David Hume’s Treatment of Mind

This paper critically examines Hume’s argument against the knowledge/existence of substantival mind. This denial is rooted in his epistemology which includes a theory of how complex ideas which lack corresponding impressions are manufactured by the imagination, in conjunction with the memory, on the basis of three relations among impressions: resemblance, continuity and constant conjunction. The crux of my critique consists in pointing out that these relations are such that only an enduring, unified agent could interact with them in the way Hume describes. I note that Hume attempts to provide such an agent by invoking the activities of imagination and memory, but that it is unclear where these belong in his system. After discussing the relevant possibilities, I conclude that there is no category within the limits of his system that can accommodate the faculties and allow them to do the work Hume assigned to them. I then note that Hume’s rejection of substantival mind rests upon the assumption that something like substantival mind exists; for the action of the latter is required for the proper functioning of the process of fabrication which creates the fictitious notion of substantival mind. My concluding argument is that if the existence of substantival mind is implicit in Hume’s argument against substantival mind, then his argument resembles an indirect proof, and ought to be considered as evidence for, rather than against, the existence of substantival mind.

It is well known that David Hume rejected any idea of a 'substance of the mind' that would account for, among other things, personal identity. I will attempt to show that Hume's argument against the existence of substantival mind presupposes that such an entity actually ...

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...ated into complex by chance, should at the level of impressions have recourse to no other 'agent'. One is inclined to wonder why Hume thought it impossible that ideas should be constantly associated by chance into the same ordered pattern that we apprehend in experience, but that it is not impossible for impressions to be thus associated.

(15) Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, i. iv. v.

(16) Ibid., i. iv. v. Hume's maxim "all that is distinct is separable" and the outright neglect, in both Locke and Hume, of the modal distinction are points that cry out for criticism. However, as the thrust of this paper is limited, these will have to be covered more thoroughly elsewhere.

(17) Ibid., i. iv. vi.

(18) Ibid., i.iv.vi.

(19) Ibid., i. iv. v.

(20) Ibid., i. i. iv.; cf. note xi.

(21) Copleston, Frederick, S.J.; A History of Philosophy, Vol. VIII, p.120.