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Unit 19: David Hume-of Essay Writing: Introduction and Detailed Study

of causation represented in the literature: (1) the logical positivist; (2) the skeptical realist; and (3) Notes
the quasi-realist.
The logical positivist interpretation is that Hume analyses causal propositions, such as “A caused
B”, in terms of regularities in perception: “A caused B” is equivalent to “Whenever A-type events
happen, B-type ones follow”, where “whenever” refers to all possible perceptions.
power and necessity... are... qualities of perceptions, not of objects... felt by the soul and not
.
perceived externally in bodies This view is rejected by sceptical realists, who argue that Hume
thought that causation amounts to more than just the regular succession of events. When two
events are causally conjoined, a necessary connection underpins the conjunction:
Shall we rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a
complete idea of causation? By no means ... there is a necessary connexion to be taken into
consideration.
Hume held that we have no perceptual access to the necessary connection, hence skepticism, but we
are naturally compelled to believe in its objective existence, ergo realism. He thus concluded that
there are no necessary connections, only constant conjunctions.
Referring to the Law of Causality, Hume wrote, “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that
something could arise without a cause.” It has been argued that, while Hume did not think
causation is reducible to pure regularity, he was not a fully fledged realist either: Simon Blackburn
calls this a quasi-realist reading. On this view, talk about causal necessity is an expression of a
functional change in the human mind, whereby certain events are predicted or anticipated on the
basis of prior experience. The expression of causal necessity is a “projection” of the functional
change onto the objects involved in the causal connection: in Hume’s words, “nothing is more
usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion.”
The Self
According to the standard interpretation of Hume on personal identity, he was a bundle theorist,
who held that the self is nothing but a bundle of experiences (“perceptions”) linked by the relations
of causation and resemblance; or, more accurately, that the empirically warranted idea of the self
is just the idea of such a bundle. This view is forwarded by, for example, positivist interpreters,
who saw Hume as suggesting that terms such as “self”, “person”, or “mind” referred to collections
of “sense-contents”. A modern-day version of the bundle theory of the mind has been advanced
by Derek Parfit in his Reasons and Persons (1986).
However, some philosophers have criticised the bundle-theory interpretation of Hume on personal
identity. They argue that distinct selves can have perceptions that stand in relations of similarity
and causality with one another. Thus perceptions must already come parcelled into distinct
“bundles” before they can be associated according to the relations of similarity and causality: in
other words, the mind must already possess a unity that cannot be generated, or constituted, by
these relations alone. Since the bundle-theory interpretation portrays Hume as answering an
ontological question, philosophers who see Hume as not very concerned with such questions have
queried whether the view is really Hume’s, or “only a decoy”.Instead, it is suggested, Hume
might have been answering an epistemological question, about the causal origin of our concept of
the self. In the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume declares himself dissatisfied with his account of
the self in Book 1 of the Treatise, and the question of why he is dissatisfied has received a number
of different answers. Another interpretation of Hume’s view of the self has been argued for by
James Giles. According to this view, Hume is not arguing for a bundle theory, which is a form of

reductionism, but rather for an eliminative view of the self. That is, rather than reducing the self
to a bundle of perceptions, Hume is rejecting the idea of the self altogether. On this interpretation
Hume is proposing a ‘No-Self Theory’ and thus has much in common with Buddhist thought.
Alison Gopnik has argued that Hume was in a position to learn about Buddhist thought during
his time in France in the 1730s.

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