The Manifest Connection
Causation, Meaning, and David Hume
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8123715 |
|---|---|
| Authors | P Kyle Stanford (0000-0003-2018-8576, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 339-360 |
| Publication date | 2002-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the history of philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-5053 • E-ISSN: 1538-4586 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/hph.2002.0061 |
| OpenAlex | W2080429516 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 3 |
exciting recent hume scholarship has challenged the traditional view that Hume's theory of meaning leads him to deny the very intelligibility or coherence of supposing that there are objective causal powers or intrinsic necessary connections between causally related entities. Influential recent interpretations have variously held that Hume himself accepted the existence of such powers and connections, that he was genuinely agnostic about them, or that he denied their existence while nonetheless holding it to be a perfectly coherent possibility, indeed one that we routinely (albeit mistakenly) think actual. In this paper I will argue against all three of these lines of interpretation and in favor of what I consider a neglected alternative: that Hume rejects the existence of objective necessary connections or causal powers as literally incoherent or meaningless, but on subtle and sophisticated semantic grounds, rather than simplistic ones. 1 I find support for this semantic reading and against the alternatives not only in passages whose significance to the debate is widely appreciated, but also in Hume's discussions "Of Liberty and Necessity" and "Of the Immateriality of the Soul." [End Page 339
Causation · Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy · Epistemology · Intelligibility (philosophy · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Metaphysics · Physicalism · Reading (process · Reflexive pronoun · Scholarship · Soul · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,24 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2021 (13) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |