Paper Title
Commentator ORCID ID
0000-0003-2212-6379
Paper Abstract
What would it take for Hume to be an external world skeptic? Is Hume's position on knowledge sufficient to force him to deny that we can acquire knowledge of (non-logical) propositions about the external world? After all, Hume is extremely restrictive about what can be known because he requires knowledge to be immune to error. In this paper, I will argue that if Hume were a skeptic, then he must also deny a particular kind of view about what is immediately present to the mind. I will argue that direct realisms—views that maintain that mind-independent (i.e. ontologically distinct) things are immediately present to the mind—combine with Hume's position on knowledge to entail the negation of skepticism. So, despite his position on knowledge, Hume could still consistently reject skepticism, if he were to endorse direct realism.
Notes
© 2020. Graham Clay. © 2020. David Landy. These materials are presented under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International copyright license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). 
Although open access is provided for these materials, please be mindful that they were originally prepared as oral presentations for traditional conference formats and that the authors may be presenting work-in-progress, even works in early stages of development, and they may not have all the kinks smoothed out yet. Before quoting from this material, we encourage you to check whether a published version supersedes this material or whether the author has a preferred version for you to quote from. Authors' ORCID iDs are available above to facilitate this for you.
Start Date
5-6-2020 2:00 PM
Time Zone
Pacific Daylight Time
End Date
5-6-2020 2:55 PM
Location
Author's Homepage
http://grahamclay.com
Commentator's Homepage
http://online.sfsu.edu/landy/
Landy Comments on Clay.mp4 (20525 kB)
Graham Clay - Highlights - What Makes Hume An External World Skeptic.mp4 (7032 kB)
Clay_2020_KnowledgeAndSensoryKnowledgeInHumesTreatise.pdf (421 kB)
Transcript - Day 2 Session 3.pdf (117 kB)
alastair crosby - Chat Comments 2020_06_05 Session 4 copy.pdf (59 kB)
Clays Responses to Landy (extended version).pdf (545 kB)
What makes Hume an External World Skeptic?
What would it take for Hume to be an external world skeptic? Is Hume's position on knowledge sufficient to force him to deny that we can acquire knowledge of (non-logical) propositions about the external world? After all, Hume is extremely restrictive about what can be known because he requires knowledge to be immune to error. In this paper, I will argue that if Hume were a skeptic, then he must also deny a particular kind of view about what is immediately present to the mind. I will argue that direct realisms—views that maintain that mind-independent (i.e. ontologically distinct) things are immediately present to the mind—combine with Hume's position on knowledge to entail the negation of skepticism. So, despite his position on knowledge, Hume could still consistently reject skepticism, if he were to endorse direct realism.