Hume's Critique of Religion: 'Sick Men's Dreams' by Alan Bailey & Dan O'Brien

Author:Alan Bailey & Dan O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

At the same time that he is being studiously neutral on the metaphysical question of the substance underlying our thoughts, Hume seems to place considerable emphasis on the causal role of the physical brain. Hume claims in both the Treatise and the Enquiry that each idea that comes before a person’s mind partially determines, via principles of psychological association, what idea or ideas will follow it (1739, 1.1.4.1/10–11; 1772a, 3.1/23). These principles of association play a crucial role in Hume’s account of belief and causal inference: without recourse to these principles he would be unable to offer any explanation of how we arrive at beliefs about matters of fact lying beyond the reach of our memories and the present operation of our senses. From Hume’s perspective, awareness of these connecting principles is of great value within the science of human nature even if it is not possible to discover why they hold sway. However, he does eventually offer what he presents as a plausible physiological account of the origins of these principles. When I receiv’d the relations of resemblance, contiguity and causation, as principles of union among ideas, without examining into their causes, ’twas more in prosecution of my first maxim, that we must in the end rest contented with experience, than for want of something specious and plausible, which I might have display’d on that subject. ’Twou’d have been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the brain, and have shown, why upon our conception of any idea, the animal spirits run into all the contiguous traces, and rouze up the other ideas, that are related to it. (1739, 1.2.5.20/60)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.