Hume Variations

Abstract

This book looks to David Hume for help in advancing our understanding of the mind. The book claims his Treatise of Human Nature as the foundational document of cognitive science: it launched the project of constructing an empirical psychology on the basis of a representational theory of mind. Going back to this work after more than 250 years we find that Hume is remarkably perceptive about the components and structure that a theory of mind requires. Careful study of the Treatise helps us to see what's amiss with much 20th-century philosophy of mind, and to get on the right track. Hume says in the Treatise that his main project is to construct a theory of human nature and, in particular, a theory of the mind. This book examines his account of cognition and how it is grounded in his ‘theory of ideas’. It discusses such key topics as the distinction between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ ideas, the thesis that an idea is some kind of picture, and the roles that ‘association’ and ‘imagination’ play in cognitive processes. It argues that the theory of ideas, as Hume develops it, is both historically and ideologically continuous with the representational theory of mind as it is now widely endorsed by cognitive scientists. This view of Hume is explicitly opposed to recent discussions by critics who hold that the theory of ideas is the Achilles heel of his philosophy and that he would surely have abandoned it if only he had read Wittgenstein carefully.