No abstract

Hume describes his own “open, social, and cheerful humour” as “a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year.” Why does he value a cheerful character so highly? I argue that, for Hume, cheerfulness has two aspects—one manifests as mirth in social situations, and the other as steadfastness against life's misfortunes. This second aspect is of special interest to Hume in that it safeguards the other virtues. And its connection with the first aspect helps explain how it differs from Stoic tranquility. For Hume, I argue, philosophy has a modest role in promoting human happiness by preserving cheerfulness.

In the conclusion to the first book of the Treatise, Hume’s skeptical reflections have plunged him into melancholy. He then proceeds through a complex series of stages, resulting in renewed interest in philosophy. Interpreters have struggled to explain the connection between the stages. I argue that Hume’s repeated invocation of the four humors of ancient and medieval medicine explains the succession, and sheds a new light on the significance of skepticism. The humoral context not only reveals that Hume conceives of skepticism primarily as a temperament, not a philosophical view or system. It also resolves a puzzle about how Hume can view skepticism as both an illness and a cure. The skeptical temperament can, depending on its degree of predominance, either contribute to or upset the balance of temperaments required for proper mental functioning.

Disjunctivist views in the theory of perception hold that genuine perceptions differ in some relevant kind from misperceptions, such as illusions and hallucinations. In recent papers, Tyler Burge has argued that such views conflict with the basic tenets of perceptual psychology. According to him, perceptual psychology is committed to the view that genuine perceptions and misperceptions produced by the same proximal stimuli must be or involve perceptual states of the same kind. This, he argues, conflicts with disjunctivism. In this paper, I defend epistemological disjunctivism from Burge's inconsistency charge. To this end, I survey the perceptual psychological literature, and reveal that the perceptual kinds they tend to employ differ from and imply nothing about the kinds at issue to the epistemological disjunctivist. I then argue that Burge's concerns with epistemological disjunctivism are best interpreted as motivated not by his commitment to empirical science, but instead by his views in epistemology and human rationality.In "Disjunctivism and Perceptual Psychology" and "Disjunctivism Again," Tyler Burge wages a many-faced attack on a view about the nature of perceptual states which he calls 'disjunctivism.' Disjunctivism about perceptual states is the view that successful and unsuccessful perceptual states are different in some relevant kind.

Peter Fosl's new monograph investigates Hume's skepticism in light of two traditions going back to ancient times: Pyrrhonism and Academic skepticism. The book offers an intricate history of both traditions and culminates in a bold reading of Hume's skepticism. Against a trend which sees Hume's naturalism overcoming his skepticism, Fosl argues that Hume is "a truly radical and coherent sceptic" (332). Moreover, Hume is a "hybrid sceptic" (2, 171), gracefully combining elements of both the Pyrrhonian and Academic skeptical traditions. Numerous scholars have sought antecedents to Hume's skepticism in the Pyrrhonian Sextus Empiricus or the broadly Academic Cicero. What distinguishes Fosl's investigation is, first, its treating both traditions together and at length, and, second, its portrayal of Hume as "a deeply Pyrrhonian thinker" (172)-one who is not only profitably compared to Sextus, but who likely understood, favorably regarded, and self-consciously adapted Pyrrhonian thought (2-4, 79-80, 153ff). Fosl supports this iconoclastic reading with extensive historical research. But, due to a failure to answer central questions about the consistency of Hume's philosophy with the Pyrrhonists', the book leaves its bold reading underexplained and undersupported.Hume's Scepticism contains an Introduction and two Parts. I highly recommend