Abstract
I have two aims in this chapter. I will argue, first, that Hume’s accounts of the aetiology of the vulgar and the philosophical beliefs about “bodies” are both inadequate. Second, I will develop a much more satisfactory account, at which Hume himself hints, based on the same idea I developed in Chap. 13, pertaining to induction. This will enable me to consider (Chap. 15) the different impacts the two views – Materialism and a more sensible Idealism than Hume’s – have on the justification (or lack thereof) of our ampliatively-acquired beliefs.
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One may wonder why Hume, who hints at the explanationist account and invokes IBE himself on several occasions (Sect. 11.3.3), fails to discern that it does a better job at accounting for our belief in the continued existence of bodies. I can shed no light on this conundrum.
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Weintraub, R. (2024). An Improved Account of the Belief in the Continued Existence of Bodies. In: Humean Bodies and their Consequences. Jerusalem Studies in Philosophy and History of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50799-1_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50799-1_14
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