Abstract
David Hume’s supposed skepticism about the existence of an external, material world is much more opaque than, for example, his inductive skepticism. So much so that Michael Tooley has argued that his particular solution to the problem of induction by invoking a necessitarian ontology of governing laws could, by the same token, make a solution to external world skepticism possible. This chapter discusses Hume’s view on the existence of material bodies. The basic idea is that an immaterial world of the Berkeleyan kind is less likely and much more complex than the corresponding world that contains material bodies. The chapter argues that Hume’s reaction to the problem of induction and the resulting inductive skepticism is highly instructive with how to react to the other skepticism looming on the horizon. However, while Hume offers to his mind unassailable arguments against the vulgar and the philosophical systems, he does not actively endorse immaterialism or any form of idealism as a positive thesis.
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