The Arguments of the Philosophers EDITED BY TED HONDERICH Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic University College, London The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher of major influence and significance. Already published in the series: Ayer John Foster Augustine Christopher Kirwan J.L.Austin Geoffrey Warnock * Bentham Ross Harrison * Berkeley George Pitcher Bergson A.R.Lacey Butler Terence Penelhum * Descartes Margaret Dauler Wilson Dewey J.E.Tiles Gottlob Frege Hans Sluga Hegel M.J.Inwood Hobbes Tom Sorell Husserl David Bell William James Graham Bird * Kant Ralph C.S.Walker Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay * Karl Marx Allen Wood John Stuart Mill John Skorupski G.E.Moore Tom Baldwin * Nietzsche Richard Schacht Peirce Christopher Hookway * Plato J.C.B.Gosling * Karl Popper Anthony O’Hear * The Presocratic Philosophers Jonathan Barnes Reid Keith Lehrer * Russell R.M.Sainsbury * Sartre Peter Caws * Schopenhauer D.W.Hamlyn * Socrates Gerasimos Xenophon Santas Spinoza R.J.Delahunty * Wittgenstein Robert J.Fogelin * Available in Paperback HUME Barry Stroud London and New York First published 1977 by Routledge & Kegan Paul plc Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 1977 Barry Stroud All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-203-16905-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-26441-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-03687-9 (Print Edition) FOR SARAH, BOOKLOVER Contents Preface ix I The Study of Human Nature 1 II The Theory of Ideas 17 III Causality and the Inference from the Observed to the Unobserved: The Negative Phase 42 IV Belief and the Idea of Necessary Connection: The Positive Phase 68 V The Continued and Distinct Existence of Bodies 96 VI The Idea of Personal Identity 118 VII Action, Reason and Passion 141 VIII Reason, Passion and Morality 171 IX Morality and Society 193 X Problems and Prospects of Humean Naturalism 219 Notes 251 Bibliography 271 Index 277 vii Preface In this book I try to provide a comprehensive interpretation of Hume’s philosophy and to expound and discuss his central problems against the background of that general interpretation. But there are several ways in which the task had to be limited. Hume had important things to say on almost every question of human concern. I say nothing, for example, about religion, and that is a serious omission since the topic was of life-long importance to Hume, both philosophically and, in another way, personally. Nor do I consider any of his philosophical writings about economics. Of Hume’s politics I discuss only the most general features of the theory of society and government. His detailed treatment of particular passions or emotions is ignored, but I do discuss at some length the role of what he calls ‘passions’ in the production of human action, and therefore in morality. I also say nothing about his historical writings, although on the general interpretation I offer they can be seen as much more of a piece with his philosophical work than has usually been supposed. But these limitations of subject-matter were necessary in order to deal more fully with what must be regarded as the most fundamental parts of Hume’s philosophy. In discussing those central parts I do not try to give an exhaustive treatment of Hume’s views or of the philosophical issues in question. My aim throughout is to illustrate and support the general interpretation by particular instances of its application, and thereby to show how Hume’s views on those fundamental questions are best to be understood and evaluated. If I am even partly successful I hope it will be apparent how much of what has come to be the conventional wisdom about Hume and the defects of his views is mistaken or misguided. I do not suggest that those views are ultimately defensible, ix PREFACE or even fully coherent, but if they are not we must come to understand the real source of their failure and not be content with superficial or merely fashionable diagnoses. I have found that many widespread objections to Hume miss the mark in not going deeply enough, usually because they attack only small, isolated bits of what he says without taking into account the more general theoretical framework that gives those particular bits their sense. But I have not encumbered the text with extensive references to commentators and critics, nor have I tried systematically to document what I would regard as the shortcomings of other interpretations. I concentrate on presenting and supporting my own understanding of Hume. I do think that in what follows I have managed to clear away some of the accumulated fog from several different windows into Hume’s philosophy, but I remain fully conscious in most cases of not having gone far towards illuminating what lies in the darker recesses within. My hope is only that now it will be easier and more fruitful to continue scholarly and philosophical investigations along some of the lines I have sketched but not fully explored. I have also tried to indicate some connections between Hume’s treatment of particular topics and more recent discussions of those same, or related, topics, and there too I have not aspired to, or achieved, completeness. Hume’s especially prominent position in Western philosophy makes that impossible. An exhaustive guide to discussions of Hume’s problems and their descendants as they appear in twentieth-century philosophy would be an almost exhaustive guide to twentieth-century philosophy. In a speculative and wide-ranging last chapter I try to indicate in general terms those aspects of Hume’s philosophy that are, or ought to be seen as, most alive for philosophers today. I have tried throughout to make what I say intelligible to beginners, or virtual beginners, in philosophy, while also providing something of interest to Hume scholars and to philosophers dealing with the problems he discussed. I think I know how difficult it is to satisfy those different demands simultaneously, but members of the relevant groups will be able to judge for themselves how far I succeed in satisfying any one of them. Like any student of philosophy, I have been reading and thinking about Hume or his problems in one way or another for a long time, and it is difficult to pin-point specific influences on my present understanding of him. My greatest debt is undoubtedly to the writings of Norman Kemp Smith. Every student of Hume is, or ought to be, in his debt. It is additional evidence, if more were needed, of the close connection between philosophy and the study of the history of philosophy that x PREFACE Kemp Smith’s revolutionary historical work on Humenever received the widespread acceptance it deserved in the philosophical world, largely because philosophy itself was not ready for it. The rigid analytic empiricism of the first half of this century could not appreciate the philosophical importance, and therefore tended to deny the existence, of what Kemp Smith was right in identifying as Hume’s philosophical naturalism. It will be obvious that my own interpretation owes a great deal to Kemp Smith, but I think that, partly on the basis of his work, I have been able to present a more systematic and more consistent naturalistic interpretation, and in many cases to discuss important questions of interpretation and assessment with attention to more detail and more recent philosophical criticism than was available to Kemp Smith. The infrequent references to him in what follows are therefore no measure of my real debt to him. E.C.Mossner’s marvellous biography of Hume has also been important for my understanding. It is invaluable for the study of the writings of someone whose person is so immediately present in his philosophical work, even though I make no direct reference to those agreeable human characteristics in what I say in this book about Hume’s philosophy. I include a bibliography listing many other works I have found especially interesting and helpful, but that is insufficient indication of my indebtedness to other writers on Hume, and I am glad to be able to acknowledge it here, if only in a sweeping and impersonal way. I have lectured and given seminars on Hume for a number of years in Berkeley, and in 1974 in Oslo, and I am grateful to those patient audiences for their sympathetic responses and their helpful criticisms and suggestions. I also would like to thank the sub-faculty of philosophy in Oxford for their hospitality when I was beginning to write the book. During that year in Oxford I also was fortunate to be able to discuss Hume’s Treatise in classes given by John Passmore, and to present some thoughts on Hume’s scepticism to theJowett Society. In my treatment of Hume’s moral philosophy, which I found very difficult, I have had the benefit of correspondence and discussion with Gilbert Harman and extensive discussion over the years with Philippa Foot and Derek Parfit.