The Two Humes

Abstract

Abstract Hume's Treatise has two distinct goals: first, to reveal the limitations of human knowledge by developing an empirical psychology, and second, to decide metaphysical questions. Many commentators take these to be in conflict, and so emphasize one or the other. This chapter suggests a way to unify them: by discovering the limits of human thought, Hume can declare certain metaphysical positions not just unknowable, or true for all we can tell, but positively nonsensical. The psychological project is thus in service of the metaphysical.

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