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Hume, a Scottish Locke? Comments on Terence Penelhum’s Hume

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Donald C. Ainslie
Donald C. Ainslie*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 170 St. George Street, Toronto, ONM5R 2M8, Canada
*
*Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Where Terence Penelhum sees a deep continuity between John Locke's theory of ideas and David Hume's theory of perceptions, I argue that the two philosophers disagree over some fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind. While Locke treats ideas as imagistic objects that we recognize as such by a special kind of inner consciousness, Hume thinks that we do not normally recognize the imagistic content of our perceptions, and instead unselfconsciously take ourselves to sense a shared public world. My disagreement with Penelhum over Hume's debt to Locke helps to explain our disagreement over the nature of Hume's scepticism.

Keywords

HumeLockePenelhumideaperceptionscepticism
Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 42 , Issue S1: Hume in Alberta: Selected Papers from the 2012 Hume Conference in Calgary , February 2012 , pp. 161 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

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References

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