2 - Metaphysics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2021
Summary
In this chapter we begin our exploration of how Hume's view of the imagination informs his philosophical system by considering his approach to subjects that fall under the heading of metaphysics. Hume himself often uses this term in a positive, or at least neutral, sense to distinguish ‘profound reasonings’ (EHU 1.7/SBN 9) of philosophy that are ‘accurate and abstruse’ rather than ‘easy and obvious’ (EHU 1.1/SBN 5). In so doing, he includes within it subjects that, to contemporary ears at least, might have the ring of matters more appropriately classified as epistemological or relating to human cognition. At the same time, the term ‘metaphysics’ has its own natural history and, even today, its precise meaning and parameters remain a matter of some debate. With this in mind, and following Hume, I propose to take ‘metaphysics’ as referring to a number of issues that fall traditionally under that heading and involve ideas, which, being created by the propensive quality of the productive imagination, refer to objects that transcend possible experience. I exclude from the present discussion those fictions that underlie the formation of property and compose the body of popular theism; these, too, are natural fictions of vulgar reason that arise from the propensive quality of the imagination and might also be included under the title of ‘metaphysics’, but they require a separate treatment, which I will pursue in Chapters 3 and 6, respectively.
Hume identifies a number of fictions that fall under the heading of metaphysics, and these can be divided according to the schema elaborated in Chapter 1. Vulgar fictions of metaphysics are part of the immersion in a world taken for granted and can be neither avoided nor corrected; correspondingly, they inspire natural first-order beliefs that are pre-reflective, universal and necessary. Philosophical fictions, by contrast, are artificial, the result of philosophers drawing connections where none otherwise exist, and they only persuade practitioners that the ideas contained in the doctrines to which they are committed refer to some real object or state of affairs. Two factors rather complicate this picture, however.
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- The Imagination in Hume's PhilosophyThe Canvas of the Mind, pp. 54 - 107Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018