The essay is due on Feb. 11th. For email submissions, remember to name your file <yourlast
name>_2650_#3. As well, include your last name on the subject line of your email. The
essay should be about 2,500 words. I will send a confirmation of receipt if you request it.
If you use outside sources, all quotations and source material must be footnoted, and a
bibliography noting those sources included in your essay. Either this essay or the next (on
Hume's Dialogues) is to be a research essay, making use of outside sources.
1. In Book I of the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume analyzes our belief in the external
world and a continuing self. In the relevant passages, he argues that neither reason nor
the senses can justify our beliefs, but that another process is at work. Focus on the
process by which we come to have any beliefs at all, indicating the ways in which the
acquisition of this special belief is different from our ‘standard’ empirical beliefs. His
discussion of these empirical beliefs will play an important role in understanding that
difference. Paying close attention to the text (please do not fill up your essay with
quotes from the text – I know it quite well), examine the arguments for EITHER of these
beliefs.
2. Kemp Smith's 1905 article, "The Naturalism of Hume," introduces the interpretive claim
that we find in Hume "natural beliefs," beliefs that are not justified by reason or the
senses, but by our very nature. In order to prepare for the debate regarding the belief in
a deity being a "natural belief," make reference to Kemp Smith's article (which I can
provide) and reference in a chapter in his book The Philosophy of David Hume (which I
also have), show your understanding of this interpretive framework. This would satisfy
the research requirement. Should you wish, you may then continue this topic into your
next essay to assess the debate regarding the belief in a deity as also being a natural
belief. (This will also be a stand-alone topic for the Dialogues essay.)
3. Discuss as clearly as you can Hume's analysis of the process by which we make causal
judgements. This topic should include a clear discussion of "belief", the role of the
imagination, the two definitions of 'cause', etc. Also refer to Sections IV and V in Hume's
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (handout from class or link to on-line text on
my web page).
4. Hume claims that his “missing shade of blue” is a singular instance that does not affect
his general claim that all simple ideas are derived from correspondent impressions. We
can ask two questions: 1) why does Hume think the resulting idea is a ‘simple’ idea;
and 2) why does it not detract from his general principle that all ideas are derived from
correspondent impressions. Detail the problem as Hume discusses it in both the Treatise
and the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and show how scholars have treated
this issue. I have .pdfs of several articles which I can send to you if you choose this
topic. Others can be found through the Philosophers’ Index (where I found these).
5. In Book III, Of Morals, Section 1, Section 1, Hume argues that reason is not the ground
for moral distinctions. Show the unity of Hume's thought by referring this section to his
earlier arguments regarding reason's similar inability to arrive at knowledge of the
external world and causal power, moral knowledge being just another kind of knowledge
open to a Humean analysis. Refer also to his criticisms of a rational basis for morality in
the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, a link to which is on my website.