1 Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH, UK.

Hume's discussion of the idea of space in his Treatise on Human Nature is fundamental to an understanding of his treatment of such central issues as the existence of external objects, the unity of the self, the relation between certainty and belief, and abstract ideas. Marina Frasca-Spada's rich and original study examines this difficult part of Hume's philosophical writings and connects it to eighteenth-century works in natural philosophy, mathematics and literature. Focusing on Hume's discussions of the infinite (...) divisibility of extension, the origin of the idea of space, geometry, and the notion of a vacuum, she shows that the central questions of Hume's 'science of human nature' - what does the 'science of human nature' reveal about the mind and its operations? what is experience? - underlie all of these discussions. Her analysis points the way to a reassessment of the central current interpretative problems in Hume studies. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Hume's Legacy Sense Impressions, Passions and Ideas The Idea of Cause and Effect Probability and the Inference from Past to Future (Moderate) Skepticism Moral Feelings Human Nature and Religious Beliefs.

Impressions of Hume collects brand-new essays from leading scholars in different philosophical, historiographical, and literary traditions within which Hume is a canonical figure. To some his writings are vehicles for intuitions, problems, and arguments which are at the center of contemporary philosophical reflection; others locate Hume's views against the background of concerns and debates of his own time. Hume's texts may be read as highly sophisticated literary-cum-philosophical creations, or as moments in the construction of the ideology of modernity; these are (...) "open" texts which present their reader with a bounty of different materials and inspirations. (shrink)

This essay is on the nature and roles of sense impressions and objects in Hume’s account of perception in the Treatise of Human Nature. I start by considering how Hume introduces sense impressions at the beginning of the Treatise and show that, although he explains the distinction between impressions and ideas on the basis of their different strength and liveliness, the crucial difference between them is in fact that ideas are copies of impressions, while impressions do not, in turn, copy (...) anything. They are what ideas represent, the objects of our thought. But if impressions are non-representative, how can Hume talk about ‘objects’ at all — in fact, what are Humean ‘objects’? This problem is the subject of the present discussion. (shrink)

Don Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. xiv + 270, Hb 40.00 ISBN 0-19-509721-1.

The original occasion for most of the chapters contained in this book was the result of a wish to establish a forum where Hume scholars of various provenances and convictions could meet and discuss all matters Humean, profiting from the very differences that commonly would make it difficult for them to cross paths with each other. This wish materialised in an interdisciplinary workshop, ‘Hume Studies in Britain’, held in Cambridge in September 2000. The title of the book is intended to (...) reflect that original interdisciplinary approach: Hume has made different impressions on the different areas of investigation here represented. Thus his writings can be taken as transparent vehicles for philosophical intuitions, problems, and arguments that are still at the centre of philosophical reflection today. On the other hand, there are readings that try to locate Hume's views against the background of concerns, debates and discussions of his own time. Hume's texts may be read as highly sophisticated literary-cum-philosophical creations: in such cases, the reader's attention tends to be directed at issues of genre and persuasive strategies rather than philosophical questions and arguments. Or they may be regarded as moments in the construction of the ideology of modernity, and as contributions to the legitimation of a given social order. As the true classics that they are, Hume's works are typical ‘open texts’, in which readers keep finding an ever new and varied bounty of inspirations. The borders between these approaches are far from neat; and this book intends to promote as much trespassing as possible between them. (shrink)

This volume includes recent contributions to the philosophy of science from a historical point of view and of the highest topicality: the range of the topics covers all fields in the philosophy of the science provided by authors from around the world focusing on ancient, modern and contemporary periods in the development of the science philosophy. This proceedings is for the scientific community and students at graduate level as well as postdocs in this interdisciplinary field of research.

Now classified as mid-way between epistemology and metaphysics, that part of 18th-century ‘science of human nature’ concerned with the investigation of human perceptions and passions was in fact closely allied both to moral and natural philosophy and to medicine. This chapter the roles in the formation of belief that writers in this tradition and authors of novels attributed to the readers' senses and imagination, and to their social intercourse. In particular, it focusses on the relative educational and moral value attributed (...) to history, romance, and novels, and the readers' sympathetic responses to historical and fictional writings as they were represented and discussed in Charlotte Lennox' The Female Quixote, and in David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. (shrink)

BackgroundCognitive dysfunctions, both subjective and detectable at psychometric testing, may follow SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, the ecological-functional relevance of such objective deficits is currently under-investigated. This study thus aimed at investigating the association between objective cognitive measures and both physical and cognitive, ecological-functional outcomes in post-COVID-19.MethodsForty-two COVID-19-recovered individuals were administered the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. The Functional Independence Measure was adopted to assess functional-ecological, motor/physical and cognitive outcomes at admission and discharge.ResultsWhen predicting both T0/T1 FIM-total and-Motor scores (...) based on MMSE/MoCA scores, premorbid risk for cognitive decline and disease-related features, no model yielded a significant fit. However, the MoCA - but not the MMSE significantly predicted T0/T1 FIM-Cognitive scores. The MoCA was significantly related only to T0/T1 FIM-Cognitive Memory items.DiscussionCognitive measures are not associated with physical/motor everyday-life outcomes in post-COVID-19 patients. The MoCA may provide an ecological estimate of cognitive functioning in this population. (shrink)

Marina Frasca-Spada's Space and the Self in Hume's Treatise proposes a subjective idealist interpretation of Hume's account of space in part ii of Book I of the Treatise. The book is divided into four chapters. The first deals with Hume's position on infinite divisibility in I ii 1-2, the second with his position on the origin of the idea of space in I ii 3, the third with his account of geometrical knowledge in I ii 4, and (...) the final chapter with his position on vacuum in I ii 5. The subject matter of I ii 6 on the idea of existence is dealt with over the course of the third chapter. Between the second and third chapters, the exposition is interrupted by what Frasca-Spada calls an "Intermezzo." This piece begins by promising to explain why Hume's theory of space is "central to the philosophical substance of the Treatise", but turns to other topics before delivering on the promise. Its relation to the other parts of the book is unclear, and it would have been better included as a preface or appendix, or omitted altogether. (shrink)

Review of: Marina Frasca-Spada: Space and the Self in Hume’s Treatise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. pp. xiii + 220. £26.99, $43.00, pbk. ISBN 9780521891622.

Alessandra Stradella - Impressions of Hume - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 164-165 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Alessandra Stradella Emory University Frasca-Spada, Marina, and P. J. E. Kail, editors. Impressions of Hume. Mind Association Occasional Series. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 308. Cloth, $74.00. Readers of Hume have a new collection of essays. Impressions of Hume adds to the literature twelve essays recounting (...) the impressions Hume has made on specialists from different disciplines: philosophy, literature, and history. The editors set their agenda adequately in the intention to foster an appreciation of Hume's work as "open texts" and "show the endless fascination of Hume's writing and thought" . I believe the.. (shrink)

Sigmund Freud sah die Anziehungskraft christlich-religiöser „Illusionen“ in der möglichen Aussöhnung des Menschen mit dem Tod begründet. Heute hat die moderne Industriegesellschaft die Religion jedoch weitestgehend hinter sich gelassen, die Vorstellungen von Tod und Sterben haben sich gewandelt. Marina Brandes untersucht, wie, in welchem Alter, an welchen Orten und unter welchen Umständen heute im Vergleich zu vormodernen Epochen normalerweise gestorben wird. Sie zeigt, welche Assoziationen mit dem Tod verknüpft sind und entwickelt vor dem Hintergrund der Medizinalisierung, der Institutionalisierung des (...) Sterbens und der Ausgrenzung der Sterbenden, Perspektiven für ein versöhntes, gutes Sterben. (shrink)

Die Hauptthese dieses Buches ist es, Krankheit und Gesundheit mit Nietzsche auf zwei verschiedenen Ebenen zu denken, nämlich als Ereignisse des Willens zur Macht in einem zirkulär-relationalen Modell, in dem sie sich gegenseitig behaupten, sowie die Metaebene der Konzeptualisierung anzuerkennen. Es behandelt die Schwierigkeit des begrifflichen Denkens, diese Ereignisse einzuholen, und diskutiert kritisch Modellbildungen, die darauf hinauslaufen, dass Krankheit zu überwinden und als lineares singuläres Ereignis zu verstehen sei. In Nietzsches Spätwerk wird die Figur des "dionysischen Künstlers" als Idealisierung der (...) Gesundheit gemäß seiner interpretierenden Sichtweise der Welt dargestellt. Die Relevanz des Buches liegt darin, eine Analyse der Begriffe von Gesundheit und Krankheit (tragischer und schlechter Pessimismus) in direkter Beziehung zu leiblichen Vorgängen vorzulegen, die sich von metaphysisch-dialektischen Voraussetzungen befreit. Zu diesem Zweck widmet die Untersuchung sich einer intertextuellen Lektüre der fünf Vorreden, die Nietzsche 1886/87 zu seinen früheren Schriften verfasste, und verknüpft sie mit der Interpretation des Nachlasses und weiterer Veröffentlichungen aus seiner letzten Schaffensphase. (shrink)

This paper develops a largely neglected parallel between prudence and population ethics. Prudence is generally understood to be concerned with the balancing of well-being over time. How, precisely, well-being ought to be balanced over time, however, is a fervently debated question. I argue that developing a standard guiding such evaluations is exceedingly challenging. This is due to an often overlooked fact about prudence, namely that it shares a structural similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value (...) of populations of personstages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that the development of an adequate theory of prudence runs into very similar impossibility results as obtain in population ethics. In particular, I prove that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare four possible answers to this challenge. First, I discuss the possibility of accepting the very repugnant conclusion intrapersonally. Second, I present and further develop Donald Bruckner’s Minimax Regret approach, which gives up Transitivity. Third, I apply Jacob Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View to prudence and critically evaluate it. Lastly, I introduce what I call the Negative Lexicality View, which is based on Lexical Threshold View but overcomes some of its problems. (shrink)

This handbook presents the conceptions and principles central to every aspect of Hegel’s systematic philosophy. In twenty-eight thematically linked chapters by leading international experts, The Palgrave Hegel Handbook provides reliable, scholarly overviews of each subject, illuminates the main issues and debates, and details concisely the considered views of each contributor. Recent scholarship challenges traditional, largely anti-Kantian, readings of Hegel, focusing instead on Hegel’s appropriation of Kantian epistemology to reconcile idealism with the rejection of foundationalism, coherentism and skepticism. Focused like Kant (...) on showing how fundamental unities underlie the profusion of apparently independent events, Hegel argued that reality is rationally structured, so that its systematic structure is manifest to our properly informed thought. Accordingly, this handbook re-assesses Hegel’s philosophical aims, methods and achievements, and re-evaluates many aspects of Hegel’s enduring philosophical contributions, ranging from metaphysics, epistemology, and dialectic, to moral and political philosophy and philosophy of history. Each chapter, and The Palgrave Hegel Handbook as a whole, provides an informed, authoritative understanding of each aspect of Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

We study a system, μŁΠ, obtained by an expansion of ŁΠ logic with fixed points connectives. The first main result of the paper is that μŁΠ is standard complete, i.e., complete with regard to the unit interval of real numbers endowed with a suitable structure. We also prove that the class of algebras which forms algebraic semantics for this logic is generated, as a variety, by its linearly ordered members and that they are precisely the interval algebras of real closed (...) fields. This correspondence is extended to a categorical equivalence between the whole category of those algebras and another category naturally arising from real closed fields. Finally, we show that this logic enjoys implicative interpolation. (shrink)

We explore different ways in which the human visual system can adapt for perceiving and categorizing the environment. There are various accounts of supervised (categorical) and unsupervised perceptual learning, and different perspectives on the functional relationship between perception and categorization. We suggest that common experimental designs are insufficient to differentiate between hypothesized perceptual learning mechanisms and reveal their possible interplay. We propose a relatively underutilized way of studying potential categorical effects on perception, and we test the predictions of different perceptual (...) learning models using a two‐dimensional, interleaved categorization‐plus‐reconstruction task. We find evidence that the human visual system adapts its encodings to the feature structure of the environment, uses categorical expectations for robust reconstruction, allocates encoding resources with respect to categorization utility, and adapts to prevent miscategorizations. (shrink)

The essays in this volume address topics prominent in current debates about Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit, which originally appeared as the third part of his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Together, a group of internationally recognized Hegel scholars presents a sophisticated, well-researched, and considered account of Hegel's text, approaching it from different perspectives, philosophical schools, and traditions. Each essay focuses on a specific issue relevant to Hegel scholarship, carefully and clearly setting out established views of the text and putting forward (...) incisive new interpretations. The essays will enable readers to obtain a broad yet analytically nuanced understanding of Hegel's thought and in particular of the Philosophy of Spirit, a rich and important work that has relevance for contemporary debates in philosophy of mind and action, philosophy of law and religion, ethics, aesthetics, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Canguilhem’s contemporary relevance lies in how he critiques the relation between knowledge and life that underlies Kantian rationality. The latter’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment represent life in the form of an exception: life is simultaneously included and excluded from understanding. Canguilhem’s critique can be grouped into three main strands of argument. First, his reference to concepts as preserved problems breaks with Kant’s idea of concepts regarding the living as a ‘unification of the manifold’. Second, Canguilhem’s vital (...) normativity represents life as the potential to resist normative orders that judge the living, relegating Kant’s ‘lawfulness of the contingent’ to a ‘mediocre regularity’. Third, Canguilhem’s introduction of the environment as a ‘category of contemporary thought’ decentres the living/knowing subject and introduces contingency. His idea of the ‘knowledge of life’ leads to the conclusion that life is the condition of possibility of rationality, rather than rationality’s ‘blind spot’. (shrink)

It seems natural to think that emotional experiences associated with a memory of a past event are new and present emotional states triggered by the remembered event. This common conception has nonetheless been challenged at the beginning of the 20th century by intellectuals who considered that emotions can be encoded and retrieved, and that emotional aspects linked to memories of the personal past need not necessary to be new emotional responses caused by the act of recollection. They called this specific (...) kind of memories “affective memories” and defended their existence. My aim here is to expound the historical background of this debate as well as the characterization and development of the notion of affective memory since its first inception. I aim to show that although the debate was left unresolved and the term disappeared from academy around 1930, many of the characterizations of the nature of emotions and memory done by the advocates of affective memory have reappeared in the scientific agenda and been further developed during the last decades. (shrink)

Criticism is a staple of the scientific enterprise and of the social epistemology of science. Philosophical discussions of criticism have traditionally focused on its roles in relation to objectivity, confirmation, and theory choice. However, attention to criticism and to criticizability should also inform our thinking about scientific pursuits: the allocation of resources with the aim of developing scientific tools and ideas. In this paper, we offer an account of scientific pursuitworthiness which takes criticizability as its starting point. We call this (...) the apokritic model of pursuit. Its core ideas are that pursuits are practices governed by norms for asking and answering questions, and that criticism arises from the breach of these norms. We illustrate and advertise our approach using examples from institutional grant review, neuroscience, and sociology. We show that the apokritic model can unify several indices of criticizability, that it can account for the importance of criticizing pursuits in scientific practice, and that it can offer ameliorative advice to erstwhile pursuers. (shrink)