Collection of papers presented at the 2nd and 3rd Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

I argue that Hume’s philosophy of time is relationist in the following two senses. 1) Standard definition of relationism. Time is a succession of indivisible moments. Hence there is no time independent of change. Time is a relational, not substantial feature of the world. 2) Rigid relationism. There is no evidence of uniform natural standard for synchronization of clocks. No absolute temporal metric is available. There are countless times, and no time is privileged. Combining 1) and 2) shows that Hume’s (...) ontology of time is thoroughly relationist. (shrink)

Philosophers no longer argue whether Hume ever read Berkeley, yet some remain puzzled as to why so little of Berkeley appears in Hume's works. Professor Popkin has remarked that even “where Hume and Berkeley come closest to discussing the same subject or holding the same view, Hume neither uses Berkeley's terms nor refers to him.” An apparent exception to this generalization is Berkeley's doctrine ofminima sensibilia, for both philosophers use this term to denote indivisible sensible points, and both invoke such (...) points in order to show that sensible extension is not infinitely divisible. Yet it has been suggested that, although Berkeley and Hume employ the same terms, they nevertheless maintain different doctrines: Hume'sminimaare unextended, whereas Berkeley's are extended. (shrink)

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 ; ii) as a mere absence of spatial things. 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. (shrink)

In his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals David Hume said that a group of earlier modern philosophers, beginning with Malebranche, held that morality was founded on relations. In this paper I follow up on that suggestion by investigating pre-Humean views in moral philosophy according to which morality is founded on relations. I do that by looking at the work of Nicolas Malebranche, John Locke, and Samuel Clarke. Each of them talked prominently about relations in their accounts of basic aspects (...) of morality. Beyond that, each of them turns out to have held both metaphysical and epistemological views that might be described as founding morality on relations. Despite the definite differences between the three philosophers’ approaches, Hume does seem to have noticed a genuine connection here—even though he himself tended to ignore significant versions of this approach when criticizing it. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do artigo de Richard H. Popkin, "So, Hume Ever Read Berkeley?", publicado originalmente em "The Journal of Philosophy". Volume LXI, número 24, 1964, pp. 773-778.

In 1675, Burchard de Volder (1643–1709) was the first professor to introduce the demonstration of experiment into a university physics course and built the Leiden Physics Theatre to accommodate this new pedagogy. When he requested the funds from the university to build the facility, he claimed that the performance of experiments would demonstrate the “truth and certainty” of the postulates of theoretical physics. Such a claim is interesting given de Volder’s lifelong commitment to Cartesian scientia. This chapter will examine de (...) Volder’s views on experiment and show that they are not Newtonian or inductivist, as is sometimes claimed. While de Volder thinks we need deductive reasoning from first principles to provide evidence of the certainty of the content of our physical theories, he also contends that we need experiment to provide evidence of the certainty of the existence of the particular bodies those theories discuss. This approach to experiment is based on a distinction between rational certainty and the certainty of material bodies in the actual world. While this account is deeply influenced by Descartes, it is importantly different than Descartes’ distinction between absolute and moral certainty. De Volder’s “Cartesian Empiricism” is best understood as a continuation and further development of a long tradition of teaching through observation at Leiden. (shrink)

Tokom dvadesetog veka na engleskom govornom području uspostavljen je standardni narativ rane moderne filozofije prema kome se svi autori ovog perioda dele u dve škole mišljenja: racionalističku i empirističku. Glavni cilj postavljen u ovom tekstu jeste da se ispitivanjem centralnih odlika ovog narativa pokaže njegova nepot- punost i neadekvatnost u prikazivanju filozofskih odnosa koji su postojali među figu- rama sedamnaestog i osamnaestog veka. Videćemo da su u poslednjih nekoliko dece- nija iznete ubedljive kritike ove teorije, kojima se predočavaju njeni glavni (...) nedostaci. Drugi cilj ovog rada jeste da se, analizom tekstova Imanuela Kanta, pokaže da on nije odgovoran za stvaranje i širenje ovog narativa, iako se u sekundarnoj literaturi često ističe suprotno. (shrink)

No Tratado, Hume procura investigar as causas da crença nos objetos exteriores, admitindo ser impossível provar se os mesmos existem ou náo. Sua análise consistirá na investigaçáo da origem da inteligibilidade das noções de continuidade e distinçáo dos objetos sensíveis, em última instância, a crença do senso comum na continuidade e distinçáo das próprias percepções. Este texto pretende mostrar como essa discussáo humeana é um diálogo direto com a filosofia berkeleyana, a defesa humeana da crença na matéria implicando inicialmente uma (...) certa aceitaçáo da filosofia de Berkeley, para, na seqüência, representar uma dissensáo direta com o seu princípio fundamental: ser é ser percebido . Tais colocações têm, entre outras, a finalidade de argumentar que Berkeley exerce um papel central na filosofia humeana, nesse caso como seu interlocutor direto, e que a compreensáo desse papel é parte obrigatória de um melhor esclarecimento do problema da objetividade em Hume. (shrink)