintance, and that ideas can be explained detectively inasmuch as they are copied from the objects of acquaintance. We can then connect the meaning of any term, via the idea, to the object of acquaintance. A term has meaning if our idea is explained in terms of our being acquainted with that object. Or, rather, the term has meaning, if the idea could be. For this interpretation of ‘meaning’ is complicated, though ¹¹ Cf. Bennett (1971: 231): I do not say that Hume ‘really meant’ to offer an analysis of meaning and understanding; but I do suggest that what he said about ideas as copied from impressions is explained, somewhat and somehow, by the fact that his remarks can be ‘translated’ into analytic truths about meaningfulness in relation to empirical cashability.

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not compromised, by the distinction between complex and simple perceptions. In many cases complex concepts are acquired simply from acquaintance with a complex item: to give someone a concept ‘I present the objects, or in other words, convey to him these impressions’ (T 1.1.1.8; SBN 5) and the meaning of a term is straightforward—it is the object with which we were acquainted. In other cases, I need not encounter such objects to acquire the concept (Edmund explained to me what a cricket bat is) or indeed some concepts are such that we can be sure that no one acquired the concept by confrontation with its object (a unicorn). Such ideas can be explained by the recombinatory powers of the imagination. Nevertheless, we can keep the connection between meaning, explanation and acquaintance intact by saying that such terms are meaningful because we could explain the possession of an idea by our being acquainted with an item. This is still to ask a genetic question—could some concept be derived from acquaintance—rather than to offer an analysis or account of content in terms of actual and possible experience. To have an idea of an object is to have an idea that can be potentially explained by acquaintance with, or detection of, its object. It is still a genetic thesis because it is a question about possible sources—possible¹² acquaintance with—even if it is not about actual sources or actual acquaintance. None of this is much different from a traditional view of Hume: where matters are different is on the issue of what is meant by ‘meaninglessness’. The obvious and correct thing to say is that something is meaningless when it is not the possible object of acquaintance. The less obvious, but more important, issue concerns the force of this sense of ‘meaningless’. Now, if we understand meaning in terms of possible objects of acquaintance, there are two ways to take the force of ‘meaninglessness’, a stronger and a weaker one. The stronger sense has it that since the relevant object is not the object of possible acquaintance, absolutely no thought at all can be formed regarding it. That is the way that ‘meaninglessness’ in Hume is usually read, a reading fostered by the idea that talk of meaning betrays a concern with limning possible thought by discovering the boundaries of possible experience. It is this interpretation of ‘meaninglessness’ which is the key threat to any realism concerning, say, necessity. If we can form absolutely no genuine thought concerning ‘objective necessity’ then questions concerning its existence cannot even be formulated, since to any ‘statements’ involving first-order uses of the term ‘power’ express no thought at all. We cannot begin to think of genuine necessity, let alone think that there is any. The weaker interpretation of meaninglessness has it that the term is meaningless because the object is not a possible object of acquaintance but nonetheless grants that we can form some sufficiently rich notion to ensure we are thinking about the object that is not a possible object of acquaintance. We can, that is, form a thin notion concerning an item for which we lack a meaning. The thin notion—which is not an idea—expresses itself in the knowledge of what it ¹² The sense of possible object of experience is explained in Chapter 4.

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would be to be acquainted with the relevant object. As we shall see, Hume does exploit such notions in connection with self and causal power. In denying that we have an impression of self or of genuine necessary connection, Hume argues on the basis of some understanding of what it would be to have an impression of the putative object (self, causal power and the like). He does not perform some introspective exercise, a hunt for a causal power ‘sensation’ analogous to a colour patch and declare the notion meaningless because no such sensation can be found. He knows full well what it would be to be acquainted with power and exploits that knowledge to argue that we cannot be so acquainted. Or, as Bennett puts it, Hume ‘proceeds by detailed, down-to-earth argument rather than by blanket applications of his meaning-empiricism’ (1971: 233). Such knowledge provides a way of thinking about objects of which we lack impressions. Hume exploits such knowledge to explain why we cannot be acquainted with the putative item: he does not start by considering complex descriptions of what we are not acquainted with to give the meaning of those terms.¹³ Bertrand Russell called such descriptions ‘noumenal’, and they consist in descriptions of the such and such which cannot be encountered directly in experience. Now, if Hume were interested in the analysis of concepts, he could offer, say, that the self is the unknown owner of experience with which we cannot be acquainted: such a description would be perfectly shipshape for the purposes of analysis. But he does not. He exploits ‘down-to-earth’ arguments using a grasp of what the objects with which we cannot be acquainted are like, in order to show why we are not acquainted. His lack of interest in such complex descriptions is unsurprising if Hume is merely concerned with showing that we cannot explain our thoughts about, say, power, by appeal to our detecting it (i.e. by being acquainted with it). It is quite by-the-by that we can refer to such objects noumenally if we cannot be acquainted with them. We can specify what is undetectable and declare that we have no idea of that object, and hence the term is ‘meaningless’ because we cannot be acquainted with it: what does not follow is that we can have no thought about that object. On the stronger reading we can mean nothing at all, on the weaker we ‘talk without a meaning’ with respect to, say, objective necessary connection, but a minimal understanding of the item with which we cannot be acquainted is available. Such an understanding therefore allows us to entertain thoughts concerning necessary connections lying beyond our ken. Hume’s use of the word ‘meaningless’ does not decide between the weaker or the stronger reading, and to assume for Hume that ‘meaningless’ must mean no thought at all is to beg the question. In Chapter 4 I argue that the weaker sense of meaningless makes more sense of Hume’s argumentative strategy with respect to necessary connection. ¹³ Cf. Craig (1987: 119–20), who uses this point in support of Craig’s contention that the analytic side of Hume’s campaign is not really his main concern.

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In summary: the senses are detective inasmuch as they offer objects of acquaintance. Our capacity to form thoughts regarding objects can be explained detectively inasmuch as our ideas are derived from objects of acquaintance (impressions). To have meaning is to be a possible object of acquaintance—and therefore allow the possibility of a detective explanation—and to lack a meaning is failing to be a possible object of acquaintance, and not therefore amenable to detective explanation. Thoughts about causal powers and selves cannot be so explained—and we shall examine Hume’s projective explanations of those thoughts in subsequent chapters. 2.3 REASON

2.3.1 Preliminaries ‘Reason’, Hume writes, is ‘a kind of cause, of which truth is the natural effect’ (T 1.4.1.1; SBN 180). A first thought then is reason is a detective source of belief in that reason is a faculty that reliably causes true beliefs. The beliefs caused by reason attain positive epistemic standing by being so caused. Let us distinguish between reason as a psychological faculty (reasonF ), a reason qua a normative consideration in favour of a judgement (reasonN ) and reasoning qua a form of inference or mental transition from one judgement to another (reasonI ). One way to represent the relations among these three notions is this: our reasonF grasps a reasonN and in virtue of doing so, we reasonI to a conclusion. The judgements, or conclusions of our inferences, are produced in such a manner and inherit their normative standing via their causation.¹⁴ On this conception, reasonF is a detective source of judgement or belief since it produces judgement by grasping or detecting reasons in favour (reasonsN ) of the produced judgement through the mental transition reasoningI . What reason detects are reasons in favour of the produced judgement. There are of course, good and bad, better or worse reasons. Russell might think that, say, the fact that lemons are yellow supports the belief that cats bake themselves by office radiators. One sense in which this is a bad reason (or no reason at all) is because there is no evidential or semantic connection between these propositions. In what follows we shall treat reasonsN in the following way. A necessary condition for R’s being a reasonN is that R expresses a genuine connection between the consideration offered in favour of such and such being the case and its being so. A subject’s merely taking it to be so is not a reasonN . Such reasons are ‘objective’ in being judgement-independent. ReasonF is our means of detecting or being sensitive to reasonsN . It is that which grasps reasonsN . ¹⁴ Why and when such reasoning produces belief as opposed to mere awareness of what is implied by one’s present thoughts is something of course Hume discusses in the context of the transference of vivacity from impressions. Here we focus solely on the transition itself.

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We can then ask the following questions: (a) What constitutes reasonsN ? (b) How, if at all, can reasonF grasp reasonsN ? (c) How, if at all, does reasonF produce the inference or reasoningI ? The answers to these questions are, in outline, as follows. ReasonsN for Hume are constituted by ideas standing in certain relations. There are two forms of reasonF that are demarcated by whatever kinds of relations to which they are sensitive. In the case of demonstrative reason, these are relations of necessitation. In the case of probable reason, we are sensitive to what Hume calls the philosophical relation of cause and effect. These relations are reasonsN and grasping reasonsN involves the activity of comparing ideas standing in relations. Such a grasp produces a judgement of a kind and forces assent. This final point is complicated by Hume’s discussion of the probable reason, which is conventionally thought to support a sceptical conclusion. The projective status of causation of belief by motivated irrationality discussed in the previous chapter, lived off a contrast with reason, understood as unbiased cognitive mechanisms productive of belief in line with its aim, namely truth. Hume also claims that our belief in continuous and distinct existence cannot be caused by reason, and the emergence of the belief of invisible intelligence does not owe itself to reason. The following discussion therefore shows in what sense reason is a detective cause in order to illuminate the detective/projective contrast. Furthermore a grasp of what Hume understands by reason will also be important in our discussion of projection with respect to power, and Hume’s famous contrast between reason and sentiment in connection with the projection of value.

2.3.2 Relations and Demonstrative Reason ‘All kinds of reasoning consist in nothing but a comparison, and a discovery of those relations, either constant or inconstant, which two or more objects bear to each other’ (T 1.3.2.2; SBN 73 (my emphasis on ‘discovery’)). If reason is a cause, of which truth is the effect, this effect is the result of the activity of comparison. So in addition to reasonF , reasonN and reasonI we have the notion of reasoningA namely a mental activity of a certain kind. This activity is that of comparing ideas. In reasoningA we discover in what relations ideas stand. Discovery is factive: reason discovers the relations in which ideas do in fact stand.¹⁵ At first blush, those relations constitute reasonsN for judgement. When A is presented as a consideration in favour of B, what is presented is the fact that x and y stand in some relation relevant to the truth of B. ¹⁵ Our capacity to discover such relations, and our confidence in it, is subject to a sceptical worry generated by iterative judgement: see T 1.4.1.

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What relations? Hume distinguishes between philosophical and natural relations: The world relation is commonly us’d in two senses considerably different from each other. Either for that quality, by which two ideas are connected together in the imagination, and the one naturally introduces the other . . . or for that particular circumstance, in which, even upon the arbitrary union of two ideas in the fancy, we may think proper to compare them. ( T 1.1.5.1; SBN 13)

Natural relations are passively acquired relations, the connecting principles of association which set up habits of thought, whereby one idea ‘naturally introduces’ another. To these we shall return, but it is the philosophical relations that are the objects of reasonF . These seven relations are: resemblance, identity, proportion in quantity or number, degrees in quality, contrariety, relations of time and place, and cause and effect. The mind can actively compare objects standing in any one or more of these relations, independently of any associational links between the ideas that are the objects of comparison. A division is made between constant and inconstant philosophical relations (T 1.3.2.2; SBN 73). Constant relations are those that supervene on the intrinsic features of the object, so that if there is a change in those intrinsic features, there is a change in the relation. Inconstant relations are those that can vary without any change in the intrinsic features of the objects. The constant relations comprise resemblance, degree in quality, contrariety and proportion in quantity and number. The first three are the objects not of reason but of intuition. Intuition is the fundamental cognitive achievement, the direct apprehension of relations holding among the present contents of the mind. It yields knowledge in a quasi-perceptual way, such that one can tell at a glance, as it were, that A resembles B, that A is more or less F than B, or that A excludes B. It is the last of the constant relations, proportions in number or quantity, which is the object of demonstrative reason. In demonstration, one begins with relations that one immediately intuits or ‘sees’ and then moves to new judgements by a grasp of those relations. When one demonstrates, for example, that the sum of angles of a triangle is 180◦ , one is directly aware of the relations contained within the triangle, and mental activity is guided by that awareness. This account of mathematical knowledge is, to put it mildly, somewhat underdeveloped. What is significant for our purposes is that such relations are relations of necessitation. In understanding 2 + 2 = 4 we recognize its truth, we recognize the necessity of that truth and we recognize that what grounds that necessity is that 2 + 2 necessitates 4 in virtue of the constant relations in which those ideas stand. That A stands in a necessitation relation to B can function as a normative reason (a reasonN ) for the judgement ‘A, therefore B’. The faculty of demonstrative reasonF perceives these relations and so grasps a reasonN ; in so doing we reasonI to a new judgement and our assent is produced. The person ‘who assents, not only conceives ideas according to the proposition [sc. the verbal expression of

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relations among ideas], but is necessarily determin’d to conceive them in that particular manner [the feeling of assent], either immediately or by the imposition of other ideas’ (T 1.3.7.3; SBN 95). Demonstrative reasonF causally determines assent through detection—discovery—of truth, under the guise of an agreement with ‘real relations’. Truth for Hume is the correctness of fit between judged relations, and reason is the ‘discovery of truth or falsehood’ which consists in agreement or disagreement either to ‘real relations’ or ‘real existence or matter of fact’ (T 3.1.1.9; SBN 458). ‘Real relations’ are the truthmakers for demonstrative truths. This view of (one form of ) truth plausibly has its origins in Malebranche, who presses the objectivity of relations to support the objectivity of truth: whoever perceives a relation of inequality between twice two and five perceives a truth, for the relation of inequality that he perceives that exists. But whoever judges that he perceives a relation of equality between twice two and five is mistaken, because he perceives, or, rather, he thinks he perceives, a relation of equality that does not exist. Truths, then, are only relations, and the knowledge of truths the knowledge of relations.¹⁶

Now for Malebranche, such relations are grounded in the immutable relations of ideas as quasi-Platonic entities whose modal nature is even independent of God. For Hume, ideas are not Platonic entities, but are ‘subjective’ items. But although they are subjective qua dependent entities, they are nevertheless objective in the sense that any qualities and relations are independent of any judgement I form concerning them. It is not my thinking that A and B stand in R that makes that thought true; my thought is true because A and B stand in relation to R. What grounds the modality of such relations is hardly discussed by Hume. He writes ‘the necessity, which makes two times two equal to four, or three angles of a triangle equal to two right lines, lies only in the act of the understanding’ (T 1.3.14.23; SBN 166), but that cannot be taken to express the view that all there is to the necessity of such relations is our taking them to be so. Instead the most plausible suggestion is that he thinks the necessity of constant relations stems from semantic relations among ideas: a proto-typical account of analytic necessity.¹⁷ Demonstrative reasonF discovers necessity relations among ideas, and those relations are reasonsN for judgements: a quasi-perceptual grasp of these relations determines us to reasonI to the relevant judgement. This helps us to understand what is an otherwise puzzling feature of demonstration. The contrary of any proposition that is proved by demonstrative reason is, according to Hume, ¹⁶ Search: 433. ¹⁷ It is sometimes asserted that demonstrative inference reduces to associational inference (e.g. Loeb 2002: 245), on the basis that Hume claims that all reason falls under the imagination. This is not at all persuasive, for crucially it is quite impossible to see how the relevant relations in demonstration could be related to the three associative relations, namely contiguity, resemblance and cause and effect. Certainly Hume drastically circumscribes the role of demonstration as opposed to association, but he does not assimilate demonstration to association.

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‘absolutely impossible’ (e.g. Abstract 11; SBN 650), implying that anything proved by demonstration is a necessary truth. But if by ‘demonstrative’ reason Hume means something similar to what we mean by deduction, he seems to have committed a blunder; that of the fallacy of shifting modal operators. Deductive arguments necessitate their conclusions, but those conclusions need not be necessary truths. Deductive arguments can easily necessitate contingent conclusions (all men are mortal; Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal). So Hume has shifted the necessity attaching to the implication to what is implied by the premises. What this actually shows is not a blunder on Hume’s part but instead a commentator’s mistake of trying to assimilate demonstration to deduction. A first difference, well illustrated by David Owen (1999), is that deduction is a formal notion, whereas demonstration is not. The validity of a deductive inference depends on its form and not on the meanings of the non-logical terms involved. Instances of the form ‘p then q; p; therefore q’ are valid in virtue of instancing that very form, regardless of the contents expressed by p and q. In demonstration, on the other hand, awareness of the relations of ideas involves awareness of the relations among meaningful contents. One can infer from the idea [1] ‘cats sleep often’ to [2] ‘cats sleep’ because the first concept contains the latter. In demonstration, one makes manifest that containment relation. But to infer validly from [1] to [2], additional premises and quantification are required. So demonstration is not the same as deduction. Secondly, the objects of demonstration are not properly the ideas themselves: demonstrative reason’s concern is with ‘a discovery’ of the relations that hold among ideas. Demonstrative reason reveals to the thinker necessity relations holding between ideas A and B. A demonstrative proof of a proposition reveals that it is absolutely impossible for [1] cats to sleep often and [2] it not be the case that cats sleep; it does not show that cats sleep. Algebra and arithmetic consist of analytic necessitation relations and reason discovers those relations: and since those relations depend on nothing else in the universe, judgements reveal ‘real relations’ and our judgements are true because they reflect those real relations. Geometry, while dependent on necessitation relations among ideas, does not depend solely on those relations, since our ideas are derived from sensory experience, which may not be faithful to nature (T 1.3.1.4; SBN 71). Any demonstrative proof therefore reveals necessitation relations among the constituent ideas of the proposition proved. The importance of this will become apparent when we discuss demonstrative argument and causation.

2.3.3 Probable Reason and Causal Inference All reasoning ‘consist in nothing but a comparison, and a discovery of those relations . . . which two or more objects bear to each other’ (T 1.3.2.2; SBN 73). Probable reason involves a comparison of objects (ideas) standing in the

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philosophical relation of causation. Such an activity supposedly produces belief, a term Hume reserves for doxastic attitudes directed towards presently unexperienced events or states of affairs, and which consists in the relative vivacity of the idea produced in the inference. This form of reasoning is central for Hume. Causation is the ‘only [relation], that can be trac’d beyond our senses, and informs us of existences and objects, which we do not see or feel’ (T 1.3.2.3; SBN 74). At first pass, matters are as follows. The faculty of probable reasonF detects probable reasonsN , which consist in the fact that A and B stand in the philosophical relation of causation. Two ideas, A and B, stand in the philosophical relation of causation just in case A and B stand in the component relations of constant conjunction, contiguity and A is temporally prior to B. In virtue of that grasp, we reasonI to the conclusion that B will occur when we see A. This is why Hume thinks that the belief in double existence cannot be caused by reason. To be so caused involves our awareness of A and B standing in the causal relation: but we cannot observe the external object A, and so we cannot observe A standing in the philosophical relation of cause and effect with B. Thus: 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. ( T 1.4.2.47; SBN 212)

This causal sense of reason dovetails the idea of a normative reason or reasonN being a relation that justifies an inference and can do so by figuring in its causation. And this is why Hume thinks that the belief cannot be justified by reason: why, that is, we ‘cannot satisfy our reason in this particular’ (T 1.4.2.47; SBN 212) and why the ‘supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning’ (EHU 12.1.12; SBN 153). This negative claim suggests a positive thesis: beliefs that are caused by reason do have positive normative status and are justified. Probable reasonF detects reasonsN which consist in the relations that objects stand, namely the philosophical relation of cause and effect. But matters are more complicated than this sketch suggests. For Hume is commonly thought to be a sceptic about probable or ‘inductive’ reason. The term ‘sceptic’ is understood here as the claim that such inferences have no more epistemic authority than (say) crystal ball gazing. No positive epistemic status is given to beliefs caused by reason. We, however, have been proceeding on the supposition that probable reason for Hume is a detective source of belief. It was that that gave us our contrast for the projective sources in the previous chapter. But the sceptical reading threatens this contrast by rejecting the idea that probable reason is a detective source after all.

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Now, this sceptical reading raises a host of queries about how we are to understand Hume’s general project. We have just seen that the fact that the doctrine of double existence is not caused by reason implies a negative assessment of its normative standing. Why would this be so unless Hume thought, precisely, that causation by reason bestows positive normative standing on its products? What are we to make of the conclusions of a science of human nature based upon a careful observation of human psychology? How can a ‘wise man’ proportion ‘his belief to the evidence’ (EHU 10.1.4; SBN 110)? How can there be ‘proofs’ from probabilities? Why is it that Hume thinks it is worthwhile examining whether religion can be supported by causal reasoning if he thinks it has no epistemic authority? Such considerations do not by themselves show that the sceptical reading is incorrect; but they do motivate the search for an alternative. Recent work¹⁸ has tended to stress Hume’s naturalistic aspirations and see him offering a conclusion about the causal basis for probable inference—probable reasonI —which itself does not foreclose on the evaluative standing of our inferences from cause to effect. Roughly, we cannot explain our tendency to draw such inferences by appeal to the faculty of reasonF itself and its grasp of some argument or reasonN in favour of such inferences. What this does not mean, however, is that Hume evaluates such inferences as epistemically worthless. Here I shall offer a reading in line with this conclusion. I shall argue that probable reason is treated by Hume as a detective source of belief. What causes us to make such inferences, however, cannot be understood detectively. Our probable reasoningI is not the causal upshot of a grasp of reasonsN . In discovering this, a question emerges about the evaluative status of those inferences; but the emergence of a question is far from the offer of a negative answer, namely that such inferences are epistemically worthless. A different form of endorsement of probable reason can be—and is—offered (see s. 3.4.2). Probable reason deals with the philosophical relation of causation. But causation is also one of Hume’s three natural relations. Natural relations are the principles of association, contiguity, resemblance and cause and effect. The full—and important—background to these natural relations is given in ss. 2.4.2–3, but what is important for the present concern is as follows. Ideas organize themselves in the mind in line with these three principles without any activity on our part. When I have idea A (the idea of my cat), I am apt to think of things that resemble A (my sister’s cat), things contiguous to A (he brings to mind the bed he occupies for long stretches of time) and effects I have experienced A to produce (the cat always purrs when stroked). These dispositions or habits of inference are simply the result of repeated experience of A followed by B (every time I have stroked the cat he has purred) and are not the result of conscious activity on our part. Hume will argue that our capacity to reason ¹⁸ Garrett (1997), Loeb (1997) and (2002), Noonan (1999), Owen (1999).

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upon the philosophical relation of causation presupposes that we have habits of inference—natural relations among ideas—drawn through experience of cause and effect. This is Hume’s conclusion to the key section T 1.3.6, ‘Of the inference from the impression to the idea’: [T]ho’ causation be a philosophical relation, as implying contiguity, succession, and constant conjunction, yet ’tis only so far as it is a natural relation, and produces an union among our ideas, that we are able to reason upon it, or draw any inference from it. ( T 1.3.6.16; SBN 94)

Part of the significance of this conclusion lies in the consequence that there is no faculty of probable reason that is independent of the mechanisms of association. That, in turn, is itself significant in its implications for human nature. Prior to Hume, associative inference was identified with animal inference and, while humans did share in that kind of associative inference, such inferences were sharply distinguished from reason. For Hume, the basis of probable reason is animal inference. One reason that associative principles are ‘natural’ is because they are animal.¹⁹ So with respect to reason, what others had called the ‘pseudoreason’ of animals (Leibniz) or mere animal ‘prudence’ as distinct from reason (Hobbes) is actually the basis of human probable reason. But how does Hume get to the conclusion that association is the basis of reason? Let us return to the beginning of ‘Of the inference from the impression to the idea’. His first move is to reject the idea that we grasp the essences of objects and in virtue of that awareness understand what their causal upshots must be. Hume is quite brief in his discussion of this topic, and expands upon it in section 4.1 of the first Enquiry. The significance and ramifications of this move will occupy our attention a little later and more centrally in Chapter 4. The notion of essence is enmeshed with the notion of necessary connection, and necessary connection is something that Hume puts to one side at this stage in his discussion of the inference from the impression to the idea. We too will put it to one side. Hume then says it is by ‘EXPERIENCE only, that we infer the existence of one object from that of another’ (T 1.3.6.2; SBN 87). That is to say, through experience of objects standing in the philosophical relation of cause and effect—contiguity, priority and constant conjunction—that we come to infer B from A. Having experienced two objects standing in relations of constant conjunction, contiguity and succession, without ‘farther ceremony’ we dub one the cause, and the other the effect (T 1.3.6.2; SBN 87). So far so good. Concerning this inference, Hume then asks: whether experience produces the idea [of the effect from the cause] by means of the understanding or imagination; whether we are determin’d by reason to make the transition, or by a certain association and relation of perceptions. ( T 1.3.6.4; SBN 88–9 (my emphasis)) ¹⁹ For discussion, see my ‘Leibniz’s Dog and Humean Reason’.

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This looks quite squarely a causal question. Is it reasonF or the association of ideas that causally explains our inferences, our reasoningI ? The answer is the association of ideas and not reasonF . How is that conclusion arrived at? Hume tells us that, If reason determin’d us, 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. ( T 1.3.6.4; SBN 89)

Sticking with the causal interpretation, it then seems that Hume supposes that if reasonF caused us to infer, it would do so in virtue of a grasp of this ‘uniformity principle’, which itself is a reasonN . But, as we shall see, reasonF cannot grasp such a principle and so reasonF cannot be the cause of the inference or reasoningI . In what immediately follows, however, it might seem that Hume switches from a causal question to a normative issue, namely, whether we can justify this principle or provide an argument for it? He asks, for example, whether ‘knowledge [demonstration or intuition] or probability . . . afford any just conclusion of this nature’ (ibid., my emphasis). We cannot prove the uniformity principle, and that principle is relevant precisely because, if true, it is a quite excellent normative ground for causal inference into the unobserved. So contra what we have said—that Hume is interested in examining what causes us to make the inference—his real concern is to show that such inferences cannot be justified because there can be no grounds for reason for it. Thus Hume is really intent on offering a sceptical argument to show that such inferences are epistemically worthless. This is partly right and partly wrong. It is right inasmuch as Hume focuses matters on what I called reasonsN , that is, genuine normative considerations in favour of judgement. What is wrong however is to think that the conclusion does not concern primarily the causation of judgement. If Hume’s target is the notion of some autonomous²⁰ faculty of reason that, in virtue of its sensitivity to genuine normative considerations, produces the normatively praiseworthy belief, Hume’s emphasis on what are good reasons is not surprising. Reason under either guise cannot be aware of any relation of ideas that reveals the uniformity principle as true, and therefore cannot detect that reason. And as reasonF cannot grasp or detect the uniformity principle, reasonF cannot cause us to make the inference or to reasonI . This is why the normative and the psychological are treated all but interchangeably, especially in the first Enquiry. Thus in EHU 4.2 he talks of founding the inference on a ‘process of the understanding’ (4.2.15; SBN 32), of a ‘negative argument’ (4.2.16; SBN 33), of ‘proof’ (4.2.9; SBN 35) and of ‘process of argument’ (4.2.21; SBN 37). So to make out the case that such inferences are not the product of an autonomous faculty of reason, then the normative will be in Hume’s sights, by showing that no relation of ideas—the objects of ²⁰ For discussion, see Hatfield (1990).

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reason—reveals the truth of the uniformity principle. Recall that the discovery of relations is factive: reasonF is such that it does not simply suppose or conjecture relations, but perceives or discovers those relations. Simply supposing the truth of the uniformity principle, and thence inference, would not count as the inference being caused by reasonF .²¹ It is only produced by reason when it is done through a genuine grasp of a reasonN . What this does not mean is that our reasoningsI cannot be justified in some other fashion, and that Hume thinks that those inferences are epistemically worthless. Let us now turn to the details of Hume’s argument. We have two (exhaustive) options—demonstrative and probable reason—for the putative roles of causation by reason. First, demonstrative reasonF , the faculty that compares and discovers relations of necessitation. If the uniformity principle were capable of being grasped by demonstrative reasonF , there would need to be apparent necessitation relations among the ideas that are the constituents of the uniformity principle. The idea of the course of nature needs somehow to necessitate or imply the idea that the future will resemble the past. But there is no apparent necessitation relation between the idea of the course of nature and its immutability: that there is none is revealed by the fact that we can conceive the (epistemic) possibility of such a change. Since there is no necessitation relation revealed between the ideas, the uniformity principle cannot be revealed as necessary. Before we continue, it is worth noting that Hume is concerned to show that demonstrative reason cannot reveal necessitation here. Why does the uniformity principle need to be cast in the strong modal register, namely that the future must resemble the past? Surely our inferences from cause and effect would be justified if it were merely contingently true that the future will resemble the past? Why not seek some other relatively a priori grounds for the contingent truth that the future will resemble the past? The reply that Hume did not see matters that way might be true, but does not take us very far. The point, I think, lies in how causal powers are understood by many of Hume’s opponents, and how they underwrite the laws of nature. The causal powers of kinds and individuals are essences, and in virtue of these essences, the world has the laws that it does. Such laws, as expressive of essence, have a hypothetical necessity. In any world(s) in which kinds K1 . . . Kn are instantiated, their instantiation necessitates the laws constitutive of the course of nature. Relative to their instantiation, the laws of nature are thereby necessary. If one is committed to the course of nature being so underwritten, one is committed to the laws of nature being necessary. But demonstration (and intuition) reveals no such apparent impossibility in the supposition of such a change, and so demonstration cannot secure knowledge of the necessity of the course of nature. In other words, demonstrative reasonF cannot reveal any reasonN for the uniformity principle since there are no apparent ²¹ This is why Hume is uninterested in the production of inference from faulty reasoning or bad arguments—such causation is not a matter of grasping reasons in this sense.

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necessitation relations among the ideas involved. Since reasonF cannot reveal reasonsN for the uniformity principle, it cannot proceed on that principle. It cannot proceed on that which it cannot grasp or detect and so it cannot enter into an explanation of causal inference. The second form of the reasoning faculty is probable reason. The faculty of probable reasonF detects probable reasonsN , which consist in the fact that A and B stand in the philosophical relation of causation. Two ideas, A and B, stand in the philosophical relation of causation just in case A and B stand in the component relations of constant conjunction, contiguity and A is temporally prior to B. The question now before us is whether probable reason so-construed is what causes us to infer effect from cause. Hume’s answer to this is No: he writes that ‘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’ (T 1.3.6.7; SBN 90). If probable reasonF were the cause of our inference or reasoningI , it must be in virtue of a grasp or awareness of some reasonN —the uniformity principle—that supports the inference. But here is the rub—how could we get to any grasp of the uniformity principle through causal reasoning unless we are already in the business of inferring the future from the past? For to reason probabilistically just is to infer the future from the past, and, as Hume puts it, ‘the same principle cannot be both the cause and the effect of another’. The presumption that the future will resemble the past arises from our habit of inference—the associational inference of cause and effect—rather than something of which we have a prior grasp through reasonF and which causes us to reasonI (T 1.3.6.7; SBN 90). So before we can do any probable reasoning we must have experienced and remembered a range of constant conjunctions. This is what—to repeat an earlier quotation—Hume means when he says, [T]ho’ causation be a philosophical relation, as implying contiguity, succession, and constant conjunction, yet ’tis only so far as it is a natural relation, and produces an union among our ideas, that we are able to reason upon it, or draw any inference from it. ( T 1.3.6.16; SBN 94)

Where does this leave us?²² I said that we can understand probable reason as a detective source of belief, and yet we have just seen that Hume thinks that, ²² The first Enquiry tends to emphasize the circularity in any appeal to probable reason to justify the uniformity principle, and that we have ‘no argument’ for the inference. This sounds again as if he is interested in whether the inference can be justified rather than its causation. But properly understood, the normative concern serves the causal claim. Recall that awareness of reasons is factive: for an inference to be caused by reasonF is for that inference to be made in virtue of a grasp of something that does justify that inference (a reasonN ). Now the appeal to probable reason to justify the assumption fails, and so it cannot reveal the truth of the uniformity principle and thereby reveal it to be a reasonN . Given that normative reasons consist in relations of ideas, any good argument is an expression of genuine relations; but since no relations of ideas reveals the truth of the uniformity principle, there can be no argument for it. The claim that there be no good arguments therefore rests on what the faculty of reason can or cannot reveal. Instead, the inference owes itself to custom.

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because reasonF is incapable of grasping a normative ground for such inferences, it is incapable of causing the inference, or causing our reasoningI . It might seem, therefore, that since probable reasoningI is not caused by a grasp of reasonsN in favour of the inference, then really such inferences are a matter of projection rather than detection. For did we not contrast projection with detection? So one might read this conclusion into the following statement of Don Garrett’s, who writes that Hume’s explanation of such inferences appeals to a ‘[psychological mechanism] which we share with the animals and is an example of ‘‘custom’’ or ‘‘habit’’ [that] leads us to project experienced constant conjunctions of events onto unobserved cases, and thereby to arrive at beliefs about those cases’ (1997: 94, my emphasis). We need, however, to distinguish the fact that our inferences that are instances of probable reasoning are not caused by a detective source (reason) from whether those instances are themselves detective sources of belief. The sense of detection or responsiveness embodied in probable reasoning lies in the fact that such inferences constitute a form of sensitivity to probability—causal regularities—but are not caused by a grasp of reasons in their favour. So we could interpret Garrett’s claim as the idea that our practice of causal reasoning owes itself to causes that grasp reasons in favour of the inference. The inferences are all drawn in line with the uniformity principle, but since reason cannot grasp that principle, reason itself is not the cause of the inference: All probable arguments are built on the supposition, that there is this conformity betwixt the future and the past, and therefore can never prove it. This conformity is a matter of fact, and if it must be proved, will admit of no proof but from experience. But our experience in the past can be a proof of nothing for future, but upon the supposition, that there is a resemblance betwixt them. This therefore is a point which can admit of no proof at all, and which we take for granted without any proof. (Abstract 14; SBN 651–2)

This does not mean probable or causal reasoning itself does not constitute an epistemically reliable source of belief, and in that sense is not a detective cause, a kind of cause of which truth is the effect. Reason cannot cause the inference because reason cannot properly grasp the proposition and so can admit of no proof from reason. This leaves open whether probable reasoning as a detective source can be endorsed on other grounds. As David Owen puts it, Hume shows only that such inferences are not warranted in the way it had been traditionally held that reason bestows warrant. There may be (and had better be) some other way to warrant such inferences. So the conclusion of Hume’s negative argument about causal reasoning does not settle the issue of warrant; it leaves it open. (1999: 140–1)²³

How such warrant is secured is discussed later (s. 3.4.2). ²³ Cf. Loeb (1997: 284): ‘Hume’s conclusion is that the idea of an unobserved cause or effect is produced by an association of ideas, by the imagination. This conclusion says nothing about the justificatory status of the inference.’

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2 . 4 T H E I M AG I N AT I O N The senses are a detective source of content. Reason is a detective source of belief. That might seem to leave the imagination as a projective source. That is partly right and partly wrong. It is wrong inasmuch as it is wrong to separate reason from the imagination entirely. First, ideas, which are the objects of reason, fall under the purview of the imagination. Secondly, the association of ideas, which is essential to probable reason, also falls under the imagination. After discussing these two features of the imagination, we turn our attention to the features of the imagination operative in the genesis of religious and external world beliefs.

2.4.1 Ideas and the Imagination Ideas, which are the objects of reason, are primarily images formed by the imagination. This fact distinguishes Hume from the rationalists, who believed in the faculty of intellect, namely, a capacity of the mind to form non-imagistic ideas or representations. Rationalists can admit that we typically operate with imagistic ideas, the contents of which are derived from sense experience: they can agree, in effect, that the materials of the imagination are copies of sensory impressions. But though the ideas of the imagination can be useful to the thinker, sensory experiences—and hence the ideas of the imagination—do not reveal the nature of the world as it is itself. What the intellect, opposed to the imagination, offers the rationalist is a mode of cognitive contact—admittedly limited—with the nature of the world that transcends the botched and confused representations of sensory experience. The intellect promises an albeit perilous route to the underlying order of the world. Hume’s rejection of the intellect is based on his maxim that all ideas are copied from antecedent impressions: ’Tis usual with mathematicians, to pretend, that those ideas, which are their objects, are of so refin’d and spiritual a nature, that they fall not under the conception of the fancy, but must be comprehended by a pure and intellectual view, of which the superior faculties of the soul are alone capable. The same notion runs thro’ most parts of philosophy . . . But to destroy this artifice, we need but reflect on that principle so oft insisted on, that all our ideas are copy’d from our impressions. ( T.1.3.1.7; SBN 72)

The implications of this are taken up in the next chapter, but the key point here is that ideas—the objects of reason—fall under the imagination.

2.4.2 Association and Power We noted earlier that in addition to the philosophical relations, Hume exploits the natural relations, or the three principles of association: resemblance, contiguity

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and cause and effect. Our ideas tend to be united in the imagination in virtue of one of these relations independently of any conscious activity of the thinker. Hume’s Treatise introduction of these principles to his readers is very brief. In the sequence of editions of the first Enquiry it becomes progressively shorter. Nevertheless, the association of ideas is one of the central roles performed by the imagination and it underpins causal inference.²⁴ Clearly they are important for Hume. Yet why is he so brief? Our first clue lies in the following passage: Thro’ this whole book, there are great pretensions to new discoveries in philosophy; but if any thing can intitle the author to so glorious a name as that of an inventor, ’tis the use he makes of the principle of the association of ideas, which enters into most of his philosophy. ( T Abstract 35; SBN 661–2)

Hume claims to be an inventor in the use to which he puts the principles of association: he does not claim to have invented them. And he did not. Similar doctrines, even if not known by that title, are fairly common in the seventeenth century,²⁵ and can be found in—in rough chronological order—Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, Hutcheson, the Spectator articles, William King, John Gay, and George Turnbull, and many others. We may add the entry on the association of ideas in a reference work that Hume probably consulted, namely Ephraim Chamber’s Cyclopedia. Hume’s brevity in his introduction of such principles is therefore not surprising: he can expect his readers to be familiar with the general idea.²⁶ Commentators have long noted that the principles of association have clear antecedents and it is instructive to approach Hume in the light of these earlier doctrines. In this section, we shall concentrate on the associative relation of cause and effect and show that the associative relation of cause and effect is bound up with a negative epistemic doctrine, namely ignorance of causal power. This sets the scene for the discussion of Part II. In the next section we show how the imagination contributes to the external world and religious belief. When we have had repeated experience of objects standing in the relation of cause and effect we acquire a habit of inference, which Hume identifies with the associative notion of cause and effect and which he calls ‘custom’ in the first Enquiry. We begin to examine the background to this by looking at Leibniz’s view of animal inference given in two short sections of the Monadology:²⁷ Note ²⁴ This holds true for the first Enquiry as well. ²⁵ Something similar can be found in Aristotle and Plato as well. I owe this point to Tim Chappell. ²⁶ David Owen (1999: 77) thinks the brevity of their introduction is best understood as ‘explanatory postulates whose ‘‘proof ’’ will come when we consider his theory as a whole’. I think my explanation is complementary to this rather than offering competition. ²⁷ Translated by Mary Morris, revised by G. H. R. Parkinson, in Leibniz: Philosophical Writings (London: Everyman/Dent, 1973).

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please that I am not suggesting a particular line of influence here. I am also not claiming that the following is unique to Leibniz: it is rather that he sums up a general climate of opinion in a compact way, and so offers a useful foil to make a general point. He writes, 26. Memory provides souls with a kind of consecutiveness, which copies reason but must be distinguished from it. What I mean is this: we often see animals, when they have a perception of something which strikes them, and which they had a similar perception previously, are led, by the representation of memory, to expect what was united with this perception before, and are moved to feelings (sentimens) to those they had before. For example, when dogs are shown a stick, they remember the pain, which it has caused them in the past, and howl or run away. 27. The powerful imagination, which strikes and moves them, arises either from the magnitude or from the number of the previous perceptions. For often a vivid (forte) impression has in a moment the effect of long habit, or of many moderate perceptions oft repeated.

This would not look out of place in Hume. We have a connection of ideas, which leads to ‘feelings’ or sentimens. Impressions leave inferential traces as a function of vivacity or repetition. Compare Hume: ‘. . . the habit, which produces the association, arises from the frequent conjunction of objects, it must . . . acquire new force with each instance’ (T 1.3.12.2; SBN 130). Taking Hume’s vivacity criterion of impressions under its most plausible guise, we can think of perceptual experience as ‘forceful’ in the sense that it has a higher tendency to affect behavioural dispositions than less forceful impressions, prompting action in a way that mere conception or idea does not. This is presumably what Leibniz means by ‘strikes and moves’ (qui les frappe et emeut) in the context of the imagination affecting animals. To make the point that this notion is not peculiar to Leibniz, we can note that a similar doctrine can be found in Hobbes. For him, the imagination is nothing but ‘decaying sense’, a store of ‘more obscure’ images derived from sensory impressions.²⁸ The repeated impact of connected sensory experience leaves a ‘trayne of imagination’, whereby one idea or image is connected with another, leaving unreflective habits of inference. Roughly where A and B have been associated through sense experience, the thought or idea of B will occur to one when one thinks of A. The ‘trayne of the imagination’ issues in what he calls ‘prudence’, which is a ‘Prœsumption of the Future, contracted from the Experience of time Past’. For both Hobbes and Leibniz, furthermore, associational inference is the way in which brutes draw causal inferences. We also share in such inferences. Prudence, declares Hobbes, is not ‘what distinguisheth man from beast’, and according to Leibniz humans ‘act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only’ (Monadology s. 28). ²⁸ Leviathan, Pt I, ss 1–5.

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For Leibniz and Hobbes then animal inference—and a great deal of our inferences—owe themselves to what is in effect the associative relation of cause and effect. Hume too thinks that animal inference is associative. He writes that: The animal infers some fact beyond what immediately strikes his senses; and . . . this inference is altogether founded on past experience, while the creature expects from the present object the same consequences, which it has always found in its observation to result from similar objects. (EHU 9.4; SBN 105–6)

There is a difference: for Hume such inferences are probable reason, both in humans and in animals, whereas for both Leibniz and Hobbes such inferences are explicitly denied the title of reason. Why? The answer they both give is in broad respects the same. Reason requires knowledge of the causes underlying the regularities: association by contrast simply mirrors those manifest regularities in lieu of a grasp of the ‘cause or reason’ sustaining them. For Hobbes, the invention of language allows us definitions, which moves us from mere ‘knowledge of Fact’, provided by sense and memory, to ‘knowledge of Consequences, and the dependence of one fact upon another’, which ultimately resolves itself to knowledge of cause.²⁹ Most humans operate solely on the level of prudence or association, which is fine for practical purposes: ‘ignorance of causes’ writes Hobbes, does not take ‘men farre out of the way’.³⁰ For Leibniz matters are far more complex, for the metaphysics and epistemology of what grounds manifest regularities is an exceedingly delicate matter. Nevertheless the formal structure is clear. For him, it is ‘the knowledge of the necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences’ (Monadology s. 29). Knowledge of necessity reflects a grasp of what underlies manifest regularities. This contrasts with animal ‘pseudo-reason’, inferences that reflect solely past observation, and marks a key (but not the sole) difference between us and animals. In the New Essays, Leibniz’s spokesman writes: A cause in the realm of things corresponds to a reason in the realm of truths, which is why causes themselves—especially final causes—are often called ‘reasons’. The faculty which is aware of this connection among truths is also called reason . . . and here on earth this faculty really is exclusive to man alone and does not appear in any animal on earth. (NE 475)³¹

For animals, however, things stand differently: The thought sequences of beasts are only a shadow of reasoning, that is, they are nothing but a connection in the imagination—a passage from one image to another; for when a new situation appears similar to its predecessor, it is expected to have the same ²⁹ Leviathan, 115. ³⁰ Ibid., 116. ³¹ New Essays on Human Understanding, (ed.) P. Remnant and J. Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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concomitant features as before, as though things were linked in reality just because their images are linked in the memory. (NE Preface 51)

Association makes up for beasts’ failure to understand what underlies manifest regularity. The metaphysic underpinning of those regularities for Leibniz is different from that offered by Hobbes. And, to change philosophers, it is different again from that of Spinoza. Similarly to Hobbes and Leibniz, association is contrasted with reason by Spinoza, and again depends on knowledge of that which underpins manifest regularities. In understanding such causes, Spinoza writes, the ‘order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things . . . ‘For the idea of everything that is caused depends on a knowledge of the cause, whereof it is an effect’(Ethics Pt II, Prop. VII and Proof ).³² Some of the ‘ordering of our ideas’ owes itself to passive, haphazard concomitance, founded on the contingency of personal experience. This is why Spinoza calls such connections in the imagination an order of ideas (or ‘affections’, passive responses) ‘according to the body’, an order that is not the same as the ‘order of things’: From this we clearly understand what memory is. It is simply a certain interconnection of ideas which involve the nature of things which are outside of the human body and which occurs in the mind according to the order and interconnection of the affections of the human body. I say, first, that the interconnection is of those ideas only which involve the nature of things which are outside the human Body, but not of the ideas which explain the nature of the [those] things [my emphasis] . . . Secondly, I say, that this interconnection occurs in accordance with the order and interconnection of the affections of the human body in order that I may distinguish it from the interconnection of ideas which occurs in accordance with the order of the intellect, [my emphasis] by which the mind perceives things through their primary causes, and which is the same in all human beings. (Ethics, II, p. XVIII, scholium)

Association is not reason because it does not involve a grasp of the causal basis of manifest regularities. For Hume this contrast falls away because he thinks that we cannot get any grasp of what underlies regularities. We cannot, that is, grasp necessary connection. Instead, [Nature] has implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; though we are ignorant of those powers and forces, on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends. (EHU 5.2.22; SBN 55)

2.4.3 Resemblance, Association and Error The associative relation identified by Hume as probable reasoning is itself a principle of the imagination. Hume’s predecessors also thought that the imagination, though useful, can be a source of error. Thus Malebranche writes ³² Ethics (trans.) G. H. R. Parkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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that the imagination, and its attendant association of ideas, is not only ‘absolutely necessary for the preservation of life’,³³ but also a fertile source of error.³⁴ All sorts of thought dispositions are established by the imagination in addition to those of probable reason. They owe themselves to the associative principles of resemblance and contiguity. ‘Resemblance’, writes Hume, is the most fertile source of error; and indeed there are few mistakes in reasoning, which do not borrow largely from that origin. Resembling ideas are not only related together, but the actions of the mind, which we employ in considering them, are so little different, that we are not able to distinguish them. This last circumstance is of great consequence; and we may in general observe, that wherever the actions in the mind in forming any two ideas are the same or resembling, we are very apt to confound these ideas, and take the one for the other. Of this we shall see many instances in the progress of this treatise. ( T 1.2.5.21; SBN 61)

It was this disposition which was behind the emergence of the belief in continued and distinct objects (s. 1.4). We shall also see that it is operative in his account of the belief in substantial selves (s. 6.2). This appeal to the associative relation of resemblance as the key source of error has Malebranchian roots. In his Search After Truth, Malebranche tells us that the natural associative relation of resemblance is a source of many errors concerning identity.³⁵ He gives this a psycho-physiological gloss. Association involves the impact of external bodies leaving corporeal ‘traces’ on the brain that act as a kind of memory of the object. The more prolonged or intense the impact on the brain—the deeper the dent, as it were—the more intense the memory, and the connection in the mind.³⁶ Somewhat more reticently, Hume appeals to the quasi-physiological understanding of the imagination to explain the operations of resemblance: ’Twou’d have been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the brain, and have shown, why upon our conception of any idea, the animal spirits run into all the contiguous traces, and rouze up the other ideas, that are related to it. But tho’ I have neglected any advantage, which I might have drawn from this topic in explaining the relation of ideas, I am afraid I must here have recourse to it, in order to account for the mistakes that arise from these relations. ( T 1.2.5.20; SBN 60)

Repeated experience of resembling objects leaves deep physical channels in the brain, and, like water, the progress of the contents of the imagination seeks the ³³ Search: 102. ³⁴ Book 2 of the Search is partly an explanation of the imagination, but partly (and in good Augustinian fashion) an explanation of why it is the source of ‘infinitely many errors’. ³⁵ Search: Bk 3, Pt 2, Ch. 10. ³⁶ Since the imagination consists only in the soul’s power to form images of objects by imprinting them, so to speak, in the fibres of its brain, the greater and more distinct the traces of the animal spirits, which are the strokes of these images, the more strongly and distinctly the soul will imagine these objects (Search: 89). See also Descartes Passion of the Soul. For discussion of the Cartesian context of Humean association see J. P. Wright (1983).

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easiest path, which means the deepest and widest traces in the brain. These channels offer the path of least resistance, as it were: unfamiliar objects that are presented to the senses and the imagination—objects which have not deeply engraved themselves onto the surface of the brain—get shunted down more well-worn paths, resulting in the subject distorting their experience in such a way as to make it intelligible in terms with which they are familiar. It is this that also explains the disposition to anthropormorphize: so both the belief in the external world and religious belief have similar origins. The tendency for us to experience the moon as having a human face, according to Malebranche, is explicable by some features that an experience and associated brain state causing it to be shunted down the ‘face’ track in the associational network of the brain. He illustrates this with two examples that make their way into Hume’s NHR, namely that we see faces in the moon and chariots in the clouds.³⁷ Resembling perceptions partly trigger a psychological disposition, that of taking resembling perceptions to be identical, a disposition the basis of which is ultimately physiological. Before we finish, there is one issue from the previous chapter that we should now address, namely why the senses cannot reveal objects as (spatially) distinct (s. 1.4). I asked earlier what Hume thinks the senses, in the success sense, reveal, and the answer to that was impressions. With this comes the view that distance or ‘outness’ is not revealed to the senses: ’Tis commonly allow’d by philosophers, that all bodies, which discover themselves to the eye, appear as if painted on a plain surface, and that their different degrees of remoteness from ourselves are discover’d more by reason than by the senses. ( T 1.2.5.8; SBN 56)

This is a familiar refrain in early modern philosophy—that three-dimensionality is not, strictly speaking, revealed in visual experience.³⁸ Bodies, strictly speaking, do not ‘discover’ themselves as arrayed in three-dimensional space. The passage just quoted comes from Hume’s discussion of space and time, and although he hints that we discover distance through reason, he does not explicitly address the topic of how the three-dimensional trick is supposed to be done until ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’. By that stage, however, it difficult to see how it can be ‘discover’d by reason’ at all. Recall that Hume wanted to uncover in ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’ the causes for the vulgar belief in external objects, and he identified two components to that belief, namely, that objects have (a) a continued, and (b) distinct, existence. ‘Distinct’ is glossed by Hume in that section to mean ‘external to and independent of us’ (T 1.4.2.8; SBN 190), which suggests the ‘outness’ of the objects of perception. This is confirmed by one consideration Hume exploits to support his negative claim that the senses are not the source of the vulgar belief ³⁷ Search: Bk 2, Pt 2, Ch. 2. ³⁸ For a discussion of this thesis in relation to Berkeley, see Atherton (1990).

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in the distinctness of objects: ‘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’ (T 1.4.2.9; SBN 191). We do not come to believe that objects are distinct from us through the senses because strictly speaking perceptual objects—impressions—are two-dimensional. So whence the three-dimensionality? Hume thinks that the distinctness ‘naturally’ comes with the belief in the continuity of perceptual objects: ‘’Tis the opinion of a continu’d existence, which first takes place, and without much study or reflection draws the other [sc. the opinion of external existence] along with it, wherever the mind follows its first and most natural tendency’ (T 1.4.2.44; SBN 210). As we saw in the previous chapter, the belief in the continued existence of the objects of perception is not the upshot of any ‘reasoning’, but was explained by appeal to the relief it offers from a dissonance felt by the mind. But supposing that belief to be in place, one might think that the distinctness of perceptions is regarded by Hume as the product of reason operating on the (false) premise that perceptual objects are continuous. So when Hume had spoken earlier about ‘outness’ being discovered to us by ‘a certain reasoning’ he must mean that we reason from the false belief in the continued existence of the objects of perception. The problem is that one cannot see, given Hume’s conception of demonstrative and probable reason, how it would be possible to reason from continuity to distinctness. For it certainly is not possible to construe the relation between continuity and distinctness as a relation among ideas that can be the object of intuition or demonstration: if it were, we could not conceive of one without the other. And it cannot be accounted for in terms of probable reasoning; we cannot observe a causal relation between ideas being continuous and distinct. So by a process of elimination, the explanation of the phenomenology of three-dimensionality must parallel the account given for Malebranche’s faces on the moon: that, in virtue of some feature of the imagination we unreflectively and immediately form a judgement, on the basis of an experiential input, that an object is distinct from us and in that sense three-dimensionality is a ‘phenomenological’ fact. Since we do not detect ‘outness’ by the senses or reason, our experience of it is a projection.³⁹ ³⁹ This of course is in line with the (far more developed) account of vision held by Berkeley. The experience of three-dimensionality is for him a ‘sudden judgement’ (New Theory of Vision, s. 20, s. 24), which is the result of ‘suggestion’ as opposed to inference. Suggestion is a customary connection of the imagination, in this case between tactile and visual ideas.

3 Realism, Meaning and Justification: The External World and Religious Belief 3 . 1 R E A L I S M A N D T H R E ATS TO R E A L I S M Chapter 1 discussed the sense in which religious and external world beliefs are projective. The emergence of each belief owes itself to the manifestation of a standing disposition in response to psychological discomfort, of which those beliefs are projections. Such explanations are projective in virtue of an implicit contrast with an alternative detective explanation. Those sources are the senses and reason, acquaintance with the object of the belief, or the causation of belief in line with an epistemically normative consideration in favour of it. In the case of the external world and religious belief, the non-detective source is motivated irrationality. This is the fixation of belief through the biasing of cognitive mechanisms: it is motivated because the belief relieves the subjects’ discomfort and irrational because it biases the subject against what would be otherwise salient evidence against the belief. Awareness of the projective sources of belief rationally destabilizes those beliefs. It provides a reason to suspend those beliefs unless and until some other justification is provided. This chapter resumes the comparison of religious and external world belief with the issue of realism uppermost. At first pass, the relevant sense of realism is the view that we can have justified beliefs in the existence of the external world or God, where what is believed is some version of the core contents for each. Those core contents were, respectively, the continued and distinct existence of the objects of perception for the external world and the existence of invisible, intelligent power for religious belief. Contrast anti-realisms here are (a) reductionism, (b) non-cognitivism, (c) rejection or (d) deep incoherence. Reductionism rejects the core content for the respective belief, and replaces it with analysis of such commitments couched in terms of allegedly more tractable materials. A classic instance of reductionism is phenomenalism. Statements referring to continuous and distinct objects of perception are reduced to statements about actual and possible sense experience (locus classicus Ayer 1946). I shall have little to say about this form here, since Hume shows no interest in offering such reductions for perceptual objects or religious commitments. But phenomenalism might

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nevertheless be congenial to Hume if he thinks that the notion of a continued and distinct object is incoherent. If it is incoherent, then we might think of recasting such object talk phenomenalistically. Non-cognitivism holds that statements regarding God or the external world express statements of mind, the function of which is other than representing the world to be thus and so. Again, somewhat briefly and dogmatically, there is no evidence that Hume thought anything like this for perceptual or religious belief, though, as we shall see, he might have thought something like this for causation and value. The two anti-realist foils that concern us are error theory and depth incoherence. Rejection, as it is understood here, is the view that such beliefs lack justification and without it we should not believe. Realism holds by contrast that we can endorse such unreduced beliefs in either continued and distinct existence or invisible intelligent powers. The threat to realism I shall call the justificatory threat. Now, the possibility of realism so described presupposes that thoughts concerning God or external objects can be formed. We need to be able to form genuine thoughts about God or external objects in order to have beliefs concerning them. But there are various strands of Hume’s thought that appear to push against the very possibility of thought regarding external objects. Any question of a possible justification of a ‘belief’ in an ‘external world’ cannot arise for the external world is literally unthinkable. Realism is halted in its semantic tracks, and the anti-realism here is what I call deep incoherence. There are no coherent thoughts to be had concerning the external world or God. This second, and more fundamental, threat I shall call the semantic threat. Both threats are discussed for the external world and religion, and I offer a realist reading of the external world and a form of rejection for religious belief. In doing so we continue our comparison of Hume’s treatment of religion and the external world, and discover yet more deep parallels. In the end, however, we shall see where he differs on the two. In the next section we shall see that Hume calls both indirect realism and monotheism ‘monstrous’ and ‘absurd’. We shall see that the ‘absurdity’ attaching to indirect realism is more serious than that attaching to monotheism, and represents one version of the semantic threat. For it looks as if Hume’s doctrine of impressions and ideas renders indirect realism either empty or incoherent. This threat is removed, and we turn, in section 3.3, to a different version of the semantic threat that applies equally to the external world and religious belief. In both cases Hume suggests that were we to proportion our belief on the principle that like effects have like causes, the notions of an external object and God become vacuous. The remainder of the chapter discusses some aspects of the justificatory threat in the context of the category of ‘natural belief’, and shows how his treatments of religious and external object belief are crucially different. Realism about the external world is vindicated whereas it is far from clear that this is so for religious belief.

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3 . 2 T H E ‘A B S U R D I T Y ’ O F M O N OT H E I S M A N D T H E D O C T R I N E O F D O U B L E E X I S T E N C E : A T H R E AT TO R E A L I S M R E M OV E D In addition to the parallels between SWRS and NHR sketched in Chapter 1, there is a further one remaining to be discussed. Hume calls the sophisticated beliefs—monotheism and the doctrine of double existence—‘monstrous’. He says that they involve or attract ‘absurdity’. The vulgar view of perception and polytheism do not attract such absurdity and, Hume says, are more ‘natural’ than their sophisticated off-spring. Polytheism contains no ‘monstrous absurdity’ (NHR XI 165) and is a system that is ‘so natural’ (NHR XI 165). Of the vulgar perceptual belief, Hume writes that ‘tho’ this opinion be false’, it is the ‘most natural of any, and has alone any primary recommendation to the fancy’ (T 1.4.2.48; SBN 213), whereas the philosophical view is a ‘monstrous off-spring’ (T 1.4.2.52; SBN 215), ‘loaded with . . . absurdity’ (T 1.4.2.56; SBN 218). Why does he think this? Let us begin with the easier of the cases, monotheism. NHR XI, entitled ‘Comparison of these religions [polytheism with monotheism] with regard to reason or absurdity’, argues that monotheism attracts an absurdity not found in polytheism. Monotheism per se is not absurd. It is rather that ‘philosophy is apt to incorporate itself with such a system of theology’ (NHR XI 165). Philosophy becomes the handmaiden of theology and is exploited—in the bad sense of the word—to produce a complex and incoherent intellectual edifice, incorporating doctrines like transubstantiation, the trinity, and other ‘scholastic’ doctrines. Following the deist tradition, Hume believes such absurdities promote the power of the priests: If . . . theology went not beyond reason and common sense, her doctrines would appear too easy and familiar. Amazement must of necessity be raised: Mystery affected: Darkness and obscurity sought after: And a foundation of merit afforded to the devout votaries, who desire an opportunity of subduing their rebellious reason, by the belief of the most unintelligible sophisms. (NHR XI 166)

The absurdity—or better absurdities—in monotheism are detachable from the core content of monotheism, that of a single intelligent invisible power. It is the priests’ use of monotheism that brings the absurdity, not the core content itself. But with respect to the sophisticated perceptual belief, matters appear different. This brings us to the semantic threat to realism about the external world. For it seems that the absurdity is integral to the core content of continuous and distinct existence. If it is incoherent—and the vulgar view false—then realism about the continued and distinct existence of body is a non-starter. Hume says of the philosophical view that it is,

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over-and-above loaded with this absurdity, that it at once denies and establishes the vulgar supposition. Philosophers deny our resembling perceptions to be identically the same, and uninterrupted; and yet have so great a propensity to believe them such, that they arbitrarily invent a new set of perceptions, to which they attribute these qualities. I say, a new set of perceptions: For we may well suppose in general, but ’tis impossible for us distinctly to conceive, objects to be in their nature any thing but exactly the same with perceptions. (T 1.4.2.56; SBN 218)

The threatening reading of this absurdity is as follows. The doctrine of double existence posits ‘external objects’ of which we are indirectly aware. These objects are supposed not to be perceptions. But we cannot conceive of anything other than perceptions. So either supposition of any object that is not a perception—the indirect object—is empty or the supposed objects must be perceptions. This worry stems from earlier in the Treatise, namely T 1.2.6, ‘Of the idea of existence, and of external existence’, and appears to be an application of the ‘theory of meaning’ reading of the doctrine of impressions and ideas discussed in section 2.2.2. Hume seems to inform us that we cannot conceive of an ‘external existence’: Now since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are deriv’d from something antecedently present to the mind; it follows, that ’tis impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible: Let us chace our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appear’d in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produc’d. (T 1.2.6.8; SBN, 67–8)

Can this semantic threat to realism be met? Previous attempts to meet this threat point out that the paragraph just quoted is followed by something that seems rather more relaxed.¹ Hume writes: The farthest we can go towards a conception of external objects, when suppos’d specifically different from our perceptions, is to form a relative idea of them, without pretending to comprehend the related objects. Generally speaking we do not suppose them specifically different; but only attribute to them different relations, connexions and durations. But of this more fully hereafter [i.e. SWRS]. (T 1.2.6.9; SBN 68)

Picking up on the term ‘relative idea’, realists have argued that such relative ideas extend our capacity for thought beyond that given in impressions. Such ideas are admittedly thin sustenance, but food for thought nevertheless. Here is Galen Strawson’s gloss: Nevertheless (Hume seems to be saying), even if we cannot form any idea of external objects that counts as positively contentful on the terms of the theory of ideas, we can ¹ E.g. Strawson (1989) and (2002), Craig (1987).

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still form a ‘relative’ idea of such objects. It is merely a relative idea because we cannot in any way conceive of or descriptively represent the nature of external objects (when it is supposed specifically different from perceptions); we can conceive it only indirectly . . . We can conceive it only as something that stands in certain relations, or holds a place in a system of relations . . . , while having no positive conception of its nature considered on its own. (1989: 51)

‘Relative ideas’ are supposed to allow us at least to form the thought of some (noumenal) something for which the term ‘external object’ is appropriate. This appeal to relative ideas, however, has been criticized on a number of grounds. First, some argue that the term ‘relative idea’ appears too infrequently to bear much exegetical weight (e.g. Blackburn 2000: 101–2). This strikes me as unconvincing: Hume often writes in a way which suggests that he assumes the existence of external objects, which may give us evidence that he is relying on the notion of a relative idea. The fact that explicit uses of the technical term ‘relative idea’ are few and far between is not that compelling. Secondly, however, candidates for the relevant relative ideas—such as ‘the cause of our perceptions’—are satisfied by the wrong kinds of things (see e.g. Flage 2000: 153). God, for example, could be the ‘cause of our perceptions’, but that is surely not what we wanted. As we shall see in the next section, Hume seems to have little enthusiasm for such ‘unknown somethings’ that relative ideas seem to pick out. So how else might we meet the semantic threat? Strawson picks on the right passage but goes in the wrong direction, leaving the interpretation open to the worry just mentioned. Rather than trade on the supposition of ‘unknown somethings’, the realist should instead simply point out that the supposed external objects resemble perceptions. That prevents the objection that the supposed ‘causes of perception’ is too under-determined to bear any weight. The difference between perceptions and external objects is captured in two ways. First, such objects are like perceptions except that they have ‘different relations, connexions and durations’: that is, they continue to exist unperceived and are distinct. Hume is explicit that the supposition of continuity (and by implication distinctness) is coherent: ‘the supposition of the continu’d existence of sensible objects or perceptions involves no contradiction’ (T 1.4.2.40; SBN 208). Secondly, the notion of a relative idea allows the thinker to think that there may be facts about such objects over and above those represented in perception by resemblance. Such differences are not anything that we can properly grasp, and so we cannot grasp any ‘specific difference’ between such objects and our perceptions. But such a possibility is left wide open. What we do not generally do is suppose that external objects are different from how they are represented to us in experience. We suppose them numerically different, continuous and distinct, but not ‘specifically different’. ² The supposition of resemblance allows us to ² Marina Frasca-Spada suggested to me that the key difference is that perceptions are ‘mental’ and external objects are not. True, but what does ‘mental’ mean in this context? Perception depends

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hold that the properties of objects are intelligible to us.³ We suppose that our experience represents the nature of objects faithfully (though not exhaustively), and this is glossed in terms of our experiences ‘resembling’ their causes. Now Hume does not analyse the supposed resemblance relation. What is striking however is that he does not—unlike Berkeley—appear very worried about its intelligibility. The worries tend to be focused on the epistemic standing of the supposition, not on its coherence. Thus in the first Enquiry he writes: 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 . . . But here experience is, and must be entirely silent. The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning. (EHU 12.1.12; SBN 153 (my emphasis))

In the Treatise too the supposition of external objects is couched in terms of resemblance. We ‘suppose external objects to resemble internal perceptions’ (T 1.4.2.54; SBN 216), and ‘we suppose our objects in general to resemble our perceptions, so we take it for granted, that every particular object resembles that perception, which it causes’ (T 1.4.2.55; SBN 217). There is only one passage that is amenable to a scepticism concerning the very intelligibility of the resemblances relation itself. Hume asks by what argument can it be proved that perceptions are ‘caused by external objects, entirely different from them, though resembling them (if that be possible)’ (EHU 12.1.11; SBN 153). This could be construed as scepticism about the intelligibility of a resemblance relation. But equally it could be construed as a worry about something being ‘entirely different’ and yet resembling. If we interpret ‘entirely different’ along the lines of how we treated ‘specifically different’ above, then it would not be possible for an object to resemble a perception if the object lacks any of the properties represented in that perception: for an ‘entirely different’ object would ex hypothesi not resemble the perception. This is not scepticism about resemblance per se: but about the supposed resemblance between two entirely different things. The supposition of objects resembling perceptions therefore seems coherent. We can conceive of external objects, by supposing objects resembling perceptions that have different relations, connections and durations. This gives us enough content to know we are thinking about external objects, rather than the rather vaguer notion of the ‘cause of perceptions’. We can also suppose that there is some further difference between objects and how they are represented to us in on a perceiver for their existence and external objects do not; that seems to be covered by the supposition that the indirect objects have ‘different relations, connections and duration’. ³ For a view of resemblance as revealing an intelligible understanding of the property that the sensation purports to represent, see Wilson ‘Descartes on Sense and ‘‘Resemblance’’ ’ in Wilson (1999).

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experience by resemblance. We suppose not only a resemblance but some further, yet unspecifiable difference, between perceptions and objects, which is the object of a ‘relative idea’. Thus in ‘Of the immateriality of the soul’ he writes: I say then, that since we may suppose, but never can conceive a specific difference betwixt an object and impression; any conclusion we form concerning the connexion and repugnance of impressions, will not be known certainly to be applicable to objects . . . As an object is suppos’d to be different from an impression, we cannot be sure, that the circumstance, upon which we found our reasoning, is common to both, supposing we form the reasoning upon the impression. ’Tis still possible, that the object may differ from it in that particular. (T 1.4.5.20; SBN 241–2)

So what then is the ‘absurdity’ that Hume thinks the philosophical system of double existence imports? I suggest it lies in Hume’s idea that it ‘at once denies and establishes the vulgar supposition’. Reason has shown the vulgar belief to be false but philosophers try to re-establish it by inventing objects resembling perceptions to be continuous and distinct. At least the vulgar know there are perceptions, and so the vulgar view does not go too wrong in that respect: the objects with which they are acquainted are objects that they know to exist. The vulgar are mistaken about some of the properties of those objects (they think they are continuous and distinct). The philosophers who have yet to justify their system compound the problems by the ‘arbitrary invention’ of a new set of objects.

3 . 3 A D I F F E R E N T S E M A N T I C T H R E AT: R E A S O N A N D T H E EVAC UAT I O N O F C O N T E N T The previous section, it should be stressed, concerned itself solely with the issue of the coherence of the doctrine of double existence and not whether any justification can be offered for it. That is something yet to be discussed. In this section we consider another threat to the content of thought, this time common to both religion and the external world. Again we shall see a significant parallel between Hume’s treatment of religion and the belief in body, though this time the parallel lies not between the NHR and SWRS but the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (DNR) and T 1.4.4 ‘Of the modern philosophy’. Roughly, the idea is this: if one determines what should be believed concerning the causes of the order in the universe—God—or the causes of perception—external objects—by the dictates of probable reason alone, one ought to believe only in a virtually empty notion of a ‘something’ as the respective cause. Reason evacuates the content from any religious or external world belief. We can begin to examine this, and its implications for realism, by considering a recent commentator’s characterization of what is distinctive of ‘sceptical realism’. A sceptical realist is ‘realist about [some] entity’s existence [= believes in the

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existence of], but agnostic about the nature or character of that thing because it is epistemically inaccessible to us in some non-trivial way’ (Richman 2000: 1). There is much to worry about in this characterization of sceptical realism:⁴ but let that pass. The key worry here is this: one had better not be too agnostic about the ‘nature or character’ of a thing, or else we are left with a ‘something-I-knownot-what’, a notion that is not sufficiently rich to characterize the ‘unknown something’ precisely as an external object or God. This is the same worry that affected the bare appeal to relative ideas. It is a worry of which Hume himself shows awareness. In the DNR Hume has Demea say: The question is not concerning the being but the nature of God. This, I affirm, from the infirmities of human understanding, to be altogether incomprehensible and unknown to us. The essence of that supreme mind, his attributes, the manner of his existence, the very nature of his duration; these and every particular, which regards so divine a Being, are mysterious to men. (DNR II 43 (emphasis original))

These are surely the sentiments of a sceptical realist so characterized: Demea is a realist about the being of God, but agnostic about his nature or character. The danger lies in becoming too agnostic about the nature or character, thereby draining the term ‘God’ of all content. This danger Cleanthes exploits to the full a little later, implying that Demea is an atheist ‘without knowing it’ (DNR IV 61). To give the notion of God some content, we have to think in terms of intelligent cause of the universe, and the word ‘intelligence’ had better have some content to it as well: It seems strange to me, said CLEANTHES, that you, DEMEA, who are so sincere in the cause of religion, should still maintain the mysterious, incomprehensible nature of the Deity, and should insist so strenuously, that he has no manner of likeness or resemblance to human creatures. The Deity, I can readily allow, possesses many powers and attributes, of which we can have no comprehension: But if our ideas, so far as they go, be not just and adequate, and correspondent to his real nature, I know not what there is in this subject worth insisting on. Is the name, without any meaning, of such mighty importance? (DNR IV 60)

Notice that the content for thought concerning God—and so the meaning of the name—is couched in terms of a resemblance: denying such a resemblance leaves us a name ‘without any meaning’. Demea’s response that it is impious to conceive of God’s intelligence resembling human intelligence is instantly rebutted: the unchanging mind Demea attributes to the cause of the universe ‘is no mind at all’ (DNR IV 61). Unless we conceive the cause of the universe as resembling our minds—as we conceive of the causes of perceptions as resembling objects—the term ‘God’ is empty, and religious ‘sceptical realism’ is indistinguishable from atheism. ⁴ For criticism of this way of characterizing the project of the sceptical realists, see Kail (2003b).

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Now, much of the DNR centres on this alleged resemblance between the human mind and the causes of order in the universe. Its conclusion tends towards the conclusion that there is little reason to suppose such a resemblance. And, whatever we are to make of Philo’s apparent about-face,⁵ Part XII suggests that if we determine what we should believe concerning the causes of order in the universe if we follow the dictates of reason, the belief we ought to hold is indistinguishable from atheism. Philo begins this discussion by an appeal to the rules of good reasoning: That the works of nature bear a great analogy to the productions of art is evident; and according to all the rules of good reasoning, we ought to infer, if we argue at all concerning them, that their causes have a proportional analogy. (DNR XII 119)

The principle alluded to here is one that centres much of the discussion of the DNR, namely that like effects have like causes. So on the rule of good reasoning that like effects have like causes, we ought to extend the resemblance between the cause or causes of order and the human mind. When we do so, however, we arrive at the thinnest of conclusions, namely that ‘the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence’ (DNR XII 129). Earlier we are told that the dispute between the theist and atheist is ‘verbal’, where also the looseness of remote analogies exposed by the fact that there is one between rotting turnips and human intelligence (DNR XII 120). The remote analogy affords us a certain unknown inexplicable something as the cause or causes of order in the universe, a notion so imperfect, that no atheist will think it worth while to contend against it. This last sentence is adapted from Hume’s discussion of perception in the first Enquiry (EHU 12.2.16; SBN 155), where a piece of philosophical reasoning applied to the external world leaves ‘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’. Again the conclusion is fostered by considerations of resemblance and the maxim that like effects have like cases. The argument concerning the distinction between primary and secondary qualities⁶ is common to the first Enquiry, and Treatise section 1.4.4 ‘Of the modern ⁵ It seems to me that Philo’s concession to religion is only apparent. He says of himself that no one ‘has a deeper sense of religion impressed on his mind, or pays more profound adoration to the divine Being, as he discovers himself to reason, in the inexplicable contrivance and artifice of nature’ (DNR XII 116). No one proportions his religious belief and practice to the God as he discovers himself to reason as much as Philo, a position perfectly consistent with God not discovering himself to reason to any significant extent at all (after all, the contrivance is called ‘inexplicable’). Philo is as religious as far as reason suggests the divine, and reason does not suggest much. Furthermore, when he says ‘a purpose, an intention, a design strikes everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker’ (DNR XII 116), he is not endorsing an argument for this belief, but recording a fact about our natural propensities. The subject of the many pages leading up to Part XII has been what reason suggests, not what strikes the ‘most careless, the most stupid thinker’: the belief in God was supposed to be the conclusion of an argument, a careful proportioning of the evidence. ⁶ Hume’s view of the distinction is discussed further at s. 7.2.

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philosophy’. Here we concentrate on the more detailed Treatise version. Modern philosophy, according to Hume, ‘asserts’ that ‘colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold . . . [are] nothing but impressions in the mind, deriv’d from the operation of external objects, and without any resemblance to the qualities of the objects’ (T 1.4.4.3; SBN 226), and the only argument for the distinction Hume thinks has any force is one from conflicting appearances. Under conditions C, an object appears F to some subject, and yet appears F* to the same subject under conditions C*. It is assumed that there is no change in the object’s properties (it does not switch from being F to F* when the conditions of observations change), and that the relevant object cannot be both F and F* at once. Conditions C may refer to the conditions of observation (or ‘external situation or position’, as Hume puts it) or to the condition of the observer. Since, Hume reasons, like effects imply like causes, it follows that when we conclude that some perceptions have non-resembling causes, all such perceptions must have non-resembling causes: Now from like effects we presume like causes. Many of the impressions of colour, sound, &c. are confest to be nothing but internal existences, and to arise from causes, which no ways resemble them. These impressions are in appearance nothing different from the other impressions of colour, sound &c. We conclude, therefore, that they are, all of them, deriv’d from a like origin. (T 1.4.4.4; SBN 227)

This distinction is supposed to apply only to some of the properties that experience represents objects as having. Others—such as shape and extension—are properties of objects, and our perceptual contact is secure in virtue of our perceptions resembling the objects in those respects. But Hume thinks if we were to apply our ‘reasonings’ consistently, the external world disappears. Of the ‘many objections [that] might be made to this system’, he thinks one is ‘decisive’: I assert, that instead of explaining the operations 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. If colours, sounds, tastes, and smells be merely perceptions, nothing we can conceive is possest of a real, contin’d, and independent existence; not even motion, extension and solidity, which are the primary qualities chiefly insisted on. (T 1.4.4.6; SBN 227–8)

Like the religious belief, the evacuation of content rests on consistent application of the ‘like causes, like effects’ principle in probable reasoning. For once these properties are excluded we cannot form any conception of an ‘external object’ (T 1.4.4.7–14). Philosophical reasoning leads us to make the distinction of modern philosophy, but in doing so we ‘utterly annihilate’ the objects. Thus there is a direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and our senses; or more properly speaking, betwixt the 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. (T 1.4.4.15; SBN 231)

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Probable reasoning therefore threatens realism in both cases, for if we determine what we should believe concerning the causes of perceptions or the causes of order by appeal to rules of God reasoning we are left with an unknown something which cannot, except by courtesy, be called an external object or a god.

3 . 4 R E A L I S M A N D J U S T I F I C AT I O N : R E L I G I O N A N D T H E E X T E R N A L WO R L D C O N T R A S T E D

3.4.1 The Letter to Elliot The great similarities between Hume’s accounts of religious and external world belief that we have thus far stressed are hardly congenial to realism in either case. The causal accounts mirror each other, and awareness of them rationally destabilizes the respective beliefs. Concerning the causes of order in the universe and the causes of our perceptions, consistent application of probable reason leaves us beliefs that are all but drained of content. There is evidence, however, that Hume ultimately views the beliefs differently. Our starting point is a letter to Gilbert Elliot that Hume wrote while writing the DNR. Hume wrote: I cou’d wish that Cleanthes’ Argument [for theism] coud be so analys’d, as to be render’d quite formal and regular. The Propensity of the Mind towards it, unless that propensity were as strong & universal as that to believe in our Senses & Experience, will still, I am afraid, be esteem’d a suspicious Foundation. Tis here I wish for your Assistance. We must endeavour to prove that this Propensity is somewhat different from our Inclination to find our own Figures in the Clouds, our Face in the Moon, our Passions & Sentiments even in inanimate Matter. Such an Inclination may, & ought to be controul’d, & can never be a legitimate Ground of Assent.⁷

There are a number of things to note here. First we know from the NHR that the propensity to religion stems precisely from the anthropomorphizing tendency mentioned in this letter. Nothing in the completed DNR contradicts that, and there is no independent evidence to think that Hume ever succeeded in showing that the propensity does not come from this ‘suspicious foundation’. Independent of any such tendency, reasoning alone concerning the causes or causes of order in the universe suggests only a virtually empty analogy. Secondly, there is a mixture of the psychological and normative: we can control this anthropomorphizing tendency and that we ought to because it is not a ‘legitimate Ground of Assent’. Thirdly, there is an explicit contrast with the propensity to believe our ‘senses & experience’, which further implies that the senses and experience are legitimate grounds of assent. Fourthly, the differences in the normative standing between ⁷ Letter to Gilbert Elliot, 10 March 1751, reprinted in Gaskin’s 1993 Oxford Edition of the Dialogues and Natural History of Religion, 26–8.

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the senses and religion lies, at least in part, in the propensity to believe in our senses being ‘strong & universal’ in contrast to our propensity to religion. This suggests there is some fact about our propensity to believe in our senses and experience that lends authority or justification to those beliefs after all, a fact absent from the religious case. This last point offers the possibility of meeting the justificatory threat to realism about the external world noted in section 3.1. That was the view that no justification is available to external world beliefs. In the next section we counter the justificatory threat and in the following meet the semantic threat to the external belief from reason discussed in s. 3.3. We then contrast external world belief with religious belief.

3.4.2 ‘Natural Belief’, Justification and the External World Not only does Hume think that the external world belief cannot be caused by reason, he also thinks it cannot be justified by reason: we ‘cannot satisfy our reason in this particular’ (T 1.4.2.47; SBN 212). For reason to justify the belief, we need to have experienced the external object causing our inner perception, and, ex hypothesi, that is impossible. The ‘supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning’ (EHU 12.1.12; SBN 153). Furthermore, Hume tells us that it is ‘impossible to decide with certainty’ whether perceptions are caused by the ‘author of our being’ or ‘the creative power of the mind’ or whether perceptions ‘represent nature justly, or be mere illusions of the senses’ (T 1.3.5.2; SBN 64). Yet on the other hand Hume tends to write in such a way that assumes the existence of an external world of objects, and not just an unknown noumenal ‘something’. Is this just Hume speaking with the vulgar or can we think that this supposition is a more genuine commitment to a world of external objects? The commitment cannot be justified by reason: but it does not follow that the commitment cannot accrue justification from some other source. The letter to Elliot suggested that the fact that the propensity is ‘strong & universal’ lends authority to the belief. This is quite consistent with Hume’s claim that we cannot ‘decide with certainty’ among other views of the causes of our perceptions. To think that one possibility—namely that perceptions are caused by external objects—has more authority or justification than the others need not entail that we can, with certainty, rule out the others. To read Hume as a realist about the external world is to read him as viewing that commitment as the one with the most justification, not as something that can be ‘proved’ once and for all. What though is the source of such justification? Since Kemp Smith, scholars have discussed a category of Humean commitment he called ‘natural beliefs’. These are beliefs that are, somehow, supposed to survive even when reason alone cannot provide a satisfactory justification for them. ‘Survive’ is understood here as partly psychological: they are ‘strong and

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universal’ in the sense that human beings cannot help but believe them. That psychological fact though does not bring with it any obvious normative bite: that we cannot help believing does not itself recommend the belief as a good thing to believe. But in an oft-cited passage from the Treatise the notions of universality and irresistibility are mixed with normative-sounding notions. Hume writes: 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 changeable, weak, and irregular . . . 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. (T 1.4.4.1; SBN 225)

The leading idea seems to be that practical criteria help us distinguish between normatively praiseworthy and normatively blameworthy sources. This is part and parcel of a view developed by some commentators that Hume’s view of the normative appraisal of belief and its sources⁸ are informed by his account of ethical appraisal.⁹ If a psychological propensity is a practical necessity or practically useful, its products have default good standing. Among these principles of the imagination can be counted the inferential disposition that Hume identifies with probable reason, part of what is meant here by ‘the customary transition from causes to effects’, or what in the letter to Elliot Hume called the propensity to believe our ‘experience’. Such inferences are justified in as much as they are practically necessary. So, it seems, does the propensity to believe our senses. Now, a proper discussion of how such practical criteria inform the normative standing of beliefs and their sources is well beyond the scope of this book. What is important for our concerns is not the detailed articulation of the view, but simply that the propensity to believe our senses and endorse probable reasoning falls on the side of the permanent, irresistible, and necessary. If the external world belief can be shown to have genuine content and accrue justification, then a realism is on the cards. In a seminal paper, John Gaskin (1974),¹⁰ having examined the evidence for the legitimacy of the category of natural belief, concluded that such beliefs must meet the following criteria: 1. the beliefs are commonsensical, 2. they are non-rational, ⁸ The most comprehensive discussion of these issues (and others’ views) is Loeb (2002). My views on the matter are rather different and space prevents a proper treatment of our divergences. ` ⁹ See e.g. Ardal (1976) and Owen (1996) and (1999: 220 ff). For a close reading of the conclusion to Bk I of the Treatise on these lines, see Kail (2005). ¹⁰ More recent discussions include Costelloe (2004), Gaskin (1988) and McCormick (1993). Gaskin’s original article however provides a nice focus to the issue.

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3. they are necessary preconditions of action, and 4. they are universally held. He also added the claim that there is ‘no evidence which makes it more reasonable to adopt any alternative set of beliefs’ (1974: 286). The belief in the external world meets these criteria, but matters need delicate treatment. It might seem that criterion (1) must mean that the vulgar version of the external world belief is the naturally justified belief. But that cannot be right. Hume is not sceptical about the justification of that belief, if by that it is thought to be possibly true, but lacking in evidence. The vulgar belief is false. If that is right, the falsity of the vulgar view constitutes evidence to adopt ‘an alternative set of beliefs’, namely the doctrine of double existence. This though seems to conflict with (4), for the philosopher’s belief is not universal. But we need to recall from the letter to Elliot that it is the propensity to believe our senses that bestows justification, and the philosopher’s belief, though not universal, is nevertheless a product of a propensity that is universal and strong. After all it emerges just because we cannot shake off the vulgar view. The philosopher’s belief, thus acquires its legitimacy from the propensity. It is a belief that is not demonstrably false and the result of a strong and universal tendency. The philosopher’s belief corrects the false view of the vulgar, but gains legitimacy from the kind of propensity that supports it. It is an instance of a philosophical decision, and philosophical decisions are ‘nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected’ (EHU 12.3.25; SBN 162). The recommendation that the belief has to the imagination is thus secondary, as opposed to the ‘primary’ recommendation that he holds the vulgar view to have. The philosophical view must ‘derive all its authority from the vulgar system’ (T 1.4.2.47; SBN 213, my emphasis), but it has authority nevertheless. That may seem surprising, for it makes the philosopher’s belief a ‘natural belief’. But this I think is not indefensible given (a) the falsity of the vulgar view, (b) that philosophical decisions involve the ‘correction’ of the views of common life, (c) his general assumption of objects distinct from perceptions throughout most of his philosophy, and (d) the fact that the philosopher’s belief derives from the strong and universal propensity of the vulgar. It is in this way that the propensity to believe our senses meets the destabilizing effect of our knowledge of its causes: it is a propensity that in virtue of its practical consequences provides a reason to prefer the corrected version of the original belief.

3.4.3 Double Existence and the Evacuation of Content We suppose a set of objects that resemble perceptions but which are continuous and distinct. The supposition is coherent (s. 3.2) and gains its authority from the practical consequences of the propensity to believe in our senses and experience (s. 3.4.2). This represents a form of realism: the belief is coherent and has some

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justification. Our final threat to realism was the evacuation of the content of the belief by reason (s. 3.3). That threat arose not from indirect realism or the doctrine of double existence per se but from the reasoning that lead to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. What is of fundamental importance to note is that Hume does not endorse the conclusion. In ‘Of the modern philosophy’, he thinks the conclusion represents a ‘very decisive’ objection to that system. When he revisits the topic in the first Enquiry, he is sceptical about the force of the reasoning in the system of modern philosophy: The second objection [to the senses] goes farther, and represents this opinion as contrary to reason; at least, if it be a principle of reason, that all sensible qualities are in the mind, not in the object. Bereave matter of all its intelligible qualities, both primary and secondary, you in a manner annihilate it, and leave only a certain unknown, inexplicable something, as the cause of our perceptions; a notion so imperfect, that no sceptic will think it worth while to contend against it. (EHU 12.1.16; SBN 155)

Hume is insinuating that there is something dubious here. It is hardly obvious then that he thinks that we ought to follow this line of reasoning, and, as others have pointed out, (Blackburn 1993a, Baier 1991: 194) his attitude to the distinction is, at best, equivocal.¹¹ There is a second reason for seeing Hume as not endorsing the conclusion of this line of reasoning, which turns on what Don Garrett aptly calls the ‘Title Principle’ (1997: 234). This is the normative claim that ‘where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us’ (T 1.4.7.11; SBN 270). Reason is authoritative over what we should or should not believe only when it gels with a natural propensity: when it does not, its conclusions have no normative authority on belief. Probable reason is a useful instrument, but that does not imply that we should use the instrument indiscriminately, any more than the usefulness of a knife carries with it the consequence that every use of a knife should be endorsed. Its exploitation in the production of ‘extravagant scepticism’ is not a use of which Hume approves. Notice further that the Title Principle sits perfectly with Hume’s expressed attitude to the worrisome argument in the first Enquiry. There, Hume (wrongly) identifies the worrisome argument with Berkeley’s case for immaterialism and notes that the view ‘admit[s] of no answer and produce[s] no conviction’ (EHU 12.1.16n; SBN 155). In the context of the Title Principle, this is not merely a psychological point: conviction for Hume is liveliness and the Title Principle states that where reason is not lively it has no claim upon us. Not only do we not believe Berkeley, we should not believe him. ¹¹ This does not, however, impugn his comparison of values with secondary qualities—see s. 7.2.

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3.4.4 Religious Commitment We have seen that Hume’s causal explanations of the external world and religious belief are markedly similar, and yet the letter to Elliot indicates that the former is legitimate and the latter is not. For although Hume asks his correspondent for help in proving that the propensity to the belief is something other than our tendency to find our faces in the moon, we know from the NHR that the propensity to monotheistic belief has its roots in precisely what Hume condemns in this letter.¹² How can this be so given our deep and extensive parallels between the two beliefs? The difference must lie in the fact that the former qualifies as a ‘natural belief’ whereas the latter does not.¹³ The propensity to believe our senses is ‘inseparable from the species’ whereas theistic belief is not so inseparable (see e.g. Gaskin 1988 and McCormick 1993). Hence Hume writes that ‘opinion [our objects have a continuous existence] has taken such deep root in the imagination, that ’tis impossible ever to eradicate it, nor will any strain’d metaphysical conviction of the dependence of our perceptions be sufficient for that purpose’ (T 1.4.2.51; SBN 214). Conversely, Hume claims that there are ‘some nations . . . who entertained no sentiment of Religion’ (NHR 134). Taken by itself, this only presents us with a psychological thesis rather than a normative recommendation. But there is further evidence to think that it is desirable to live without all but the most vacuous form of the belief. In DNR Part XII and elsewhere, the practical consequences of religious belief beyond the vacuous ‘true religion’ are viewed in a very dim light indeed. A large proportion of Part XII of the DNR is devoted to listing the negative consequences of vulgar religion, as opposed to the religion of reason, which ‘affords no inference that affects human life, or can be [no] source of any action’ (DNR XII 129). Nothing prevents our proportioning our belief to what reason suggests, namely the most vacuous true religion. The belief, and its propensity, is neither ‘unavoidable to mankind, nor necessary, or so much as useful in the conduct of life’ (T 1.4.4.1; SBN 225).

3 . 5 C O N C LU S I O N TO PA RT I It is now time to recap what we have so far discovered. Part I introduced a schema for projection, and compared Hume’s accounts of the origin of religious concepts and external world beliefs. Projection was an explanatory notion, and both accounts were ‘projective’ in the sense that the products could be ¹² I do not accept the contention that there is a further source for the belief in design, some further or more basic ‘instinct’. See Yandell (1976) for this view. ¹³ Locus classicus Gaskin (1988).

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seen as projections of fear, or anxiety and not of the unbiased detection or responsiveness to evidence. In the religious case, the two forms of the core content—monotheism and polytheism—have irrational causes, and the two forms of belief in the external causes have equally irrational causes. Awareness of these irrational causes destabilizes, but that those causes are irrational does not settle the issue of whether we can ultimately endorse those beliefs. Projection so understood is compatible with realism. The account of detection, which provides the contrast to projection, was discussed in the context of Hume’s three-fold distinction of the senses, reason and the imagination. We then discussed threats to realism in the religious and external world cases, the semantic threat and the justificatory threat. The semantic threat of SWRS was removed by showing that the supposition of continuous and distinct objects that resemble perceptions is coherent. We noted, however, that both beliefs are vulnerable to a different semantic threat: if, concerning the cause of our perceptions or the cause of order in the universe, we proportion our belief on the maxim that like effects have like causes, the belief suggested is that of a vacuous unknown ‘something’. However, in the external world case, Hume does not endorse this conclusion of reason; whereas DNR XII suggests that he does. The justificatory threat to realism of the external world was met by appeal to the category of natural belief. I have argued that realism is defensible for Hume on the external world by showing that the supposition of external objects is coherent, and, although not supported by reason, is nevertheless liable to a form of practical justification. This, I argued, is not so: the religious belief is not supported by reason and has no practical authority. Suitably understood, the external world belief is a natural belief with authority whereas the religious belief is not. A theme throughout Part I was the extensive parallels between Hume’s treatment of the external world and religious belief. The reader may find the following summary outline helpful. 1. Both NHR and SWRS open with a statement to the effect they are interested only in causal explanation of the belief (s. 1.6). 2. Each offers an explanation of a primary form of belief constructed from what Hume takes to be more minimal and independently intelligible materials (s. 1.2 & s. 1.4). 3. Both explanations advert to relatively encapsulated psychological dispositions, whose manifestations remove psychological discomfort (s. 1.2 & s. 1.4). 4. Both vulgar beliefs are shown by minimal reflection to be false (s. 1.5). 5. Each transmutes itself into a more sophisticated version, indirect realism and monotheism respectively (s. 1.5).

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6. Both sophisticated beliefs are not the causal upshot of reason or argument,¹⁴ but instead, of the very psychological facts responsible for the vulgar versions (s. 1.5). 7. Both sophisticated beliefs have a more tenuous hold on the psychology of the thinker than their vulgar counterpart (s. 1.5). 8. Both beliefs owe themselves to the associative relation of resemblance (s. 2.3.4). 9. Both sophisticated beliefs are ‘monstrous’ and ‘absurd’, while the primitive beliefs are instead ‘natural’ and merely false (s. 3.2). 10. Both accounts destabilize the beliefs they explain (s. 1.7). 11. Both beliefs are rendered vacuous by consistent probable reasoning (s. 3.3). ¹⁴ A different proposition from saying that reasoning is a necessary condition for the belief being in place.

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PART I I M O D A L I T Y, P RO J E C T I O N AND REALISM Part II is centred on Hume’s views on causal necessity. Chapter 4 introduces what is meant by causal realism, and examines why Hume thinks we cannot detect necessity. This discussion attempts to show that his strategy is not incompatible with realism and offers the relevant contrast for the explanatory projective account of our commitment to necessity that is the topic of Chapter 5. Chapter 5 shows that Hume’s positive account is explanatorily projective as well as feature projective. Having shown that the projective account is compatible with realism, we then consider whether Hume should be read as a realist about causal power. Things will turn out to be finely balanced, the evidence so far examined suggesting that Hume is an agnostic regarding the existence of powers. Chapter 6, however, offers a reading of Hume’s worries about his account of self that offers an argument against the agnostic reading.

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4 ‘Our Profound Ignorance’: Causal Realism and the Failure to Detect Necessity 4 . 1 I N T RO D U C T I O N Hume’s account of our commitment¹ to causal necessity is projective. It is explanatorily projective in that he argues that we cannot detect necessity and our commitment to it is explained non-detectively. The account, as we shall see, also involves feature projection, the view that something ‘in here’ is attributed to something ‘out there’. In this chapter we begin to examine Hume’s projective account of causal necessity by focusing on his reasons for thinking that we cannot detect genuine necessity. Recall that we said of any explanatorily projective account that matters are best approached in terms of a series of questions. We are to ask: 1. What is the privileged notion of ‘responsiveness’ or detection against which the projective explanation is articulated? 2. What is the explanandum? Are we trying to explain the presence of a belief? The presence of a distinct area of content? Of an experience? Or something else? 3. On what grounds is it thought that we are not so responsive? 4. Of what mental state is the projected appearance (the belief, the content, the experience) a projection? 5. What is the mechanism of projection? What kind of explanation is invoked to explain the appearance? With respect to (2), the primary explanandum is our idea of necessity. It is the aspect of the content of causal commitments that makes the difference between thinking that B will happen, given A, and thinking that B must happen, given A. A detective explanation of concept is one whereby the concept is acquired through acquaintance with genuine causal power. We would be acquainted with an instance of genuine causal necessity, and our idea of it would be a copy of it (cf. ¹ The (Blackburnian) term ‘commitment’ is used in order to remain neutral on the cognitive status of necessity thought and talk. The importance of this issue for realism is discussed at s. 5.3.

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s. 2.2.1). Hume does not think we detect genuine necessity, and this motivates a projective explanation of the concept of causal necessity that we actually have. This brings us to questions (1) and (3). Why does Hume think that we cannot acquire our idea of necessity by detecting power in experience? What would it be to detect necessity—what, that is, is the alternative detective account against which the projective account is contrasted? And do the reasons preventing us from being detectors of necessity preclude any form of realism about causal necessity? The limited aims of this chapter are to articulate the central thesis of causal realism and show that Hume’s negative strategy—his reason for thinking that we do not detect necessity—is not incompatible with it. The remainder of the projective account and its relation to realism are the topics of the next chapter.

4 . 2 C AU S A L R E A L I S M A N D T H R E ATS TO C AU S A L REALISM

4.2.1 What is Causal Realism? Michael Ayers, in a beautiful statement of the causal realist position, writes that Hume, simply held that that . . . necessity is utterly beyond our conception. In the world as we can experience and conceive it, there are, he held, only brute regularities. But among things as they are in themselves, he assumed, there is an intelligible order. (1991: 155)

The important words here are ‘assumed’ ‘intelligible’ and ‘beyond our conception’. We begin with ‘assumed’. Realist readers² contend that Hume assumed the existence of genuine, irreducible powers that lie beyond our cognitive resources.³ What is not at stake is the unproblematic notion that for Hume causation involves temporal priority and constant conjunction. It is rather whether he assumed the existence of genuine causal powers beyond such observable regularities. Realist readers thereby reject ² Realist readings also (unfortunately) go under the misleading label of the ‘New Hume’ after Ken Winkler’s 1991 article (reprinted as Winkler 2000a). This term should be rejected, since it smuggles in tones of unwarranted revisionism. Realist readings go back a very long way, the most conspicuous of which being Kemp Smith’s article of 1905. Other ‘old’ readings in the spirit of causal realism include Calderwood (1898), Maund (1937) and Knight (1886). This list could be extended. ³ Such readings have different motivations. For John Wright (1983) the background is Hume’s view of human nature in the context of Cartesianism. For Craig, Hume’s target is the idea that human beings are made in the image of God (1987). For Strawson (1989) Hume’s scepticism is a natural adjunct to realism. For Buckle (2001) the assumption of power is part and parcel of an attack on the ideal of scientia. The avowals of secret powers and ignorance play roles in different, but complementary, readings of Hume’s overall project. See also Livingston (1984), Costa (1989), and Broughton (1987).

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the reading of Hume as a regularity theorist of causation. A regularity theorist has it that tokens a and b stand in the relation of cause and effect when, in addition to the requirements that a be temporally prior to, and spatially contiguous with, b, a and b instantiate a universal regularity holding between types A and B.⁴ Such facts, and nothing else, constitute what it is for a and b to stand in a causal relation. For the causal realist, on the other hand, what makes it true that a causes b is that the particular a manifests some power in virtue of which b is brought about or produced. Regularities in nature—or those that constitute laws—are expressions of the causal powers of particulars, rather than causal relations being merely instances of regularities.⁵ A regularity theory is understood here as a metaphysical thesis, as opposed to a semantic claim. A semantic regularity theory holds that we can offer a reduction of the concept of cause. All that is meant by ‘cause’ is that events of type A are regularly followed by events of type B. One can reject that analysis—and indeed any possible reduction of the concept of a causal relation—and yet maintain that metaphysically speaking all there could be to such a relation is regular succession. This is important to remember when considering Hume’s famous ‘definitions’ of ‘cause’. We are offered two definitions, the first given in terms of objects standing in relations of priority and contiguity, the second in terms of those relations determining the mind to make the inference from the one to the other. Some have taken the first of these as to be a semantic version of the regularity theory, whereby the meaning of cause is captured in terms of regular succession. The second definition, though, brings with it something more, namely the reaction of the mind toward those relations, making it difficult to think the meaning of term ‘cause’ is exhausted by regular succession. But the second definition—if it amounts to the claim that these conditions jointly constitute causation—is still a regularity theory metaphysically speaking in that all there is to causation, independently of our reaction to it, is regular succession.⁶ ⁴ Contiguity gets dropped as a requirement in the first Enquiry. ⁵ Philosophically the choices are more complicated, given David Armstrong’s view of laws as involving a Platonic necessitation relation between Platonic properties and causal relations as the instantiation of this relation in the causally related particulars. (See e.g. Armstrong 1997: ch. 14.) ⁶ The presence of Hume’s two ‘definitions’ of cause is no threat to realism, but I have elected not to discuss the matter, since I have nothing to add to what others have repeatedly pointed out (Craig 1987: 102ff ; Strawson 1989a: ch. 21; Strawson 2000: 46ff ; and Wright 2000: 90ff ). They cannot be definitions of the meaning of the concept ‘cause’. See also Buckle (2001: 208ff ). Hume tells us that such definitions involve ‘imperfect’ ideas (EHU 7.2.29; SBN 76), and are drawn from ‘something foreign to it’ ( T 1.3.14.31; SBN 170). Crucially, given that they are neither extensionally nor intensionally equivalent, and there is little prospect of establishing that he prefers one to the other, they cannot be read as analyses of the concept. They are best viewed as an account of the input into the cognitive machine, and its output. This is the best we can do since ‘we cannot remedy this inconvenience [of ignorance], or attain any more perfect definition, which may point out the circumstance in the cause, which gives its connexion with its effect’ (EHU 7.2.29; SBN 77). For a discussion of the application of these two ‘definitions’ to Hume’s reconciling project in ‘Of liberty and necessity’ in connection with causal realism, see my ‘How to Understand Hume’s Realism’. (See also s. 5.4.2.)

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The realist Hume assumes that particulars standing in causal relations do so in virtue of the particular cause’s power, manifested in its bringing about its effect. We cannot grasp these powers: we can only observe their surface manifestation. A key motivation for this reading is that in many places Hume seems to make reference to ‘secret powers’, ‘hidden connections’ and the like. Such talk is often accompanied by confessions of ignorance and of the limitations of our faculties.⁷ Thus, for example, he writes: It has been observ’d already, that in no single instance the ultimate connexion of any objects is discoverable, either by our senses or reason, and that we can never penetrate so far into the essence and construction of bodies, as to perceive the principle, on which their mutual influence depends. ( T 2.3.1.4; SBN 400) We are ignorant, it is true, of the manner in which bodies operate on each other. Their force or energy is entirely incomprehensible. (EHU 7.1.25; SBN 72) These ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human curiosity and enquiry . . . The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only starves off our ignorance a little longer. (EHU 4.1.12; SBN 30–1) we are ignorant of those powers and forces, on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends. (EHU 5.2.22; SBN 55)

Such examples could be multiplied, and apparent references to ‘secret powers’, or ‘hidden connections’, and relatedly, to our ‘profound ignorance’, and the ‘imperfections’ and ‘inadequacies’ of our ideas of cause and effect are a persistent feature of Hume’s texts (especially the EHU). One perfectly natural reading of these avowals is that Hume assumes the existence of such things and wishes to expose the limitations of our understanding of this presumed realm. His scepticism lies in exposing our lack of the cognitive wherewithal to grasp the ‘secret connexion’. We learn our ‘profound ignorance’, a lesson that regards ‘human nature’, our ‘human understanding’, and not the metaphysical structure of the world. Such references offer prima facie evidence that Hume assumes the existence of such powers. They have a default authority that is removed if, and only if, strong reason can be given to undermine their natural referential force.

4.2.2 Threats to Causal Realism The default referential force of such avowals is threatened in the following ways. First, given Hume’s scepticism, no justification for any such supposition is available and so he cannot maintain that there are hidden powers. Thus James Harris writes ‘Hume’s scepticism is thorough-going enough . . . to issue in complete suspension of judgement as regards whether there is more to the universe, causally speaking’ (2005: 85–6). This is akin to the justificatory ⁷ For a meticulous catalogue and discussion of such apparently referring uses of power and the like, see Strawson (1989).

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threat to realism of section 3.1. This threat is discussed in section 5.3.4. The second threat is semantic. For realism to be a possibility we need to be in a position to form thoughts of that of which we are ignorant. But it appears Hume’s account of the derivation of the idea of necessity implies that no thought at all can be formed concerning genuine necessity and that the ‘true meaning’ of necessity is merely that it is a feature of our psychology. Either way, the very possibility of the barest thought concerning genuine necessity is undercut, and with that any possibility of realism. No content can be given to putative thoughts with respect to objective causal necessity and hence no question concerning its existence can be intelligibly raised. For even to raise the question of whether there is genuine causal power requires content for such thoughts. The only thought we can form with regard to the objective component to causal relations is, roughly, that they fall under a pattern of regular succession, and that, therefore, is in what causation consists.⁸ On this view, the phrase ‘beyond our conception’ does not, pace Ayers, have the implication of cognitive modesty (we cannot understand causal power) but of cognitive emptiness—no meaning or thought is expressed by the words ‘causal power’. Such a position is not without textual support. Thus: We wou’d not willingly stop before we are acquainted with that energy in the cause, by which it operates on its effect . . . And how must we be disappointed, when we learn, that this connection, tie, or energy lies merely in ourselves . . . Such a discovery not only cuts off all hopes of ever attaining satisfaction, but even prevents our very wishes; since it appears, that when we say we desire to know the ultimate and operating principle, as something, which resides in the external object, we either contradict ourselves, or talk without a meaning. ( T 1.4.7.5; SBN 266–7)

That looks decisive: but the very next sentence muddies the waters: This deficiency in our ideas is not, indeed, perceiv’d in common life, nor are we sensible, that in the most usual conjunctions of cause and effect we are as ignorant of the ultimate principle, which binds them together, as in the most unusual and extraordinary. ( T 1.4.7.6; SBN 267)

Here the talk is of a ‘deficiency in our ideas’, and more startlingly, of ignorance of power. These passages, standing cheek by jowl, make an uncomfortable pairing: if we can mean nothing at all by necessity ‘in the objects’, why even bother saying that we are ignorant of the ‘ultimate principle’? Surely there is precisely nothing of which to be ignorant, if ‘necessity’ either means an internal impression or ⁸ Thomas Beauchamp and Alexander Rosenberg sum up the position nicely (Beauchamp and Rosenberg 1981: 81): ‘The empiricist strictures of Hume’s impressions and ideas doctrine nudges him from this purely negative claim [sc. that we lack an idea of objective necessary connection] to his positive regularity theory of causation.’ For what is in effect the very same idea—that talk of necessity is ‘non-sense’—see Read (2000). Read quite unaccountably claims that reading Hume as saying that talk of necessity is nonsense is an option that realist readers miss (and indeed could itself be viewed as a ‘New Hume’ reading).

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nothing at all? The second passage appears to allow that we can form some kind of thought concerning the ‘ultimate principle’. The presence of such passages creates what Galen Strawson (1989: s. 12.1) calls a ‘meaning tension’, a tension between avowals of ignorance on the one hand and talk of meaninglessness on the other. Of course any passage in Hume is amenable to a number of interpretations. If, for example, one is resistant to the idea that Hume is referring to an ultimate principle of which we are ignorant, one might seize upon the comparative formulation—‘we are as ignorant as’—to undercut any referential implicature. This thought introduces a third threat to realism, namely that all such apparent references are amenable to deflationary readings. The deflationists argue that this tension can be resolved by offering readings of such avowals that do not violate their preferred understanding of the strictures of Hume’s philosophy of mind, and so need not be seen as expressive of any commitment on his part to genuine powers. These are discussed and rejected later (s. 5.4.2). The semantic threat to realism is the most formidable. For it is quite undeniable that Hume talks of ‘meaning’ and ‘meaninglessness’ in connection with necessary connection, which appears in tension to references to hidden connections. But the meaning tension needs to be approached carefully. Kenneth Clatterbaugh, commenting on sceptical realist readings, provides an excellent example of how not to approach things: In Hume’s own theory of knowledge, when we talk of ultimate principles, etc., we are literally speaking nonsense; we are using words without ideas associated with them . . . To take Hume’s talk about secret powers seriously, even to think that such sentences are meaningful, would mean that Hume would have to set aside the entire epistemological framework of his philosophy in the Treatise and the Enquiry. (1999: 204)

This is a spectacularly question-begging argument. Clatterbaugh assumes a particular interpretation of what Hume means by ‘meaningless’ and in the light of that assumption claims that we cannot take his talk of hidden powers seriously. But what Hume means by ‘meaning’ and ‘meaningless’ is not a fixed point around which all else must turn, but is itself in need of interpretation. That requires taking seriously such avowals. That is not to say that they are fixed points either: but they cannot be dismissed at the outset. 4 . 3 M E E T I N G T H E S E M A N T I C T H R E AT

4.3.1 The Semantic Threat and the Realist Strategy The semantic threat is fostered by the strong reading of meaninglessness that disbars any thought at all about that which falls outside the realm of impressions and ideas. Pressure was put on this interpretation in section 2.2.2. Hume’s general view of the relation between impressions and ideas is primarily a genetic claim.

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His approach is to consider possible sources of an idea, and we agreed with Bennett that Hume spends a great deal of time producing particular arguments for why we lack such-and-such an impression, rather than applying some meaning-empiricism theory in a blanket fashion. We suggested that his emphasis on genetic issues and his neglect of complex ideas in key areas, allows us to think of ‘meaninglessness’ in a weaker sense than the total absence of significance. To be ‘meaningless’ is to be such as to be not a possible object of acquaintance, an interpretation that nevertheless left room for a thin conception of that with which we cannot be acquainted. A term has a meaning when we grasp the nature of the putative object through acquaintance, and is meaningless insofar as we are not acquainted with that feature. Hume’s use of words like ‘meaningless’ do not by themselves decide between a strong sense of meaningless, which disbars all thought and a weaker sense, which does not: much depends on the details of the arguments, not on some prior conviction of what Hume means by ‘meaningless’ and its cognates. But with what feature is it we are not acquainted? To use the words ‘causal power’ in this connection gets us nowhere: just as use of the word ‘God’, when no meaning is attached to the term, does not carve out a position evidently distinguishable from atheism (cf. s. 3.3). To sustain a viable realism about causal power we need some understanding of what makes that particular with which we are not acquainted precisely causal power. The correct place to look for such an understanding is in the arguments Hume marshals to explain why we cannot be acquainted with power. Hume’s arguments manifest an understanding of what it would be to be acquainted with power, and as such involve an implicit characterization of that of which we cannot be acquainted. This understanding I shall dub ‘the Bare Thought’. Such an understanding is sufficiently rich to allow us to specify uniquely that with which we cannot be acquainted, and thus avoid the objection that no thought at all is available concerning hidden powers. As such, it allows us to meet the semantic threat to realism. It is, we shall see, coherent and not used ad hominem. The thin notion provides a way of specifying in a non-trivial way that which we cannot detect or be acquainted with in experience (cf. s. 2.2.1–2). That we cannot detect such necessity motivates Hume’s positive, projective, explanation of the idea of necessity, which is the subject of the next chapter. That account also explains the source of the Bare Thought.

4.3.2 The Bare Thought of Necessity Articulated; Why We Cannot Detect Causal Power Hume’s projective account of our idea of causal power is motivated by the fact that we cannot detect—have an impression of—genuine causal power. But why does Hume think that we have no idea of power derived from the objects? A crude understanding of his approach to the question is that he seeks some

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impression qua experiential datum, a ‘power patch’ analogous to a colour patch, and, of course, he fails to find such a datum. But that is really not how his argument works: his argument against our having an impression of power turns on a view of what cognitive consequences such an impression would yield. Were we to have an impression of the causal power of some object—that is to say detect such a power through acquaintance—two related things would follow. First, we could infer a priori the causal upshots of that object. The relevant sense of ‘a priori’ here is that awareness of the power of some object would allow us to infer what effect the object must have prior to its manifestation or actualization. We would be able to ‘read off’ what effect an object has by a simple inspection of that object. Thus: From the first appearance of an object, we can never conjecture what effect will result from it. But were the power or energy of any cause discoverable by the mind, we could foresee the effect, even without experience; and might, at first, pronounce with certainty concerning it, by the mere dint of thought and reasoning. (EHU 7.1.7; SBN 63)⁹

Secondly, detection of power would render it impossible for us to conceive of the cause without its having that effect that that power necessitates. In grasping the causal power of an object we would then not find it conceivable that it could have anything other than the effect that it does have. Hume’s negative arguments equip us with the Bare Thought necessary to meet the semantic threat to realism. We can specify uniquely that which we cannot understand (causal power) by saying that it is that feature that, were we acquainted with it, would yield a priori inference and render it inconceivable that the cause not be followed by its effect. This is the Bare Thought. The Bare Thought identifies that which we cannot understand as, precisely, causal necessity and thus avoiding the objection that talk of ‘unknown somethings’ is not sufficiently rich to allow for thought of causal power. This is not an idea of necessity. What we have absolutely no idea of is what kind of thing it is that could, through our detection of it, yield those consequences. That seems perfectly true: I can gain no conception of what kind of feature it is acquaintance with which would yield those cognitive consequences. So it is quite true that we have ‘no idea of this connexion, nor even any distinct notion of what it is we desire to know, when we endeavour at a conception of it’ (EHU 7.2.29; SBN 77). Nevertheless a thought of a kind is available, manifested in Hume’s negative strategy, to specify that of which we have ‘no distinct notion’. The thin notion is not itself an idea of causal power, but an understanding of what it would be to have such an idea.¹⁰ ⁹ Cf. T 1.3.14.13; SBN 161: ‘We must distinctly and particularly conceive the connexion betwixt cause and effect, and be able to pronounce, from a simple view of the one, that it must be follow’d or preceded by the other. This is the true manner of conceiving a particular power in a particular body.’ ¹⁰ Chapter 5 explains how such an understanding emerges in a Humean mind.

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No instance of genuine power is ever available to the mind, and so our idea of necessity cannot be derived from acquaintance with such powers. We cannot—as we are presently constituted—‘read off’ the causal consequences of an object. We cannot, for example, make such inferences by peering at the sensible qualities of objects¹¹ or from reflecting on the connection between our wills and bodily movements,¹² and we can conceive of a cause not being followed by effect. The rejection of such sources as sources of a genuine idea of necessity instances a general strategy on Hume’s part. First, to infer effect from cause in the light of genuine necessary connection would involve an awareness of a necessitation relation between a and b, making our knowledge of the relation a matter of demonstration. As emphasized in section 2.3.3 the objects of demonstrative reason are relations, and awareness of power would involve an awareness of a necessitation relation. This awareness of a necessitation relation would in turn render the inference from cause to effect a priori in the sense of yielding knowledge of what effect the cause must have, prior to its manifestation. But we are aware of no necessitation relation between cause and effect, and so our inference is not a priori (cf. EHU 4.1). Secondly, knowledge of power would render it impossible to conceive cause without its effect. But according to Hume we can find it conceivable that such and such effect not follow from its cause. The details of Hume’s negative argument will occupy us presently. First a misunderstanding and a related objection need removing.

4.3.3 Powers and Absolute Necessity This misunderstanding is that Hume is supposed to have blundered by conflating causal with logical necessity. The objection is that Hume centreing discussion on that specified in the Bare Thought is wholly ad hominem. The notion of causal power expressed by the Bare Thought relates cause and effect as a matter of absolute necessity. Hume’s discussion of power is dominated by this concept of power, and he treats the above-mentioned cognitive consequences as the sole criterion for awareness of causal power. Such a view of powers entails that the cause item has that power essentially, so that the identity of cause is bound up with the effects it necessitates. As such it demarcates kinds. In any world in which kind K exists, it must have such and such effect E: there can be no world in which K exists and not E.¹³ In the minds of Hume’s predecessors, there are two general views of how such powers figured in the world. The first is what Michael Ayers (1996) calls ‘naturalism’. All agree ¹¹ E.g. T 1.3.14.11; SBN 160–1; EHU 4.1.6; SBN 27; EHU 7.1.8; SBN 63–4. ¹² E.g. T 1.3.14.12; SBN Appendix, 632–3; EHU 7.1.9; SBN 64. ¹³ Notice the existence of the necessitated effect is dispositional: the object’s essence grounds a disposition that the object or kind also has essentially. That way, we can allow for the existence of effects that are unmanifested.

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that God is the ‘first cause’ in that He created the world. The issue was whether He also created ‘second causes’, or objects with natures in virtue of which they bring about their effects, or whether he set up laws of nature among powerless natural objects, which are maintained by God’s efficacious will. Naturalism has it that there are second causes. Natural objects have causal powers in a way that relates to their status as natural kinds. The identity conditions of kinds are given by their essences, and a component of this essence just is the causal consequences of those kinds: it is constitutive of kind K that it has such and such effects. This modal claim is not an artefact of descriptive conventions (the essences are not nominal). These features are features of the world, which the mind might grasp under ideal conditions. A grasp of those essences would yield a priori knowledge of its effect and the impossibility of conceiving that object without its effect. The second general view of powers so conceived is a species of what Ayers calls ‘voluntarism’. By ‘voluntarism’ Ayers means the view that all efficacy resides in God’s will so that created—natural—objects lack powers, but there are two distinct ways in which this can go. First, one might hold that the notion of volition is basic and, crucially, utterly unconstrained by modal, conceptual or logical constraints. All modal facts, including logical and mathematics, depend on the unconstrained will of God, and so God could have made 2 + 2 = 5. There is evidence to suggest that Descartes held this view. Certainly Malebranche thought this was Descartes’ view, and roundly criticized him. Malebranche’s occasionalism represents the second way in which powers figure. For him, the operations of God’s will had to be constrained by will-independent modal facts.¹⁴ This modal constraint helps him in arriving at his occasionalist conclusion in a way that is not merely an appeal to God’s omnipotence. For him, anything that is a power must be such as to relate by absolute necessity. Knowledge of that power yields the cognitive consequences discussed, namely a priori inference and a related incapacity to conceive of that cause not being followed by that effect. The only thing for which this is true is God’s will: ‘it is impossible to conceive that He wills a body to be moved and that this body not be moved’ (Search: 448). Power is a function of will constrained by logical possibility, facts which are determined by relations of ideas residing in the mind of God (but are not a function of His will). God’s will is the only thing that has power essentially, and there are no ‘second causes’ or objects with essences constituting genuine powers. In both cases, powers are connected with the absolute and this necessity puzzles some commentators (e.g. Nadler 2000). It is sometimes said that Hume and Malebranche conflate natural necessity with logical necessity. But ¹⁴ See Elucidation 10 of Nicolas Malebranche The Search After Truth (trans.) T. Lennon and P. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Henceforth: Search.

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there is no conflation, and this connection does not represent some arbitrary high standard for causal power. It is simply the only way in which we can gain any notion of power that does not reduce ultimately to brute regularities (cf. Blackburn 2000 and Bennett 2001: s. 268). To see why this is so, we need to distinguish sharply between what our concept of A causing B might be from what the metaphysical grounds for that relation might be. Let us suppose that our concept of a causal relation commits us to more than a relation of regular succession between A and B. We hold, for example, that A relates B causally if, and only if, we believe that B is counterfactually dependent on A. An objector to Hume and Malebranche’s view of causal power as absolute necessity might then say that this is a modality between absolute necessity and some mere relation of regular succession. An appeal to absolute necessity is quite unnecessary, since our concept of a causal relation only implies counterfactual dependence. Suppose we grant that this is correct of our ordinary concept: the question now arises regarding in virtue of what, metaphysically speaking, do such relations hold. At that level, there are two and only two modalities: either the relation holds in virtue of some contingent relation or some necessary relation. If the relation is a contingent one, the only candidate seems to be some ultimately brute regularity, so that at bottom there are no powers but just regularities. If you maintain that there is metaphysically speaking more to the world than mere regularities, then no other modality is available to you other than absolute necessity. Hume and Malebranche do not therefore set some arbitrarily high standard for the existence of causal powers but know quite rightly that if there is anything more to the relation than regularity it has to be absolute necessity. It is absolute necessity or nothing at all (see also s. 4.3.5). Our knowledge of it must be reflected in the kinds of cognitive consequences that both Hume and Malebranche agree on. This misunderstanding can feed into an objection to the strategy we are thus far pursuing. The objection is this: Hume’s use of the Bare Thought signals not endorsement on his part, but is entirely ad hominem. Malebranche holds that powers involve absolute necessity and knowledge of them involves the consequences specified in the Bare Thought. Hume uses this against Malebranche to reveal that the notion of power cannot be met, and such a conception of power is to be rejected.¹⁵ Hume himself does not think that genuine experience of power would meet what is given in the Bare Thought. However, Hume’s exploitation of the Bare Thought is that his negative strategy should not be taken that way. Instead, his and Malebranche’s consistent use of it marks an understanding of just what it would be to grasp anything that counts as genuine power. It is, as Hume says, ‘the true manner of conceiving a particular power in a particular body.’ (T 1.3.14.13; SBN 161) ¹⁵ See Bell (2000), Winkler (2000a) and Craig (1987). It is unclear whether Bell thinks the strategy is purely ad hominem.

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4.3.4 The Bare Thought and the Threat of Incoherence: The Short Argument While Hume’s use of the Bare Thought is not ad hominem, one might argue that he uses it solely for the purposes of a reductio ad absurdum. For it seems that the Bare Thought can be shown to be incoherent in a short and decisive way. This renders the talk of causal powers ‘in the objects’ meaningless in a way far stronger than our not being acquainted with them: the very supposition is internally incoherent and so we cannot even form the Bare Thought (cf. s. 2.2.2). To meet the semantic objection to realism the threat of incoherence to the Bare Thought needs to be removed. The particular threat I have in mind I call the short argument and it runs as follows. The senses do not reveal necessity to us since (a) we cannot infer a priori the causal upshots of objects, and (b) we can conceive of an effect without a cause; but were we acquainted with the power ‘residing in objects’ the converse would be the case. But if this is what is supposed by ‘necessary connection’, then necessity so conceived is incoherent. We can never be in a position to infer a priori causal upshots and we can always conceive of any cause without its effect, and so the very idea of a feature of an object, acquaintance with which would yield such epistemic consequences is incoherent. The following seems to be a decisive statement of the short argument: ’Tis easy to observe, that in tracing this relation, the inference we draw from cause to effect, is not deriv’d merely for a survey of these particular objects, and from such a penetration into their essences as may discover the dependence of the one upon the other. There is no object, which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves, and never look beyond the ideas which we form of them. Such an inference wou’d amount to knowledge, and wou’d imply the absolute contradiction and impossibility of conceiving any thing different. But as all distinct ideas are separable, ’tis evident there can be no impossibility of that kind. ( T 1.3.6.1; SBN 86–7)

There can be no such impossibility since the ideas of cause and effect are ‘distinct’, and so ‘separable’, implying that we can always conceive cause without effect. This seems decisive: but it is not. In order to be decisive, the following needs to be in place. First, we’ll need to know the grounds for claiming that we can always conceive of cause without effect. That involves offering some account of conceivability, and without one, the simple assertion that we can always conceive cause without effect is not compelling. Secondly, we shall need to be convinced of the fact that conceivability is a reliable guide to metaphysical modality, and under what conditions such conceivability delivers the goods. For we might, if we are sceptics about modal epistemology rather than modal fact, reject the assumption that conceivability is any guide to the modal features of the world. That being so, what we can conceive does not show that cause and effect cannot

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be necessarily connected. We might, in other words, think that conceivability tells us nothing about the modal structure of the world. But does not Hume himself provide these details for this short argument? He gives us a relatively determinate account of conceivability, involving the ‘separateness’ and ‘distinctness’ of our ideas, and there is plenty of textual evidence to suggest that he subscribes to the principle that whatever we can conceive is possible. Since we can conceive of the ‘distinct existences’ relating cause and effect independently of each other, and whatever we can conceive is metaphysically possible, cause and effect cannot be necessarily connected. With this all in place, the thin notion of power can be shown to be incoherent. The argument again seems short and decisive. Further inspection reveals that it is not: the short argument can be dismantled. By way of a preliminary, note that there is something a little odd about the short argument: it is a little too short. First, why should Hume spend so much time discussing the various possible sources of the idea of necessity when he could simply announce that no such thing is possible and move directly to his discussion of our positive idea of necessity? Secondly, the fairly extended discussions of ‘secret powers’ in T 1.3.6 and EHU 4 only make sense in terms of causal powers construed in the absolute necessity sense. All that is nothing but wasted ink if the short and decisive argument is both short and decisive, for it leaves whole stretches of text without purpose. These, of course, are themselves far from decisive considerations, but they should give us pause, especially when we can give an alternative reading of this passage, which does not make it a decisive demonstration of incoherence of genuine power. Notice that in the passage above Hume says that the inference from cause to effect does not derive ‘for a survey of these particular objects, and from such a penetration into their essence as may discover the dependence of the one upon the other’. Now Hume often intimates that we are ignorant of the essences of objects. Thus: my intention never was to penetrate into the nature of bodies, or explain the secret causes of their operations. For besides that this belongs not to my present purpose, I am afraid, that such an enterprize is beyond the reach of human understanding, and that we can never pretend to know body otherwise than by those external properties, which discover themselves to the senses. ( T 1.2.5.26; SBN 64)

and For to me it seems evident, that the essence of the mind being equally unknown to us with that of external bodies, it must be equally impossible to form any notion of its powers and qualities otherwise than from careful and exact experiments . . . ( T Introduction 8; SBN xvii)

In these cases ignorance of essence is bound up with ignorance of power. The reason for this ignorance stems from the fact that we lack the faculty of intellect, a non-sensory mode of cognition that facilitates a grasp of the essences

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of objects (cf. s. 2.4.1). Now if we therefore cannot ‘penetrate the essences of objects’, then our capacity to find cause and effect separately conceivable can be read as symptomatic of that failure, rather than revealing the incoherence of the Bare Thought. Considering the ‘objects themselves’ is just considering our sensory impressions of cause and effect, so that we ‘never look beyond the ideas which we form’ of the surfaces of objects. Since our senses provide us, at best, with information regarding the surface properties of objects, our conceptual resources—the ideas with which reason operates—are constrained by the character of that input: our conception of the objects is a limited conception, and crucially involves failure to penetrate such essences. We cannot get a proper grasp of the ‘essence and construction of bodies’ because sensory qualities are all that is available to us as input. Crucially, that fact also informs what is conceivable to us: because we are ignorant of the essences of items standing in genuine causal relations, we find certain possibilities conceivable and cannot infer a priori the causal upshot of that item. So power is inconceivable to us because of what we can find conceivable.

4.3.5 Powers as Essences Let us marshal some further evidence that Hume thinks of powers as essences before we come to dismantle the short argument. The notions of power, ignorance and essence are drawn together in a later passage: It has been observ’d already, that in no single instance the ultimate connexion of any objects is discoverable, either by our senses or reason, and that we can never penetrate so far into the essence and construction of bodies, as to perceive the principle, on which their mutual influence depends. ( T 2.3.1.4; SBN 400)

Our senses cannot penetrate essences, since our ideas of objects are constrained by impressions: the most we can get to know of the body is ‘those external properties, which discover themselves to the senses’ (T 1.2.5.26; SBN 64). All our ideas are geared toward sensory input, and we lack the rationalist non-sensory faculty of the intellect necessary to grasp the inner structure or ultimate principles of nature. That Hume thinks of powers as essences is further evidenced by his discussion of why reason cannot be the source of our idea of necessity. In T.1.3.14 he says that ‘we need but reflect on two very obvious principles’: First, That reason alone can never give rise to any original idea, and secondly, that reason, as distinguish’d from experience, can never make us conclude, that a cause or productive quality is absolutely requisite to every beginning of existence. ( T 1.3.14.5; SBN 157)

The first part of this is straightforward. Reason cannot give us a new simple idea, and cannot be the source of the idea of necessity. The second is more complicated. Demonstrative reason cannot prove that every event must have a

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cause. We can imagine any object without its having a ‘productive principle’, and so we cannot ‘by mere ideas’ prove that every beginning of existence requires a cause (T 1.3.3.3). Hume’s second consideration is more pertinent to the issue of essence. In connection with the concerns about probable inference discussed in section 2.3.3, Hume considers the following move: It may, perhaps, be said, that after experience of the constant conjunction of certain objects, we reason in the following manner. Such an object is always found to produce another. ’Tis impossible it cou’d have this effect, if it was not endow’d with a power of production. The power necessarily implies the effect; and therefore there is a just foundation for drawing a conclusion from the existence of one object to that of its usual attendant. ( T 1.3.6.8; SBN 90)

Hume’s response to this argument starts with the observation that power lies ‘not in the sensible qualities of the cause’ (T 1.3.6.10; SBN 91). Nevertheless we do suppose that there is a secret power.¹⁶ But now the question arises: why suppose that a collection of sensible qualities S1 and a relevantly similar collection S2, observed at another time, conceal the same power P, rather than some new power P*? Why could not the powers concealed by relevantly similar collections of sensible qualities ‘switch’? Reason, as Hume construes it, cannot assure us that they do not switch. We cannot demonstrate that any cluster of sensible qualities must be accompanied by the same power. But why is Hume concerned to show that reason cannot determine whether the same power is operative, rather than reason’s impotence in showing that some power is operative? The answer rests in the connection between absolute necessity and essence. Let us borrow a useful distinction from Blackburn (2000: 103) between a ‘causal nexus’ and a ‘causal straightjacket’. A causal nexus is some feature explaining connections between kinds that could, in principle, change. The connection between deadly nightshade and death could be explained by some chemical contained in the plant; but there is no reason in principle why deadly nightshade might not still have this effect on us, but in virtue of some other chemical. It is a general fact about that chemical, though deadly nightshade might poison us in some other way. Causal nexus facts allow us to think of powers as features that explain certain regularities (we don’t think of all regularities as brute), so there is some point to talking about powers explaining higher-level regularities: but ultimately causal nexus facts reduce to, or are supervenient on, contingent regularities. Straightjacketing facts, on the other hand, are essential features. It is constitutive of any kind K that it has such and such causal effects, and failing to have those powers is ipso facto failure to be of that kind. Once you understand that power, you will understand how one object simply could not fail to have its effect. The straightjacket is obviously the Bare Thought with which ¹⁶ See EHU 4.2.14. I shall move freely between the Treatise and the Enquiry in this section, since there are no relevant differences as far as we are concerned.

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we are working; it is that feature which, were we acquainted with it, would yield grounds for a priori inference and corresponding closure of our capacity to conceive of anything else being the effect of that kind. If kind K is instantiated, then it necessitates its effect, and anything with different effects fails to be of that kind. It is because Hume supposes powers to be essences that he is fond of the switching argument. The notion of necessary connection is a straitjacket and essentialist notion: natural kinds have their causal powers essentially and, as such, causal powers are partly constitutive of the relevant kind. It is the essence of fire to burn. For if we could be sure that object F identified at time t2 as kind K is the same kind as F * at time t2, then we could know that F * necessitates the effect that F was observed to have brought about. Reason would determine us because we would know that the next thing presented to us must have the effect it was previously observed to have brought about. But reason cannot do this: given that all that is available to the mind is clusters of sensible qualities, the evidence of the senses radically underdetermines the evidence we have from sameness of kind. When presented with F , though it may appear to be the same kind as F *, our ignorance of its internal nature prevents us from having any guarantee of that fact. ‘We always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers’ (EHU 4.2.16; SBN 33). But sameness of sensible qualities does not guarantee sameness of underlying kind. Demonstrative reason sees no necessity relation between a cluster of sensible qualities S1 . . . Sn and kind K, and we cannot by probable reason, guarantee that the next time we encounter such a cluster it will indicate kind K. Thus: In vain do you pretend to have learned the nature of bodies from your past experience. Their secret nature, and consequently, all their effects and influence, may change, without any change in their sensible qualities. (EHU 4.2.21; SBN 38 (my emphasis))

4.3.6 The Short Argument Dismantled: Conceivability, Metaphysical Possibility and the Objects of Conceivability We now return to the short argument against the coherence of the Bare Thought. We can always conceive of some cause not being followed by its effect. But the Bare Thought of power has it that the supposed powers are such that, were we acquainted with them, then it would be inconceivable that the cause not have its effect. The Bare Thought is actually incoherent. The main burden of this section is to show that the restrictions Hume places on the inference from conceivability to metaphysical possibility undercuts the short argument. First, however, a few words about the issue of conceivability (a fuller treatment is given in s. 6.4.3). In Hume’s account of conceivability there is a deep connection between the ideas of cause and effect being ‘distinct existences’ on the one hand and our capacity to find them independently conceivable. There

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is no perceivable necessary connection between distinct existences, because it is possible for the imagination to ‘separate’ the two. But now there is a notorious problem of determining what ‘distinct’ means in a non-circular way.¹⁷ If the notion of ‘distinct existence’ is applied directly to non-conceptual objects or events, it looks as if ‘distinct’ simply means ‘not necessarily connected’, that is, it is metaphysically possible for the cause to exist without effect. If that is right, Hume has simply invited us to trace a small and uninteresting circle. It is no good simply to assert that he thinks that cause and effect are ‘distinct existences’ and therefore are not necessarily connected. That is metaphysics by legislation, and merely laying down the law should not impress anyone. Instead, the distinctness is supposed to apply to conceptual items—ideas. In virtue of our ideas of cause and effect being conceptually distinct existences, we can find it conceivable that cause exists without its effect. And because what we find conceivable reveals what is metaphysically possible, it turns out that cause and effect cannot be necessarily connected. But the problem now is how to construe conceptually distinct existence. For Hume wants to use the notion of distinctness to explain the possibility of conceiving A apart from B. But if distinct simply means independently conceivable we have a different but equally small circle. Either way, Hume’s view that cause and effect are distinct existences and that no necessary connection is perceivable between them seems legislative. In section 6.4.2, I shall argue for a conception of distinctness that traces no such circle. This is distinctness construed as a phenomenal notion. Roughly, two objects are distinct when they occupy non-overlapping regions in a phenomenal field. Our capacity to conceive A independently from B—their conceptual distinctness—can thereby be explained, in a non-circular way by phenomenal distinctness. To conceive A apart from B is, as Hume puts it, to separate those ideas, which amounts to imagining sensory fields occupied by A without B. Particular causes and effects are distinct in that they are phenomenally different objects, and we can conceive cause and effect apart from each other in the sense that we can imagine one without the other. In virtue of phenomenal distinctness, we are able to separate conceptual objects. This avoids the trivialization of the claim that cause and effect are distinct existences. The account of conceivability is something to which we shall return. Our concern here is to show that separating the idea of effect from the idea of cause, and hence finding them separately conceivable does reveal that the Bare Thought is incoherent. For crucially, what we find possible through modal thought experiments cannot, given the restrictions Hume places on conceivability, reveal what is metaphysically possible in re. So our capacity to conceive separately cause from effect does not reveal the incoherence of something that we cannot understand rendering such a separation inconceivable, were we to grasp it. This defuses the short argument and leaves the Bare Thought coherent. ¹⁷ For critical discussion, see Stroud (1977: 47ff ) and Bennett (2001: s. 261).

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It is quite undeniable that Hume thinks that conceivability, suitably qualified, reveals metaphysical possibility:¹⁸ The mind can always conceive any effect to follow from any cause, and indeed any event to follow upon another: Whatever we conceive is possible, at least in a metaphysical sense: But wherever a demonstration takes place, the contrary is impossible, and implies a contradiction. There is no demonstration, therefore, for any conjunction of cause and effect. ( T Abstract 11; SBN 650–1) nothing of which we can form a clear and distinct idea is absurd and impossible. ( T 1.1.7.6; SBN 19–20) ’Tis an establish’d maxim in metaphysics, that whatever the mind clearly conceives includes the idea of possible existence, or in other words, that nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible. ( T 1.2.2.8; SBN 32) Whatever can be conceiv’d by a clear and distinct idea necessarily implies the possibility of existence. ( T 1.2.4.11; SBN 43)

Before one announces that Hume thinks we can grasp the modal structure of the world, and thereby shows there are no necessary connections, it is important to remember the following, both philosophically and in the dialectical situation in which Hume stands with respect to his opponents. Conceivability delivers the truth about in re modality only under situations whereby we have sufficient information concerning the object or objects concerned. Without some restrictions in place, the imagination cannot with any plausibility be thought to entitle one to knowledge of metaphysical modality. Suppose Edmund does not know that Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus, but has ideas of each. He comes to know, after some catastrophic galactic event, that Hesperus has been destroyed. Chloe, somewhat spiteful and prone to mocking Edmund (he is none too bright and makes an easy figure of fun), asks him to consider the possibility that Phosphorus has survived the catastrophe by inviting him to imagine the existence of one without the other. He brings up the idea of Hesperus and the idea of Phosphorus, separates them, and imagines the one ceasing to exist while the other continues. ‘Obviously possible’, yawns Edmund, and lies back on the sofa. All that Edmund’s imaginative exercise has delivered is epistemic possibility, possibility relative to his limited information (and of course he is unaware that his information is so limited). Further information defeats the move from Edmund’s conception to metaphysical possibility. Considerations like these were in the air in the early modern period. For Spinoza, for example, the imagination can produce an illusion of contingency, an illusion explained the conceivability of A without B owing to a confused or inadequate understanding of, or our ignorance of, the essence of A (see e.g. Ethics I, Pr.33, scholium 1, II, Pr.31, corollary and II, Pr.44).¹⁹ Hume’s talk of clarity ¹⁸ For other discussions see e.g. Lightener (1997), Garrett (1997: 64–6), and Kail (2003a). ¹⁹ See also the exchange between Arnauld and Descartes with respect to conceivability and adequacy in the fifth set of objections and replies to the Meditations. Arnauld objects that Descartes

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and distinctness is most plausibly read as recognizing some restrictions on the move from conceivability to metaphysical possibility. Elsewhere he insists that ideas be ‘adequate representations’ of their objects: Wherever ideas are adequate representations of objects, the relations, contradictions and agreements of ideas are all applicable to the objects; and this we may in general observe to be the foundation of all human knowledge . . . The plain consequence is, that whatever appears impossible and contradictory upon the comparison of these ideas, must be really impossible and contradictory, without any further excuse or evasion. ( T 1.2.2.1; SBN 29 (emphasis original, except for the first phrase))

There is no discussion of ‘adequacy’ in Hume’s texts, but illumination can be found elsewhere. Locke connects the notion of some idea being ‘inadequate’ with ignorance of (real) essence (Essay 2.31.6).²⁰ Adequate ideas are those ‘which perfectly represent those archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from’, whereas inadequate ideas are ‘partial or incomplete’ (Essay 2.31.1). We know at most the surface or sensible properties of objects (which constitute their nominal essence), but we lack knowledge of the real essences of objects. The matter is different with respect to mathematics (and morality): the nominal and real essences of, for example, geometrical figures coincide, so that there is no ‘gap’ between our ideas and the essence of the relevant items. Thus: So that all our complex Ideas of substances are imperfect and inadequate. Which would be so also in mathematical Figures, if we were to have our complex Ideas of them, only by collecting their Properties in reference to other Figures. How uncertain, and imperfect, would our Ideas be of an Ellipsis, if we had no other Idea of it, but some few of its Properties? Whereas having in our plain Idea, the whole Essence of that Figure, we from thence discover those Properties, and demonstratively see how they flow, and are inseparable from it. (Essay 2.31.11)

Notice the explicit links drawn between ‘uncertain’, ‘inadequate’ and ‘imperfect’ ideas, essences, and the related notions of demonstration and inseparability. Our ideas of substance, and their related essence, are imperfect and inadequate, but where the idea involves ‘the whole essence’ of the relevant item we ‘thence discover those properties, and demonstratively see how they flow and are inseparable from them’. The drift of this—and many other passages in Locke—is that if we did have adequate ideas of substances we would ‘thence discover those properties, and demonstratively see how they flow and are inseparable from them’. Let us now return to Hume. Though he gives us no general guidance in determining when ideas are ‘adequate’ or ‘clear’, he certainly thinks we have clear, distinct and adequate ideas. So if one were to look for a way to block cannot know his conception of mind is adequate, and hence cannot infer the distinctness of the mind from extension. Descartes’ unsatisfactory reply is that adequacy of perception is not required since he can determine that the mind is a substance. For discussion see e.g. Wilson (1978: 194ff ). ²⁰ An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ed.) P. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).

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the inference from conceivability to modality by an appeal to the inadequacy of the ideas involved one will, I think, be disappointed. But the realist joker is this: of what ‘objects’ are such ideas representations? William Kneale, finding fault in Hume’s apparent move from conceivability to metaphysical modalities, wrote: My imagination of a bright visual sensum not followed by a loud auditory sensum does, indeed, enable me to know that I might experience the one without the other. For while imagining this course of experience I can recognize its possibility. But imagination is powerless to prove a lack of connexion between lightning and thunder. For there may well be many truths concerning lightning and thunder which are not open to inspection to me when I imagine the experiences needed for the perception of lightning and thunder. (1949: 79)²¹

Hume however must really agree with Kneale. For the official theory of impressions and ideas licenses one, and only one, answer to the issue of what objects such as our representations are clear and adequate, namely sensory experiences or impressions.²² Given Hume’s qualifications regarding the scope of modal knowledge revealed by conceivability, modal thought experiments may reveal modal properties of impressions, representations that at best reveal the surface features of ‘external objects’, leaving the possibility of ‘many truths . . . not open to inspection to me’. Modal thought experiments do not licence any inference about the modal properties of the putative objects of impressions, unless impressions are themselves clear, distinct or adequate representations of objects.²³ But there are no grounds whatsoever to think impressions are ‘clear’, ‘distinct’ or ‘adequate’ representations of external objects. This means modal features of ideas cannot be said to reveal any modal properties of ‘objects’ when taken for in re experience-independent things.²⁴ Given that the scope of clear and distinct understanding ranges over sensory impressions, imagining one’s experience going one way rather than another is just that: imagining experience going one way rather than another. If one remains suitably modest about what experience reveals about its putative objects, the imagination is not revelatory of metaphysical possibility even if one buys into the general thesis that what we can imagine is metaphysically possible. Or, to put matters in Hume’s own words: I say then, that since we may suppose, but never can conceive a specific difference betwixt an object and impression; any conclusion we form concerning the connexion and repugnance of impressions, will not be known certainly to be applicable to objects . . . As ²¹ I owe this reference to Edward Craig. ²² Hume uses the words ‘object’ and ‘impression’ interchangeably: ‘no object can appear to the senses; or in other words that no impression can become present to the mind . . . ’ ( T 1.1.7.4; SBN 19). For discussion see Greene (1994). ²³ But what of causal connections among perceptions? See Ch. 6. ²⁴ We rejected the view that impressions cannot be representations in s. 3.2.

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an object is suppos’d to be different from an impression, we cannot be sure, that the circumstance, upon which we found our reasoning, is common to both, supposing we form the reasoning upon the impression. ’Tis still possible, that the object may differ from it in that particular. ( T 1.4.5.20; SBN 241–2)

That Hume thinks conceivability is restricted to the sensory is further supported by his treatment of the switching argument introduced in section 4.3.5. The discussion in the relevant sections of the Treatise and first Enquiry stresses the fact that we cannot know whether the collection of sensible qualities at time t1 is underwritten by the same kind as the collection of similar sensible qualities at time t2. I said that was explained by the supposition that powers are essences. If that is right, then any laws of nature that those kinds determine are hypothetically necessary. If powers are essences of kinds, then while the relation between cause and effect is absolutely necessary, the instantiation of the kind is not. Nevertheless if kinds K1 . . . Kn are instantiated, they necessitate their effects absolutely. That is to say if these kinds are instantiated, a change in the course of nature is not metaphysically possible, relative to that instantiation, since those kinds necessitate the laws they underwrite. The course of nature—again relative to what kinds the actual world instantiates—is necessary. But Hume’s name is taken to be synonymous with the view that laws of nature are contingent. We can conceive of a change in the course of nature, and what we can conceive reveals what is metaphysically possible. So laws of nature cannot be necessary, and powers cannot be essences. But Hume’s claim that we find a change in the course of nature conceivable is couched in a way that implies that this is epistemic possibility, not metaphysical possibility. Through the relevant discussions he is careful to distinguish between objects and sensible qualities. ‘No object’ he writes ‘ever discovers by the qualities that appear to the senses, either the causes which produced it, or the effects which will arise from it’ (EHU 4.1.6; SBN 27). When conceivability is related to the possibility of a change in a course of nature in the EHU this distinction between an object and sensible qualities is maintained, and, what’s more, maintained in such a way that conceivability reveals at most the epistemic possibility—the possibility relative to our ignorance of essence—of a change in the course of nature, and not the metaphysical possibility of such a change. He says that ‘it implies no contradiction, that the course of nature may change, and that an object seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects’ (EHU 4.2.18; SBN 35, my emphasis). The joker here is the ‘seemingly like those’: for in conceiving a change in the course of nature, we are not conceiving of the same object, or an object of the same kind being followed by different effects, but of something seemingly like those we have encountered. He then writes that we may ‘clearly and distinctively conceive, that a body, falling from the clouds, and which in all other respects, resembles snow, has yet the taste of salt or feeling of fire?’ (EHU 4.2.18; SBN 35, my emphasis). This is not conceiving snow to have different effects, but something epistemically

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indistinguishable vis à vis its sensible qualities. Elsewhere, asking what reason we have to extend experience to future times he talks of ‘other objects, which for aught we know, may be only in appearance similar; this is the main question on which I would insist’ (EHU 4.2.16; SBN 33–4). This shows Hume exploiting a sense of conceivability expressed in a way that does not move straightforwardly to metaphysical possibility. It seems, that is, that ‘implies no contradiction’ has an epistemic sense here of no contradiction being revealed to the thinker, rather than it being metaphysically possible that the course of nature change. If conceivability revealed it to be metaphysically possible for the course of nature to change, then Hume could just move to the claim that snow and so forth, could have the feeling of fire rather than something resembling snow. Yet he is very careful to distinguish something’s appearing to be snow and something’s being snow. These expressions can function in such a way as to block any neat inference from what we find conceivable relative to our sensory information, and to what is metaphysically possible. Something appearing to be water, say, is like a notion exploited in Kripke (1980) to explain the illusion of contingency with respect to the necessity of identity between, for example, water and H2 O. When we are imagining water being XYZ, we are not genuinely conceiving water being XYZ (a metaphysical impossibility) but putting ourselves in an epistemic position wherein XYZ has all the relevantly similar surface characteristics (colourless, odourless liquid etc.). Just so with conceiving a change in a course of nature: we are not conceiving the kinds which underwrite laws being followed by different effects (a metaphysical impossibility), but putting ourselves in a position whereby something different, but with the same sensible qualities, is followed by such and such effects.²⁵

4.3.7 Summary, Another Objection and ‘Meaninglessness’ Reconsidered The burden of this chapter is to show how we can avoid the semantic threat to realism. That was the objection that no thought at all can be formed concerning (alleged) powers that we cannot understand, and so no issue at all can even begin to be raised concerning their putative existence. The objection was met by appeal to the Bare Thought: we can specify uniquely that which we cannot understand by reference to the cognitive consequences that a genuine impression would yield, namely the capacity to make a priori inference from cause to effect and a related incapacity to conceive cause without its effect. Powers relate with absolute necessity, and a grasp of that power would be reflected in those cognitive consequences. Hume’s (correct) lesson is that we ²⁵ Blackburn (2000) asserts that identifying causal powers with essences is a ‘verbal’ manoeuvre, but does nothing to justify this claim. In any case, if Hume thinks it is merely verbal he does a very good impression of talking the language with conviction.

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have no conception of what kind of feature could yield those consequences. A realist interprets Hume as assuming that there are such features; an anti-realist as not. Powers so construed are essential properties of causes. Either they are the essences of created efficacious objects or, with Malebranche, an essential property of God’s will. The question that has concerned us is whether Hume’s negative strategy—his reason for thinking we cannot detect necessity—is inconsistent with its supposition. That is not yet to answer the question of whether there are such things or whether Hume believes that there are. That has not been our goal here. Thus far we have shown that his negative strategy does not render the Bare Thought incoherent. Thoughts about what we find conceivable do not show that cause and effect in re are not necessarily connected, nor that the Bare Thought is incoherent. Nor does it show that the laws of nature are contingent. Hume’s talk of essence, and our ignorance of it, and our restricted sensory access to objects and essences, are completely compatible with the supposition of genuine power. Were our faculties different, we could grasp those supposed powers. Talk of ‘were our faculties different’ brings us to a different but related objection to the coherence of the Bare Thought. We said that we can think of necessary connection by thinking of that feature which, were we acquainted with it, would at once allow us to infer a priori the causal upshots of an object and secondly render it impossible to conceive of the cause without its effect. But to be acquainted with some item is to have an impression of it. Here is where a different incoherence in the thin notion may lurk: the notion of a feature, acquaintance with which would close down our imaginative capacities, is itself impossible, since all possible objects of acquaintance —impressions—are phenomenally distinct, loose and separable items. So we cannot be acquainted with anything that would allow us to make such a priori inferences and close down what we presently find conceivable. Our candidate content for necessity is incoherent, and we are left with no other; to talk of ‘necessary connection in the object’ is indeed to talk without a meaning in a sense stronger than mere lack of acquaintance. This objection fails. We can approach this issue by looking at a passage in the DNR. Here the topic is necessary existence, but similar considerations apply to necessary connection. Cleanthes says: It is pretended that the Deity is a necessarily existent Being; and this necessity of his existence is attempted to be explained by asserting, that, if we knew his whole essence or nature, we should perceive it to be as impossible for him not to exist as for twice two not to be four. But it is evident, that this can never happen, while our faculties remain the same as at present. It will still be possible for us, at any time, to conceive the non-existence of what we formerly conceived to exist; nor can the mind ever lie under a necessity of supposing any object to always remain always in being; in the same manner as we lie under a necessity of always conceiving twice two to be four. The words, therefore,

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necessary existence, have no meaning; or, which is the same thing, none that is consistent. (DNR IX 91–92)

The sense of ‘necessity’ is such that were we to know his essence we would find it impossible to conceive his non-existence. This is a direct analogue to our way of specifying necessary connection in terms of the cognitive consequences captured by the Bare Thought. The words ‘necessary existence’ have no meaning because there is an incoherence to be found in their elucidation: we can always find the supposition of his non-existence conceivable. Like the short argument against the coherence of causal necessity, this argument seems short and decisive; but equally a little too short, given what else happens in the text. If it were really decisive, Hume lets a stone-dead horse suffer a few pages of unnecessary flogging. Cleanthes suggests that matter itself might be the necessary being.²⁶ Philo then suggests this ‘probable’ view of the universe: To a superficial observer, so wonderful a regularity [in algebra] may be admired as the effect either of chance or design; but a skilful algebraist immediately concludes it to be the work of necessity, and demonstrates, that it must for ever result from the nature of these numbers. Is it not probable, I ask, that the whole œconomy of the universe is conducted by a like necessity, though no human algebra can furnish a key, which solves the difficulty? And instead of admiring the order of natural bodies, may it not happen, that, could we but penetrate into the intimate nature of bodies, we should clearly see why it was absolutely impossible, they could ever admit of any other disposition? (DNR IX 93)

The point of this exchange is to show how ‘dangerous’ to religion it is to introduce the ‘idea of necessity’ (DNR IX 93), since the notion of necessity can be applied equally well to insensate matter. But all this would be quite redundant if Cleanthes’ original argument were as swift and decisive as it seems. Perhaps Hume adds these further considerations for those unfortunate enough not to spot a sound argument when they see it. Philo, for example, seems oblivious to a similar incoherence lurking in his view of the ‘intimate nature of bodies’. But Cleanthes’ argument does not show the notion to be incoherent: for in the middle of his alleged demonstration of the incoherence of necessity the phrase ‘while our faculties remain as at present’ makes an appearance.²⁷ This suggests a different place for Cleanthes’ ‘contradiction’: it is not that necessity so characterized is incoherent, but rather as we presently are we cannot grasp any such feature. That is crucially different from saying that there could never be any such feature, specified by reference to its cognitive consequences for those with different cognitive equipment. It tells us that we can have no knowledge of ²⁶ ‘We dare not affirm that we know all the qualities of matter; and for aught we can determine, it may contain some qualities, which, were they known, would make its non-existence appear as great a contradiction as that twice two is five’ (DNR IX 92). Notice the straight use of a full-blooded modal notion here, immediately after the alleged demonstration of its incoherence. ²⁷ See Wright (1983: 148) for a related discussion.

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necessity as we are presently constituted; not that there is, or can be, no such feature. At present we can have no idea of God’s essence and the way of specifying that of which we are ignorant, relative to our present cognitive apparatus, yields a contradiction. So there can be no a priori proof for the existence of God. His opponent would have to envisage a change in human cognitive faculties before such a proof is forthcoming: as we actually are, there can be no such proof. It is a contradiction to talk of a proof available to us when we lack the faculties to grasp the object of the proof. That reading is quite enough to undermine the a priori argument for the existence of God and give Hume what he wants. It is also enough to avoid the charge of incoherence: were our faculties different, it might be the case that knowledge of essence would close down our imaginative faculties. But it might be thought that the wording of the passage is ad hominem, and so the talk of ‘while our faculties remain as present’ carries little weight.²⁸ It would certainly be a mistake to rest everything on a single sentence in a controversial passage in a controversial work. But that Hume thinks it is a contingent fact that our faculties are as they are now is lent support elsewhere. Hume has Philo say: Everything is surely governed by steady, inviolable laws. And were the inmost essences of things laid open to us, we should then discover a scene, of which, at present, we can have no idea. Instead of admiring the order of natural beings, we should clearly see, that it was absolutely impossible for them, in the smallest article, ever to admit of any other disposition. (DNR VI 76–7 my emphasis)

Note that at present we can have no idea that yields knowledge of absolute impossibility, not that the supposition of such knowledge is incoherent. In the first Enquiry Hume says: It is readily allowed, that other beings may possess many senses, of which we can have no conception; because the ideas of them have never been introduced to us, in the only manner, by which an idea can have access to the mind, to wit, by the actual feeling and sensation. (EHU 2.7; SBN 20)

For us it is a contingent fact that our ideas are derived from sensory experience. What would be an alternative view of our faculties? The alternative view is the rationalist faculty of the intellect, whereby non-sensory representations provide content for thought. Hume does not of course believe that we are equipped with such a faculty. But that is not a worry for our reading. What is important for our concerns is that Hume is not committed to the claim that the only possible objects of acquaintance are sensory impressions. For the objection we have been considering is this: the putative content we have offered for necessity, namely some feature which were we acquainted with it, would close down our capacity to conceive cause and effect separately, is incoherent. The only items ²⁸ Winkler (2000a: 81–2). Winkler though does not tell us who the target of the alleged ad hominem argument is. See also Wright (2000: 97) for a view closer to my own.

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with which we can be acquainted are ‘loose and separable’ sensory qualities. The response is to say that the content is not incoherent, since it is certainly not a priori known, nor necessary for Hume, that acquaintance must be limited to sensory experience. Were our faculties different, our conceptual capacities might yield acquaintance with essences that would preclude conceiving cause and effect separately. Nothing in Hume’s account of the Copy Principle rules out such a possibility: the Copy Principle is neither a necessary truth nor is its status a priori.²⁹ ²⁹ Cf. s. 2.4.1. For a good discussion see ch. 2 of Garrett (1997).

5 Spreading The Mind: Projection, Necessity and Realism 5 . 1 I N T RO D U C T I O N A key aim of the last chapter was to defend the coherence of the Bare Thought. The causal necessity of which we may be ignorant can be understood as that which, were we to be acquainted with it, would yield a priori inference and render it impossible to conceive cause without effect. The Bare Thought helped defeat the semantic threat to realism. We have no understanding of what kind of thing that might be, other than the relatively formal fact that such powers must be had by causes essentially. This is not an idea of necessity, for it yields no grasp of the kind of thing necessity might be. Nevertheless the Bare Thought allows us to specify uniquely that of which we may be ignorant. None of this should be construed as an argument to the effect that Hume did assume that there are such powers. We are still examining the issue of whether the position is coherent. In section 5.4.3 we shall examine whether there are good grounds to hold that he did assume their existence. The bulk of this chapter, however, is devoted to understanding Hume’s positive account of our idea of necessity, and the senses in which it is projective. The last chapter also answered two of the questions to be asked of any explanatorily projective account, namely what is the favoured account of detection against which projection is contrasted, and why is it that detection is deemed inappropriate. The primary explanandum of Hume’s account is our idea of necessary connection, or causal power. To detect genuine causal power is to be acquainted with some feature that would yield a priori knowledge of the object’s causal consequences and render it impossible to conceive the cause without effect. However, the ideas with which we operate are derived from sense-impressions. This has two consequences: first, we cannot be in a position to grasp the essences (powers) of objects: ‘we can never pretend to know body otherwise than by those external properties, which discover themselves to the senses’ (T 1.2.5.26; SBN 64). The alternative, rationalist faculty of the intellect is rejected by Hume. Secondly, our sensorily-derived ideas are ‘distinct’, and such

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distinctness renders it possible to conceive cause and effect separately.¹ The free play of the imagination owes itself to our limited information with respect to our sensory representations. Were our faculties different, we might ‘penetrate into the intimate nature of bodies, [and] we should clearly see why it was absolutely impossible, they could ever admit of any other disposition’ (DNR IX 93). So we cannot explain our idea of necessity detectively. Our commitment to necessity is a projection partly because it explained non-detectively. For we do have an idea of necessity, an idea that allows us to draw a distinction between causal sequences and non-causal sequences of events. We think in terms richer than mere sequence. Without this idea, says Hume, we might say that ‘one object or event has followed another; not that one was produced by another’ (EHU 8.1.5; SBN 82, my emphasis). There are two remaining questions to be answered. First, of what mental state is the projected appearance a projection? The answer to that question is the ‘determination of the mind’ felt after repeated experiences of regularities. Secondly, what is the mechanism of projection? What kind of explanation is invoked to explain the appearance? The answer to this falls into two parts: the first is a functional change in the imagination, the second is the attribution of this feature of the imagination to ‘external objects’. This second aspect brings us to the notion of feature projection, introduced briefly in section 1.1, namely the attribution of what are features of minds to external objects. This is clearly an aspect of Hume’s view of our commitment to causal power: as we feel a customary connexion between the ideas, we transfer that feeling to the objects; as nothing is more usual that to apply to external bodies every internal sensation, which they occasion. (EHU 7.2.29, n17; SBN 78n) We feel, after the constant Conjunction, an easy Transition from one Idea to the other, or a Connexion in the Imagination. And as it is usual for us to transfer our own Feelings to the Objects on which they are dependent, we attach the internal sentiment to the external Objects.²

And most famously: ’Tis a common observation, that the mind has a great propensity to spread itself on external objects, and to conjoin with them any internal impressions, which they occasion, and which always make their appearance at the same time that these objects discover themselves to the senses. Thus as certain sounds and smells are always found to attend certain visible objects, we naturally imagine a conjunction, even in place, betwixt the objects and qualities, tho’ the qualities be of such a nature as to admit of no such conjunction, and really exist no where. ( T 1.3.14.25; SBN 167)

This feature-projective element of Hume’s thinking is combined with the explanatory element to yield an explanation of our ordinary commitment to causal power. ¹ For a discussion of what distinctness means, see s. 6.4.2. ² Letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, 10 March 1751.

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Aside from the interest in understanding Hume’s positive account of our commitment to necessity, the discussion is important to the realism issue for the following reason. To build a case for Hume’s realism it is not sufficient merely to show the coherence of the Bare Thought. One must show how the Bare Thought emerges in the Humean mind. We need to explain how it is that we can, in terms of Humean psychology, even begin to think that genuine powers are such as the Bare Thought has them. We shall see that Hume’s account can explain the Bare Thought.

5 . 2 H U M E ’ S P RO J E C T I V E AC C O U N T O F N E C E S S I T Y

5.2.1 The Determination of the Mind: Hume’s Non-Detective Explanation of the Idea of Necessity The idea of causation comprises contiguity, constant conjunction, temporal priority and necessary connection. The first three of these components are relatively unproblematic, and constitute Hume’s first ‘definition’ of cause. But there is also the idea of necessary connection, which, Hume tells us, ‘is of much greater importance’ than the other relations (T. 1.3.2.11; SBN 77). At this early stage of the game, he puts the question of its origin to one side, and turns to the issue of causal inference, independent of the idea of necessary connection. At T.1.3.6 he explains how repeated experience of objects standing in the philosophical relation of causation is causally responsible for the transition that Hume identifies with probable reasoning (cf. s. 2.3.3).³ During this discussion, however, a hint is dropped concerning the source of our idea of necessity. ‘Perhaps’, he writes, ‘’twill appear in the end, that the necessary connexion depends on the inference, instead of the inference’s depending on the necessary connexion’ (T 1.3.6.3; SBN 88). This is expanded upon in T 1.3.14 ‘Of the idea of necessary connexion’. The ‘necessary connexion’ depends on the inference in the following way. Repeated observation of the ‘uninterrupted resemblance’ of objects standing in ‘relations of contiguity and succession’ (THN 1.3.14.19; SBN 164) ‘produces a new impression in the mind, which is its [sc. the idea of necessity’s] real model’ (T 1.3.14.20; SBN 165). This impression is variously called a ‘determination’ (T 1.3.14.1; SBN 156), a ‘propensity, which custom produces, to pass from an object to the idea of its usual attendant’ (T 1.3.14.22; SBN 165), a ‘customary transition’ (T 1.3.14.24; SBN 165). In the EHU it is a ‘customary transition of the imagination’, that we ‘feel’ (EHU 7.2.27; SBN 75). The point about the ³ ‘[T]ho’ causation be a philosophical relation, as implying contiguity, succession, and constant conjunction, yet ’tis only so far as it is a natural relation, and produces an union among our ideas, that we are able to reason upon it, or draw any inference from it’ ( T 1.3.6.16; SBN 94).

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necessary connection depending on the inference then appears to be this: the repeated transition from A to B (the inference) issues in some functional change in the imagination. It is because of this transition that we acquire the idea of necessity. The contrast between this and the inference depending on the necessary connection will be made clear presently. At this stage, however, we should note that commentators have taken a dim view of Hume’s account of the origin of the idea of necessity. The difficulty lies in how such an impression could provide anything like a modal content, the thought that B must follow A, rather than the thought that it merely will. Jonathan Bennett (2001: ss 272–3) seems to find the account hopeless, but incidental to Hume’s real concerns. David Pears (1990: 110–19) suggests that the impression is an impression of the powerlessness of our will in the face of associational dispositions: but there is little evidence that Hume himself thought that way. Barry Stroud thinks the alleged impression of necessity lives off the idea and vice versa (1977: 87–8). There is—and could be—no simple impression which provides an idea of necessity. Part of the way in which Hume’s account misleads is his own fault: he shows a marked tendency to treat the impression as a single phenomenal datum, a ‘feeling’. According to Pears, what lies behind this tendency is the general thesis that impressions are phenomenal and any simple impression must be a phenomenal simple, so Hume is looking for such a simple because his general theory demands one (1990: 101). I do not think that is the correct explanation for Hume’s tendency to treat the impression as such. He shows no such tendency to look for simple impressions in discussing the ideas of self or the external world. I shall give a different explanation of this tendency of Hume’s in the next section. But we can go a long way in mitigating the alleged hopelessness of the account by attending to its details in tandem with our understanding of what it would be like to have a genuine impression of power. Recall that a veridical experience of power would enable us to infer a priori effect from cause (in Hume’s sense of simply ‘reading off ’ the effect from the cause) and render it impossible to conceive of the cause without effect. The determination of the mind has to be sufficiently like that without entailing that we do make such grounded inferences and that we cannot conceive cause and effect separately. That is to say, the determination of the mind has to mimic what a genuine experience of power would enable us to do in the absence of that genuine experience. The first aspect of the veridical experience of necessity, its yielding a priori inference, is mimicked by the ‘determination of the mind’ consisting in immediate or unreflective mental transition from experienced cause object to the idea of its effect. Were ‘the power or energy of any cause discoverable by the mind, we could foresee the effect, even without experience’ (EHU 7.1.7; SBN 63) and our tendency to think that we can foresee effect from cause owes itself to the unreflective transitions we make between cause and effect, which owe themselves to the association tracks left in the mind. In encountering a

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cause object of type A, after repeated experience of A being followed by B, we are disposed in such a way that we need not reflect upon that past experience and, on the basis of a grasp of this past conjunction, come to conclude that B will occur. While the determination of the mind to move from A to B is the effect of past experience, B’s having followed A in the past does not figure as a reason or consideration that enters into determining the mental transition from A to B. The mental transition from A to B is itself immediate, as if we were simply ‘reading off ’ the effect from the presented cause: The idea of sinking is so closely connected with that of water, and the idea of suffocating with that of sinking, that the mind makes the transition without the assistance of the memory. The custom operates before we have time for reflection. ( T 1.3.8.13; SBN 104)

The change in the imagination that is the impression of necessity is that the subject ‘feels these events to be connected in his imagination, and he can readily foretel the existence of one from the appearance of the other’ (EHU 7.2.28; SBN 75–6). The ‘readily foretel’ here records the immediacy of the mental transition. The determination of the mind mimics that which one would experience, were one aware, through the faculty of demonstrative reason, of a necessitation relation holding between the relata of causation (cf. s. 2.3.2). The transition from the perception of the cause to the thought of its effect takes on a phenomenology of immediacy. We see the cause and immediately think its effect must occur. But why is the impression the thought that B must follow A rather than simply will? Remember that awareness of a necessitation relation between A and B would also engender an incapacity in the thinker to conceive of A without B following. For Hume, that would mean that the idea of B would be inseparable from the idea of A. This too is a feature explained in terms of the ‘customary transition of the imagination’. Consider this passage: ’Tis natural for men, in their common and careless way of thinking, to imagine they perceive a connexion betwixt such objects as they have constantly found united together; and because custom has render’d it difficult to separate the ideas, they are apt to fancy such a separation to be in itself impossible and absurd. ( T 1.4.3.9; SBN 223, my emphasis)

At one point Hume goes as far as to say that the ideas of objects standing in what are deemed causal relations are inseparable: We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have been always conjoin’d together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. ( T 1.3.6.15; SBN 93)

Both the immediacy of the transition and the inseparability come together in a single passage: The idea of sinking is so closely connected with that of water, and the idea of suffocating with that of sinking, that the mind makes the transition without the assistance of memory.

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The custom operates before we have time for reflection. The objects seem so inseparable, that we interpose not a moment’s delay in passing from the one to the other. ( T 1.3.8.13; SBN 104 (my emphasis))

So these psychological effects of repeated experience—the effects that are of immediate transition and psychological inseparability—mimic what a genuine experience of necessary connection would involve, namely a priori ‘reading off ’ and conceptual inseparability. Rather than this phenomenology of inference owing itself to an awareness of, detection of, a grasp of, a necessitation relation between A and B, our inference between the two takes on a character of ersatz necessitation. Because we come to infer like that, thanks to association, we become to think we do so because we are aware of the necessitation. As Hume puts it, in another context, ‘the custom of imagining a dependence has the same effect as the custom of observing it wou’d have’ (T 1.4.3.7: SBN 222 (my emphasis)). So the necessary connection depends on the inference, rather than the inference depending on the necessary connection.

5.2.2 Spreading the Determination: Feature Projection and the Experience of Causation The determination of the mind gives us an idea of necessity by its mimicking the effects that a genuine experience of necessity would have. It is nondetective because that idea does not arise from such a genuine experience. The psychological state of which the idea is a projection is the customary transition, and the mechanism of projection is the associational mechanism. But of course there is Hume’s talk of ‘spreading the mind’ and the like, which suggested feature projection. This involves a comparison of such an idea with sounds and smells which, although really ‘in here’ are experienced as ‘out there’. How are we to understand this? I suggest that we see this as Hume’s attempt to explain the naïve and mistaken perceptual epistemology of causal relations. This is a much-overlooked aspect of Hume’s treatment of our commitment to necessity. He credits ordinary or vulgar thought with the view that we perceive or experience causal power in the world, rather than only ‘supposing’ that there is (unknowable) power in the object. The ‘generality of mankind . . . suppose, that . . . they perceive the very force of energy of the cause, by which [a cause] is connected with its effect’ (EHU 7.1.21; SBN 69). He writes of the ‘vulgar error’ of thinking that ‘there is a natural and perceivable’ connection between cause and effect (T. 1.4.3.9; SBN 223), and that it is ‘natural for men, in their common and careless way of thinking, to imagine they perceive a connexion betwixt [causally related] objects . . . ’ (T 1.4.3.9; SBN 223). Given the perceptual-sounding metaphors that Hume exploits in the context of projection, and his claim about what the vulgar hold, it may seem that Hume is trying to account not merely for a belief in power but the vulgar notion that we experience power in causal transactions.

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This is on all fours with the perceptual slant given to the metaphor of spreading the mind. In introducing ‘spreading the mind’, Hume refers us to a discussion of the localization of smells and sounds in ‘Of the immateriality of the soul’, a discussion of how we come to attribute non-spatial perceptions—smells and sounds—to extended impression objects by ‘feigning’ a local, though impossible, conjunction between them. He gives an associational explanation of this feigning, in terms of causation and contiguity in time (T 1.4.5.12–14; SBN 237ff ). What is important for our concerns is not the details of this account but its emphasis on the perceptual. Hume is trying to account for something experiential. This point is further supported when we come to consider the source of the metaphor. As suggested by his remark that it is a ‘common observation’ that the mind spreads itself, Hume is appealing to what he thinks is an established phenomenon. And, as with so much of the Treatise, the metaphor is borrowed from Nicolas Malebranche’s Search After Truth. Malebranche argues that we experience bodies as coloured because the soul is ‘content, as it were, to spread itself onto the objects it considers by clothing them with what it has stripped from itself’.⁴ The key idea is that the projection consists in the primitive and mistaken judgement that what is an effect of an ‘external’ body is its cause. This notion of experiencing something ‘in here’ to be ‘out there’ will occupy us greatly when we turn to examine projection and secondary qualities (s. 7.2). Hume’s tendency to treat the impression as a simple phenomenal datum occurs precisely in the contexts when such feature projection is involved, as if he were being guided by such a model. For the moment, it is clear enough that the metaphors involve feature projection and that this suggests that Hume is trying to account for an (ersatz) experience of causal power. But is that really a component of the naïve epistemology of causation? We can approach this by considering a fairly recent objection (to what is taken to be) Hume’s position from philosophers of causation called ‘singularists’.⁵ Singularists reject the assumption that there is any interesting relation to be had between particular causal transactions and regularities and/or laws of nature. They reject the idea that what makes it true that a and b stand in a causal relation is that they instantiate a regularity or law of nature holding between types A and B. One motivation for this view is phenomenological. If a particular instance of the causal relation—a’s being the cause of b—depends on whether a and b instantiate a regularity holding between A and B to constitute it as such, then our capacity to tell whether a causes b seems to require a prior knowledge of the law relating A and B. But this seems a wildly implausible view ⁴ Nicolas Malebranche The Search After Truth (trans.) T. Lennon and P. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997: 58) (henceforth: Search). For Malebranche’s discussion of spreading the mind in relation to causation, see Elucidation 15 of the Search. ‘Spread’ (répandre) is one of Malebranche’s favourite terms, occurring frequently in the Search After Truth and other of his works. ⁵ See e.g. Anscombe (1993) and Peter Strawson (1992: ch. 9).

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of the epistemology of causation, for it seems we can identify causal relations in everyday life all the time, without any knowledge of laws: children know when they have broken their toy, scratched their knees, hit their siblings and the like. The phenomenological point is that we can make such spontaneous judgements concerning causal relations, without any grasp of regularities or laws, or perhaps even possessing the concept. This is one point in favour of not yoking causal relations to laws.⁶ The phenomenological point carries with it an idea of the epistemology of the relation. The epistemology of the causal relation must be perceptual: we can see or feel a’s bringing about b. The spontaneity of our causal judgements suggests an epistemology of non-inferential response to manifestations of causal power.⁷ So many suggest that the spontaneity of causal judgements and the absence of any knowledge of laws to support the idea that the epistemology of the causal relation is perceptual. This, I suggest, is one of the things Hume is trying to account for projectively. The determination of the mind issues in the spontaneous and unreflective idea that, given a, b must happen. When we see the brick flying we immediately think the window must smash, and the phenomenology of that judgement is not that of an inference from past experience (‘I have seen this happen in the past, so it must happen this time’): it is an unmediated inference caused by past experience. So Hume can give a projective account of the spontaneity. The immediate transition presents itself to the thinker as a non-inferential awareness of an instance of the bringing about of an effect, and not of some mental effect of the objects, or indeed of my drawing an inference: I do not glance inwards, as it were, when I come to the immediate judgement that the window must break: I just experience the brick as bringing about the breaking. That phenomenology though does not constitute a revelation of power through experience, but instead a quasi-experience of power: it is not an experience of power because we are not really reading off effect from cause: it only feels like it. It is the determination spread onto the objects that accounts for the quasi-experience of power. 5 . 3 T H O U G H T O R QUA S I T H O U G H T ? R E A L I S M , T H E IDEA OF NECESSITY AND THE BARE THOUGHT The determination of the mind provides a concept of necessity—its idea—explained without appeal to acquaintance with genuine necessity, and the appeal to spreading the determination is an attempt to capture our vulgar phenomenology ⁶ Armstrong takes himself to be a singularist because all that is relevant to determining whether a and b stand in a causal relation is wholly present in the relata. Why? Because there is a necessitation relation between properties constituting a law of nature, and when that is instantiated it is wholly present in any particular in which it so instantiated. (See e.g. Armstrong 1997: ch. 14). ⁷ They are fond of citing a psychological study, Michotte (1963), in support of this idea that we can perceive causal transactions.

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of causation, the view that we simply see instances of bringing about. Of course, it is false that we perceive causal power and indeed our concept of it is derived non-detectively through the impact of repeated regularities on the mind: ‘custom has render’d it difficult to separate the ideas, [we] are apt to fancy such a separation to be in itself impossible and absurd’ (T 1.4.3.9; SBN 223). But we are never aware of a power since we cannot make a priori inferences and we can, on reflection, conceive cause and effect separately. Philosophers who abstract from the effects of custom, and compare the ideas of objects, immediately perceive the falsehood of these vulgar sentiments . . . Every different object appears to them entirely distinct and separate; and they perceive that ’tis not from a view of the nature and qualities of objects we infer one from another. ( T 1.4.3.9; SBN 223)

The question we need now consider is what ramifications Hume’s positive account of the idea of necessity may have for realism. With respect to the realism issue, the only thing we have so far established is the coherence of the Bare Thought. This removed a key semantic threat to realism. Furthermore there is nothing in general about a concept having a projective—non-detective—origin that renders realism impossible (cf. Craig 2000). But the devil in the sea of detail threatens to drown this compatibility by rendering it impossible for the supposition expressed in the Bare Thought even to be formed. To see this, consider two ways of understanding Hume’s account of an idea of necessity. The first is that we acquire an idea of necessity capable of representing the causal powers underlying experience regularities. Though we never perceive such powers, we can nevertheless represent the world to contain them. Such a view of Hume’s aims is common to Craig (2000) and Stroud (1977, 2000a). Stroud thinks such thoughts are false, but genuine thoughts none the less. So Hume is an error theorist for Stroud. Craig, like Stroud, thinks such thoughts are genuine thoughts, but does not take them to be false. The second way to understand the account of necessity is that the acquisition and possession of the idea of necessity simply consists in a disposition to make certain inferences given certain sequences as input. Having the idea of necessity is not having a ‘representation’ of something unknown that we call power: it is merely to be in the habit of making certain inferences. The former account seems congenial to realism, since it sees us as having perfectly intelligible thoughts about (admittedly unknown) powers. We may not know the ‘nature’ of causal power, but we can succeed in referring to something that is a genuine causal power. The second account seems to block that possibility: our use of words like ‘causal power’ does not express thoughts capable of representing some feature of the world, but instead merely express our preparedness to make certain inferences, and in virtue of doing so, we dub some sequences as causal and others as not. Causal talk is a disciplined form of non-cognitive reaction to a world devoid of power, and what is called thought about causal power is really ‘quasi-thought’.

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This latter view—which is the essence of Simon Blackburn’s view—seems to be most promising from what we have seen thus far. It is also a distinct version of explanatory projection, which Blackburn calls ‘projectivism’.⁸ Projectivism seeks ‘to explain our practice of moralizing, using causal language, and so on, in terms only of our exposure to a thinner reality—a world which contains only some lesser states of affairs, to which we respond and in which we have to conduct our lives’ (1984: 169).⁹ The emphasis on the explanatory here is on all fours with what we have said so far. We explain our moral and modal behaviour, including our use of terms like ‘must’ or ‘possible’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘good’ or ‘beautiful’ without saying that there are ‘mustness facts’ or the like that we somehow detect. But, despite talk of a ‘thinner reality’, the explanation is not an explanation of a mistake, error or illusion. That is because in projecting we are not believing falsely that there are moral or modal properties the world happens to lack. Instead, in projecting, we are expressing non-cognitive states of mind the function of which is other than trying to represent the world. These expressions are refined in behaviour and themselves become the objects of higher-order non-cognitive states (we approve of our own approving for example). The upshot of this is that our language takes on a descriptive surface: [W]e project an attitude or habit or other commitment which is not descriptive onto the world, when we speak and think as though there were a property of things which our sayings describe, which we can reason about, know about, and so on. Projecting is what Hume referred to when he talks of ‘gilding and staining all natural objects with the colours borrowed from internal sentiment’, or of the mind ‘spreading itself on the world’. (1984: 170–1)

The last sentence gives us a reason to take this notion of projection very seriously: for Blackburn, Hume is the ‘first great projectivist’ (1993b: 5) and failure to understand this, according to Blackburn, means Hume is ‘shamefully ⁸ Allan Gibbard writes: I myself find Blackburn’s ‘projection’ metaphor misleading: when I find an act of cruelty horrific, do I ‘project’ my feeling of horror onto the act? Not in the sense in which, say, I ‘project’ my hostility onto a person if my own hostility to him makes me groundlessly experience him as hostile. The quality I’m attributing to the act that horrifies me isn’t feeling horror but being horrific—not, I hope, a quality of my own mind. The quasi-property of being horrific isn’t a property of my mind; rather my attributing it consists in my mind’s having a certain property of its own, in my feeling horror. (1996: 332) See also A. Price (1992) and (2000) for a similar complaint. Although the metaphor can mislead, the insistence that it be reserved for what I have called feature projection is unduly restrictive. ⁹ See also (1984: 182): ‘The projective theory intends to ask no more from the world than what we know is there—the ordinary features of things on the basis of which we make decisions about them, like or dislike them, fear them and avoid them, desire them and seek them out. It asks no more than this: a natural world, and patterns of reaction to it. By contrast a theory assimilating moral understanding to perception demands more of the world. Perception is a causal process: we perceive those features of things which are responsible for our experiences. It is uneconomical to postulate both a feature of things (the values they have) and a mechanism (intuition) by which we are happily aware of it.’

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abused by his commentators’ (1984: 221).¹⁰ So for Blackburn’s Hume, words like ‘must’ express a preparedness to make an inference, a state of mind that does not function as a representation of some distinct and metaphysically heavyweight feature such as causal necessity. As we saw, the determination of the mind seems to be the preparedness to make an inference rather than a representational state. It seems to me that our idea of necessity is better construed as a quasi-thought. For that idea does not represent what is ‘in the objects’. Hume writes that when we suppose that a connexion depends upon an efficacy or energy . . . in all these expressions, so apply’d, we have really no distinct meaning, and make use only of common words, without any clear and determinate ideas. But . . . ’tis more probable, that these expressions do here lose their true meaning by being wrong apply’d, than that they never have any meaning. ( T 1.3.14.14; SBN 162)

The ‘true’ meaning of necessity is that it is the determination of the mind. Power or necessity are ‘qualities of perceptions, not of objects, and are internally felt by the soul, and not perceiv’d externally in bodies’ (T 1.3.14.24; SBN 166). If we properly investigate what we are acquainted with in respect to causal powers, then the only possible object of acquaintance—from which our idea is derived—is that psychological transition. This is reinforced by Hume’s claim that in spreading the mind, we suppose something that is ‘incompatible’ with the objects. Hume imagines this objection to his discovery: What! the efficacy of causes lie in the determination of the mind! . . . Thought may well depend on causes from its operation, but not causes on thought . . . to remove [power] from all causes, and bestow it on a being, that is no ways related to cause and effect, but by perceiving them, is a gross absurdity, and contrary to the most certain principles of human reason. ( T 1.3.14.26; SBN 167–8)

In response he says that there ‘may be several qualities both in material and immaterial objects, with which we are utterly unacquainted’ and ‘if we please’ we can call them ‘power’ (T 1.3.14.27; SBN 168). But if ‘instead of meaning these unknown qualities’, we make the term signify something of which we have a clear idea, we must refer to the determination of the mind, which is ‘incompatible’ with the objects. Confusion occurs ‘when we transfer the determination of the thought to external objects, and suppose any real intelligible connexion betwixt them; that being only a quality, which can only belong to the mind that considers them’ (T 1.3.14.27; SBN 168). There are two possible sources of incompatibility. Suppose in forming thoughts about necessity ‘out there’ we at the same time attribute to them features of psychology. The vehicle for the thought involves such feature projection. One ¹⁰ See also (1993b: 167) ‘[This] projectivism is not, of course, new—the package is intended indeed to be a modern version of Hume’s theory of the nature of ethics.’ Hume’s name is invoked frequently. His (1993a) and (2000) are the most exegetically focused pieces.

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might then argue that what we conceive ourselves as attributing—namely causal powers—are not incompatible with objects. The incompatibility is implicated not in what is thought but how that thought is generated. It is generated by projecting a psychological feature onto an external object, and ‘external objects’ cannot be the bearers of mental attributes like the tendency to infer. So Hume here is not saying that causal powers are incompatible with objects but our projective tendency generates an incompatibility. But Hume seems to be saying something stronger here: it is not that we do represent powers in the objects, but do so in a way that it involves attributing a psychological feature to an inappropriate object. It is rather that our idea cannot represent powers. Suppose it were true that our idea could represent power. Now, if the idea were capable for representing, even falsely, genuine power there should be no incompatibility. We represent objects to have something they lack. But now in spreading our mind, the idea purports to represent objects as possessing something that is incompatible ‘with the objects’ (we suppose something that can only lie in the mind). Of course the thought might be false, or unjustifiable, but mere falsehood is different from the incompatibility of power and external object. The representational incompatibility of idea and ‘external object’ becomes readily understandable on the non-cognitivist construal. The idea is incompatible with external objects just because the function of the idea is not that of representation: its function is to fixate certain inferential patterns in the mind of the thinker. Any attempt to think something further about power in the objects is impossible, since it is an attempt to apply what is really an inferential disposition, which is not itself a representation. We now have a reading of why the idea of necessity cannot represent something in the objects that is far more interesting than the lack of an impression of something ‘in the objects’. This again puts realism on the back foot. Hume does not allow any other source of our notion of necessity and it seems that the one we do have cannot ‘represent’ anything in the objects. The semantic threat to realism now returns with a vengeance. Let us concede that the determination of the mind—the impression of necessity—just is an inferential disposition. This is what the texts clearly suggest. In conceding this we further concede that its function is non-cognitive, and so the idea is incompatible with the objects not merely because of some mental/nonmental mismatch but because the function of impression is not at all to represent power, but to guide inference. Again the incompatibility of our idea of necessity and ‘external objects’ is a textual datum. So we concede that the vast majority of causal thought is non-cognitive quasi-thought, and any attribution of power is quasi-attribution. By this I mean that causal power talk is expressive of inferential dispositions and not an attempt to attribute some heavyweight metaphysical feature like causal power. What should be resisted however is the suggestion that all thought concerning causal power is really just non-cognitive quasi-thought. For recall that the Bare Thought is exploited by Hume in his negative strategy, and the Bare Thought cannot be construed non-cognitively. For we have already

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seen that the impression of necessity that we actually have and the Bare Thought are closely related. The Bare Thought is not an idea, and it is certainly not an idea or copy of our impression of necessity. But the non-cognitive impression can nevertheless explain how the Bare Thought comes into circulation: we form such a notion through a mistaken interpretation of what our causal inferences express, namely a perception of causal power. What the non-cognitivist reading of all areas of causal thinking needs to show is not only that our idea of necessity is best accounted for in terms of a non-cognitive reaction (which I agree is right), but that there can be no further notion—as opposed to idea—of necessity derivable from the determination of the mind. Hume does exploit the Bare Thought. We also have an interpretation of ‘meaning’ and ‘meaninglessness’ that allows a sense of meaningless that does not preclude realism (s. 2.2.2). We also have an account of how the Bare Thought can be seen to emerge from the impression of necessity we do have. Conversely, we cannot let things rest on the fact that we use words like causal power or that they ‘sound meaningful’. That such words are used is no proof that genuine thoughts lie behind them. The Bare Thought needs to be defended in some principled way to decide whether the Bare Thought is really a thought at all. For one way to decide this, I borrow from Crispin Wright.¹¹ Wright suggests that we can decide whether we should see discourse as expressive of genuine thought when we can offer some account of what would constitute the requisite cognitive abilities to acquire knowledge of the putative facts in the area. If we can have no such conception, we should instead see the commitment as non-factual, as having a function other than representation. If it is not a contingent matter that we lack the cognitive wherewithal to be in a position to know whether p in some disputed area, then the expression—or class of expressions—can thereby be shown not to be capable of being true or false.¹² In an attempt to deflect external world scepticism by appeal to non-cognitivism, Wright says: sense experience is not merely a mode which we poor humans, limited as we are, are forced to utilize in the attempt to know our physical environment, and which could be contrasted with some superior, more direct mode of cognition . . . We have absolutely no inkling of the nature of any such superior mode of cognition. (1985: 450)

This is a route to showing that any expression in the area must be non-factual because there is no contrasting mode of cognition. This though does not apply to Hume, dialectically speaking. Hume does not rule out a priori the possibility of there being such non-sensory modes of representation (cf. s. 4.3.7). Hume ¹¹ See e.g. Wright (1985) and Wright (1986). Wright’s position has been refined throughout the years, and the suggestion discussed here does not represent his final position on the matter. ¹² The whole issue of whether projectivism qua non-cognitivism can be successful is subject to a vast literature, a tiny fraction of which includes Hale (1986), McDowell (1988a), Anthony Price (1992), Huw Price (1988) and Crispin Wright (1992). I do not of course pretend to have settled matters of the truth of projectivism per se.

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thinks it is a deep, but nevertheless contingent fact that sense experience is our mode of contact with the world. It may turn out in the end that Wright is correct about the philosophical issue: but there is much to indicate that Hume does not foreclose on the possibility of non-sensory representation. That is enough to give the Bare Thought room to breathe. A second way to deprive the Bare Thought of its status as a genuine thought is much more direct, and an antecedent with which Hume was most likely familiar. In dealing with the objection that his philosophy leaves ordinary thought in massive error, Berkeley writes the following: Must we suppose the whole world to be mistaken? . . . I answer, first, that upon a narrow inquiry, it will not perhaps be found, so many as is imagined do really believe the existence of matter or things without the mind. Strictly speaking, to believe that which involves a contradiction, or has no meaning in it, is impossible . . . In one sense indeed, men may be said to believe that matter exists, that is, that they act as if the immediate cause of their sensations, which affects them every moment, and is so nearly present to them, were some senseless unthinking being. But that they should apprehend any meaning marked by those words, and form thereof a speculative opinion, is what I am not able to conceive. This is not the only instance wherein men impose upon themselves, by imagining they believe those propositions they have often heard, though at bottom they have no meaning in them.¹³

Here we have a distinction between thought and quasi-thought, between belief and quasi-belief. In acting in certain ways—acting is if the cause of experience were not intelligent—we may be said to believe or think about matter, even though in reality we do not believe or think any such thing. For the notion of matter is actually incoherent, and it is impossible to have such beliefs or thoughts. But this will not work in the case of the Bare Thought: for as we saw in the previous chapter, its supposition involves no contradiction.

5.4 REALISM RECONSIDERED

5.4.1 Why Realism? We have worked very hard to meet the semantic objection to realism. A coherent thought concerning supposed necessity is available to Hume. His grasp of it is manifested in his reasons for thinking we have no impression of genuine power, and this Bare Thought relates quite closely to the impression of necessity that we do have. It seems, therefore, as if we can form a thought without an idea, a thought that concerns precisely genuine powers that may exist and for which there are principled reasons for thinking that we shall never be in a position to understand. ¹³ A Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge Pt I, s. 54, in George Berkeley Philosophical Works (ed.) M. R. Ayers (London, Everyman/Dent, 1975).

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If the Bare Thought succeeds in undermining the semantic objection, this is a highly significant victory for realism.¹⁴ Part of what makes Hume a realist as opposed to anti-realist is a refusal to move from facts about what we can or cannot imagine or conceive to claims about the metaphysical constitution of the world. The nature of the world may systematically outrun our capacity to understand it. He is unprepared to move to ontological conclusions from our cognitive limitations, and laments such moves, calling them an ‘infirmity’ to which philosophers are prone: Our own mind being narrow and contracted, we cannot extend our own conception to the variety and extent of nature; but imagine, that she is as much bounded in her operations, as we are in our speculation. (EMPL 159–60)

If that much is conceded, matters now shift to what I called the ‘justificatory threat’ (s. 4.2.2). Grant that we can form the Bare Thought, but why might Hume hold that there exist causal powers? We should actually distinguish between two issues here. The first is whether it would make sense given Hume’s overall project for him to have assumed there are such things, and the second is whether his philosophy provides the resources that can favour the supposition of such powers over, say, agnosticism or rejection. The first of these rests on big picture issues. How would ignorance of power fit into Hume’s overall project? My own view is that his interest in rendering human thinking in line with animal minds sits perfectly naturally with the realist assumption. As noted in section 2.4.2, the kind of mechanism that (a) underpins Hume’s account of causal inference, and (b) prior to Hume was conceived as the correct account of animal inference, is intimately linked with ignorance of causal powers. If Hume’s aim is to understand human thought as continuous with animal thought, then the assumption of powers of which we are ignorant is perfectly in line with that project. Hume need not fall foul of the infirmity of philosophers of moving from a failure to grasp what underpins regularities to a rejection of them. As we noted, a key difference between humans and animals was the alleged difference in our capacity to understand what underpins regularities (s. 2.4.2). Thus, just like the animals, [Nature] has implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; though we are ignorant of those powers and forces, on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends. (EHU 5.2.22; SBN 55)

The second issue is whether there are sufficient resources in Hume to lend the supposition of such powers any authority. That I discuss in section 5.4.3. The primary reason for believing that Hume, however, assumed the existence ¹⁴ This point cannot be overemphasized: the debate has silently shifted in such a way that many think that the key issue is whether Hume allows any epistemic grounds for the belief. For a discussion of the confused historiography of the so-called ‘New Hume’, see Kail (2003b).

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of powers is, as noted in section 4.2.1, the frequent references to them. Some, however, hold that such references are either amenable to deflationary readings or cannot be taken as evidence that Hume assumed the existence of powers. In the next section I reject these deflationary readings.

5.4.2 Deflationary Strategies Rejected I have argued that our ignorance of power is ignorance of essence, owing to the deep, but nevertheless contingent, fact that our concepts and imaginative capacities are bound up with sensory experience. This explains what causal powers are and why we are ignorant of them. Deflationary readings attempt to show that Hume’s talk of ‘hidden connections’ is consistent with a metaphysic wherein causal relations are just instantiations of regularities. They attempt to undercut the referential force of his talk of hidden powers and associated claims about ignorance and the deficiency of ideas. One suggestion is that when Hume talks of ‘hidden connections’ he is referring to contingently unobservable micro-regularities, but mere regularities nonetheless (e.g. Broackes 1993: 100–1 and Winkler 2000a: 55–6). Hidden connections would then be causal nexuses rather than causal straitjackets (cf. s. 4.3.5) and so such talk is perfectly consistent with a metaphysic whereby causal relations reduce to regularities. The problem with this move is that it fails to account for the reasons Hume adduces for our ignorance.¹⁵ As we have seen, it is the fact that our imagination works with ideas drawn from sensory impressions which prevents us from being able to make the requisite a priori inferences. Even if we had microscopes powerful enough to reveal the hidden (and perhaps fundamental) regularities, these would be insufficient to reveal power (we could still conceive the cause without the effect). The ‘secret connection’ therefore cannot be understood as contingently unobservable regularities. The reason why no philosopher who is ‘rational and modest’ can show ‘distinctly the action of that power, which produces any single effect in the universe’ (EHU 4.1.12; SBN 30) is our inability to make a priori inferences from cause to effect. Certainly, Hume admits that some natural phenomena can be reduced to more general principles, and to that extent causes can be hidden to us in advance of science. But it is a deep fact about our concept-forming capacities that ‘ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human curiosity and enquiry’ (EHU 4.1.12; SBN 30), one which more powerful microscopes and telescopes cannot rectify.¹⁶ A different, but deflationary, way of handling Hume’s talk of hidden causal powers is to read them as functioning expressively or instrumentally.¹⁷ Blackburn’s ¹⁵ A point also made in Wright (2000: 92). ¹⁶ A similar consideration applies to Martin Bell’s view in Bell (2000). Bell thinks that Hume drops the strong notion of necessity when it comes to causal power. ¹⁷ I’ll treat these two views as equivalent since the same point applies notwithstanding the differences between instrumentalism and non-cognitivism. If Hume’s conclusion that ‘force’ etc., have

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view of what projection consists in is thought by him to apply to ethics as well as causal power. There is nevertheless an asymmetry here. Both necessity and value involve some form of projection for Hume, but in the case of necessity this is coupled with frequent expressions of ignorance whereas there is no mention of ‘hidden value properties’, of vice and virtue being ‘totally shut up from human curiosity’. But this asymmetry is easy to handle. Interest in causal power is interest in what underlies manifest regularities and starts with the assumption of a relative degree of ignorance. That involves the idea that causal powers are not typically manifest, but need to be investigated and discovered. Evaluation, by contrast, is not the discovery of what ‘lies behind’ manifest properties, but instead is based on those manifest features. Of course we need not be in a position to evaluate some features until we have taken other features, of which we may be presently ignorant, into account (was Fred provoked or did he hit Edmund out of malice?), but that is not a matter of finding some hidden value property, but discovering further properties which are relevant to the evaluation. Evaluatively relevant properties may be unknown, but once all the relevant phenomena are in we do not find it credible that the objects value is still undiscovered. But we can always ask for further causal explanations when we descend from the macro to the micro level. Even if causal power talk is merely expression of attitude, it would not be too surprising if the commitment evolved a higher-order disposition to find more and more fundamental causal nexus facts, explaining our preparedness to talk of hidden connections and our ignorance. We are adopting attitudes towards some further features that underlie manifest features of which we are presently ignorant, without being committed to anything more metaphysically weighty than regularities.¹⁸ I think there is nothing wrong with an expressivist way of accounting for our talk of contingently hidden causal powers. But it is obscure, to say the least, how this is supposed to account for the fact that Hume’s avowals of hidden connections that are, relative to our cognitive limitations, in principle hidden to us. It is not the case that he claims only that causal explanations go deeper than manifest regularities: it is that causal powers lie deeper than any human mind can penetrate. Powers are ‘totally shut up from human curiosity and enquiry’, and ‘we can never penetrate so far into the essence and construction of bodies, as to perceive the principle, on which their mutual influence depends’ (T 2.3.1.4; SBN 400, my emphasis). ‘Totally shut up’ and ‘never’ are in a different register altogether from expressions of ignorance of contingently deep regularities, and it is unclear how an expressivist can parse them. an instrumental function, then all his trumpeting of his view of power as revolutionary would be bizarre, given that Berkeley had already taken that position. ¹⁸ Cf. EHU 7.2.29, n 17; SBN 77 ‘When we consider the unknown circumstance of an object, by which the degree or quantity of its effect is fixed and determined, we call that its power.’

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A third deflationary reading turns on the role of a footnote Hume added to the 1750 edition of the EHU. To the phrase ‘notwithstanding our ignorance of natural powers’ Hume adds a note saying, The word, power, here is used in a loose and popular sense. The more accurate explanation of it would give additional evidence to this argument. See section 7. (EHU 4.2.16n; SBN 33)

The deflationary suggestion is that this footnote, referring as it does to section 7 to where Hume examines the idea of necessary connection, and offers his definitions of ‘power’, undercuts the referential force of such earlier avowals (the point was made by Winkler in 1991 (reprinted in 2000a: 54 ff )). Section 7 shows that such expressions are really meaningless and so Hume’s use of them is really a matter of speaking with the vulgar rather than thinking with the learned. This would be effective if it were true that the discoveries of section 7 do undermine the natural referential force of such avowals. But nothing in section 7 establishes that. All that is established is that we cannot be acquainted with necessity so our idea derives from a projective source, and the projection determines the sense of ‘power’ that is loose. We think we are aware of the operation of powers ‘out there’, but the only thing we can fully grasp is the operation of our minds and the regularities that trigger the customary transition. So what we can mean—what we can be acquainted with—are these two features alone, whereas the vulgar think there is something more we can understand. It does not follow from this that the natural referential force is undercut: only that our understanding is even more limited than we had thought. The ‘additional force’ is that the original arguments for ignorance are augmented by a discovery that source of our idea is not acquaintance with power and of our inability to grasp necessity: not that such avowals are meaningless in the strong sense. To deflate the earlier references, section 7 needs to establish something stronger: that references to powers that are in principle inaccessible to us are illusory or have a non-referential force. That is to say, we should see Hume indicating that no thought at all is possible or that such references should be understood expressively or instrumentally. But when he explicitly addresses the ‘loose and popular’ sense of power he tells us only that those uses are not proof that we understand or acquainted with power: not that any such uses are illegitimate. Thus: As to the frequent use of the words, force, power, energy, &c, which every where occur in common conversation, as well as in philosophy; that is no proof, that we are acquainted, in any instance, with the connecting principle between cause and effect, or can account ultimately for the production of one thing by another. These words, as commonly used, have very loose meanings annexed to them; and their ideas are very uncertain and confused. (EHU 7.2.29n; SBN 77–8n (my emphasis on acquainted) )

This is precisely what we have been suggesting: that the words do not prove that we are acquainted with power or that we can grasp it: not that thought concerning inaccessible powers is impossible.

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There are other indications that section 7 does not undercut the referential force of such avowals. Hume’s two definitions involve ‘imperfect’ ideas (EHU 7.2.29; SBN 76), and are drawn from ‘something foreign to it’ (T 1.3.14.31; SBN 170), indicating that he does not think that they exhaust all there is to causation. In any case, they are neither extensionally nor intensionally equivalent, and there is little prospect of establishing that he prefers one to the other, so they cannot be read as reductive analyses of the concept. As Hume offers these ‘definitions’, Hume still talks of our ignorance, talk that should go in the two ‘definitions’ preclude any genuine thought. His discovery is one that concerns ‘the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity’ (EHU 7.2.28; SBN 76). Furthermore, talk of ignorance continues after section 7.¹⁹ If Hume brought us to the conclusion that such talk is illusory, it is hard to see why he does not change register and talk of sheer rejection. A final point, which concerns the evidential status of Hume’s avowals, is related to the previous one. Anne Jaap Jacobson (2000) suggests that taking such avowals as referring to secret causes commits a fallacy akin to taking an atheist’s talk of God in philosophical discussion to be evidence that the atheist believes God exists. On her understanding, such avowals cannot be regarded as evidence that Hume assumed their existence because to do so commits that fallacy. This is mistaken. The interpretative status as evidence of Hume’s avowals for realism does not rest on their logically entailing a commitment to power, but instead on their having (uncancelled) conversational implicature. Clearly there is no entailment from ‘we are ignorant of x’ to ‘there is an x’: but in the context of interpreting a text, there is a natural conversational implicature in the use of such phrases and that can be good evidence for what the speaker assumes even when such phrases do not entail the commitment. There is no fallacy. Secondly, and importantly, their evidential status would only be undermined if Hume were to say something that cancelled all such implicature. The apparent force to Jacobson’s move rests on the fact that the implicature of an atheist’s talk of God is immediately cancelled by our knowledge that the speakers are atheists. This singularly fails to apply to Hume on the issue of causation, for, unless we are given independent grounds to show that he did not assume the existence of power, there are no grounds to discount the evidential force of the implicature of his talk of secret connections.

5.4.3 The Character of the Supposition and the Justificatory Threat Hume does not explicitly raise the question of whether there are hidden connections or not, nor does he say that we should not believe in such things. ¹⁹ ‘If we examine . . . the production of effects from their causes, we shall find that all our faculties can never carry us farther in our knowledge of this relation than [constant conjunction] . . . But though this conclusion concerning human ignorance be the result of strictest scrutiny [we suppose we] can penetrate farther into the powers of nature, and perceive . . . necessary connexion . . . [Beyond this] we know nothing farther of causation of any kind’ (EHU 8.1.21; SBN 92 (my emphasis)).

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Instead he has a lot to say about the origins of the idea. Nowhere does Hume raise the question of whether there exist real powers. There is, of course, a different explanation of why Hume does not directly raise the question of whether there are hidden connections or not, as opposed to his frequent worry about whether we can understand them. For if the whole notion is ‘meaningless’, then there is no point in raising the question: nonsense words figure in nonsense questions. This is why the content threat is the most serious threat to realism. But supposing the meaninglessness issue is to be resolved, it still might be objected that even if Hume does not explicitly raise the existence issue, the fact that the belief is sourced in the imagination is sufficient to raise the issue of whether we can maintain the belief. That is perfectly true: but raising the question is not the same as delivering a settled answer. For as we saw in section 3.4.2 it is possible to secure some authority from the steady principles of the imagination. It is important to stress that the supposition of power should not be taken to be stronger than is necessary. No sceptical realist interpreter ever argued that Hume thinks that we can know that causal powers exist.²⁰ Nor should such an assumption be read as comprising particular beliefs about particular causal transactions, but instead as a general assumption of power. The customary transition gives a notion of there being some power or force in general, though its locus is not something we can determine.²¹ Though we talk about particular forces, in virtue of projecting the notion onto particular pairs, we cannot really justify these particular judgements to ourselves: instead it is the most general principles, which lie beyond the ordinary objects that are the targets of our projective tendencies, in which the assumption ultimately must be placed. What does appear to give the assumption some natural force is the passage involving the choice between the principles of the imagination that can be endorsed and those which cannot. For here the idea of necessity—the customary transition—is given pride of place:²² ²⁰ Pace Richman (2000: 1). Costa (1989) reads Hume as an agnostic about the ontological question. John Wright thinks that some justification for the problematic supposition is forthcoming, but it rests ‘ultimately on a kind of faith’ (1983: 27). Strawson, in one passage (1989: 100), claims that Hume takes it that we can know that there are external objects and causal powers, but this, Strawson says, is ‘to put the point more provocatively’. For him the point turns on the fact that Hume never questions the existence of power. ²¹ It would not, however, be occasionalism, which Hume explicitly rejects (cf. EHU 7.1.21–5). Now that Hume rejects occasionalism does not establish that the locus must be in the material world (cf. Winkler 2000a: s 7). Hume argues that we are equally ignorant of the necessary connection in God’s will and in objects, so if ignorance is a good reason for rejecting power in the first case, it is equally good in the second. The comparative formulation shows only that in his view the logic of occasionalism is self-defeating, not that Hume thinks powers are features of objects. But now it might be thought that the general supposition of power in the universal may lead us to read Hume as taking occasionalism to be a live possibility. This thought misses a crucial point: Hume rejects the belief in God so occasionalism is not an option for him. ²² See e.g. Wright (1983: 150 ff ).

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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. ( T 1.4.4.1; SBN 225 (my emphasis) )

Now our tendency to spread this onto objects is easily resistible, so that tendency cannot hold any authority. Nevertheless the idea of power—the customary transition—has some authority, so the supposition of power in general presumably has some authority. ‘Supposing’ here is not understood to have the force of justified belief, but something far weaker. First, it is not believing: his official account of the state of belief requires any such belief in causal power to involve such an idea to combine to deliver the conclusion that no such belief is available to Hume. Any considered realist position will insist on attitudes like supposition, assumption or taking for granted, attitudes that, independently of the details of Hume’s view of belief, have different functional roles from belief. Beliefs tend to govern one’s behaviour in a way that assumptions do not: one may be more prepared to defend the former, or more likely to retain beliefs in the face of challenges than assumptions or allow them to figure in practical as opposed to speculative inference. The minimal preference for realism is simply a preference for what metaphysical position the combination of our natural propensities and reason deliver: reason suggests agnosticism but that is trumped by the natural propensities. Such a supposition cannot be maintained during moments of intense philosophical scepticism. But that does not mean that Hume cannot have a preference for the realist supposition. For that is to conflate an awareness that the norms of epistemic rationality issues in such and such a result (roughly we should not assent since we have no grounds) with the idea that those norms are categorically authoritative on what thinkers—including Hume—are entitled to assume or believe (if only they could escape the psychological seductions of the imagination). But it is—to say the least—an open question whether Hume thinks legitimate entitlement to believe is constrained by the (meagre) deliverances of reason under its epistemically normative guise. To hold that what Hume thinks we can legitimately believe or assume must coincide with the sceptical recommendations of reason, embodies a ‘nuclear option’: it threatens the conclusion that really Hume ‘reject[s] all belief and reasoning’ (T 1.4.7.8; SBN 268). But although the nuclear option comes under Hume’s consideration in T 1.4.7, he does not accept it. In that crucial text there is a complex, dramatic and subtle discussion of the relation between the deliverances of reason and our entitlement to commitments, where Hume’s response is not merely to point to the psychological impossibility of radical scepticism, but also to reflect on the philosophical question of the categorical demands of reason upon commitment. However, if we are to understand the content of Hume’s conclusions here—and that is clearly

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a difficult and contested matter²³—it is very plausible to think that Hume does not recommend the unrestricted deliverances of reason as authoritative on belief. Nevertheless, I think at this stage we reach a stalemate between the realist reading and the anti-realist reading. For although there are some points that can be squared with realism, others are more difficult. For example, as we saw in section 5.3, Hume responded to an objector who clearly understood him to be asserting that necessity is nothing but the internal determination of the mind. In response he said that there ‘may be several qualities both in material and immaterial objects, with which we are utterly unacquainted’ and ‘if we please’ we can call them ‘power’ (T 1.3.14.27; SBN 168). It allows that we may mean by power an unknown quality—a supposition that makes perfect sense on our reading—but he gives little indication that he does assume their existence. The question Hume imagines he is asked is ‘are you really telling me that causal powers are just in the mind?’: His answer, had he assumed their existence, presumably would have been something like: ‘No, I don’t mean that, I mean that we do not understand them.’ It is here that Hume would have the best opportunity to affirm a commitment in general to unknowable power; but he does not do so. On balance, all this suggests is that, although such a supposition can be rendered coherent, there seems little to favour anything stronger than an agnostic position. That is what I used to think.²⁴ The considerations in the next chapter, if successful, tip that balance firmly in favour of realism. ²³ For my own view see my (2005). ²⁴ See Kail (2001a).

6 Into the Labyrinth: Persons, Modality and Hume’s Undoing 6 . 1 I N T RO D U C T I O N This chapter addresses two main issues. First, the sense in which Hume’s account of self is projective. Second, his worries about this account expressed in the Appendix. The issue of realism continues to be prominent in two ways. First, I argue that Hume is not a sceptical realist about substantial selves. Hume, according to some, assumed the existence of a substantial self and his conclusion was that we are ignorant of its nature. This reading is rejected. Realism about necessary connection, however, figures directly in the second issue of this chapter. ‘I find myself involv’d in such a labyrinth’, Hume writes, ‘that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent’ (T Appendix 10; SBN 633). There is something wrong, he thinks, with his account of self. But what puzzles Hume puzzles us in a different way. There is no scholarly issue in the Hume literature that has provoked such a variety of interpretation and so little consensus than what worries Hume in the Appendix. We do not know what problem Hume expresses so poorly and feels so deeply, to paraphrase Barry Stroud.¹ The suggestion pursued here is as follows. Let us suppose Hume is a realist about causation in the sense that he thinks any genuine causation involves necessary connection. On that supposition, his Appendix worries can be seen to have the following shape. The reasoning Hume exploits to undo the notion of the self as a simple substance of which perceptions are modes, forces the conclusion that perceptions are metaphysically independent items, items that cannot be necessarily connected. But the self, on his system, is a bundle of perceptions, a bundle, furthermore, connected by causation. A realist Hume assumes that anything that is causally connected is connected by an unknowable necessary connection. So his account of self forces an unacceptable conclusion. Before we come to the details of this reading, its dialectical role should be made crystal clear. The anti-realist and realist readings give priority to different ¹ Notable discussions include Fogelin (1985: ch. 8); Fogelin ‘Hume’s Worries About Personal Identity’ in Fogelin (1992); Garrett (1997: ch. 8); Passmore (1952: ch. 6); Pears (1990: chs 8 & 9); Robison (1974); Stroud (1977: ch. 6). This list could be extended.

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aspects of the texts. For the realist, Hume’s avowals of ignorance are evidence against a view of the theory of ideas that disbars taking such claims at face value. For the anti-realist, the theory of ideas places restrictions of the availability of thought such that those avowals must be rejected as insincere, ironic, or given deflationary readings. I said at the end of the last chapter that there is something of a stalemate and that a form of agnosticism seemed to be on the cards. But if, on the supposition that Hume assumes the existence of necessary connection, we can give a neat solution to the notoriously recalcitrant Appendix problem, we now have an additional reason for the truth of that supposition. Reading the Appendix worries in light of the realist assumption acts as an additional reason to take Hume’s avowals of unknowable powers very seriously indeed.² In the next section, I sketch Hume’s projective account of the belief in substantial self. Section 6.3 examines the argument that induces him ‘to deny the proper identity and simplicity of a self’ (T Appendix 10; SBN 633). Here sceptical realist readings of Hume on the self are rejected. In section 6.4, I sketch my realist reading of the Appendix puzzle. I then turn to examine some of the assumptions that lie behind Hume’s labyrinth, and why he cannot escape it. I then answer some objections to this reading and conclude with a summary.

6 . 2 T H E P RO J E C T I V E E X P L A N AT I O N O F T H E B E L I E F I N A S U B S TA N T I A L S E L F The title of T 1.4.6—‘Of personal identity’—is apt to mislead. Hume’s focus here is not to identify the facts that constitute the diachronic identity of persons. His primary focus is the question of why we ‘suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence thro’ the whole course of our lives’ (T 1.4.6.5; SBN 253), when introspection reveals only a ‘bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement’ (T 1.4.6.4; SBN 252). One reason why ‘Of personal identity’ does not concern itself much with questions of what constitutes personal identity across time is Hume’s strict view of identity. Any change in parts is ipso facto a change of identity. So when he discusses the Lockean trichotomy of matter, organisms and persons, his interest is in the explanation of our false identity claims, not about the facts that constitute true ones. Certainly, some of the discussion is germane to the issue of the identity of persons across time, but that turns on the relations that produce the fiction, on a surrogate for identity rather than identity itself.³ ² For a different realist view of what worries Hume in the Appendix, see Wright (1996). ³ ‘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’ ( T 1.4.6.21; SBN 262). For a recent discussion, see Bennett (2001: ch. 40).

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What concerns us is Hume’s projective explanation of the belief in a substantial self. As we know by now, projective explanation is non-detective explanation. Why can we not explain the belief detectively? One detective route would be introspective acquaintance with a substantial self, from which we could derive our idea. Famously, Hume denies that we are introspectively aware of a substantial self: There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF . . . Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain’d. ( T 1.4.6.1–2; SBN 251)

We have no impression of self since the self is, ex hypothesi, supposed to ‘continue invariably’ but there is no impression that is ‘constant and invariable’ (T 1.4.6.2; SBN 251). To detect a self would be to have an impression of it, and we have no such impression. This introspective point is not Hume’s sole or even most important argument against the detectability of a substantial self. There is another argument that turns on the relation of perceptions to substances. It is this that makes Hume fairly confident that the self is ‘nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions’ (T.1.4.6.4; SBN 252), and we shall look at the grounds for this confidence later (s. 6.3).⁴ What concerns us now is how, given that the self is nothing but a bundle of perceptions, the belief in a substantial self nevertheless emerges. Dan Bennett writes that ‘the self is . . . a projection, a feigning of the imagination, by Hume’s account’ (1985: 91). If this is right, we need to answer our questions—what is the content of the projection, and of what is it a projection: what features, that is, are operative in the production of the belief. The belief ’s content is of some ‘new and unintelligible principle, that connects the objects together, and prevents their interruption or variation’ (T 1.4.6.6; SBN 254). This owner is supposed to continue to exist through change (thus preserving identity), and to be simple. The content of the projection is thus the ‘notion of a soul, and self, and substance’ upon which perceptions depend.⁵ We suppose that there is a single, simple, substance underlying all the changing experiences. But of what is that content a projection? What explains the belief? Hume’s account is explanatorily projective, and exploits materials similar to those operative in the belief of continued and distinct objects. There is a standing psychological disposition that provides content for the relevant belief. This is ⁴ One might have thought that Hume would discuss reason as a putative source of the belief, but he shows no interest in that route. This is perhaps not surprising. Since we have already been told in ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’ that probable reason deals only in observed connections and, since the self is not observed, reason cannot persuade us that there is an unobservable owner of perceptions. ⁵ Not all philosophers think in terms of discrete souls; some go for something more extravagant (Hume mentions Shaftesbury in a footnote). See Winkler (2000b) for discussion.

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triggered in the fixation of belief in response to psychological dissonance or discomfort. We are, in the first instance, aware of perceptions as separate but resembling objects. The effect of the experience of observing resembling but different perceptions, however, is very similar to the mental disposition involved in viewing ‘one continu’d object’ (T 1.4.6.6; SBN 254). We are prone to confuse, as it were, the experience of a single continuous object and the experience of a collection of resembling objects. We are thus pulled in two directions: that of recognizing that all that we introspect is distinct but related perceptions, and that of a standing temptation to think that we are experiencing an invariable and uninterrupted object. This latter ‘biass of the imagination’ continues to exert its pull even when we realize it is just that: a bias of the imagination. In the end we just give in: we ‘yield [to this bias], and boldly assert that these different related objects are in effect the same, however interrupted and variable’ (T 1.4.6.6; SBN 254). To do so, however, requires shifting from viewing the different perceptions as a ‘single continuous object’ to a belief in a single and continuous object underlying the change: 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 variation. Thus we feign the continu’d existence of the perceptions of the senses, to remove the interruption; and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the variation. ( T 1.4.6.6; SBN 254)

So the belief is a projection of a psychological discomfort removed by yielding to a ‘biass of the imagination’. It is not a matter of experiencing a genuine simple self or of reasoning upon relations among perceptions, an acquaintance with a self or a grasp of an epistemic reason in favour of the belief. Hume’s next question concerning this account can be phrased as follows: what are the relations that trigger this projected belief? Not any old relations among perceptions are such as to trigger the disposition to identity. Thus: Our chief business, then, must be to prove, that all objects, to which we ascribe identity, without observing their invariableness and uninterruptedness, are such as to consist of a succession of related objects. ( T 1.4.6.7; SBN 255)

Hume addresses this issue obliquely, beginning with an examination of the features that in general cause us to ascribe identity to matter and organisms, and finally turning to the self. It is this last stage that concerns us here. The first candidate relation he discusses is that of perceptions related by perceivable necessary connection or a ‘real bond’. But no real connection is ever observed between perceptions, and since such connections are not observed, they cannot be part of the input that triggers the projection (T 1.4.6.16; SBN 259). The relations that are observable are the associative relations, and so some combination of these observable relations must be the trigger. Contiguity is dropped, leaving resemblance and causation, and causation seems to be the key relation: [W]e 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

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of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other. ( T 1.4.6.19; SBN 261)

So perceptions related by causation are such as to trigger the projected belief that there is some self that is the owner of these successive experiences. This is supposed to give us the notion of a continuous owner. From that, we get the notion of simplicity: What I have said concerning the first origin and uncertainty of our notion of identity, as apply’d to the human mind, may be extended with little or not variation to that of simplicity. An object, whose different co-existent parts are bound together by a close relation, operates upon the imagination after much the same manner as one perfectly simple and indivisible . . . From this similarity of operation we attribute a simplicity to it, and feign a principle of union as the support of this simplicity, and the center of all the different parts and qualities of the object. ( T 1.4.6.22; SBN 263)

Hence our projected belief in a substantial self.

6 . 3 S C E P T I C A L R E A L I S M A B O U T S U B S TA N T I A L S E LV E S , A N D D E N Y I N G T H E ‘ P RO PE R I D E N T I T Y AND SIMPLICITY OF A SELF ’ I said in the previous section that Hume seems confident early on in his discussion that metaphysically speaking the self simply consists in a bundle of perceptions. Sceptical realist readers of Hume on the self claim that no such metaphysical claim is intended, and that Hume’s lesson is that we are ignorant of a supposed and unknowable self (Craig 1987: 111ff and Strawson 1989a: 128ff ). I do not think the texts really warrant such a reading. Much of what Hume says—and the tone in which he says it—indicates that he does indeed adopt such a bundle theory, metaphysically speaking. There are only a few remarks consistent with a sceptical realist attitude about the self, and they are not matched with any deep expressions of ignorance like those we saw in the case of necessary connections. Instead he writes, The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance . . . The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind. ( T 1.4.6.4; SBN 253)

and: it must be our several particular perceptions, that compose the mind. I say, compose the mind, not belong to it. The mind is not a substance in which perceptions inhere. ( T Abstract 28; SBN 658)

But now why is Hume so confident of this metaphysical claim? Why does he not content himself with saying that we have no impression of a self? To see why we

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need to look a little closer at the considerations that lead to the bundle theory. I said in the previous section his affirmation that the mind consists of nothing but a bundle of perceptions is based on more than an introspective report. In ‘Of personal identity’ he asks: But farther, what must become of all our particular perceptions upon this hypothesis [of self as substance]? 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. ( T 1.4.6.3; SBN 252)

This is a modal argument. The self, traditionally conceived, is a substance upon which perceptions qua modes of substances are dependent. But we can conceive of perceptions in such a way that implies that they have no need of anything to support their existence. If they appear to have no need of anything to support their existence, then their dependence qua modes of substance conflicts with the possibility of separate existence. This piece of reasoning is an application of a reductio Hume offers in ‘Of the immateriality of the soul’ against the notion of the substance construed in that traditional way as ‘that which may exist by itself’ (T 1.4.5.5; SBN 233). There are two subtly but crucially distinct ways to understand this argument. The first has it that the modal reasoning yields a conclusion, endorsed by Hume, that perceptions are metaphysically independent items. Hume shows that perceptions are substances, and so not dependent on anything for their existence. But this is not Hume’s conclusion. Instead, Hume’s point is this. If one has no notion of substance other than that which exists by itself, then the traditional Cartesian way of determining whether or not something is a substance qua metaphysically independent delivers the result that perceptions are metaphysically independent. That epistemology turns on our capacity to conceive of the relevant item as independent of any other existence. But this conclusion is directly contrary to the supposition that the self is a substance upon which perceptions depend. So if the only conception of substance one has is that which may exist by itself and one adheres to the traditional conceivability epistemology, one must think that perceptions are substances: which is contrary to the supposition that perceptions are dependent items. My conclusion . . . 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 anything else to support their existence. They are, therefore, substances, as far as this definition explains a substance. ( T 1.4.5.5; SBN 233)

So we have no conception at all of simple substance upon which perceptions depend and the traditional conceivability argument yields the wrong results. But it is crucial to note that Hume does not endorse the conclusion that perceptions are metaphysically independent items. Instead we are told that we have ‘no

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perfect idea of anything but a perception. A substance is entirely different from a substance. We have, therefore, no idea of a substance’ (T 1.4.5.6; SBN 234). Thus the notion of self as simple substance cannot do any work. Of course perceptions are dependent entities but it does not follow that perceptions are dependent on a simple, unique and individual substance. The traditional route to substance individuation leads to the wrong conclusion, namely that perceptions are metaphysically independent items. So without any further idea of substance, the self should be properly considered as a collection of dependent entities and not a simple individual thing upon which those perceptions depend.

6.4 THE LABYRINTH

6.4.1 A Causal Realist Reading of the Appendix Worry Outlined Where does it all go wrong? At the centre of Hume’s labyrinth is the following passage: In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion 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. ( T Appendix 21; SBN 636)

This is Hume’s puzzle, and it has puzzled commentators deeply. Not only are these two principles consistent, but it is also extremely difficult to see how the issue of real connections has any bearing on the discussion of ‘Of personal identity’. It is not surprising, then, that many discussions of Hume’s Appendix end up offering accounts that really do not properly explain this piece of text. That is to say, readings tend to offer problems for Hume’s bundle theory or his explanation of the idea, without really getting to the heart of what Hume is expressing in this passage.⁶ The reading we are about to advance has the feature of locating the problem with the account precisely where Hume says his problem lies. We begin by noting, first, that the problem lies squarely with the notions of distinct existence, necessary connection, and perceptions. Secondly, we note that he thinks that there would be no problem if either the mind perceived real connections or perceptions inhered in a substance. This strongly suggests that the issue turns on what it is that connects perceptions together.⁷ Now, let us ⁶ See Garrett (1997: ch. 8) for a survey of these accounts, plus one of his own. Garrett’s own reading does generate a contradiction, but requires the reader of the Appendix to acknowledge four other propositions in addition to the two Hume explicitly identified. This requires, it seems to me, too much ingenuity on the part of the reader to be convincing. ⁷ Thus some commentators admit that it seems as if Hume is searching for some ‘real bond’ among perceptions. Louis Loeb (1992: 220) writes, for example, that ‘Hume seems to be in search

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suppose that causal realism is correct, namely that any genuine causal relation is related by unknowable necessary connection. The suggestion now is that this passage expresses Hume’s realization that his reflections on the self force the conclusion that perceptions are not causally related because they are not, and cannot be, necessarily connected. This is inconsistent with his claim that the self is a bundle of causally connected perceptions. More, specifically, it forces the conclusion that they are independent entities, whereas Hume holds that perceptions are dependent entities. In ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’ he says we need only ‘few experiments’ to convince us that ‘our perceptions are not possest of any independent existence’ (T 1.4.2.45; SBN 210), and that the ‘doctrine of the independent existence of our sensible perceptions is contrary to the plainest experience’ (T 1.4.2.44; SBN 210).⁸ But his reasoning makes them completely independent items, a conclusion that he does not endorse. Did the mind perceive some real connection among perceptions, then they would be causally dependent, and hence connected. Did they inhere in a substance, they would again be dependent and connected, this time as modes of substances. Perceptions cannot at all be connected to each other either by causation or qua modes of substance and are metaphysically independent and unconnected entities rather than dependent and connected entities. How does his account of self lead to this? The problem emerges out of his reductio of substance. In reviewing his account, Hume reminds us that we have no impression of the self or substance as simple and unchangeable and hence we have ‘no idea of them in that sense’ (T Appendix 11; SBN 633). The modal reasoning discussed in the previous section is also repeated: Whatever is distinct, is distinguishable; and whatever is distinguishable, is separable by the thought or imagination. All perceptions are distinct. They are, therefore, distinguishable, and separable, and may be conceiv’d as separately existent, and may exist separately, without any contradiction or absurdity. ( T Appendix 12; SBN 634)

We have no impression of the self and an attempt to explicate the notion of substance by appeal to that which may exist by itself falls foul of the reductio. So far so good. A little later Hume says this: having thus loosen’d all our particular perceptions, when I proceed to explain the principle of connexion, which binds them together and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity; I am sensible, that my account is very defective, and that nothing but of the sort of bond or connection that he has forcefully rejected, as if he has a lingering commitment to real connections, or to necessity, despite himself .’ David Pears, offering a reading which turns on the necessary ownership of perceptions, admits that his account ‘seems fanciful’, but supports this by saying that it is ‘hard to see what other reason [Hume] could have had for requiring stronger relations between the perceptions of a single mind than those allowed in the main text of the Treatise’ (1993: 290). Hume does seem to be searching for some stronger bond, but of course Loeb and Pears read Hume as rejecting necessary connections. ⁸ For a catalogue of candidates for what it is that perceptions do depend on, see Robert Anderson (1966: ch. 3).

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the seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings cou’d have induc’d me to receive it. ( T Appendix 20; SBN 635)

The problem is with the ‘principle of connexion’ in his account of self. This is causation. Hume also says it is the ‘seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings’ induces the defective account. This reasoning, the context suggests, is the modal one that denies the simplicity of the self as substance, and it leads to the defective aspect. His ‘hopes vanish’ when he attempts to explain the principle of connection ‘that unite[s] our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness’ (T Appendix 20; SBN 635–6). The problem is (1) all distinct perceptions are distinct existences and (2) the mind never perceives any real connection among distinct existences. Recall that perceiving a real connection would render it impossible to conceive cause without effect. Perceptions, though, are distinct existences: this means that they are separately conceivable, entailing that no real connection is perceived among them. This, together with some other assumptions, entails that perceptions cannot be necessarily connected, and (on the assumption of realism) cannot be causally connected. Hence (1) and (2) are inconsistent with the claim that perceptions are bundled by causation: which is Hume’s account of self. Thus there is an inconsistency in Hume’s account generated by the reasonings that led him to deny the self as a simple substance. But now why cannot Hume simply plead ignorance of causal power, as he did with causal powers among external objects? Surely if that were the worry for Hume, he could simply claim that the connections among perceptions are as hidden to us as they are among external objects? In what follows I shall show why this is not an option for Hume here, and why he cannot renounce the principles that drive the unwelcome conclusion. Only then can we properly appreciate Hume’s labyrinth.

6.4.2 ‘Distinctness’ The key here is how Hume understands distinctness and what grounds it. In this section we shall concentrate on distinctness. Recall that some think distinctness is synonymous with metaphysical independence. So Hume, it may be argued, already thinks that perceptions are metaphysically independent items, and so it should not be a worry to him that his account of self has the implication that they are. Thus Robert Anderson writes that on the ‘initial assumption, that there are no real connections among distinct existences . . . Hume founds his conclusion that every perception is an independently existing substance’ (1966: 90).⁹ On this reading, Hume has already decided that ‘distinct existences’ are not necessarily connected and since perceptions are ⁹ Despite my disagreement with him on this point, Anderson’s work is very insightful on the issues germane to this discussion.

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‘distinct existences’ they too are not necessarily connected. Since they are not necessarily connected, they must be metaphysically independent items. Pace Anderson, Hume does not assume that there are no necessary connections among distinct existences. First, pace Lewis (1986 ix), and philosophical folklore in general, Hume is not ‘the great denier of necessary connections’, at least if by that it is meant that Hume offers a statement that there are no necessary connections among distinct existences. He always puts matters epistemologically, namely that there is no perceivable or discoverable connection, not there is none. Hume cannot be just assuming there are no necessary connections among distinct existences because, as we shall see below, the notion of distinctness is invoked to explain why we cannot perceive such a connection. Third, and again pace Anderson it is false that Hume endorses the conclusion that perceptions are metaphysically independent items. For, as we shall see, Hume asserts that perceptions are dependent items whose distinctness implies that we cannot perceive a necessary connection between them. We raised, but did not settle, the issue of distinctness at section 4.3.6. We noted that there was more than a suspicion of circularity involved in the claim that there are no necessary connections among distinct existences. One cannot simply define something as a ‘distinct existence’ in terms of its not being necessarily connected with another item; that would get the conclusion that there is no necessary connection among distinct existences by simple stipulation, saving Hume (and us) a lot of work, but delivering little. Mutatis mutandis trying to understand ‘distinct existence’ in terms of conceptual distinctness does not help either. For he wants to use distinctness to explain conceptual independence, but we cannot get a grip on distinctness except, so it seems, in terms of conceptual independence. We can however acquit Hume of the charge of circularity. For there is available a gloss on the notion of ‘distinct existence’ which does not trade on its being understood simply in terms of not being necessarily connected, and which can explain conceptual independence. It is furthermore a notion of distinctness that sits very comfortably with an empiricist account of mind. It is that distinct existence is a phenomenal notion. For better or worse, Hume’s conception of mind is deeply informed by the thesis that impressions and ideas are experiences. Certainly, he strains this model and occasionally breaks it, but nevertheless it governs a good deal of his thinking. Given this fact, the notions of ‘distinct’ or ‘different’ existence can plausibly be thought to be phenomenal notions. The phenomenal distinctness of A and B does not imply the metaphysical independence of A and B. Secondly, phenomenal distinctness is independent of any conceptual difference. As a feature of impressions, it can explain conceptual distinctness. Since ideas qua concepts are ‘exact copies’ of sensory impressions, their conceptual distinctness is inherited from the phenomenal distinctness of experience. The distinctness of ideas would then be explicable in terms of the phenomenal distinctness of impressions of which those ideas are copies.

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But what is ‘phenomenal distinctness’? Hume writes that ‘whatever objects are different are distinguishable, and . . . whatever objects are distinguishable are separable by the thought and imagination’ (T 1.1.7.3; SBN 18). This sounds as if ‘different’, ‘distinguishable’, and ‘separable’ stand in explanatory relations. What would make two objects distinct or different, phenomenally speaking, is that the experiences have differing qualitative characters, a notion that itself admits of no further analysis, except in those modalities that involve a phenomenal space (sight and feeling, as Hume puts it). In the case of sight and feeling, the difference is easily made out, for we can appeal to the occupation by perceptions of regions of this phenomenal space (call it ‘p-space’), where this space is relative to the frame of the manifold. So in one’s visual field, say, there are two phenomenally salient patches, one yellow and round on the left, one yellow and round on the right. They are distinguishable in terms of their quasi-spatial location, which makes for their separability. Separability would come down to our capacity to imagine (e.g.) the left-hand side of the p-space occupied by the qualitatively same circle as before, but the right-hand side vacant or occupied by something else.¹⁰ But in the case of other perceptions—those that do not occupy a phenomenal space—their distinctness will turn on the further unanalysable notion of difference in qualitative character. Hume’s discussion of distinction of reason suggests this phenomenal reading: Of this kind is the distinction betwixt figure and the body figur’d; motion and the body mov’d. The difficulty of explaining this distinction arises from the principles above explain’d, that all ideas, which are different, are separable. For it follows from thence, that if the figure be different from the body, their ideas must be separable as well as distinguishable; if they be not different, their ideas can neither be separable nor distinguishable. What then is meant by a distinction of reason, since it implies neither a difference nor separation? ( T 1.1.7.17; SBN 24–5)

Hume thinks that we can make a distinction between the figure and the body that is so figured by employing his account of abstract ideas, but the important point for our concerns is how examples like this illustrate the phenomenal sense of ‘different’ or ‘distinct’. Hume uses the examples of a white globe, whose colour can be thought of independently of its shape by a distinction of reason, even though the colour and the form cannot be separated. The colour and the shape are not distinct in the sense that the impression of a coloured figure is a particular occupying p-space, and there is no possibility of imagining that item—the demonstratively identifiable particular—without its colour: one would not be separating the colour and the shape, but imagining a different item (e.g. a blue globe or a black square). The separability of ideas—conceptual ¹⁰ Hume also thinks that the inverse is true, that whatever is separable is distinct. But it is clear that the distinctness grounds the separability since he asks ‘how is it possible to separate what is not distinguishable or distinguish what is not different?’ ( T 1.1.7.3; SBN 18), which clearly grounds the possibility of separation in the distinctness of objects.

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independence—is thus explained by their distinctness, and distinctness can be characterized as a phenomenal notion. Hume’s account of conceivability thus can be seen to rest on the differences in phenomenal character among the data of experience. Distinctness grounds our capacity to conceive A apart from B. None of this entails the metaphysical independence either of the objects of experience or the experiences themselves. But how does this notion of distinctness figure in the explanation of Hume’s labyrinth? We need to look further at the assumptions that inform Hume’s account of experience.

6.4.3 Distinctness, Conceivability and the Reification of Experience: Why Hume Cannot Renounce His Principles and Escape the Labyrinth Phenomenal distinctness though admits of two readings, intentional and nonintentional. We begin with it as an intentional notion. An experience can be phenomenally distinct construed intentionally: the experience represents such and such an object as possessing a certain phenomenal feature. The phenomenal distinctness thereby qualifies the content of the experience, and not the experience itself. This notion does not commit us to the existence of objects, substances, or things that such experiences represent: nor does it commit us to the reification of such experiences themselves. In, say, visual experience, a field is represented as being variously occupied, rather than there being experience-distinct objects that occupy that field. Now, when ideas are used to think about objects, they are treated as ideas qua representational contents ideas of things. So in thinking about objects A and B we exploit ideas of A and B, and represent A and B as distinct by representing them as phenomenally distinct, as having different phenomenal characters. This can be now fitted to what we said about conceivability and modality in Chapter 4. Cause and effect are represented as phenomenally distinct existences. The phenomenal character and its distinctness owe themselves to the phenomenal character of sensory experiences from which our representations are derived. Ideas represent cause and effect as phenomenally distinct existences, allowing us to conceive or imagine for any particular cause a and effect b separately. This explains why no necessary connections are discoverable or perceivable among distinct existences: were a connection perceivable the separate conceivability of a and b would not be possible. This does not entail the absence of such a connection: rather it explains why we cannot grasp such a connection because our representations are sensory, and hence phenomenally distinct. Thus Hume says there are no perceivable or discoverable connections among distinct existences: never that there are none. Neither does such an imaginative exercise reveal the metaphysical possibility of the independent existence of b from a, thereby showing the impossibility of necessary connection. For our ideas represent at best the sensible qualities of objects—our phenomenally distinct experiences as of the surfaces of objects—and are therefore not clear or adequate representations

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of the objects, and in particular do not give us a grasp of the essences of objects. All our imaginative exercises involving the phenomenally distinct representations derived from sensory impressions are perfectly consistent with the supposition of genuine but unknowable necessary connections or powers in virtue of which any a and b standing in a causal relation are related. The solution to the Appendix puzzle, I suggested, rested on Hume’s realization that the reasonings that led him to deny that our dependent perceptions depend on a simple substance also led to the conclusion that perceptions are independent items, so not causally dependent on anything at all. That is because the reasoning entails that there cannot be necessary connections among perceptions. Hume however clearly thinks that perceptions are dependent items. If he holds that such dependence is causal, and, on the realist supposition, any genuine causal relation involves necessary connection, revealing that there are no necessary connections delivers quite the wrong result: that perceptions are independent items. But now it might be asked: why can’t Hume argue that such supposed necessary connections are hidden to us, as a realist Hume does with respect to external objects? Hume’s account of ideas and the imagination rests on the assumption that any representation involves some object in virtue of which some resemblance relation holds. Given that these objects represent phenomenally distinct items by resemblance, those perceptions that represent phenomenally distinct items must themselves be objects that are phenomenally distinct. Hume, recall, reifies experiences (s. 2.2.1). Phenomenal difference or difference in appearance is determined by their being independent objects that are bundles of tropes. The appearance of F is a matter of there being an object that is F determining the way things seem, rather than there simply being a representation as of some F . This therefore brings us to the non-intentional sense of phenomenally distinct. For every appearance as of phenomenal distinctness—the intentional notion secured by resemblance—there is an object or sense-datum which gives that appearance its sensory character. Once considerations of separability are applied to perceptions qua the vehicles of representation rather than to the objects that ideas are ideas of, separability reveals that those objects are metaphysically independent and so not necessarily connected: and, on the realist assumption, not causally related. There is no inadequate representation of those perceptions involved: one is separating those very objects. Therefore the possibility of separation reveals that perceptions are not necessarily connected.¹¹ The reification of experience also explains why Hume cannot renounce either of his two principles. Phenomenal distinctness requires distinct existences qua reified objects that constitute the intentionally phenomenal distinctness. Without that assumption in place, intentional distinctness cannot be explained. And not only is it true that we cannot perceive any such real connections among distinct ¹¹ Hume does talk of secondary perceptions at T 1.1.1.11; SBN 6, but notice that any such problem applies equally to higher-order perceptions. Any such move is liable to a vicious regress.

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existence but his account of conceivability requires it. To imagine something requires an operation on genuinely separable objects (perceptions qua vehicles) which in turn represent other objects. Without that, Hume has no account of the free play of the imagination, of how we can conceive of things separately

6.4.4 Summary, Objections and Replies Perceptions, Hume insists, are dependent entities that stand in causal relations. Let us assume that he thinks that any genuine causal relation involves necessary connection. ‘The uniting principle among our internal perceptions’ he writes ‘is as unintelligible as that among external objects, and is not known to us any other way than by experience’ (T 1.3.14.29; SBN 169). Any piece of modal reasoning which delivers the conclusion that perceptions cannot be necessarily connected entails that perceptions are not causally connected. They would be metaphysically independent items—substances—which cannot enter into genuine causal transactions. His account of self is that perceptions are bundled by causation, but the ‘seeming evidence’ that induced him to ‘deny the proper identity and simplicity of a self’ (T Appendix 10; SBN 633) leads to the conclusion that they are independent entities and cannot enter into genuine causal transactions. That ‘seeming evidence’ was a reductio of an appeal to an understanding of substance as ‘that which may exist by itself ’: if you hold onto that notion then, since we can conceive of perceptions separately, perceptions are substances on that definition. But clearly they are not: they are dependent entities, so the notion of substance as ‘that which may exist by itself’, together with an argument from conceivability delivers the wrong answer. We should be reconciled to the fact that we have no notion of the mind ‘distinct from the particular perceptions’ (T Appendix 19; SBN 635). But it also delivers the wrong answer for Hume, namely the conclusion that perceptions are independent entities, which cannot enter into causal relations, in flat contradiction with his thesis that perceptions are dependent entities. For if perceptions were causally connected, then we could not perform the imaginative operations that we manifestly do, since when we operate on perceptions qua objects we are not operating with inadequate representations of them: we are separating those very objects, which would be impossible were they necessarily connected. Let us now turn to remove some objections to this reading. First, suppose Hume’s ‘reasonings’ do force the conclusion that perceptions are not causally related. That conclusion puts his whole system, built on the principles of association, under pressure (to put it mildly). Causation, as one of those principles, is for Hume ‘the most extensive’ (T 1.1.4.4; SBN 12), and yet if Hume concludes that perceptions are not causally related his Appendix concerns should be both deeper and wider than his worries about personal identity.¹² ¹² Tom Baldwin and Geoff Sayre-McCord independently offered this objection to me.

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If Hume is worried because his reflections on personal identity lead to the conclusion that there are no causal connections among perceptions, then the ramifications of that worry are far deeper and far more troubling than just his account of persons. The objection is misplaced. Hume does not endorse the conclusion that there are no causal connections among perceptions: rather, it is an apparent consequence of the reasoning—its ‘seeming evidence’—that induces him to deny ‘the strict and proper identity and simplicity of a self or thinking being’ (T Appendix 10; SBN 633). For that was precisely what unties perceptions in thought and consciousness. Had he left perceptions united in a simple self there would be no problem, but his modal argument against that notion proves too much. He knows he has gone wrong somewhere in the argument. Certainly this line of thought has consequences wider than his account of persons; but it is his account of persons that leads to the problem, so that is where the worry lies. Hume tells us: 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. ( T Appendix 21; SBN 636)

This tells us that there would be no problem for Hume if perceptions were really connected—if, that is, they were modes of a substance or existences connected by real connections. On my view, the problem then turns on the fact that the seeming evidence implies that neither is the case. But this has puzzled some, and leads us to our second objection. Hume’s problem would be solved if perceptions were modes of a simple substance; but Stroud says that this seems to imply that Hume is bothered by some question other than the one he appears and claims to be asking about the origin of our idea of the self. Even if all the perceptions belonging to a single mind were to inhere in a simple substance, that in itself would not explain how we ever get the idea of a mind or self in the first place. (1977: 133–4)

The objection, in other words, is that Hume locates his problem in the origin of our idea of self, rather than in what bundles perceptions together. An initial point: it is quite unclear that this is where Hume thinks the problem is. After all, the fact that he says that there would be no difficulty were perceptions modes of substances seems to tell directly against this objection. Of course, Hume tells us that his worry is with the ‘principle of connection, which binds them together and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity’ (T Appendix 20; SBN 635), and one might think that this should be read as a problem with the details of the belief-forming mechanism, the details of the projective account. But the principle of connexion can quite equally be taken to apply to relations in the bundle that in turn triggers the projected belief. That is, ‘principle of connexion’ refers to the principle that bundles perceptions together in the first place, before we ‘attribute to them [the related perceptions] a real simplicity and identity’. That would also explain why Hume thinks that there would be no

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problem if perceptions inhered in a simple substance. If perceptions inhered in a simple but unobservable self, then introspectively speaking all that would appear to us are fleeting perceptions (the changing modes of the simple self ). Hume would still give his projective explanation of the belief in self. But nevertheless the fleeting perceptions—the input into the belief-forming mechanism—would be genuinely connected and so there would be no difficulty in the case. Since substance is rejected, there must be some other way in which the bundles are secured. But Hume’s reasonings seem to imply that that is impossible. So Hume cannot secure the input necessary for the projected belief. Thirdly, by saying that Hume cannot secure the input, I mean that Hume is driven to the conclusion that the presence of the input is metaphysically inexplicable on his principles: his reasoning concerning persons leads to the conclusion that perceptions cannot be causally connected. This is stronger than the conclusion that we do not understand what bundles perceptions. In objecting to solutions to Hume’s puzzle that propose he realizes that he cannot explain what bundles perceptions in the mind, Don Garrett rightly says ‘Hume freely admits that there may be causal relations of the ultimate sources of our perceptions that are essentially out of our reach’ (1997: 171). Presumably Hume could just say that perceptions are bundled somehow, but what does so eludes him. That would not generate any contradiction, but merely an admission of modesty. But the problem we have put our finger on is not that Hume does not have an explanation at hand (that, I agree, would not cause him too many problems). Instead Hume’s principles preclude the existence of any causal explanation whatsoever, since perceptions cannot be causes or effects on those principles (assuming that causation must involve necessary connection). They are entirely independent items which float free of any other items. Hume’s problem is not ignorance; it is rather that he knows enough to know that his reasoning about the self forces the conclusion that perceptions cannot be causally connected.¹³ Fourthly, Hume sometimes says that perceptions are ‘perfectly known’. If however he supposed that they are related by hidden powers, how could it be that perceptions are perfectly known? It is certainly true that what he says in Book I implies the transparency of perceptions. For example, he writes: 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 conscious, we might be mistaken. ( T 1.4.2.7; SBN 190) ¹³ Garrett also objects that such explanations conflict with Hume’s ‘explanatory empiricism’, the idea that explanations always lead to brute facts. Hume could therefore just say that the bundling of perceptions just is a brute fact. Garrett argues that Hume is committed to this because of his rejection of necessary connection (1997: 35–6), but in the light of our discussion of Hume’s scepticism with regard to necessary connection, I see no reason to foist an ontology of brute facts on Hume.

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But he appears later to have changed his mind. At the beginning of the Appendix review he writes: I had entertain’d some hopes, that however deficient our theory 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. ( T Appendix 10; SBN 633)

Indeed, Book II provides some evidence that he thought the transparency claim was troubling. Thus: The essence 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 attended every other system. ( T 2.2.6.2; SBN 366 (my emphasis))

The passage we have just quoted occurs in a discussion of the ‘blending of impressions’, where two impressions can merge to produce another, a phenomenon he admits is contrary to his official principles, and so he has to ‘depart a little’ from them. His confidence that the intellectual world is ‘free from absurdity’ has been dashed by this phenomenon. I suggest that Hume never put the transparency of perceptions and the lack of causal power together until he reflected upon the matter in the Appendix: the claim that perceptions are ‘perfectly known’ is never made by Hume again. Fifth, should not it have occurred to Hume much earlier that the application of conceivability to perceptions qua objects yields the conclusion that they cannot be causally connected? Perhaps, but most of the applications of the separability principle in the body of the Treatise involve perceptions qua contents, yielding the conclusion of ignorance. I suggest that when he is considering perceptions in ‘Of the immateriality of the soul’ and ‘Of personal identity’ his thinking is still guided by his dominant view of perceptions as contents and it is only later he came to realize that his view of perceptions as objects leads him into trouble. Finally, it might be objected that in both his original discussion and in the Appendix, Hume asserts that there are no real connections among perceptions. But he says no such thing. Instead, the discussion is almost entirely epistemic. The closest he comes to saying that there is no real connection in ‘Of personal identity’ is in a single and ambiguous sentence, sandwiched between sentences which are straightforwardly epistemic: 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 . . . [without the association of ideas] every distinct object is separable by the mind, and may be separately consider’d, and appears not to have any more connection with any other object. ( T 1.4.6.16; SBN 259–60 (my emphasis))

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‘Appears’ and ‘may’ and ‘never observes’ are all epistemic, consistent with there being a real connection: ‘resolves itself’ is not. But for the most part it merely sounds epistemic. The Appendix discussion sounds epistemic too: If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct existences are ever discoverable by human understanding. ( T Appendix 20; SBN 635 (my emphasis))

Hume does not say there are no connections. He merely says that they are not discoverable to us. 6 . 5 S U M M A RY O U T L I N E O F T H E A RG U M E N T A large portion of this chapter has argued that if one assumes that Hume is committed to the idea that any causal relation must involve necessary connection, then we can explain the Appendix problem. This is therefore a reason to read Hume as a realist about necessary connection. The reading of the Appendix is itself straightforward, though the assumptions behind it took some uncovering. Here in summary is the argument. 1. His arguments in ‘Of personal identity’ ‘induc’d [him] to deny the proper identity and simplicity of a self’ (T Appendix 10; SBN 633). 2. Since there is no substantial self, some ‘principle of connection’ that bundles perceptions is required. That is the relation of causation: ‘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’ (T 1.4.6.19; SBN 261). 3. But his explanation of ‘principle of connexion, which binds them together, and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity’ is ‘very defective’ (T Appendix 20; SBN 635). 4. According to Hume, ‘nothing but the seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings could have induc’d me to receive it’ (T Appendix 20; SBN 635). It is the ‘reasonings’ which induced him to deny a substantial self and that suggested the defective account. 5. The defect in his account takes the form of an inconsistency between theses (a) the distinct perceptions are distinct existences, (b) the mind perceives no connection among distinct existence, and one or more other principles. 6. Hume cannot renounce either of these principles. 7. If (a) the mind perceive some real connection among perceptions or (b) if perceptions inhere in something simple, there would be no difficulty. Point (7) tells us Hume thinks there would be little difficulty if (7a) or (7b) were true. But (1) leads him to deny (7b). This leads him to seek some other

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principle of connection. That principle of connection is causation (2). If (7a) were true, perceptions would be causally connected (on the realist assumption that real causation involves necessary connection). (7a) is false. The argument in (1) also induces him to claim that the self is nothing but a bundle of perceptions related by causation (2). That argument exploits the two principles (5a) and (5b) in order to drive the notion of self as substances to absurdity. These principles he cannot renounce because both are required for his account of separability and to account for our capacity to think of a range of possibilities (6). But these principles applied to perceptions qua objects imply that perceptions cannot be related by causation, so they are inconsistent with (2). So there is something wrong with the ‘seeming evidence’ (4), namely the argument for (1) which not only induced him to deny that the self is a simple substance, but leads to this unacceptable inconsistency. A labyrinth indeed. What he should have done is to drop his implicit assumption that impressions and ideas, whose character of distinctness is given in terms of their phenomenal distinctness, have that character in virtue of their being objects that consist of arrangements of properties. That way, he could refuse to draw any conclusion about the lack of causal relations among perceptions construed as content-bearing objects from the phenomenal distinctness of perceptions construed as intentional contents. The phenomenal distinctness of the intentional objects of the ideas would not then force a view of ideas as constituted by objects in virtue of which they have this phenomenal distinctness. That way, modal considerations regarding the intentional objects of experiences would not apply to the metaphysical independence or otherwise of the experiences themselves. This is yet another reason not to reify experiences—if you really need one. 6 . 6 C O N C LU S I O N TO PA RT I I Part II of the present work has defended a form of causal realism and showed it to be compatible with Hume’s projective account of our commitment to causal power. We have looked at the reasons why Hume thinks that we cannot grasp what it is that grounds causal transactions and showed how Hume’s strategy exploited a coherent supposition that I called the Bare Thought. I then explained how Hume thinks we acquire both the idea of necessity and the consequent notion or Bare Thought. I explained the sense in which that account was both explanatorily and feature projective. The evidence that Hume assumed the existence of genuine powers was then considered and found in the balance. I then offered a reading of the Appendix puzzle which supported the realism assumption. Hume’s realism is a very deep form of scepticism. It is not a shallow form of rejection nor an instance of the infirmity of philosophers to move from what we can or cannot understand to what there can or cannot be. Hume is concerned

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with our incapacity to understand regions of reality, a failure to grasp or know what causal powers are, which is compatible with an assumption that there are such things. This is itself a perfectly legitimate sense of ‘scepticism’, a sense that fits with how Hume actually discusses the matter. Our total failure to understand just what it is that could yield the cognitive consequences specified in the Bare Thought means that we have ‘no idea of this connexion, nor even any distinct notion of what it is we desire to know, when we endeavour at a conception of it’ (EHU 7.2.29; SBN 77). And that is right: I have no idea of what sort of thing would do that job; nevertheless we can form a sufficiently rich thought to single out powers as that which a grasp of which would equip us with the requisite inferences. The emergence of that Bare Thought depends on the kinds of mechanisms that underpin animal inference, and provide us with no genuine understanding of such matters. A comparison with a contemporary philosopher may help to make this clear. Colin McGinn (1991) argues that the mind/body problem is unsolvable on the grounds that our conceptual resources are inadequate to understand the relation. He thinks that our conceptual resources are typically geared to a spatial world, and not for understanding connections between the spatial and the non-spatial. The nature of the relation between mind and body is, as McGinn puts it, ‘cognitively closed to us’. But McGinn does not deny that there is any such relation, or that the relation is not intelligible to some other suitably equipped thinker. He just takes it that there is some relation but it is not intelligible to us. This, I suggest, is analogous to Hume’s scepticism about causal power. Our conceptual resources are geared to sensory experiences and, as for all the other animals, the structure of the world is closed off to us. It is also a form of modesty which is hardly unreasonable in its own right.

PART I I I VALU E , P RO J E C T I O N AND REALISM Part III examines the issues of projection and realism with respect to Hume’s account of evaluation. Chapter 7 discusses Hume’s comparison of values with secondary qualities. I argue that the account is both explanatorily projective and feature projective. What is to be explained is the possession of contents for beliefs concerning something’s being essentially valuable, or valuable for its own sake. These contents owe themselves to our ideas of good or evil, pleasure or pain, which give beliefs such contents and in virtue of which we come to think of and experience a range of objects as essentially valuable. It is in virtue of attributing what are features of experience to the objects of experience—the element of feature projection—that such beliefs are possible. This is the point of the secondary quality comparison. Chapter 8 argues that sentiments are projected contents for evaluative beliefs and suggests that there is a residual realism in Hume’s view of pleasure and pain. Chapter 9 places Hume’s discussion of evaluation and correction of the sentiments of pleasure and pain in a wider context. In so doing I suggest that moral experiences and thoughts can be thought of as analogous to a sense. The pleasures of gustatory experience are nature’s way of encouraging animals to pursue features that are conducive to their bodily wellbeing, and analogously, moral experience is nature’s approval of what is conducive to personal and societal wellbeing. The case for this overall reading is cumulative and rests on a reading of Hume’s context and how his moves inside the texts can be understood against this background. So although the discussion is broken into three chapters, the plausibility of the main thesis of each chapter depends on its meshing with the thesis of the other two. A summary is offered at the end of Part III.

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7 Gilding: Projection, Value and Secondary Qualities 7 . 1 I N T RO D U C T I O N It is difficult to overestimate the influence of Hume’s writings on value. More accurately, his writings have occasioned a variety of philosophical ideas that continue to be central points of reference. To determine what his settled views are in this area is no easy matter, and there is no shortage of different readings. Labels abound: he is a realist (Norton 1982), a naturalist (Sturgeon 2001), a reflective naturalist (Baier 1991), a non-cognitivist (Bricke 1996) or an expressivist-projectivist (Blackburn 1993a). Mackie (1980: ch. 5) finds different variants of sentimentalism in Hume’s writings (dispositional descriptivism, emotivism and the objectification theory) but does not find Hume settling on just one of these variants. Behind these labels of course lie detailed readings,¹ but rather than assess them directly, I shall develop my own through a discussion of the topics of projection and realism. The concern of this chapter is the meaning and import of Hume’s famous comparison of vice, virtue, beauty and deformity with secondary qualities (henceforth: the Comparison). The Comparison suggests a way to interpret the metaphor of projection. Colours are only really ‘in the mind’ and yet we experience the world as coloured: colours are ‘projections’. The point then of the Comparison is that vice, virtue and beauty are really only ‘in the mind’, ¹ They are also the tips of exegetical icebergs. For there is much dispute over particular, but still fairly coarse-grained, issues in Hume’s account of value. Some think that Hume’s talk of sentiments is central to his account (Blackburn 1993b), others that it is inessential (Baier 1991). Some find a tension between his talk of sentiment as essential to moral evaluation and the correction of sentiment in the general point of view (Baier 1991: chapters 7–8, Herdt 1997: 65), others no such inconsistency (Bricke 1996, Cohon 1997, Radcliffe 1994 and 1996). Some take his comparison of values with secondary qualities to important be to him (Shaw 1993, Pitson 1989, Sturgeon 2001, Harman 1986), others as a red herring (Blackburn 1993, Baier 1991: 194–5). So not only do labels abound, but also deep disagreements. I shall indicate where my reading touches on these disagreements.

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though we think and experience the world to contain such features: values are ‘projections’. Here is John Mackie’s² gloss on this idea: we tend to project these sentiments onto the actions or characters that arise from them, or read some sort of image of these sentiments in to them so that we think of those actions and characters as possessing, objectively and intrinsically, certain distinctively moral features; but these features are fictitious. (1980: 71)

Barry Stroud has a similar view of Hume: value is like colour in that in virtue of projecting sensations we come to think of some object as virtuous (1977: 182ff).³ This reading of Hume is not a popular one. First, it seems to put some form of error at the centre of his account of evaluation, which sits ill with his friendly attitude to virtue. Indeed, he says that the Comparison ‘takes off no more from the reality of the latter qualities [sc. virtue and vice], than from that of the former [sc. colour]; nor need it give any umbrage either to critics or moralists’ (‘The Sceptic’ EMPL 166n). Secondly, it appears to credit Hume with a mistaken view of the primary/secondary quality distinction. For, it is said, secondary qualities, properly understood, are not features of minds, but powers or dispositions to elicit certain responses. Thirdly, it seems to imply that moral judgements are centrally (false) beliefs whereas there is much to suggest that Hume is a non-cognitivist about evaluation: evaluations express desires or sentiments directed towards objects rather than consisting of representations of some range of sui generis goodness or badness, which objects, as a matter of fact, fail to instantiate. Fourthly, if we have difficulty in understanding how colour experience can be a matter of representing sensations as properties of ‘external objects’, such an account applied to evaluation carries with it unintelligibility in spades. How could representing a ‘sentiment’ of pleasure and pain as something ‘out there’ ever be the model for evaluative thought? But what then are we to make of the Comparison? Some think it pulls very little philosophical weight in Hume’s account (e.g. Blackburn 1993a, Baier 1991: 194, Bricke 1996: 159n44), whereas others hold that its point lies in the idea that values, like secondary qualities, are importantly like powers or dispositions.⁴ Neither of these is correct, as we shall see. Where we begin is with Hume’s understanding of the doctrine of secondary qualities, and he very clearly makes the Comparison to point towards some kind of error. Annette Baier, ² Anthony Flew writes ‘Hume’s fundamental conclusion is that value characteristics in general and moral in particular, are a sort of secondary qualities. Things in themselves actually possess certain primary qualities which, because we are the kind of creatures we are, cause us to react in certain ways. We then project these valuing reactions back onto what in truth possesses no value’ (1986: 114). ³ See also (2000a). Robert Fogelin concurs, seeing this as a ‘remarkably good suggestion’ (1985: 193). ⁴ Pitson (1989), Shaw (1993), Goldman (1990: 76), Harman (1986), Sayre-McCord (1996) and Sturgeon (2001). Some of these are reactions to the readings of Mackie and Stroud.

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discussing projection by way of ‘a brief concession to current philosophical tastes’, writes: There is no good reason to see [Hume] as likening the status of virtues to that of ‘secondary qualities’ if these are seen as some how less real than others . . . [t]here need be no illusion of something ‘out there’ when in fact it is really ‘in here’. (Baier 1991: 194–5)

That seems difficult to square with what Hume says. Plenty of what Hume says seems to indicate precisely the opposite, and if this does not constitute a good reason—which of course is not the same as a conclusive one—then I do not know what does. Thus: Vice and virtue, therefore, maybe compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. ( T.3.1.1.26; SBN 469) Were I not afraid of appearing too philosophical, I should remind my reader of that famous doctrine, supposed to be fully proved in modern times, ‘That tastes and colours, and all other sensible qualities, lie not in the bodies but merely in the senses.’ The case is the same with beauty and deformity, virtue and vice. (‘The Sceptic’ EMPL 166n) Beauty is not a quality of the circle . . . It is only the effect, which that figure produces upon a mind, whose peculiar fabric or structure renders it susceptible to such sentiments. (EMPL 165) it be certain, that beauty and deformity, more than sweet or bitter, are not qualities in the objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment. (‘Of the Standard of Taste’, EMPL 235) no objects are, in themselves, desirable or odious, valuable or despicable; but that objects acquire these qualities from the particular character and constitution of the mind, which surveys them. (‘The Sceptic’, EMPL 171)

The drift of the Comparison is always towards some error. How are we to understand this? The burden of this chapter is to show that the Comparison attempts to account for a component of our implicit, pre-theoretical concept of the objects of evaluation (or rather some of them). Its point concerns an error to which our pre-theoretical concept commits us, rather than to make some substantive point about powers or dispositions. I do this by examining Hume’s view that colours are nothing but perceptions of the mind and its background in order to illuminate what he means by this understanding of the doctrine of modern philosophy. We then read the details of the Comparison in the light of this understanding. The error in colour experience is this: colours are thought and experienced pre-theoretically as manifest, non-dispositional phenomenal qualities of the surfaces of physical objects. So understood objects possess no such colours and colours are ‘nothing but perceptions of the mind’. The account Hume offers is both explanatorily and feature projective. As with any explanatorily projective account, we need to answer some key questions. These are discussed in the course of the chapter, but the explanandum of

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Hume’s account is introduced here. The explanandum is our pre-theoretical, and erroneous, conception of virtuous and beautiful objects as essentially valuable.⁵ The notion of something’s being essentially valuable is best approached by a contrast with its being relationally valuable. A relational value has its value in virtue of its being something that is good (or bad) for something else (see e.g. Railton 2003: 48–9). A particular foodstuff is good for some species if it is, for example, nourishing. Its value is relational since its goodness derives from its disposition to promote some end (bodily wellbeing). This is not a relativism about value since it is true that it has that effect independently of any one’s judging it to be so. Someone might think that something is a relational good, but be mistaken. For example, I might think that drinking coffee makes me healthy but I am just wrong about that. The connection between desirability and relational value becomes intelligible in light of the object’s contribution to some further end. So: moderation is relationally valuable in light of its beneficial effects to one’s mental and bodily wellbeing. Something is essentially valuable (as opposed to relationally so) when it is desirable or praiseworthy for its own sake rather than the contribution it makes to some other end. For example, the aesthetic value attaching to an object is sometimes held to be independent of any other effect that object may have (e.g. its commercial value or its calming psychological effects). Correlatively, something is essentially disvaluable only when it is worthy of avoidance for its own sake, rather than its potentially harmful effects on something else. Something essentially valuable may accrue relational value or disvalue, in that it may contribute or detract from some other state of affairs. So, for example, education might be thought to be worthy of desire for its own sake, and could contribute to some other good end (e.g. better status) or some further bad end (it makes the criminal more cunning). Mutatis mutandis the same point applies to something that is essentially disvaluable accruing relational value or disvalue. Our experience of, and beliefs about such values, are such as to (a) causally explain the desire or aversion directed towards those objects and (b) render intelligible those attitudes. In understanding why, say, Edmund is in university, we could cite the essential value of education as explanatory of his action, rendering his action intelligible. The suggestion is that Hume’s Comparison attempts to explain thought and experience of a range of objects as essentially valuable. Some objects are thought and experienced pre-theoretically as essentially valuable, as desirable independently of other concerns. So understood, no objects are valuable and, vice, virtue and beauty are ‘nothing but perceptions of the mind’. ⁵ Mackie uses the term ‘intrinsic’ value for what I call essential value since he takes value to bear some internal relation to the will. Since Moore at least, the notion of intrinsic value is linked to the idea of its being utterly independent of desire: thus it is a conceivable situation under which the world contains value and fully rational agents need not adopt any appropriate conative attitude towards its value. I suspect such a notion is at bottom unintelligible, but never mind that. For discussion see Korsgaard (1983).

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That Hume thinks evaluative thought and experience involves some kind of error is strongly supported by the texts, and this chapter brings that back into focus. The error is something that is downplayed or ignored in recent Hume literature. Here we offer a reading that allows us to give full voice to those statements. The approach to understanding this and other aspects of his treatment of value is more ‘external’ to the text than that taken in Parts I and II. That is to say, I lay great emphasis on the wider context of Hume’s thought in an effort to understand the meaning of his comparison and, subsequently, the role of sentiment and its relation to reason and motivation. Included here are writers such as Malebranche and Hutcheson whom Hume knew very well. The cumulative effect across the three chapters of Part III is to offer a plausible, but novel, account of how Hume construed evaluative thought. We begin by discussing Hume’s view of secondary qualities as ‘nothing but perceptions of the mind’. We show that this should be understood not as a failure to understand Locke (as is commonly thought) but as an independent understanding of the idea of ‘modern philosophy’. This is then connected with feature projection, the attribution of what are features of mentality to features of external objects. These discussions jointly provide the background to Hume’s view of secondary qualities. This understanding is what should inform any view of the Comparison, and we then turn to read his account of the experience and thought of value in that light.

7.2 HUME AND THE DOCTRINE OF MODERN PH I LO S O PH Y: T H E V I EW A N D I TS B AC KG RO U N D

7.2.1 Modern Philosophy and the Vulgar According to Hume, the doctrine of ‘modern philosophy’ has it that ‘colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold . . . [are] nothing but impressions in the mind, deriv’d from the operation of external objects, and without any resemblance to the qualities of the objects’ (T 1.4.4.3; SBN 226). Hume is consistent in this conception of modern philosophy: colours, heat, and sound are perceptions of the mind, and he never identifies colours and such like with powers to produce such perceptions. We noted in section 3.4 that Hume thought that a conflicting appearances argument was the best reason for drawing the distinction of modern philosophy, though it is unclear whether he endorsed the distinction itself. Here though we are concerned with how Hume understood the distinction, rather than whether he endorsed it. We approach matters by taking a cue from Hume, and seek to understand this doctrine’s meaning by turning to its origin. Commentators routinely chide Hume for his ‘wild misrepresentation’ (Sturgeon 2001: 15) of, or ‘confusion over’ (Pitson 1989: 68) Locke’s view of

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secondary qualities as powers of objects to produce ideas.⁶ Having pointed out Hume’s mistake or confusion, such commentators then proceed to read it as if Hume is ‘faithful’ (Sturgeon 2001: 16) to the Lockean model in his treatment of value: he says (or really means to say) that ‘wilful murder is vicious precisely because it is exercising the power it has . . . to produce a certain feeling in us’ (Sturgeon 2001: 16). A number of assumptions inform this, not untypical, move. The first, I suspect, is philosophical: taking Hume’s view of colour at face value imputes massive error to colour discourse, which charity dictates is a bad thing. This ignores the fact that plenty have taken modern philosophy to have precisely that consequence, including some of our contemporaries (Mackie 1977, Boghossian and Velleman 1997a). If Hume needs charity, he is not the only deserving case. Secondly, there is the assumption that any allusion to secondary qualities is ipso facto an allusion to Locke’s version of the distinction. Further, that any such allusion must take secondary qualities to be powers. But none of these assumptions is obvious, though they remain unargued for in the Hume literature. All begins to evaporate when the slightest heat is applied. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is not Locke’s, and Locke’s alone. Indeed it is misleading to think that there is anything below the broadest level of characterization that can be called the distinction. Locke’s is one particular articulation of a cluster of considerations discussed by many early modern authors, some of whose work predates Locke’s Essay including, for example, Galileo, Hobbes, Malebranche and Descartes.⁷ Hume’s own discussion in ‘Of the modern philosophy’ exploits considerations about the relativity of perception, together with the application of the ‘like effects, like causes’, to be the best argument for the distinction (cf. s. 3.3). Locke does not take this to be the central argument. Indeed Hume’s own discussion shows little evidence of engagement with Locke’s own arguments. This is not to misunderstand Locke: it is to ignore him.⁸ In any case, Hume’s reading extends well beyond Locke, and, as we shall see, these authors are the more likely source for Hume’s conception of modern philosophy.⁹ In a letter to Michael Ramsey of 1737 Hume lists the authors Ramsey should read in preparation for reading the Treatise. The list, topped by Malebranche’s Search After Truth, includes Bayle, Descartes and Berkeley (but not Locke). Now, whatever Hume intended to convey to Ramsey in this letter it is nevertheless ⁶ See also Shaw (1993) and Buckle (2001: 205n). ⁷ Hobbes writes colours, sounds etc., lie only in ‘the sentient’, rather than the object of perception, and the ‘great deception of sense’ is that such a bodily modification ‘seemeth to be in the object’, Human Nature ch. 2. ⁸ Admittedly Hume mentions solidity as a primary quality, perhaps indicating a Lockean inheritance. Locke’s Essay of course makes an impression on the Treatise, though in perhaps less than one might have expected. For example, Locke’s view that we get the idea of power from reflection on our wills does not make an appearance in Hume until the Appendix. ⁹ A. D. Smith (1990: 236) argues that quite a number of early modern thinkers saw matters the way Hume did.

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significant that Bayle and Berkeley conceive of secondary qualities just as Hume does, and Malebranche is close to it. Malebranche’s Search After Truth is published some 16 years before Locke’s Essay is, and Bayle’s Dictionary only six years later than the Essay.¹⁰ For Bayle, the doctrine amounts to a claim that ‘heat, smells, colours and the like, are not in the objects of the senses. They are modifications of the senses.’¹¹ Bayle, Malebranche and Berkeley, like Hume but unlike Locke, take relativity considerations to be crucial to the establishment of this distinction.¹² So we have non-Lockean sources for Hume’s view of modern philosophy. That Hume is not alone in such an understanding should not, furthermore, be written off by saying that the ‘misunderstanding’ was ‘standard’ (Sturgeon 2001: 15). For the view is a consequence of a philosophical criticism of the thesis that qualities such as colour can be identified with powers or dispositions. If Hume’s conception of modern philosophy is informed by these sources, then there is no ‘wild misrepresentation’ or ‘confusion’ with regard to Locke but a rejection of the identification of colours with powers. That, in turn, conditions how we should read the Comparison. Let us now try to understand the view that colours are nothing but perceptions of the mind. The early modern period was dominated by a mechanical understanding of the world that involved a denial that material objects (including our own bodies) possess irreducible qualitative or phenomenal properties. This understanding of material objects, to borrow some terminology from Wilfred Sellars, encourages a cleavage between two images of the world, the ‘manifest’ and the ‘scientific’. The scientific image of the world is properly no image at all, but a mathematical representation of the world external to sensory experience. The manifest image includes how objects are presented in sensory experience. This includes presenting them as possessing a range of distinct qualitative properties such as the yellowness of butterscotch, the savoury taste of a good St Julien, the warmth of the body sleeping next to one. Within the range of properties that perceptual experience presents objects as possessing, a distinction can be drawn between ideas that resemble their causes and those that do not, with the primary qualities mapping onto the former, secondary qualities mapping onto the latter.¹³ Central to the resemblance thesis is the extent to which the idea yields an understanding of the nature of the property causally correlated with the idea. Our ideas and experiences as of extended objects present them as standing in geometrical ¹⁰ Bayle’s view is influenced by Malebranche’s discussion (he is one of Bayle’s targets in his discussion of the distinction). ¹¹ From note b to entry on Pyrrho Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections (ed.) Popkin (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1963: 197). ¹² Bayle’s view of the arguments for the distinction, and his worries about it, are to be found in notes on Zeno (Dictionary 364–5). These constitute the most plausible source for both Berkeley and Hume’s misgivings about the distinction. ¹³ This is neutral on whether the content of such ideas is determined by an intellectual contribution to sensory experience or whether the content is determined solely by the experiential element. The former is roughly Descartes’ view, the latter Locke’s.

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relations, even to those without any grasp of the mechanical science: to that extent our ideas resemble their causes by providing a form of understanding of how those properties are in re. Colour ideas, however, do not resemble their causes: the causal correlates of such experiences consists in some micro-textual surface, light-modifying properties of the object, but the colour experience alone provides the thinker without even the slightest conception of those properties or even that the causes are such properties.¹⁴ How then are we to classify such properties as tastes, smells, and colours for which our ideas have non-resembling causes? Descartes wrote: It is clear, then, that when we say that we perceive colours in objects, this is really just the same as saying that we perceive something in the objects whose nature we do not know, but which produces in us a certain clear and very vivid sensation which we call the sensation of colour . . . [and, furthermore] . . . we do not really know what we are calling a colour.¹⁵

On Descartes’ view, colours are identical to secondary qualities as ‘powers’ understood in what I shall call the ‘causalist’ sense. The sensation of red acts as a reference-fixing device, so that the reference of ‘red’ is rigid: the property red is then identified with the microphysical structure type that is the distal cause of that experience.¹⁶ The word ‘power’ picks up on what pulls the causal weight in the production of an idea. So, there are colours and colours are microphysical properties of physical objects. We do not know, however, on the basis of our sensory experiences what kind of property colour properties are. Secondary qualities are the unknown causes of ideas, and colour is identical to this unknown cause. Scientific investigation will tell us what colours are. This view allows for successful predication of colour properties to physical objects: but it does so at a cost to our pre-theoretical or ‘vulgar’ understanding ¹⁴ On this understanding of resemblance, see Wilson ‘Descartes on Sense and ‘‘Resemblance’’ ’ in Wilson (1999) and A. D. Smith’s superb discussion (Smith: 1990). This understanding does not disbar the literal understanding of resemblance: it may be that it is in virtue of the experience sharing properties with the object (e.g. structural ones) that such a transparent understanding of the causes of experience is possible. The point here is not how the experience and ideas can yield such understanding—how the resemblance is supposed to be secured—but what is supposed to be secured in such resemblance, namely a grasp of the nature of the property. ¹⁵ The Principles of Philosophy, Pt I, s. 70, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. I (trans.) J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985: 218). For discussion, see Wilson ‘Descartes on Sense and ‘‘Resemblance’’ ’ in Wilson (1999). I will concentrate on colour in what follows for convenience. But there can be differences among the secondary qualities that prevent a single story being true of all. One concerns the effects that a property can have other than its production of an idea in us. For example, a reliable correlation between temperature and warmth may mean that the property picked out by a secondary quality term might not only explain our experience but also its effects on other things (melting things, for example). Colours are taken as the paradigm secondary quality, but it is plausible to think that colour is peculiar in that the property picked out plays no other causal role than eliciting a characteristic experience in suitable observers. ¹⁶ A difference sense of ‘power’ is discussed in s. 9.4.2.

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of colours. The vulgar tend to make a mistake, namely that they think that they understand the nature of what it is that causes colour experience: they think that ‘what is called colour in objects is something like the colour of which we have sensory awareness’ (Principles s. 70). Descartes thinks this is a judgemental error, and so external to the meaning of the concept ‘red’ but his followers began to think that the meaning of terms such as ‘red’ are ambiguous between a referential meaning—what it is ‘in’ the object that causes the relevant idea—and the phenomenological sense or the way that the cause is presented to us in experience. Thus Rouhault on heat and cold: These two words each have two meanings: For, first, by heat and cold, one understands two particular sentiments that are in us, and that resemble in some manner those which one calls pain and pleasure; such as the sentiments one has when one approaches the fire, or when one touches ice. Secondly, by heat and cold, one understands the power that bodies have to cause in us these two sentiments. (Treatise on Physics (1671), quoted in Schmaltz (1996: 56–7))

Malebranche sees this as a distinction between our vulgar concept of, say, colour and a replacement philosophical concept. He then exploits it in a more radical way than his predecessors (though, as is his wont, he presents his own position as Descartes’).¹⁷ He is less confident than Descartes that there will be a sufficiently neat class of microphysical properties causally responsible for the relevant sensations or ideas to make such identity claims plausible.¹⁸ He also criticizes Descartes’ use of terms like ‘power’ and ‘disposition’ as rather too close to uninformative ‘faculty’ talk.¹⁹ But central to our concerns is a point about the status and nature of our ordinary concept and experience of colours. Prior to Descartes, writes Malebranche, all philosophers, when they say that fire is hot, grass is green and so on, mean, like children and the common man, that fire contains what they feel when they are warm; that grass has on it the colours they believe they see there; that sugar contains the sweetness that they sense in eating it, and so on. (Search 441)²⁰

Post-Cartesian science, we may mean by colour ‘some movement of insensible parts’, but the ordinary thinker’s conception implies that fire is not hot and grass is not green, ‘for the heat we feel, and the colours we see are only in the soul’. Two components of the ordinary view of colour are in tension. These are (a) that physical objects have colours, and (b) colours are as we experience them to be, that is, distinct and irreducible phenomenal qualities. If you emphasize (a) you lose (b) and vice versa. Malebranche, and following him Bayle and Berkeley, ¹⁷ Malebranche typically presents himself as a faithful follower of Descartes, but frequently makes significant changes to, or developments of, Descartes’ system. Often, as the Malebranche–Arnauld exchange attests, he is prone to assert, incorrectly, that his position was Descartes’ position. ¹⁸ For discussion see Schmaltz (1995). ¹⁹ For discussion see Jolley (1990: 82–4). ²⁰ Nicolas Malebranche The Search After Truth (trans.) T. Lennon and P. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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emphasize (b) as essential to our concept of colour, leading to the conclusion that colours are perceptions of the mind. This is why Malebranche repeatedly says that colours, smells and so forth, are merely modifications of the soul, and that we erroneously judge ‘colours, odours, tastes, and other sensible qualities to be in the bodies we call coloured, odiferous, and flavoured’ (Search 73). On our ordinary understanding of colours as distinct phenomenal properties, the new science forces the conclusion that those properties are modes of the soul. This is now a short step away from saying colours, tastes, and so on, are nothing but perceptions of the mind. For if you emphasize the vulgar understanding of colour as exhausted by the phenomenal, one can then argue that objects possess no colours. Thus from the Search: Certainly, a peasant, for example, sees colours perfectly well and distinguishes them from those things that have no colour. It is also certain that he does not perceive any motion either in coloured objects or in the fundus of his eye—colour, therefore, is not motion. Likewise, a peasant perfectly well feels heat and knows it clearly enough to distinguish everything that is not heat—however, he does not believe merely that the fibres of his hand are excited. The heat that he feels, then, is not an instance of motion because the ideas of heat and of motion are different . . . (Search 59)

The vulgar identify colours with perceivable properties, but do not perceive the motion of particles: so colour cannot be identified with the motion of particles. The key is the phrase ‘knows perfectly well’: implicit in the vulgar understanding of colours is the thought that such properties are exhaustively as they seem. We know enough about the nature of the property (or we think we know enough) to know that they are not identical to some candidate microphysical property. Berkeley develops this thought further. Berkeley is well aware of the Locke/Descartes view of them as textually grounded powers,²¹ but is impressed by, and fully exploits, Malebranche’s thoughts about the ordinary semantics of sensible qualities like colour. Colours ‘in the vulgar sense’ are the ‘immediate objects of sense’. As for the ‘invisible’ colours of philosophers, Philonous says, It is not my business to dispute about them; only I would advise you [Hylas] to bethink your self, whether considering the inquiry we are upon, it be prudent for you to affirm, the red and blue we see are not real colours, but certain unknown motions and figures which no man ever did or can see, are truly so. Are these not shocking notions, and are not they subject to as many ridiculous inferences, as those which you were obliged to renounce before in the case of sounds?²²

Grant that objects have powers to produce ideas of objects and our ideas do not resemble those causes (however such notions are glossed). Grant that our ideas ²¹ See Margaret Wilson, ‘Did Berkeley Completely Misunderstand the Basis of the Primary–Secondary Quality Distinction in Locke?’ in Wilson (1999). Wilson emphasizes the explanatory failure of corpuscular science by Berkeley’s lights. Here I think there are considerations about the ordinary meaning of terms such as colour. ²² First Dialogue:187 (Luce and Jessop pagination).

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of red, and so on do not resemble those powers. This alone does not imply that one can in good conscience identify colours, heat or cold with such powers. One might concede that objects have powers to produce ideas in us of non-resembling ideas of colours, heat and smell but claim that our ordinary or vulgar concept of colour, smell and so on, is not of any such powers. Crudely, what we mean by colour is a manifest phenomenal quality and our sensory experience presents objects as the bearers of such properties. But modern philosophy implies there are no such qualities, only powers to produce non-resembling ideas. We have, at the very least, a choice here: identify colours with such powers or say that we falsely represent the world to contain colours. If this is right, then Hume’s view that modern philosophy forces the conclusion that colours and the rest are nothing but perceptions of the mind is not a mistake or misrepresentation, but can be understood against the idea that our ordinary understanding of such properties is of distinct phenomenal properties. We will attend a little closer to what this means in the next section, but we can confirm that Hume understands the consequences of modern philosophy in the light of the vulgar conception of colour through his response to Thomas Reid’s view of colour. Reid, like Descartes, holds that colours are unknown microphysical structures that cause sensations. In a letter commentating of Reid’s ‘performance’ (his Inquiry), Hume writes: The Author supposes, that the Vulgar do not believe the sensible Qualities of Heat, Smell, Sounds & probably Colour to be really in the Bodies, but only their Causes or something capable of producing them in the Mind. But this is imagining the Vulgar to be Philosophers & Corpuscularians from their Infancy. You know what pains it cost Malebranche and Locke to establish that Principle . . . And indeed Philosophy scarce ever advances a greater Paradox in the Eyes of the People, than when it affirms that Snow is neither cold not white: Fire hot nor red. ²³

Taking the vulgar view of what these properties are, philosophers do deny such properties to be ‘really in the Bodies’, a paradox which owes itself to Malebranche and Locke. For Reid, our ordinary concept of colour and secondary qualities in general is that of some property whose nature we do not understand: they ‘are conceived only as the unknown causes or occasions of certain sensations with which we are well-acquainted’.²⁴ For Hume the vulgar believe colours to be distinct phenomenal properties, and the doctrine of modern philosophy thereby implies that colours so understood are nothing but perceptions of the mind. Call this conception of colour ‘phenomenal colour’. Hume tells us that the vulgar believe that sensible qualities such as colour ‘be really in the objects’. What is the content of this claim? A first component of the vulgar concept is that ²³ Letter to Hugh Blair, July 1762, reprinted in Wood (1986). The phrase ‘advance a paradox’ (or rather its French equivalent) is used by Bayle in his discussion of the doctrine of ‘modern philosophy’. See note b to the entry on Pyrrho (op. cit.). ²⁴ Reid Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1969: 254)

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there is a constitutive relation between a characteristic qualitative or phenomenal nature and colour: that is glossed in the idea that we suppose colours ‘resemble’ or are ‘like’ our experiences. Anything that is not like this phenomenal nature is not a colour. This places a condition on what is required to understand redness. One must be acquainted with an instance of the property in order to grasp what redness is. We cannot, to change the example, properly understand the taste of pineapple unless we encounter it in experience, for we conceive of that property to be exhausted by its irreducible qualitative character. Secondly, such essentially phenomenal properties exist independently of our experiences of them and are possessed by the objects of sensory experiences. This is couched by Malebranche and Descartes in terms of our supposing something ‘in the object’ that ‘resembles’ our ideas. That way of putting the matter is a theoretical gloss on the content of our ordinary view. Put more straightforwardly, our experience presents to us objects as possessing, independently of our experience, those phenomenal properties which we call colours. Remember that for Hume (and for Berkeley) the vulgar do not think of perception as a complex relation, involving object, idea and resemblance, but instead of direct and unmediated acquaintance with objects. Colours, as conceived by the vulgar, are phenomenal properties of which we are directly aware and continue to exist unperceived. Whatever may be ‘our philosophical opinion, colours, sounds, heat and cold, as far as appears to the senses, exist after the same manner with motion and solidity, and that the difference we make betwixt them in this respect, arises not from mere perception’ (T 1.4.2.15; SBN 192). The philosophical view of perception, however, introduces the notion of experiences representing objects in virtue of some resemblance relation. That by itself does not so much abandon the vulgar view of colour, but complicates our perceptual relation to such properties. The vulgar conception of colour is compatible with an indirect realist account of perception when it supposes colour experiences to be resemblances of colour properties: ‘what is called colour in objects is something like the colour of which we have sensory awareness’ (Descartes Principles s. 70).

7.2.2 Projection, Sensation and Experience Hume’s view that the consequence of modern philosophy is that colour and so on, are nothing but perceptions of the mind is no misreading of Locke. Instead it turns on how colours are ordinarily conceived and the ramifications that modern philosophy has for colours so conceived: that colours are ‘in the mind’. How does this relate to projection? C. D. Broad writes of projection: We are asked to believe that there is browness without shape ‘in me’, and round shape without colour out there where the penny is, and yet that in some mysterious way, the shapeless browness ‘in me’ is projected into the round contour of the penny ‘out there’. If this be not nonsense I do not know what nonsense is. (1923: 273–4)

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It is not difficult to sympathize with Broad’s verdict: in this section we try to understand what might be meant by this claim. Phenomenal colours are nothing but perceptions of the mind. Are phenomenal colours thereby projections? Let us first take the claim that such colours are nothing but perceptions as merely intentional: we represent colours to be ‘out there’ but there are none (there is nothing resembling our colour perceptions ‘in the object’). The term ‘in the mind’ then simply picks up on the illusory character of sensory experience. To say colour is a projection is simply to claim that there is no such thing, though there seems to be. This is a legitimate, but not particularly illuminating, use of the metaphor. It does not fall under the explanatory projection: the claim is simply that we falsely represent objects to be coloured, and makes no attempt to explain how. Nor does it involve feature projection: there is no attribution of what are features of mentality to other items. There is, however, a different interpretation of colours as nothing but perceptions of the mind that does invite a more substantial use of the metaphor. It is the view that certain non-intensional features of visual experiences—sensations or qualia—are attributed to external objects. Phenomenal colour is explained by such feature projection. There is a temptation furthermore to identify colour properties with those non-intensional properties of experience, given a more literal-minded interpretation of colours as perceptions of the mind. Again, this cluster of ideas is best examined through a discussion of Hume’s predecessors. We noted in section 5.2.2 that the metaphor of spreading the mind derived from Malebranche. It is in Malebranche, furthermore, that the feature projection of sensation is highly prominent. Descartes thought that the phenomenal character of our experience of colour was purely intensional: sensations are nothing but confused thoughts or representations. So when he says that the vulgar think ‘what is called colour in objects is something like the colour of which we have sensory awareness’ (Principles s. 70), he means that we represent the world to contain a property that is thus represented. Such colours are ‘in the mind’ in the intensional sense just described. For Malebranche on the other hand, phrases such as ‘the colour of which we have sensory awareness’ are open invitations to find some item that is a colour of which we have sensory awareness. There are a number of philosophical motives for this move, including, centrally, the general intuition that phenomenal character cannot be captured in merely intentional terms. The very character of sensory experiences tempts some into thinking that over and above the representational content (its ‘objective reality’), experience must also involve non-representational intrinsic properties to provide the experience with that character. According to Malebranche, the soul has features he calls sensations and sentiments that determine the phenomenal character of experience. These sensations or sentiments play a number of roles. A primary role concerns conceptual indefinability of the pre-theoretical notion

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of colour. Redness, as the vulgar understand it, is something that can only be understood through perceptual acquaintance. This is why the blind cannot be ‘given the least knowledge of what is meant by red, green and yellow and so on’ (Search 62).²⁵ The phenomenal character of experience—the what-it’s-like to see red—then requires crediting the mind with intrinsic, non-representational properties. Such sensations are irreducible phenomenal properties with which we are acquainted, and thus the source of phenomenal colour concepts: ‘When we feel [sentons] heat, see [voyons] light or colours, or other objects we in fact see them [il est vrai que nous les voyons].’ Sensations then provide the phenomenal character of experience. They also figure in Malebranche’s explanation of the vulgar view that external objects possess phenomenal colour. Malebranche, like Descartes, calls this a natural judgement, but appeals not to confused intentionality but the spreading or projecting nonintentional sensational features onto external objects, leading to the conclusion that phenomenal colour ‘really exists externally because they see it externally’ (Search 69–70). ‘The soul’, says Malebranche, ‘is so blind that it misunderstands itself and does not recognise the ownership of its own sensations’ (Search 57). It is ‘content, as it were, to spread itself onto the objects it considers by clothing them with what it has stripped from itself’ (Search 58). We ‘habitually attribute our own sensations to objects, and we judge colours, odours, tastes and other sensible qualities to be in the bodies we call coloured, odiferous, and flavoured, and so on for the other sensible qualities’ (Search: 73). We shall come to Malebranche’s explanation of this form of feature projection, but first note that it is very close to a view that is the subject of contemporary discussion. Sydney Shoemaker says: If we insist on saying that the phenomenal character belongs to experiences or sensations, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that our sense-experience systematically misrepresents its objects in the environment—that it represents them as having features that in fact belong to the experiences themselves . . . that we somehow project onto external objects features that in fact belong to the experiences themselves. (1997: 231)

Shoemaker calls such a view ‘literal projectivism’, and contrasts it with a subtler view, ‘figurative projectivism’. On this latter view experience does not represent properties of experience as properties of the object of experience, but instead an experience represents objects to have a phenomenal property (e.g. green as-we-seeit) in virtue of the qualitative properties of those experiences. In literal projectivism phenomenal greenness is instantiated in experience, and projected onto objects whereas in figurative projection an experience represents objects as having phenomenal greenness, but phenomenal greenness is nowhere instantiated. ²⁵ Malebranche must here be treating blindness as a being deprived of causally necessary condition on acquiring the sensation, unless blind is supposed simply to mean incapable of having sensation.

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Phenomenal greenness seems to be instantiated in virtue of the experience having sensational properties that determine that seeming.²⁶ Now this feature projection relates to what we have called explanatory projection, or non-detective explanation. What needs to be explained is an experience as of a world of coloured objects: this cannot be explained detectively—by saying that we perceive coloured objects—because the objects of our perceptual experience lack phenomenal colour. The mechanism involved in the explanation of the experience of phenomenal colour is feature projection: non-intensional features of experience account for the qualitative character of such experiences that are attributed by us to external objects. There is one further twist to this tale, which brings us to the view Broad called nonsensical. Suppose we combine the idea that the qualitative character of colour experience is determined by sensation with the ordinary view of colour as phenomenally distinct properties and we arrive at the view that colours are sensations that are projected onto the world. The only properties that are distinctly phenomenal are sensations and so if there any colours in the vulgar sense they are sensations. The vulgar know—or see [voir] as Malebranche says—what colours are in the sense that they are acquainted with a characteristic range of phenomenal properties: the mistake they make is that they represent material objects as possessing those properties. This is what lies behind the recent ‘projectivist’ view of colour championed by Paul Boghossian and David Velleman. For them the ordinary concept of colour is centrally the concept of an irreducible phenomenal property. Colour properties are projected in that ‘the intentional content of visual experience represents external objects as possessing colour qualities that belong, in fact, only to regions of the visual field’ (1997a: 96).²⁷ This seems almost identical to Malebranche’s view. Two further things should be noted before we turn to Hume. First, Malebranche holds that we suppose that our sensations or sentiments are in the objects (or in a philosophical frame of mind we suppose something resembling those sentiments is in the objects). But the content of this natural judgement should not be parsed as the quite ludicrous view that we form explicit judgements that involve the concepts of resemblance and colour sensation: I do not consciously judge that there exists in an external object a sensation or something resembling a sensation. First, because for the key range of sensible qualities identified as secondary, and for colour in particular, the notion of a sensation is a theoretical one, and not one the vulgar possess. The ordinary think that phenomenal colour and other sensible qualities ²⁶ Shoemaker endorses neither view. ²⁷ Elsewhere, they speak of their theory as ‘the theory that colours are qualitative properties of visual experience that are mistakenly projected onto material objects’ (1997b: 131). David Velleman (in conversation) tells me that he leans toward a simple error theory.

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are not modes of the soul but properties of external objects. The notion of a sensation for each of these qualities is derived from the philosophical discovery that the material world of extension lacks all these properties. One imagines that colour is ‘spread out on the surface of objects’ (Search 634), but once we know the nature of external objects, we are forced to conclude that it is a mode of the soul: Heat, pain, and colour cannot be modifications of extension . . . Now there are only two kinds of beings, minds and bodies. Therefore, pain, heat, color, and all other sensible qualities belong to the mind. (Search 634)

The vulgar may refer to a sensation when they talk about external objects have phenomenal colour but the reference of colour is not conceived as a sensation. It is merely conceived as a phenomenal property that the object possesses. ‘The soul’, says Malebranche, ‘is so blind that it misunderstands itself and does not recognise the ownership of its own sensations’ (Search 57). Secondly, Malebranche points to a number of things that contribute to this phenomenon of feature projection. One owes itself to ignorance of sensations’ causes. ‘[W]e attribute our sensations to objects when the causes of these sensations are unknown’ (Search 54). The other is a claim that such sensations are projected when they have a low level of phenomenological intensity or vivacity: ‘weak sensations . . . affect the soul so little that it does not believe that they belong to it, nor that they are within it or its own body, but that they are only in objects’ (Search 58). For example, light appears to be a property of a candle but staring closely at the candle, sensations of whiteness or after-images dazzle the eye, a function of the strength of the vibrating motions caused by close proximity (see e.g. Search 59). Very vivacious sensations intimate themselves as sensations, but at lower intensity they present themselves as the phenomenal qualities of objects (compare Berkeley’s discussion of intense heat and pain in the first of his Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous).

7 . 3 T H E C O M PA R I S O N

7.3.1 Introductory We can therefore understand Hume’s view that colour, heat and sounds are nothing but perceptions of the mind as expressing an implication of mechanical philosophy for the ordinary understanding of such properties. No object possesses phenomenal colour, though our experience presents objects as so coloured. One relatively uninteresting sense of projection is that of our falsely representing the world as so coloured. We noted, however, that in Hume’s background was a more substantial sense of projection, of spreading the mind. This was the feature projection of sensation. This feature projection married up with explanatory

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projection: what is trying to be explained is the experience of objects as coloured even though those objects lack phenomenal colour. That explanation appealed to our feature projecting sensation onto the world. We now turn to offer a reading of Hume’s view of evaluative thought and experience in the light of this conception of modern philosophy. It is in Hume’s two essays ‘The Sceptic’ and ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ that the comparison is at its most developed and we shall use these as clues to understanding the projective sounding passages in the account of moral evaluation given in the Treatise. Before we do so, let us dispose of a red herring. As we saw, Hume is less than enthusiastic about the doctrine of modern philosophy (s. 3.4.3). Some suggest that this makes it unlikely the Comparison is important to him since he worries about, or even rejects, the distinction in general (Blackburn 1993a, Baier 1991: 194, Bricke 1996: 159n44). This is unpersuasive: that he cannot or does not rely on the Comparison would follow only if the worries about the distinction proper carried over into the value case. But although the considerations in favour of the Comparison are similar to those Hume thinks point towards the primary/secondary quality distinction proper, they do not have the unpalatable consequences for our conception of the external world that they do when applied to sensible qualities. That, remember, was what worried Hume about the distinction. The doctrine of modern philosophy offers him a model for projection (which is why he makes such a Comparison) but he need not endorse the distinction proper to find the model useful.

7.3.2 The Explanandum What is Hume trying to explain when he draws the Comparison? I suggested that talk of colour being ‘in the mind’ partly made sense against a view whereby there is some pre-theoretical view of colours as certain mindindependent phenomenal qualities. Now clearly in the aesthetic and moral case there is no straight equivalent, no experience of some non-relational qualitative property experienced as something ‘out there’. That, Hume thinks, is pretty obvious: Beauty is not a quality of the circle. It lies not in any part of the line whose parts are all equally distant from a common center. It is only the effect, which that figure produces upon a mind . . . In vain would you look for it in the circle, or seek it, either by your senses, or by mathematical reasonings, in all the properties of the circle. (EMPL 165)

What then is the product of the projection? A clue is to be found in ‘The Sceptic’: If we can depend upon any principle, which we learn from philosophy, this, I think, may be considered as certain and undoubted, that there is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection. (EMPL 162)

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On the one hand we have a denial that objects are valuable or desirable ‘of themselves’, and, on the other, the claim that our thoughts that they are so ‘arise from’ sentiments. Again: no objects are, in themselves, desirable or odious, valuable or despicable; but that objects acquire these qualities from the particular character and constitution of the mind, which surveys them. (EMPL 171)

The explanandum seems therefore the thought or experience of things as ‘valuable in themselves’. Again, some objects of pursuit—like vengeance or power—are not thought to be valuable or desirable ‘of themselves’. However ‘with regard to beauty, either natural or moral, the case is commonly supposed to be different’: such properties are supposed to ‘lie in the object’, and natural and moral beauty are desirable of themselves (EMPL 165). So the lesson we learn from philosophy, which ‘may be considered as certain and undoubted’, is that ‘there is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed’ (‘The Sceptic’ EMPL 162). But presumably for some objects we do think and experience some objects to be desirable for their own sake. Thus in the paragraph leading up to Hume’s famous metaphor of gilding and staining, he talks of virtue as ‘an end’ and ‘desirable of its own account’ (EPM Appendix 1.18; SBN 293–4). Talk of things being valuable ‘in themselves’ suggests that the projected product is the thought of something’s being essentially as opposed to relationally valuable. We introduced this pair briefly at section 7.1. Something’s being relationally valuable is its being that which accrues its value from its fitness towards some end. Hume, as we shall see (s. 9.3.3), recognizes this category of value. It is relatively easy to understand how we can be detectors of relational value: something’s being conducive to an end, its being good for something else, does not present any particular epistemological problems. What Hume takes to require a projective explanation is the value of the ends, of that which is valued for its own sake. An object’s essential value is here understood as bearing an internal connection between value and inclination, disvalue and aversion. This internalism is summed up in Anthony Price’s dictum that it is of the ‘essence’ of value that ‘if I perceive a value in an object, that must incline me for or against it’ (1986: 215). This can be a matter of drawing one’s attention to an object (the beautiful face in the crowd catches one’s sight), or thrilling the subject (‘what a wonderful strike of the ball!’), eliciting emotion or calming one (the sonorous tones of the overture), or the motivational force of a moral experience. The essential value of an object is supposed to justify or render intelligible the conative state it elicits. Edmund gazes at her because she is beautiful; he drank that wine because it was delicious; she gave some money to charity because it was the right thing to do. There is though a second sense of ‘because’ here, namely that some of our evaluations

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are explained by the object’s being valuable. This sense of ‘because’ is captured in what Mark Johnston says is ‘an obvious fact’: We often take ourselves to be in a cognitive, affective or conative state because of certain features of the object of that state. That is, we often regard features of the objects of our cognitive, affective or conative states as partly explaining the existence of those states. (1991: 122)

The thought that beauty is ‘in the objects’ can be understood as trying to respect this ‘obvious fact’. In some favourable cases our conative attitudes are responsive to the essential value of the objects in such a way that we are in that state because we detect that feature. In seeing her face, Edmund became aware of her beauty and this awareness explained his desire to talk to her. In putting my nose to the wine I become aware of its wonderful cedar bouquet, and my awareness explains my desire to drink (and buy a case). This is not simply a matter of taking conative attitudes, such as ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’ to objects that we experience as or conceive to be valueless. Matters are the other way round: the value presented in the experience causes and justifies the attitude taken towards it. Asked why I like the wine, I offer the response ‘its delicious’, a reference to a feature of the experience. It was the grace of the shot played which explained the thrill felt; it was the deliciousness of the wine that explained why Fred spent £120 on a single bottle; it was the beauty of her face that explained why Edmund could not take his eyes off her; and so on. Beautiful and virtuous objects are such as to elicit conative responses such as desire in subjects. This brings up an issue concerning something about which we have so far been silent, namely the idea that Hume’s Comparison is supposed to show that values are powers or dispositions to elicit such responses. And isn’t saying that beautiful and virtuous objects are such as to elicit such conative states just the same as saying that they have powers to elicit such sentiments or are disposed to elicit them? It is quite true that beautiful and virtuous objects have such a power. But that is quite different from saying that beauty and virtue are powers to elicit sentiments. To see why, let us anticipate a little of the discussion of Chapter 9 concerning the notion of a secondary quality (s. 9.4.2). Suppose one understands by an object having a ‘disposition’ or ‘power’ that certain counterfactuals are true of it. To credit the object with the power to appear red, is to say that the object is such that it looks red under certain lighting conditions, to normal people under normal conditions. That such counterfactuals are true of the object does not imply that redness is such a power. For all depends on what one understands as the grounds for these counterfactual truths; whether, that is, they are true in virtue of the object’s being non-reductively red or not. A square object is such as to appear square to normal subjects and under normal conditions, but it is open to say that what makes such counterfactuals true is, precisely, because it is square. Construing powers in this way means that square objects have the power to seem

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square—elicit an appropriate response—in normal observers under normal conditions, not that squareness is the power to elicit the response. Now, on the vulgar view of colour we have been so far considering, the relation between truths about how things look—the dispositional truths—and colour is conceived to be analogous to what we have said about squareness. Red things have the power to appear red to normal people under normal conditions because they are red. Redness is not the power to appear but the grounds for so appearing. The redness is a property whose nature consists in the distinct phenomenal property presented in visual experience, residing on the surface of physical objects which in turn grounds any dispositional truths there may be about that object’s tendency to look red.²⁸ Returning now to the Comparison with value, the projected content shares with the vulgar view of colour the idea that essential value of any object grounds the disposition to elicit the response. It is true that beautiful objects are disposed to appear beautiful to normal people under normal conditions: but this truth is true in virtue of their being beautiful. But there is a different sense of ‘power’ and its relation to a secondary quality that focuses not so much on counterfactuals, but the kind of thing that grounds such counterfactuals. This is the idea that we identify colour with what causes the response, and we mark the distinction between primary and secondary quality along the dimension of resemblance: our experiences of primary qualities resemble their causes, and our experiences of secondary qualities do not resemble their causes.²⁹ This idea we noted briefly in connection with Descartes (s. 7.2.1). But the view we are considering is not simply that there is something in the object that causes the response, but that, in line with colour, there is something like the response in the object. Part of this with respect to colour is surely phenomenological. We are not aware of any ‘subjective response’ involved: instead colours present themselves as just ‘there’. This point tends to get lost in discussion, but it is worth reminding oneself of just ²⁸ This view is what John Campbell calls the simple view. Colour is ‘to be thought of as the grounds of the dispositions of objects to produce experiences of colour. This is not a kind of physicalism about colour . . . It may be instead that characters of the colours are simply transparent to us’ (Campbell 1997: 178). This last point marks the difference between the vulgar view and Descartes’. Descartes takes the grounds of the disposition to be some microphysical structure and not phenomenal colour. ²⁹ Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter write: Redness is not the disposition, power or capacity of an object to look red. For if it were, an object’s looking red would not be the apprehension of that object’s redness, because dispositions do not cause their manifestations. Their categorical bases do that . . . Holding that redness is the disposition to look red would commit us to denying the evident fact that a thing’s looking red in the right circumstances is the apprehension of that thing’s redness. (1997: 69) Jackson elsewhere calls this the ‘primary’ view of colour because he understands the distinction as a distinction between the categorical and dispositional properties of an object. That distinction is somewhat orthogonal to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities since that rests on whether our sensory experience can reveal the nature of their causes or not. At the very least if a secondary quality is a disposition, it is a disposition to produce a characteristic experience, for Locke allows there to be tertiary qualities which are powers to produce effects in other objects, and these may seem equally dispositional.

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how objective colours appear to be when represented in our experience. Hume is right to say that our ‘very senses’ contradict a view that denies such an objectivity to colour. The point with value however is different: what is supposed to be in the object is some feature that elicits desire and aversion. The phenomenology here is that of one’s attention, desire and attitude being directed towards such objects and finding them desirable ‘for their own sake’.

7.3.3 The Mechanism of Projection But no ‘external objects’ are essentially valuable: no objects are, in themselves, desirable or odious, valuable or despicable; but that objects acquire these qualities from the particular character and constitution of the mind, which surveys them. (EMPL 171)

How do they acquire such qualities? In the next section we discuss what is projected, namely the peculiar pleasures and pains or sentiments of vice, virtue, beauty and deformity. Our question now is how they are projected. We know that Hume has a great tendency to identify value properties with properties of experience. ‘[I]t be certain, that beauty and deformity, more than sweet or bitter, are not qualities in the objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment’ (‘Of the Standard of Taste’, EMPL 235), and beauty ‘properly speaking lies . . . in the sentiment or taste’ (The Sceptic EMPL 166). ‘Beauty’, he asserts in ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, ‘is no quality of things in themselves: it exists only in the mind which contemplates them’ (EMPL 230) which points again to the Comparison with modern philosophy. We know further that we suppose in fact the ‘agreeable quality’ to be ‘in the object’, and we have interpreted that as our conceiving objects to be essentially valuable. But now is ‘in the mind’ just the intentional notion discussed in section 7.2.2 or is the account feature projective? Does Hume think that we attribute what are features of our experience and thought to ‘external objects’? Unfortunately, Hume is very brief. We know he alludes to Malebranche’s metaphor of spreading the mind in connection with the idea of necessary connection. We also know that he has an independent tendency to reify experiences: so any representation of something ‘in the object’ is likely to involve some non-intentional aspect of thought or experience being attributed to an object. Where he does offer a reason for the attribution of essential value to objects, he says this: The agreeable quality is thought to lie in the object, not in the sentiment; and that merely because the sentiment is not so turbulent and violent as to distinguish itself, in an evident manner, from the perception of the object. (EMPL 165)

The attribution owes itself to the low intensity of the sentiment. Now, this fact is used by some to argue against reading Hume as making any Comparison.

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In asking the question of whether in Hume’s account, experience presents ‘a perceiver with the presence of object or mind-independent qualities’, John Bricke rejects the secondary quality comparison suggested here because it does not ‘in fact’ seem to be Hume’s explanation of the illusory belief: according to Bricke, ‘he fastens onto the calmness of [sentiment], not on projection’ (1996: 159). But we saw that in Malebranche’s account of the projection of sensation or sentiment in section 7.2.2 the low intensity of sensation and sentiment is precisely a key explanation of the false attribution of features of experience to ‘external objects’.³⁰ It is why we think objects possess phenomenal colour. For Malebranche our experience of a range of objects as desirable, as ‘sensible goods’, owes itself to a similar projection of pleasures. One way in which we project pleasure and pain is in terms of locating them in regions of our body, of their having a felt location. Pain is located in the damaged region of our body, though properly speaking it is a mode of the soul. Such bodily sensations have an intermediate status—they are more vivid than those of the standard secondary qualities, and so not located in external objects, but are nevertheless falsely located in regions of our bodies. But there is a further mistake with respect to pleasures: the general tendency to believe ‘sensations are in the objects’ means that our senses present us with ‘false goods’ (Search 76): Nothing is so common as the sight of people dedicated to sensible goods . . . Now the following is approximately how they must have reasoned to be of the opinion that these objects are goods. All these enjoyable savours that please us at feasts, the sounds that delight the ears, and the other pleasures we occasionally experience are no doubt contained in sensible objects . . . That is the argument we ordinarily employ almost unconsciously. Thus because we believe our sensations to be in the objects, or objects have in themselves the power of making us sense them [we take the objects of our passions to be genuine goods]. (Search 76)

One mistake we make is in thinking that ‘objects have in themselves the power’ to produce pleasure and pain (Malebranche thinks that only God is the one true cause). But crucially, this is not the only mistake we make: we also believe that the pleasure sensation is in the ‘objects’ and given that is distinguished from the power to cause the sensation, it must mean something more than that. The mistake he wishes to correct is that external objects are themselves ‘enjoyable or disagreeable’ (Search 77), a mistake fostered by thinking the ‘sensations are in the object’. This cannot be intelligibly parsed as the belief that such objects cause sensations qua sensations. Instead the product must be this: in virtue of projecting pleasure and pain we come to experience, and hence believe, objects as, or to be, ‘enjoyable or ³⁰ Notice that in T 1.4.2.12; SBN 192, Hume distinguishes pleasures and pains from secondary qualities, the latter the vulgar think to be in the object, the former not. But the pleasure and pains here are bodily, i.e. ‘those which arise from the application of objects to our bodies, as by the cutting of our flesh with steel, and such like’. In ‘The Sceptic’, as we saw, in the case of beauty, both natural and moral, the agreeable quality—the pleasure or sentiment—is thought to ‘lie in the object’.

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disagreeable’. In the Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, Malebranche writes ‘goods of the body’ (the sensuous goods) are ‘false or deceiving goods because they are not such as they appear to our senses’ (DMR 65).³¹ Hume’s view therefore is in perfect accord with the view of secondary qualities whereby a false belief or experience owes itself to the projection of sensation and sentiment. His argument for why we cannot detect essential value parallels his understanding of secondary qualities, and again sits well with our understanding of projection. ‘The Sceptic’ and ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ offer a set of considerations which mirrors what Hume takes to be the key argument for the view that colours are nothing but perceptions of the mind. There is great variation in judgement in different persons with respect to the essential value or that which is desirable of its own account. The best explanation of this lack of convergence is that no object is essentially valuable. Thus: What seems the most delicious food to one animal, appears loathsome to another: What affects the feeling of one with delight, produces uneasiness in another. This is confessedly the case with regard to all bodily senses: But if we examine the matter more accurately, we shall find, that the same observation holds even when the mind concurs with the body, and mingles its sentiment with the exterior appetite. (EMPL 162)

And from ‘Of the Standard Taste’: One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others. To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an enquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter. According to the disposition of the organs, the same object may be both sweet and bitter; and the proverb has justly determined it to be fruitless to dispute concerning tastes. (EMPL 230)

We are not detectors of essential value because there is no essential value to detect: if there were, we would expect a convergence among judgements that is patently absent. Something else is hinted at in ‘Of the Standard of Taste’. Hume writes that ‘all sentiment is right’ and ‘has a reference to nothing beyond itself . . . [and] no sentiment represents what is really in the object’ (EMPL 230). This may appear to offer a different reason why a detective account of essential value is rejected. For one might hold that what Hume means by ‘sentiment’ is some non-cognitive attitude such as a desire, the function of which is very different from that of representing how the world stands. Sentiments are therefore not in the business of trying to represent how things are, and so we are not detectors of essential value. This reading of the term sentiment will be rejected in the next chapter. For pursuing the Comparison in the way we have been so far doing suggests a different way in which sentiments are to be construed. ³¹ Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (trans.) N. Jolley and D. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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7.3.4 Sentiment and Colour Sensation We saw that colour sensation in Malebranche played the role of determining the content for irreducible concepts of the phenomenal. The ‘what-it’s-likeness’ of colour experience is not intelligible to those who have not enjoyed the experience and is accounted for by sensational properties. These sensations are feature-projected onto objects in order to account for our experience of and thought about objects as bearers of phenomenal colour. If our understanding of the Comparison is correct, we should expect to see the moral sentiments playing a similar role. The sentiments give to moral and aesthetic experience its irreducible character. The term ‘sentiment’ in the Humean corpus, and outside it, is used in a variety of different senses, ranging from sensation at one end to opinion at the other.³² The various moral responses are called feelings, warm feelings, esteem, disgust, contempt, approbation, particular feelings. Nevertheless in definitional contexts in the Treatise, where Hume has his eye on psychological detail, such sentiments are squarely identified with ‘peculiar pleasures and pains’. ³³ When discussing vice and virtue in Book 2 we are told that ‘[Pleasure and pain] are not only inseparable from vice and virtue, but constitute their very essence’ (T.2.1.7.5; SBN 296—a comparable claim is made in the next section, when he discusses beauty and deformity). Later in the Treatise Hume insists on the ‘peculiarity’ of the sentiment of beauty: a convenient house, and a virtuous character, cause not the same feeling of approbation; even tho’ the source of our approbation be the same, and flow from sympathy and an idea of their utility. There is something very inexplicable in this variation of our feelings; but ’tis what we have experience of with regard to all our passions and sentiments. ( T 3.3.5.6; SBN 617)

There are a number of reasons to take pleasure and pain as the core notion of sentiment. First, and most obviously, moral and aesthetic impressions are identified by Hume as peculiar pleasures and pains precisely when he is concerned to identify what impressions mark moral distinctions: that is to say in definitional contexts. Such claims are not, as it were, slipped in when Hume has his eyes on other matters, but made when his thought is self-consciously directed towards ³² See Jones (1982) for a discussion of the different uses of ‘sentiment’. ³³ The use of the term sentiment in the second Enquiry is very varied. Sometimes it is treated as a desire for the happiness of mankind, sometimes of a feeling of pleasure. The Treatise has the advantage of offering a detailed psychology that allows us to draw sharper distinctions than the second Enquiry affords. This being so I do not find the uses of the term ‘sentiment’ in the second Enquiry as equivalent to e.g. desire to be weighty pieces of evidence against my reading. Compare, for example, Hume’s identification of sympathy as a sentiment in the second Enquiry. This cannot be evidence that sympathy for Hume is not the mechanism that the Treatise describes in detail: it is instead evidence of the loose terminology of the second Enquiry. In the key projective text of Appendix one, however, taste is identified with pleasure and pain.

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the nature of value and its epistemology. Secondly, the Treatise is concerned with the details of the psychology and that should carry some weight in identifying which states of mind are sentiments. Thirdly, he takes these pleasures and pains to be explanatory of passions. The impressions of pleasures and pain constitutive of vice and virtue in moral evaluation produce the indirect passions of pride and humility, when the object of evaluation is one’s own virtue or vice, love and hatred when the object of evaluation is something other than one’s self, and so their identity as pleasures and pains is partly necessary given their role in Hume’s overall theory of the passions.³⁴ Those who wish to identify moral sentiments with the passions of love or desire (e.g. Bricke 1996) are faced with the problem that the sentiments enter into the explanation of those passions and so cannot be identical to them. There are two important aspects to this identification, one pertaining to their status as pleasures and pains, the other to their peculiarity. The first is that the notion of natural good and evil was deeply connected in the early modern period with pleasure and pain. It was a commonplace during the period that the only natural good was pleasure, and the only natural evil pain, and that our use of the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ applied to ordinary objects owes itself to pleasure and pain. The sources of moral distinctions were held to lie elsewhere, but pleasure and pain enter into the explanation of why we think in terms of natural good and evil. The suggestion we shall pursue in the next chapter, which nevertheless reinforces the point made here, is that we can see how Hume’s account of moral and aesthetic evaluation is modelled on the role of pleasure and pain in the account of the evaluation of natural goods. The identification of such evaluative perceptions with ‘peculiar pleasures and pains’ makes perfect sense against this background. The peculiarity of the relevant pleasures and pains suggest a parallel with colour sensation inasmuch as it gestures to the irreducible character of the response. There are peculiar moral and aesthetic responses to objects, responses that cannot be understood except by those who undergo them just as colour experience is only intelligible to those who enjoy the characteristic visual experience. This point will occupy us a little later in the next section.³⁵ 7 . 4 P R E L I M I N A RY C O N C LU S I O N : QU E S T I O N S AND ISSUES We have been pressing the idea that the Comparison is made with an eye to a certain kind of error. The vulgar conceive colours to be ‘in the objects’ in ³⁴ Since Hume has the same detailed account involving pleasure and pain in the production of the passions in the 1757 ‘Dissertation of the Passions’ I take this as further evidence that the language of the second Enquiry is loose. ³⁵ Compare Stroud in connection with this point: ‘The origins of certain simple perceptions in the mind can be explained, but their meaning or content cannot be explicated further’ (1977: 186).

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that they conceive of external objects as the bearers of irreducible phenomenal qualities. This guides their concept of colour as such a property, and modern philosophy has the consequence that colour so conceived is ‘in the mind’. The phrase ‘in the mind’ admits of an intentional and non-intentional reading. The former is that we represent the world to contain such properties but there are none; the latter is that our experience and representation of the world as such requires there to be non-intentional features of experience that are attributed to external objects. Our ordinary conception of some objects is that they are essentially valuable, that is, valuable for their own sake, and are such as to explain and justify our inclination towards them. No object is essentially valuable, and so beauty and deformity so construed are ‘nothing but perceptions of the mind’. This thought is explained (a) by the presence of certain sentiments of a ‘peculiar’ unanalysable in nature, and which are (b) feature-projected onto the objects of evaluation. This account is explanatorily projective. It seeks to explain experiences and thoughts as of essential value when no object is desirable ‘of its own account’. A detective account of thought seems inappropriate since the objects to which we attribute such value are not essentially valuable. The states of mind of which such experiences and thoughts are projections are the peculiar pleasures or pains that are the moral and aesthetic sentiments. The mechanism of projection is feature projection, that attribution of what are non-intentional features of experiences to the objects those thoughts or experiences purport to be about. This reading brings to the fore the exegetical and philosophical issues, to which we now turn. As noted, one of the worries with the Stroud/Mackie reading of Hume as an error-theorist about value, is precisely its emphasis on error. But to say that Hume thinks that there is some kind of error in evaluation is not to say that our evaluations are completely in error or should be eliminated. For it is part and parcel of a wider view about the grounds and status of our evaluations that mitigates against this error. This we examine in Chapter 9. This leads to a question concerning what kinds of states of mind are the sentiments. Traditionally the sentiments are classed as non-cognitive attitudes like desire. But the drift of the discussion makes them more like constituents of beliefs and experiences towards which such attitudes are directed. The idea of virtue figures in beliefs concerning virtuous objects, and gives those beliefs their distinctive contents, just as the sensation of red figures in beliefs about red objects, and gives them their distinctive content. I shall argue that that is precisely how we should see the role of the sentiments, and I shall argue against the traditional reading in the next chapter. Suppose that we understand how a colour sensation can contribute to a colour experience in order to give it its irreducible content. How is it that the ‘peculiar pleasures and pains’ can contribute to thought and experience concerning essential value? This question actually decomposes into a number of separate questions. One is why pleasure and pain are chosen to play such

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a role: I shall argue that there is a general thesis in the early modern period that I shall call the ‘hedonist intuition’ which explains the appeal to pleasure and pain. It is the idea that those states of consciousness are themselves essentially valuable (in non-moral cases) and so the appearance of other things being so it is a matter of projecting those items. Phenomenal red was literally a property of experience that determines the appearance as of red items (cf. s. 7.2.2). To determine thought and experience about objects as essentially valuable, appeal is made to non-intentional features of those thoughts which themselves determine desires. This claim is supported in the next chapter. The second question here concerns the very intelligibility of projecting nonintentional features of experiences and thought onto the objects of experience and thought. In both cases we feature project onto objects something that is a property of thought or experience. In the colour case it is the phenomenal property that determines experience of redness; in the evaluative case it is pleasure and pain that determine desirability or aversion-worthiness. In both cases the phenomenology of the product is not that of a conscious attribution of something conceived as mental to an ‘external object’: it is simply a matter of experiencing something as red or finding something desirable. Even if we could make sense of how thought performs this trick, there is a further and more pressing philosophical obstacle to this notion (see also Stroud 2001). We have said that projection is centrally an explanatory notion: we try to explain, by appeal to some state of mind of which the appearance is a projection, how the subject takes the world to be when that cannot be explained in a detective fashion. To be so explanatory, however, we need to be able to characterize the state of mind of which the appearance is a projection in a way that is intelligible independently of that appearance. The problem now is how we are supposed to get a grasp on the relevant response of which redness is a projection without appealing to objects that are precisely red. Analogously, how are we to characterize the response characteristic of aesthetic beauty except in terms of saying the kind of response that one gets from beautiful objects? This is a problem that has been levelled at projectivists views of ethics that are non-cognitivist by ‘sensibility theorists’ such as John McDowell and David Wiggins. McDowell writes that ‘it is a mistake to think we can illuminate the metaphysics of [value] by appealing to the image of projection’ (1988a: 12), and Wiggins rejects the idea that values are ‘somehow put into or spread onto the factual world’ (1987: 94). They hold this to be so because they think we cannot get any grasp of the projected state of mind independent of the evaluated object or the object independent of the mind. Take, for example, something’s being contemptible. The challenge is to say, independently of exploiting the notion of something’s being contemptible, what the natural features which trigger the projection have in common and, relatedly, what state of mind is projected, without being forced to say ‘the kind of state elicited by contemptible things’. Certainly people can fail to find some contemptible act contemptible,

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or mistake an uncontemptible act for a contemptible one, but that is merely a sign of humdrum fallibility. We cannot properly identify some state of mind associated with something’s being, for example, amusing, mischievous, honest, or boring without helping ourselves to the idea of those things being precisely amusing, mischievous, honest, or boring. And there is no way of identifying what mischievous, honest, or boring things share in common other than their being disposed to elicit the relevant responses in appropriate persons: the relevant properties are ‘shapeless’. With respect to colour experience, appeal tends to be made to colour sensation or qualia to avoid this difficulty. But it is quite unclear whether we really do have an independent grasp of a colour sensation. As we saw, Malebranche thought the notion of a colour sensation was a quasi-theoretical notion introduced because he was convinced that external objects lack phenomenal colour. With respect to Hume’s view of the moral and aesthetic sentiments, there is no appeal to try to reduce matters beyond the phenomenology of the states involved, their peculiar feeling. This may seem unsatisfactory on Hume’s part, but if it is true that we can get no independent grasp of moral responses it might not be surprising that Hume thinks that we have phenomenologically irreducible moral and aesthetic responses. He recognizes their irreducibility and appeals to irreducible sensation. But why now are they peculiar pleasures and pains? The next two chapters attempt to answer this question by suggesting how Hume’s account of moral and aesthetic experience is best read against a model of the role of bodily pleasures and pains.

8 The Gold: Good, Evil, Belief and Desire 8 . 1 I N T RO D U C T I O N The previous chapter read Hume’s Comparison as implying that we have genuine (but false) thoughts and experiences as of objects being essentially valuable or desirable for their own sake. This reading was supported by Hume’s understanding of a secondary quality and its background, together with the textual evidence that evaluation involves some form of error. As noted in the Introduction, this reading of Hume’s account of evaluation needs to be taken in the round and the contribution of all the pieces of evidence is cumulative rather than demonstrative. One feature of the reading of projection in the previous chapter is the implication that evaluations are (false) beliefs, and that sentiments figure in such beliefs as the ideas or constituents that give those beliefs their irreducible contents. Sentiments play a role analogous to colour sensation in giving experience and thought its irreducible content. Just as we believe that objects are phenomenally red in virtue of projecting the sensations that give those beliefs their irreducible contents, we believe that a range of objects is essentially valuable in virtue of projecting sentiments that give those beliefs their irreducible contents. Two issues emerge from this. First, why is it that pleasure and pain are chosen to play this role? Second, there are separate lines of thought that imply that Hume cannot think that evaluative commitments are beliefs at all: sentiments are more akin to desires directed towards the contents represented in beliefs rather than constituents of beliefs. So if the Comparison, so understood, has the implication that sentiments are more like colour sensations than desires, then, it will be objected, it must be wrong. One thought that lies behind this second objection focuses on the relations holding among representation, motivation and value. In broad outlines it goes like this: it is constitutive of valuing some state of affairs or what have you that one is ‘moved’ or ‘repelled’ by that state of affairs. It is incoherent—or a sign of insincerity—to attribute positive value to something and yet not be disposed to appropriate action. It is of the ‘essence’ of value that, ‘if I perceive a value in an object, that must incline me for or against it’ (A Price 1986: 215). But if such inclination is essential to value, it seems we can establish that the states of mind distinctive of evaluation are not beliefs. It is desires or other ‘attitudes’ that

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incline us. States that represent—beliefs—do not of themselves incline. Hume himself tells us that reason is ‘inactive’ or ‘inert’: surely the claim that beliefs do not motivate. Sentiment is active, says Hume, so that sentiments are desire-like attitudes that provide the motive force. I agree that Hume thinks there is some intimate connection between evaluation and motivation. But I disagree with the claim that beliefs alone cannot motivate for Hume. Part of the reason for this lies in the answer to our first question, namely why pleasure and pain are central to the account. I shall suggest that such states are treated as items that are themselves essentially valuable. Pleasure and pains are desirable or aversion-worthy for their own sake, and, crucially, our awareness of such states motivates essentially. In that way they provide the content for states of mind that present objects as essentially valuable, that is, as desirable on their own account, feature-projected onto the objects of belief. Gilding is the projecting described in the last chapter: the gold is pleasure and pain. Hume writes: Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood: The latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: the other has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation. (EPM Appendix 1.19; SBN 294)¹

We have interpreted this projective metaphor by appeal to the colour analogy: we come to experience and think of natural objects as essentially desirable. Sentiments have properties that are conceived to be properties of those natural objects, and in virtue of such feature projection we think such thoughts. But the passage suggests an alternative view of projection. Evaluation is not a matter of having beliefs that such objects are essentially valuable. Rather, we form beliefs about the natural properties of objects and adopt non-cognitive attitudes towards those objects. The distinction between reason and taste here is a distinction between belief and attitude. The account is non-detective because the states of mind involved are simply not the kind of states that aspire to represent how things stand in the world. Projecting is a matter of expressing such attitudes in a descriptive guise. Thus Blackburn: [W]e project an attitude or habit or other commitment which is not descriptive onto the world, when we speak and think as though there were a property of things which our sayings describe, which we can reason about, know about, and so on. Projecting is what Hume referred to when he talks of ‘gilding and staining all natural objects with the colours borrowed from internal sentiment’, or of the mind ‘spreading itself on the world’. (1984: 170–1) ¹ The SBN edition has slightly different punctuation.

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The contrast between reason and passion in this case is between beliefs, states that represent the world to be thus and so, and desires, states whose function is not to represent how things stand. But this is not, I shall argue, the contrast Hume has in mind. We should, instead, understand Hume’s use of ‘reason’ to refer to a faculty rather than to states of belief. The faculty of reason is a faculty of comparison, comparing the relations in which ideas stand or ideas with objects, when considered as ‘copies’ or representations of those objects. Reason discovers the falsity of beliefs about the essential value of objects and shows how such objects really stand in nature, just as reason can be used to show that objects lack phenomenal colour. What marks the crucial distinction between our reading of the Comparison and non-cognitivism comes to this. Evaluative sentiments function as evaluative contents for false beliefs about objects. On the noncognitivist reading, sentiments are attitudes taken to evaluatively neutral contents. This chapter defends the idea the sentiments are evaluative contents, and explains the role of pleasure and pain. In what follows I note the role of pleasure and pain in Hume’s account of natural good and evil, and argue that such a thesis can be read as a form of metaphysical hedonism. This is the thesis that only pleasure is essentially valuable and pain essentially aversion-worthy. I turn then to the threat stemming from ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ to this thesis and argue that that famous discussion does not threaten metaphysical hedonism. Metaphysical hedonism explains why sentiments are thought to be pleasures and pains and why they are the candidates for the explanation of thoughts and experience of essential value. Finally we then look at the role of this in Hume’s attack on the moral rationalists.

8 . 2 P L E A S U R E A N D PA I N , G O O D A N D EV I L , D E S I R E A N D AV E R S I O N

8.2.1 The Identity Thesis We noted in the previous chapter that in definitional contexts Hume identified evaluative sentiments with ‘peculiar pleasures and pains’. This claim is matched by a tendency to identify non-moral or natural good and evil with pleasure and pain, particularly in the Treatise and the Dissertation of the Passions. For example he writes: By direct passions I understand such as arise immediately from good or evil, pleasure or pain. ( T 2.1.1.4; SBN 276) ’Tis easy to observe, that the passions, both direct and indirect, are founded on pain and pleasure, and that in order to produce an affection of any kind, ’tis only requisite to present some good or evil. Upon the removal of pain and pleasure there immediately follows a removal of love and hatred, pride and humility, desire and aversion, and most

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of our reflective or secondary impressions. The impressions, which arise from good and evil most naturally, and with the least preparation are the direct passions of desire and aversion, grief and joy, hope and fear, along with volition. ( T 2.3.9.1–2; SBN 438)

There are, as we shall see, many other such passages. On the face of it, they suggest what I shall call the Identity Thesis: good is identical to pleasure, evil to pain. This view is not peculiar to Hume. Many early modern authors (Malebranche, Hutcheson, Locke, Berkeley and others) seem confident in identifying natural good with pleasure and natural evil with pain. Hutcheson’s first definition in the On the Nature and the Conduct of the Passions is that natural good is pleasure and natural evil is pain. Malebranche tells us that ‘pleasure is good and pain is evil’ (Search 359).² Berkeley writes that ‘sensual pleasure is the Summum Bonum’ (Notebook A, s. 769),³ and that ‘sensual pleasure qua pleasure is Good & desirable’ (Notebook A, s. 773). Locke tells us happiness is ‘the utmost Pleasure we are capable of’ (Essay 2.21.42),⁴ and ‘that which is properly good or bad, is nothing but barely Pleasure or pain’ (Essay 2.21.61). These authors may differ regarding in what the moral good consists—indeed Malebranche thinks we should ‘avoid pleasure, even though it makes us happy’ (Search 307). Nevertheless there is a good deal of convergence in the early modern period on the Identity Thesis with respect to natural good and evil. Statements of the Identity Thesis are also accompanied by a claim about how items other than pleasure and pain acquire the name ‘good’ and ‘evil’. This will occupy us in the next chapter, but it is worth mentioning here. Locke tells us that things are called good and evil ‘only by reference to pleasure and pain’ (Essay 2.20.2), and Hutcheson’s first two definitions in the On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions are: 1 Natural Good is pleasure: Natural Evil is pain 2 Natural Good Objects are those which are apt . . . to give pleasure . . . Natural evil are such as, in like manner, to give pain. Hume shares in this. In the Dissertation on the Passions section I.1 he writes: Some objects produce immediately an agreeable sensation, by the original structure of our organs, and are thence denominated GOOD; and others, from their immediate disagreeable sensation, the appellation of EVIL.

Such pleasures and pains are impressions of sensation, which Hume classes as ‘bodily’ (T. 2.1.1.2–3; SBN 276). The pleasures and pains of the moral and aesthetic senses are classed as ‘reflective’ meaning that, unlike bodily sensation, ² Nicolas Malebranche The Search After Truth (trans.) T. Lennon and P. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). The context makes it clear that as far as natural good is concerned, pleasure and pain are the only natural goods and evils. ³ George Berkeley Philosophical Works (ed.) M. R. Ayers (London: Everyman/Dent, 1975). ⁴ An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ed.) P. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).

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they have ideas or thoughts as their immediate cause. Reflective passions are those that depend on other ideas, and are comprehended under the catch all ‘passion’ (T. 2.1.1.1; SBN 275). The way in which those reflective pleasures and pains are integrated into thought will occupy us presently (s. 8.5 and s. 9.3.4) but for the time being we remain with the Identity Thesis for natural good and evil. Hume states very clearly that not only is natural good pleasure and evil pain, but that the direct passions of desire and aversion are ‘founded on’ or ‘arise from’ good or evil, pleasure and pain. The natural way to take this is that desire and aversion are desire and aversion for good and evil, pleasure and pain. We desire the good, and the good is pleasure and we avoid evil, and evil is pain. That is to say, pleasure is the end of desire, and pain is that which is to be avoided. This though is not the standard reading. Commentators argue that we should read such statements not as saying pleasure and pain constitute the ends of action but the claim that pleasure and pain are the efficient causes of desire and aversion.⁵ Our desires are desires for other objects, but their proximate cause is pleasure.⁶ This reading of Hume’s view of the relation between pleasure and desire, pain and aversion, emerged from a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debate over whether Hume was a psychological hedonist (for a summary and references see Àrdal 1989: 69–70). Psychological hedonism is the thesis that ‘all human actions are motivated by a desire for the agent’s own future pleasure’, together with a complementary thesis regarding the avoidance of pain (Àrdal 1989: 70). This views hedonism as a contingent claim regarding what motivates all human action. This, as was swiftly pointed out, is easily shown to be false for Hume since he explicitly says that there are passions which do not have pleasure as their object, including the desire for the happiness of others, for the punishment of others, hunger and thirst (see e.g. T 2.3.8.8 and EPM Appendix 2). A second point levelled against this reading was that Humean passions are typically directed towards worldy items, like people or houses, rather than the pleasure and pain. In so far as passions have intentional objects, pleasures and pains are hardly ever such objects (McGilvary 1903: 280ff; Kemp Smith 1941: 163–4 and Àrdal 1989: 76). So action is not motivated by a desire for pleasure. Instead, we should read the role of pleasure and pain in Hume’s psychological economy as that of efficient or mechanical cause. Pleasure and pain function ‘dynamically, and not teleologically in the production of passions’ (McGilvary 1903: 282). This, however, leaves too much unexplained and too many recalcitrant pieces of text. First, if pleasure and pain are mechanical causes, we are owed an explanation of why they are identified with evaluative notions like good and evil: why are pleasure and pain called ‘good’ and ‘evil’? Indeed, we shall see in a passage that will presently occupy our attention, that Hume talks of pleasure and ⁵ I will for the most part concentrate on the direct passions in this chapter. ⁶ For this claim with respect to Hutcheson, see Jensen (1971: 21ff ). The arguments I adduce against it in Hume carry across to Hutcheson.

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pain constituting happiness (EPM, Appendix I, 21: SBN 294), and of pleasure being ‘desirable of its own account’, texts difficult to square with an efficient causation reading. Secondly, just why does Hume think that pleasure and pain are required to play any causal role? Are they just quasi-mechanical wheels that are, in reality, idle? After all, Hume is happy to allow that some passions have no need of pleasure and pain in their production, so why should any? Thirdly, why pick on just pleasure and pain? We need an explanation of just why those states are chosen to play a pivotal role. Fourthly, and most importantly, much of the talk of passions being ‘founded on’ or ‘arising from’ good and evil figures in statements in which it is thought about pleasure and pain that motivates; when it is the ‘idea of’, the ‘supposition of’, the ‘probability of ’ good or evil, pleasure and pain, that produces desire or aversion. Here are a couple of examples: ’Tis obvious, that when we have the prospect of pain or pleasure from any object, we feel a consequent emotion of aversion or propensity, and are carry’d to avoid or embrace what will give us this uneasiness or satisfaction . . . ’Tis from the prospect pain and pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises towards any object. ( T 2.3.3.3; SBN 414 (my emphasis)) A person may be affected with passion, by supposing a pain or pleasure to lie in an object, which has no tendency to produce either of these sensations, or which produces the contrary to what is imagin’d. ( T 3.1.1.12; SBN 459 (my emphasis))

That the thought of pleasure or pain elicits passion is further confirmed when Hume talks of hope and fear being founded on the ‘probability’ of good and evil (see e.g. the discussion in T 2.3.9, and the comparable sections of the Dissertation on the Passions). It is quite clear in the Dissertation on the Passions that it is the apprehension of good and evil which is productive of the passion: ‘all good or evil, whence-ever it arises, produces various passions and affections, according to the light in which it is surveyed ’ (I.2 (my emphasis)). ‘Bodily pleasures’ he writes, ‘are the source of many passions, when felt and consider’d by the mind ’ (T 2.1.1.2; SBN 276 (my emphasis)). Nevertheless it is quite true that passions for Hume are directed towards worldly objects rather than states of mind. How can we reconcile this with the passages whereby passions are motivated by thoughts concerning pleasure and pain? What we need to understand is that passions are directed towards objects through our evaluation of them, our thoughts concerning their goodness, badness, moral or aesthetic beauty. Hume distinguishes between the object of a passion and the quality of that object.⁷ One’s house is the worldy object of one’s pride, but it is some particular quality, its beauty, that is the aspect of the object of which one is proud. ‘I am proud of my house’ is elliptical for ‘I am ⁷ See e.g. T 2.1.2.6; SBN 279. Hume uses the term ‘subject’ to mean what we refer to as the object of a passion. This distinction is made in the context of a discussion of the indirect passions, but nothing prevents it being applicable to passions in general.

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proud of the beauty of my house’ (or whatever quality it may be). These qualities for Hume are always values of some sort, beauty, virtue, and so on, which are further united by their being such as to give a peculiar pleasure (T.2.1.5). Any judgement from which a passion arises is a judgement that the object is good or evil. This suggests that the ideas of good or evil, or pleasure and pain, figure as evaluative constituents in the contents of thoughts directed at objects, thoughts which in turn can elicit passion. Thoughts are about worldly objects rather than states of mind but they are about those objects being valuable or disvaluable: the ideas of good and evil, pleasure and pain provide the constituent ideas for the evaluative contents of that thought. The object of my desire is not the pleasure caused by the food: it is the pleasurable food that I desire. This represented in the complex thought that this object is good or pleasurable. This reading is reinforced by a passage discussing belief from Book I of the Treatise. In anticipation of his treatment of ‘the passions and the sense of beauty’ (T 1.3.10.1; SBN 118), Hume writes: There is implanted in the human mind a perception of pain and pleasure, as the chief spring and moving principle of all its actions. But 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, or only in idea, as at present when I mention them. ( T 1.3.10.2; SBN 118)

This passage occurs in a discussion of how belief can influence behaviour, where Hume considers a problem for his theory. Pleasure and pain are motivating: but not every pleasure or pain motivates equally. Pleasure and pain have the ‘power of actuating the will’ (T 1.3.10.3; SBN 119), and he writes later that of ‘all the immediate effects of pain and pleasure, there is none more remarkable than the WILL’ (T 2.3.1.2; SBN 399). Pleasure and pain ‘in impression to the actual feeling’ are such as to ‘always actuate the soul’ (T 1.3.10.2; SBN 118). But merely conceiving them does not, and a good thing too: ‘images . . . of goods and evils, are always wandering in the mind; and were it mov’d by every idle conception of this kind, it would never enjoy a moment’s peace and tranquillity’ (T 1.3.10.2; SBN 119). Instead their power to actuate the soul is manifested in our believing that such and such exists. He writes:⁸ Nature has . . . chosen a medium, and has neither bestow’d on every idea of good and evil the power of actuating the will, nor yet has entirely excluded them from this influence. Tho’ idle fiction has no efficacy, yet we find by experience, that the ideas of those objects, which we believe either are or will be existent, produce in a lesser degree the same effect with the impressions, which are immediately present to the senses and perception. The effect, then, of belief, is to raise up a simple idea to an equality with our impressions and bestow on it a like influence on the passions. ( T 1.3.10.3; SBN 119) ⁸ For discussions of this passage, each of which draw different morals from it, see McGilvary (1903: 282), Baier (1991: 159) and Radcliffe (1999: 104ff ). See also Kydd (1946).

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The belief here is that this object is good or evil and in our believing our ideas of good or evil—faint copies of pleasures and pains—manifest their power to actuate the will. This is intriguing. It suggests that beliefs with evaluative contents motivate and, further, that they motivate in virtue of their believed contents. What motivates desire is the believing that such and such is good and evil. Pleasure and pain provide a way of characterizing the goodness of the object of the passion, or its badness. This leaves a further question about how the relation between pleasure, good and the object is to be understood. Recall that Hume said: Some objects produce immediately an agreeable sensation, by the original structure of our organs, and are thence denominated GOOD; and others, from their immediate disagreeable sensation, the appellation of EVIL.

One might take this as an analysis of the concept of good object: what we understand when we understand that the object is good is that it is such as to cause pleasure in us. On this view we understand something more basic than the object’s being good: we understand that it is such as to cause pleasure and a grasp of that content motivates desire. Alternatively, one can take it as a theoretical account of how thought concerning an object’s being good is possible. Pleasure and pain are the impressions that provide the ideas of good and evil and determine the content for thoughts concerning good objects. But we do not grasp the object to be such as to be apt to cause pleasure, just as the vulgar view of colour does not grasp yellow objects to be such as to cause yellow sensation: we just grasp them to be good and yellow respectively. I think for natural good Hume tends toward the former reading whereas in the cases of beauty and virtue the parallel with secondary qualities suggests the latter. We ‘suppose a pleasure to lie in a object’ is analogous to our ‘supposing a colour sensation to be in an object’: what we think is x is good and x is yellow, though metaphysically speaking the supposition is the supposition of a feature of our mentality ‘in the objects’.

8.2.2 Why the Identity Thesis? Metaphysical Hedonism and the Sources of Content So far we have seen this. Hume, like many other thinkers, subscribes to the Identity Thesis. The claim that such talk really only amounts to a view that pleasure and pain are the efficient causes of passion did not explain why pleasure and pain are so prominent, and why, in particular, the idea, thought or supposition could motivate passion. The suggestion was that we could reconcile this observation with the fact that Humean passions are directed towards worldly objects by viewing the ideas of pleasure and pain, good and evil, as constituents of complex judgements regarding the goodness or badness of those objects. But

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we have yet to examine the grounds of the Identity Thesis. Just why is it that pleasure is identified with good, and evil with pain? Michael Ayers writes of Locke: The question of how experience gives us ideas of good and evil was for [Locke] the question of what it is in our experience of things which makes anything matter to us, and which makes one thing preferable to another. Without something which constitutes a ground for preference there could be no evaluative concepts. The hedonist holds, not implausibly, that the only ingredients of experience which supply such grounds are pleasure and pain . . . In that way, at least, it is tenable that hedonism explains how the words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have meaning. (1991: 197–8)

A way to interpret Ayers is to say the two features that present themselves as grounds for preference are pleasure and pain. The intuition is that pleasure is essentially valuable—desirable for its own sake—and pain has essentially negative value—it is aversion-worthy essentially. If you hold that evaluative concepts emerge from experience, then our ideas of good and evil can be seen to emerge from those features or, to put matters in Humean language, our ideas of good and evil are derived from impressions of pleasure and pain. This intuition would explain the Identity Thesis, and the view that concepts emerge from experience would explain why ideas of natural good and evil are intimately connected with pleasure and pain. The suggestion then is that the kind of intuition Ayers describes is behind what was the early modern commonplace of the Identity Thesis. This form of hedonism needs to be distinguished from the psychological hedonism of the previous section. Psychological hedonism is a contingent psychological claim concerning what motivates humans. The hedonism implicit in Ayers’ statement is what I call metaphysical hedonism. It is not a thesis about what is or is not desired. It is a thesis about what is essentially valuable, that which is desirable for its own sake. Pain has essential negative value, in that it is essentially aversion-worthy. That thesis is consistent with the fact that some passions are not explained in terms of natural good or evil. As we noted in the previous section, Hume happily admits that there are such passions. Furthermore, the fact that the only thing essentially valuable is pleasure, and pain is the only thing that is essentially of negative value, does not imply that we are, as a matter of fact, motivated only by those features. Plenty of other desires motivate behaviour. The claim concerns what merits desire or aversion, not what we desire or avoid. That would mean that our ideas of good and evil provide contents for thoughts about essential value and essential negative value and emerge from acquaintance with impressions of pleasure and pain, which are themselves essentially valuable or have essential negative value. Such a view is, in a very limited sense, a realism about essential value. There are states that are desirable or aversion-worthy, albeit states of consciousness. So our concept of good and evil is explained detectively: but our experience of items other than states of consciousness as

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essentially valuable is a matter of feature projection: of projecting a property of the experience, its value, onto the object of the experience. Before we return to Hume, let us spell out the sense in which metaphysical hedonism is realist. One thing that drives metaphysical hedonism is that pleasure and pain seem to be among the few candidates that command convergence in judgement regarding what is desirable and aversion-worthy for its own sake. What remains constant when people pursue different things is that those ends produce pleasure. This view is present both in Malebranche and Hutcheson. For them, any variation in evaluation is not a matter of our having the very same experiences from the same objects and adopting different attitudes towards them: it is rather that the same objects are experienced differently, and these differences explain the difference in passions. Here is Malebranche’s way of putting the matter: As for tastes, there is as much diversity here as in the other sensations . . . One likes the sweet, another likes the sour. One finds wine pleasant, another abhors it . . . Yet all men like pleasure [aiment le plaisir], they all like pleasant sensations [les sensation agréable], and in this they all have the same inclination. Hence they do not receive the same sensations from the same objects, since they do not like them equally. Thus, what makes a man say he likes sweetness is that the sensation he has of it is pleasant [agréable], and what makes another say he does not like sweetness is, if the truth be known, that he does not have the same sensation as he who likes it. (Search 64)

A little later Malebranche rejects the possibility that one can cease to like a sensation one previously liked; he argues that we make that mistake because, since we no longer like the same wine, qua liquid, we think that the experience of the object must be the same (i.e. it gives the same sensations) and that we no longer like those sensations. It is instead the experience occasioned by the liquid that has changed its character, rather than a different attitude to the same sensations that explains the variation, and what remains constant is the goodness of the experience—the pleasure. Hutcheson makes a similar move: The simple ideas rais’d in different persons by the same object are probably some way different when they disagree in their Approbation or Dislike . . . as in those Wines to which men acquire an Aversion, after they have taken them with an Emetick Preparation, we are conscious that the Idea is alter’d from what it was when the Wine was agreeable.⁹

We are, writes Malebranche, ‘inwardly convinced that pleasure is good, and this inner conviction is not false, for pleasure is indeed good’ (Search 310). It seems that it is this variation in the desirability of external objects that partly pushes towards an identification of natural good with pleasure, natural evil with pain. That there is some convergence on the thesis pleasure and pain are essential values does not alone support metaphysical hedonism. There are two ways ⁹ An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 4th edn with corrections (London, 1738), first enquiry, section 1, paragraph 7. The context makes it clear that the change in the idea is the change in the hedonic tone.

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convergence might go, depending on a distinction between desire-constitution models of the good and desire-determining models. On the first model something acquires the status of good from being desired, such that, on the most basic model, anything that is desired is good, and is good because it is desired. Slightly more subtly, pleasure and pain are good and evil because they are the only items humans count as desired for their own sake or to be avoided for their own sake. On the second model, the relation between desire and value is the other way around. It is because the relevant feature is valuable that Edmund desires it. So we would cite the value F in explaining Edmund’s desire for the object that is F. Value and desire are ‘internally connected’ in so far as a suitably-equipped, suitably positioned agent must, on cognition of that value be appropriately conatively disposed. If, like Hobbes,¹⁰ you buy the desire-constitution model, the convergence is not explained. The twin doctrines that pleasure is the good and pain evil and what is valuable is determined by what is desired, or desired under full information, and other such variants, make for a consistent pair (they can be jointly true), but a somewhat odd pairing. If one were to hold a desire-constitution model of the good, one would need an additional argument to restrict the good to pleasure. Prima facie people desire things other than pleasure for their own sakes, so there is nothing in the desire-constitution model itself which forces us to the conclusion that pleasure is the only good. The desire-determining model on the other hand can explain the convergence by appealing to the very character of the experiences. The agreement is commanded because we are acquainted with states of mind that are essentially valuable. This intuition has some plausibility and it has been argued for in recent philosophical literature (e.g. Goldstein 1989, Mendola 1990, Platts 1980: 74–67 on pain, Sprigge 2000). Any state of mind that can be adequately characterized as a pleasure or pain must involve evaluative characterization. The intuition is realist about value inasmuch as there is a pair of properties (pleasure and pain) which, when cognized, elicit and render intelligible some appropriate conative attitude. Pleasure and pain are, of their very essence, desirable and awful ‘of themselves’ and coming to appreciate this fact both explains and renders intelligible the attitudes based upon those states. Value realism applied to pleasure and pain meets two of the standard objections to it. John Mackie (1977: ch. 1) famously rejected values so conceived as involving the postulation of metaphysically ‘queer’ features and, second, for requiring some faculty of ‘intuition’ by which we cognize these strange properties. But as far as the epistemology goes, our relation to pleasure and pain (values) is whatever cognitive relation we stand to our experiences, and for the period we are ¹⁰ A very good case for Hobbes having a desire-constitution model of the good can be made. See e.g. Leviathan (ch. iv). The desire-constitution model can apply both to descriptivist and expressivist conceptions of the relation between desire and the good (whether, that is, ‘x is good’ should be parsed as descriptive of the fact that S desires x or as expressive of S’s desire for x).

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discussing that cognitive relation is going to be one of acquaintance or intuition. We are, writes Malebranche, ‘inwardly convinced that pleasure is good, and this inner conviction is not false, for pleasure is indeed good’ (Search 310). No peculiar faculty of ‘intuition’ need be postulated with respect to the cognition of the pleasure (value) involved in some gustatory experience: its epistemology is simply whatever our epistemic relation to experience actually is. As for their metaphysical oddity, the best response is simply to insist that we are acquainted with such properties, and, in advance of an argument for their metaphysical weirdness, refuse to find such name-calling impressive. Pleasure and desire, pain and aversion, are related by the cognitive state of acquaintance and in coming to be aware of the character of these pleasures and pains we thereby acquire a reason that at once motivates and rationalizes action. It motivates in that it brings about desire or aversion directed towards the object: it rationalizes because the desire or aversion is brought about by an understanding of the essential value of the pleasure or the awfulness of the pain. In saying why Fred drank the wine, we cite his knowledge of the pleasurable experience as justifying and explaining his action. Of course many voluntarily undergo painful experiences (e.g. dental work) or avoid pleasure (that last glass of wine), but that does not mean that such pleasures and pains cease to be essentially valuable or disvaluable. The pain in the dentist’s chair makes me desire to leave it, but the manifestation of that desire in action is masked by my desire to avoid future pain. The knowledge of the pleasure from the last glass of wine determines my desire to have it, but the manifestation of the desire is masked by my aversion to hangovers (sometimes, at any rate). We may also discount (but not eliminate) the value of pleasure on moral grounds: the moral awfulness of someone torturing cats for pleasure should make us completely discount the value of the pleasure involved in torture, but discounting is not the same as destroying: the pleasure still has value (see Zimmerman 1980, and Goldstein 2003 for finessed versions of this). A final point: commentators who take Hume’s talk of pleasure and pain seriously are liable to assimilate pleasure to desire, pain to aversion. This cannot be right, and it is important to see why. Elizabeth Radcliffe writes: for Hume, ideas of pleasures and pains become desires and aversions, respectively . . . On this view, pain is defined functionally, rather than in terms of a particular sensation that establishes its reference in the way meaning of ‘red’ or ‘cold’ might be established. That is, we call ‘painful’ or ‘displeasurable’ those states to which people are averse, those that constitute a disposition for the subject to change her condition. Hume believes that various pleasure and pains have different phenomenal qualities . . . but he also requires some account of how these diverse sensations are comprehended under a single category. The functional explanation fulfils that requirement. (1996: 401 (italics original))

On one reading of this passage, pleasure and pain are exhausted by the disposition to elicit desire and aversion respectively (which I take to be the only sense to be attached to the claim that they ‘become’ desires and aversions). But pleasure and

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pain are productive of passions other than desire and aversion and therefore cannot be so exhausted. Furthermore, identifying pleasure and pain with dispositions to elicit desire and aversion deprives them of any explanatory role, an explanatory role that Hume clearly wants them to have. How can pain explain aversion if all there is to pain is simply a tendency to aversion? Finally as Radcliffe recognizes, Hume’s official characterization places the identificatory emphasis on the phenomenal aspects of the sensation. True, pains differ in their phenomenology, but they may nevertheless be comprehended under the same term in virtue of their resemblances along a phenomenal dimension (cf. T 3.1.2.4; SBN 472). Instead the phenomenal and the explanatory come together in states of consciousness. Pleasure and pain are not exhausted by such dispositions to elicit attitudes: pleasures and pains have these dispositions essentially in virtue of their phenomenological character. Anything that feels that way (construed phenomenally) is worthy of aversion. We are averse to pain because its phenomenal character, a character which grounds, but is not exhausted by, the disposition to elicit aversion. Thus ‘we call ‘‘painful’’ or ‘‘displeasurable’’ those states to which people are averse, those that constitute a disposition for the subject to change her condition’ is correct, but in the sense that pleasure and pain are the grounds for those dispositions rather being identical to them (so in that sense ‘constitute them’). Knowledge of the disposition may function as a reference-fixing device, but pleasure and pain have a phenomenal essence that grounds another essential property, namely their disposition.¹¹ It is the way pain feels which produces the aversion; the feeling is not identical to its doing so.

8.2.3 Hume and Metaphysical Hedonism: Initial Support and Strategy Whether metaphysical hedonism is true is one thing: whether it is a plausible reading of Hume is quite another. I am here to establish its plausibility as a reading of Hume, not to establish the truth of the thesis. But nothing we have yet met with implies that Hume rejects metaphysical hedonism, and, indeed, its supposition fits the texts. But there is argument against realisms such as metaphysical hedonism thought to stem from Hume. It is thought to lie in his discussion of reason and passion in ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’. Metaphysical hedonism holds that a cognitive state—acquaintance with pain—can be such as to rationalize and motivate aversion toward it. And Hume is supposed to have shown that there could be no cognitive state that at once motivates and rationalizes action since there can be no ‘internal relation’ between cognition and motivation: a fortiori there can be no values as the realist conceives them, irrespective of any further claims concerning the status of pleasure or pain as values. But we shall see that ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ offers no such argument. ¹¹ Compare with the discussion of disposition and grounds s. 7.3.2.

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Before we turn to this, let us garner some initial support for our reading. The central claim is that pleasure and pain are treated by Hume as the bearers of essential value and disvalue respectively. These impressions furnish the constituent ideas that figure in evaluative thought and belief, beliefs concerning good and evil. Those constituents render possible thought about objects being desirable or aversion-worthy essentially. The thought ‘x is good’ involves the ideas of the object and the concept of goodness, which the pleasurable impression provides. The suggestion is that the intuition underlying the Identity Thesis is metaphysical hedonism. The only thing essentially desirable is pleasure, essentially aversionworthy is pain. The first consideration in favour of reading Hume in this light is the presence of the Identity Thesis. Unless there is some commitment to the idea that pleasure is the good and pain an evil understood as claims about property identity, the thesis seems unmotivated. Of course that does not entail that Hume subscribes to it, but it has the advantage of explaining the presence of the Identity Claim. Second, there is an argument in Appendix I of EPM that seems to presuppose it: pleasure and pain are invoked to stem a regress of the justification of practical reason. EPM (Appendix 1. 18–19; SBN 293).¹² Why does a man exercise? Because he wants to be healthy. Why? Because sickness is painful. Why does he hate pain? It is impossible for him to give a reason. Alternatively, he may want health so he can work. Why does he want to work? Because he desires money. Why? Because it is ‘the instrument of pleasure’. Beyond this ‘it is an absurdity to ask for a reason’: It is impossible there can be a progress in infinitum; and that one thing can always be a reason why another is desired. Something must be desirable on its own account and because of its immediate accord or agreement with human sentiment and affection. (EPM, Appendix 1.19; SBN 293)

If asking for a reason is asking for a further proposition to halt the regress, then there can be no such reason. If, on the other hand, we can point to some feature that, of its very nature is desirable or aversion-worthy, then the regress can be stemmed by the desirability of pleasure and the aversion-worthiness of pain. These are ‘ultimate ends’ which are certainly not accounted for by reason: perception or experience on the other hand can present those experiences as desirable or aversion-worthy. The ‘external’ object becomes desirable because it accords with sentiments of pleasure and pain which themselves determine the grounds of preference. This regress argument must rest on a normative view of the role of pleasure and pain, that they are desirable or aversion-worthy of their own sake. The alternative ¹² For comparable regress arguments, see Hutcheson On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (ed.) A. Ward (Manchester: Clinamen 1997), Illustrations s. 1, p. 113, and William King’s Preliminary dissertation concerning the fundamental principle of Virtue of Morality, p. xiv, in An Essay on the Origin of Evil, 3rd edn, (trans.) Edmund Law (Cambridge, 1739).

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is to see it as an endorsement of psychological hedonism, that all human action is as a matter of fact motivated by a desire for pleasure. But this is an implausible reading. As a piece of descriptive psychology it seems to go badly wrong, but more importantly if it were simply a descriptive claim, it would be rather too close to the smoke and powder of what Hume calls, in the very next section of the EPM, the ‘philosophical chymistry’ of the ‘doctrine of self-love’. The target here is the claim that all desires are related to an ultimate desire from one’s self. This hypothesis is, claims Hume, motivated by ‘the love of simplicity’, a source of much ‘false reasoning in philosophy’. But now if Hume is trying to say that the regress argument in Appendix I is a description of our practical reasoning, he would, to paraphrase, be guilty of an attempt to ‘explain every affection to be for pleasure, twisted and moulded, by a particular turn of the imagination, to a variety of appearances’ (EPM Appendix 2.2; SBN 296—the original has self-love rather than pleasure). Either Hume’s description of practical reasoning is wrong or he is saying in effect that we do so ‘secretly’ and hence he is guilty of just the same ‘twisting and warping’ by a philosopher’s imagination. Hume’s regress argument therefore is driven by a demand for some normatively-relevant feature to stem the regress: ‘Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition’ (EPM, Appendix I, 21; SBN 294). Quite clearly neither of these considerations entail that Hume subscribes to metaphysical hedonism. They nevertheless support such a reading. To further this reading two things are in order. First, we need offer a way of understanding Hume’s discussion of the relation between reason and passion and reason and sentiment that is compatible with it. As we said, this nest of considerations is supposed to provide the argument against essential value. Secondly, we need to provide an account of Hume’s target in his discussion of reason and passion. The standard reading is driven by a view of the ‘moral rationalists’ and this itself needs disarming: unless we can offer an alternative conception of such a target, our alternative reading of the relation between reason and passion will seem unmotivated. Thirdly, the view of moral and aesthetic sentiments as pleasures and pains needs to be integrated into a positive understanding of Hume’s account of evaluation. The first two tasks are undertaken in this chapter, the third in the next.

8 . 3 R E - R E A D I N G ‘ O F T H E I N F LU E N C I N G M OT I V E S O F T H E W I L L’

8.3.1 The Standard Reading In popular philosophical consciousness, Hume is supposed to have argued for the ‘Humean theory of motivation’. On this view, reasons for action are essentially

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motivating, such that when one acknowledges that one has a reason to act one is thereby disposed to act appropriately. No cognitive state—which is centrally taken to mean belief—is sufficient to motivate action. For we can always imagine someone believing such and such to be the case, and yet being unmoved by such an acknowledgement. Beliefs must be combined with desires in order to motivate action. So one only has a reason to act when acting in that way is suitably related to some antecedent desire. This thesis is in direct conflict with metaphysical hedonism. Metaphysical hedonism holds that pleasure and pain are essential values, a thesis bound up with the claim that coming to cognize the goodness or awfulness of those experiences provides a reason for action by motivating desire or aversion. Knowledge of pleasure and pain is cognition of essential value, and it is knowledge that itself motivates. The motivation here is not to be understood in terms of some antecedent general desire for pleasure and aversion to pain, but simply in coming to be aware of the pleasure as good and pain as awful. ‘Motivates’ here is both causal and justificatory: what makes desire, and hence action, intelligible, is that an agent’s cognitive state—his perception or belief—involves a content under which the object of that state is thought to be good. The cognitive state presents the item as good, and both explains and justifies the presence of the desire. He took a second glass of wine because he perceived its deliciousness; she left the kitchen because she found the smell awful. On this view, attitudes like desire or aversion do figure in the explanation of the agent’s action: but such desires are motivated by the agent’s appreciation of the good (cf. Nagel 1970: ch. 5). The desire so motivated is not itself explained by the presence of some further, or prior, desire, but simply by the evaluative contents of the belief itself. With respect to pleasure or pain, our desire or aversion is motivated by an appreciation of the fact that pleasure is essentially good, pain essentially bad. Independent of the agent’s appreciation of pleasure and pain, there is no standing desire for pleasure or aversion to pain antecedent to our perception of these values, which explains why we are motivated. We are motivated because of the goodness of the pleasure or the awfulness of the pain, not because, prior to our experience of such things, there was a standing desire or aversion to them. Furthermore, this motivated desire is not explained by some other antecedent desire. Certainly we can acquire desires through belief or experience without deliberation or decision on our part. Here’s an example: suppose I am persuaded to go and watch an opera by someone. I am not at all interested in the opera, but I go along to please my friend. When I get there, however, I find, quite unexpectedly, the whole thing quite wonderful and so through my experience of this opera I acquire a desire to go to the opera in future. The acquisition of the desire, though occasioned by the experience, is rendered intelligible because I have some prior desires that the opera experience satisfies (e.g. for drama, for music). But on the view to be defended here the appreciation of pleasure and pain is not made intelligible because of some other

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desire or aversion that renders them so in a manner analogous to the opera case. That is solely down to the essential value and disvalue of the states themselves. I do not claim that Hume was explicitly endorsing this position: instead the idea is that such a view is the best articulation of what might lie behind an identification of pleasure with good and pain with evil. But such a conception of pleasure and pain appears to involve an internal relation between cognition of the value and motivation and Hume’s discussion of the relation between passion and reason in ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ is supposed to target this idea. I shall argue that there is no non-question-begging reading of that section to support that claim, and plenty to point in the other direction. Combining that with Hume’s identification of pleasure and pain with good and evil, and in the absence of any independent case for thinking that his goal in that section is to deny an internal connection between value and desire, we can construct a good case for thinking that we are mistaken to think that it is so intended. Before we turn to the details of the text, a more general point should be made. Michael Smith writes that Hume holds: belief and desire are . . . distinct existences: that is, that we can always pull belief and desire apart, at least modally. For any belief and desire pair we imagine, we can always imagine someone having the desire but lacking the belief, and vice versa. If this were not so, if we had to imagine a particular belief bringing a particular desire with it, then desires would—contrary to fact—be assessable in terms of truth and falsehood, at least derivatively; for we could count the desire as true whenever the belief which it was necessarily connected counted as true, false whenever the belief with which it was necessarily connected counted as false. (1994: 7–8)

So no cognitive state could bear the appropriate relation to desire, since it is possible for the belief to exist without the desire. There are a number of reasons for thinking that this cannot be Hume’s argument. First, and in light of the drift of much of the discussion in this book, calling belief and desire ‘distinct existences’ and assuming that this entails that they are not necessarily connected, begs a huge number of questions. Secondly, if one is to wield this weapon, one ought to be careful not to slay some friends. If that route were used to show that belief and desire are not connected ‘in the right way’, then one would also be denying any such connection among any other attitudes, including connections among beliefs as far as Hume is concerned. No such ‘necessary connection’ is perceivable among the contents of the mind, and so if the argument is supposed to apply to relations between belief and desire only, it cannot be so restricted. Of course, those who do think that Hume denies the existence of necessary connections will not be fazed by this, but there is a worry about Smith’s way of putting the matter which is independent of which side you take on the general issue of the existence of necessary connection. For it is not sensitive to the peculiarities of Hume’s treatment of the relation between reason and passion, or why he highlights

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just that topic. If this is all that is at work, we shall need to know why it is the relation between reason and the passions that is singled out for attention, and what differences there are supposed to be from, say, the relations among ideas. Thirdly, Hume nowhere uses the argument thus described (pace Smith), in anything approaching this explicit formulation in ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’, and if it is there implicitly, it is buried very deeply indeed; Hume’s form of words when he discusses the influencing motives of the will give little indication of what Smith says Hume’s argument is. There is something superficially like Smith’s argument in T3.1.1, and we shall look at that a little later. For the moment let us instead turn to textual matters.

8.3.2 ‘Reason Alone’ Hume famously attempts to prove in ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’, ‘first that reason alone can never be a motivation to any action of the will; and secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will’ (T 2.3.2.1; SBN 413). Outside of Hume scholarship and for many inside it, ‘reason alone’ is thought to mean belief alone. From this it is concluded that beliefs cannot motivate action. This is a mistake. Nowhere does he produce an argument in this connection that uses the term ‘belief’ or its cognates, nor does he say that belief alone cannot motivate. Indeed, the passage we saw in section 8.3.1 suggested otherwise. Hume talked there of the ideas of pleasure and pain that figure in beliefs as having ‘the power to actuate the will’. More importantly, paying attention to the phrase ‘reason alone’ helps to show why this is not the claim that beliefs alone cannot motivate. Reason, as we saw (s. 2.3) is a faculty of comparison, which either compares ideas standing in philosophical relations or ‘consider’d as copies, with those objects, which they represent’ (T 2.3.3.5; SBN 415). Considered as a faculty of comparison, reason is productive of belief by transferring force or liveliness from one idea to another. It can extinguish belief by showing that a supposed representational relation between an idea and object is mistaken. Reason can also produce complex ideas, ideas that subsequently enter into beliefs. What ‘reason alone’ cannot do is produce simple constituents of belief. Impressions produce simple constituents and reason alone merely operates with the constituents provided by experience and the relations in which they stand. On this reading, reason alone cannot be a motive to the will because reason alone cannot produce the ideas of good and evil which motivate when embodied in belief: this is a claim quite distinct from the claim that beliefs alone cannot motivate. On this understanding of reason alone, reason alone cannot motivate because the faculty of comparison, under its demonstrative and probable guise, cannot

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alone set ends: it must range over experience-derived contents. Thus with probable reason: ’Tis obvious, that when we have the prospect of pain or pleasure from any object, we feel a consequent emotion of aversion or propensity, and are carry’d to avoid or embrace what will give us this uneasiness or satisfaction . . . Here then reasoning takes place to discover this relation [between cause and effect] . . . But ’tis evident in this case, that the impulse arises not from reason, but is only directed by it. ’Tis from the prospect pain and pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises towards any object: And these emotions extend themselves to the causes and effects of that object, as they are pointed out to us by reason and experience. It can never in the least concern us to know, that such objects are causes, and others are effects, if both the causes and the effects be indifferent to us. ( T 2.3.3.3; SBN 414)

This tells us nothing about beliefs alone not motivating. It just tells us that if we are indifferent to the ends—we do not believe them to be good or evil—reason alone is powerless. This reading is supported by the Dissertation on the Passions. Hume writes: It seems evident, that reason, in a strict sense, as meaning the judgement of truth and falshood, can never, of itself, be any motive to the will, and can have no influence but so far as it touches some passion or affection. Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition. And matters of fact, where they are not good and evil, where they neither excite desire nor aversion, are totally indifferent; and whether known or unknown, whether mistaken or rightly apprehend, cannot be regarded as any motive to action. (s. 5.1, my italics beginning ‘matters . . . ’)

Here, by implication, Hume allows that matters of fact can excite desire and aversion and be a motive to the will. As in the Treatise, the Dissertation explicitly links good and evil with pleasure and pain, so the ‘matter of fact’ here is the object’s relation to pleasure and pain. This passage fits very neatly with our reading, allowing for good and evil matters of fact to excite desire and aversion. The ‘judgment of truth’—the activity of comparison—cannot motivate unless the objects of those judgements are good and evil matters of fact.

8.3.3 ‘Reason Cannot Oppose’ Reason alone cannot oppose a passion and show it to be ‘unreasonable’. Since reason alone is just the faculty of comparison, its exercise, independent of considerations of the contents of ideas, cannot alone show a passion to be unreasonable. No amount of information about causal links can have any bearing on my disposition to have that last glass of wine, unless that information is evaluatively relevant. The faculty can oppose a passion to show the falsity of some evaluative belief, or some mistake in means/end reasoning, and so render the conative state based upon it ‘unreasonable’ (T 2.3.3.6; SBN 417). When the passion is a based on some false judgement about the goodness of an object, or

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the means to attain it, the passion is unreasonable ‘in a figurative and improper way of speaking’ (T 3.1.1.12; SBN 459). The examples Hume uses of such false beliefs are those concerning pleasure and pain. Thus: A person may be affected with passion, by supposing a pain or pleasure to lie in an object, which has no tendency to produce either of these sensations, or which produces the contrary to what is imagin’d. ( T 3.1.1.12; SBN 459 (my emphasis))

This is in line with our view about the motivational efficacy of contents that make reference to good and evil. Notice further that Hume’s language tends to suggest that the relation between passion and false belief is not that of a mere tendency of the discovery of the one to extinguish the other (that learning of falsehoods ‘tends’ to extinguish the desire, or is ‘usually’ followed by its disappearance). Instead, the language is in a different modal register entirely. Thus he says ‘I may desire any fruit as of an excellent relish; but whenever you convince me of my mistake, my longing ceases’ (T 2.3.3.5; SBN 417); ‘as soon as’ I discover the falsehood of some supposition, the object ‘must become indifferent to me’ (T 2.3.3.5; SBN 417, my italics). ‘The moment’ we perceive the falsehood of some relevant supposition, ‘our passions yield to our reason without opposition’ (T 2.3.3.5; SBN 416). Reason alone cannot oppose a passion, but reason operating on evaluative contents can: once the evaluative judgement is shown to be false, the object must become indifferent to me. The other consideration Hume marshals is his most famous and most notorious. He writes: A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence, and contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification . . . ’Tis impossible, therefore, that this passion can be oppos’d by, or be contradictory to truth and reason; since this contradiction consists in the disagreement of ideas, consider’d as copies, with those objects, which they represent. ( T 2.3.3.5; SBN 415)

This is repeated (to all intents and purposes) later in the Treatise: Reason is the discovery of truth or falshood. Truth or falshood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact. Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible to this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason. Now ’tis evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement; being original facts and realities, compleat in themselves, and implying no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions. ’Tis impossible, therefore, they can be pronounc’d either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason. ( T 3.1.1.9; SBN 458)

If this is an argument to the effect that there is no internal connection between cognition and the will, commentators agree that it is not a very good one. Actually, that is to put the matter mildly: Robert Fogelin calls it a ‘disaster’ (1985: 113), Terrence Penelham, ‘one of Hume’s worst arguments, and unfortunately one of

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his most important’,¹³ and Annette Baier, ‘a very silly paragraph’ (1991: 160). Even John Bricke, the staunchest defender of the standard reading, writes: it must be said, Hume has presented [the argument] in an impressionistic, an insufficiently explicit, at places a seriously misleading fashion. It encourages one to suspect that insight has here outstripped execution, and so to attempt to set out, on Hume’s materials, an argument that serves the purposes his . . . argument is supposed to serve. (1996: 21–2)

But as Bricke recognizes, we cannot assume that Hume’s argument here does purport to serve the purpose of the so-called Humean theory of motivation: we should not be trying to reconstruct it in light of a presumed conclusion, but look at what the passage does imply. What can we say about these passages? We have the following: 1 Representation involves a copy relation. 2 Reason compares a copy with its original in order to determine truth or falsehood (that amounts to the accuracy, or otherwise, of the copy). 3 Passions are not copies. 4 So they are incapable of being true or false. What this tells us is that passions like desires are impressions, rather than ideas. They are ‘original existences’.¹⁴ Since they are not copies, then no passion is assessable for truth or falsehood. Reason alone, which is the faculty of comparison that discovers truth or falsehood, cannot by itself show a passion to be ‘contradictory to truth or reason’. Beliefs, on the other hand, involve ideas that are supposed to be copies of impressions. This shows us that passions are not beliefs and so not assessable for truth or falsehood, and would undermine a view of motivation which takes motivational states to be beliefs. But that says no more and no less than it says here, and as such, does not affect the view we are considering. On our view, beliefs motivate because their contents represent items as desirable, and hence motivate desire. The unreasonableness of the desire is derived from the falsity of the evaluative belief that motivates it. It is in this sense that passions are ‘contrary to reason, in so far as they are accompany’d with some judgment or opinion’ (T 2.3.3.6; SBN 416). There is one passage however that seems recalcitrant to our reading: Hume writes that ‘’Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter’ (T 2.3.3.5; SBN 416). It occurs in the context in which he discusses the derivative unreasonableness of passions from false judgement and its point is to say that a passion cannot be called unreasonable when there is no false belief or judgement about means to ends. It looks difficult for us since such a ¹³ Quoted in Bricke (1996: 22). ¹⁴ See Cohon and Owen (1997) for a similar reading of these passages. They think that beliefs can motivate desire, but they do not discuss this in the light of the realist view of value that hedonism, on my reading, embodies.

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conflict would be contrary to reason because we are opposing a greater value with a lesser value, and that would be a degree in quality or proportion, a relation that Hume thinks can be the object of reason (T 1.3.1). So I admit this passage is problematic. But the sense of ‘contrary to reason’ in this passage may be the sense in which passions cannot be contrary to reason in so far as they are not themselves copies.¹⁵

8.3.4 Calm Passions Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will nor oppose a passion since reason alone is a faculty of comparison: unless that faculty is provided with evaluative contents, any such activity of comparison—of reasoning—is not a motive to the will. But the ideas of good and evil yield constituents that represent items as essentially valuable. Causation of passion is ‘reasonable’ in the sense that the state is caused by a belief whose content makes reference to something that is essentially valuable.¹⁶ Nothing we have seen goes against this reading. It might be objected that there is a different way in which the presence of beliefs about pleasure and pain, or good and evil, figure in Hume’s psychology, a way that does not go against the motivational inefficacy of belief. One might instead claim that there is some antecedent and general desire for pleasure, and correlatively an antecedent and general aversion to pain. Pleasure acquires the status of good because we have a general desire for it, and pain evil because we have a general aversion to it. We can account for what Hume says about pleasure as good, pain as evil on what I called the desire-constitution model of the good (s. 8.2.2). It is not pleasure being essentially valuable that motivates desire. Instead, it is the belief that such and such is productive of pleasure together with the general desire for pleasure that motivates action. Nor is its pain being essentially disvaluable that motivates aversion; it is the belief that such and such is a source of pain coupled with an independent aversion to such things that motivates action. So it is the general passion that makes action intelligible, not the essential goodness or badness of pleasure and pain. These general passions, as Mark Platts puts it, can be ‘led to an aversion or propensity vis-à-vis a particular object by the belief that that object will cause pain or pleasure’ (1988: 189–90).¹⁷ Hume does say that we have a ‘general appetite’ for good and evil, but what is interesting is that he contrasts this appetite with original instincts. This appetite ¹⁵ Hume also thinks that he can give a more ordinary sense of ‘reasonable’ as that of actions deriving from stable dispositions rather than acting out of one’s immediate desires. This is not directed at the notion of weakness of will as much as reasonableness as stability. The notion of habitual ‘strength of mind’ may indicate another inheritance from Malebranche. See below for reference to his Treatise on Morality. ¹⁶ For a discussion of reasonable causation in this context, see Platts (1988: s. 7). ¹⁷ I am grateful for David Owens for pushing me on this point when I presented a version of this argument at Sheffield University.

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is one of two kinds of calm passions. These are ‘certain instincts originally implanted in our natures, such as benevolence and resentment, the love of life, and kindness to children; or the general appetite to good, and aversion to evil, consider’d merely as such’ (T 2.3.3.8; SBN 417). Notice that the contrast naturally makes for an exclusive reading of ‘or’: some appetites are original, hardwired as it were, but the general appetites to good and evil are not. Instead, such general appetites are acquired from encounters from particular instances of good and evil. The aversion or desire ‘arises from’ these states, rather than merely causing the manifestation of an antecedent desire or aversion, or being made intelligible as ends in light of some further antecedent desires (like the opera case). Pleasure and pain are causally prior to the general appetite, and furthermore, their presence does not conflict with the motivated desire account I sketched above. For the general desire arises from particular experiences of what is essentially valuable. That is no problem for a motivated desire theorist, and indeed is something we should actually expect. Suppose I come to experience a range of essentially valuable features, each of which motivates a particular desire. I can acquire a general desire for features of the same kind, and for Hume that is a general desire for pain and pleasure. Nevertheless it is the essentially valuable states that have the explanatory priority here: the general desire emerges from particular perceptions of the good.¹⁸

8.3.5 Cognition, Acquaintance and Belief The view that pleasure and pain are essential values is the view such states of mind motivate and render intelligible desire and aversion respectively. Our cognitive relation to these features is primarily that of acquaintance: pleasure and pain ‘to actual feeling’, as Hume puts it, are directly present to the mind and manifest the ‘power of actuating the will’ (T 1.3.10.3; SBN 119). They ‘always actuate the soul’ (op. cit.). Of ‘all the immediate effects of pain and pleasure’ Hume writes ‘there is no more remarkable than the WILL’ (T 2.3.1.2; SBN 399). But in the case of belief, the relevant cognitive relation, so it seems, cannot be direct acquaintance, for the beliefs involve ideas of pleasures and pains rather than pleasures and pains themselves. How then are those contents operative? We need to remember that the effect of belief is to bestow on ideas some of the powers of impressions. Ideas are nothing but faint copies and when embodied in beliefs, ideas approach the force and liveliness of the original impressions, thus actuating the passions. The contents of beliefs are instances of pleasure and pain that actuate the will. In believing that such and such is good our idea of pleasure ¹⁸ Hume also writes: ‘The mind by an original instinct tends to unite itself with the good, and to avoid the evil, tho’ they be conceiv’d merely in idea, and be consider’d as to exist in any future period of time’ ( T 2.3.9.2; SBN 438, emphasis original). Here I think the term ‘original instinct’ is there just to record the fact of our basic responsiveness to good or evil rather than a statement that there is some prior general appetite.

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representing the good manifests its power to actuate the will. This fact will be important when we discuss the correction of sentiment (s. 9.4.5). This returns us to powers and our cognition of them (or otherwise). It was argued in Part II that Hume takes powers as essences and further that he had deep troubles when it came to causal relations among perceptions. Acquaintance with powers renders it impossible to conceive cause without effect: since pleasure and pain have the power to actuate the will (a power they have essentially), we should not be able to conceive pleasure without desire, pain without aversion. This, in fact, seems to be how Berkeley sees things. As well as telling us that ‘sensual pleasure is the Summum Bonum’ (Notebook A, s. 769) and that ‘sensual pleasure qua pleasure is Good & desirable’ (Notebook A, s. 773), he says that ‘no agent can be conceiv’d as indifferent to pain or pleasure’ (Notebook B, s. 143, my emphasis). We cannot conceive of an agent who is indifferent to these essential values. But we know that Hume holds that we are not in such a position with regard to ‘distinct existences’, and this clashes with cognitivism about value. If the value consists in something that is an essential property of pleasure and pain, then value is not something intelligible to us. Pleasure is not something that acquaintance with which would yield an incapacity to conceive of pleasure without desire, for the general reason that the two are phenomenally distinct existences. So if cognitivism about value is in part the claim that in fully understanding or grasping the value of something desire is thereby motivated, it looks as if we have a problem. The appeal to the ‘nature’ of pleasure as something that in understanding makes desire intelligible, cannot work. Almost: it all depends on how demanding you want the cognitivism to be. To be motivated by a cognitive state like belief or acquaintance is different from being motivated by a cognitive state that constitutes a complete or full grasp of that which motivates you. It is rather that the causal power that constitutes the value of pleasure and pain is not something that can be discovered by a simple inspection. Nevertheless, that pleasure and pain do motivate is still a matter of the contents of the cognitive state, the pleasure and the pain. Our evidence for them having such a power can, like evidence for any power, only be a posteriori. Desire is caused by states embodying contents that represent the good, or which constitute acquaintance with the good. We believe that pleasure and pain rationalize desire and aversion, but we lack understanding of that relation; we are ignorant of how the good is the intelligible cause of desire. The concession we have to make is that the ignorance view of necessary connection implies that an understanding of relation between the good and desire is not available to the thinker. In Book III (T 3.1.1.22–3; SBN 465–6), Hume offers an argument concerning those who take moral facts to consist in some relation of ideas. Besides the difficulty of picking out which relations are relevant, Hume claims that we must: also point out the connexion betwixt the relation and the will; and must prove that the connection is so necessary, that in every well-disposed mind, it must take place and have its influence. ( T 3.1.1.22; SBN 465)

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He then says, in treating of the understanding, [I have shown] that there is no connexion of cause and effect, such as this is suppos’d to be, which is discoverable other than by experience, and by which we can pretend to have security by the simple consideration of the objects. All beings in the universe, consider’d in themselves, appear loose and independent of each other. ’Tis only by experience we learn their influence and connexion. ( T 3.1.1.22; SBN 466 (my emphasis) )

Hume uses this observation to disarm the moral rationalists: they cannot demonstrate or prove a connection between relations they pick on and the will; ‘we cannot prove a priori, that these relations, if they really existed, and were perceiv’d, wou’d, be universally forceful and obligatory’ (T 3.1.1.23; SBN 466). Notice please Hume’s phrasing—things appear loose, and the connection is not discoverable—not that there is no connection; another instance of ignorance, not elimination. Furthermore, the point again is what ‘reason alone’ can discover and ‘reason alone’ can discover no necessary connection among phenomenally distinct existences. What does influence the will, according to Hume, is pleasure and pain, and the relation between pleasure and desire, and pain and aversion is, like any other causal relation, discovered empirically. 8 . 4 M O R A L R AT I O N A L I S M A N D M O R A L I T Y N OT A M AT T E R O F FAC T The argument thus far is intended to render plausible the claim that Hume’s thinking about value is guided by metaphysical hedonism. Such a view would explain the Identity Thesis and its role in the production of passion, and we have found no conclusive argument to the contrary. The wider aim is to understand his account of moral and aesthetic evaluation, where thoughts about essential value are compared with secondary qualities. The previous chapter offered a plausible understanding of what Hume may have intended in that comparison, especially with respect to the elements that sound feature projective. Just as colour sensation determines the phenomenological character of colour experience, pleasure and pain determine experience and thought as essentially valuable. The Identity Thesis we have been discussing further explains why such perceptions are thought to be ‘peculiar pleasures and pains’. Nothing in ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ pushes unambiguously to the claim that awareness of the value of pleasure and pain cannot motivate desire. Evaluations can be beliefs that motivate in virtue of their evaluative contents (the ideas of good and evil). The faculty of reason, independent of the deliverances of the impressions of pleasure and pain cannot effect action. How that can be squared with the fact that the claim that morality is not a ‘matter of fact’ will be addressed there. In this section I want to consider the role of ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ in Hume’s critique of the moral rationalists.

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Hume of course says that morality is not a ‘matter of fact’, but this alone does not mean we cannot have the belief that some ‘external’ states of affairs are essentially motivating (albeit false ones). With respect to matters of fact construed as the correspondence of ideas ‘consider’d as copies’ to objects, there is no matter of fact of morality: nothing in the objects that are considered is essentially motivating. Such judgements are false. ‘Examine wilful murder’, he says, ‘and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice’ (T3.1.1.26; SBN 468). Nevertheless, there is a ‘matter of fact’ but it is an internal one: the response: ‘it lies in yourself, not in the object’ (op. cit.). This matter of fact is then projected onto the object yielding the false belief that such objects are essentially valuable. Since sentiments are not copies of essentially motivating features of external objects, there is no matter of fact about morality: but that does not preclude us having false beliefs about such matters of fact. Understanding ‘matter of fact’ as correspondence between supposed object and idea explains why morality is not a matter of fact, for there is no correspondence between what is supposed and what is true of the object. We suppose something false of the objects of belief. But there is something else that encourages the idea that ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ is an argument to the effect that evaluative belief cannot motivate. The conclusions of ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ figure in Hume’s campaign against the moral ‘rationalists’, and are given pride of place in the section entitled ‘Moral distinctions not deriv’d from reason’ (T 3.1.1). What else is rationalism unless it is nothing other than a combination of cognitivism—moral commitments are beliefs—and internalism, namely that sincere moral judgement is sufficient to motivate action? This then gives us a reason to think that Hume is really pushing to the conclusion that beliefs cannot motivate action. This understanding of moral rationalism and the standard view of ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ feed off each other. But a brief look at the kinds of view that Hume actually targets makes it far from obvious that such a view is distinctive of moral rationalism. Approaching T 3.1.1 for the first—and perhaps not only the first—time, the views that moral rationalists are said to hold sounds a little odd to the modern ear. Hume writes that they suppose that: [V]irtue is nothing but a conformity to reason; that there are eternal fitness and unfitnesses of things, which are the same to every rational being that considers them; that the immutable measures of right and wrong impose an obligation, not only on human creatures, but on the Deity himself. ( T 3.1.1.4; SBN 456)

It is first important to recognize the last clause here. Rationalists hold such a view because it offers a response to the threat of moral voluntarism.¹⁹ If moral facts depended on God’s will, their status would seem arbitrary.²⁰ We need a ¹⁹ See Schneewind (2000) for a superb discussion. ²⁰ Compare with Malebranche’s worry about the status of mathematical and logical facts in the face of Descartes’ voluntarism mentioned in s. 3.3.1

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conception of in what moral facts can consist that does not make them dependent on God’s will. Mathematics offers a model of how there could be truths that are eternal and necessary but not the result of God’s will. That way they impose themselves upon God as well as humans. One articulation of this view is Samuel Clarke’s 1705 A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion.²¹ The relations of ‘fitness’ or ‘unfitness’ are supposed to secure an objectivity of moral truth that avoids a voluntarist position where the moral goodness of an action consists in its being commanded by God. For example, there is the relation of evident superiority of the infinite over the finite (Discourse I.1: 296), a relation of proportion. Clarke gives the following example: ‘that God is infinitely superior to man is as clear as that infinity is larger than a point . . . And ’tis as certainly fit that men should honour and worship and imitate God.’ Morality consists in recognizing these kinds of relations. The first of these is a relation holding between the ideas of man and God, stating a truth that is wholly independent of the will of God. Our knowledge of its truth is a matter of discerning that relation, and in understanding the relation of superiority with respect to humans and God we come to ‘assent necessarily and unavoidably’ (I.3: 303). Malebranche, who, Hume writes, ‘was the first that stated this abstract theory of morals . . . [that] excludes all sentiment’ (EPM, 3.2.34n; SBN 197) shares a similar account of moral truths consisting in immutable relations among ideas, a view that is again held as a response to the threat of voluntarism: Since truth and order are relations of greatness and perfection, real immutable and necessary relations, relations comprehended in the substance of the divine word, he that sees these relations sees what God sees. He that regulates his love according to these relations observes a law which God invincible loves.²²

That moral facts consist in relations of ideas that reason can discern is logically distinct from issues about whether those facts, or our judgements, about them are sufficient to motivate action. For Malebranche, the exercise of reason will eventually secure the love of God, and it is this that is an inducement to following the dictates of reason. Since God is reason, the exercise of reason increases our resemblance to God. Necessary and immutable Order requires that the creature depends on the Creator, that all expression is related to this model, and that man, made in the image of God, live subject to God, united to God, like unto God in all possible ways.²³ ²¹ Hutcheson criticizes this view in a fashion similar to Hume—see On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (ed.) A. Ward (Manchester: Clinamen, 1997), Treatise II, s. ii. Hume’s criticisms of William Wollaston are largely derived from Hutcheson’s in section iii of the Illustrations. I quote Clarke from Schneewind (ed.) (2003). ²² Treatise of Ethics (1684) (ed.) Walton (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), Pt I, Ch. 1, s. xiv. ²³ Treatise of Ethics II, 1, s. ii. See Clarke Discourse (I.1: 296) for a similar claim.

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Since God loves that which resembles Him ‘He loves His creatures in proportion as they are loveable, in proportion as they resemble Him.’²⁴ For Locke, moral facts consist in relations of ideas that are independent of God’s will, and form the basis of his laws: the motivation to be good lies elsewhere, namely in the promise of reward or punishment: Good and evil [= natural good and evil], as hath been shown are nothing but pleasure and pain to us. Moral good and evil then is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary action to some law whereby some good or evil is drawn on us from the will and power of the law-maker; which good and evil, pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law by the decree of the law-maker, it is that we call reward or punishment. (Essay: 2.28.5)

Clarke, on the other hand, just asserts that the ‘original obligation’ is the ‘eternal reason of things’ (I.3: 301), which moves God as well as human beings. What this means is that while it is true that Hume attacks the moral rationalists, what is not obvious is that moral rationalism is identical to the view that moral commitments are beliefs that motivate passion and hence action. Moral rationalism is a view of in what moral facts consist, not concerning the motivational efficacy of moral belief.²⁵ If that is right, then Hume’s arguments against moral rationalism take on a different colour. Malebranche, Clarke, and Locke suggest we can recognize or grasp moral facts by discerning certain relations of ideas: moral facts are relations and we come to recognize the relations as such by that comparison. Malebranche and Locke think that any further motivation is external to our recognition of which ideas are moral and for Clarke it is internal to the recognition. But independently of that, there is a question that both versions of rationalism must face: not all relations among ideas are moral relations, so what is it about the supposed moral relations that makes them moral? The distinction we make between moral good and evil must rest in a difference in the contents of the ideas compared, facts about the relata rather than their relation. The rationalists will be forced to say what it is about such and such a relation that makes it a moral relation, but if the facts are supposed to consist in relations they can say nothing further. But that deprives us of an explanation of just why those relations are moral. Reason alone is a faculty of comparison, and a discovery of the relations among ideas; but unless those ideas themselves marked a difference between moral good and evil, no amount of comparing is going to make us think in terms of moral good and evil. Recall now the target: Virtue is nothing but a conformity to reason; that there are eternal fitness and unfitnesses of things, which are the same to every rational being that considers them; that the ²⁴ Treatise of Ethics I, 1, s. ii. ²⁵ Rachel Cohon (1997b) quite rightly notices that moral rationalism seems to be a claim about in what moral facts consist rather than a claim about motivation. She does not however go into detail.

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immutable measures of right and wrong impose an obligation, not only on human creatures, but on the Deity himself. ( T 3.1.1.4; SBN 456)

That says nothing about motivation, and we have seen that Malebranche and Locke think that the motivation to obey any such rules depends on something external to the recognition of their moral rightness. The target is instead the idea that the origin of our moral concepts is a matter of discovering relations by comparison: that morality ‘is discern’d merely by ideas, and by their juxtaposition and comparison’ (T 3.1.1.4; SBN 456–7). He then introduces two further theses: first, the morals excite passions, and produce and prevent action, and second, reason ‘of itself is utterly impotent’ (T 3.1.1.6; SNB 457). The first of these picks out the motivational nature of moral commitments: a sincere moral commitment motivates passion and hence action. This, however, does not say that no belief can motivate in virtue of its contents: it just states that moral commitments are motivating. Hume will therefore disagree with Locke and Malebranche over whether moral beliefs motivate essentially. The second component has it that reason alone cannot be a motive to action, and we have interpreted that as the thesis that reason alone, the faculty of comparison, cannot furnish motivational contents. The rationalist will have to show how by ‘reason alone’ we can determine which relations should motivate us—which ones are the moral ones—but reason alone cannot do so. Without impressions to mark the distinctions of moral good and evil and motivate action, reason alone is powerless: ‘Moral distinctions, therefore, are not the offspring of reason. Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals’ (T 3.1.1.10; SBN 458). The facts in which morality are supposed to consist cannot ground explanations of our capacity to distinguish between good and evil, and for Hume, that requires impression. We saw in section 2.4.2 that Hume’s account of inference is modelled on previous accounts of animal inference. More widely, one can take Hume’s naturalism as an attempt to model much of human nature on animal nature, downplaying an invidious contrast between beast and human.²⁶ Rationalists in ethics make morality a supernatural affair, one that concerns immutable order rather than more humdrum notions like utility and pleasure and more earthly everyday concerns. In the next chapter, I shall show how Hume’s moral sentimentalism is modelled on an account of animal nature, and offers an account of morality that brings morality down to earth. ²⁶ See also my ‘Leibniz’s Dog and Humean Reason’, and Craig (1987).

9 The Golden: Relational Values, Realism and A Moral Sense 9 . 1 I N T RO D U C T I O N The purpose of this chapter is to integrate the results of the previous two chapters into a model of Hume’s account of moral evaluation. We saw that Hume’s Comparison should be understood in terms of a false thought of objects (other than states of consciousness) being essentially valuable. Pleasure and pain are treated as essentially valuable and providing the possibility of such false thoughts. How though does this relate to Hume’s overall friendly view of morality and virtue? Hume writes: And this discovery [sc. that virtue, like heat, ‘is a perception of the mind’] in morals, like that other in physics, is to be regarded as a considerable advancement of the speculative sciences; tho’, like that too, it has little or no influence on practice. Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue, and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behaviour. ( T 3.1.1.26; SBN 469)

He thinks that the discovery will not lead to a breakdown in moral practice and that our sentiments are favourable to virtue. I shall argue that he is right to be confident. He is right because he takes it that although our naïve view of the virtues and vices is mistaken, our moral reactions nevertheless are responses to moral properties or virtues and vices, namely the useful and the agreeable. While showing that nothing is essentially valuable, Hume at the same time brings us to understand what our responses are responses to, namely that which is relationally valuable to human wellbeing. The account avoids the Hobbesian scheme whereby morality is simply a matter of prudence and self-interest or the bizarre otherworldliness of the rationalists. There are irreducible moral responses to the useful and the agreeable which, though containing an element of projective error, can nevertheless be endorsed when we become aware of that to which we are responding and how it contributes to our human wellbeing. The function of our sentiments then becomes the object of reflexive approval. It is for this reason that we might in the end call Hume’s view a form of naturalistic realism. Moral properties are identical to natural properties, and

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moral sentiments are the way by which such properties are detected by us.¹ This realism resembles what Allan Gibbard has recently called ‘mitigated realism’, a view he develops with a parallel with colour. Our naïve understanding of colour has it that we are detectors of a property that exists independently of us. We detect redness by seeing things as red. The detection isn’t infallible, because sometimes our response isn’t set off by the property, or is set off by things without that property. (2006: 205)

But this naïve view is not quite right, ‘colours seem a basic property of things, [so it is] a surprise, then, that colours turn out to be a matter of how uncoloured particles interact’ (2006: 208). Our naïve colour discourse embodies misconceptions that mitigate against taking that naïve conception to be fully correct. This naïve concept is to be replaced by a sophisticated concept of the colour as a physical property. But this does not mean the naïve view is so incorrect that it should be abandoned as error-theory would suggest. We can hold to the mitigated realism because our concept nevertheless is sensitive to correction standards. These exhibit an underlying sensitivity to the physical properties that are colours, so our standards for correction implicitly track that property. We do so because we reason ‘in roughly the same ways one should if thinking about colours, and deploying the most sophisticated concept’ (2006: 208). It is this that Gibbard thinks is true for our moral responses. Our moral responses tend to be understood in naïve ways that turn out to involve misconceptions. So it may come as a surprise that ‘right and wrong are of interest only to beings like us, and that the gods wouldn’t care about these properties’ (2006: 209). We might think, furthermore, that morality is essentially valuable, desirable independently of all other concerns. Nevertheless we can turn this naïve and false view into a mitigated realism. Thus: On the hypothesis that moral sentiments are error-prone detectors of properties— properties of interest to human being in general or to members of particular cultural groups—we expect some variation in response. We come to views of what the conditions are under which the responses are most nearly constant. We use our responses under these conditions as fallible tests of theories of moral properties. (2006: 208)

The suggestion pursued in the remainder of this book is that Hume’s moral sense theory is a form of mitigated realism, allowing us to identify moral properties that are the objects of sentimental responses. The argument for this claim is largely contextual, based on the early modern treatment of the functional role of natural pleasures and pains. Roughly, pleasure ¹ To this extent, and only to this extent, this reading concurs with David Fate Norton’s ‘realist’ view that sentiments are ‘signs’ for ‘moral facts’ (see for example his 1984). But Norton places upon Hume (and Hutcheson) a form of ontology that implies moral properties are ‘obscure’ items that are distinct from the relational values. He also does not make good how and why we should understand such sentiments as signs. For a critique of Norton’s reading of Hutcheson, see my (2001b).

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is a way of rendering salient to creatures a range of relational values, items that are good for the creature. Pain is a way in which the harmful is rendered salient to the creature. These sensations serve this purpose in the absence of an understanding of the relational goods and evils or even a belief that those objects are relational goods or evils. The fact of being experienced under a pleasurable aspect makes the object appear essentially desirable, being experienced under a painful mode motivates aversion. In that way relational goods and evils are ‘discovered’ to creatures lacking any understanding of them as such relational values, and motivate appropriate action. Moral pleasures and pains stand to virtues and vices as objective features that are relational values, as bodily pleasures and pains stand to relational values such as healthy foodstuffs or unhealthy temperatures. In the next section, we return to the Identity Thesis but this time with an eye to the functional nature of pleasure and pain and its projection. In doing so we establish a widespread view of natural pleasure and pain. I then turn to compare Hutcheson’s and Hume’s treatment of sentiment and its correction in the light of this doctrine. Hutcheson, as we shall see, explicitly models his moral and aesthetic senses on the functional nature of bodily pleasure and pain. Hume does not: nevertheless, if we understand what Hume has to say about the role of sentiment in morality and its correction in the light of this model we shall see how Hume’s view is an extension of this idea.

9 . 2 PE RC E P T I O N S O F ‘ O F G O O D O R EV I L , O F P L E A S U R E A N D PA I N ’ : T H E I N D I C ATO R F U N C T I O N O F P L E A S U R E A N D PA I N , A N D T H E B E N E F I C I A L AND THE HARMFUL We noted that the Identity Thesis was widespread in the early modern period. The natural good (as opposed to the moral good) is identical to pleasure, natural evil to pain. We noted too that other objects ‘acquire the name’ good or evil through their relation to pleasure and pain. This in turn is related to a view about the functional nature of pleasure and pain. Berkeley writes: There be two sorts of Pleasure the one is ordain’d as a spur or incitement to somewhat else & has a visible relation & subordination thereto, the other is not. Thus the pleasure of eating is of the former sort, of Musick is Ye later sort. These may be used for recreation, those not but in order to their End. (Notebook A, s. 852)

Whereas some pleasures are just for enjoyment others have a motivational force directing us to something else. But what? Descartes, in discussing some

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consequences of mind/body union in the Sixth Meditation, notes that pleasures and pains are ‘confused modes of thinking’ (56),² which ‘teach’ (56) us something. Their teaching, their ‘proper purpose’, is ‘simply to inform the mind what is beneficial or harmful for the composite of which the mind is a part’ (57). This doctrine is not peculiar to Descartes. Malebranche writes that ‘sensible pleasure’ is the mark that nature has attached to the use of certain things in order that without having to bother with a rational examination we might use them for the preservation of the body. (Search 359)

Pleasure and pain are signs for the healthy and the harmful, ‘natural marks of good and evil’, (Search 66) the ‘natural and indubitable signs of good and evil’ (Search 21)³ or the ‘natural signs for distinguishing good from evil’ (Search 348). Such pleasures and pains—or sentiments in the French⁴—provide a way of eliciting appropriate and timely action directed towards their objects in subjects who lack any deep understanding of themselves and their environment, action which nevertheless contributes to the overarching goal of self-preservation. According to Francis Hutcheson, ‘the author of nature’ has ‘determin’d us to receive, by our external Senses, pleasant or disagreeable Ideas of Objects, according as they are useful or hurtful to our Bodys’ (Inquiry 2. 1. 8. (italics original)).⁵ Berkeley tells us that: We regard objects that environ us in proportion as they are adapted to benefit or injure our own bodies, and thereby produce in our minds the sensations of pleasure or pain . . . Which foresight, how necessary it is for the preservation of the body, everyone’s experience can inform him. (An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, s. 59)⁶

Note, first, these sensations owe themselves to our animal nature. God lacks all sensation, and operates solely through the intellect, but animals operate by ² The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, volume II, (trans.) J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). ³ Following Barnouw (1992: 410), I translate caractère as ‘sign’ rather than Lennon and Olscamp’s ‘characteristic’. See also Bk V, ch. 3, 348, Bk V, ch. 4, 359 and Bk V, ch. 5, 365. In Elucidation XIII of the Search, Malebranche defends this claim against obvious counter-examples, for example pleasant tasting items that are harmful to our bodies. ⁴ In a discussion of the term ‘sentiment’, Dugald Stewart writes ‘Mr. Hume, [in contradistinction to other Scottish writers] sometimes employs (after the example of the French metaphysicians) sentiment as synonymous with feeling; a use of the word quite unprecedented in our tongue’ (From ‘Locke on the Sources of Human Knowledge, and its Influence on the Doctrines of Some of His Successors’, ch. 4, Philosophical Essays, 4th edn, (ed.) Sir William Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1855)). ⁵ An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 4th edn with corrections (London, 1738). This volume contains both An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design and An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil. Henceforth I shall refer to the complete volume as Inquiry. At the time of writing, there is no readily available edition of the Inquiry so treatise, section, and article numbers will be given instead of page numbers. ⁶ See also the Principles of Human Knowledge, s. 146.

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sensation,⁷ and our sensations are due to our embodiment.⁸ Even immaterialists like Berkeley subscribed to the view that sensation is animal, and that God lacks sensation. Secondly, general laws exist between pleasure and features conducive to the bodily health of an animal on the one hand and pain or unpleasant with the harmful on the other. This is given a providential twist. Animals lack understanding of their bodies, the nature of the environment, and its causal properties. Nevertheless, they need to act in a prompt, timely, and reliable manner. They need to eat the right foods and avoid the wrong ones, avoid extremes of temperature, and the like. What is wanted is desire or aversion elicited towards appropriate objects in the absence of any intellectual grasp of whether, or how, some foodstuff is nutritious or poisonous. Edmund the cat finds certain foods pleasant, and this elicits desire towards them, and nasty tastes elicit aversion. Given the general correlation between the pleasant and the healthy, the nasty and the harmful, Edmund’s total ignorance, then, is not a hindrance to his bodily wellbeing. Pleasure gets him to eat the right stuff though he does not know it to be so, nasty tastes produce aversion to the harmful. If, in his state of ignorance, he lacked those sensations, his chances of survival are (like him) pretty dim. Pleasure ‘teaches’ Edmund what is good for him and pain what is bad for him, even though he has no explicit grasp of that fact. Human nature shares in this somewhat. There are laws that connect the harmful to the unpleasant, the healthy to the pleasant with respect to human nature and the environment. One difference between us and Edmund is that ⁷ William King An Essay on the Origin of Evil (3rd edn, (trans.) Edmund Law, Cambridge, 1739, p. 172): ‘In order to [preserve the body given our state of natural ignorance], ’tis necessary that the Soul should have a perception of what is good for, or prejudicial to the Body, and this could not be more effectively procured, than by providing that those things which tend to is preservation should communicate an agreeable sensation to the Soul, and what is pernicious, a disagreeable one. For otherwise, the first thing we met might destroy us, while we were unaware or regardless of it; nor should we be sollicitous to avoid a River or a precipice.’ He then goes on to emphasize that this is due to our ‘animal nature’. Reid, writing later, buys into the same story, and its connection with the brutes ( Thomas Reid Essays on the Intellectual Powers (ed.) B. Broady (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1969), Essay 8, s. 8: 456): ‘The taste of the palate may be accounted most just and perfect, when we relish the things which are fit for the nourishment of the body, and are disgusted with things of a contrary nature. The manifest intention of nature in giving us this sense, is, that we may discern what it is fit for us to eat and to drink, and what is not. Brute animals are directed in the choice of their food merely by their taste. Led by this guide, they choose the food that nature intended for them . . . ’ (my emphasis). ⁸ One might object that talk of animal pleasure and pain is oxymoronic for Descartes, for he thinks of animals as non-conscious machines. First off, it is unclear whether Descartes actually subscribed to such a blanket view (Cottingham 1978) but in any case the objection misses a key point about Descartes’ treatment of sensation. Such sensations are only given to humans because of their embodiment in the animal machine. If we weren’t part animal machine, we would never have sensual pleasure and pain (this is no doubt part of Descartes’ Augustinian inheritance). Malebranche—to whom similar considerations apply—is even more explicit that such sensations are due to our animal nature. See the Preface to The Search after Truth.

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although Edmund’s responses are in line with the healthy, he operates without concepts of pleasure, or the healthy: he just gets on with his business. Humans, on the other hand, not only respond in line with such correlations but can also form concepts of pleasure and the healthy. The concept ‘good’ emerges because of the presence of pleasure, evil because of pain. Thus Hutcheson writes that objects ‘obtain the name’ (ENCP 1.1: 11)⁹ good or evil, according to their being apt to cause pleasure and pain. But that certain objects thus obtain the name does not yet say what it is about those objects that merits that name. In an uncultivated state—as one of the vulgar, or before the development of science in general—we share, though to a lesser degree, in Edmund’s ignorance: we do not understand how, say, oranges nourish us, how our bodies work and the like. Thus when Malebranche writes that pleasure is the mark of the healthy, he says we need not have ‘to bother with a rational examination we might use them for the preservation of the body’. This is because humans too are subject to the same pressures and demands for timely action when relatively ignorant of what is good or bad for them. The mind must recognise this sort of good without examination, and by the quick and indubitable proof of sensation. Stones do not provide nourishment; the proof of this is convincing and taste alone produces universal agreement. (Search 21)

Pleasure and pain take up the slack when ignorance and the slowness of reason could lead to disaster. The pleasures and pains, the natural marks, prompt desire and aversion, and hence action in our state of ignorance: Through pleasure and pain, through agreeable and disagreeable tastes, and other sensations, . . . [the soul is quickly advised] of what ought and ought not be done for the preservation of the body. (Search 23)

Hutcheson concurs: Now, our Reason, or knowledge of the relations of external things to our bodies, is so inconsiderable, that it is generally some pleasant sensation which teaches us what tends to their preservation; and some painful sensation which shows what is pernicious. Nor is this instruction sufficient; we need also to be directed when our bodies want supplies of nourishment; to this our reason could not extend; here then appears the first necessity of uneasy sensation preceding desire . . . Again, our bodies could not be preserved without a sense of pain, connected with incisions, bruises, or violent labour, or whatever else tends to destroy any part of their mechanism. (ENCP 1.2.6: 34 (italics original))¹⁰

Nature or sensation, as Descartes puts it, ‘presents to me [certain objects] as objects which I should seek or avoid’ (58), but it does not present to the ⁹ On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (ed.) A. Ward (Manchester: Clinamen 1997). The references are to essay, part, section (where available), and page number. ¹⁰ See also ENCP 1.6.3: 94: ‘The simple productions of nature, which are useful to any species, are also grateful to them; and the pernicious or useless objects are made disagreeable.’

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mind what it is about the object that is worthy of aversion or desire. For merely tasting pleasant does not reveal to the subject, that it is healthy, what its healthy properties are, or how the object will contribute to bodily wellbeing. It just tastes good, and elicits desire. As Malebranche writes, through pleasure ‘I know through the sense of taste that a given fruit is good’ (Search 21), but I do not know on the basis of the sensation alone ‘the goodness of the fruit’ (Search 21). I do not know, that is, what properties of the fruit are health-conducive. Indeed, I may not even know that the fruit is health-conducive. Instead it tastes pleasant and I elect to eat it, and in that sense pleasure and pain teach us what is good for us. Pain, according to Malebranche, is falsely located in the damaged region of our body, though properly speaking it is a mode of the soul. This mistake in location is nevertheless to our advantage: it ‘directs the soul’s attention to the parts of our body’ (Search 55), and gets us to take action appropriate to the particular region of our body (for example moving our hand away from the fire). This ‘occurs solely in connection with the preservation of life; it is clear that vivid affective sensations must be felt in the pricked finger rather than the thorn in order to pull it away’ (Search 55). We noted further that Malebranche believed that pleasure can be projected to yield the false belief in ‘sensible goods’ (s. 7.3.2) Thus he writes: Nothing is so common as the sight of people dedicated to sensible goods . . . Now the following is approximately how they must have reasoned to be of the opinion that these objects are goods. All these enjoyable savours that please us at feasts, the sounds that delight the ears, and the other pleasures we occasionally experience are no doubt contained in sensible objects . . . That is the argument we ordinarily employ almost unconsciously. Thus because we believe our sensations to be in the objects, or objects have in themselves the power of making us sense them [we take the objects of our passions to be genuine goods]. (Search: 76 (my emphasis))

Certainly pleasures are natural goods (cf. s. 5.2) and we should love the cause of pleasure; we are ‘inwardly convinced that pleasure is good, and this inner conviction is not false, for pleasure is indeed good’ (Search 310). But we believe such objects not merely to be the cause of pleasure but that ‘external’ objects are ‘enjoyable’ or ‘disagreeable’ (Search 77). We come to think of them as good and evil, rather than simply the cause of those sensations. Although he insists that ‘pleasure is good and pain is evil’ (Search 359), Malebranche recognizes that our experience and thought is experience of and thought about objects as themselves ‘good and evil’. Hence: We ordinarily mean by goods and evils good and evil things and not sensations of pleasure and pain, which are rather the soul’s natural signs for distinguishing good from evil. (Search 348)

This is not only a semantic claim; there is a deeper reason why we do not mean ‘pleasure and pain’ when we talk of good and evil. If we went out seeking

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the sensations of pleasure and pain (pretending that they are sensations for the moment), those sensations threaten to become disconnected from their function; they are there to encourage one to pursue objects which are good for one, and avoid the bad, so we should be pursuing the object of the experience, rather than the pleasantness of the experience itself. One way to secure that would be to have the subject think that the object itself is essentially valuable rather than conceiving it as a mere means to secure a pleasant sensation. So we do not think that objects are merely means to pleasurable states: we experience and think that those very objects are good or bad themselves: [W]e imagine that sensible objects act in us, because at their approach we have new sensations, and because we do not see Him who truly causes them in us. We taste a fruit and at the same time we sense sweetness; then we attribute this sweetness to the fruit; we judge that it causes it, and even that it contains it. (Search 310)

In the Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, Malebranche writes ‘goods of the body’ (the sensuous goods) are ‘false or deceiving goods because they are not such as they appear to our senses’ (DMR 65).¹¹ The good—pleasure—is conceived to be ‘in the object’ because our attention is to be directed to those objects (which contribute to our wellbeing) rather than the state of mind itself: [I]t was fitting that the mind should sense qualities as if they were in bodies, which bodies do not have . . . [in order for the body to] unite itself to or separate itself from them according to the urgent needs of the machine, whose delicate springs require a vigilant and prompt guardian. (DMR 67)

Attributing to objects what is in effect an indicator for healthiness is useful because it directs our attention to precisely those objects and not the state of mind (the pleasure) itself. The projection, though an error, is connected to its function. Pleasure and pain are taken to have a semiotic or indicatory function. Malebranche tells us that they are ‘natural marks of good and evil’,¹² the ‘natural and indubitable signs of good and evil’,¹³ or the ‘natural signs for distinguishing good from evil’.¹⁴ In A System of Moral Philosophy, Hutcheson tells us that sensations: are either signals, as it were, of new events happening to the body, of which experience and observation will show us the cause; or marks, settled by the Author of Nature, to shew us what things are salutary, innocent or hurtful; or intimations of things not otherways discernible which may affect our state; tho’ these marks or signals bear no more resemblance to the external reality, than the report of a gun, or the flash of the powder, bears to the distress of a ship.¹⁵ ¹¹ Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (trans.) N. Jolley and D. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). ¹² Search, 66. ¹³ Search, 21. ¹⁴ Search, 348. ¹⁵ System on Moral Philosophy, 2 vols. (Glasgow: Foulis, 1755), 1: 5.

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Note that they have this indicator function even though they are not ‘resemblances’ of their external causes. Instead matters go this way. In the animal case, Edmund the cat operates with gustatory experiences, responses which are typically elicited by what is good for him even though he lacks the conceptual resources to understand that to which his experience is responsive. His experience is ‘interpreted’ in a shallow fashion in that his responses elicit desire or aversion, and hence action that is appropriate with respect to his object in virtue of that experience (he eats the tuna). So although Edmund has no awareness that his gustatory experience indicates the healthy to him, it nevertheless has that function because it mediates between a certain input (a potential food stuff) and an output behaviour (eating it). For human beings, who have greater reflective resources, we can investigate the causes of pleasure and pain and become aware of what they indicate. Hence Hutcheson’s claim that sensation ‘signals, as it were, of new events happening to the body, of which experience and observation will show us the cause’, and Berkeley’s talk of ‘visible relation’. We become aware that pleasure indicates the healthy, pain the harmful. So bodily pleasure and pain are typically caused by the healthy and the harmful, and indicate those features (are ‘natural marks’ or ‘signals’) that function to direct us toward the healthy and the harmful, in the absence of any understanding how those objects contribute to wellbeing. They are interpreted signs in the shallowest sense, namely that they dispose the subject to act in ways appropriate to that object. Humans can reflect on this correlation and become aware that those sensations signal the harmful and the healthy. Now the correlation between the pleasant and the healthy, the painful and the harmful is not perfect: not everything that tastes good is healthy and not everything that tastes bad is harmful (indeed bitter medicine can be positively good). But awareness of the general correlation leaves conceptual room for the notion of a proper cause. Returning to Descartes, it should be remembered that he tells us that it is the proper purpose of pleasure and pain ‘to inform the mind what is beneficial or harmful for the composite of which the mind is a part’ (57). He then raises a problem: [A] further problem now comes to mind regarding those very things which nature presents to me as objects which I should seek or avoid . . . e.g. when someone is tricked by the pleasant taste of some food into eating the poison concealed inside it. (58)

His response is to dub this an ‘error’ since his ‘nature knows nothing’ about the poison: a mismatch, that is, between the pleasant and the healthy. Once the function of the pleasure is introduced, the present response is corrected by reason: by becoming aware that it is in this particular instance that the pleasure is not elicited by its proper cause. So the relish is a false one, corrected by further information. As Malebranche puts it, ‘our senses may lead us to eat poisoned meats’, but they don’t ‘lead us to eat poisons’ (Search 645). There is a different way in which this natural calibration can be upset, on the perceiver end of things: when for example one is ill. To use Descartes’ example,

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a man with dropsy has thirst sensations that make him desire to drink copious amounts of water, which just makes things worse. Here ill health is viewed as a departure from nature, where this is given a functional gloss, comparing this state of ill health with a badly made clock failing to tell the correct time. The sick man departs from his nature just as the clock does when it fails to tell the time correctly (58). Still, when one is normal, and notwithstanding the fact that ‘it is not unusual for us to go wrong’ (58), ‘in matters regarding the well-being of the body, my senses report the truth much more frequently than not’ (61; cf. Malebranche (Search 646ff)). Proper function allows us to avoid the ‘misrepresentation problem’ for purely causal theories of representation. Notoriously, if one explicates representational properties by appealing to their typical causes, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that experiences ‘represent’ anything and everything which causes them, and so the possibility of misrepresentation is threatened; and if there can be no misrepresentation, there can be no talk of representation. But with a notion of proper function in place, pleasant gustatory experience does not ‘represent’ just any object which causes it (and hence can’t really be said to represent), but instead represents its proper cause, understood as those which the experience is designed to pick out. Notice that a subject who has these representations need not be able to determine their content by mere introspection alone, or recognize them as representations. This does not mean that they are not representations. Fred the monkey operates with representations of what is good for him even though he lacks the resources to be in a position to know that they are representations. It cannot be a condition on representation that all should recognize them as such. So pleasure and pain have an indicator function. They are responses tied to relational goods and evils. The relational good consists in those items which are conducive to bodily wellbeing, the relational evil, in that which is harmful to the body. These objective features are initially presented to us under the aspect of pleasure and pain, subjective modes of experience, because pleasure and pain elicit desire and aversion and hence action appropriate to the objects of those sensations, when we lack understanding of those relational goods, or knowledge of which features are relational goods or even that they are relational goods. Nevertheless, awareness of the correlation can allow us to reflect upon and correct sensation, leading to a notion of a proper cause and a better understanding of those relational goods and evils. 9.3 MODELLING A MORAL SENSE: HUME IN THE L I G H T O F H U TC H E S O N

9.3.1 Preliminaries Hume is quite aware of the view we have just sketched. Not only can we be sure that he was familiar with Malebranche, Hutcheson and Berkeley, but of others

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such as King, at least at second hand through Bayle. Hence it is a good bet that he was familiar with the general view. There is also internal evidence to suggest such a familiarity. In the Dialogues discussion of evil Philo says: The first circumstance which introduces evil, is that contrivance or œconomy of the animal creation, by which pains, as well as pleasures, are employed to excite all creatures to action, and make them vigilant in the great work of self-preservation. (DNR XI 107)

This passage occurs in a discussion of evil (construed as the presence of pain), and Philo is about to point out that this kind of job might have been performed without introducing pain, but instead by diminishing pleasure. This objection of Hume’s seems to have been a long-standing thought. One of his early memoranda makes a similar point: men ‘might have been determin’d to avoid things harmful & seek the useful by the Augmentation & Diminution of [Pain crossed out] Pleasure as well as by Pain’.¹⁶ This is surely the forerunner of the thought voiced later in the Dialogues. Furthermore, the Dialogues connects functionality with all sentiments. Philo says: All the sentiments of the human mind, gratitude, resentment, love, friendship, approbation, blame, pity, emulation, envy, have a plain reference to the state and situation of man, and are calculated for preserving the existence, and promoting the activity of such a being in such circumstances. (DNR III 58)

In a letter to Hutcheson, Hume connects this idea with moral sentiments. Thus: [S]ince Morality, according to your Opinion, as well as mine, is determin’d merely by Sentiment, it regards only human Nature and human Life . . . What Experience have we with regard to superior Beings? How can we ascribe them any Sentiments at all? They have implanted those Sentiments in us for the Conduct of Life like our bodily sensations, which they possess not themselves. I expect no Answer to these Difficultys in the Compass of a Letter.¹⁷

Notice the parallel between sentiments and bodily sensations we are pursuing. Hutcheson, as we shall see, explicitly models his moral and aesthetic sense on the functional account of bodily pleasure and pain we have just sketched.¹⁸ We have sentiments that incline us toward features conducive to the wellbeing of society. Hutcheson also asks what would motivate God to give us such a moral sense? His answer is that God would have a reason if his sentiments were similar to us: It is plain if the Deity had nothing essential to his nature resembling or analogous to our sweetest and most kind affections we can scarce suppose he could have any reason ¹⁶ ‘Hume’s Early Memoranda, 1729–40: The Complete Text’ (ed.) Mossner, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XI, 1948, s. II, n. 19, p. 501. ¹⁷ The Letters of David Hume (ed.) J. Y. T. Greig, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932 I, pp. 39–40. ¹⁸ The discussion of Hutcheson in what follows builds on Kail (2000) and Kail (2001b).

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exciting him to anything he has done. But grant such a disposition in the Deity and then the manifest tendency of the present constitution to the happiness of his creatures was an exciting reason for choosing [this constitution]. (ENCP 2.1: 108)

It is this to which Hume is objecting. We have no idea what the sentiments of ‘superior beings’ are or indeed whether they have any. But what Hume does not reject is the parallel between moral sentiments and bodily sensation. This passage suggests a working hypothesis: bodily sensations like pleasure and pain have an indicator function with respect to the beneficial and the harmful, Hume’s pleasure and pains of vice and virtue have an analogous indicator function. Bodily pleasures and pains indicate some relational notion of good or bad, namely features which are conducive to the health of the body, or harmful to it. By analogy, the sentiments of virtue and vice indicate some relational notion of good or bad, namely qualities that are agreeable to their possessors and to others. Bodily pleasures and pains elicit appropriate behaviour stances directed towards their object (basic case: desire and aversion) in the absence of any explicit grasp of what features, or even that such features, contribute to bodily wellbeing. Feelings of virtue and vice are directed towards their objects (characters or conventions) in a way that does not necessitate an explicit grasp of what are the feature(s) of the character ‘surveyed’ to which the sentiment is a response. Gradual awareness of what features bodily pleasure and pain indicate leads to standards by such feelings are corrected: pleasure and pain is corrected in line with the discovery that it indicates the healthy and the harmful. Gradual awareness of what features moral sentiments indicate leads to standards of correction: the response to virtue is corrected in line with increasing awareness that it indicates the useful and agreeable. The norms attaching to bodily pleasure and pain are rendered intelligible in terms of the presumption that health is a good: the norms attaching to virtue and vice are rendered intelligible in terms of the presumption that the wellbeing of society and its members is a good. There is no smoking gun for this hypothesis. The case for it rests on contextual facts—or, if one is less charitable, on circumstantial evidence—and how it illuminates the details of Hume’s view of the relation between sentiments, the useful and agreeable and the correction of sentiment. Hutcheson’s use of the moral sense in his rejection of ‘moral rationalism’ and the Hobbesian account of moral distinctions is explicitly modelled on the function of bodily pleasure and pain. Hume also employs similar considerations in rejecting moral rationalism and the Hobbesian scheme which are deeply informed by Hutcheson’s view. The internal details of Hume’s account of moral sentiment, its relation to the useful and the agreeable, and its correction, furthermore, make a great deal of sense against this background. One key difference we shall see is the providential twist Hutcheson gives to the moral sense, one which Hume does not endorse. This difference between the two raises an issue that must be addressed, namely the relation between Hume and Hutcheson and its role in this argument. No one could now agree with A. N.

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Prior’s view that ‘there is little or nothing in Hume’s moral philosophy that cannot be traced to Hutcheson, but in Hume it is more clear and pointed’ (1949: 31). The view that Hume simply lifts his moral philosophy from Hutcheson is demonstrably false, and recent commentators have rightly emphasized their differences (for example Moore 1994, Turco 2003). Hutcheson thinks our moral response is tied to a single feature, namely benevolence, whereas Hume thinks that virtues are comprehended under the disjunction of the useful and agreeable to their possessors and others. Hutcheson takes all virtues to be ‘natural’ in the sense that the objects of evaluation are not products of convention, whereas Hume clearly allows for the category of artificial virtue. Indeed, their difference on justice is perhaps the biggest between them. Hume also takes sympathy to have a central role while Hutcheson does not. These and other differences are great, significant and interesting. But emphasizing the differences should not make us blind to what they have in common.¹⁹ There is much in Hume that comes from Hutcheson, including the tangled knot of considerations purporting to show that reason alone is impotent with regard to moral distinctions. Hutcheson’s Illustrations on the Moral Sense is a key source, on which much of Book 3, Part I of the Treatise, and a good deal of Appendix 1 of the EPM, are based. Hutcheson’s influence is undeniable: but ‘influence’ is not a matter of passive, uncritical absorption. We shall be examining how Hume uses Hutchesonian considerations, and that involves showing where they differ and why. Nevertheless we can see Hume’s view of the function of sentiment as deeply informed by the functional model of pleasure and pain. We proceed by a point by point comparison.

9.3.2 Sentiments, Pleasure and Meaning We noted that for Hume, moral and aesthetic sentiments are treated in definitional contexts as ‘peculiar pleasures and pains’ (s. 7.3.4). Thus, the distinguishing impressions, by which moral good and evil are known, are nothing but particular pains or pleasures . . . An action, or sentiment, or character is virtuous or vicious; why? because its view causes a pleasure or uneasiness of a particular kind. ( T.3.1.2.3; SBN 471 (emphasis original))

In his review of his system at the beginning of Book 3, Part III, he writes that ‘we have already observ’d, that moral distinctions depend entirely on certain peculiar sentiments of pain and pleasure’ (T.3.3.1.2; SBN 574), and when discussing vice and virtue in Book 2 we are told that ‘[Pleasure and pain] are not only inseparable from vice and virtue, but constitute their very essence’ (T.2.1.7.5; ¹⁹ Moore claims that Hutcheson was not a ‘formative and lasting influence upon Hume’s thinking and writing’ (1994: 24) and ‘Hume’s moral philosophy is not at all Hutchesonian in its origin or inspiration’ (54). This extreme thesis is implausible. See Norton (2005) for a rebuttal.

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SBN 296—a comparable claim is made in the next section, when he discusses beauty and deformity). We suggested that the peculiarity owes itself to Hume’s view that moral contents are irreducible and the appeal to pleasures and pains owes itself to a view about how passions are motivated. The same is the case for Hutcheson’s aesthetic and moral senses, where also there are explicit parallels drawn with gustatory pleasure. The term ‘beauty’ ‘properly denotes some perception in the mind’, which is a ‘pleasure’ (Inquiry 1.1.16). This pleasure is dubbed a ‘sensible idea’, and like ‘cold, hot, sweet, bitter’, has no ‘resemblance’ in the object, ‘however much we imagine otherwise’ (Inquiry 1.1.16). The moral ideas are called ‘approbation’ and ‘disapprobation’ (Inquiry 2.1.1), but in the Illustrations on the Moral Sense approbation is understood as ‘pleasant’ (ENCP 2. Preface: 108). The aesthetic pleasure elicits contemplation of the object (Inquiry 1.8.1), the moral approbation procures love in the spectator, directed towards the agent morally appraised (ENCP 2. Preface: 108). For neither Hume nor Hutcheson are these experiences assimilated to desires or similar attitudes: they are explanatory of desires or related attitudes. Hutcheson is explicit on this point, and draws the parallel with gustatory pleasure: Our Sense of Beauty from Objects, by which they are constituted good to us, is very distinct from our Desire of them when they are thus constituted: Our Desire of beauty may be counter-balan’d by Rewards or Threatenings, but never our Sense of it; even as Fear of death may make us desire a bitter potion, or neglect those Meats which the Sense of Taste would recommend as pleasant; but cannot make that Potion agreeable to the Sense, or meat disagreeable to it, which was not so antecedently to this Prospect. (Inquiry 1.1.14)

The importance of this for Hutcheson is as a preliminary for an aestheticized view of moral epistemology. For the aesthetic experience exemplifies a mode of evaluation which is not derived from reflection on how the object of the evaluation benefits the private interests of the spectator. It is prior to this, and elicits contemplation. One’s other interests may override its direction (we may have no time to stop and stare), but its existence is not reducible to the non-aesthetic interests of the spectator. The taste remains the same, and elicits contemplation, even if not manifested in action because of other overriding interests. My taste still presents the bitter potion as disgusting and elicits aversion, but the aversion is not manifested in behaviour: my desire for health masks its manifestation in behaviour. This phenomenological point is important for him as a weapon against the terrible twins, Hobbes and the ‘witty author’ Mandeville. The guiding thought behind the Hobbes/Mandeville scheme (as Hutcheson saw it) is that we are ‘determin’d to Obedience to Laws, or deterr’d from Disobedience, merely by Motives of Self-Interest’ (Inquiry 2.1, Introduction).²⁰ All moral reasoning reduces to non-moral grounds, and its ²⁰ Whether Hutcheson’s characterization of Hobbes is accurate is not so obvious—see Bernie Gert’s introduction to Man and Citizen (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991).

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normative force to the extent to which it furthers the (non-moral) interests of the agent. One of Hutcheson’s key objections is that Hobbes and Mandeville lack the resources to account for distinctly moral content, as opposed to merely prudential: moral distinctions, he claims, simply would not be in circulation without such sentiments.²¹ The moral sense, modelled as it is on the aesthetic, is an irreducible mode of experience, and so moral discriminations are not the result of ‘art, education, custom, [or] policy of subtle views of interest’ (ENCP Preface: 7). Hume, who also thinks ‘moral beauty’ has ‘so near a resemblance’ to natural (EPM Appendix I 13: SBN 287), makes essentially the same point. Any artifice of politicians may assist nature in the producing of these sentiments . . . but ’tis impossible it should be the sole case of the distinction we make betwixt vice and virtue. For if nature did not aid us in this particular, ’twould be in vain to talk of honourable or dishonourable, praiseworthy or blameable. These words wou’d be perfectly unintelligible . . . The utmost politicians can perform, is, to extend the natural sentiments beyond their original bounds; but still nature must furnish the materials, and give us some notion of moral distinctions. ( T 3.2.2.25; SBN 500 (italics original))

So in both Hutcheson and Hume there is a basic form of evaluation, independent of self-interest, and it procures an attitude of love directed towards its object (see T.3.1.2.4; SBN 473). Hutcheson appeals to gustatory pleasure as a model for this irreducible mode of experience. The appeal to such immediate and irreducible pleasures serves a second purpose. Often we have aesthetic or moral responses without reflection or calculation. What the gustatory and aesthetic models suggest is that we can have evaluative experiences that explain the direction of behavioural dispositions towards objects without conceiving them as, say, furthering one’s own interests. The pleasure from eating fruit or listening to music is what Hutcheson calls ‘antecedent to our interests’ (Inquiry 2.1). We do not derive pleasure from, say, particular foods, because we think or even know them to be good for us, or further our own advantage (though sometimes we may do so). The food is presented to us as pleasurable, whatever other advantages the food may bestow upon us. Pleasurable experience presents objects as valuable²² and hence desired. ‘We do not’ he writes ‘perceive Pleasure in Objects, because it is in our interest to do so; but Objects or Actions are advantageous, and pursu’d . . . because we receive Pleasure from them’ (Inquiry 2, Introduction). This is a preface to an analogous point about moral experience: [S]ome actions have to Men an immediate Goodness; or that by a superior Sense, which I call a Moral one, we approve the actions of others, and perceive them to be their Perfection and Dignity, and are determin’d to love the Agent . . . without any View of natural Advantage from them. (Inquiry 2, Introduction) ²¹ On this point see the editor’s introduction to the Illustrations on the Moral Sense (ed.) B. Peach (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971: 78 ff ). ²² This was discussed in Ch. 7.

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This immediacy of response is emphasized in Hume. Thus ‘we do not infer a character to be virtuous because it pleases: but in feeling that it pleases after such a particular manner we in effect feel that it is virtuous’ (T 3.1.2.3; SBN 471). It is important not to confuse the claim that gustatory, aesthetic and moral pleasures are ‘antecedent to interest’ with a denial that they have any indicator function. Bodily pleasures and pains are certainly tied to promoting the interests of subjects: their wellbeing. But it is the pleasure and the pain which elicit respectively the desire or aversion and hence the action, not the belief that one’s body will be nourished or damaged. That belief may motivate action through awareness that it is in my self-interest to eat, say, these bland cereals rather than the bacon and egg: but the pleasure of eating bacon and egg remains a standing source of motivation which is ‘antecedent to interest’. The aesthetic and moral experiences are the same: independently of our own interests we may have, certain features are presented valuable, and hence desirable. Hutcheson’s point is that such responses are generally in line with our interests, and are themselves a source of value. Hence: even as Fear of death may make us desire a bitter potion, or neglect those Meats which the Sense of Taste would recommend as pleasant; but cannot make that Potion agreeable to the Sense, or meat disagreeable to it, which was not so antecedently to this Prospect.²³

9.3.3 The Relational Values and Projection The function of bodily pleasures and pains is to promote bodily wellbeing. They are immediate responses to relational values, construed as the healthy and the harmful. What are the relational values to which moral and aesthetic experiences are responses? Hutcheson’s answer with respect to aesthetic sentiments is ‘uniformity amidst variety’, and he is at pains to emphasize that ‘pleasant Sensation arises only from Objects, in which there is Uniformity amidst Variety’.²⁴ This candidate feature puzzles some commentators, especially given the inordinate amount of time spent discussing the beauty of geometrical figures and mathematics.²⁵ But the answer becomes clearer when we know what the function of the aesthetic experience is, and here again the parallel with bodily sensations comes to the fore: as the AUTHOR of Nature has determin’d us to receive, by our external Senses, pleasant or disagreeable Ideas of Objects, according as they are useful or hurtful to our Bodys: . . . [we] receive from uniform Objects the Pleasures of Beauty and Harmony, to excite us to the Pursuit of Knowledge and reward us for it.²⁶

Just as the experience of bodily pleasure and pain leads to the promotion of bodily health by getting us to pursue or avoid what is healthy or harmful, ²³ Inquiries, I, 1, xiv. ²⁴ Inquiries, I, 2, xiv. See also Inquiries, I, 2, iii. ²⁵ George Dickie (1996: 18) for example, says that it is ‘hard to see the point’ of it. ²⁶ Inquiries, II, 1, viii (italics original).

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our experience of beauty—uniformity amid variety—leads to the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge. The answer lies in the fact that uniformity amidst variety is the mark of a good explanation, by Hutcheson’s lights. Explanations seek to render seemingly disparate phenomena intelligible in terms of simpler elements, by finding uniformity amidst variety. We become drawn to, interested in, this feature in virtue of the pleasing aspect that the experience of beauty presents it under, in the same way that we are drawn to the healthy by the pleasant gustatory experience it is presented under. Thus: how suitable it is . . . [for the deity], to constitute our internal Senses in the manner in which they are; by which Pleasure is join’d to the Contemplation of those Objects which a finite Mind can best imprint and retain the Ideas of with the least Distraction; to those Actions which are the most efficacious, and fruitful in useful Effects; and those Theorems which most inlarge our Minds.²⁷

This passage follows a discussion of a supposition of a ‘contrary sense of beauty’, whereby we experience irregular objects and particular truths as beautiful. Here again the function of the aesthetic sentiments is made explicit: if irregular Objects, particular Truths and Operations pleased us, beside the endless Toil this would involve us in, there must be a perpetual Dissatisfaction in all Rational Agents with themselves; since Reason and Interest would lead us to simple general Causes, while a contrary Sense of Beauty would make us disapprove them: Universal Theorems would appear to our Understanding the best Means of increasing our Knowledge of what might be useful; while a contrary Sense would set us on the search after particular Truths.²⁸

So both bodily sensations and the sense of beauty direct us towards objects that relate to some specific purposes, bodily health on the one hand and the acquisition of knowledge on the other. Hume’s Treatise account of aesthetic responses identifies the relational good, namely the useful and the agreeable. Wherever an object has a tendency to produce a pleasure in the possessor, or in other words, is the proper cause of pleasure, it is sure to please the spectator, by a delicate sympathy with the possessor. Most of the works of art are esteem’d beautiful, in proportion to their fitness for the use of man, and even many of the productions of nature derive their beauty from that source. Handsome and beautiful, on most occasions, is not an absolute but a relative quality, and pleases us by nothing but its tendency to produce an end that is agreeable. ( T 3.3.1.8; SBN 576–7 (emphasis original))

By way of illustration, Hume goes on to quote Quintilian in a footnote to this passage: A horse whose flanks are compact is not only better to look upon, but swifter in speed. The athlete whose muscles have been formed by exercise is a joy to the eye, but he is also better fitted for the contests in which he must engage. In fact true beauty and usefulness ²⁷ Inquiries, I, 8, ii.

²⁸ Inquiries, I, 8, ii.

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always go hand in hand. It does not, however, require any special ability to discern the truth of this.²⁹

The aesthetic experience is linked to items especially fitted to certain tasks, thus giving us a relational value. Whereas Hutcheson understood the aesthetic sense in terms of an overall end of understanding nature, Hume in the Treatise³⁰ goes for the marriage of form and function.³¹ What of the relational good in the moral case? Hutcheson’s view of the overarching function of the moral sense has the end as the ‘good of the society of the whole’, and again there is a parallel with bodily sensation: Notwithstanding the mighty Reason we boast of above other Animals, its Processes are too slow, too full of doubt and hesitation, to serve us in every Exigency, either for our own Preservation, without the external Senses, or to direct our Actions for the Good of the Whole, without this moral Sense. (Inquiry 2.8.3)

To this end, Hutcheson thinks our moral responses indicate a single feature that is conducive to the ‘Good of the Whole’: benevolence. In valuing benevolence we value a relational good, a feature that promotes the wellbeing of society as a whole. Like our sense of taste, we are responsive to a feature which promotes wellbeing, but this time a feature which promotes the wellbeing of society and not merely our own. We reflect upon characters and receive a pleasure upon that reflection, one which is ‘antecedent to our interests’. We find ourselves, that is, positively evaluating characters whose tendencies are such as to promote the wellbeing of the whole, and a response that directs our love to those characters. For Hume, the relational values are the useful and agreeable to one’s self and others. Hume never questions the idea that certain items can be relational goods, items that are suitable or fit to contribute to some end. The virtues, he writes, ‘have, for the most part, a tendency to the good of society or to that of the person possess’d of them’ (T 3.3.6.1; SBN 618).³² Where a person is possess’d of a character, that in its natural tendency is beneficial to society, we esteem him virtuous, and are delighted with the view of his character. ( T 3.3.1.19; SBN 584)

For Hutcheson our moral responses are ‘hard-wired’ to the single underlying feature of benevolence, whereas Hume’s view is more pluralistic and more plausible. Such responses can also be extended beyond characters and toward the ²⁹ David Fate Norton’s translation. ³⁰ For a discussion of ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, see s. 9.6. ³¹ ‘[T]he rules of architecture require, that the top of a pillar shou’d be more slender than its base, and that because such a figure conveys to us the idea of security which is pleasant; whereas the contrary form gives us the apprehension of danger, which is uneasy’ ( T 2.1.8.2; SBN 299). ³² ‘If usefulness . . . be a source of moral sentiment, and if this usefulness be not always considered with a reference to self; it follows, that everything which contributes to the happiness of society, recommends itself directly to our approbation and good-will’ (EPM 5.2.17; SBN 219).

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utility of convention. Virtues are virtues because of their tendency³³ to contribute to the good of society and/or more local matters: namely their possessors and those in the immediate circle.³⁴

9.3.4 Reflex Sentiments & Sensitivity Hume likens the perceptions of vice, virtue and beauty to secondary qualities. We interpreted that as explanatorily projective, as the idea that we experience a range of objects as essentially valuable, though no object is ‘desirable of itself ’. Hutcheson calls the idea of beauty a ‘sensible idea’ and compares it to ‘cold, hot, sweet, bitter’. He implies that we suppose there to be a resemblance between the property and the response by asserting that such ideas have no ‘resemblance’ in the object, ‘however much we imagine otherwise’ (Inquiry 1.1.16). Hume does not seem unduly fazed by the discovery. And this discovery [sc. that virtue ‘is a perception of the mind’] in morals, like that other in physics, is to be regarded as a considerable advancement of the speculative sciences; tho’, like that too, it has little or no influence on practice. Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue, and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behaviour. ( T 3.1.1.26; SBN 469)

And from ‘The Sceptic’: This doctrine, however, takes off no more from the reality of the latter qualities [sc. virtue and vice], than from that of the former [sc. colour]; nor need it give any umbrage either to critics or moralists. Though colours were allowed to lie only in the eye, would dyers or painters ever be less regarded or esteemed? There is a sufficient uniformity in the senses and feelings of mankind, to make all these qualities the objects of art and reasoning, and to have the greatest influence on life and manners. And as it is certain, that the discovery above-mentioned in natural philosophy, makes no alteration on action and conduct; why should a like discovery in moral philosophy make any alteration? (EMPL 166n)

There are a number of thoughts here. First, the projective error is sufficiently stubborn to prevent its discovery altering our conduct. In the lived-in world, things will continue to appear golden, even when I know that it is only the appearance that contains the gold. Secondly, our responses are sufficiently uniform to ensure that our conduct and evaluation will remain uniform. So the discovery is no cause for concern. Perhaps Hume is too complacent, but there is another reason why the discovery is not too worrisome. For such experiences, like those of bodily pleasure and pain, serve the function of rendering ³³ Here I agree with Sayre-McCord (1996) that the objects of moral approval—the virtues—are grounded character dispositions, whose worth derives from being particularly well-suited to serving some end or purpose, rather than simply of their actual consequences. ³⁴ Using the notion of good to include the agreeable.

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salient to thinkers the features that are relational values. By experiencing the useful and agreeable under the distinct evaluative modes—as essentially valuable—they become objects of concern and of passion for human beings. This fits nicely with the parallel we are developing. The sense in which morality ‘is more properly felt than judg’d of ’ (T 3.1.2.1; SBN 470) is that the moral mode of experience renders to us relational values which would otherwise not be the object of immediate concern. These experiences render such objects salient to us even when we lack a grasp of what grounds their merit. Thus: the distinguishing impressions, by which moral good and evil are known, are nothing but particular pains or pleasures . . . An action, or sentiment, or character is virtuous or vicious; why? because its view causes a pleasure or uneasiness of a particular kind. ( T.3.1.2.3; SBN 471 (emphasis original))

The suggestion is that the relational value of its objects become salient—‘are known’—through its being experienced under the mode of pleasure, just as the goodness of the fruit became known through gustatory pleasure for Malebranche. This function is suggested when Hume says that since ‘vice and virtue are not discoverable by reason, . . . it must be by means of some impression or sentiment they occasion, that we are able to mark the difference betwixt them’ (T 3.1.2.1; SBN 470). There is some agreeable ‘impression arising from virtue . . . and that from vice . . . disagreeable’ (T 3.1.2.2; SBN 470 (my emphasis)). We noted that for Hume the moral and aesthetic perceptions are reflective pleasures and pains: unlike bodily pleasures and pains, they are responsive to ideas of objects rather than being ‘original’ perceptions (cf. s. 8.2.1). Hutcheson shares in this and this is what he means by the ‘inner senses’. He defines such a sense as ‘a determination of the mind, to receive any Idea from the presence of an object which occurs to us, independent of our will’ (Inquiry 2.1.1).³⁵ This is not entirely perspicuous because ‘presence of an object’ does not pick out what makes an inner sense distinctively inner. But in a long note in Essay Concerning the Nature and the Conduct of the Passions (1.1: 12 n3) Hutcheson makes it clear that the causally relevant object is an idea or representation of some item, and not an ‘external object’ directly affecting the perceiver. In the case of a knife cutting one’s flesh, the pain is not mediated by a representation of the knife—the causation is rather more direct than that. The perception of pleasure in reflective senses is triggered by features of the representation of the object and not the object of that representation. That the moral and aesthetic sentiments have as their distal causes ideas of ‘external’ items seems to threaten the parallel we are developing between the role of bodily sensation and the evaluative sentiments. Bodily pleasure and pain indicate the relational goods and evils and, furthermore, have their function in ³⁵ Here he is talking about the moral sense, but the same holds true for the aesthetic sense—see the Preface to the Inquiry.

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order to make up for the relative lack of knowledge of the nature of the relational good or even when the subject lacks the belief that the item to which she is responding is a relational value. But if the sentiments are responsive to ideas of objects—ideas of uniformity amidst variety, of benevolence, of utility and agreeableness, then it seems that the subject already understands what it is to which they are responding. So the claim that the sentiments make up for lack of knowledge of the relational values seems misguided.³⁶ This objection is mistaken. To see why, we need to move from the account of aesthetic experience to moral experience. Recall that for Hutcheson the aesthetic sentiment is triggered by uniformity amidst variety, and we now know that the distal cause of that is the idea of an object that exhibits such a feature. But that the idea is the cause of the sentiment and the idea represents an object exhibiting that feature is very different from the subject having a grasp that such and such an object exhibits this feature, understanding what that feature is or understanding why such and such an object produces that response. The idea represents the property and the idea is the distal cause of the pleasure, but consciousness of that property via its representation is not consciousness that such and such instantiates uniformity amidst variety. My cat, for example, has experiences (= ideas) that represent to him shape, colour and so on, but he is not in a position to articulate or be conscious that he is experiencing shape or colour. With respect to experiences representing a certain relation—uniformity amidst variety—among the objects of aesthetics experience, that relational property is presented in the experience: the lines in the picture, or the harmonious relation of notes, and we respond without having to reflect upon, or be in a position to articulate, the property to which we are responding. This is a common enough phenomenon: people with no musical education respond to harmony, though when asked what it is they are responding to, they may be in no position to say much. Thus: the pleasure is communicated to those who never reflected on this general foundation [that is uniformity amidst variety] . . . We may have the Sensation without knowing what is the Occasion of it; as a Man’s Taste may suggest Ideas of Sweets, Acids, Bitters, tho’ he be ignorant of the Forms of the small Bodys, or their Motions, which excite these Perceptions in him. (Inquiry 1.2.14)

A second point: one’s capacity to understand what it is in the representation of the object to which one is responding is a matter of degree, and may involve practice, study and the like. It is not an all or nothing affair. But what Hutcheson identifies is what he thinks all aesthetic experiences have in common, and in that sense uniformity is the foundation of beauty. It does not commit him to the idea that we recognize that all such experiences have this relational property ³⁶ This also lends support to the non-cognitivist conception of the role of sentiments, namely that we have beliefs whose contents concern only non-evaluative facts and attitudes directed towards those objects.

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as its object.³⁷ After the correlation is noticed, we can reflect upon it, and its ‘general foundation’, turning our attention to further beauties in light of our understanding: but our initial and untutored responses are responses to the relational good, the simple among the complex which contributes to this end. With this in mind, let us turn to moral responses. What Hume and Hutcheson offer is a theoretical account of our moral thinking and its first-order practice. First-order practice involves—on any account of it—not only an evaluative response (the pleasures and pains of the moral sense) but basic norms of assessment, which recognize requirements such as the need for disinterestedness, the lack of relevant false belief and the need for relevant information of both sufficient quantity and quality. This part of our practice is pursued in ordinary life, and can be pursued without any theoretical underpinning. Our responses are reflective in that they are mediated through thoughts or concepts, but what is not so obvious is that our initial responses to characters need involve a grasp of their being useful, agreeable or benevolent, or that we explicitly understand the objects of the response as useful or agreeable. Nor, furthermore, need we have any grasp that what they have in common is conduciveness to the wellbeing of humanity. The objects of evaluation—characters and institutions—can be presented in thought under different descriptions, and under descriptions of different degrees of richness or articulation, or where relevant information is lacking. At a very basic level, moral reaction (construed simply as an evaluation of character) can be elicited without the spectator being able to articulate quite what it is they find objectionable, or what feature to which they are reacting. In other words, I need not have a full grasp of what it is that grounds my reaction. Thus on meeting someone, I may find her somewhat disagreeable but be hard-pressed to articulate what it was I found so objectionable (‘I don’t know, she just seemed a bit shifty’). Further information and reflection may reinforce, render more sophisticated, or otherwise change this original response. Initial responses to acts or characters may lead to the categorization of the objects of those responses under certain thicker concepts (honesty, trustworthiness, deceit etc.), which in turn leads to a more articulate presentation of the feature to which one is responding. But that does not yet mean that one is fully aware of that to which one is responding, nor why one has that response. More exposure and finer sensitivity leads ultimately to a full awareness of the features that elicit the evaluative attitude. ³⁷ This relieves Hutcheson of a problem Kivy (1995) lands on his doorstep. Kivy rightly says that, according to Hutcheson, one need not know which properties elicit one’s sentiment, and so, to use Kivy’s term, the sense is ‘non-epistemic’. Kivy then argues that this makes it difficult to see how uniformity amidst variety can elicit the sentiment. Thus he says, for example, ‘it is in awareness of [this property], not its hidden causal powers, that our aesthetic pleasure lies’ (1995: 354). This elides the distinction between an idea or experience representing a property (and so the property has ‘intentional presence’) and the subject knowing what his experience represents. That seems right in many cases; we cannot say what features of an experience elicit our aesthetic reactions, but that is not the same as saying that those properties are not presented in experience. We might say that the beauty of an experience is an aspect of its non-conceptual content.

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Moral discriminations, without any explicit theory, are situation and information sensitive (was he really being friendly? Is he too involved?) but the ends to which this information bears may not be considered, and may only emerge under full reflection. To what, and to what end, is such correction of sentiment in the light for information about partiality and information quality sensitive? People are responsive to a range of features in a distinctly moral way, but there is a further question to ask concerning what they are ultimately responsive to and why they are so responsive. That is something of which someone engaged in the practice need have no inkling,³⁸ just as Edmund finds his tuna pleasant without any inclination about why he is so responsive. This is why Hume treats his account as explanatory and as having the status of an empirical discovery. His ‘very simple method’ is to ‘analyse that complication of mental qualities, which form what, in common life, we call Personal Merit’ (EPM 1.11; SBN 173 my emphasis), and thence: discover the circumstances on both sides, which are common to these qualities; to observe that particular in which the estimable qualities agree on the one hand, and the blameable on the other; and thence to reach to the foundation of ethics, and find those universal principles, from which all censure or approbation is ultimately derived. (EPM 1.11; SBN 174 my emphasis)

Prior though to this investigation we have untutored responses: The social virtues must . . . be allowed to have a natural beauty and amiableness, which, at first, antecedent to all precept or education, recommend them to the esteem of uninstructed mankind, and engages their affections. And as the public utility of these virtues is the chief circumstance, when they derive their merit, it follows, that the end, which they have the tendency to promote, must be some way agreeable to us, and take hold of some natural affection. (EPM 5.1.4; SBN 214)

So although prior to Hume’s investigation into the origin of moral experience we respond to features such as friendliness and courage, it takes an empirical investigation to understand what it is that unites these as virtues. It is their utility or immediate agreeability that contributes to overall wellbeing, but our grasp of that is at best implicit. The sentimental response is a response to these features without our explicit grasp of this fact, as bodily pleasure and pain is a response to the healthy and the harmful. That this is how Hume sees matters is supported in the second Enquiry. He writes: It may justly appear surprising, that any man, in so late an age, should find it requisite to prove, by elaborate reasoning, that PERSONAL MERIT consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities, useful or agreeable . . . It might be expected, that this principle would have occurred to the first rude, unpracticed enquirers concerning morals. (EPM 9.1.1; SBN 268) ³⁸ Or indeed, have their view skewed by a false account, such as a religious ethic.

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He then says two things. First, philosophy and religion confuse matters with offering incorrect accounts of what morality consists in. Such accounts obscure matters. Secondly, he says that ‘in common life, these principles are still implicitly maintained’ (EPM 9.1.2; SBN 269 (my emphasis)), implying that common life conducts itself without an explicit grasp of that to which they (the principles) are responding. The ‘discovery’ is an explicit representation of what we think implicitly. Having introduced the moral sentiments, Hume sees his task as answering this ‘simple question’, namely ‘why any action or sentiment upon the general view or survey, gives a certain satisfaction or uneasiness’ (T 3.1.2.11; SBN 475). We start with a position whereby a certain range of features are presented as valuable to us. The sense in which they are presented as valuable ‘is more properly felt then judg’d’ in that we respond straightforwardly to certain characters and are disposed to make basic evaluations. We can, and often do, find this a morally admirable quality without reflecting any further on the grounds for our moral admiration. Once the moral sentiment picks out, say, friendliness at this low-grade level of sensitivity, friendliness becomes a salient feature in evaluation. Once that feature is picked out we may subsequently reflect on the circumstances of mismatch between character trait and sentiment. This can include apparent friendliness (for example that of a salesman), the limitations of sympathy acting at a distance (the tale of friendliness in a long past era),³⁹ the interplay of virtues and vices (the friendly but arrogant bore) or of the biasing of one’s sentimental reactions by envy, and so on. What Hutcheson and Hume attempt to bring out in their theoretical accounts of the practice is that those responses, and the practice of their correction, have as their objects a set of relational goods. For Hutcheson the relational good is benevolence, a tendency to contribute to the wellbeing of society as a whole: for Hume the virtues ‘have, for the most part, a tendency to the good of society or to that of the person possess’d of them’ (T 3.3.6.1; SBN 618). To make this clearer, let us distinguish between that to which we are sensitive, the mode of sensitivity under which we are so sensitive, and the quality of this sensitivity. Take the relation between bodily damage and pain. The object of sensitivity is bodily damage, and the mode of sensitivity involved is a sensory presentation of bodily damage. The quality of this mode of sensitivity is lowgrade in the following sense: though painful sensation is awareness of bodily damage, it is not itself awareness that one’s body is damaged (or such damage ³⁹ Of course if the scene is well-represented in fiction or art, the description of the character trait can evoke a sentiment approaching the vivacity which would be evoked if one were actually ‘there’. Hume is well aware that good presentation of history can bring the past ‘back to life’, and indeed the vivid portraits of figures in his History of England was sometimes the grounds for complaint. Thomas Jefferson complained of Hume’s History of England that ‘so plausible & pleasing in it’s style & manner, as to instil it’s errors & heresies insensibly into the minds of unwary readers’ (Letter to John Norvell, June 14, 1807).

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is likely). The experience, in virtue of its painful character, prompts the subject to take action appropriate to the object of that mode of sensitivity. The point of such a mode of sensitivity is to prompt appropriate action in creatures who lack the concepts requisite to form and explicitly grasp the judgement ‘region x of my body is threatened’ when action must be taken. A more sophisticated creature may be able to grasp explicitly the object of sensitivity, and form judgements which reinforce the low-grade awareness. For example, sitting at an uncomfortable desk produces back pain which prompts the subject to rearrange her seating, though she may be ignorant of the necessity for correct posture and of the potential damage to the spine. A doctor who has a better grasp of such matters may tell her much more about the possible damage to her spine, and her subsequent grasp of this fact may lend the feelings of discomfort more authority in virtue of her awareness that they are a sensitivity to such potential damage. Long before doctors, however, nature determined us to be sensitive to such problems under a mode which disposed the subject to avoid them. A subject who lacked all feeling could avoid bodily damage only if she had a pretty thorough understanding of the workings of her body, and paid constant attention to all of it: a demanding task indeed. What sentiment does is render features salient to the thinker, by presenting them under pleasurable or painful modes of sensitivity. The moral sense then does this: it presents to the subject certain features, namely those conducive to the wellbeing of society, under a particular mode which renders them salient to the thinker, as features of concern, or applause, or condemnation. This is owing to the fact that the mode of experience or thought under which they are presented to us have certain properties, namely pleasure and pain, which themselves determine the experiences’ affective powers, their relation to desire or aversion. Those properties are projected onto the object of the experience so that the subject experiences or believes the objects of those experiences to be desirable or undesirable, to be pursued or avoided. As we have said, (and Hume himself notes) some error is committed here. But more important than the error is its result. Through projected sentiment, the natural virtues and vices become detected in the sense that they become salient to us, and become the objects of pride, love, hatred and humility.

9 . 4 T H E C O R R E C T I O N O F S E N T I M E N T: S E N S I T I V I T Y, S E C O N D A RY QUA L I T I E S A N D R E A L I S M

9.4.1 Realism, Identity and Correction We continue our comparison with Hutcheson and Hume with respect to the moral sense, sentiment and its correction. However, I have divided this section off since the discussion here is focused on the issue of realism. For it concerns

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the claim that moral features can be identified with natural virtues, namely the relational values to which moral sentiments respond. Though our thought and experience by which those items are ‘discovered’—by which, that is, they are rendered salient to us—involve a projection inasmuch as we experience them as essentially valuable, the reflective enterprise Hume and Hutcheson engage can be understood as a theoretical account of what virtue and vice consist in.⁴⁰ We discover that virtue is benevolence (for Hutcheson) or the useful or agreeable (for Hume). Recall that Descartes thought that colour could be identified with the microphysical structure. The ordinary or commonsensical view of colour is false but nevertheless a theoretical account of that to which we are responding can be given (cf. s. 9.3.4). The idea we shall be pursuing is that both Hume and Hutcheson’s accounts parallel this suggestion (though with important differences). Their respective settled position is the identification of moral facts with relational values. The case for this turns on the correction of sentiments and our analogy with moral sentiments and the indicator function of bodily pleasure and pain. It also returns us to the notion of ‘powers’ and their relation to secondary qualities, introduced earlier (s. 7.3.2). Short of an error theory, our other candidates for virtues and vices are ‘powers’ to elicit sentiments. Crucially, we shall see that the way both authors understand the correction of sentiment precludes identifying virtues and vices with powers to elicit to the sentiments: instead it implies that virtues and vices are features (the relational values) that have such powers but which are not identical to them. This thereby leaves the relational values as the best candidates for moral facts: facts that are ‘discovered’ or rendered salient to us through feeling. Let us illustrate this with the analogy of bodily pain and bodily damage. The concepts of pain and bodily damage are distinct but if we take the former to be a natural sign of the latter, the latter acquires the term ‘evil’ from the kind of experience the former furnishes. Our tendency then to refer to the region of our body as ‘bad’ can be understood in two ways. The first is to say that it is disposed to produce pain in me, thereby identifying its badness with the disposition to elicit the unpleasant experience. The second is to say that there is something wrong with my body and we subsequently identify the badness with the damage: badness is bodily damage and has the power to elicit pain, but the badness is not the power. This second view in outline, is how Hutcheson and Hume model the relational between virtue and sentiment.

9.4.2 Two Views of Power and Secondary Qualities Revisited Hutcheson, as well as Hume, compares values with secondary qualities. Chapter 7 argued that for Hume the Comparison is made in order to illustrate a point about the vulgar conception of virtue and vice, beauty and deformity, as essential ⁴⁰ For a contemporary view like this, see Railton (2003).

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values. Hutcheson too takes it that we imagine a resemblance between property and response. But as noted in section 7.1, Hume’s Comparison is read by some as a claim to the effect that values are powers or dispositions to elicit responses. So too is Hutcheson’s as we shall see. It seems then possible to combine our projective reading of the Comparison with a reading of values as powers or dispositions by distinguishing between the vulgar conception of them and a theoretical claim about their ontology, again akin to Descartes’ view of colour. Some commentators come close to this suggestion. Sturgeon, for example, defends a dispositional view and is careful to distinguish it from the ordinary thinkers concept of that property (2001: 7–8), and Goldman (1990: 76) defends dispositionalism but admits that our thoughts contain an element of ‘projective error’. The notion of power in this connection has two broad senses, which I call causalism and dispositionalism. Causalism is Descartes’ view (cf. s. 7.2.1). We identify the colour with the property causally responsible for the sensation. Objects are disposed to produce an experience of such and such a kind, and we suppose that the colour is that which causally underpins this tendency. The property is secondary because the causal properties of the objects are explained in terms of the mechanical properties of arrangements of primary qualities, which the colour sensation does not resemble. The relation between the property that is the colour and the colour experience is a matter of the latter fixing the reference for the former.⁴¹ Once the reference is fixed, it remains true that the object is red even when, because of changes in observers or the environment, it ceases to appear red (produce the sensation) in those observers, since the colour is identical to a type of microphysical structure, a structure it retains even when observer’s responses vary. This view is closer to Hume and Hutcheson’s view of the relation of sentiments to virtues than conventionalism, but nevertheless it is incorrect. First it is driven by an assumption that there is, independent of the experience, a way to categorize the causally relevant property, other than in terms of the fact that it is such as to cause the experience. Secondly, if the relational virtues are the causes of the sentiments and we identify the causes of sentiments with secondary qualities, then the relational values—benevolence, the useful and the agreeable—are secondary qualities: surely the wrong result. A comparison with colour brings this point out. This post box is red; this post box causes red experiences; the colour is identical to the cause of the experience; therefore redness is identical to this post box. This is fallacious primarily because it confuses the ‘is’ of identity with the ‘is’ of predication. ‘This post box is red’ is true in virtue of our predicating of it a property that causes the red experience, and it is that which is the secondary quality. So if we were to say that Hume and Hutcheson hold that virtue and vices are secondary qualities in the causalist sense, we would then need to hold that the relational values have some property, other than their being relational values, that ⁴¹ This is the essence of Kripke’s view of colour—see Kripke (1980).

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causes the experience. But there is no evidence at all that Hume or Hutcheson thought that way. Furthermore, the distal causes of such sentiments are ideas of these features, rendering the search from some independently intelligible, causally efficacious, property possessed by such relational values, redundant. Virtues have the requisite causal grounds to elicit sentiments, but only in virtue of our thoughts about them: virtues are not identical to the powers. But our view is like causalism, in that the responses are responses to something that we may not fully grasp when we have that response. Our response is a response to virtue—the relational good—without our fully understanding that that is to what we are responding.⁴² A different understanding of ‘power’ has it that virtue and vice are like powers in the dispositionalist sense. Hume writes that his sentimental hypothesis ‘defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary’ (EPM Appendix I 10; SBN 289 (emphasis original)). This ‘definition’ can be read as a claim about the constitution of virtue: what virtues have in common is merely the fact that they are disposed to elicit the sentiment, never mind what the causal basis of that disposition is.⁴³ They are so constituted conceptually speaking: our concept of a virtue is the concept of any object disposed to elicit a sentimental response. ‘X is red’ is true just in case it is such to look red. ‘X is a virtue’ just in case it is such as to produce the sentiment. Moral facts would then consist in natural facts, namely facts about how such things are so disposed to elicit sentiments. More precisely, what makes it true that ‘x is a virtue’ or ‘x is red’ is not simply its being such as to elicit the sentiment or colour sensation, but being disposed to do so in normal observers under normal conditions. We recognize a distinction between something’s being red and its merely seeming red, and something’s seeming virtuous and its being so. We secure a distinction between correct and incorrect, with the idea that virtue consists in its being disposed to elicit sentiments in normal observers under normal conditions, and its being so disposed constitutes its virtue, whereas causalism secures the distinction by identifying redness with some particular type of microphysical structure. It is still its being disposed to elicit a certain sentiment that constitutes an object’s virtue, but the invocation of normality prevents an extreme Protagorean relativism. This seems to be what Gilbert Harman understands by the comparison with secondary qualities: For an object to be red is . . . for an object to be such that it would look red to normal observers in good light. Similarly, for Hutcheson and Hume, for an action to be wrong is ⁴² Cf. Winkler (1985) and (1996). ⁴³ Relational values are dispositional in that they have a tendency to promote some good end. The point though is that virtues are not such simply because of their tendency to produce the moral sentiment. Secondary qualities here are dispositions but not all dispositions are secondary qualities; secondary qualities consist in dispositions to produce experiences.

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for the action to be such that it would displease normal observers under conditions ideal for reacting to actions. (1986: 2)⁴⁴

It is vitally important to understand that these notions are constitutive, and not merely epistemic. What constitutes something’s being a virtue is its relation to the sentimental reactions of normal observers under normal conditions. In the extreme case, being red just is seeming red to someone and nothing else. But to account for different judgements, we make being red seeming red to a privileged class of observers under a privileged set of conditions. Once we know that we satisfy the conditions necessary for being normal, and the object seems red to us, then it is red because that is what redness consists in. So being virtuous is just producing the sentiment under normal conditions in normal observers and nothing more. This view of the constitution of colour and virtue brings with it considerable complexities but thankfully these need not concern us here.⁴⁵ What is important for us to know is what the moral analogues of normal observation and normal conditions are for Hume and Hutcheson, and how they bear of the correction of sentiment. The key point is brought out by contrasting the role of suitable observers and conditions in shape and colour perception respectively. Square things are disposed to elicit a response—the perceptual experience as of square—but can and do appear differently to different people under different conditions (taking drugs in a hall of mirrors may make square things look systematically distorted). You have to be in the right conditions and be the right kind of observer to ensure that your perceptual experience is properly responsive to shape. So square things are disposed to seem square to us, but only to normal observers under normal conditions. But looking so to normal observers does not constitute their squareness: conditions and observers are normal because they get things right with respect to that property. Normal observers and conditions for the observation of shape are those where one’s experience reliably tracks squareness itself. For, importantly, we can understand squareness in ways other than its disposition to elicit an appearance in us, and in light of that understanding we correct for distortions of perspective or of our perceptual apparatus. In the case of colour, on this view at any rate, there is no other way in which to characterize the property except in terms of its effect on observers. Being red just is the tendency an object has to look red. The roles of normal conditions and observers is then somewhat different from those played in shape perception. On the one hand, we have no way of characterizing red except in terms of its effect on us, but on the other we have a great variation of response, ⁴⁴ I shall ignore Harman’s use of the word ‘ideal’ since it introduces unnecessary complications, namely the problem of determining ‘ideal’ in a non-circular way. For Hutcheson see also Radcliffe (1986) and the editor’s introduction to D. H. Munro (ed.) A Guide to the British Moralists (London: Fontana, 1972: 22). For a reading of Hume along these lines, see e.g. Pitson (1989) and Shaw (1993). ⁴⁵ For further discussion see e.g. Wright (1992: ch. 3).

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owing to the different conditions of observers and of observation. To avoid this conflict, certain conditions and certain observers are taken as normal as a matter of convention, albeit implicitly. We fix on some set of circumstances and one particular class of observers and allow something to be red or virtuous if it is apt to elicit the response under those circumstances. In order to determine that one’s sentimental reactions are the correct ones, one needs to make sure that one is just that kind of observer and in just that kind of situation. One corrects one’s response by making sure that one is the right kind of observer and in the right kind of situation because getting the responses in that situation makes it true that the object is virtuous. We shall see that, actually, matters are the other way round: a sensibility is correct just because it is correctly responsive to virtues, construed as relational values: they are not valuable because the response is made by some independently specifiable normal observer under independently specifiable normal conditions.

9.4.3 Dispositionalism Rejected: Hutcheson In the moral case, the obvious sense in which the response of an observer is inappropriate is when she lacks relevant information or has false beliefs. Of this Hutcheson is clearly aware. Thus: Our reason does often correct the report of our senses about the natural tendency of the external action, and corrects rash conclusions about the affections of agents.⁴⁶

A colour analogy here would be, for example, the requirement to correct the judgement based on one’s present experience that the object is red because one has just been told that the sodium lights are on. Further information impacts upon your response-based judgement, and serves to correct it. But as yet this does not give us any constitutive relation between virtue, response and observer. It simply says that sentiments can be corrected. There is a different notion of ‘normal observers’ that is more material to the present question. Consider this question asked by Hutcheson: But may there be not a right or wrong state of our moral sense, as there is in our other senses, according as they represent their objects to be as they really are, or represent them otherwise? So may not our moral sense approve what is vicious, and disapprove virtue, as a sickly palate may dislike grateful food, or a vitiated sight misrepresent colours or dimensions?⁴⁷

A correct or normal moral sensibility is one that is responsive to virtue and vice. As it stands, it is viciously circular and uninformative since we would ⁴⁶ On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (ed.) A. Ward (Manchester: Clinamen, 1997), Treatise II, s. 4, p. 142. ⁴⁷ ECNP, II, 4, 141–2 (italics original).

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have no understanding of ‘normal’ independent of virtue and vice: it would simply say that normal conditions are those when we correctly judge the vice and virtue. Secondly, the parallel between a sickly palate and grateful food on the one hand, and virtue and sentiment on the other, suggests a rather different way of understanding ‘normality’. Recall Descartes’ claim that the man-machine departs from its nature when it is in an unhealthy state. The man with dropsy gets pleasure from drinking, even though drinking is harmful to him. His relish is correct when he is in an appropriate state, and an ‘appropriate state’ is one where the pleasure and pain sentiments direct him towards or away from things conducive to, or deleterious to, his health. A correct observer is understood relative to the function of the sentiments, namely, the tracking of features that contribute to bodily wellbeing. Being a morally normal observer is not what constitutes the object’s goodness: being normal is being properly attuned to the good, namely the relational values to which sentiments respond. This reading is confirmed by a response Hutcheson gave to Gilbert Burnett in their correspondence of the 1720s.⁴⁸ Burnett asks Hutcheson whether we could call one moral sense right, and another wrong. Hutcheson’s response is first to say that this is a confused question: one cannot ask whether a sense of right is itself right, anymore than it makes sense to ask whether the sense of taste is itself bitter or sweet. He follows this up by drawing the analogy between the gustatory sense and the moral sense: Reason may show men that their moral sense, as it is now constituted, tends to make the species happy and that a contrary sense would have been pernicious, and therefore we may by a metonymy call it happy as we call our taste healthful when it leads us to delight in objects tending to our health.⁴⁹

The right sense is responsive to benevolence, the features sentiments track, just as the right taste tracks healthy objects. A similar thought too occurs in the Illustrations. Hutcheson asks himself how a rational being without a moral sense could decide between two different moral senses, one that does track benevolence and one that does not. We cannot appeal to the moral sense here since the rational agent lacks one, and in any case the appeal is circular. Still, a rational agent without a moral sense would find our sense preferable in the following way. The constitution of the moral sense might appear to be more advantageous to those who had it than the contrary; as we may call that sense of tasting healthful, which made wholesome meat pleasant; and we would call a contrary taste pernicious. And yet we would no more ⁴⁸ Letters between the Late Mr. Gilbert Burnett and Mr. Hutchinson, Concerning The True Foundation of VIRTUE or MORAL GOODNESS (London: Wilkins, 1735). Reprinted in Bernard Peach (ed.) Illustrations on the Moral Sense (Cambridge MA: Belknap Harvard University Press, 1971). All page references to this volume. ⁴⁹ Hutcheson to Burnett, 9 Oct. 1725, 229–30.

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call the moral sense morally good or evil, than we call the sense of tasting savoury or unsavoury, sweet or bitter.⁵⁰

Again what ultimately makes for a correct sense is that it properly tracks the relational values and not because there is some independent notion of normality that determines the goodness of the object.

9.4.4 Dispositionalism Rejected: Hume Hume does occasionally use the word power with respect to value,⁵¹ but his account of the correction of sentiments shows that this is no commitment to dispositionalism. For again we correct, not for some conventional and constituting standard, but instead in response to information bearing on whether our sentiments track relational values. It is important to note that the ordinary practice of making such corrections need not be made with an explicit grasp of that to which one is responding. As we said, Hume offers a theoretical underpinning for our practice of correcting sentiment, rendering explicit the fact that the practice is fundamentally, but implicitly, responsive to the useful and agreeable. We correct roughly for information bearing on the useful and the agreeable and the effect of sympathy. I reserve discussion of the variation of sentiment owing to sympathy until the next section since it raises its own problems. Let us start with the information-sensitivity. First, reason corrects sentiment for rash judgement and misinformation, namely information bearing on the issue of whether the character or practice is itself useful or agreeable. Since one ‘foundation of moral praise’ is utility, then reason’s role for correcting sentiment involves correcting for mistakes or information about the evaluated object’s utility, mistakes or information bearing on the relational value of the object of appraisal; ‘reason must enter into a considerable share in all decisions of this kind’ (EPM Appendix I.2; SBN 285). These are not facts about correcting sentiment in light of a convention to accommodate divergent responses: they are facts about whether or not the object has the relational value to which the sentiment is tied. We correct furthermore for partiality: partiality prevents us feeling—or at least masks—the distinct moral responses ⁵⁰ ENCP, II, 1, p. 121. ⁵¹ Cf. T 2.1.7–8. Hume also tells us we may regard the following as equivalent: ‘ . . . virtue and the power of producing love and pride, vice and the power of producing humility or hatred’ ( T 3.3.1.3; SBN 575 (italics original)). This passage comes in a paragraph where Hume has just told us that moral distinctions ‘depend entirely on certain peculiar sentiments of pain and pleasure’. The equivalence asserted in the passage is not the claim that virtue and vice are powers to produce the indirect passions. The equivalence is sustained because virtue and vice occasion the sentiments of pleasure and pain, and these, we have argued, have the power to elicit the passions. Thus, ‘Now since every quality in ourselves or others, which gives pleasure, always causes pride of love; as every one, that produces uneasiness, excites humility or hatred’ ( T 3.3.1.3; SBN 575).

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of which the useful and agreeable are the proper causes. In such matters ‘it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may be frequently corrected by argument and reflection’ (EPM 1.9; SBN 173). The sentiment is ‘proper’ not because it is had from some conventional viewpoint, but because it is a response from the useful and the agreeable. It is this, furthermore, that gives Hume grounds to criticize the false sentiments of the ‘monkish virtues’. The monk’s virtues are not virtues because their sentimental responses are not tied to the useful and the agreeable, not because they fall outside a conventionally-fixed standard. Their sentiments are ‘perverted’ by false religion, and the virtues are rejected ‘because they neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society’ (EPM 9.1.3; SBN 270). We reject their sentiments in light of our awareness that they do not track the relational values of the useful and the agreeable; their religion ‘pervert[s] entirely these natural sentiments’. What the useful and agreeable—the virtues—have in common is their contribution to the wellbeing of society and its members, and the sentiments are corrected in light of this, rather than a convention for the mere pragmatics of agreeing judgements and responses. What makes for moral standard is the correct calibration of sentiment with the relational values.

9.4.5 Sympathy and the Common Point of View The discussion in the first Enquiry is more explicit about correcting sentiment in line with judgement bearing on the relational values. The Treatise is more concerned with a different source of variation in sentiment, namely the operation of sympathy. Here we consider the correction of sympathy with respect to the moral sense. Sympathy is the route to understanding the concerns and responses of others, and from this knowledge our moral sentiments spring. It is a matter of being able to experience and hence understand the concerns and evaluations of other persons. Hutcheson has little to say about the mechanics of the origins of sentiments, whereas Hume thinks our sentiment is triggered by our capacity to sympathize with others. Hume’s use of sympathy does not mean, however, that he dispenses with the need for the irreducible sentiments of morality. It is quite true that Hume writes that ‘sympathy is the chief source of moral distinctions’ (T 3.3.6.1; SBN 618), but this should not be taken to mean that moral judgements consist solely in our being appropriately sympathetic (pace Herdt 1997 and others). Sympathy is like eyesight. Eyesight is the chief source of visual experiences, but those experiences have an irreducible character over and above their causal history. It is through sympathizing with other human creatures that those peculiar sentiments are felt in the mind of the moral spectator.

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However, the mechanics of sympathy mean we are greatly affected by those who are nearer to us, spatially, temporally and socially.⁵² At its most basic, the greater the psychological distance, the less lively are our sentiments. My moral sentiments are livelier when, for example, I learn of the virtues of a friend than reading of the virtue of Marcus Brutus. The psychology of sympathy, and the effect of psychological distance, means that the liveliness of moral sentiment is changeable. Since, furthermore, we are all in our own particular place, the degree of sentimental response will depend on that person and their situation (you are affected more by your friends, I by my friends). However, though our sentiments differ in liveliness as a function of psychological distance, we can nevertheless ‘esteem’ both the distant and the near as equally virtuous. We do this by adopting a less partial view, correcting, as Rachel Cohon puts it, for our ‘situated concerns’ (1997: 836–7). Thus Hume writes: In order, therefore, to prevent those continual contradictions [sc. variations in sentimental response], and arrive at a more stable judgment of things, we fix on some steady and general points of view; and always in our thoughts, place ourselves in them, whatever may be our present situation. ( T 3.3.1.15; SBN 581–2)

We still feel the pull of our more situated concerns, but experience of such sentimental variations offers us a way of ‘correcting our sentiments, or at least correcting our language, where the sentiments are more stubborn and inalterable’ (T 3.3.1.16: SBN 582). And, tho’ the heart does not always take part with those general notions, or regulate its love and hatred by them, yet are they sufficient for discourse, and serve all our purposes in company, in the pulpit, on the theatre, and in the schools. ( T 3.3.3.2; SBN 603)

We adopt this common point of view, thus allowing for ‘variation of sentiment, without a variation of the esteem’ (T 3.3.1.15; SBN 581). We believe the remote to be as virtuous as the near, though the near effects us more than the remote. Notice that this correction is fostered by experience of the variation of sentimental response from what we recognize as virtues: in line with what we said in the previous section that the correction is not made because adopting that point of view is a convention constituting the difference between is virtuous/seems virtuous. We correct because we learn through experience that there is a variation between response and what that response tracks, namely the useful and agreeable. So when Hume says ‘that we know from reflexion, that the former action wou’d excite as strong sentiments of disapprobation as the latter, were it plac’d in the same position’ (T 3.3.1.18; SBN 584), the point is that we come to realize that virtue’s tendency to produce the response can be masked by psychological distance, and we correct for that fact in light of an implicit grasp of the reference of ⁵² This view of the variation of sympathy with proximity no doubt owes its origins to the mechanical view of sympathy found in Malebranche and Spinoza.

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the sentiment. So it is not the case that the virtues are constituted by a disposition to elicit sentiments in suitable observers (those who correct for sympathy): we correct for sympathy because those responses are not responses to independently characterized virtues. There is a worry that has exercised commentators in Hume’s view of the correction of sentiment.⁵³ The opening sections of Book III, and ‘Of the influencing motives of the will’ strongly suggest that Hume adheres to the view that sentiments are essential to motivation and that any sincere moral commitment is essentially motivating. So morals are the ‘object of feeling’, and any moral commitment requires the presence of a sentiment. In his discussion of the common point of view Hume appears to reiterate this idea: moral approbation ‘proceeds entirely from a moral taste, and from certain sentiments of pleasure or disgust, which arise upon the contemplation and view of particular qualities or characters’ (T 3.3.1.15; SBN 581). However, his discussion of the common point of view, and the correction of sentiment seems to remove the need for sentiment, or at least with the need for an evaluator to enjoy the actual sentiment. Moral judgements appear to become the ‘object of reason’, rather than the ‘object of feeling’, because it seems that he has judgers making judgements about the hypothetical feelings of a spectator who has assumed the common point of view.⁵⁴ Thus: We blame equally a bad action, which we read of in history, with one perform’d in our neighbourhood t’other day: The meaning of which is, that we know from reflexion, that the former action wou’d excite as strong sentiments of disapprobation as the latter, were it plac’d in the same position. ( T 3.3.1.18; SBN 584)

The problem is that it appears no actual sentiment is required for corrected moral judgement, thus clashing with Hume’s earlier instance of sentiments. There is no problem of this kind for Hume if one holds the view that moral sentiments are the ideas or contents of beliefs. Ideas are nothing but faint copies of impressions and so sentiments are present in such judgements. For sentiments are ideas of virtue and vice which present the remote and the near as essentially valuable, as worthy of hatred or love. The variation of sympathy causes problems for Hume, not because we feel no sentiment when judging the remote as equally worthy of esteem as the near, but because of a problem inherent in his theory of belief in general. Belief for Hume comes in degrees, and, at first blush, degree of belief is a function of the force or liveliness of the believed content. So believing to the same degree that a psychologically remote character is as virtuous as a psychologically near one should mean that the beliefs have equal force or liveliness. ⁵³ For discussion, and different views of the relation between sentiment’s correction and its role in motivation, see e.g. Baier (1991: 179–88), Radcliffe (1994) and (1996), Cohon (1997), Herdt (1997: 65–6). For a staunchly non-cognitivist view of this apparent tension, see Bricke (1996: 156ff ). See also Mackie (1980: 121–4). ⁵⁴ This is taken to be evidence by some that Hume holds moral facts to be facts about the powers objects have to elicit sentiments in appropriate observers under appropriate conditions.

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However, sympathy also affects the force or liveliness of ideas as a function of psychological distance. Characters psychologically nearer to us enliven our virtue or vice ideas more than those that are distant. If, therefore, the ideas are less lively, it seems the degree of belief in the proposition that Marcus Brutus is virtuous is much less than the degree of belief that my friend is virtuous. And yet we can believe, or judge, the one to be as virtuous as the other. Our judgement, however, corrects for this, and we counteract the enlivening of our idea of the near by adhering to general rules that infix judgemental dispositions in the mind of the thinker: the ‘imagination adheres to the general view of things, and distinguishes betwixt the feelings they produce, and those which arise from our particular and momentary situation’ (T 3.3.1.23; SBN 587). So there is no conflict here: all moral beliefs embody sentiments, but sympathy operates on the enlivening of the ideas in such a way as though it seems that we believe that the local is more virtuous than the distant, making ‘our praise or blame fainter and more doubtful’ (T 3.3.3.2; SBN 603). That, though, as Hume points out, is compensated for by correcting for the peculiarities of our situation, just as we do in our perceptual judgements of distance: The case here is the same as in our judgments concerning external bodies. All objects seem to diminish by their distance: But tho’ the appearance of objects to our senses be the original standards, by which we judge them, yet we do not say, that they actually diminish by the distance; but by correcting the appearance by reflexion, arrive at more constant and establish’d judgment concerning them. ( T 3.3.3.2; SBN 603)

So when Hume says ‘the former action wou’d excite as strong sentiments of disapprobation as the latter, were it plac’d in the same position’ (T 3.3.1.18; SBN 584), I am suggesting that we know that the strength of sentiment qua liveliness of content embedded in belief is subject to distance effects, just as our judgements of absolute size are. Admittedly, Hume does not put the matter in terms of belief, but I suspect that this is because he tends to oppose belief with judgements arising from general rules. General rules correct first-order beliefs, or dispositions to believe, and are the upshot of repetition. He does not call these beliefs, but he treats general rules as productive of features like firmness, and solidity, and strong conception, those, that is, which are associated with belief proper. Thus, in T.1.3.8 he talks of general rules as productive of an ‘inlivening of the imagination’, a ‘strong conception’ of an object, a ‘lively conception’ and a ‘superior force’. General rules correct the momentary appearance and compensate for the enlivening effects of sympathy.

9.4.6 Providence versus Reflection: A Key Difference between Hutcheson and Hume Moral sentiments for Hume are like the pleasures which Berkeley identified, those ‘ordain’d as a spur or incitement to somewhat else & has a visible relation

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& subordination thereto’. They present a basic form of evaluation, and in doing so, they indicate features that have a tendency to contribute to a wider end, namely the wellbeing of society, in a way analogous to bodily sensation’s indication of features which contribute to the wellbeing of the body. Such experiences act as reference-fixing devices, and norms of correction emerge when we gradually begin to understand what those features are, and how they contribute to the wellbeing of one’s body or the wellbeing of society. Virtues have the disposition to elicit sentiments, but virtue is not identical to that disposition, any more than a poison is identical to its disposition to elicit an unpleasant taste. This reading is made against a Hutchesonian background and, as we said, there are many differences between them: here though I think is the key one: Hutcheson takes such experiences as evidence of final causes (cf. Inquiry 1.8), an invocation to which Hume objects. It is ‘pointless’ to ask why we have such sentiments, where the ‘why’ has an invocation of final causes: We must stop somewhere in our examination of causes; and there are, in every science, some general principles, beyond which we cannot hope to find any principle more general. No man is absolutely indifferent to the happiness and misery of others. The first has a natural tendency to give pleasure; the second pain. (EPM 5.2.17 n19; SBN 219–20)

For Hume the operation is self-standing, and it is the final explicit awareness of what our sentiments track that vindicates them, rather than Stoic considerations about our role in the universe and the contribution sentiments make, which impress Hutcheson and Shaftesbury. For Hutcheson, the moral sense shows ‘the highest perfection of our nature, what we may see to be the end or design of such a structure, and consequently what is required of us by the author of our nature’, and our ‘acting according to what we may see from the constitution of our Nature, we were intended for by our Creator’ (ENCP Preface: 7). These are clearly un-Humean sentiments. For Hume, the indicator function emerges from our basic endowment, and there is nothing further to be asked. Instead, for Hume, the system is underpinned by a reflexive operation of the moral sense when we become, through Hume’s theory of the progress of sentiments, aware of the functional nature of our moral sense. Full awareness of the workings of the moral sense and its correction, is not only explanatory but also vindicatory.⁵⁵ Thus at the end of his survey, he writes, It requires but very little knowledge of human affairs to perceive, that a sense of morals is a principle inherent in the soul, and one of the most powerful that enters into the composition. But this sense must certainly acquire new force, when reflecting on itself, ⁵⁵ There are debunking aspects as well, including the exposure of the ‘verbal nature’ of the distinction between moral virtues and natural abilities (for example T 3.3.4) and the monkish ‘virtues’ in the EPM. In the conclusion in the EPM, Hume tells us that in common life the view the moral virtues are the useful and agreeable is ‘implicitly maintained’ but is often perverted by superstition and systems of philosophy.

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it approves of those principles, from whence it is deriv’d, and finds nothing but what is great and good in its rise and origin. ( T 3.3.6.3; SBN 619)

Awareness of the origin of the moral sense—finding that its sentiments derive from the useful and agreeable—reinforces its first-order deliverances. We become explicitly aware of the items that moral sentiments are responsive to and we become aware these are relational values, features that contribute to the wellbeing of persons and society.⁵⁶ This moral sense then approves of this very awareness. So we have in the end a bootstrapping manoeuvre: the grounds for the approbation of the end to which the relational goods tend is just our approval of that end. To ask for anything more is to abandon the human perspective.

9 . 5 C O N C LU S I O N TO C H A P T E R 9 : R E A L I S M I N HUMEAN MORALS The discussion of Part III has focused on how Hume conceives the relation between projection, sentiments, motivation and virtues. This of course is not the same as an entire account of Hume’s theory of morals and that has not been attempted here. I called this position ‘mitigated realism’. Its general features can be summed up as follows: (M) (1) The best candidates for ‘moral facts’ are the natural properties of the useful and agreeable, properties whose value is relational (that is whose value is understood in terms of their fittingness to contribute to the well-being of society and its inhabitants). (2) These features are conceived of in moral thought as essentially valuable, that is valuable for their own sake, and not for their contribution to some further end. (3) The conception described in (2) owes itself to the projection of features of thought or experience in virtue of which we come to think of what are relational values as essential values. (4) These states are beliefs which are themselves motivating. (5) The sentiments projected nevertheless have a functional nature which (a) renders salient to thinkers natural properties (objects with relational value) and (b) elicits appropriate attitudes towards which in turn promotes the wellbeing of society and its inhabitants. (6) The correction of sentiment is made in accordance with an implicit grasp of the relational values those sentiments indicate, a grasp made explicit by Hume’s theoretical account.

Such an account can be called a realism because the sentiments are responsive to objective features—the relational values—and render them salient to thinkers even when they do not grasp what it is to which they are responding. Sentiments tend to be caused by relational values, though not always. We recognize that there is variation in sentiment and correct them, and do so in a way that is implicitly sensitive to whether they are caused by those relational values. In this ⁵⁶ For different readings of this important passage, see for example Baier (1991: 196), Garrett (1997: 204) and Korsgaard (1996).

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case the sentiments can be thought of as primitive representations of moral good and bad because they have an indicator function, analogous to that discussed with respect to bodily sensation. They are responses that produce appropriate stances towards independent items and are not identical to attitudes such as desire or love, and they are subject to correction through standards that respect that indicator function. Hume will not call sentiments ‘representations’ since he is wedded to a view of representation as resemblance or copying. But that he will not use the term is quite independent of whether the details of the theory warrant understanding sentiments as having an indicatory function, thereby meriting the term representation. It seems that they do. The projective element in the account is an attempt to explain the phenomenology of our evaluations, of our being presented with objects that are desirable or aversion-worthy of their own account. Hume’s model, like Hutcheson’s—or indeed because of him—is informed by gustatory and aesthetic experience whereby our attention and enjoyment is directed towards such objects by our finding them as essentially valuable. We have such experiences: the phenomenology of the aesthetic and the gustatory seems recalcitrant to there being value-neutral experiences on the one hand and independent attitudes such as likings directing towards them. Both attempt to use this model to offer a naturalism about morality. This is not a thesis concerning the meaning of moral terms or their analysis, but an account of the growth, nature and practice of morality continuous with the rest of nature especially animal nature. This continuity with animal nature we stressed in Hume’s account of probable inference and association (cf. s. 2.4.2). Morality is on a parallel with our and animals’ natural responses to their environment. For Hutcheson this has a providential twist: for Hume, I suggest, it is part of the sceptical tradition that disavows a distinction between humans and animals. 9 . 6 C O N C LU S I O N TO PA RT I I I We have seen in Part III how we could do justice to Hume’s projectivesounding talk and at the same time accommodate his generally friendly attitude to virtue. Hume is trying to account for the ordinary phenomenology of certain evaluative thoughts and experiences, namely of thoughts and experiences of things being essentially valuable. We are not detectors of such values, so we are offered a projective explanation. The account is naturalistic, when naturalistic is not understood in an otherwise tendentious way. He treats pleasures and pains as essentially desirable or aversion-worthy. It is this that strikes some as non-naturalistic, but it is unclear why this is not legislation. They are familiar experiences, easily detectable and part of the natural order. To say that they are non-natural because they are essentially valuable, or otherwise, is a claim that requires independent motivation. For Hume, as for others, such states are

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simply aspects of human nature that can figure as theoretical ingredients in an explanation of how the world appears to us. We ourselves are more concerned with the metaphysical status of such items and are less sanguine about pleasure and pain as possible bearers of items. So the understanding of hedonism we inherit has drifted towards a desire-constitution model, the way that Mill’s ‘proof’ is commonly interpreted, namely that pleasure is good because we all desire it on reflection. But it is unclear to me that Hume needs to be interpreted in that way—instead he wants to model the way in which we are responsive to the useful and the agreeable and can be seen as modelling it on a view of how animals operate. That will take him in other directions which can legitimately be called ‘naturalistic’, as well as realist and projective.

9 . 7 A P PE N D I X : A P U Z Z L E A B O U T ‘ O F T H E S TA N D A R D O F TA S T E ’ Hume’s discussion of natural beauty in the Treatise accords with our idea that sentiments make certain features salient to us for a purpose. The tendency in the Treatise is to connect aesthetic experience with utility. But in aesthetics ‘Of the standard of taste’ is the canonical text. A great deal of attention has been paid to this piece (to put it mildly), and I am not here to offer a comprehensive reading. I merely want to make a comment on one aspect of that essay which has caught the attention of Nick Zangwill (1994). In his interesting essay, Zangwill recognizes that Hume’s discussion of standards for taste sometimes seems to work with teleological notions. For example, In each creature, there is a sound and a defective state; the former alone can be supposed to afford us a true standard of taste and sentiment. If, in the sound state of the organ, there be an entire or a considerable uniformity of sentiment among men, we may then derive an idea of the perfect beauty; in a like manner as the appearance of objects in day-light, to the eye of a man in health, is denominated their real and true colour, even while colour is allowed to be merely a phantasm of the senses. (EMPL 233–4)

Notice here the notion of a healthy state, an echo of Descartes’ discussion of healthy state and the function of bodily sensation. But what is such a sound or healthy state? Hume, as we all know, picks on various features which contribute to this sound state; an appropriate delicacy in taste, practice in making judgement, a sufficiently broad acquaintance with different areas of beauty (‘species of excellence’), the silencing of prejudice and a general attentiveness to purposes and detail. When noting this, Zangwill picks up on Hume’s talk of the beautiful being ‘fitted by nature’ or ‘naturally calculated’ to produce aesthetic experience. When putting these parts together, he suggests that beauty consists in such natural aptness and the critic derives her normative authority through possessing the features we just sketched in virtue of the fact that they are best suited for

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being sensitive to this ‘natural aptness’. Hume’s famous ‘test of time’ constitutes evidence for such a natural aptness. Zangwill then contrasts this aesthetic account with another ‘natural aptness’ story in order to pose a problem for Hume: We can give some evolutionary explanation of why people do not like to drink urine and eat excrement. These things are not naturally apt for pleasurable consumption because eating and drinking these things is unhealthy and unadaptive . . . But an evolutionary explanation of our aesthetic life seems hard to come by because it is not obviously adaptive . . . responding to colour and shape with pleasure seems useless. Hume’s teleological approach needs to be underpinned by an evolutionary story; but it is difficult to see how it would go. (1994: 12)

Zangwill unknowingly hits upon exactly the comparison we have been pursuing, but finds a gap: we know what the point of gustatory experience is; but what is the point of aesthetic experience? What Hume needs, suggests Zangwill, is a story about what is the point or function of aesthetic experience, in order to make more of the teleology he detects in ‘Of the standard of taste’. The question is a good one. The only conjecture I have is that he (rightly) loses confidence in utility as its grounds, but beyond that I have no idea.

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Index acquaintance: and conceivability 99 and detection 33 and external world belief 14–15 and impressions as objects of 27–8, 29–30 and meaning and objects of 33–4, 83 and motivation 186 and pleasure and pain 186, 197 and powers 83, 198 and psychological transition 113 and sensory impressions 101–2 adequacy, and ideas 95–6 aesthetic experience 217, 219, 224–5 and function of 219–21, 244 and ideas of ’external’ items 223–4 and standards for taste 243–4 and the useful and agreeable 220–1 agnosticism 123, 124 agreeable, see useful and agreeable, the Anderson, Robert, and perceptions 133 animal nature, and pleasure and pain 207–8 anthropomorphism 8–9, 66 and anxiety 9–10 and resemblance 54 anti-realism: and detection 6 and incoherence 57 and non-cognitivism 57 and phenomenalism 56–7 and reductionism 56 and rejection 57 anxiety, and origins of religion 9–10 Arnauld, Antoine 28 assent, and demonstrative reason 38–9 association: and ideas 44, 48–52 and inference 49–52 and principles of 48–9 and reason 43–4 and resemblance 53 aversion: and acquaintance 186 and metaphysical hedonism 184 and motivation 196 and pleasure and pain 179, 180, 186–7, 198 Ayers, Michael: and causal realism 78–80 and hedonism 183

and naturalism 85–6 and voluntarism 86 Baier, Annette 148–9, 195 Bare Thought 98, 103, 143, 144 and causal powers 83–5 and necessity 115 and non-cognitivism 114–15 and objection to coherence of 99–100 and realism 105, 111, 116–17 and short argument against coherence of 88–90 dismantling of 92–8 Bayle, Pierre 152 and secondary qualities 153 beauty 163, 165, 219–21, 224–5 and standards for taste 243–4 belief: and behaviour 123 and belief sources: destabilizing 22–3 neutral 22 vindicatory 22 and degree of 238–9 and desires 177, 191 and epistemic aim of 22 and false beliefs 193–4 and motivated irrationality 10–11, 20, 37, 56 and motivation 176, 181–2, 190, 192, 195, 197–8, 200 and natural beliefs 67–9 and normative ideal of 22 and probable reason 41, 42, 46–7 and rational destabilization 21–2 and reason 36, 37, 41, 123–4, 192 evacuation of content 62–6, 69–70 and value 176 see also external world belief; religious belief benevolence 216, 221, 227, 229 Bennett, Dan, and self 127 Bennett, Jonathan: and Copy Principle 33 and Hume’s approach 35 and origin of idea of necessity 106 and tropes 29 Berkeley, George 116, 152 and colour 156 and pleasure 178, 198, 206, 239–40 and secondary qualities 153

256

Index

Berkeley, George (cont.) and sensation 208 Blackburn, Simon 3, 91 and projection 118–19, 176 and projectivism 112–13 Boghossian, Paul 161 Bricke, John 168, 195 Broad, C D, on projection 158 Burnett, Gilbert 234 causal realism 78–80 and Bare Thought 105, 111, 143 and ignorance of power 117 and justificatory threat to 117 and meeting semantic threat 116 Bare Thought 83–5, 98, 103, 116–17 causal powers 83–5 powers and absolute necessity 85–7 powers as essences 90–2 realist strategy 82–3 short argument 88–9 short argument dismantled 92–8 threat of incoherence 88–90 and necessary connection 125 and necessity 111, 114 and projectivism 112 and self 125 and threats to 80–2, 98 see also realism causalism 230–1 causation: and idea of 105 and necessary connection 125 and probable reason 40–1, 42–3, 46 and regularity theory 79 see also causal realism cause, and definition of 79 Chamber, Ephraim 49 Clark, Stephen R L, and anthropomorphism 9 Clarke, Samuel 201, 202 Clatterbaugh, Kenneth 82 cognitivism, and value 198 coherence, and perception 16 Cohon, Rachel 237 colour: and Berkeley’s view of 156 and Descartes’ view of 154–5, 159, 230 and explanatory projection 161 and feature projection 160, 161, 162 and Malebranche’s view of 155–6, 159–60, 161–2 and mitigated realism 205 and objectivity of 166–7 and observers’ response 232–3 as perception of the mind 149, 153–8, 172 and phenomenal colour 157–8

and powers 156–7 and projection 158–9 and Reid’s view of 157 and sensations 159–60, 161–2 and vulgar view of 154–6, 157–8, 171–2 commitment 77 and necessity 77 and reason 123 common point of view 237, 238 conceivability: and acquaintance 99 and adequacy of ideas 95–6 and cause and effect 88–9, 92–3, 99 and change in course of nature 97–8 and distinctness 93, 135–6 and epistemic possibility 97–8 and impressions 96–7 and metaphysical possibility 94 and perceptions 141 and restrictions 94–5 constancy, and perception 15, 16 continuous existence, see external world belief Copy Principle 31, 102 and meaning 31–3 and revisions to 33 Craig, E J 5, 111 customary transition 107–8, 122 and principles of imagination 122–3 deduction, and demonstrative reason 40 demonstrative reason 37, 45 and assent 38–9 and causal inference 45–6 and deduction 40 and detection 39 and intuition 38 and necessity 90–1 and relations 37–40 and truth 39–40 and uniformity principle 45–6 Descartes, Ren´e 28, 49, 86, 152 and aversion/desire 209–10 departure from nature 212–13, 234 and causalism 230 and colour 154–5, 159, 229 and pleasure and pain 206–7, 212 and secondary qualities 152 desires: and acquaintance 186 and beliefs 177, 191 and general passions 195–6 and good and evil 185 and metaphysical hedonism 184 and motivation 190–1 and pleasure and pain 179, 186–7, 198 and relational value 150

Index and value 175–6, 185 detection 72 as acquaintance 33 and demonstrative reason 39 and derivation of ideas 27 and explanatory projection 103 and impressions 30 and probable reason 47 and projection 24 and senses 33 and substantial self 127 detective explanation 4–5, 26 and explanatory projection 5 determination of the mind: and inference 113 as inferential disposition 114 and necessity 105–8, 113 and non-cognitivism 114 and spreading of the mind 108–9, 113 dispositionalism 230 and powers 231–2 and rejection of: Hume 235–6 Hutcheson 233–5 distinctness: and cause and effect 93 and conceivability 135–6 and ideas 103–4, 143 and impressions 143 as phenomenal notion 93, 134–5 intentional 136–7 non-intentional 136, 137–8 and self 133–7 double existence 18, 19, 24 and absurdity of 58–9, 62 and evacuation of content 69–70 and reason 41, 42 Elliot, Gilbert 66 essences: and causal powers 45 and ignorance of 89–90, 103, 118 and necessity 91–2 and powers as 90–2, 97, 99, 198 evaluation, see value and evaluation evil, see good and evil experience: and aesthetic experience 224 and customary transition of imagination 107–8 and determination of the mind 106–7 and distinctness 136 and figurative projectivism 160–1 and ideas 134 and impressions 134 and inference 43

257

and literal projectivism 160 and misrepresentation problem 213 and perception 108–9 and reification of 27, 28, 137, 167 and sensations 160 explanatory projection 3–4, 24, 173 and colour 161 and commitment 77 and external world belief 17 and mental features 6 as non-detective explanation 4, 26 and origins of religion: anxiety 9–10 passions 10–11 and projectivism 112 and questions to be asked about 5–6, 77, 103 expressivism 118–19 expulsion, and Freudian projection 13 external world belief: and absurdity of double existence 58–9, 62 and anti-realism 56–7 and continuous existence 14 double existence 18, 19, 24 imagination 15–16 philosophical view 18–19, 58–9, 69 psychological dispositions 16–17 reason 18 senses 14–15 supposition of 16 vulgar view of perception 14, 18, 24, 58, 62, 69 and destabilizing belief source 22–3 and justification 67–9 natural beliefs 68–9 and justificatory threat to 57 and motivated irrationality 24, 56 as natural belief 71 and rational destabilization 21–2 and realism 20–1, 56, 57 and reason and evacuation of content 62, 65–6 and religious belief, parallels in treatment of 72–3 and semantic threat to 57 and senses 14–15, 54–5 and three-dimensionality 54–5 faculties, and nature of human 101–2 feature projection 3, 4, 24 and anthropomorphism 9 and causal powers 104 and colour 160, 161, 162 and commitment 77 and experience of causation 108–10 and impressions 109

258 feature projection (cont.) and mental features 6 and necessity 113–14 and spreading of the mind 108–9 Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas 3 figurative projectivism 160–1 Fogelin, Robert 194 Freud, Sigmund 3 and projection 13 and religious belief 12–14 Galileo Galilei 152 Garrett, Don 47 and perceptions 140 and Title Principle 70 Gaskin, John, and natural beliefs 68–9 Gay, John 49 Gibbard, Alan, and mitigated realism 205 Goldman, A 230 good and evil: and desire-constitution model 185, 196 and desire-determining model 185 and distinction between 182 and general appetite for 195–6 and identity thesis 178–82, 206 and metaphysical hedonism 183–6 and morality 170 and motivation 181–2, 196 and passions 180, 181 and pleasure and pain 182, 183, 191, 193, 207, 210–11, 216, 223 and relational value 206 Harman, Gilbert 231–2 Harris, James, and Hume’s scepticism 80 hedonism: and metaphysical hedonism 183–6, 199 motivation 190 reading of Hume 187–9 and motivation 179 and pleasure and pain 173, 179 hidden connections 118, 119, 121–2 Hobbes, Thomas 30, 43, 49, 185 and imagination 50 and secondary qualities 152 and self-interest 217–18 Hutcheson, Francis 49 and aesthetic experience 217, 219–20, 224–5 and beauty 222 and dispositionalism 233–5 and final causes 240 and good and evil 178, 209 and influence on Hume 215–16

Index and inner senses 223 and morality 214, 217 benevolence 216, 221, 227, 229 God’s motivations 214–15 and pleasure and pain 184, 207, 209, 218 and sensations 211 ideas: and adequacy 95–6 as adequate representation of objects 95 and association 44, 48–52 and Copy Principle 31 and distinctness 103–4, 143 and experience 134 and imagination 34, 48, 137 and impressions 27, 29, 30–1, 43, 48, 82–3, 96, 197 complex ideas 31 and meaning 31–2 meaningless 34–5 and modal features of 96 and morality 203 and natural relations 42–3 and relative ideas 59–60 identity 126 identity thesis: and metaphysical hedonism 183–6, 199 reading of Hume 187–9 and pleasure and pain/good and evil 178–82, 206 imagination 48 and anthropomorphism 54 and association of ideas 48–52 and customary transition of 107–8 and external world belief 15–16 and ideas 34, 48, 137 and impressions 30–1, 118 and metaphysical possibility 94, 96–7 and principles of 122–3 and reason 48 and resemblance 53–4 as source of error 52–3 and three-dimensionality 55 impressions: and acquaintance 101–2 and blending of 141 and conceivability 96–7 and Copy Principle 31 and detection 30 and distinctness 143 and distinguishing feeling and thinking 30–1 and experience 134 and feature projection 109 and ideas 27, 29, 30–1, 43, 48, 82–3, 96, 197

Index complex ideas 31 and imagination 30–1, 118 and meaning 31–2, 59 and meaning of 28 as mind’s input 27, 29–30 and necessity 106 as objects 30 as objects of acquaintance 27–8, 29–30 and passions 195 of reflection 27 and representational properties 28 of sensation 27 and the senses 27 and tropes 28–9 incoherence 57 and Bare Thought 88–90 inference: and association 49–52 and determination of the mind 113 and experience 43 and necessary connection 105–6, 108 and necessity 111 and probable reason 40–7, 51 instrumentalism 118–19 intellect 48, 103 and ignorance of essences 89, 90 introspection, and substantial self 127 intuition, and relations 38 Jacobson, Anne Jaap 121 Johnson, Mark 164 justice 216 justification: and external world belief 67–9 and natural beliefs 67–9 and propensity to believe in senses 66–7, 68, 69 kinds 85 and naturalism 86 King, William 49 Kneale, William 96 language, and projectivism 112–13 Leibniz, Gottfried 30, 43 and inference 49–52 Lewis, D 134 literal projectivism 160 Locke, John 49 and adequacy 95 and good and evil 178 and moral facts 202 and pleasure and pain 178 and secondary qualities 151–2

259

Mackie, John, and values 148, 185 Malebranche, Nicolas 49, 152 and colour 155–6, 159–60, 161–2 and good and evil 210, 211 and imagination as source of error 52–3 and morality 201 and occasionalism 86 and pain 210 and pleasure 184, 186, 207, 209, 210 and projection of sensation 168–9 and resemblance 53 and secondary qualities 152, 153 and sensation and imagination 30–1 and senses 212 and sensible goods 210–11 and spreading of the mind 109 and truth 39 Mandeville, Bernard, and self-interest 217–18 McDowell, John, and value 173 McGinn, Colin, and mind/body problem 144 McIntyre, J L 7 meaning: and causal realism 82 and Copy Principle 31–3 and impressions 31–2, 59 and meaningless 31–2 senses of 34–5 and objects of acquaintance 33–4, 83 and realism 115 and simple/complex perceptions 33–4 meaningless: and causal realism 82 and realism 115 and weaker sense of 83 memory 50, 52 mental features, and projection 6 Mill, J S 243 misrepresentation 213 mitigated realism, and morality 205, 241 monotheism 7, 18, 19, 20, 24 and absurdity of 58–9 moral behaviour 112 morality: and action of moral sense 228 and dispositionalism: Hume’s rejection of 235–6 Hutcheson’s rejection of 233–5 and final causes 240 and first-order practice 225, 227 and God 201–2 and good and evil 170 and ideas 203 and ideas of ’external’ items 223–4 and mitigated realism 205, 241 and moral discrimination 225–6

260 morality:(cont.) personal merit 226–7 and moral rationalism 199–203 and moral voluntarism 200, 201 and motivation 203, 238 and naturalism 204–5, 242 and not a matter of fact 200 and origins of moral sense 240–1 and pleasure and pain 186, 216–17, 218–19 distinguishing healthy from harmful 208–13 indicatory function 219 and realism 228–9, 241–2 and reason 203, 216 and relational values 219–22, 223, 229 aesthetic sentiments 219–21 benevolence 221 virtues 221–2 and self-interest 217–18 and sensations 215 and sentiment 169–70, 214, 241–2 and sympathy 236–9 and the useful and agreeable 215, 241 and values as projections 148 and vice and virtue 228 indicatory function 215 motivated irrationality: and beliefs 20, 37 as destabilizing belief source 22–3 and external world belief 24, 56 and Freudian projection 13–14 and religious belief 10–11, 24, 56 motivation: and acquaintance 186 and aversion 196 and beliefs 176, 181–2, 190, 192, 195, 197–8, 200 and cognitive states 198 and desires 190–1 and general passions 195–6 and good and evil 181–2, 196 and hedonism 179 and Humean theory of 189–90 and metaphysical hedonism 190 and morality 203, 238 and pleasure and pain 176, 181, 190, 193, 196, 197, 198, 209, 210, 219 and reason 192–3, 203 and sentiment 238 and value 176, 181–2, 189–91, 198 natural beliefs 67–9 and external world belief 71 naturalism: and morality 204–5, 242

Index and powers 85–6 necessary connection 99–100, 105–6, 108 and causation 125, 132, 138 and distinct existences 134, 136 and perceptions 132, 137, 138 and realism 125 necessity 77–8 and Bare Thought 115, 143 and causal powers 85–7 detection of 83–5, 103 and causal realism 78–80 threat of incoherence 88–90 threats to 80–2 and demonstrative reason 90–1 and determination of the mind 105–8, 113 and feature projection 113–14 and idea of 104, 111–12, 114 and impressions 106 and inference 111 and necessary connection 99–100, 105–6, 108 and non-detective explanation of idea of 105–8 and powers as essences 90–2 and projection 119 and quasi-thought 111, 113 and realism 111, 114 and reason 90 and religion 100 and senses 88 and thoughts of 113–14 Nietzsche, Friedrich 3 nominalism 29 non-cognitivism 57 and Bare Thought 114–15 and determination of the mind 114 occasionalism 86 Owen, David: and deduction and demonstration 40 and inference 47 pain, see pleasure and pain passions: and calm passions 196 and false beliefs 193–4 and general passions 195–6 and good and evil 180, 181 as impressions 195 and judgements 181 and metaphysical hedonism 183 and origins of religion 10–11 and pleasure and pain 177–8, 179, 180, 181 and reason 189, 191–2, 193, 194–6

Index and worldly objects of 180–1 Pears, David: and impressions 106 and motivated irrationality 10 Penelham, Terrence 194–5 perceptions: and causal relations 110, 138–40, 141–2, 143 and causes of 64, 67 non-resembling 65 and coherence 16 and colour 149, 153–8 and complex perceptions 34 and conceivability 141 and constancy 15, 16 as dependent entities 132, 138 and distinctness 133–4, 135 and double existence 18, 24 and experience 108–9 and necessary connection 132, 137, 138 and philosophical view 18–19, 58–9, 69 and resembling external objects 61–2 and self 126, 127–9, 130–1, 138, 139–40 and senses 14–15 and simple perceptions 34 and transparency 140–1 and vulgar view of 14, 18, 24, 58, 62, 69 personal merit 226–7 phenomenalism 56–7 Platts, Mark, and general passions 196 pleasure and pain: and acquaintance 186, 197 and aesthetic experience 219–21 and animal nature 207–8 and aversion 179, 180, 186–7 and desires 179, 186–7 and essential value 176, 184–5, 188, 197 and false beliefs 194 and function of 179–80, 206–7, 219, 223–4 distinguishing healthy from harmful 208–13 indicatory function 211–13, 215, 219 and general appetite for 195–6 and good and evil 182, 183, 191, 193, 207, 210–11, 216, 223 and hedonism 173, 179 and identity thesis 178–82, 206 and metaphysical hedonism 183–6 motivation 190 reading of Hume 187–9 and morality 186, 216–17, 218–19 distinguishing healthy from harmful 208–13

261

and motivation 176, 181, 190, 193, 196, 197, 198, 209, 210, 219 and passions 177–8, 179, 180, 181 and roles of 205–6 and sensible goods 210–11 and sensitivity 227–8 and sentiment 169–70, 172–3 and value 176, 184–5 and vice and virtue 216 polytheism 7, 8, 18, 24, 58 powers: and absolute necessity 85–7 and acquaintance with 83, 198 and causal nexus facts 91 and causal straightjacket facts 91–2 and causalism 230–1 and cognition of 198 and colour 156–7 and definition of 120–1 and deflationary readings of 118–21 and dispositionalism 230, 231 as essences 90–2, 97, 99, 198 and existence of 122 and hidden connections 118 and ignorance of 117, 120, 121 and naturalism 85–6 and secondary qualities 229 and supposition of 122–3 and threat of incoherence 88–90 and voluntarism 86 Price, Anthony, and value 164, 175 Prior, A N 215–16 probable reason 37, 45 and association 43–4 and causal inference 40–7, 51 and causation 40–1, 42–3 and comparison of ideas 40–1 as detective source of belief 41, 42, 46–7 and realism 66 and scepticism about 41–2 projection: and anti-realism 6 and belief in substantial self 126–9 and the Comparison 147–8 and detection 24 and mechanism of 6 and mental features 6 and necessity 119 as non-detective explanation 26 and projectivism 112 and realism 5, 72 and value 119, 148 mechanism of projection 167–9 and variety of uses of term 3 see also explanatory projection; feature projection projectivism 112–13

262

Index

quasi-thought 111, 113 and thought 116 Radcliffe, Elizabeth, and pleasure and pain 186 Ramsey, Michael 152 rational destabilization, and beliefs 21–2 rationalism, and moral rationalism 199–203 rationalists 48 realism: and external world belief 20–1, 56, 57 and justificatory threat to 57 and metaphysical hedonism 183–4 and morality 228–9, 241–2 and nature of Hume’s 143–4 and probable reason 66 and projection 5, 72 and reason and evacuation of content 62–6, 69–70 and relative ideas 59–60 and religious belief 20–1, 56, 57 and resembling external objects 60–2 and sceptical realism 62–3 and semantic threat to 57 and threats of 56–7 see also causal realism reason 36–7 and belief 36, 37, 41, 123–4, 192 evacuation of content 62–6, 69–70 justification 67 and commitment 123 and demonstrative reason 37, 45 assent 38–9 causal inference 45–6 deduction 40 detection 39 intuition 38 relations 37–40 truth 39–40 uniformity principle 45–6 and double existence 41, 42 and faculty of 177 and false beliefs 193–4 and imagination 48 and morality 203, 216 and motivation 192–3, 203 and necessity 90 and passions 189, 191–2, 193, 194–6 and perception 18 and probable reason 37, 45 association 43–4 causal inference 40–7, 51 causation 40–1, 42–3, 46 comparison of ideas 40–1 as detective source of belief 41, 42, 46–7 scepticism about 41–2 and relations 37–40, 45

and Title Principle 70 and truth 12 and type of 36–7 and uniformity principle 44–5 reductionism 56 reflection, and impressions of 27 regularity theory, and causation 79 Reid, Thomas 157 rejection, and beliefs 57 relations: and constant and inconstant 38 and demonstrative reason 37–40 and intuition 38 and natural 38 ideas 42–3 and philosophical 38 and reason 37–40, 45 and truth 39 relative ideas 59–60 religious belief: and absurdity of monotheism 58–9 and anti-realism 56–7 and destabilizing belief source 23–4 and external world belief, parallels in treatment of 72–3 and justificatory threat to 57 and necessity 100 and origins of 7–12 anthropomorphism 8–9, 66 anxiety 9–10 Freud’s view 12–14 invisible intelligent power 7–8, 24 monotheism 18, 19, 20, 24 motivated irrationality 10–11, 13–14, 24 passions 10–11 polytheism 8, 18, 24, 58 psychological disposition 12 and practical consequences of 71 and rational destabilization 21–2 and realism 20–1, 56, 57 and reason and evacuation of content 62–4 and semantic threat to 57 and suspension of 23 and vacuous form 71 resemblance: and anthropomorphism 54 and imagination 53–4 and resembling external objects 60–2 as source of error 53 responsiveness, and explanatory projection 4–5 Richman, K, and sceptical realism 62–3 Rosenberg, A, and theory of meaning 32 Russell, Bertrand 35

Index sceptical realism 62–3 scepticism, and Hume’s realism 143–4 secondary qualities: and causalism 230 and dispositionalism 231–2 and philosophical origins of idea 152–3 and powers 229 and projection of sensation 168–9 and values 148–9, 151–2, 229–30 and vice and virtue 230–1 self: and belief in substantial self: bias of the imagination 128 failure of detective explanation 127 projective explanation of 126–9 psychological disposition 127–8 relations triggering belief 128–9 simplicity 129 as collection of dependent entities 131 and Hume’s Appendix worries 125–6, 138–42 causal realist reading of 131–3 distinctness 133–8 reading of 142–3 and perceptions 126, 127–9, 130–1, 138, 139–40 transparency 140–1 and realism 125 and sceptical realism about substantial self 129–30 self-interest, and morality 217–18 Sellars, Wilfred 153 sensation: and animal nature 207–8 and colour 159–60, 161–2 and experience 160 and impressions of 27 and indicator function of 211–12 and morality 215 and projection of 168–9 senses: and detection 33 and external world belief 14–15, 54–5 and ignorance of essences 90, 118 and impressions 27–8 and necessity 88 and propensity to believe in 66–7, 68, 69 and three-dimensionality 54–5 sensitivity 227–8 sentiment: and correction of 235–6, 238 common point of view 237, 238 and essential value 169 and function of 214 and ideas of ’external’ items 223–4 and indicator function of 242 and morality 169–70, 214, 241–2

263

and motivation 238 and pleasure and pain 169–70, 172–3 and relational values 241 and role of 172, 175, 177 and states of mind 172 and sympathy 236–9 and vice and virtue 223, 231–2 shape perception 232 Shoemaker, Sydney: and figurative projectivism 160–1 and literal projectivism 160 short argument 88–9 and dismantling of 92–8 simplicity, and belief in substantial self 129 singularists, and causation 109–10 Smith, Michael, and belief and desire 191 specific difference 60–1, 62 Spinoza, Baruch 49 and association 52 and illusion of contingency 94 spreading the mind 108–9, 113 Strawson, Galen: and meaning tension 82 and relative ideas 59–60 Streminger, G 7 Stroud, Barry 111 and Hume’s Appendix 125 and necessity 106 and self 139 and value 148 Sturgeon, N 152, 230 and secondary qualities 153 sympathy 216, 236–9 taste 176 and standards for 243–4 thought: and necessity 113–14 and quasi-thought 116 three-dimensionality 54–5 Title Principle 70 transparency, and perceptions 140–1 tropes: and impressions 28–9 and trope theory 29 truth: and judged relations 39 and reason 12 demonstrative reason 39–40 Turnbull, George 49 uniformity principle: and demonstrative reason 45–6 and reason 44–5 useful and agreeable, the: and aesthetic experience 220–1

264

Index

useful and agreeable, the: (cont.) and morality 215, 241 and personal merit 226–7 and vice and virtue 215, 216, 221–2 value and evaluation: and beliefs 176 and cognitivism 198 and the Comparison 147–8 conative responses 165 dispositions 166, 169 error 148–9, 171–2 essential value 150, 164–5, 169, 172, 175, 229–30 explanandum 163–7 mechanism of projection 167–9 relational value 150, 164 sentiment 169–70, 175 and desires 175–6, 185 and doctrine of modern philosophy 149, 151 origin of 152–3 and error 148–9, 151, 172 and essential value 150, 164–5, 172, 175 absence of 169 conative responses 165 dispositions 166, 169 pleasure and pain 176, 184–5, 188, 197 reason for attribution of 167–8 and false beliefs 175, 193–4 and good and evil: distinction between 182 identity thesis 178–82, 206 metaphysical hedonism 183–6 morality 170 motivation 181–2 and influence of Hume’s writings 147 and metaphysical hedonism 183–6, 199 reading of Hume 187–9 and moral judgements 148 and motivation 176, 181–2, 189–91, 198 and passions 180–1 and pleasure and pain 176

identity thesis 178–82, 206 metaphysical hedonism 183–6 roles of 205–6 and primary/secondary quality distinction 148 and projection 119 mechanism of 167–9 as projections 148 and relational value 150, 164 and secondary qualities 148–9, 151–2, 229–30 philosophical origin of idea 152–3 projection of sensation 168–9 and sentiment 169 pleasure and pain 169–70, 172–3 role of 172, 175, 177 see also morality Velleman, David 161 vice and virtue: and benevolence 216, 221, 227, 229 and causalism 230–1 and content of 229 and definition of 231 and dispositionalism 231–2 Hume’s rejection of 235–6 Hutcheson’s rejection of 233–5 and indicator function of 215 and moral sense 228 and personal merit 226–7 and pleasure and pain 216 and secondary qualities 230–1 and sentiment 223, 231–2 and the useful and agreeable 215, 216, 221–2, 229 virtue, see vice and virtue voluntarism, and powers 86 Wiggins, David, and value 173 Wright, Crispin 115 Yolton, John 28 Zangwill, Nick 243–4