In the “Appendix” to the Treatise, Hume claims that he has discovered a “very considerable” mistake in his earlier discussion of the self. Hume's expression of the problem is notoriously opaque, leading to a vast scholarly debate as to exactly what problem he identified in his earlier account of the self. I propose a new solution to this interpretive puzzle. I argue that a tension generated by Hume's conceptual skepticism about real “principles of union” and his account of fictions of (...) the imagination is the defect identified in the “Appendix.”. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify Locke’s distinction between simple and complex ideas. I argue that Locke accepts what I call the “compositional criterion of simplicity.” According to this criterion, an idea is simple just in case it does not have another idea as a proper part. This criterion is prima facie inconsistent with Locke’s view that there are simple ideas of extension. This objection was presented to Locke by his French translator, Pierre Coste, on behalf of Jean Barbeyrac. Locke responded (...) to Barbeyrac’s objection, but his response, along with a passage from Chapter XV of Book II of the Essay, “Of Duration and Expansion, considered together,” has been taken to show that he did not accept the compositional criterion. I examine these passages and argue that they are not in tension with but rather affirm that criterion. (shrink)

Hume’s claim that we project necessity onto objects we take to be causally related has been influential in contemporary discussions of modality, inspiring deflationary accounts of our modal commitments. Hume is commonly understood as holding that modal projection explains our judging that an effect must follow its cause. This misunderstands the role of projection in Hume’s discussions of causation and causal judgement. Projection is a diagnosis of a distinctively philosophical confusion: the commitment to mind-independent necessary connections. In arguing for this, (...) I provide an account of the psychological process that, in Hume’s view, underlies projection. This account resolves problems with Hume’s projectivism identified by his commentators. (shrink)

That Socrates took himself to possess a divine sign is well attested by ancient sources. Both Plato and Xenophon mention Socrates’ daimonion on numerous occasions. What is problematic for contemporary scholars is that Socrates unfailingly obeys the warnings of his sign. Scholars have worried that Socrates seems to ascribe greater epistemic authority to his sign than his own critical reasoning. Moreover, he never so much as questions the authority of his sign to guide his actions, much less its divine nature. (...) Socrates’ unquestioning obedience to his sign thus appears to be in conflict with another of Socrates’ defining characteristics: namely, his relentless rationality. However, Socrates does not seem to recognize such inconsistency. The problem of the daimonion, then, is this: is Socrates’ professed commitment to rationality consistent with his unquestioning deference to his daimonion’s warnings? And if so, how? In this paper, I first discuss several solutions to the problem of the daimonion. I aim to show that none of the accounts of Socrates’ sign that have appeared in the scholarly literature are adequate. I then propose a new account of the daimonion, which, I argue, secures the rationality of Socrates’ obedience to his divine sign. (shrink)

The Molyneux problem is one of the major questions addressed by early modern authors. Whereas Locke’s response to Molyneux’s question has been the subject of extensive scholarly discussion, Leibniz’s response has received comparatively little attention. This paper defends an interpretation of Leibniz’s nuanced response to the problem and criticizes a competing interpretation that has recently been proposed.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hume on the Self and Personal Identity ed. by Dan O’BrienBridger EhliDan O’Brien, ed. Hume on the Self and Personal Identity. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. xxiv + 321. Softcover. ISBN: 9783031042751. $129.99This is an engaging collection of essays on a central topic in Hume’s philosophy. Perhaps Hume’s best-known contribution to the philosophy of the self is his denial, in section 1.4.6 of the Treatise, “Of personal identity,” (...) of the existence of a simple, enduring self that is accessible by reflection. But as his distinction between personal identity “as it regards our thought or imagination” and personal identity “as it regards our passions or the concern we take for ourselves” suggests, he has more to say about the self and personal identity than the skeptical doctrines presented in T 1.4.6 (T 1.4.6.5). One virtue of the collection is that it strives to capture the breadth and complexity of Hume’s thinking about the self.The collection, which focuses primarily on the Treatise, is divided into three parts. The essays in Part 1 consider Book 1 and the Appendix. Andrew Ward’s “How Sceptical is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity?” argues for the provocative thesis that Hume’s intention in the Appendix is not to express dissatisfaction with either his metaphysics of the self or his psychological explanation of ascriptions of identity and simplicity to the self. According to Ward, Hume’s aim is rather to “clarify and strengthen his sceptical position” by reinforcing his rejection of realist accounts of personal identity (13). To my mind, Ward does not adequately address the textual evidence that has led other commentators to believe that the Appendix identifies a defect in T 1.4.6’s discussion of the self, such as Hume’s complaint that he does not “know how to correct [his] former opinions, nor how to render them consistent” (T App 10).Donald Ainslie’s “Hume’s Bundle” is also chiefly concerned with the interpretation of the Appendix. Ainslie has defended an influential reading according to which Hume’s problem in the Appendix concerns his psychological explanation of ascriptions of unity to the self. Here, he argues against interpretations according to which Hume’s problem concerns his metaphysical account of the self as a bundle of perceptions. According to Ainslie, Hume did not worry about how one’s perceptions come to be bundled together, because he treated the fact that perceptions come in distinct bundles as brute. This argument against the bundling interpretation seems less than decisive. At least some versions of that interpretation can be understood to hold that Hume’s problem in the Appendix arises from his being unable to answer a causal question: what is the cause of one’s perceptions’ being bundled together? In the “Letter from a Gentleman,” Hume suggests that the maxim according to which everything has a cause enjoys moral, albeit neither intuitive nor demonstrative, certainty [End Page 377] (LG 26). Insofar as he accepts this maxim, he would hold that the question of the cause of the bundling of one’s perceptions has an answer and, accordingly, that the bundling of one’s perceptions is not brute.The themes of Galen Strawson’s “What I Call Myself ” will be familiar to readers of his The Evident Connexion. Strawson argues against a traditional reading of Hume according to which he both holds that the self is nothing more than a bundle of perceptions and denies the existence of subjects of experience. Central to Straw-son’s case is what he calls the “Experience/Experiencer Thesis,” which says that the existence of an experience requires the existence of a subject of experience. Strawson takes Hume to endorse this “necessary truth” and, hence, to hold that no perception can exist without its being experienced by a subject (48). But there is a text that tells against Hume’s endorsing the Experience/Experiencer Thesis. In section 1.4.2, “Of scepticism with regard to the senses,” Hume argues that “the continu’d existence of... perceptions involves no contradiction” (T 1.4.2.40). Because what it is for perceptions... (shrink)

In section 1.4.4 of the Treatise, “Of the modern philosophy,” Hume offers a skeptical argument concerning the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The argument in that section is often understood to aim to undermine the modern philosophy’s account of body, according to which bodies lack paradigmatic secondary qualities, by showing that it has “extravagant” skeptical consequences. I argue that Hume does not reject the core commitments of the modern philosophy. His aim in T 1.4.4 is not to undermine any (...) particular account of body but rather to establish the deeply rooted inadequacy of our cognition of external bodies. (shrink)