On Garrett's Hume

Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 1, April 1998, pp. 131-139 SYMPOSIUM A version of this paper was presented at the symposium on Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy by Don Garrett, held at the XXIVth International Hume Conference, Monterey, California, July 1997. On Garrett's Hume MARGARET DAULER WILSON Don Garrett's book is impressive for its scholarship; for its friendliness towards Hume (often arguing inventively that rigorous reinterpretation can absolve him from allegations of error or incoherence); and for its emphasis on questions of continuing philosophical worth and interest. As someone who has long found it difficult to enter fully into Hume's system—especially his positions on issues of cognition—I particularly appreciate Don's candid admissions of what one may call (with some pain, in the present context) the serious limitations of Hume's theories in this area. Despite such concessions , of course, Garrett still holds that Hume's achievements in the Treatise and later works continue to reward philosophical study and critical involvement. And he makes clear through detailed analysis the force of Hume's critique of principles central to the positions of major Rationalist philosophers—which indeed may seem often "dogmatic." In the area of cognitive theory specifically, and closely related treatments of such "metaphysical " topics as causality and substance, Garrett explains Hume's systematic opposition to intellectualist doctrines espoused by Descartes and such successors as Spinoza and Leibniz. As Don emphasizes, Hume followed in the steps of Locke and Berkeley in rejecting the Cartesian conception of intellect; but his opposition to this supposed "faculty" was in many ways more systematic and searching than theirs. But, after all, Hume was working in a later period; and yet (I would be inclined to argue) he intensified (rather than overcame) certain central problems in previous empiricist accounts of human mentality. The late Margaret Dauler Wilson (1939-1998) was Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, Princeton NJ USA. 132 Margaret Dauler Wilson I'll try to give some color to this perhaps "««friendly" suggestion mainly by sketching out some doubts about Garrett's positive claims about epistemological support for the "Copy Principle"—a principle which, as he says, is fundamental to Hume's philosophy, and derives in large degree from Locke. I'll also raise a couple of questions about Hume's imagist conception of "abstract ideas," derived from Berkeley. Garrett makes some interesting appeals to this conception in arguing that apparent conflicts or incoherences in Hume's position can be resolved, if its pivotal role is recognized. But the conception, as he explains it, seems to present sufficient difficulties of its own that one may well wonder whether its pivotal role (assuming Garrett's interpretations are right) is such a good thing. I'll conclude with some minor queries about certain of Garrett's early remarks about pre-Humean rationalist philosophers. I. As explained by Garrett, the Copy Principle encompasses the claims that every simple "idea" (1) has an exactly resembling simple impression (sensory experience); and (2) is at least partly caused by a simple impression —presumably, the very one that it exactly resembles (CCHP 41).x (Additionally—in the Treatise anyway—Hume holds that every simple impression has a "corresponding" [and I think Don takes this to mean exactly resembling] idea—which is just a fainter copy of itself [CCHP 44]). Critics (most emphatically Antony Flew) have claimed that Hume presents this principle as if it were an empirically-supported psychological law; but then "outrageously" wields it in a normative way to rule out the very existence of "ideas" that might be presented as counterexamples to it. In other words, the "counterexamples" are not even entertained as empirical counter-evidence, but rather doctrinairely ruled out as if inconsistent with a known a priori, necessary truth. Garrett, however, maintains that Hume consistently presents the principle as an empirically grounded, contingent claim. He writes that "[t]he Copy Principle...is a relatively straightforward empirical claim that the presented content of those mental representations that are less 'lively' than (Humean) impressions is copied from the experienced content of these impressions." He stresses that Hume does seriously entertain possible counterexamples —notably the famous "missing shade of blue...