The article discusses the varying conceptions of the faculty of ‘the understanding’ in 18th-century British philosophy and logic. Topics include the distinction between the understanding and the will, the traditional division of three acts of understanding and its critics, the naturalizing of human understanding, conceiving of the limits of human understanding, British innatism and the critique of empiricist conceptions of the understanding, and reconceiving the understanding and the elimination of scepticism. Authors discussed include Richard Price, James Harris, Zachary Mayne, Edward (...) Bentham, Isaac Watts, Dugald Stewart, John Norris—as well as Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Reid. (shrink)

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments has long been recognized as importantly influenced by, and in part responding to, David Hume’s earlier ethical theory. With regard to Smith’s account of the foundations of morals in particular, recent scholarly attention has focused on Smith’s differences with Hume over the question of sympathy. Whilst this is certainly important, disagreement over sympathy in fact represents only the starting point of Smith’s engagement with – and eventual attempted rejection of – Hume’s core moral theory. (...) We can see this by recognizing the TMS’s account of moral foundations as predicated upon a rejection of Hume’s distinction between the natural and artificial virtues. Smith is in turn revealed as generating a major break with Hume – a break which, if based on a superior theory of moral foundations has important consequences for how we treat Smith and Hume in both the history of philosophy and contemporary moral theory. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the question of how affect, or feeling, moves through and ultimately shapes the Humean mental landscape, with particular focus on the question of how this constantly changing geography of feeling results in the kind of enduring dispositions and tendencies necessary for the existence of character, an essential component of Hume’s moral philosophy. Section 1 looks at the concept of ‘attending emotion’ and outlines two important principles of mind Hume introduces in Book II of the Treatise: (...) the Principle of Attending Emotion, and the Principle of Affective Conversion. Section 2 explores the origin of enduring tendency and disposition by considering the calm and violent passions in conjunction with these principles. The paper concludes with some preliminary suggestions of how, on this picture, an individual might come to take an active hand in shaping her own character. (shrink)

Is there anything in the mind that was not first in the senses? According to the received view, the French empiricist Étienne Bonnot de Condillac’s answer to this was a firm “No”. Unlike Locke, who accepted the existence of innate faculties, Condillac rejected the existence of all innate structure and instinctive behaviours. Everything, therefore, is learned. In this article, I argue that from at least the writing of his 1754 Traité des sensations, this reading fails to capture the true nature (...) of his philosophy of mind. I present a genetic reading of Condillac’s philosophy that shows that from the 1750s until his death in 1780, he developed, by engaging closely with the life sciences of his day, an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the mind and perception. This understanding depends on the acceptance of the activity of the mind, innate structure, and a moderate defence of instincts—all characteristics of the mind that he is most commonly read as rejecting. Reading Condillac in this genetic way demonstrates that his philosophy of mind is much more original and powerful than has previously been recognised. (shrink)

I begin with a diagnosis. Present-day scholarly work on the Scottish Enlightenment is bifurcated: it is either focused on the areas of moral philosophy or of natural philosophy, broadly construed in both cases. The aspiration to combine these inquiries is rare and unsystematic. This paper makes a case for the need and possibility of a perspective that conceives moral and natural inquiry as integrated enterprises in the period. It also suggests that potentially useful interpretive devices can be adopted from the (...) historiography of science and philosophy, as well as science studies. (shrink)

This essay gives a new interpretation of Hume's second thoughts about minds in the Appendix, based on a new interpretation of his view of composition. In Book 1 of the Treatise, Hume argued that, as far as we can conceive it, a mind is a whole composed by all its perceptions. But—this essay argues—he also held that several perceptions form a whole only if the mind to which they belong supplies a “connexion” among them. In order to do so, it (...) must contain a further perception or perceptions. But when the perceptions in question are all of those belonging to a given mind—as in the section “Of personal identity” and the Appendix—there cannot be a further perception in that mind, and so those perceptions do not form a whole. Hence, Hume's views were inconsistent. This essay argues that, unlike most others, this interpretation explains his retreat to skepticism in the Appendix. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Jon Charles Miller argues that the ‘New Humeans’ stress the primacy of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding over A Treatise of Human Nature, and that this is indefensible because it relies on omitting and distorting negative aspects surrounding Hume's statements of this preference. Miller's argument is not successful: first, the battle lines between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Humeans are not reducible to the primacy of either text; nor are his specific objections to the letters convincing. Moreover, the Enquiry is not, as (...) Miller supposes, softer than the Treatise on controversial religious questions. In fact, his particular focus on religious questions provides a plausible explanation for Hume's preference. (shrink)