The past two decades have seen an explosion of literature on Hume's views about mental representation and intentionality. This essay gives a roadmap of this literature, while arguing for two main interpretive claims. First, Hume aims to naturalize all forms of mental representation and intentionality, that is, to explain them in terms of properties and relations that are found throughout the natural world (not just in minds) and that are not, individually, peculiar to representational or intentional things. Second, Hume holds that the passions are not representational but do have intentionality extrinsically.
Hume's works are cited as follows. References to 'T ' are to A Treatise of Human Nature, followed by book, part, section, and, where appropriate, paragraph numbers from the 2007 Norton and Norton edition (references to paragraphs of the Appendix to the Treatise and of Hume's "Abstract of a Book Lately Published" are preceded by 'App' and 'Abs,' respectively). Each of these citations is followed by the corresponding page numbers in the 1978 Selby-Bigge edition revised by Nidditch, set off by 'SBN.' References to 'EHU ' are to An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, followed by section and paragraph numbers from the 2000 Beauchamp edition, and the corresponding page numbers in the 1975 Selby-Bigge edition revised by Nidditch, set off by 'SBN.'
Hume’s discussion of space in the Treatise addresses two main topics: divisibility and vacuum. It is widely recognized that his discussion of divisibility contains an answer to Bayle, whose Dictionary article “Zeno of Elea” presents arguments about divisibility as support for fideism. It is not so widely recognized that, elsewhere in the same article, Bayle presents arguments about vacuum as further support for fideism. This paper aims to show that Hume’s discussion of vacuum contains an answer to these vacuum-based fideistic arguments. Key to this answer is a distinction between two ways in which vacuum was conceived in the early modern period: i) as a genuine thing that has spatial properties, and yet is immobile, indivisible, and penetrable (positive vacuum); ii) as a mere absence of spatial things (privative vacuum). This paper also aims to provide a novel defense of Hume against the long-standing objection that he is inconsistent in denying that we can conceive of a vacuum, while allowing that we can conceive of “invisible and intangible distance.” As I interpret him, Hume consistently denies that we can conceive of a positive vacuum, while allowing that we can conceive of two or more objects’ being arranged so as to have privative vacuum between them.
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