Themes in Hume

Themes in Hume PDF Author: Terence Penelhum
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199266357
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Terence Penelhum presents a selection of the best of his essays on Hume, most of them quite recent, and three of them not published elsewhere. The central themes of the book are selfhood, the will, and religious belief. Penelhum argues that Hume's sceptical conclusions on personal identity are based on conceptual confusions, but that the common charge of circularity made against him is unfounded. He examines the role Hume gives the idea of the self in his analysis of the passions, the dissonance between the account of the self in the first book of the Treatise of Human Nature and that found in the second, and the reasons for Hume's own dissatisfaction with his views on this theme. The essays on the will examine Hume's famous attacks on rationalist understandings of human motives, and try to expose the deficiencies in his 'compatibilist' interpretation of freedom. The discussion of Hume's views on religion relates them to his scepticism and to his doctrine of natural belief. Penelhum maintains that Hume's ultimate views on religion are to be found in the harshly negative judgements of the first Enquiry, which he did not ever see reason to modify. Penelhum's essays will be fascinating for all who work on these themes, whether from an eighteenth-century or a twentieth-century perspective.

Themes in Hume

Themes in Hume PDF Author: Terence Penelhum
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199266357
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book

Book Description
Terence Penelhum presents a selection of the best of his essays on Hume, most of them quite recent, and three of them not published elsewhere. The central themes of the book are selfhood, the will, and religious belief. Penelhum argues that Hume's sceptical conclusions on personal identity are based on conceptual confusions, but that the common charge of circularity made against him is unfounded. He examines the role Hume gives the idea of the self in his analysis of the passions, the dissonance between the account of the self in the first book of the Treatise of Human Nature and that found in the second, and the reasons for Hume's own dissatisfaction with his views on this theme. The essays on the will examine Hume's famous attacks on rationalist understandings of human motives, and try to expose the deficiencies in his 'compatibilist' interpretation of freedom. The discussion of Hume's views on religion relates them to his scepticism and to his doctrine of natural belief. Penelhum maintains that Hume's ultimate views on religion are to be found in the harshly negative judgements of the first Enquiry, which he did not ever see reason to modify. Penelhum's essays will be fascinating for all who work on these themes, whether from an eighteenth-century or a twentieth-century perspective.

Themes in Hume

Themes in Hume PDF Author: Terence Penelhum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Custom and Reason in Hume

Custom and Reason in Hume PDF Author: Henry E. Allison
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615528
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Henry Allison examines the central tenets of Hume's epistemology and cognitive psychology, as contained in the Treatise of Human Nature. Allison takes a distinctive two-level approach. On the one hand, he considers Hume's thought in its own terms and historical context. So considered, Hume is viewed as a naturalist, whose project in the first three parts of the first book of the Treatise is to provide an account of the operation of the understanding in which reason is subordinated to custom and other non-rational propensities. Scepticism arises in the fourth part as a form of metascepticism, directed not against first-order beliefs, but against philosophical attempts to ground these beliefs in the "space of reasons." On the other hand, Allison provides a critique of these tenets from a Kantian perspective. This involves a comparison of the two thinkers on a range of issues, including space and time, causation, existence, induction, and the self. In each case, the issue is seen to turn on a contrast between their underlying models of cognition. Hume is committed to a version of the perceptual model, according to which the paradigm of knowledge is a seeing with the "mind's eye" of the relation between mental contents. By contrast, Kant appeals to a discursive model in which the fundamental cognitive act is judgment, understood as the application of concepts to sensory data, Whereas regarded from the first point of view, Hume's account is deemed a major philosophical achievement, seen from the second it suffers from a failure to develop an adequate account of concepts and judgment.

Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes

Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes PDF Author: Jonathan Francis Bennett
Publisher: Oxford : Clarendon Press
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Hume's Intentions

Hume's Intentions PDF Author: J. A. Passmore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107697867
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
The intention of this book was to to disentangle certain main themes in Hume's philosophy and relate them to Hume's main philosophic purpose.

Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise

Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise PDF Author: Louis E. Loeb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198033508
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature is famous for its extreme skepticism. Louis Loeb argues that Hume's destructive conclusions have in fact obscured a constructive stage that Hume abandons prematurely. Working within a philosophical tradition that values tranquillity, Hume favors an epistemology that links justification with settled belief. Hume appeals to psychological stability to support his own epistemological assessments, both favorable regarding causal inference, and unfavorable regarding imaginative propensities. The theory's success in explaining Hume's epistemic distinctions gives way to pessimism, since Hume contends that reflection on beliefs is deeply destabilizing. So much the worse, Hume concludes, for placing a premium on reflection. Hume endorses and defends the position that stable beliefs of unreflective persons are justified, though they would not survive reflection. At the same time, Hume relishes the paradox that unreflective beliefs enjoy a preferred epistemic status and strains to establish it. Loeb introduces a series of amendments to the Treatise that secures a more positive result for justified belief while maintaining Hume's fundamental principles. In his review of Hume's applications of his epistemology, Loeb uncovers a stratum of psychological doctrine beyond associationism, a theory of conditions in which beliefs are felt to conflict and of the resolution of this uneasiness or dissonance. This theory of mental conflict is also essential to Hume's strategy for integrating empiricism about meaning with his naturalism. However, Hume fails to provide a general account of the conditions in which conflicting beliefs lead to persisting instability, so his theory is incomplete. Loeb explores Hume's concern with stability in reference to his discussions of belief, education, the probability of causes, unphilosophical probability, the belief in body, sympathy and moral judgment, and the passions, among other topics.

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals PDF Author: David Hume
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Conduct of life
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Knowledge, Reason, and Taste

Knowledge, Reason, and Taste PDF Author: Paul Guyer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691151172
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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

The Essence of Hume's Philosophy

The Essence of Hume's Philosophy PDF Author: David Hume
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 758

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Book Description
One of the most central doctrines of Hume's philosophy is his notion that the mind consists of its mental perceptions, or the mental objects which are present to it, and which divide into two categories: impressions and ideas. David Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. He argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge is founded solely in experience. This book presents all the main Hume's ideas and teaching, beginning with his classic statement of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism, " A Treatise of Human Nature".

Reflecting Subjects

Reflecting Subjects PDF Author: Jacqueline Anne Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198729529
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Offers a reconstruction of Hume's social theory and examines his moral philosophy, account of social power, and system of ethics.