Sun Demirli

Hume begins his discussion of causation with the promise that he will explain fully the relation of cause and effect, and argues strenuously that there is no impression from which the idea of necessary connection is derived. At the end of his discussion, he summarizes his views by offering his two definitions of cause where he asserts that the causal relation can be nothing but the regular succession of cause and effect. This is traditionally thought to be evidence for the view that Hume reduces causation to regular succession and that he denies causal realism which asserts that there are necessary connections in nature to be taken into consideration. There is no evidence for the claim that Hume distinguishes between what we know of causation and what causation in itself is. On the contrary, he denies the existence of an external physical world (of which we can have inadequate ideas) and limits reality to our ideas. It seems to be a mistake, therefore, to claim that he believes that...

Descartes, zihin-beden problemini tartisirken, fiziksel bir varlik olarak bedenin nasil olupta kendisinden tamamen farkli bir dogaya sahip olan zihin uzerinde, algi, his, dusunce, ve benzer zihinsel olgulara neden olabilecegini sorguluyordu. Hume, zihin ve beden arasinda bir nedensellik bagintisi olup olamayacagini, hic bir yazisinda tartismadi. Buna ragmen, Descartes’in problemini farkli bir sekilde ele aldi: Nasil oluyorda zihinsel icerikler dis nesneleri temsil edebilir? Hume bu soruyu su sekilde cevapliyor: Ide yada algi gibi zihinsel iceriklerin, dis dunya hakkinda oldugu (ve boylece dis nesneleri resmettigi) dusuncesi, Descartes ve Locke benzeri modern felsefecilerin talihsiz bir icadi olmali. Bu yazida, Hume’un algi iceriklerini, ne zihinsel ne de fiziksel olmayan, notr bir yapi olarak dusundugunu, ve zihin ve bedeni, bu algi iceriklerinden ortaya cikan birer kurgu olarak tanimladigini savunuyorum. Bunun sonucu olarak soyle diyebiriz: Hume, Spinoza’yi takip ederek, zihin ve b...

The mind-body problem concerns Descartes’ question of how material things can cause something completely different in nature: sensations, ideas or mental experiences. Hume does not confront this puzzle head on and never worries about the problem of causation between mental and physical. He nonetheless emphasizes this Cartesian puzzle in terms of representation: how something mental can be about things that are completely different in nature? How perceptions can represent external bodies? His answer is that this is Locke’s double existence view, according to which, there is an external reality behind the “veil of perceptions”. In his words, this view is “the monstrous offspring of the modern philosophy”. I argue that Hume holds that there are only perceptions, which are neither mental nor physical and that minds and bodies are constructions out of such neutral perceptions. This brings him close to Spinoza’s view according to which mind-body distinction is a conceptual rather than a r...

Hume begins his discussion of causation with the promise that he will explain fully the relation of cause and effect, and argues strenuously that there is no impression from which the idea of necessary connection is derived. At the end of his discussion, he summarizes his views ...

The mind-body problem concerns Descartes' question of how material things can cause something completely different in nature: sensations, ideas or mental experiences. Hume does not confront this puzzle head on and never worries about the problem of causation between mental and physical. He nonetheless emphasizes this Cartesian puzzle in terms of representation: how something mental can be about things that are completely different in nature? How perceptions can represent external bodies? His answer is that this is Locke's double existence view, according to which, there is an external reality behind the "veil of perceptions". In his words, this view is "the monstrous offspring of the modern philosophy". I argue that Hume holds that there are only perceptions, which are neither mental nor physical and that minds and bodies are constructions out of such neutral perceptions. This brings him close to Spinoza's view according to which mind-body distinction is a conceptual rather than a real distinction. 1. Mind-body Dualism: The mind-body problem concerns Descartes' question of how material things can cause something completely different in nature: sensations, ideas or mental experiences. In bringing forth this problem, one has to look into Descartes' dualism and his conception of humans. Dualism is the view that each human being has a mind along with a body. Consider various properties a human being like Descartes has. He weighs less than 80 kilograms on the surface of the Earth; he has a human shape; he has a scar on his left shoulder; and so on. These are all physical properties. Along with such properties, he has also mental properties such as pondering whether to visit Vienna, having a pain on his right elbow, and having a desire to eat an apple. All the properties that Descartes has must be grouped under physical and mental properties. No mental property can be reduced to (or understood in terms of) physical properties and vice versa. This is the position that is called "property dualism" (PP 1:9; and also CSM 2: 259-87.) 1 I thank Lucas Thorpe, Stephen Voss and John Borhot for their helpful comments, and Bogazici University BAP for the research grant that they provide for my research in early modern philosophy.

One old view is that Hume endorsed a reductive analysis of causation: all causation can be reduced to the regular succession of events, and there are no irreducible causal relations, connecting causes to their effects. Recently, however, this old interpret-ation has been challenged, ...

Hume begins his discussion of causation with the promise that he will explain fully the relation of cause and effect, and argues strenuously that there is no impression from which the idea of necessary connection is derived. At the end of his discussion, he summarizes his views ...