Vulgar Habits and Hume's Double Vision Argument

Annemarie Butler

doi:10.3366/jsp.2010.0005

Vulgar Habits and Hume's Double Vision Argument

Journal of Scottish Philosophy ◽

10.3366/jsp.2010.0005 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 169-187

Author(s):

Annemarie Butler

Keyword(s):

David Hume ◽

Double Vision ◽

Raw Data ◽

The Senses

In Treatise 1.4.2, David Hume seeks to explain how we come to believe in the external existence of bodies. He offers a complicated psychological account, where the imagination operates on the raw data of the senses to produce the ‘vulgar’ belief in the continued existence of the very things we sense. On behalf of philosophers, he presents a perceptual relativity argument that purports to show that the vulgar belief is false. I argue that scholars have failed to appreciate Hume's peculiar formulation of the perceptual relativity argument and its relation to his psychological account of the vulgar belief. On my interpretation, in order to account for all the premises that Hume explicitly offers, the argument is best interpreted as beginning with a reductio that opposes the effects of the senses and the imagination in the vulgar belief. Thus Hume can be interpreted as identifying an ‘antinomy’ in the habits of the vulgar mind that produce belief in bodies.

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Hendel on Hume's Atomism

Dialogue ◽

10.1017/s0012217300035447 ◽

1964 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 299-307

Author(s):

Cecil Currie

Keyword(s):

First Principles ◽

David Hume ◽

Space Time ◽

The Body ◽

Space And Time ◽

Time Correction ◽

The Senses

In this new edition of Professor Hendel's Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume (1925), there are no changes in the body of the work, except the elimination of the original Chapter five, “Space, Time and Reality,” and its replacement by a short Appendix (III) entitled “On Space and Time: Correction of Former Errors.” Three appendices have been added: I. “The ‘Discoveries’ of Hume and the ‘New Scene of Thought’”; II. “Hume's Relation to Hutcheson;” III. “On ‘The Nature of Experience’ and the Senses in Which It Has Been Considered Normative.” A more substantial addition is a thirty-page introduction in which Professor Hendel reviews the great efflorescence of Hume scholarship in the present century and notes how vastly more important Hume the philosopher looms now than when he wrote the Studies. Finally, there is a supplement of one hundred pages, “On Atomism: A Critique of Hume's First Principles and Method.”

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Observations on the physiology of the nerves of sensation, illustrated by a case of paralysis of the fifth pair

Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London ◽

10.1098/rspl.1830.0121 ◽

1837 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

pp. 205-206

Keyword(s):

Sphenoid Bone ◽

Double Vision ◽

Left Nostril ◽

Inner Surface ◽

The Face ◽

The Subject ◽

Voluntary Motion ◽

The Senses ◽

The Brain

The influence of the fifth pair of nerves on the functions of sight, smell, and taste, is a subject which has lately occupied the attention of physiologists. Many experiments have been made on living animals with a view to its elucidation; but these experiments have never led to any satisfactory conclusion. Considerable light has been thrown upon this obscure question by the phenomena attending a case of paralysis of the fifth pair of nerves, which occurred in the author’s practice, and of which he gives the history in detail, after quoting the account given by Magendie of his experiments and speculations respecting the functions of these nerves. The lady who was the subject of these observations had been affected with total insensibility of the left side of the face and head, together with strabismus, accompanied with double vision; but the powers of voluntary motion of all these parts remained entire. The globe of the left eye was quite insensible to touch, though it retained the power of vision unimpaired, excepting that for sometime previous to death it had lost the faculty of distinguishing colours. The left nostril received no impressions from the most irritating stimulants, such as snuff or ammonia; yet the sense of smelling continued unimpaired. The left side of the tongue was quite insensible to impressions both of touch and of taste. On examining the brain after death, a scirrhous tumour was found lying on the inner surface of the sphenoid bone, extending laterally to the foramen auditorium internum, and resting posteriorly on the pons Varolii, which was slightly ulcerated. The tumour had completely obliterated the foramina for the exit of the three branches of the fifth pair of nerves. This case proves, therefore, that, contrary to the opinion of Magendie, the senses of smell and vision can be exercised independently of the fifth pair of nerves; and that the sense of taste is altogether derived from that nerve; and corroborates the views of Sir Charles Bell on this part of physiology.

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REID'S RESPONSE TO HUME ON DOUBLE VISION

Journal of Scottish Philosophy ◽

10.3366/e1479665108000213 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 189-194

Author(s):

JAMES J.S. FOSTER

Keyword(s):

David Hume ◽

Direct Realism ◽

Double Vision ◽

Animal Spirits ◽

Natural Position

In issue 6.1 of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, James Van Cleve describes Thomas Reid's understanding of double vision and then presents a challenge to his direct realism found in works of David Hume based on double vision. The challenge is as follows: When we press one eye with a finger, we immediately perceive all the objects to become double, and one half of them to be remov'd from their common and natural position. But as we do not attribute a continu'd existence to both these perceptions, and as they are both of the same nature, we clearly perceive, that all our perceptions [i.e., all the things we perceive] are dependent on our organs, and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits. (THN: 210–211)

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