Hume on Resemblance, Relevance, and Representation

Abstract

I consider a class of argument implying that Hume's position on general representation is irredeemably circular in that it presupposes what it is meant to explain. Arguments of this sort (the most famous being Sellars' "myth of the given") threaten to undermine any empiricist account of general representation by showing how they depend on the naïve assumption that the relevant resemblances required for the sorting of experience into concepts for use in reasoning are simply given in experience itself. My aim is to salvage Hume's account from this objection. To that end, I argue first for a "Goodmanesque" interpretation of Humean resemblance, and second for an alternative reading of Hume's account of general ideas offered at T 1.1.7 that avoids falling into "the given" trap.

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