Philosophical theories about the nature of belief can be roughly classified into two groups: those that treat beliefs as occurrent mental states or episodes and those that treat beliefs as dispositions. David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature seems to contain a classic example of an occurrence theory of belief. Hume defines ‘belief’ as ‘a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression’ (Treatise 1.3.7.5 96). This definition suggests that believing is an occurrent mental state, such as judging, or thinking about something in a particular manner. However, at the same time, a number of Hume's readers claim to find elements in his writings that are suggestive of a dispositional account of belief. Moreover, these elements are sometimes taken as signs of the inadequacy of Hume's account of belief and his dissatisfaction with it. If Hume is not, in fact, wholeheartedly committed to a thoroughgoing occurrence theory of belief, one wonders just who is.
Locke appears committed to the view that forming a propositional thought that p involves judging that p is true. He seems to inherit this commitment from traditional logics, like the Port-Royal Logic . P.T. Geach claims that pre-Fregean philosophers like Locke and Arnauld simply conflate predication and judgment and that the result is a “monstrous and unholy union.” I argue that Locke and Arnauld have good reasons for claiming that forming the propositional thought that p is to be explained in terms of judging that p , and that they can successfully respond to the problems that seem to face this view.
There is reason for genuine puzzlement about Hume's aim in ‘The Natural History of Religion’. Some commentators take the work to be merely a causal investigation into the psychological processes and environmental conditions that are likely to give rise to the first religions, an investigation that has no significant or straightforward implications for the rationality or justification of religious belief. Others take the work to constitute an attack on the rationality and justification of religious belief in general. In contrast to these views, I argue that Hume aims to establish two important claims in ‘The Natural History of Religion’. First, almost all popular religions, including popular monotheism, are deeply superstitious. Second, superstitious monotheism is incompatible with the variety of theism supported by the argument from design. This incompatibility puts significant pressure on the rational acceptability of popular religions.
A characteristically Humean pattern of explanation starts by claiming that we have a certain kind of feeling in response to some objects and then takes our having such feelings to provide an explanation of how we come to think of those objects as having some feature that we would not otherwise be able to think of them as having. This core pattern of explanation is what leads Simon Blackburn to dub Hume ‘the first great projectivist.’ This paper critically examines the philosophical and textual basis for interpreting Hume as a causal projectivist. I argue that projectivist interpretations of Hume's account of causation are motivated by two convictions: that beliefs about causation, according to Hume, are not just beliefs about regularity relations and that believing that two events are necessarily connected, according to Hume, is not merely having a belief about something that occurs in one's mind. I suggest that the latter conviction is worth revisiting, both for textual and philosophical reasons.
In the first of the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Hylas distinguishes two parts or aspects of every perception, namely a sensation, which is an act of mind, and an object immediately perceived. Hylas concedes that sensations can exist only in a mind, but maintains that the objects immediately perceived have a real existence outside the mind; they are qualities of material objects. This distinction and Philonous’s response to it are the topic of this essay. It considers the implications of this response for understanding Berkeley’s theory of perception and concludes that it supports attributing to Berkeley an object-first theory of perception, according to which it is the special kind of object involved in perception that is philosophically significant.
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