The subject of this post is an important one for me, but I’m having trouble understanding your remarks on Hume’s work. I have a pdf of Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature” and am about to undertake a study of Book2/Part3: “Of the will and direct passions” but I know from a previous attempt to understand Hume that it’s going to be a rough sled.
How you get on with Hume depends to a large degree on your patience for older writing styles and idioms. Hume writes in a style typical for his time, but very different from our own, and he's writing long before contemporary psychological parlance, which means a certain amount of translating between terms is required for the typical contemporary reader. The more you read older texts (as I do quite frequently) the easier this sort of 'expedition' becomes.
I thoroughly enjoyed Hume, and have read all of his work now (I think...), getting something different from all of it. I particularly enjoy contrasting An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding with A Treatise of Human Nature, since the Enquiry is a condensed version of the original text which focusses on what Hume thought was important. Indeed, I would recommend the Enquiry over the Treatise, personally, although the sections you are interested in are more related to his later An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which is the refined version of book 2 and 3 of the treatise, and cuts out a lot of fluff.
I would consider substituting An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals for book 2 and 3 of the Treatise unless you feel honour bound to tackle the Treatise head on (which you might). It's a third of the length and a little clearer. But also, I think you will find it hard work to extract Hume's meaning wherever you go. Just go with my reassurance that as long as you work to understand Hume's discussions, he presents arguments that still have contemporary relevance, but must be translated into our concepts, which can be a demanding process.
Reasoning sound, but I take issue with the assumption that human behaviour makes sense in a Newtonian way as cause and effect. I agree however that the idea of universes splitting away into probability trees is a hallucination of the math and has nothing to do with reality.
I definitely don't say that human behaviour has to be understood in a parallel to Newtonian physics here (although you *can* derive that viewpoint from Hume, whose views I'm recounting). But honestly, I'm just setting out the tent with Hume here - give me a chance to get to the really good stuff over the next two weeks! 😁
Hi Chris,
The subject of this post is an important one for me, but I’m having trouble understanding your remarks on Hume’s work. I have a pdf of Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature” and am about to undertake a study of Book2/Part3: “Of the will and direct passions” but I know from a previous attempt to understand Hume that it’s going to be a rough sled.
Dear Frank,
How you get on with Hume depends to a large degree on your patience for older writing styles and idioms. Hume writes in a style typical for his time, but very different from our own, and he's writing long before contemporary psychological parlance, which means a certain amount of translating between terms is required for the typical contemporary reader. The more you read older texts (as I do quite frequently) the easier this sort of 'expedition' becomes.
I thoroughly enjoyed Hume, and have read all of his work now (I think...), getting something different from all of it. I particularly enjoy contrasting An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding with A Treatise of Human Nature, since the Enquiry is a condensed version of the original text which focusses on what Hume thought was important. Indeed, I would recommend the Enquiry over the Treatise, personally, although the sections you are interested in are more related to his later An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which is the refined version of book 2 and 3 of the treatise, and cuts out a lot of fluff.
I would consider substituting An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals for book 2 and 3 of the Treatise unless you feel honour bound to tackle the Treatise head on (which you might). It's a third of the length and a little clearer. But also, I think you will find it hard work to extract Hume's meaning wherever you go. Just go with my reassurance that as long as you work to understand Hume's discussions, he presents arguments that still have contemporary relevance, but must be translated into our concepts, which can be a demanding process.
Good luck and bon voyage!
Chris.
Reasoning sound, but I take issue with the assumption that human behaviour makes sense in a Newtonian way as cause and effect. I agree however that the idea of universes splitting away into probability trees is a hallucination of the math and has nothing to do with reality.
Hey Asa,
I definitely don't say that human behaviour has to be understood in a parallel to Newtonian physics here (although you *can* derive that viewpoint from Hume, whose views I'm recounting). But honestly, I'm just setting out the tent with Hume here - give me a chance to get to the really good stuff over the next two weeks! 😁
Chris.