Abstract
In this chapter, I present the different ways of interpreting the belief in external objects (“bodies”) that Hume ascribes to us. There is here a plethora of interpretations, engendered by the fact that Hume distinguishes between the belief of the ordinary (vulgar) person (including philosophers outside the study) and the “philosophical” belief, and each can be construed in more than one way. Supporting texts exist for each interpretation, and the interpreter has to rule out in a principled way some of them as non-representative, peripheral. My interpretative methodology for deciding between the different interpretations will be to focus on texts in which Hume discusses “bodies” in a systematic way (rather than merely talking about them): section 1.4.2 of the Treatise (“Of scepticism with regard to the senses”) and in the first part of section 12 in the Enquiry (“Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy”).
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Notes
- 1.
Kant (1787, B274) labels Descartes’ view “problematic idealism”, because “it declares the existence of objects in space outside us…to be merely doubtful and indemonstrable”. Kant’s usage of the term “Idealism” is idiosyncratic: it is an epistemological version of ontological Idealism. I discuss below (Sect. 2.5) what Hume says about it.
- 2.
I borrow the term from Mackie (1977), who claims that our moral terms (‘good’, ‘bad’, etc.) purport to denote moral properties that are too “queer” to exist, although we think they do.
- 3.
The same is true in the case of any restrictive semantic theory. For instance, the logical positivist, who claims we cannot think about atoms (since they are unobservable), rejects as meaningless the suggestion that his semantic thesis doesn’t entail the ontological one (that no atoms exist). But if his rival is correct, he can understand the two theses, and appreciate their logical independence.
- 4.
Berkeley endorses both the semantic and the ontological theses: “[t]he table I write on I say exists – that is, I see and feel it…This is all I can understand by these and the like expressions” (PHK, §3). But he attaches much greater significance to the ontological version of Idealism. He invokes the semantic version in order to argue for the ontological one.
- 5.
This was suggested by an anonymous reader.
- 6.
Reid (1785, II, iv [257a]) professes not to understand “what is meant by an image of [objects of sense, except figure and colour]”. But Hume uses the term ‘image’ broadly, as applying to anything which can be copied from experience, not just the visual. The term ‘impression’ applies to “all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul” (T 1.1.1.1; SBN 1, my italics), and ideas are “the faint images of these”. So Reid’s mockery is misguided.
- 7.
Grene (1994) contrasts the “phenomenalist” sense of the word ‘object’ (perceptions in the mind) with the “realist” (objects being non-mental). I distinguish, by contrast, between the Idealist reading, according to which objects are continuously existing perceptions, and the Materialist one, in which they are material. In my classification, but not in hers, both kinds of objects are believed to exist continuously. So her classification of Hume’s uses of the word doesn’t straightforwardly impinge on the dispute as I have set it up.
- 8.
O’Shea (1996, p. 288) characterises Hume’s view so vaguely that it fits all three interpretations: “Hume…describes the vulgar as ‘confounding’ perceptions and objects, in that we take our interrupted perceptions of things to constitute the persisting external object itself”.
- 9.
Baxter (2009) and Ainslie (2010) impute to Hume an epistemological reason for a philosopher to use “body-terms” in the Idealist way (although they don’t use my term). They argue that because Hume thinks we cannot discover the true nature of bodies, he recommends the philosopher should rest content with finding out how they appear to us, i.e., what “impressions they occasion” (Baxter, 2009, p. 130). There is support in the text for the epistemological motivation: “As long as we confine our speculations to the appearances of objects to our senses, without entering into disquisitions concerning their real nature and operations, we are safe from all difficulties, and can never be embarrass’d by any question” (T 1.2.5.26n12; SBN 638-9). But the semantic consideration, which figures much more prominently in the text, preempts the epistemic argument. It forces on us the Idealist interpretation of “body-terms”.
- 10.
I think Wright subscribes to the Materialist reading, because he suggests that Hume himself countenances “a firm belief in the independent existence of the material world” (1983, p. 42, my italics), and says that “he allowed a specific difference between perceptions and objects” (1983, p. 81). I hesitate, because Wright mainly speaks of the philosophers’ belief that bodies exist continuously and independently, which is consistent with the Idealist reading. And Hume’s advocacy of a representative theory of perception (1983, p. 13), too, is consistent with the Idealist reading, since the represented “object” can be a perception.
- 11.
An obvious difference between phenomenalism and single-impression Idealism is that only the former makes it possible for “bodies” to have properties we do not observe (although we could). For instance, the house I am seeing has a rear window that I do not observe. This suggests that phenomenalism is a more sensible version of Idealism.
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Weintraub, R. (2024). Interpreting Hume on 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_2
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