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Hume on Thought and Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Edward Craig
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Extract

I. Two topics given prominence in the early sections of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding are those of thought and belief. Of each Hume asks two questions. One, which we might call the constitutive question: what exactly is it to have a thought, or to hold a belief?—and another, which we may call the genetic question: how do we come by our thoughts, or our capacity to think them, and how do we come to believe that certain of these thoughts are true? In this lecture I shall be considering the detail of Hume's answers to these questions; but first I want to say a little about why they should have loomed large for him at all.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 20: Philosophers Ancient and Modern , March 1986 , pp. 93 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1986

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References

1 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (hereafter ECHU), 18 (page numbers relate to Selby-Bigge, L. A.'s edition, revised by P. H. Nidditch, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)).Google Scholar

2 ECHU, 18.Google Scholar

3 E.g. ECHU, 18.Google Scholar

4 A Treatise of Human Nature (hereafter THN), Book I, Pt I, Sect. I.

5 E.g. ECHU, 18.Google Scholar

6 See the above quotation from THN, and also ECHU, 18.

7 ECHU, 20.Google Scholar

8 ECHU, 19.Google Scholar

9 ECHU, 20–21.Google Scholar

10 ECHU, 21.Google Scholar

11 ECHU, 22.Google Scholar

12 ECHU, Sect. VII.

13 Hume's own example, ECHU, 63.Google Scholar

14 Not, at least, in the place where one would most naturally look for it.

15 To deny it is an important feature of the Platonic tradition for instance.

16 ECHU, 19.Google Scholar

17 ECHU, 20.Google Scholar

18 The reader may find it interesting to compare: Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, para. 139 and note.Google Scholar

19 Notably in Logical Positivism.

20 ECHU, 47.Google Scholar

21 Hume's own example, ECHU, 48.Google Scholar

22 THN, BkI, PtIII, Sect. VII.

23 ECHU, 49–50Google Scholar. Hume had also said something very similar in the Appendix to THN, see p. 629 in A Treatise of Human Nature, Selby-Bigge, L. A. (ed.), 2nd edn rev. by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).Google Scholar

24 ECHU, Section III.

26 THN, BkI, PtI, Sect.IV.

27 ECHU, 24.Google Scholar

28 See ECHU, 26–27.Google Scholar

29 ECHU, 50–52.Google Scholar

30 ECHU, 53–54.Google Scholar

31 Hume's own example, ECHU, 54.Google Scholar

32 ECHU, 54.Google Scholar

33 See George Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.

34 ECHU, 155, footnote.Google Scholar

35 See ECHU, Sect. IX.