Hume, Kant and the Sea of Illusion

Given Hume's seemingly ambivalent—and often cryptic—claims about the limits of human knowledge, it is no surprise that a skeptical and a naturalistic reading compete as the proper interpretation of the Treatise. Although Hume was traditionally viewed as a skeptic, more recently the "naturalized" view of the Treatise has been in the ascendancy. On this view, while Hume deploys various skeptical arguments, they are mainly in the service of revealing the essentially naturalistic structure of human cognition. In other words, Hume is taken to be engaged in a type of philosophical psychology, and the results of this project are taken to accord with generally naturalized claims about the mind.