Abstract

The dissertation seeks to articulate a Humean conception of an embodied person, according to which our beliefs and actions are essentially dependent upon certain "seemingly trivial" and intellectually opaque properties of our imagination and character. This conception is opposed to rationalism, which I take to be the view that our beliefs and actions should ideally be caused by rule-governed, intellectually transparent mental operations. I present two Hume-derived critiques of rationalism. ;The first critique concerns our beliefs. If we attempt to base our beliefs about all non-present realities exclusively on causal inference , we will in effect disavow an irregular inference that operates on resemblances, and the result will be a total and unanswerable skepticism, an imaginatively disembodied condition in which we will not be able to recognize ourselves as holders of beliefs. The only way out of this malign skeptical impasse is through "carelessness and inattention," and this solution testifies to our essential embodiment. The second critique concerns our values. If we attempt to correct our sentiments by means of an intellectually clear theory of value, as requested by the rationalist, we shall subvert our intentions to the extent that the point of view of the theory becomes embodied. Once again, we would lose self-recognition. ;I then consider some informal consequences of the Humean conception. First, I show that although our powers of self-correction are more limited than the rationalist thinks they are, we should not draw any irrationalist conclusions. The Humean conception allows us to detect, moreover, certain harmful psychological tendencies whose presence is lost on rationalism. Secondly, I show that persons and artworks, rightly understood, do at least some of the work that reason, on the rationalist picture, was supposed to do, even though we do not usually approach artworks and other persons with the intention of having our sentiments corrected by them