Cover of Hume Studies
>> Go to Current Issue

Hume Studies

Volume 34, Issue 2, November 2008

Table of Contents

Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-16 of 16 documents


articles

1. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Ruth Weintraub

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
According to Hume, the paradigm type of inductive reasoning involves a constant conjunction. But, as Price points out, Hume misrepresents ordinary induction: we experience very few constant conjunctions. In this paper, I examine several ways of defending Hume’s (psychological) account of our practice against Price’s objection, and conclude that the theory cannot be upheld.
2. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Karl Schafer

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Hume’s discussion of the role of reason in the practical sphere is often read to imply two broad, negative claims: first, that passions and actions can (at most) only be regarded as responsive to reasons in so far as they are either in agreement with or contrary to the instrumental implications of other passions or desires. And second, that there is no properly practical form of inference or reasoning. I argue that Hume’s general understanding of practical reason does not support either of these claims. Rather, Hume’s explicit discussion of these issues—like his discussion of the nature of probable inference—is intended to lay the foundation for a naturalist account of practical thought that we would today regard as embodying a substantive, non-instrumentalist theory of practical rationality. This account will, indeed, make reason the “slave of the passions,” but in a very different sense than the one familiar from most contemporary discussions of Hume.
3. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Peter Knox-Shaw

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
While numerous sources have been found for the ideas expressed by Cleanthes and Demea in the Dialogues, Philo’s thoughts have commonly been taken to originate with Hume. It is clear, however, both from internal and external evidence, that Hume drew for his (sometimes wayward) spokesman on that mid-century ferment in the life sciences that Denis Diderot described as a “revolution.” The restoration of this context—obscured by the late publication of the Dialogues—suggests that Philo’s celebrated critique of theism is merely one face of a discourse that centres in new ideas about generation and evolution. On this reading the Dialogues emerges as a conjectural as well as analytic work, one that offers in addition to its demolition of the argument from design an argument about design, built on the premise that natural order can be independent of a creator. The philosophical definition that Hume brings to ideas that first surfaced in the works ofMaupertuis and Buffon makes the Dialogues the most potent pre-Darwinian work of its period.
4. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Emil Badici

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
It has been argued that Hume’s denial of infinite divisibility entails the falsity of most of the familiar theorems of Euclidean geometry, including the Pythagorean theorem and the bisection theorem. I argue that Hume’s thesis that there are indivisibles is not incompatible with the Pythagorean theorem and other central theorems of Euclidean geometry, but only with those theorems that deal with matters of minuteness. The key to understanding Hume’s view of geometry is the distinction he draws between a precise and an imprecise standard of equality in extension. Hume’s project is different from the attempt made by Berkeley in some of his later writings to save Euclidean geometry. Unlike Berkeley, who interprets the theorems of Euclidean geometry as false albeit useful approximations of geometrical facts, Hume is able to save most of the central theorems as true.
5. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
M. A. Box

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

symposium: rachel cohon, hume’s morality: feeling and fabrication

6. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Rachel Cohon

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
7. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Don Garrett

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
8. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Elizabeth S. Radcliffe Orcid-ID

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
9. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Rachel Cohon

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

book reviews

10. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Sophie Botros

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
11. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
David Fate Norton

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
12. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
John P. Wright

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
13. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
Michel Malherbe

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

bibliography

14. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2
James Fieser

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
15. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
16. Hume Studies: Volume > 34 > Issue: 2

view |  rights & permissions | cited by